Chad Gabriel, Sherpa of Purpose

#191: How to Wake the World With Your Purpose-Driven Brand Story

You hold the power to create the life you want. But the world has become so chaotic and so full of noise it’s difficult to distinguish your own authentic story from the story the world is telling you. Therefore, it is important to pause and take a journey back to awaken the aliveness that is sleeping within you through the power of a purpose-driven brand story.

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John Oechsle, President and CEO of Swiftpage

#190: Why, How and When to Evolve Your Brand Story

All businesses have stories. It doesn’t matter if you own a small-scale business, a medium enterprise, or a large corporation – they all come together with a common denominator: a brand story worth telling. So how do you know when it’s time to evolve your business and your brand story?

With every company’s evolution and growth, the brand story needs to evolve because you want your people to take part in that evolution. But what comes first the business or brand story evolution? 

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Jason Linett, Speaker

#189: How to Re-write Your Internal Stories Through Hypnosis

We all tell ourselves stories. We all have collective, imagined realities. But these stories are critical because they can either make or break you. Therefore, it’s also important to take a step back, re-evaluate, and re-write these internal stories to make sure they’re in line with our personal and professional goals and our subconscious mind isn’t tearing them down.

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” —Hamlet

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Dr. Ghina Halabi, Space Scientist

#188: How Storytelling is Attracting More Female Scientists

How “woo woo” does it sound if I tell you we are all made of stardust?

I guess it depends on the messenger. If you hear it from someone who has a doctorate in astrophysics and has mastered the study of the entire solar system, it might sound like a natural science phenomenon.

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Barry Kirk, Vice President of Strategy at Maritz Loyalty

#187: How to Build Customer Loyalty Through a Shared Brand Narrative

Two weeks ago, I bought a pair of black wingtip shoes from the Johnston and Murphy store at Scottsdale Fashion Square. I noticed a pair of blue dress shoes that I had bought in Chicago six months earlier were marked down by $40. I mentioned this in passing to the cashier. When she rang up my new pair, she knocked $40 off of them. I wasn’t looking for a deal. But she was empowered to give me one.

That was the best $40 Johnston and Murphy could’ve spent on advertising in that moment. Because I am now telling you, and they have a loyal customer in me. (more…)

Pete Sena, Founder of Digital Surgeons

#186: How the Medium Magnifies Your Message

The media you choose, the channels you select, determine the kind of message you will share to connect with your audience. And most of us use our analytical left brain to understand what drives our customers. But this only covers what we believe is the logical behavioral side, and isn’t capturing the full picture of what customers want and need.

Therefore, in this week’s episode, discover a revolutionary way of understanding audiences and how to effectively communicate using an interesting combination of algorithms and anecdotes. 

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Zeke Zelker, Filmmaker and Transmedia Pioneer

#185: How to Grow Your Brand via Transmedia Storytelling

The way we typically consume stories is how they are told — starting from the beginning to the finale. But it’s important to realize that not all stories are linear. Therefore, on this week’s show, we’re exploring a non-linear approach to telling stories using a variety of media channels to scale the same story. (more…)

Bruno Sarda, Head of Sustainability at NRG

#184: How to Open Minds With Your Brand Story

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Jonathan Haidt, Author

#183: How Your Stories Can Unite Divided People

Why is happiness elusive? Why can’t it be as easy as knowing what makes you happy and doing exactly that? Think about it. Later, you’ll come to realize your important role in resolving this dilemma. In the pursuit of elusive happiness, we can use stories to connect even the greatest divides.

It is a privilege to have Jonathan Haidt on this week’s Business of Story podcast. Jonathan is an American social psychologist who wrote the book The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. In this book, he explored the relationship between modern science and ancient philosophies like Buddhism and Stoicism. Using the metaphor of the elephant and the rider, he rationalized that the subconscious mind is constantly at war with our conscious mind. That’s the reason why our actions are often the exact opposite of what we’re thinking or feeling.

What is it that divides us? Jonathan touches on the subject in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided By Politics and Religion, showcasing how moral judgments arise from gut feelings, and why many of us have such different intuitions about right and wrong.

In his new book, The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, Haidt, with his co-author Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, reveal how we can overcome the polarization we’re now seeing in universities as the iGen. Or Gen Z, kids born in 1995 and beyond.

How can we conquer this division through storytelling and link our worlds together? In this episode, find out how

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Doug Passon, Defense Attorney turned Filmmaker

182: How Defense Attorneys Use Cinematic Storytelling to Reduce Sentences

In 1995, a convict of a federal drug case was given a reduced sentence of probation. Why? The judge saw a video of him taking care of his wife who was very sick. The video showed how his wife’s entire life depended on him. Most importantly, it showed who will be affected most by the judge’s decision — the sick and dying wife who didn’t have anything to do with the crime.

That alone influenced the judge’s decision because it appealed to his human side. That’s the power empathy has.

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