Mitchell Clements

#410: How ESPN’s Social Media Team Uses Storytelling to Score Big Time

#410: How ESPN’s Social Media Team Uses Storytelling to Score Big Time

You, like everyone else, are battling in the most competitive arena of communication that we’ve ever experienced.

Social media, where everyone believes they’re a superstar.

Like an Ali jab, if you can get your messages to land right the first time, every time, then you’ll have the impact on the audiences you seek.

But you’re messages aren’t winning because they’re lackluster. Listless. Lathargic, to keep this alliteration going.

Mitchell Clements, Social Media Creative Manager at ESPN is here to share with you some of the most creative ways ESPN tells their sports stories online.

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Brock Swinson

#409: How to Become a Positively Prolific Storyteller

#409: How to Become a Positively Prolific Storyteller

So you think you want to write a book and share even more of your fantastic stories? Or maybe you just want to become more prolific with your blog.

But you’ve got writer’s block. Or worse. Burnout.

In this episode of The Business of Story, we’re joined by Brock Swinson, author of Ink by the Barrel: Secrets From Prolific Writers and host of the Creative Principles Podcast.

Brock has interviewed some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, including Aaron Sorkin, Ethan Hawke, and Judd Apatow, and is now sharing his insights with novice writers.

One of the most effective ways Brock helps his clients is by exploring sub-genres and niches within their niche. It’s amazing how many parallels you can draw between your own experiences and those of your audience when you take the time to dig deep and find the common threads.

But one of the biggest challenges is coming up with stories about yourself that feel valuable and meaningful.

Brock believes the stories that feel too obvious or too personal are often the ones that resonate the most with others. They’re the stories that help you connect with your audience on a deeper level and build trust with them over time.

So don’t be afraid to share your own experiences and let your personality shine through. It’s what sets you apart and makes you unique.

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Bernadette Jiwa

#408: How to Use the Power of Your Everyday Stories

#408: How to Use the Power of Your Everyday Stories

Have you ever thought that you had to tell big, sweeping stories to capture attention?

If it’s not epic, it’s boring.

But what if your small, everyday stories carried an even greater impact than you had ever imagined?

You are about to learn from Bernadette Jiwa, the creator of the Story Skills Workshop, who has taught thousands of people to harness the power of their everyday stories.

Her eight bestselling books are modern classics on mastering the art of storytelling to persuade, influence and inspire.

Named by Smart Company as one of Australia’s Top Business Thinkers and listed as one of the Top Branding Experts to follow on Twitter, Bernadette is trusted by leaders from the likes of Disney, UNICEF, Louis Vuitton, Adidas, United Nations, Red Cross, Microsoft, Google, LEGO, and more.

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Aransas Savas

#407: How to Design Transformative Customer Experiences With Your Business Storytelling

#407: How to Design Transformative Customer Experiences With Your Business Storytelling

A beautiful thing happens when you place your customer at the center of your brand story and then deliver on the promises you make to them.

But man does it get ugly fast when you don’t.

That’s why today we’re focused on how you can use business storytelling to create transformative experiences for all those you serve.

Aransas Savas is an experience designer and coach at Stone Mantel, an experience strategy company, and the co-host of the Experience Strategy Podcast.

Drawing on her over two-decade career, Aransas combines behavioral science and coaching to partner with experience strategists at leading consumer brands, including Weight Watchers, Best Buy, Truist Bank, and Clayton Homes to create meaningful, and often, transformative, customer journeys.

Based in Brooklyn, Aransas is a 20-time marathoner, a wife to a newscaster, and a mother to a 200-year-old sourdough culture, a fluffy pup and two spirited, creative girls.

She uses storytelling as a central theme in their work to unify the complimentary, though often competitive, disciplines of marketing strategy and experience strategy. When we talk about promises made and promises kept, we are talking about storytelling that delivers on meaningful and valuable experiences and builds trust. Conversely, many brands degrade trust by telling stories that they just can’t deliver on.

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Rand Jenkins & Michael Gass

#406: How to Find Your Riches in the Niches With Your Brand Story

#406: How to Find Your Riches in the Niches With Your Brand Story

My friend Greg Head, a guru in the start-up and hi-tech marketing world, and host of The Practical Founders podcast once told me that “Specialists eat generalists for lunch.”

I’ve seen that in my own work from running my ad agency Park&Co as a generalist agency back in the late 1990s and then finding a core niche of sustainable marketing starting in 2008.

But my services became laser focused in 2016 when now all I do is consult, teach, coach, and speak internationally on the power of storytelling in business leadership.

The wise master who initially helped me niche-down Park&Co and whose guidance has helped me refine my Business of Story offering is Michael Gass. He has been helping agencies internationally find their focused purpose through his company Fuel Lines.

Today, Michael joins Rand Jenkins, co-founder and director of marketing strategy for Mountain Mojo Group, a Flagstaff Arizona-based ad agency with a focus on serving independent, mom & pop hardware stores across the country.

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Dr. Randy Olson

#405: ChatGPT Meets the ABT: Friend or Foe for Your Business Storytelling?

#405: ChatGPT Meets the ABT: Friend or Foe for Your Business Storytelling?

Artificial intelligence, especially with the introduction of ChatGPT, is an earth-shaking development in content creation and business communications.

But many people fear that the bots are going to rise up and dominate the human species. Is an AI apocalypse at hand?

Lately, we’ve been asked if AIs like ChatGPT will render our Business of Story training obsolete, especially our work with the ABT (And, But, Therefore) agile narrative framework.

So we put ChatGPT to the test.

In this episode, you will learn what I and Dr. Randy Olson, the Harvard-trained evolutionary scientist-turned-Hollywood filmmaker have learned working with ChatGPT and the ABT.

Randy and I co-wrote The Narrative Gym for Business, which is a crisp 75-page guide that helps you understand narrative form versus content and how to craft the ABTs on three primary, secondary and tertiary levels.

We have learned that you have to understand the ABT agile narrative framework from a very human perspective if you are going to prompt ChatGPT appropriately and recognize if the AI is actually taking you where you want to go.
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Brittany Gabriales

#404: How to Turn Moments into Movements With Your Social Media Storytelling

#404: How to Turn Moments into Movements With Your Social Media Storytelling

Have you participated in any of the Social Media Strategies Summits that are offered year-round to make you a better marketer?

They are NOT a sponsor of this podcast.

But they have invited me to be a mentor in their sessions. In return, one of the perks is access to their amazing speakers for my show.

I am delighted to host on today’s show Brittany Cabriales who, for nearly a decade,  has helped build GoFundMe social channels from the ground up with heartfelt, authentic storytelling.

Her ideas and content have helped turn GoFundMe from a “little website that’s kinda like Kickstarter” into a household name, known by millions across the globe.

Today Brittany shares how they use brand storytelling in different ways on different channels. For instance, their Twitter feed focuses on stories that are relevant to breaking news while GoFundMe uses Instagram to pull at the heartstrings.

They’re still experimenting with TikTok.

Plus, Brittany shares some pretty cool stories about the impact GoFundMe is having on people who have simply summoned the courage to ask for help.

It must be working, because GoFundMe has raised more than $15 billion in donations from 120 million donors since its inception in 2010.

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Amy Jacobs-Schroeder & Sean Schroeder

How Storytelling Through a SaaS Platform is Revolutionizing Autism Care

How Storytelling Through a SaaS Platform is Revolutionizing Autism Care

All of us parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and family friends want the children in our lives to be happy and healthy.

But autism is on the rise and some suggest in epidemic proportions.

In 2021, the CDC reported that approximately one in 44 children in the U.S. is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Boys are four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls.

And as doctors, clinicians, and therapists focus on providing better outcomes for the kids struck by autism, historically there hasn’t been a ton of help for their parents. They often find themselves overwhelmed and under-educated on how to not just cope, but how to help their kids live fulfilling lives.

Happy Ladders helps expand your child’s potential with its digital autism therapy platform.

To ignite the growth of Happy Ladders, Amy Jacobs-Schroeder and Sean Schroeder summon the power of storytelling to elevate their impact in the world.

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Jason Stanford

#402: Forget the Alamo: The Revisionist History That Built This Texas Brand

#402: Forget the Alamo: The Revisionist History That Built This Texas Brand

Who doesn’t love the legend of Davey Crockett as groomed by Disney? Coonskin cap. Ol’ Betsy, Davy’s rifle that he presumably killed packs of “bahr”.

His bravery at the Alamo.

And what about the American lore of the Alamo itself? For 187 years, the Alamo has represented the fighting fury and independence of long tall Texans everywhere.

But what if the story of the Alamo is just a long tall tale? A complete fabrication?

What if everything you knew about Crockett, Jim Bowie for which the Bowie Knife is named, and Bill Travis, the leader of “The Defenders” is total hooey?

And what does this all mean for your brand story?

Jason Stanford, co-author of Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, corrects revisionist history in his book written with Bryan Burrough and Chris Tomlinson.

Jason’s bylines have appeared in Texas Monthly, the Texas Tribune, Texas Highways, and the Texas Observer, as well as many publications that have nothing whatsoever to do with Texas. Jason also publishes a Substack newsletter called The Experiment.

As former communications director for Austin Mayor Steve Adler, in 2018 he was named by Austin Monthly “Best Man Behind the Curtain.” A former political consultant, Stanford often contributed to the Austin American-Statesman, Politico Magazine, Talking Points Memo, and MSNBC.

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Allan Rienstra

#401: How to Use Ultrasonic Storytelling in the Manufacturing Industry

#401: How to Use Ultrasonic Storytelling in the Manufacturing Industry

You have an amazing product or service and are pumped to share stories about how you’ve revolutionized your industry through your innovation.

But few people seem to care. Why?

Because you lead your communications with logical arguments and reasoned rationale when what your audience really wants is the emotional pull of a story.

One of my favorite videos that humorously demonstrates this insight is found in this engineer’s jargon-laced presentation about the Entabulator.

I believe we can all learn a lesson here, and that is people don’t buy what you make but what you make happen. Outcomes trump your offering every time.

No one knows that better than today’s guest, Allan Reinstra. He is co-owner of a 50-year-old technology “startup” headquartered in Brussels, Belgium called SDT Ultrasound. His primary role is director of international business development overseeing sales and marketing in all countries outside of Europe.

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