It Has Everything to Do with How You Tell Your Story
Why leaders from the United States Air Force to Dell, Intel, and top universities are learning to close the communication gap with story
A senior officer at a United States Air Force installation knows exactly what the mission requires. She has the intelligence, the credibility, the decades of earned expertise.
But when she stands in front of her team to communicate that vision — to actually move people to act — something gets lost in translation. The message is technically correct. The words are all there. The story isn’t.
I’ve been training USAF leaders, from Brigadier to Four-Star Generals and their staffs, on the power of leadership storytelling for over a decade.
I’ve helped them close this communication gap; the most expensive, underestimated gap in leadership today.
I sat down with sales leadership expert Bernadette McClelland on her podcast, The Influence Gap, to show you how to use storytelling to bridge the gap with your people.
Bernadette McClelland has spent her career helping high performers close the distance between their capability and the influence they’ve earned the right to have. Her show asks the question every serious leader should be wrestling with: what’s standing between your intention and your impact?
For more than two decades, working with organizations from the United States Air Force to Dell, Intel, major universities, and large healthcare systems — my answer has almost always been the same. Story.
What’s In It For You
- Why the communication gap — not the strategy gap — is what keeps great leaders from becoming extraordinary ones
- The three-word narrative framework I’ve used with military commands, Silicon Valley giants, academic institutions, and major health systems
- How a global SaaS company saw a 400% LinkedIn engagement increase by restructuring their copy — without changing a single word
- What brand actually means — and why it has nothing to do with your logo or tagline
- Why AI without your authentic story is just expensive, well-formatted noise
- The one storytelling habit that consistently separates good leaders from great ones
Two Decades of Watching Leaders Miss the Room
The organizations I’ve worked with are wildly different. The gap is almost always identical.
Leaders lead with what they make. They almost never lead with what they make happen.
A surgeon explains the procedure. A tech executive demonstrates the product features. A general outlines the operational objectives. All of it is accurate. None of it is story. And so none of it lands the way it needs to.
The human brain doesn’t make decisions based on accuracy. It makes decisions based on emotion — then justifies those decisions with logic. Every communication that jumps straight to the data, the slide deck, the credentials, without first speaking to the audience’s emotional reality, is leaving influence on the table.
The Three-Word Framework That Changes Everything
Dr. Randy Olson is a Harvard PhD evolutionary biologist and USC film school graduate who has spent his career teaching scientists and academics how to communicate. His contribution is three words: and, but, therefore.
That’s the ABT framework. And it is the most powerful three-word story structure in existence.
The “and” establishes agreement — speaking from your audience’s perspective: here’s what you want, and here’s why it matters to you. The “but” introduces the conflict, the gap standing between where they are and where they need to be. The “therefore” delivers the resolution — what becomes possible when that gap is closed.
Setup. Problem. Resolution. It’s a 70,000-year-old story engine, hardwired into every human brain on the planet.
When we applied the ABT framework to Trimble’s LinkedIn campaigns — a global SaaS company running five campaigns across five countries in five languages — they saw a 400% increase in engagement the following month. We didn’t rewrite the copy. We restructured it. That’s what happens when you feed a clear, emotionally grounded narrative to the decision-making brain.
What Brand Actually Means
Jeff Bezos said your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. I’d push that further: your brand is the story people tell about you when you’re not there.
The distinction matters. People can say things. But when they tell a story, they’re closing the influence gap for you — bringing someone else into your world through narrative, emotion, and personal experience.
That only happens when you’ve done the intentional work of building a story worth telling, and invited people so deeply into it that they carry it forward.
From Winging It to Winning It
Most leaders are intuitive storytellers — it works sometimes, by accident. An early Goodwill campaign from my agency tells that story perfectly. Two TV spots. Same budget. Same team. One drove a 42% increase in same-store sales. The other moved nothing and got pulled.
The difference? One landed on story naturally. The other was created for our own creative satisfaction.
That was the moment I understood: intuition occasionally produces brilliance. Intention produces it consistently.
Running every important communication through the ABT structure — and, but, therefore — before it reaches your audience is the single habit that separates good leaders from great ones at every organization I’ve had the privilege to work with.
Artful Intelligence — Not Artificial Slop
Bernadette and I also talked about AI. My position: AI is only as powerful as the authentic human story you bring to it. I call it artful intelligence.
When you bring your market knowledge, your hard-earned insights, your specific experiences and perspective, AI amplifies you. When you skip all of that and let the machine generate, you get content slop that audiences recognize immediately.
Leaders winning in this AI era know their story so completely that they can guide any tool to amplify it — not fabricate it. Think in moments, not masterpieces. The strongest story is almost always a single specific anecdote — one real moment that makes your audience exhale and think: yes, that’s exactly it.
Closing the Gap for Everyone
For more than two decades, the mission of The Business of Story has been to put these frameworks into the hands of every leader who needs them — whether that’s a four-star general closing a command-level communication gap or an entrepreneur making her first serious pitch.
That’s why we built StoryCycle Genie™ — to democratize the same world-class narrative methodology behind those results. Accessible in hours, not months, at a fraction of the traditional cost.
Test the strength of your brand story for free at storycyclegenie.ai. You’ll receive a 14-point storytelling assessment and a grade from A+ to F– in about 60 seconds. No credit card required.
The communication gap is closeable. It just takes a story.
Park Howell’s Conversation With Bernadette McClelland on The Influence Gap Podcast
Bernadette McClelland: Welcome to The Influence Gap. This is the show where leaders come to close the gap between intention and impact so they can have the right conversations, make the right decisions, and achieve the results that matter most.
Welcome to this week’s episode of The Influence Gap. My guest today is going to help any sales leader, any salesperson, any business owner bridge that gap between the message you want your team sharing in the marketplace and the impact you know they can make.
Park Howell is, as far as I’m concerned, an absolute authority when it comes to story. I love a good story. We met a couple of years ago, he had me on his podcast, and I’m thrilled to have him on the show today.
He’s going to share a practical formula you can use to incorporate story — whether it’s in your prospecting, your emails, your conversations, or any form of relationship building.
Park Howell is an Emmy Award-winning branding expert with an amazing podcast called The Business of Story. He’s written a couple of books and you’re going to love what he has to share. Park, welcome to The Influence Gap.
Park Howell: Bernadette, thank you so much for having me here. This is great.
Bernadette: Time flies so fast. It was four years ago that we landed in America — I’m from Australia. I think Alice Hyman introduced us, we had a conversation, and then you had me on your show.
Park: Yeah. And I think we also have an anecdote in common — you did some work with them, as did I many years ago. Sean Callahan and the gang over there.
Bernadette: Yes, Mike Adams, who wrote about the seven stories every salesperson must know. Great guys. So talking about story — what is your story? Seriously, if someone wants to read a bio that pulls you right in, go to businessofstory.com. But tell us: you had your own ad agency, and you had a big shift, a real aha moment.
How Park Howell Discovered the Power of Intentional Business Storytelling
Park: Yeah, well, I’ve been in the advertising, branding, and marketing world for 40-plus years. I ran my own ad agency, Park Inc., out of Phoenix, Arizona, for 20 of those years — from 1995 to about 2015.
My big aha moment came in the early 2000s when this whole concept of story and storytelling started bubbling up in our world. I thought, well, isn’t that obvious? But the more I studied it, the more I realized people weren’t using story very effectively in branding.
We’re all intuitive storytellers just by being Homo sapiens — storytelling apes, if you will. And I even found it in our own work: when we weren’t intentional about it, when we weren’t following frameworks and story structures, our campaigns were less effective.
So I thought I’d better study story more deeply and really understand what goes into it. My son Parker was going to film school at Chapman University at the time — this was 2006, a very prominent film school. I said, “Send me your books and your recorded lectures when you’re done with them, since I’m paying for them. I want to know what Hollywood knew about storytelling.”
I found the hero’s journey, which inspired my 10-step Story Cycle System. Then I met Dr. Randy Olson, and he taught me the And But Therefore framework — what I call the DNA of storytelling. My clients came to me and said, “Our campaigns are going great. Would you start teaching our people and our leaders what you’ve learned about these story structures?”
That’s when I left the agency world and became a teacher. That was my next calling. Bernadette, when I was 55 years old, people thought I was nuts — but I off-ramped out of my ad agency and built The Business of Story. Now all I do is consult, teach, coach, and speak on the power of story around the world. And I get to work with some of the biggest brands ever — which I never got to do as an ad guy, but I was a story guy.
Bernadette: I love that. When you said the word “framework” — in the sales environment, there’s a whole thought process that salespeople have the gift of the gab and are great storytellers. Around the barbecue they probably are. But they’re lacking structure.
What I’ve noticed working with technical people is that they say “story” and “sales” don’t go together. However, because technical people love structure so much, once they can wrap their head around the fact that story has structure — they are actually the best storytellers. That’s what I’ve found. So what do you mean by frameworks and structure?
Why the ABT Framework Is the DNA of Business Storytelling
Park: Let’s think about it from the technical side — I’ve run into the same thing with developers and coders and big tech people. And the way I explain it to them is: think of storytelling as the software that drives the hardware of our meaning-making limbic brain.
One of my all-time favorite frameworks comes from Dr. Randy Olson — a Harvard PhD evolutionary biologist who also graduated from USC film school. He’s written books teaching scientists and academics how to use story, specifically the And But Therefore framework. Three words.
It seems so basic it couldn’t possibly work. But I have found this to be the most dynamic three-word story structure there is.
You have the “and” — the statement of agreement. You’re speaking from your audience’s point of view and sharing a shared vision: here’s what you want, and here’s why that’s important to you.
Then you introduce the “but” — the statement of contradiction, the problem. You’re super frustrated because of this major gap standing in your way.
The “therefore” is your statement of consequence, your resolution. Imagine how much easier life is going to be when you close that gap with our product or service.
Setup, problem, resolution. It simply feeds your complex message in a very powerful way to that limbic brain — the pattern-seeking, problem-solving, decision-making brain.
Start with the ABT. That is the DNA of storytelling, and everything builds off of it.
Bernadette: So you could use the ABT framework for getting appointments, emails, phone conversations, leading into a demonstration, a proposal — you could actually use it continuously throughout your dialogue with anybody, really.
Park: Absolutely. And it’s a lot easier than the hero’s journey, the Pixar way, and all those multi-step frameworks. When you use it enough, you build a narrative intuition of setup, problem, resolution.
Here’s a fun thought experiment. Let’s go back 70,000 years to the savannah. You’ve got your rotund cavemate Larry, sitting safely by the fire in the cave, and he looks out and sees his buddy Thog, all disheveled in the doorway.
Larry goes, “Thog, where have you been?”
Thog says, “Well, I was down at the river trying to catch saber-toothed salmon for dinner.”
Larry goes, “Uh-huh.”
Thog says, “But saber-toothed tiger showed up.”
Larry goes, “Uh-oh! What’d you do?”
“I gave the salmon to the tiger. It likes salmon better than Thog. Therefore, I’m safely back here at fire with you.”
Story structure in three grunts. Uh-huh. Uh-oh. Uh-huh. It literally was the very first technology we Homo sapiens used — not just to survive the Savannah, but to evolve into the consumers we are today.
Proving ABT ROI: The Trimble Case Study — 400% LinkedIn Engagement Increase
Bernadette: Sorry, I’m laughing — I’m picturing a couple of salespeople with the grunts. But if we’re talking about that environment, building businesses, generating revenue — sales environments are mainly trained on pipeline and process and tactics. So we know story plays a pivotal part. What’s the cost to a business by not incorporating story strategically into their conversations?
Park: I can prove it. There’s absolute ROI to this. Your show is The Influence Gap — let’s close that gap.
Back in 2022, I was doing work with a very large global SaaS provider out of Denver called Trimble. They were running five LinkedIn campaigns in five different countries in five different languages, and getting about 3% engagement. LinkedIn says anything over 1.2% is pretty good.
So we took their March campaign copy and I did not rewrite it — it wasn’t Emmy Award-winning copy. I just reformatted it. It was very much logic-and-reason-driven: features, functions, a little bit of benefits sprinkled in — but it was all about the brand, not the audience.
I simply reformatted it using the And But Therefore framework. I did it in English because I couldn’t speak all those other languages, and they translated it.
In April 2022, they saw a 400% increase in engagement in their LinkedIn campaign. All we did differently was reformulate it as an And But Therefore.
That’s closing the influence gap.
Why Leaders Lead with Logic Instead of Emotion — and How to Fix It
Bernadette: So that’s really diving into the limbic part of the brain — we lead with emotions before logic. Yet a lot of people still lead with logic first. Why do you think that is, even when they have a framework?
Park: Storytelling is hard. We’re never really taught how to tell stories.
So it makes sense that very bright men and women in the tech world think “our product is the best.” And they lead with what they make versus what they actually make happen in their audience’s life. It’s understandable — they want to look smart, look progressive, stay on top of their game. So they lead with executive-functioning reason.
But our brains are completely built to first lead with emotion. What’s in it for me? How are you going to solve this annoying, frustrating, scary problem? How am I going to feel when you solve it? Then come back in and support everything with your logic and reason.
I had an analogy hit me recently. Have you been to Amsterdam? Have you been to the Amsterdam Museum — the small museum on how they built the city? Amsterdam was built on top of centuries-old wooden pilings. But when you walk through that city, you’re walking through a storybook. Your emotions are just lit up.
That’s the story sitting on top of the supports. Your logic and reason, your features and functions, are the supports that hold up the story you want to tell and get your customers to live.
What “Brand” Really Means: Storytelling Beyond the Logo
Bernadette: You mentioned the word “brand.” We’re all in a world today that is so noisy, and we’re all trying to differentiate and rise above it. Personal brand comes into that. What’s your meaning behind the word brand when it comes to story?
Park: I’m going to borrow a term that inspired me from Jeff Bezos — like him or not. He said a brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. I like that a lot, but I changed it a little bit.
A brand is the story people tell about you when you’re not in the room.
When they actually tell a story, they’re closing that influence gap with whoever is sitting in there. So you better have indoctrinated your story into them — through not only how you share your brand story, but how they experience it, how you’ve invited them into it, how you’ve fulfilled the promises you’ve made — so that they become your brand storyteller.
Bernadette: I love that. And that is intentional — you have to actually do some work around that. Because the intuitive part is really just off the cuff, isn’t it?
Park: Right. Do you want to move from winging it to winning it?
Bernadette: Yeah, absolutely.
From Winging It to Winning It: The Goodwill Campaign That Proved Story Works
Park: Through my agency, we did work for Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona. We did all our due diligence and branding, then launched a first TV campaign with two spots.
One spot performed unbelievably well — same-store sales the next month increased by as much as 42%. The other spot didn’t do anything. They pulled it after a month. And I didn’t know why at the time, because we loved both spots like we love all our kids.
This was before I really started studying story. After I got those books from Hollywood and looked at those two spots, I realized: the first one had humor, spoke directly to the audience, and said, “Look, we get you.” The other one was just a really creative, fun spot we created — I think, for our own egos.
That was my aha moment. We were being intuitive in both cases. One we naturally landed on story. The other we didn’t.
That’s when I said we need to evolve from intuitive to intentional every single time. Run all our work through the Story Cycle System, the ABT framework, and make sure we’re truly sharing a setup, problem, resolution, three-act structured story.
How Digital Disruption Made Brand Storytelling a Business Survival Skill
Bernadette: When you made the shift into the world of story, it was at a time when digital marketing had come in.
Park: It had. And I realized that the branding work we’d been doing, while story was always the answer, we just hadn’t fully understood it yet. This was 2001, 2002, 2003. Digital marketing came in and it was just a cacophony of communication.
What I’d tell our clients was: look, you used to own the influence of mass media. But now the masses have become the media, and they own your story. So you’d better get your story straight and be able to communicate with them.
The universe blessed me with the timing — our son going to film school coincided exactly with when I realized we needed storytelling frameworks more than ever.
That all traces back twenty years earlier, when I was in university. I got a degree in communications to function in advertising. But I also got a second degree in music composition and theory because I love writing music.
I started realizing all I was learning was the composition and theory of story. That eventually led to a professorship at Arizona State University, where I taught a master’s program in sustainable storytelling for five years. And the doors just kept opening.
AI and Artful Intelligence: Why “Slop” Is the Real Threat to Your Influence
Bernadette: Your bliss. So what are your thoughts on AI and creativity today?
Park: I love it. I am so tired of hearing the whining about AI.
I was driving back from a Business of Story mastery training in South Texas — about a two-and-a-half-hour drive — and I was thinking about this. What a horrible brand name for the most revolutionary technology any of us have ever experienced: Artificial Intelligence.
That’s what they make. But what do they actually make happen? To me, I reframe it from artificial to artful intelligence.
Bernadette: I like that.
Park: When you bring yourself to it — when you bring your market knowledge, your customer insights, your own influence and persuasive skills — then artificial intelligence starts augmenting what you do and how you can scale it.
Where it gets super fake and phony and hallucinates is when people just say, “Write me a blog post about this. Boom, done. Put it out there.” Everybody knows what you’re doing.
But if you bring yourself to it and collaborate with it, it truly becomes artful intelligence. That’s why I think it’s one of the most marvelous inventions we’ve ever had.
Bernadette: I agree. And to those people just using it for slop — that is the new term.
Park: Your influence gap is going to grow, grow, grow.
The #1 Thing Keeping Sales Leaders Stuck: The “And-And-And” Trap
Bernadette: So story is a huge component of influence. We know that categorically. And that gap where a sales leader or CEO goes from being good to absolutely great — what are you seeing that’s keeping them stuck on the good side of that spectrum?
Park: I’ll tell you — it’s one word. “And.”
Bernadette: And there we go.
Park: People think they’re telling a story. And what they’re really doing is “and-and-and-and-anding” their audience to death. They never get out of what Hollywood calls exposition or act one. “And then this happened, and then we did this, and then this thing happened.”
Get rid of the extra ands. Use one “and,” then throw it out. Get to that “but,” then to the “therefore.” Then you can add another “but” to it. And then the “therefore.” Keep that pulse going through your communications.
The other thing I’d say is: people get stuck thinking they have to tell some big, epic story. Think in moments instead.
Tell a story about a moment when something changed. Look at you and I here — I’ve probably already shared five or six anecdotal moments that taught me something and spurred me in another direction. Those little moment stories are what our Homo sapiens brains actually care about.
Bernadette: I agree. And with the moments — for those listening or watching — it’s when you put dialogue into it as well. It just connects with the brain on such a different level.
How to Use the ABT One-Two Punch in Sales Conversations
Park: Let’s have some fun with that, Bernadette. You’ve got this new wonderful podcast. Podcasts are hard. I’ve had my Business of Story show for almost 11 years — 564 episodes. So, Bernadette, take us to that moment you said, “Yes, I’m going to do it.” What finally spurred you?
Bernadette: It was about six or seven weeks ago. I was sitting downstairs in the lounge with my husband, Tim. I said to him, “Honey, I am going to start my show again.”
When I did it last time it was solo, and I thought: for me to really tap into what matters to sales leaders today — their role to get growth for their sales team and their business — there’s one thing wrong with what I’m doing.
I haven’t got great people to interview yet.
He said, “So what are you going to do about it?”
I said, “I know exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to change the name to The Influence Gap, hire a producer, and I’m going to help those sales leaders move from good to great by closing the influence gap.”
And here we are today, with an amazing guest.
Park: I love it. And you see, I’ve got this gap right here — that’s my influence gap. I use it to tell stories to close the gap in my relationships with people.
Bernadette: For me it was really all about closing the gap between a sales leader’s message and the impact they want to make. And that created a whole different shift in my thinking. It was a story. There was a story there. Thank you for that.
Park: That’s a great example, folks. That’s how you do it. If you want to show your product or service in action, or an initiative you want your people to buy into — and they’re saying, “We like the status quo, don’t make me change” — there’s a good example of using story.
And what I like to do is use the anecdote and the ABT as a one-two punch. The ABT in under 15 seconds to set up the story: “You want this, and it’s important to you because of this, but you’re super frustrated because of this, therefore imagine when you get it by doing this with me.”
Boom — you get into that story in under 90 seconds. You’ve used two very powerful story structures — the ABT and the five primal elements of a short story — to speak to that limbic brain, that heart. And when they’re like, “Wow, okay, tell me more” — then you start propping it up with your reason and logic and support points. Like those pillars prop up Amsterdam.
StoryCycle Genie: Democratizing World-Class Brand Storytelling for Every Business
Bernadette: While we’re talking about influence gaps, what is the space between where your story reaches now and where you want it to go?
Park: There has always been a huge gap for small to medium-sized businesses — having world-class branding they can actually afford, without an agency taking six months to create it.
As you know, we’ve built the StoryCycle Genie. It took us two years, and it’s based on my 10-step Story Cycle System. At the core of it is the And But Therefore. I wrote a short book with Dr. Randy Olson on exactly how to use the ABT in business communications.
What we’ve done is democratize branding so that everybody can use it, have it, and afford it. StoryCycle Genie is the only platform really built on story and narrative frameworks — the And But Therefore, the five primal elements of a short story, and the 10-step Story Cycle System. Everything that comes out of it is in your voice, with story structure naturally built in.
A lot of people might be wondering — did you just knock off StoryBrand? No. I had been doing the Story Cycle System brand development eight years before Donald Miller introduced StoryBrand. I come at branding as a brand architect. He comes at it as a storytelling philosopher. Their framework is terrific — seven steps that anybody can use — and so everybody kind of sounds the same.
StoryCycle Genie is different in that everyone has an important story to tell, they just can’t find it. StoryCycle Genie helps you find it, then helps you build out your entire story environment so people are telling the right story about you when you’re not in the room. And it learns with every iteration.
How can I close that gap for companies and leaders — not over months but in an hour or two, not spending $50,000 but maybe $50 to $100? Sure, it’s AI-driven. But it’s artful intelligence.
Bernadette: Yes, and I’ve been through it. It’s very simple and very powerful. How can people connect with you?
How to Connect with Park Howell and Access Free Storytelling Resources
Park: Thank you, Bernadette. First, go test the strength of your brand story for free at storycyclegenie.ai. It costs you nothing. Put in your name, your email address, and the URL of your website. In about 60 seconds, the StoryCycle Genie gives you a grade from A+ to F– and a 14-point storytelling assessment. It will validate what you’re already doing well, reveal gaps you can quickly fix, and inspire new ways to think about your brand story.
If you’re ready to start building your brand brain within the StoryCycle Genie, sign up. You build the brain, then do all your strategy from there. And we have a money-back guarantee — if you’re not 100% enthralled with what the Genie creates for you in month one, we’ll return your month one subscription and you keep all the assets you created.
So — storycyclegenie.ai. And reach out to me on LinkedIn. If you’re not on LinkedIn, go to businessofstory.com, hit my contact page, shoot me a note, and let me know you heard me on Bernadette’s wonderful show. If I can support you in any way — training your people on storytelling, helping you refine and define your brand’s story, or anything else to help you close that influence gap — I’m here for it.
Rapid Fire: Park Howell’s One-Word Answers on Story, Leadership, and Influence
Bernadette: Now before we finish — rapid fire. One-word answers. Stories are —
Park: Powerful.
Bernadette: Brands need —
Park: Stories.
Bernadette: Creativity is —
Park: Brilliance.
Bernadette: Leadership is —
Park: Influence.
Bernadette: And influence leads to —
Park: Impact.
Bernadette: Park, it’s been an absolute pleasure. You are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to story, and you live it and walk your talk. I want everybody to follow up with you. A huge thank you.
Park: Bernadette, thank you so much. It’s always a privilege to speak with you and an absolute honor to be part of the resurrection of your show.
Bernadette: Thank you. Here’s to the democratization of story. I believe that too. Thank you to everybody watching and listening. Remember: influence doesn’t happen unless you create change within you in order to create change around you. Have an amazing rest of your day, and we’ll see you this time next week. Bye for now.
