How to build an online audience with David Perell and Anthony Pompliano
“Write of Passage” creator and writer David Perell held a value-packed interview with Anthony Pompliano, founder of Morgan Creek Digital. You can watch the video here and read the show notes below:
“Audience is the new currency.”
Pompliano has built a media empire brick by brick and channel by channel.
Today he hosts a Podcast with five interviews per week biz / tech / finance
He writes a newsletter with 50,000+ subscribers. Writes the newsletter himself each morning.
He hosts a daily YouTube show with 250,000 subscribers.
All his media efforts are driven by his Twitter account, which was his first focus starting in 2017 when he had 2,000 followers. Now he has over 330,000 followers.
“My best piece of advice: Don’t try it.”
If you’re going to try to build a large audience, know your why and know what success looks like.
Make sure you have the time and energy to attempt it.
If you can talk yourself out of it, you never would’ve been successful anyway.
Pompliano’s key principles
Principle #1: Persistence is the most important thing.
Persistence wins. It takes time.
Principle #2: Productize yourself.
Every hour is something he dedicates to another product: one hour for newsletter. One for a podcast, one for a video, etc.
He optimizes for every hour invested the most amount of content he can create to monetize later.
He creates five pieces of content per day.
Creating more pieces of content gives you a better chance of being selected by a content algorithm (Facebook, for example). It’s not about number of entities competing for slots, but number of pieces of content.
You must choose between high frequency “good enough” quality, or less volume and higher quality.
Difficult to predict what will work, so volume improves your overall chances of success.
Principle #3: Focus on one platform at a time.
Anthony focused on Twitter for 18 months, then added the newsletter. YouTube came later.
Being successful on one platform helps you build the second platform audience faster.
A lot of the big names (Gary Vee, for example) have large content teams who work all the time. Ignore them and maximize your time and energy on one channel at a time.
Over time, like weightlifting, you build the muscle memory, endurance, and strength to develop and deliver more content by optimizing your day.
Principle #4: More content is better than less
Anthony grew Twitter by: finding every person who might be interested in the content he was creating.
He Tweeted until he couldn’t think of anything else to Tweet
Anthony wasn’t comfortable being himself in 2017. So every hour he would take a major media story, pull an insight out, and then Tweet it. 10-15 times per day.
The high volume provided feedback on what worked and what didn’t
Through high volume, he created a magnet for people who liked what he was saying.
Be like Netflix: create as much content as you can and let the audience pick and choose what they are interested in.
For example: Marginal Revolution creates 4-5 posts per day. It’s actually a destination site. People want to come and see what is new.
Principle #5 Create once and publish five times
Example: Podcasts.
Audio is a podcast
Zoom is a YouTube, including cuts of highlights
Tweet out links to podcast and video
Anthony creates 8-10 pieces of content out of one hour of his time
A blog post could be a Tweetstorm summary, a podcast reading, a YouTube reading, and an email newsletter snippet
Principle #6: You owe the audience everything
Anthony spends multiple hours per day responding to YouTube comments, Twitter comments, email replies, etc.
Obsessing over the audience is the boss
It sucks—it’s hard. But he can get through 150 YouTube comments in 20 minutes.
He has pre-baked responses. “Thanks for reading,” or thumbs up emojis, etc., interspersed with more customized responses.
It does become unscalable at some point. Now he focuses on the YouTube responses with the greatest support and also the least supported at the bottom.
Analog case study: Watch the Garth Brooks documentary on Netflix. Brooks would stay for hours after small shows in the early 90s, spending time with fans until 4-5 AM. His dedication to fans was returned to him as his popularity grew.
Your relationship with your audience is a dance. You get feedback, and move forward in a larger way. A popular Tweet becomes a larger blog post, for example.
Creators can make one of two mistakes:
“I’m publishing what I want and I don’t care,” or
“I’m going to do what’s popular”
You need a synthesis between the two. What surprises people, what engages them, what do they come back for.
It comes down to authenticity. Anthony knows that one day he will just stop. Because of that, he wants to do it his way. He will not compromise on the big things—he’s doing what he wants. But he will work to improve audio issues, video quality, etc.
The audience gives you the best feedback on the details. They are not as good on the big picture.
Actionable Ideas for Twitter
If you think you are creating a lot of content, then double it
10+ tweets for day
Use spacing and punctuation to improve readability
Lists increase virality
Links hurt virality — you’re armoring users leaving the platform. If you want to link, share your top three things in the Tweet. Compressing info works and will give you boosting.
Hijack viral tweets / accounts — he turned on Tweet notifications fo Trump, for example. He would race to respond as fast as possible. He would respond to trump, hey to leanr abt this sign up fo this email. Others would sign up.
Reply to everyone
DMs are the real LinkedIn. People are very responsive. Most people are reading their own accounts.
Set your profile up for success. Where do you want people to go? Here’s the kind of content you’re going to get.
A good gif is worth 1000 favorites. Multi-media is doing well on twitter.
People want to learn and they don’t want to spend a lot of time on things.
More complexity doesn’t necessarily mean more value.
Actionable ideas for email newsletters
Consistentcy wins. Set a schedule and stick to it.
Build your free list - give more than you extract - email is an invasion. Give loads of value.
Don’t be afraid to ask people to subscribe. Know what you are worth and don’t be shy
Find like-minded audiences and do link swaps in emails, do live-streams, etc.
ID inflection points an promote them in advance - he knows when something will be received well. He’ll promote it in advance, “Hye I going to write about X, then subscribe.”
Use email as distribution point for all content - bottom half of his email is distribution for everything else. Has a template he uses daily.
Passive links pay off - see above
Upsell, upsell, upsell - delvier value and ask the audience to help yo win some way. Share it, tweet it, etc.
Actionable ideas for YouTube
Use the banner to explain what you cover and how often
Don’t be afraid to ask people to subscribe
Create more videos
Optimize the video title descritopi, and thumbnail for SEO - YT is world’s second largest search engine
Use the description for passive links (link to social, email, etc.)
Pin a comment to top of comments with top link (single best thing to do on YT. He promotes his email newsletter with link)
Create an outro with each video (thank you for watching, subscribe, leave a comment and I’ll do my best to respond)
Use search trends to your advantage
Leverage guests with large audiences - when guests share content, you’ll benefit with more subscriptions
Anthony makes decisions based on optimizing his time. Email is just him, nothing else to rely on. Podcasts, etc. have more moving parts and reliance on people and things outside his control.
He believes if the content is good, people will find it.
Actionable ideas for Podcasts
Set a frequency and don’t miss an episode
Target guests with large audiences
Authors with new books are always looking to promote. Their work - great way to start the flywheel of getting great guests
Record via Zoom to get audio and video
Good mic and good lighting is important
Use micro content to promote individual episodes
Transcripts and show notes for SEO - works well for lesser content schedules (once a week or so). Hard to do with a daily show.
Closing ideas and questions
How do you think about revenue splits?
Ideally he would not deal with an advertiser and be 100% subscriber based.
He wanted to be profitable but not squeak out every last dollar.
Balance optimization between revenue and the largest audience he can have.
In Silicon Valley, people build audiences and become angel investors (Tim Ferriss in Uber, etc.)
You also get paid in access, in influence, in education.
Where is he going?
All of the audience and distribution is a gateway drug.
“Audience first products:” Businesses will build the audience first and then the products will follow. He will know they already have product / market fit.
20th century: Tide example. Built it first, then build an audience through traditional advertising. Now we are seeing an inversion. The person who has the relationship with the customer wins. If you control the relationship with the customer, you can avoid Facebook and Google advertising.
Write of Passage: all growth with zero paid advertising. Audience first and the product followed.
“If you’re going to try this, make sure you are ready to dedicate hours a day for a decade.”
Book review and summary: “Consider This,” by Chuck Palahniuk
If Kurt Cobain created the soundtrack for Generation X, Chuck Palahniuk wrote its handbook. The novel “Fight Club” — and it’s Brad Pitt/Edward Norton onscreen incarnation—captured the cynicism, disillusionment, and disdain felt by millions in a generation destined to be ignored in America’s Boomer-to-Millennial transition.
Palahniuk is a captivating and raw storyteller, unafraid to jolt and shock us into emotional responses. So why would a guide he wrote to fiction writing be any different?
Spoiler alert: it isn’t. Palahniuk’s guide is as entertaining as it is useful, and there’s plenty of both.
We should be skeptical when the great ones try to explain how they do it. The effort often fails. Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player of all time, but he’s a lousy basketball owner. He can’t download his drive and athleticism to other athletes. His greatness was in and of him. It was him. There’s no way to teach it.
But Palahniuk gives us plenty of help, both strategic and tactical, for writing better fiction—even for communicating better in any form. He helps us establish authority, build tension, and build reader rapport using concrete and replicable examples.
“Consider This” is also, stealthily, an autobiography.
Palahniuk’s “Postcards from the Tour” serve as entertaining interludes between the instructional courses, quick shots of his life on the road that sometimes weave into recollections from his childhood. Weaved into sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrifying tales from book tours, Palahniuk drops insight into the margins about what shaped him as a writer.
Some of his “Postcards” are too strange for fiction. You can make that determination for yourself—and you definitely should. “Consider This” is a wild and useful ride.
Consider This: A quick diagnostic guide for fiction writing
Near the book’s end, Palahniuk provides a checklist in a “problem / consider” format to troubleshoot fiction that’s falling flat. You can read a summary of the Consider This diagnostic guide here.
Find this summary useful?
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The Artist’s Way: A review and week-by-week journal
Introduction
The Artist’s Way is a time-tested book and a process for getting creatively unstuck. It’s premise is that God wants us to be creative, dwells within us, and esseintially, we have to get out of our own way to get in a creative flow state.
Some are turned off by the book’s spirituality. I find it a huge asset.
Because The Artist’s Way is, in essence, a spiritual path, initiated and practiced through creativity, this book uses the word God. This may be volatile for some of you—conjuring old, unworkable, unpleasant, or simply unbelievable ideas about God as you were raised to understand “him.” Please be open-minded.
Instead of focusing on creative acts as an expression of our own egos, the book strives to get us to wrestle creativity away from our own egos and turn it over to a higher power.
If the creative process comes from God, this makes it more freeing. We don’t own it. We’re simply getting out of our own way to let it come forward. When the ego realizes it’s not in charge, it can relax—and quit blocking our creative flow.
The Artist’s Way core principles:
1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.
2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life—including ourselves.
3. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives.
4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
5. Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.
7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.
8. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.
10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.
The process
You read a chapter each week for 12 weeks, and focus on the various exercises for examining our own limitations and pushing through them.
The core exercises
The Morning Pages: Three, hand-written pages every morning. No topics, no rules. Just write. These helps clear whatever is keeping us stuck. The act of freely dumping something—anything—onto the pages starts to get us unstuck. Morning pages must be written out longhand—no typing. And I have to say the effect is pretty great. What Cameron writes is true:
“Once we get those muddy, maddening, confusing thoughts [nebulous worries, jitters, and preoccupations] on the page, we face our day with clearer eyes.”
The Artist’s Date: I’m still struggling to figure this one out.
But what exactly is an artist’s date? An artist date is a block of time, perhaps two hours weekly, especially set aside and committed to nurturing your creative consciousness, your inner artist.”
Fortunately, the Internet has lots of examples, such as this list of 101 artist date ideas.
Just do something a little different. Jolt yourself out of your normal routines and thought patterns. It might be a physical activity, a mental activity, or a new creative activity. Or all three. Just mix it up.
Tracking progress
Getting it done: I’m tracking my tasks and progress using the Done app for iPhone. You can read more about how I use the excellent Done app here.
Writing about writing: The rest of post will serve as a journal of my weekly process through the course. With that said, we move onto week one.
Now, we move onto the weekly journal.
The Artist’s Way Journal, week one: Recovering a Sense of Safety
What’s the ultimate goal? I’m not even entirely sure what creativity I’m trying to uncork. I do know I feel stuck—creatively and professionally.
So I don’t know where this journey is going, exactly. But I’m willing to see it through and see what happens.
In this first week, Cameron wants us to create a sense of safety. She compares our creativity to a child that needs a safe space free from the critics that loom both inside and outside of us.
The Morning Pages
“Hey teacher, I brought my pencil …”
I hate writing things out by hand: At least I thought I did. But this process just flows smoothly, in between sips of coffee.
Just let it fly: I write about whatever comes to mind. I dump my anxieties onto the page. I pray. I express gratitude. I plan my day. I write about long-term goals. And I feel better afterward. The Morning Pages really do empty my brain of chatter, clearing space for other things.
The Artist’s Date
Keeping it simple: I’ll sit down this weekend to read a copy of GQ— the “Creativity in the Time of Quarantine” issue, coincidentally—cover-to-cover. I’m not sure where these “dates” will go week-to-week.
Creative affirmations
Cameron is a big proponent of creative affirmations:
All too often, it is audacity and not talent that moves an artist to center stage. As blocked creatives, we tend to regard these bogus spotlight grabbers with animosity. We may be able to defer to true genius, but if it’s merely a genius for self-promotion we’re witnessing, our resentment runs high. This is not just jealousy. It is a stalling technique that reinforces our staying stuck. We make speeches to ourselves and other willing victims: “I could do that better, if only . . .” You could do it better if only you would let yourself do it! Affirmations will help you allow yourself to do it. An affirmation is a positive statement of (positive) belief, and if we can become one-tenth as good at positive self-talk as we are at negative self-talk, we will notice an enormous change.
She offers examples in chapter one:
1. I am a channel for God’s creativity, and my work comes to good.
2. My dreams come from God and God has the power to accomplish them.
3. As I create and listen, I will be led.
4. Creativity is the creator’s will for me.
We’re encouraged to create our own as well, and to write them out longhand at the end of the day’s Morning Pages.
Some affirmations I repeated every day. Others appeared just for a single day, a product of whatever anxiety was pouring onto the pages that morning.
Weekly exercises
Each week Cameron provides a list of exercises. Too many exercises, which she acknowledges. She encourages us to pick both the ones that we are drawn to, and the ones we are repelled by. Skip the ones that don’t elicit a strong reaction.
I have seen the enemy, and he is me: This week I dug up old demons, writing about people and events that stilted my own creativity—a dictatorial teacher, a condescending boss or two, people who have made rough judgements in my past.
But truly I am my own worst creative enemy, and have often tried to shoehorn myself into places and positions where I didn’t really belong, to please others. Looking back, this has always been to my own emotional and professional detriment.
Summing up Week One
Cameron warns us that there will be times we want to quit this course. But not this week. There is something freeing about the Morning Pages, and I hope to have the discipline to keep writing them long after the course is complete.
Week Two: Recovering a Sense of Identity
Excerpts and Key Ideas
The Artist’s Way Basic Principles:
Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.
There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life—including ourselves.
When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives.
We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.
When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.
As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.
Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.”
The Rules of the Road:
In order to be an artist, I must:
Show up at the page.
Use the page to rest, to dream, to try.
Fill the well by caring for my artist.
Set small and gentle goals and meet them.
Pray for guidance, courage, and humility.
Remember that it is far harder and more painful to be a blocked artist than it is to do the work.
Be alert, always, for the presence of the Great Creator leading and helping my artist.
Choose companions who encourage me to do the work, not just talk about doing the work or why I am not doing the work.
Remember that the Great Creator loves creativity.
Remember that it is my job to do the work, not judge the work.
Place this sign in my workplace: Great Creator, I will take care of the quantity. You take care of the quality.”
Crazymakers: People that sap our creative energy by creating chaos and negativity. I don’t have issues with this right now. That’s the good news. The bad news is I’ve seen the enemy and he is me. Crazymakers destroy schedules, create chaos, and drain physical, mental, and creative energy.
Creativity flourishes when we have a sense of safety and self-acceptance.
Watch out for “friends” experiencing their blocked creativity—they may go on offense against your growth. If you can become unblocked, so can they, and that can be very threatening.
Trust God and move in faith.
The quality of life is in direct proportion, always, to the capacity for delight. The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.
[...]
In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, i have learned to pay attention to right now.
To enjoy the process of creativity, you must surrender the need to control the result.
Actions taken
Morning pages: Seven days out of seven. Boom.
Read the basic principles every day.
Wrote out three chosen affirmations as part of my morning pages every day.
The artists date: hanging out at the pool to recharge my batteries.
Personal Insights
Most days, the Morning Pages flow smoothly. But the last day of the week was the first real struglle. Lots of anxiety-dumping onto the page. Prayer and conversations with God. Most days flowed easily.
I remain highly skeptical of affirmations. I don’t feel them moving my beliefs in any new direction. But I’m sticking to the plan.
An unintended insight from the Morning Pages: My handwriting sucks.
The energy bursts out of my hand in ragged fits and starts. Letters go unfinished at the end of words. The result is uneven, inconsistent, and sometimes indecipherable lettering.
I’m working on getting that rhythm, flow, and clarity back in my handwriting. I say “back,” because I used to write well by hand.
Of course, this realization is about far more than sloppy handwriting.
This book is sneaky good.
Week 3: Recovering a sense of power
Excerpts and Key Ideas
Anger
Anger is meant to be acted upon—not acted out.
Anger can be a useful tool, a spotlight that shows us the gap between where we want to be and where we are.
Used properly, anger can burn away our old limiting beliefs, and propel us into a new future God intended.
I would add: anger is explosive and must be handled with care. It can be nitro if used to fuel positive action. Anger can also be self-destructive if used to fuel the wrong actions.
Synchronicity
Synchronicity is prayer answered.
Answered prayers are scary, because they return responsibility back to us: “Oh man, I got what I wanted … now what?”
“God is efficient” says actress Julianna McCarthy
Understand that with plans for our life, the what must come before the how. First choose, then they how usually falls into place with itself.
We like to pretend it is hard to to follow our dreams. The truth is, it is difficult to avoid walking through the many doors that will open.
Growth
Growth is uneven and come in fits and spurts. Effort and commitment to creativity is constant and predictable. But growth is unpredictable.
Commit small acts of kindness to yourself and watch God surprise you.
Shame
Shame is a controlling device. People enact it on those dong something that makes others feel uncomfortable.
Often artists “lose interest” in a project as it nears completion. This is a defense mechanism against judgement and shame.
The antidote for shame is self-love and self-praise. Criticism can be warranted and we should look for constructive help in it. But then give yourself space to recover from criticism, and have confidence you will.
Sometimes we have to swing and miss on our way to home runs.
Actions taken
Morning pages: Seven days out of seven. Boom.
Wrote out chosen affirmations as part of my morning pages every day.
The exercises this week focused examining childhood: the traits we valued, describing a childhood room, the activities and things we loved most.
Personal Insights
Every version of the prior me did the best he could at the time. Time to take the baton from him and level up.
The exercises this week in examining childhood show me I’ve allowed my inner critic to cover up some positive personality traits. I need to excavate and reinstall those again.
Week 4: Recovering a sense of integrity
This week may find you grappling with changing self-definition. The essays, tasks, and exercises are designed to catapult you into productive introspection and integration of new self-awareness.
Excerpts and Key ideas
Reading deprivation
One week, no reading. When this book was writiten, social media was not a thing. Web sites weren’t really a thing. And Twitter, my crutch, certainly wasn’t a thing. Now we’re removing all of that, plus books, newspapers, newsletters, stone tablets, etc.
“Real Feelings vs. Official Feelings”
The morning pages help us sort through what we really think and feel, versus the feelings we put out for public consumption, in our workplaces, with our friends, and on social media.
Official feelings are usually couched in the phrase “I feel okay about _____.” Saying you feel okay about something is a reliable signal that you do not, in fact, feel ok about it—and are making that position official instead of real.
To restart creativity, we have to punch through our denial. The morning pages help us get to what’s real.
Sometimes getting to what’s real is painful and we resist by skipping the morning pages. Push through!
Arriving at clarity creates change—which can also be painful and difficult.
What you have been doing is wiping the mirror. Each day’s morning pages take a swipe at the blur you have kept between you and your real self. As your image becomes clearer, it may surprise you. You may discover very particular likes and dislikes that you hadn’t acknowledged.
Kriya
… thanks to the morning pages we learn what we want and ultimately become willing to make the changes needed to get it. But not without a tantrum. And not without a kriya, a Sanskrit word meaning a spiritual emergency or surrender.
[…]
We all know what a kriya looks like: it is the bad case of the flu right after you’ve broken up with your lover. It’s the rotten head cold and bronchial cough that announces you’ve abused your health to meet an unreachable work deadline.
Creativity is based in clear observation
People frequently believe the creative life is grounded in fantasy. The more difficult truth is that creativity is grounded in reality, in the particular, the focused, the well observed or specifically imagined.
Improved life flow
There will be a sense of the flow of life—that you are brought into new vistas as you surrender surrender to moving with the flow of God. This is clear already. You may well be experiencing a sense of both bafflement and faith. You are no longer stuck, but you cannot tell where you are going.
Actions Taken
Reading depravation
I’m doing it, and it hurts. I prefer sit-ups to reading deprivation, and I hate sit-ups. Twitter is the hardest to swear off. But it’s a busy week with long travel and travel prep, and that filled many of the hours.
Thinking about my ideal environment
This was pretty easy for me. My ideal environment is tropical and secluded. It has great wifi and a gym. Something like this:
Other items
Completed exercises on hobbies that sound fun, things that sound fun I’d never try, and new skills that would be fun to have.
Seven for seven on morning pages again.
I’m failing badly at completing “Artist’s Dates” each week. Maybe they feel too hokey, or I am doing them but not labeling them properly—taking the family out for ice cream could count, for example, but I don’t count them as Artist’s Dates.
I wrote my personal version of the artist’s prayer.
The Done app review: Maintain healthy habits when it’s hard to focus
There has never been a year where we:
Needed our healthy and productive routines more
Faced greater distraction and deeper destruction of our normal daily cadence.
Enter the Done app, a flexible and great-looking habit tracker. There are a number of excellent apps in the habit tracker category, and at their core they all use the power of streaks to keep us motivated and moving forward.
It takes 66 days to cement a habit, and streaks can help us get there.
Much has been written about the Snapchat app and its use of streaks. Snapchat built one ofthe worlds’ most popular social media apps on the back of the streaks concept. In Snapchat, you get credit for a “streak day” every time you direct message a particular person--and vice-versa. As the streaks build, the app gives users badges as they reach certain milestones (50 days, 100 days, etc.). Teens don’t want to snap those streaks.
But Snapchat certainly didn’t invent streaks.
Jerry Seinfeld used streaks—analog style—to build his career through a daily writing habit:
He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. But his advice was better than that. He had a gem of a leverage technique he used on himself and you can use it to motivate yourself—even when you don't feel like it.
He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here's how it works.
He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker
He said for each day that I do my task of writing, I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain."
"Don't break the chain," he said again for emphasis.
Don’t break the chain. That’s the core feature of any habit tracker, and Done is a good one.
Setting up tracking with Done
Done allows you to set up daily, weekly, or monthly habit goals, and track progress in your actions against those goals.
Done is system-oriented, not goal-oriented. Done invests your in your actions, not outcomes.
Magically, this leads you to better outcomes because you’re focused on and motivated by the things you can control.
Getting started with Habits
Hit the “+” at the bottom of the screen to set up your first habit. You’ll see a screen like this:
Tons of options here. Name your habit, set it up as daily, weekly, or monthly, and the days you’ll performing the habit.
Important: You can also use Done to set up negative habits — days you don’t do something, like drink or smoke , for example. Done can help us eliminate bad habits just as well as helping us build the good ones.
As you scroll, you can assign colors, other options, and assign a habit to a new or existing group.
Setting up Groups
Habits can be grouped into, well, groups that you create. Groups are categorizations of habits and are totally customizable.
The Groups screen looks like this (these are my current groups):
And that’s all there is to set up.
Example: My initial groups and habits
I set up my initial habits into four groups:
The Artist’s Way
The Artist’s Way is a time-tested book and methodology for “unstuckifying” your innate creativity. Within the book are two core habits: the daily Morning Pages and the weekly Artist’s Date, and various exercises you complete for each of 12 weeks. I have four habits set up in my Artist’s Way group:
Morning pages (tracked daily)
Artist’s date (tracked weekly)
Chapter reading (tracked weekly)
Exercises (tracked weekly)
Fitness
Run four or more miles at least three times per week (tracked weekly, with Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday check-ins)
Lift weights three times per week (tracked weekly, with Monday, Wednesday, and Friday check-ins)
Worship
Read the Bible (tracked daily)
Pray (tracked daily)
Attend church (tracked weekly, with a Sunday check-in)
Writing
Journal (tracked daily)
Send newsletter (tracked weekly)
What the Done app isn’t
The Done app is not a project manager. It’s not designed to break a project (writing a book, building a deck) into its component parts, with timelines and interdependencies.
The Done app is not a detailed fitness tracker: Done is great for logging that you *did* work out, but not the details of your workout or your progress vs. your last workout.
Here’s what I mean:
I use Done to log that I met my workout obligation.
I use a Numbers spreadsheet to track my lift exercises, weight, and reps
I use Nike Run Club to track the details of my runs — distance and time.
The Done app helps you stay on track
When you’re finished with initial setup, you’ll have a daily habit screen that looks something like this:
It’s all about the streaks. So get to streaking.
The Done App
Price: free for up to 3 habits, then $8.99 for lifetime access or $18.99 as part of a group of apps.
Look and feel: 5 stars
Customizability: 5 stars
Siri Shortcuts: A beginner’s guide
Siri Shortcuts might be the most powerful thing you’re *not* putting to work on your iPhone.
And that’s a shame, because Shortcuts can supercharge your iPhone or iPad workflow, saving you time and taps.
What are Siri Shortcuts?
Siri Shortcuts are small programs that automate tasks.
Sounds simple, but Shortcuts can be really make your iOS device easier and faster to use.
Shortcuts can:
shorten generic and simpler tasks, like starting a text message to someone you text often, or
automate something very specific to your individual workflow, like adding information to a document or spreadsheet you use frequently.
And the best part is: you can use Shortcuts without knowing anything about programming at all. (Although you can also build your own in the Shortcuts app.)
Shortcuts are easy to add to your iOS device and easy to share. We will get to that.
OK, what are some examples?
Shortcuts work with Apple-created apps, like Music, Podcasts, and Maps, and many third-party apps like Twitter or Nike+.
Some of current favorites include:
Launching a playlist inside the Music app
Starting a run tracker inside the Nike+ app
Directly opening my strength training tracking spreadsheet inside the Numbers app
Pulling up a menu of my Twitter lists to go directly to a list inside the Twitter app
Finding and adding Shortcuts
To start with Shortcuts, download the Shortcuts app from the App Store.
Open the app, and tap the “Gallery” option in the lower right.
A mother lode of premade Shortcuts are available here, including many custom options based on the things you most often do on your iPhone or iPad.
For example, the app created Shortcuts I can use to open my workout tracking spreadsheet, get to a Dark Sky forecast, or start the run track in the Nike+ app.
In the Gallery:
All I have to do is hit the “+” to add a Shortcut to my library.
Tapping “See All” takes you to many more options.
And the list is dynamic: as you do new things with your iPhone, Shortcuts conjures up more options to shorten those tasks for you in the future.
You’re not limited to the suggestions and pre-baked options inside the Shortcuts app.
Third-party Shortcuts
Shortcuts can be created and shared by anybody, and there are some great directories of Shortcuts made by others you can browse and easily add to your library:
Matthew Cassinelli - Cassinelli worked for a company called Workflow, which Apple purchased and turned into Shortcuts. He also worked at Apple for a time after the transition and has a list of 150 of his own shortcuts.
MacStories.net - a site about being more productive with Apple--especially on the iPad. Founder Federico Viticci and his team have developed and shared 217 Shortcuts (as of this writing) you can browse and download to your library.
Between these two sources and the options within the Shortcut app itself, you can add a ton of efficiency and productivity to your iOS device without ever programming a thing.
Launching Shortcuts
Now we’ve added some Shortcuts. How do we access and use them?
Shortcuts can be set to launch when you launch an app, or connect to CarPlay, or reach a certain geographic location. And there are many other methods.
But today, let’s focus on the simpler methods to launch a shortcut:
Inside the Shortcuts app, in the “My Library” section.
By adding the shortcuts to the widget section of your iOS device.
By adding a home screen icon to access the Shortcut.
By adding a Shortcut to your share screen.
By verbally telling Siri to launch a Shortcut.
Launch a Shortcut from inside the Shortcuts app
Tap “My Shortcuts” inside the Shortcuts app to view and search all the Shortcuts in your library”
Add a Shortcut to your iOS widgets
“Widgets” is a menu in iOS that shows you information from, and lets you quickly access key functions of, your favorite apps.
On iPad, your widgets appear on the left-hand side of your screen. On the iPhone, you access widgets by swiping right on your home screen.
(Sidenote: here’s more on how to configure widgets)
To add a Shortcut to your widgets:
Add the Shortcuts app to your widgets by tapping “Edit” on the widgets menu and then tapping the green plus symbol next to “Shortcuts”
Then tap “Customize in the Shortcuts section of your widgets, and a menu will appear of your Shortcuts library. Just tap a Shortcut to add it to widgets.
Add a Shortcut icon to your home screen
To create a Shortcut icon:
Tap “My Shortcuts” inside the Shortcuts app
Tap the circle with three dots in the upper-right of the Shortcut badge you want to add
Tap another circle with three dots after the menu launches
Tap “Add to Home Screen.” You will see a screen like this:
Here you can configure the icon and its name. Apple has a variety of colors and “glyphs” (symbols) you can choose from, or you can use a photo from your camera roll.
Adding a Shortcut to your Share Sheet
The “Share Sheet” in iOS is menu that comes up when you tap the square with the arrow pointing up in a variety of apps. It’s the service that lets you save and share links, photos, files, etc.
Here’s how you can add a Shortcut to your Share Sheet:
Tap “My Shortcuts” inside the Shortcuts app
Tap the circle with three dots in the upper-right of the Shortcut badge you want to add
Tap another circle with three dots after the menu launches
Activate the “Show in Share Sheet” option on the menu
Tell Siri to launch a Shortcut
For hands-free Shortcut activation:
Say “Hey Siri”
Say, “Launch ‘Shortcut name’”
You now know enough to be dangerous. Get started.
Siri Shortcuts can do so much--they really can transform the way you use your iPhone and iPad. We’ve just scratched the surface here, but hopefully you’re feeling confident enough to get started today.
Review and Highlights: Building a Story Brand, by Donald Miller
There are mountains of bad marketing books out there.
Books whose sole purpose is to elevate a consultant, speaker, or agency in order to drive clients and speaking opps to their door.
I thought this might be one of those books.
It is not. In fact, the book is pretty great.
Miller looks at marketing through the time-tested methodology of storytelling, laying out a simple (and simple does not mean easy) framework for creating a marketing message strategy that interests and engages your target customer.
Miller’s “StoryBrand” framework looks like this:
It’s an effective structure that also forces a business to be displicined about what it sells and how it sells it.
Much of the book fleshes out the details and strategies involved in creating something compelling and effective inside this framework--and, again, the content truly is useful. There’s no holding back information so you have to hire Miller’s agency. You can, if you want guidenace and content development, but there’s enough meat here for small businesses to build a story themselves so they can push it out into the wild for testing and refinement.
Later in the book comes the selling we’ve come to expect in marketing books--propping up the agency’s ability to infuse story into a company’s culture, for example.
But that’s forgiveable, because Miller gives us so much value in the rest of the book.
Miller implores businesses to position themselves as the “The Guide” who can lead “The Hero”--the customer--through a transformation. And Miller clearly demonstrates the power of that philopsophy, serving as the Obi-Wan Kenobi who leads the reader through a detailed, effective messaging framework.
“Building a Story Brand” is the rare marketing book that deeply explains strategy and follows up with tactical suggestions for execution.
Very smart, very useful. I recommend “Building a Story Brand” for any marketer or business owner.
Chapter-by-chapter highlights from “Building a Story Brand,” by Donald Miller
INTRODUCTION
This is not a book about telling your company’s story. A book like that would be a waste of time. Customers don’t generally care about your story; they care about their own.
To get the most out of this book, I encourage you to do three things:
1. Read the book and understand the SB7 Framework.
2. Filter your message through the framework.
3. Clarify your message so more customers listen.
Businesses that invite their customers into a heroic story grow. Businesses that don’t are forgotten.
SECTION 1
WHY MOST MARKETING IS A MONEY PIT
CHAPTER 1
THE KEY TO BEING SEEN, HEARD, AND UNDERSTOOD
The graphic artists and designers we’re hiring to build our websites and brochures have degrees in design and know everything about Photoshop, but how many of them have read a single book about writing good sales copy? How many of them know how to clarify your message so customers listen?
The fact is, pretty websites don’t sell things. Words sell things.
Essentially, story formulas put everything in order so the brain doesn’t have to work to understand what’s going on.”
The first mistake brands make is they fail to focus on the aspects of their offer that will help people survive and thrive.
All great stories are about survival—either physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual.
Mistake Number Two The second mistake brands make is they cause their customers to burn too many calories in an effort to understand their offer.
Imagine every time we talk about our products to potential customers, they have to start running on a treadmill. Literally, they have to jog the whole time we’re talking. How long do you think they’re going to pay attention? Not long.
The key is to make your company’s message about something that helps the customer survive and to do so in such a way that they can understand it without burning too many calories.
Story formulas reveal a well-worn path in the human brain, and if we want to stay in business, we need to position our products along this path.
In a story, audiences must always know who the hero is, what the hero wants, who the hero has to defeat to get what they want, what tragic thing will happen if the hero doesn’t win, and what wonderful thing will happen if they do.
All experienced writers know the key to great writing isn’t in what they say; it’s in what they don’t say. The more we cut out, the better the screenplay or book.
CHAPTER 2 THE SECRET WEAPON THAT WILL GROW YOUR BUSINESS
Technically speaking, music and noise are similar. Both are created by traveling sound waves that rattle our eardrums. Music, however, is noise that has been submitted to certain rules that allow the brain to engage on a different level. If I played you a recording of a dump truck backing up, birds chirping, and children laughing, you’d not remember those sounds the next day. But if I played you a Beatles song, you’d likely be humming it for a week.
Story is similar to music. A good story takes a series of random events and distills them into the essence of what really matters.
When Jobs returned to the company after running Pixar, Apple became customer-centric, compelling, and clear in their communication. The first campaign he released went from nine pages in the New York Times to just two words on billboards all over America: Think Different.
When Apple began filtering their communication to make it simple and relevant, they actually stopped featuring computers in most of their advertising. Instead, they understood their customers were all living, breathing heroes, and they tapped into their stories. They did this by (1) identifying what their customers wanted (to be seen and heard), (2) defining their customers’ challenge (that people didn’t recognize their hidden genius), and (3) offering their customers a tool they could use to express themselves (computers and smartphones). Each of these realizations are pillars in ancient storytelling and critical for connecting with customers.
People don’t buy the best products; they buy the products they can understand the fastest.
Here is nearly every story you see or hear in a nutshell: A CHARACTER who wants something encounters a PROBLEM before they can get it. At the peak of their despair, a GUIDE steps into their lives, gives them a PLAN, and CALLS THEM TO ACTION. That action helps them avoid FAILURE and ends in a SUCCESS.
In Star Wars: A New Hope, our reluctant hero, Luke Skywalker, experiences a devastating tragedy: his aunt and uncle are murdered at the hands of the evil Empire. This sets a series of events in motion: Luke begins the journey of becoming a Jedi Knight and destroys the Empire’s battle station, the Death Star, which allows the Rebellion to live and fight another day.
The fact that nearly every movie you go see at the theater includes these seven elements means something. After thousands of years, storytellers the world over have arrived at this formula as a means of best practices.
The further we veer away from these seven elements, the harder it becomes for audiences to engage.
The Three Crucial Questions
1. What does the hero want?
2. Who or what is opposing the hero getting what she wants?
3. What will the hero’s life look like if she does (or does not) get what she wants?
if these three questions can’t be answered within the first fifteen to twenty minutes, the story has already descended into noise and will almost certainly fail at the box office.
there are three questions potential customers must answer if we expect them to engage with our brand. And they should be able to answer these questions within five seconds of looking at our website or marketing material:
1. What do you offer?
2. How will it make my life better?
3. What do I need to do to buy it?
So how do we come up with these messages? It’s simple. We use the same grid storytellers use in telling stories to map out the story of our customers, then we create clear and refined statements in the seven relevant categories of their lives to position ourselves as their guides.
CHAPTER 3 THE SIMPLE SB7 FRAMEWORK
THE STORYBRAND FRAMEWORK
1. A Character STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE ONE: THE CUSTOMER IS THE HERO, NOT YOUR BRAND.
2. Has a Problem STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE TWO: COMPANIES TEND TO SELL SOLUTIONS TO EXTERNAL PROBLEMS, BUT CUSTOMERS BUY SOLUTIONS TO INTERNAL PROBLEMS.
What most brands miss, however, is that there are three levels of problems a customer encounters. In stories, heroes encounter external, internal, and philosophical problems. Why? Because these are the same three levels of problems human beings face in their everyday lives. Almost all companies try to sell solutions to external problems, but as we unfold the StoryBrand Framework, you’ll see why customers are much more motivated to resolve their inner frustrations.
3. And Meets a Guide
STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE THREE: CUSTOMERS AREN’T LOOKING FOR ANOTHER HERO; THEY’RE LOOKING FOR A GUIDE.
It’s no accident that guides show up in almost every movie. Nearly every human being is looking for a guide (or guides) to help them win the day.
When a brand comes along and positions itself as the hero, customers remain distant.
4. Who Gives Them a Plan
PRINCIPLE FOUR: CUSTOMERS TRUST A GUIDE WHO HAS A PLAN.
At this point we’ve identified what the customer wants, defined three levels of problems they’re encountering, and positioned ourselves as their guide. And our customers love us for the effort. But they still aren’t going to make a purchase. Why? Because we haven’t laid out a simple plan of action they can take.
What customers are looking for, then, is a clear path we’ve laid out that takes away any confusion they might have about how to do business with us. The StoryBrand tool we will use to create this path is called the plan.
5. And Calls Them to Action
STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE FIVE: CUSTOMERS DO NOT TAKE ACTION UNLESS THEY ARE CHALLENGED TO TAKE ACTION.
In stories, characters don’t take action on their own. They must be challenged.
A call to action involves communicating a clear and direct step our customer can take to overcome their challenge and return to a peaceful life. Without clear calls to action, people will not engage our brand.
I’ll show you two calls to action that have worked for thousands of our clients. One call to action is direct, asking the customer for a purchase or to schedule an appointment. The other is a transitional call to action, furthering our relationship with the customer. Once we begin using both kinds of calls to action in our messaging, customers will understand exactly what we want them to do and decide whether to let us play a role in their story.
6. That Helps Them Avoid Failure
STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE SIX: EVERY HUMAN BEING IS TRYING TO AVOID A TRAGIC ENDING.
Stories live and die on a single question: What’s at stake? If nothing can be gained or lost, nobody cares.
Simply put, we must show people the cost of not doing business with us.
Whole Foods has built an enormous industry helping customers avoid the consequences of overly processed foods, and more recently Trader Joe’s has come along to help customers avoid the consequences of Whole Foods’ prices.
not all of the seven elements should be used evenly in your communication. Think of the StoryBrand Framework as a recipe for a loaf of bread. Failure is like salt: use too much and you’ll ruin the flavor; leave it out and the recipe will taste bland.
7. And Ends in a Success
STORYBRAND PRINCIPLE SEVEN: NEVER ASSUME PEOPLE UNDERSTAND HOW YOUR BRAND CAN CHANGE THEIR LIVES. TELL THEM.
We must tell our customers how great their life can look if they buy our products and services.
I’ll elaborate on what is perhaps the most important element of your messaging strategy: offering a vision for how great a customer’s life could be if they engage your products or services.
WHEN YOU FEEL CONFUSED, CLARIFY YOUR MESSAGE
CLARIFY YOUR MESSAGE SO CUSTOMERS LISTEN As you walk through the seven parts of the StoryBrand Framework, simply follow these three steps:
1. Read each of the next seven chapters.
2. After you read each chapter, brainstorm potential messages you might use to populate your BrandScript.
3. Carefully look at your brainstorm and then decide on a specific message to use in each section of your BrandScript.
SECTION 2 BUILDING YOUR STORYBRAND
CHAPTER 4 A CHARACTER
A story starts with a hero who wants something. And then the question becomes: Will the hero get what she wants?
Before knowing what the hero wants, the audience has little interest in her fate.
As a brand it’s important to define something your customer wants, because as soon as we define something our customer wants, we posit a story question in the mind of the customer: Can this brand really help me get what I want?
OPEN A STORY GAP
In story terms, identifying a potential desire for your customer opens what’s sometimes called a story gap. The idea is that you place a gap between a character and what they want.
To understand the power of a story gap is to understand what compels a human brain toward a desire. Even classical music follows this formula. Many classical sonatas can be broken into three sections: exposition, development, and recapitulation. The final section, recapitulation, is simply an altered version of the exposition that brings a sense of resolve. If that doesn’t make sense, try singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” without singing the final note on the word are. It will bother you to no end.
We also see this at work in poetry. When our ears hear Lord Byron’s first line “She walks in beauty, like the night,” a story gap has been opened. We are waiting to hear a word that rhymes with night and closes the open gap in our minds.
PARE DOWN THE CUSTOMER’S AMBITION TO A SINGLE FOCUS A critical mistake many organizations make in defining something their customers want is they don’t pare down that desire to a single focus.
This can be frustrating if your products and services fulfill many desires.
As you create a BrandScript for your overall brand, focus on one simple desire and then, as you create campaigns for each division and maybe even each product, you can identify more things your customer wants in the subplots of your overall brand.
At the highest level, the most important challenge for business leaders is to define something simple and relevant their customers want and to become known for delivering on that promise.
Everything else is a subplot that, after having delivered on the customer’s basic desire, will only serve to delight and surprise them all the more.
CHOOSE A DESIRE RELEVANT TO THEIR SURVIVAL
Once a brand defines what their customer wants, they are often guilty of making the second mistake—what they’ve defined isn’t related to the customer’s sense of survival. In their desire to cast a wide net, they define a blob of a desire that is so vague, potential customers can’t figure out why they need it in the first place.
What Does Survival Mean?
When I say survival, I’m talking about that primitive desire we all have to be safe, healthy, happy, and strong. Survival simply means we have the economic and social resources to eat, drink, reproduce, and fend off foes. So what kinds of desires fit under this definition?
Conserving financial resources.
Conserving time.
Building social networks.
Gaining status.
Accumulating resources.
The innate desire to be generous.
The desire for meaning.
WHAT’S THE STORY QUESTION FOR YOUR CUSTOMER?
When I offered my executive coach friend the tagline “Helping you become the leader everybody loves,” his customers’ brains were able to translate that message into multiple survival categories, including social networks, status, the innate desire to be generous, the opportunity to gain resources, and even the desire for deeper meaning.
The goal for our branding should be that every potential customer knows exactly where we want to take them: a luxury resort where they can get some rest, to become the leader everybody loves, or to save money and live better.
If you randomly asked a potential customer where your brand wants to take them, would they be able to answer?
CLARIFY YOUR MESSAGE SO CUSTOMERS LISTEN
CHAPTER 5 HAS A PROBLEM
StoryBrand Principle Two: Companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but customers buy solutions to internal problems.
Identifying our customers’ problems deepens their interest in the story we are telling. Every story is about somebody who is trying to solve a problem, so when we identify our customers’ problems, they recognize us as a brand that understands them.
The problem is the “hook” of a story, and if we don’t identify our customers’ problems, the story we are telling will fall flat.
As the novelist James Scott Bell says, “Readers want to fret.” It’s true in story and it’s true in branding.
It bears repeating. The more we talk about the problems our customers experience, the more interest they will have in our brand.
HOW TO TALK ABOUT YOUR CUSTOMERS’ PROBLEMS
Every Story Needs a Villain
The villain is the number one device storytellers use to give conflict a clear point of focus.
The villain doesn’t have to be a person, but without question it should have personified characteristics. If we’re selling time-management software, for instance, we might vilify the idea of distractions.
Advertisers personify the problems their customers face in order to capture their imagination and give their frustrations a focal point. Fuzzy hairballs with squeaky voices living in your drains, making nests, and clogging up the pipes? Yellow globs of living, breathing, talking plaque vacationing between your teeth? These are all personified versions of conflict. They’re all villains.
four characteristics that make for a good villain on your StoryBrand BrandScript:
The villain should be a root source. Frustration, for example, is not a villain; frustration is what a villain makes us feel. High taxes, rather, are a good example of a villain.
The villain should be relatable. When people hear us talk about the villain, they should immediately recognize it as something they disdain.
The villain should be singular.
The villain should be real. Never go down the path of being a fearmonger. There are plenty of actual villains out there to fight.
The Three Levels of Conflict
External Problems Internal Problems Philosophical Problems
In a story, a villain initiates an external problem that causes the character to experience an internal frustration that is, quite simply, philosophically wrong.
EXTERNAL PROBLEMS
In literature, a villain’s job is to wreak havoc on the hero, to place barriers between them and their desperate desire for stability.
the external problem is often a physical, tangible problem the hero must overcome in order to save the day.
The external problem works like a prized chess piece set between the hero and the villain, and each is trying to control the piece so they can win the game.
If we own a restaurant, the external problem we solve is hunger. The external problem a plumber fixes might be a leaky pipe, just like a pest-control guy might solve the external problem of termites in the attic.
INTERNAL PROBLEMS
By limiting our marketing messages to only external problems, we neglect a principle that is costing us thousands and potentially millions of dollars. That principle is this: Companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but people buy solutions to internal problems.
The purpose of an external problem in a story is to manifest an internal problem.
If I wrote a movie about a guy who simply needed to disarm a bomb, audiences would lose interest. What storytellers and screenwriters do, then, is create a backstory of frustration in the hero’s life.
In the movie Moneyball, for instance, Billy Beane failed in his playing career and so was filled with self-doubt about whether he could redeem himself as a general manager. In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker was told by his uncle that he was too young to join the resistance, so he doubted his ability until the very end.
In almost every story the hero struggles with the same question: Do I have what it takes?
By assuming our customers only want to resolve external problems, we fail to engage the deeper story they’re actually living.
The only reason our customers buy from us is because the external problem we solve is frustrating them in some way.
If we can identify that frustration, put it into words, and offer to resolve it along with the original external problem, something special happens.
For example, if we own a house-painting business, our customer’s external problem might be an unsightly home. The internal problem, however, may involve a sense of embarrassment about having the ugliest home on the street. Knowing this, our marketing could offer “Paint That Will Make Your Neighbors Jealous.”
What Frustrations Do Our Products Resolve?
CarMax’s business strategy is aimed at you not having to feel lied to, cheated, or worked over in your car-buying experience.
The external problem CarMax resolves is the need for a car, of course, but they hardly advertise about cars at all. They focus on their customers’ internal problems and, in doing so, entered one of the least-trusted industries in America and created a $15 billion franchise.
PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS
The philosophical problem in a story is about something even larger than the story itself. It’s about the question why. Why does this story matter in the overall epic of humanity?
Why is it important that Tommy Boy save his dad’s company? I’ll tell you why, because the people trying to take Tommy Boy down are lying thieves. This is a comedic story about honesty, family, integrity, and hard work versus deception, greed, and trickery.
Why is it important that Bridget Jones find love? Because the beauty and worth of every person deserves to be recognized and cherished by another.
A philosophical problem can best be talked about using terms like ought and shouldn’t. “Bad people shouldn’t be allowed to win” or “People ought to be treated fairly.”
What’s the Deeper Meaning?
People want to be involved in a story that is larger than themselves.
Brands that give customers a voice in a larger narrative add value to their products by giving their customers a deeper sense of meaning.
Before music went digital, Tower Records promoted their chain of record stores using the tagline “No music, no life.” Not only did the tagline help them sell more than a billion dollars in records each year, but they sold thousands of bumper stickers and T-shirts featuring the tagline to fans who wanted to associate with the philosophical belief that music mattered.
The Perfect Brand Promise
If we really want to satisfy our customers, we can offer much more than products or services; we can offer to resolve an external, internal, and philosophical problem whenever they engage our business.
When Luke shoots the photon torpedo through the little hole in the Death Star, he actually resolves the external problem of destroying the Death Star, the internal problem that had him wondering whether he had what it took to be a Jedi, and the philosophical problem of good versus evil,
This formula works because human beings experience three levels of problems in their everyday lives. They aren’t just looking for a resolution to one level of problem; they’re hoping for a resolution to all three.
TESLA MOTOR CARS:
Villain: Gas guzzling, inferior technology
External: I need a car.
Internal: I want to be an early adopter of new technology.
Philosophical: My choice of car ought to help save the environment.
A large problem most of our clients face is they want to include three villains and seven external problems and four internal problems, and so on. But, as I’ve already mentioned, stories are best when they are simple and clear. We are going to have to make choices.
CHAPTER 6 AND MEETS A GUIDE
StoryBrand Principle Three: Customers aren’t looking for another hero; they’re looking for a guide.
No two lives are the same, and yet we share common chapters. Every human being is on a transformational journey.
It’s easy to recognize these chapters by their events, or what writer and story scholar James Scott Bell calls “doorways of no return.”1 This might have been our parents’ divorce, our first crush, a rejection from somebody we loved, or having absolutely nailed the moonwalk when the crowd gathered around us at the junior high dance.
The events that define our chapters are often instigated or interpreted by mystical characters that help us along the way. In a story there are many names for these characters, but I choose to call them guides.
In his book The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker describes the introduction of the guide into the story this way: A hero or heroine falls under a dark spell which eventually traps them in some wintry state, akin to a living death: physical or spiritual imprisonment, sleep, sickness or some other form of enchantment. For a long time they languish in this frozen condition. Then a miraculous act of redemption takes place, focused on a particular figure who helps to liberate the hero or heroine from imprisonment.
EVERY HERO IS LOOKING FOR A GUIDE
When I talk about a guide, I’m talking about our mother and father when they sat us down to talk about integrity, or a football coach who helped us understand the importance of working hard and believing we could accomplish more than we ever thought possible.
If a hero solves her own problem in a story, the audience will tune out. Why? Because we intuitively know if she could solve her own problem, she wouldn’t have gotten into trouble in the first place. Storytellers use the guide character to encourage the hero and equip them to win the day.
Frodo has Gandalf, Katniss has Haymitch, and Luke Skywalker has Yoda.
The fatal mistake some brands make, especially young brands who believe they need to prove themselves, is they position themselves as the hero in the story instead of the guide.
The Fatal Mistake
In the months leading up to the launch of Tidal, Jay Z recruited sixteen well-known musicians who agreed to release exclusive content on his platform in exchange for a percentage of equity. In their multimillion-dollar rollout, the artists stood shoulder to shoulder at a press conference to explain their mission. Predictably, this is where everything fell apart.
“Water is free,” Jay Z quipped. “Music is $6 but no one wants to pay for music.” He continued, somewhat confusingly, “You should drink free water from the tap—it’s a beautiful thing. And if you want to hear the most beautiful song, then support the artist.”
Social media, especially Twitter, eviscerated Jay Z and Tidal.
Jay Z failed to answer the one question lingering in the subconscious of every hero customer: How are you helping me win the day?
The Story Is Not About Us
The larger point here is simple: the day we stop losing sleep over the success of our business and start losing sleep over the success of our customers is the day our business will start growing again.
Heroes are often ill-equipped and filled with self-doubt. They don’t know if they have what it takes. They are often reluctant, being thrown into the story rather than willingly engaging the plot.
The guide, however, has already “been there and done that” and has conquered the hero’s challenge in their own backstory.
THE TWO CHARACTERISTICS OF A GUIDE
Empathy Authority
Yoda understands Luke’s dilemma and has mastered the skills Luke must develop if he is going to win the day.
The guide must have this precise one-two punch of empathy and authority in order to move the hero and the story along.
When Bill Clinton delivered his now-famous line “I feel your pain” in 1992, he did more than just clinch a victory over George H. W. Bush; he positioned himself as the guide in the American voters’ story.
Bush gave a rambling answer to a young woman when she asked what the national debt meant to the average American. Clinton countered Bush’s linear, cerebral answer by asking the woman if she knew anybody who’d lost their job. He asked whether it pained her that she had friends out of work, and when the woman said yes, he went on to explain how the national debt is tied to the well-being of every American, even her and her friends. That’s empathy.
Empathetic statements start with words like, “We understand how it feels to . . .” or “Nobody should have to experience . . .” or “Like you, we are frustrated by
ARE YOU LIKE ME?
Empathy is more than just sentimental slogans, though. Real empathy means letting customers know we see them as we see ourselves.
Demonstrate Authority
Nobody likes a know-it-all and nobody wants to be preached at. Brands that lord their expertise over the masses turn people off.
When I talk about authority, I’m really talking about competence. When looking for a guide, a hero trusts somebody who knows what they’re doing.
how do we express our authority without bragging about ourselves so much that we step into the role of hero?
There are four easy ways to add just the right amount of authority to our marketing.
1. Testimonials: Let others do the talking for you.
2. Statistics: How many satisfied customers have you helped? How much money have you helped them save?
3. Awards: If you’ve won a few awards for your work, feel free to include small logos or indications of those awards at the bottom of your page.
4. Logos: If you provide a business-to-business product or service, place logos of known businesses you’ve worked with in your marketing collateral.
HOW TO MAKE A GREAT FIRST IMPRESSION
When people meet your brand, it’s as though they are meeting a person. They’re wondering if the two of you will get along, whether you can help them live a better life, whether they want to associate their identity with your brand, and ultimately whether they can trust you.
Cuddy distilled her research into two questions people subconsciously ask when meeting someone new: “Can I trust this person?” and “Can I respect this person?”
When we express empathy, we help our customers answer Cuddy’s first question, “Can I trust this person?” Demonstrating competence helps our customers answer the second question, “Can I respect this person?”
CHAPTER 7 WHO GIVES THEM A PLAN
If we’ve positioned ourselves as the guide, our customers are already in a relationship with us. But making a purchase isn’t a characteristic of a casual relationship; it’s a characteristic of a commitment. When a customer places an order, they’re essentially saying, “I believe you can help me solve my problem, and I believe it so much I’m willing to put skin in the game. I’m willing to part with my hard-earned dollars.”
When a customer is deciding whether to buy something, we should picture them standing on the edge of a rushing creek. It’s true they want what’s on the other side, but as they stand there, they hear a waterfall downstream. What happens if they fall into the creek?
In order to ease our customers’ concerns, we need to place large stones in that creek. When we identify the stones our customers can step on to get across the creek, we remove much of the risk and increase their comfort level about doing business with us. It’s as though we’re saying, “First, step here. See, it’s easy. Then step here, then here, and then you’ll be on the other side, and your problem will be resolved.”
In nearly every movie you can think of, the guide gives the hero a plan. The plan is the bridge the hero must cross in order to arrive at the climactic scene.
Rocky has to train using nontraditional methods, Tommy Boy has to embark on a national sales trip,
THE PLAN CREATES CLARITY
Plans can take many shapes and forms, but all effective plans do one of two things: they either clarify how somebody can do business with us, or they remove the sense of risk somebody might have if they’re considering investing in our products or services.
The fact that we want them to place an order is not enough information to motivate them.
THE PROCESS PLAN
A process plan can describe the steps a customer needs to take to buy our product, or the steps the customer needs to take to use our product after they buy it, or a mixture of both. For instance, if you’re selling an expensive product, you might break down the steps like this:
1. Schedule an appointment.
2. Allow us to create a customized plan.
3. Let’s execute the plan together.
the key to the success of any plan is to alleviate confusion for our customers.
We get frequent questions about how many steps a process plan should have. The answer varies, of course, but we recommend at least three and no more than six.
THE AGREEMENT PLAN
If process plans are about alleviating confusion, agreement plans are about alleviating fears.
An agreement plan is best understood as a list of agreements you make with your customers to help them overcome their fear of doing business with you.
The best way to arrive at an agreement plan is to list all the things your customer might be concerned about as it relates to your product or service and then counter that list with agreements that will alleviate their fears.
WHAT’S THE PLAN CALLED?
Your agreement plan might be titled the “customer satisfaction agreement” or even “our quality guarantee.”
Titling your plan will frame it in the customer’s mind and increases the perceived value of all that your brand offers.
CHAPTER 8 AND CALLS THEM TO ACTION
StoryBrand Principle Five: Customers do not take action unless they are challenged to take action.
they need us to do one more thing: they need us to call them to action.
ASK THEM TO PLACE AN ORDER
In stories, characters never take action on their own. They have to be challenged to take action.
The reason characters have to be challenged to take action is because everybody sitting in the dark theater knows human beings do not make major life decisions unless something challenges them to do so.
Have you ever wondered why late-night infomercial hosts keep screaming, “Call now! Don’t delay!” over and over as though they’re trying to wake people up from a zombie trance? They do that because they’re trying to wake people up from a zombie trance!
The Power of the “Buy Now” Button
One of the biggest hindrances to business success is that we think customers can read our minds. It’s obvious to us that we want them to place an order (why else would we be talking to them about our products?), so we assume it’s obvious to them too. It isn’t.
Companies that don’t make their calls to action clear remind me of my dating days before I met my wife. Instead of clearly asking a girl out, I’d say something like, “Coffee is nice, isn’t it? Do you like coffee?”
we don’t want to constantly beat our customers over the head with direct calls to action. Of the thousands of clients we’ve worked with, though, we’ve yet to encounter anybody who oversells. Most people think they’re overselling when, in truth, their calls to action fall softer than a whisper.
The reality is when we try to sell passively, we communicate a lack of belief in our product.
If we can change our customer’s story for the better, why shouldn’t we be bold about inviting them to do business with us?
Two Kinds of Calls to Action
direct calls to action and transitional calls to action. They work like two phases of a relationship.
Direct calls to action include requests like “buy now,” “schedule an appointment,” or “call today.”
Transitional calls to action, however, contain less risk and usually offer a customer something for free. Transitional calls to action can be used to “on-ramp” potential customers to an eventual purchase. Inviting people to watch a webinar or download a PDF are good examples of transitional calls to action.
To further the relational metaphor, a transitional call to action is like saying, “Can I take you out on a date?” to your customer, and a direct call to action is like saying, “Will you marry me?”
we always want to have a direct call to action and a transitional call to action. The metaphorical conversation with our customers goes like this:
Us: Will you marry me?
Customer: No.
Us: Will you go out with me again?
Customer: Yes.
Us: Will you marry me now?
Customer: No.
Us: Will you go out with me again?
Customer: Sure, you’re interesting and the information you provide is helpful.
Us: Will you marry me?
Customer: Okay, I’ll marry you now.
THOSE WHO ASK AGAIN AND AGAIN SHALL FINALLY RECEIVE
Direct Calls to Action It bears repeating: there should be one obvious button to press on your website, and it should be the direct call to action.
Our customers should always know we want to marry them. Even if they’re not ready, we should keep saying it.
Examples of direct calls to action are
Order now
Call today
Schedule an appointment
Register today
Buy now
Transitional Calls to Action
Direct calls to action are simple and obvious (though ridiculously underused), but transitional calls to action can be equally as powerful to grow your business.
A good transitional call to action can do three powerful things for your brand:
1. Stake a claim to your territory. If you want to be known as the leader in a certain territory, stake a claim to that territory before the competition beats you to it. Creating a PDF, a video series, or anything else that positions you as the expert is a great way to establish authority.
2. Create reciprocity.
All relationships are give-and-take, and the more you give to your customers, the more likely they will be to give something back in the future.
3. Position yourself as the guide. When you help your customers solve a problem, even for free, you position yourself as the guide.
Transitional calls to action come in all shapes and sizes.
Free information: Create a white paper or free PDF educating customers about your field of expertise.
Testimonials: Creating a video or PDF including testimonials from happy clients creates a story map in the minds of potential customers.
Samples: If you can give away free samples of your product, do it.
Free trial: Offering a limited-time free trial works as a risk-removal policy that helps to on-ramp your customers.
Connecting the Dots
WHAT ARE THE STAKES?
Once customers decide to buy our products, how can we increase the perceived value of those products and deepen the positive experience they have with our brand? How can we make the story we’ve invited them into so enticing that they can’t wait to turn the page? To do this, we must define the stakes.
CHAPTER 9 THAT HELPS THEM AVOID FAILURE
StoryBrand Principle Six: Every human being is trying to avoid a tragic ending.
The only two motivations a hero has in a story are to escape something bad or experience something good. Such is life.
If a storyteller doesn’t clearly let an audience know what no-good, terrible, awful thing might befall their hero unless she overcomes her challenge, the story will have no stakes, and a story without stakes is boring.
Every conversation, every chase scene, every reflective montage should serve the movie in the same way: it must either move the character closer to, or further from, the tragic result that might befall them.
the benefits of featuring the potential pitfalls of not doing business with us are much easier to include than we may think. Blog subjects, e-mail content, and bullet points on our website can all include elements of potential failure to give our customers a sense of urgency when it comes to our products and services.
WHAT’S THERE TO LOSE?
As it relates to our marketing, the obvious question is: What will the customer lose if they don’t buy our products?
People Are Motivated by Loss Aversion
Emphasizing potential loss is more than just good storytelling; it’s good behavioral economics.
In 1979, Nobel Memorial Prize winner Daniel Kahneman published a theory about why people make certain buying decisions. Prospect Theory, as it was called, espoused that people are more likely to be dissatisfied with a loss than they are satisfied with a gain.
In Dominic Infante, Andrew Rancer, and Deanna Womack’s book Building Communication Theory, they propose a four-step process called a “fear appeal.”
First, we must make a reader (or listener) know they are vulnerable to a threat. For example: “Nearly 30 percent of all homes have evidence of termite infestation.”
Second, we should let the reader know that since they’re vulnerable, they should take action to reduce their vulnerability.
“Since nobody wants termites, you should do something about it to protect your home.” Third, we should let them know about a specific call to action that protects them from the risk. “We offer a complete home treatment that will insure your house is free of termites.” Fourth, we should challenge people to take this specific action. “Call us today and schedule your home treatment.”
Fear Is Salt in the Recipe
We do not need to use a great deal of fear in the story we’re telling our customers. Just a pinch of salt in the recipe will do.
When receivers are either very fearful or very unafraid, little attitude or behavior change results. High levels of fear are so strong that individuals block them out; low levels are too weak to produce the desired effect. Messages containing moderate amounts of fear-rousing content are most effective in producing attitudinal and/or behavior change.
WHAT ARE YOU HELPING YOUR CUSTOMER AVOID?
What negative consequences are you helping customers avoid? Could customers lose money? Are there health risks if they avoid your services? What about opportunity costs?
Could they make or save more money with you than they can with a competitor?
PERKINS MOTORPLEX (USED CARS)
Getting ripped off by a used-car salesman
Being stuck with a lemon
Feeling taken advantage of
RELY TECHNOLOGY (AUDIO AND VIDEO FOR THE HOME)
Living in a boring home
Nobody will want to watch the game at your house
You need a PhD to turn on the TV
CHAPTER 10 AND ENDS IN A SUCCESS
StoryBrand Principle Seven: Never assume people understand how your brand can change their lives. Tell them.
Years ago, a friend gave me the best leadership advice I’ve ever received. He said, “Don, always remember, people want to be taken somewhere.”
Where is your brand taking people? Are you taking them to financial security? To the day when they’ll move into their dream home? To a fun weekend with friends? Without knowing it, every potential customer we meet is asking us where we can take them.
Ronald Reagan envisioned America as a shining city on a hill. Bill Clinton promised to build a bridge to the twenty-first century. Casting a clear, aspirational vision has always served a presidential candidate.
Successful brands, like successful leaders, make it clear what life will look like if somebody engages their products or services.
Without a vision, the people perish. And so do brands.
THE ENDING SHOULD BE SPECIFIC AND CLEAR
One of the problems we run into with StoryBrand clients is the vision they paint for their customer’s future is too fuzzy.
Harrison Ford had to defeat the terrorists on Air Force One to return to a peaceful White House. Erin Brockovich had to win the final verdict against Pacific Gas and Electric so the citizens of Hinkley, California, could know justice.
In a good story, the resolution must be clearly defined so the audience knows exactly what to hope for.
Being specific matters.
BEFORE AND AFTER
The next step is to say it clearly. We must tell our customers what their lives will look like after they buy our products, or they will have no motivation to do so.
HOW TO END A STORY FOR YOUR CUSTOMER
Brainstorm what your customer’s life will look like externally if their problem is resolved, then think about how that resolution will make them feel, then consider why the resolution to their problem has made the world a more just place to live in.
The three dominant ways storytellers end a story is by allowing the hero to
1. Win some sort of power or position.
2. Be unified with somebody or something that makes them whole.
3. Experience some kind of self-realization that also makes them whole.
The fact that these are the three most-employed story endings implies these are three dominant psychological desires shared by most human beings.
1. Winning Power and Position (The Need for Status)
part of survival means gaining status. If our brand can participate in making our customers more esteemed, respected, and appealing in a social context, we’re offering something they want.
So how can our brand offer status?
Offer access:
My wife loves using her Starbucks membership card because it gains her points, which gains her status and the occasional free latte.
Create scarcity: Offering a limited number of a specific item creates scarcity, and owning something that is scarce is often seen as a status symbol.
Offer a premium:
Most companies earn 70 percent or more of their revenue from a small percentage of their clients. Few, though, identify those clients and offer them a title such as “Preferred” or “Diamond Member.”
Offer identity association: Premium brands like Mercedes and Rolex sell status as much as they do luxury.
Status really does open doors, and by associating their brand, and thus their customers, with success and refinement, they offer them status.
2. Union That Makes the Hero Whole (The Need for Something External to Create Completeness)
The reason stories often end with the union of lovers has little to do with the desire for love or sex. Rather, union between male and female characteristics fulfills in the reader a desire for wholeness.
When the prince rescues the princess and they unite in a wedding at the end of the movie, the audience subconsciously experiences the joining of two halves.
So what are some of the ways we can offer external help for customers looking to become complete or whole?
Reduced anxiety: For years, brands that sell basic items like dish detergent and glass cleaner have almost comically positioned their products as anti-anxiety medication.
What is the brand really offering? Satisfaction for a job well done. A feeling of closure about a clean house. A better, more peaceful life.
Will the use of your product lead to the relief of stress and a feeling of completeness? If so, talk about it and show it in your marketing material.
Reduced workload: Customers who don’t have the right tools must work harder because they are, well, incomplete.
Whether they’re selling wheelbarrows, software, jackhammers, or a fishing apparatus, manufacturers have been positioning tools as “the thing that will make you superhuman” for decades.
More time: For many customers, time is the enemy, and if our product can expand time, we’re offering to solve an external problem that is causing an internal frustration.
3. Ultimate Self-Realization or Acceptance (The Need to Reach Our Potential)
Movies like Rudy, Hoosiers, and Chariots of Fire all tap into the human desire to reach our potential.
Legally Blonde, The Theory of Everything, and Whiplash are all about heroes who face great odds in their journey to prove themselves.
Once proven, the heroes realize an inner peace and can finally accept themselves because they’ve reached their potential.
Heroes can also take an internal journey to come to the same conclusion. When Bridget Jones realized she was too good for the boss with whom she desired a relationship, she came to an ultimate self-realization that returned her to a place of peace and stability.
How can a brand offer a sense of ultimate self-realization or self-acceptance? Here are a few ideas:
Inspiration: If an aspect of your brand can offer or be associated with an inspirational feat, open the floodgates. Brands like Red Bull, Harvard Business Review, Under Armour, The Ken Blanchard Company, Michelob Ultra, and even GMC have associated themselves with athletic and intellectual accomplishment and thus a sense of self-actualization.
Acceptance: Helping people accept themselves as they are isn’t just a thoughtful thing to do; it’s good marketing.
American Eagle used real people as models and refused to retouch the images. Tackling body-image issues, American Eagle went beyond basic product promotion and contributed to universal self-acceptance among their clientele.
Transcendence: Brands that invite customers to participate in a larger movement offer a greater, more impactful life along with their products and services.
Tom’s Shoes built a name for itself by selling stylish shoes while simultaneously giving a pair to somebody in need in what they called a “one for one” model.
CLOSING THE STORY LOOPS
The idea behind the success module in the SB7 Framework is that we offer to close a story loop.
Human beings are looking for resolutions to their external, internal, and philosophical problems, and they can achieve this through, among other things, status, self-realization, self-acceptance, and transcendence.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Offering to close a story loop is much more simple than you think.
Even the inclusion of smiley, happy people on your website is a strong way to offer the closing of a story loop.
What problem are you resolving in your customer’s life, and what does that resolution look like? Stick to basic answers because basic answers really do work.
Then, when you get good, start diving deeper into the levels of problems your brand resolves.
CHAPTER 11 PEOPLE WANT YOUR BRAND TO PARTICIPATE IN THEIR TRANSFORMATION
I’m talking about the human desire to transform. Everybody wants to change. Everybody wants to be somebody different, somebody better, or, perhaps, somebody who simply becomes more self-accepting.
we are all participating in our customers’ transformation, which is exactly what they want us to do. Brands that participate in the identity transformation of their customers create passionate brand evangelists.
HEROES ARE DESIGNED TO TRANSFORM
At the beginning of a story, the hero is usually flawed, filled with doubt, and ill-equipped for the task set before them. The guide aids them on their journey, rife with conflict.
The conflict begins to change the character, though. Forced into action, the hero develops skills and accrues the experience needed to defeat their foe.
This same character arc, by the way, is the arc for The Old Man and the Sea, Pride and Prejudice, Pinocchio, Hamlet, Sleeping Beauty, and Tommy Boy.
It’s the arc of almost every popular story we can name.
Feelings of self-doubt are universal, as is the desire to become somebody competent and courageous.
SMART BRANDS DEFINE AN ASPIRIATIONAL IDENTITY
HOW DOES YOUR CUSTOMER WANT TO BE DESCRIBED BY OTHERS?
The best way to identify an aspirational identity that our customers may be attracted to is to consider how they want their friends to talk about them. Think about it. When others talk about you, what do you want them to say? How we answer that question reveals who it is we’d like to be.
It’s the same for our customers. As it relates to your brand, how does your customer want to be perceived by their friends?
Once we know who our customers want to be, we will have language to use in e-mails, blog posts, and all manner of marketing material.
A GUIDE OFFERS MORE THAN A PRODUCT AND A PLAN
Playing the guide is more than a marketing strategy; it’s a position of the heart. When a brand commits itself to their customers’ journey, to helping resolve their external, internal, and philosophical problems, and then inspires them with an aspirational identity, they do more than sell products—they change lives. And leaders who care more about changing lives than they do about selling products tend to do a good bit of both.
GREAT BRANDS OBSESS ABOUT THE TRANSFORMATION OF THEIR CUSTOMERS
When we first met with Dave, I was surprised to learn he didn’t know that affirming the hero’s transformation was an oft included scene at the end of many stories. After the climactic scene (the debt-free scream), the guide comes back to affirm the transformation of the hero.
In Star Wars, the ghost of Obi-Wan stands next to Luke Skywalker as he’s rewarded for bravery. In The King’s Speech, Lionel tells King George he will be a great king. Peter Brand sits Billy Beane down in the movie Moneyball and lets him know he’s hit the equivalent of a home run as the manager of the A’s.
A hero needs somebody else to step into the story to tell them they’re different, they’re better. That somebody is the guide. That somebody is you.
IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION
Who does your customer want to become as they relate to your products and services?
EXAMPLES OF IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION
PET FOOD BRAND
From: Passive dog owner
To: Every dog’s hero
FINANCIAL ADVISOR
From: Confused and ill-equipped
To: Competent and smart
Participating in your customer’s transformation can give new life and meaning to your business. When your team realizes that they sell more than products, that they guide people toward a stronger belief in themselves, then their work will have greater meaning.
SECTION 3 IMPLEMENTING YOUR STORYBRAND BRANDSCRIPT
CHAPTER 12 BUILDING A BETTER WEBSITE
START WITH YOUR WEBSITE
A great digital presence starts with a clear and effective website.
When they get to our website, their “hopes need to be confirmed,” and they need to be convinced we have a solution to their problem.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Today your website should be the equivalent of an elevator pitch.
The customer simply needs to know that you have something they want and you can be trusted to deliver whatever that is.
THE FIVE THINGS YOUR WEBSITE SHOULD INCLUDE
1. An Offer Above the Fold
On a website, the images and text above the fold are the things you see and read before you start scrolling down.
I like to think of the messages above the fold as a first date, and then as you scroll down you can put the messages you want to share on a second and third date. But as we’ve talked about, the stuff you share on a first date should be short, enticing, and exclusively customer-centric.
customers need to know what’s in it for them right when they read the text. The text should be bold and the statement should be short. It should be easy to read and not buried under buttons and clutter.
Above the fold, make sure the images and text you use meet one of the following criteria:
They promise an aspirational identity.
They promise to solve a problem.
They state exactly what they do.
2. Obvious Calls to Action
There are two main places we want to place a direct call to action. The first is at the top right of our website and the second is in the center of the screen, above the fold.
Your customer’s eye moves quickly in a Z pattern across your website, so if the top left is your logo and perhaps tagline, your top right is a “Buy Now” button, and the middle of the page is an offer followed by another “Buy Now” button, then you’ve likely gotten through all the noise in your customer’s mind and they know what role you can play in their story.
3. Images of Success
The images we use on our websites also communicate something.
Everybody wants to experience a better life in some way or another, and while it may seem simple, images of people smiling or looking satisfied speak to us. They represent an emotional destination we’d like to head toward.
4. A Bite-Sized Breakdown of Your Revenue Streams
A common challenge for many businesses is that they need to communicate simply about what they do, but they’ve diversified their revenue streams so widely that they’re having trouble knowing where to start.
We had a client a couple of years ago that had two main products: a two-day personalized life-planning process for individuals and a two-day strategic operations planning session for teams of executive leaders. Sounds simple enough, except the company didn’t really make money off either product; instead, they made money training and certifying the facilitators. The challenge, then, was to increase demand for each product so that more people would want to become facilitators. This means they had to drive traffic to three different products: the life-planning product, the strat-ops product, and the facilitator certification. If this company sounds like yours, the first challenge is to find an overall umbrella message that unifies your various streams.
Above the fold on their website, we recommended the text “The Key to Success Is a Customized Plan” over an image of a facilitator mapping out a plan on a whiteboard for a satisfied client.
We may think our business is too diverse to communicate clearly, but it probably isn’t.
5. Very Few Words
People don’t read websites anymore; they scan them. If there is a paragraph above the fold on your website, it’s being passed over, I promise.
Some of the most effective websites I’ve reviewed have used ten sentences or less on the entire page.
If you do want to use a long section of text to explain something (we do it on our site, in fact), just place a little “read more” link at the end of the first or second sentence so people can expand it if they like, that way you aren’t bombarding customers with too much text.
CHAPTER 13 USING STORYBRAND TO TRANSFORM COMPANY CULTURE
THE CURSE OF THE NARRATIVE VOID
The Narrative Void is a vacant space that occurs inside the organization when there’s no story to keep everyone aligned.
For years, companies have attempted to exorcise the Narrative Void using the most sacred document available: the mission statement.
Needless to say, only in very rare cases has a mission statement actually led a company to be on a mission.
ARE YOUR PEOPLE CONFUSED?
THE COST OF A NARRATIVE VOID
one of the biggest contributors to the rise of disengagement has been the information explosion.
Companies who calibrate their activities around a common story don’t just state their mission; they're on a mission.
JUST BECAUSE YOU KNOW THE STORY DOESN’T MEAN YOUR TEAM DOES
GETTING THE ORGANIZATION BACK ON MISSION
THE STORYBRAND MARKETING ROADMAP
Five (almost free) things you can do to implement the StoryBrand Framework and grow your business
1. Create a One-liner. This roadmap is going to teach you the four-part formula for creating a single statement that will grow your business.
2. Create a Lead Generator and Collect E-mail Addresses.
You need a lead generator. You need a PDF, e-course, video series, webinar, live event, or just about anything else that will allow you to collect e-mail addresses.
3. Create an Automated E-Mail Drip Campaign.
Marketing has changed, and even the largest of companies are diversifying their ad spend to include e-mail campaigns. But where is the best place to get started? By far, you’ll get your best results through an automated drip campaign.
4. Collect and Tell Stories of Transformation.
Almost every story is about the transformation of the hero, and when we tell stories about how we’ve helped our customers transform, potential customers immediately understand what your brand can offer them.
5. Create a System That Generates Referrals. Once you create a system that funnels potential customers into becoming actual customers, your work is not quite done.
The final step is to turn around and invite happy customers to become evangelists for your brand.
STORYBRAND ROADMAP TASK ONE: CREATE A ONE-LINER FOR YOUR COMPANY
A one-liner is a new and improved way to answer the question “What do you do?”
When writers pitch their screenplays to studio executives, the difference between being accepted or rejected often comes down to what’s called a logline.
A logline is simply a movie’s one-sentence description.
Here are a few examples:
“Blacksmith Will Turner teams up with eccentric pirate ‘Captain’ Jack Sparrow to save his love, the governor’s daughter, from Jack’s former pirate allies, who are now undead.”—Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
“A science-fiction fantasy about a naive but ambitious farm boy from a backwater desert who discovers powers he never knew he had when he teams up with a feisty princess, a mercenary space pilot, and an old wizard warrior to lead a ragtag rebellion against the sinister forces of the evil Galactic Empire.”—Star Wars: A New Hope
“An incompetent, immature, and dimwitted heir to an auto-parts factory must save the business to keep it out of the hands of his new con-artist relatives and big business.”—Tommy Boy
What makes these loglines complete and effective? Two things: imagination and intrigue.
To craft a compelling one-liner, we’ll employ a distilled version of the StoryBrand Framework. If you use the following four components, you’ll craft a powerful one-liner:
1. The Character
2. The Problem
3. The Plan
4. The Success
Your one-liner doesn’t have to be a single sentence, nor does it need to be four sentences. Think of it more as a statement.
1. THE CHARACTER
Let’s say your demographic is soccer moms and you sell a Pilates class. Your one-liner might be, “We help busy mothers get a weekly, meaningful workout so they feel healthy and full of energy.”
2. THE PROBLEM
Soccer moms are challenged with busy schedules, and they can never seem to find time to work out. A retired couple looking to spend their winter in Florida cringes at the cost of buying a second home. But defining the problem is vital, because once you do you’ve opened a story loop and they’ll be looking to you to help them find a resolution.
3. THE PLAN
When a customer reads your one-liner, the plan component should cause them to think, Well, when it’s organized that way, it makes sense. Perhaps there’s hope.
4. THE SUCCESS
This is where you paint a picture of what life could look like after customers use your product or service. For soccer moms, success may involve a sense of health, well-being, or attractiveness.
Let’s put it all together by crafting a one-liner for soccer moms to see how powerful a one-liner actually is.
• The Character: Moms
• The Problem: Busy schedules
• The Plan: Short, meaningful workouts
• The Success: Health and renewed energy
• “We provide busy moms with a short, meaningful workout they can use to stay healthy and have renewed energy.”
Keep Editing Your One-Liner Until It Works
Consider your first one-liner a rough draft. Write it down and test it repeatedly.
How to Use Your One-Liner
1. Memorize your one-liner and repeat it over and over.
2. Have your team memorize the one-liner.
3. Include it on your website.
4. Repeat your one-liner in every piece of marketing collateral possible.
Use your one-liner till it feels borderline excessive. Include your one-liner in every piece of marketing possible.
When you think about how often you’ll need to say your one-liner, think of yourself as a big music star. Amateurs ramble on, playing and saying whatever they want, but professionals serve their audience. Our one-liner is like our hit song, and we need to say it over and over and over until even our customers have it memorized and start repeating it to their friends.
ROADMAP TASK TWO: CREATE A LEAD-GENERATOR AND COLLECT E-MAIL ADDRESSES
Email is the most valuable and effective way you can spread the word about your business, especially if your company revenue is under $5 million and you don’t have a large marketing budget.
Busting the Myth of the Newsletter Signup
Nobody wants to sign up to “stay in the loop,” because this kind of offer doesn’t promise anything of value. The only thing it implies is spam.
We offer them something valuable in return, something more valuable than the vague offer of a newsletter.
How to Create an Irresistible Lead Generator
In order to combat noise in today’s marketplace, your lead generator must do two things:
1. Provide enormous value for your customer
2. Establish you as an authority in your field
Five Types of Lead Generators for All Types of Businesses
1. Downloadable Guide: This is a shockingly inexpensive way to generate leads, and it’s what we used when launching StoryBrand. Get specific. If you’re a local market selling produce, offer monthly recipes or tips for tending a garden.
2. Online Course or Webinar:
3. Software Demos or a Free Trial:
4. Free Samples:
5. Live Events:
Still Stuck? Swipe Ideas from These Examples
“5 Mistakes People Make with Their First Million Dollars”—
“Building Your Dream Home: 10 Things to Get Right Before You Build”—
“Cocktail Club: Learn to Make One New Cocktail Each Month”—This
“Becoming a Professional Speaker”—A
How Much Value Should I Give Away for Free?
Among marketers, it’s been said you give away the “why”—as in why a potential customer would need to address or be aware of a certain issue—and sell the “how,” which is where you offer a tool or teach customers how to follow through step-by-step. My personal belief is that we should be generous—very generous. At StoryBrand, we certainly give away the “why,” but we also give away an awful lot of the “how.” It’s never cost me to be generous with my customers.
How Many E-mail Addresses Do We Need to Get Started?
if your business is generating less than $5 million a year, you should see results with as little as two hundred and fifty qualified e-mail addresses.
Where Should I Feature My Lead Generator? Make sure you feature your lead generator liberally on your website. I recommend creating a pop-up feature on your site that, after ten seconds or so of the browser arriving, offers your resource to the user.
ROADMAP TASK THREE: CREATE AN AUTOMATED E-MAIL DRIP CAMPAIGN
Content is important, but the point is, there is great power in simply reminding our customers we exist.
Send Potential Customers Regular, Valuable E-mails
An automated e-mail campaign is a prewritten sequence of e-mail messages that trigger once a person is added to your list.
Does Anybody Read These Things?
Don’t worry if the open rates on these e-mails are low. A 20 percent open rate is industry standard, so anything above that is performing well.
Getting Started
the one we recommend starting with is the nurturing campaign. A nurturing campaign is a simple, regular
mail that offers your subscribers valuable information as it relates to your products or services.
we want these e-mails to continue positioning us as the guide and to create a bond of trust and reciprocity with potential customers.
A typical nurturing campaign may have an e-mail going out once each week, and the order might look like this: E-mail #1: Nurturing e-mail E-mail #2: Nurturing e-mail E-mail #3: Nurturing e-mail E-mail #4: Sales e-mail with a call to action
This pattern can be repeated month after month.
The Nurturing E-mail
1. Talk about a problem.
2. Explain a plan to solve the problem.
3. Describe how life can look for the reader once the problem is solved.
I also recommend including a postscript, or the P.S. Often, the P.S. is the only thing somebody who opens a mass e-mail will actually read.
A GOOD NURTURING E-MAIL
The Offer and Call to Action E-mail
The formula might look like this:
1. Talk about a problem.
2. Describe a product you offer that solves this problem.
3. Describe what life can look like for the reader once the problem is solved.
4. Call the customer to a direct action leading to a sale.
Similar to the nurturing e-mail, the offer and call-to-action e-mail aims to solve a problem. The only difference is that the solution is your product and a strong call to action has been inserted.
ROADMAP TASK FOUR: COLLECT AND TELL STORIES OF TRANSFORMATION
As we learned earlier in the book, few things are more foundational to a compelling story than the transformation of the hero. Why? Because transformation is a core desire for every human being. That’s why so many stories are about the hero being transformed into somebody better.
Great testimonials give future customers the gift of going second.
Weaving together a compelling tale of transformation means you have to ask the right questions—you need some raw materials to work with. The following questions will allow you to build a bank of compelling testimonials that work with nearly any customer quickly and easily.
1. What was the problem you were having before you discovered our product?
2. What did the frustration feel like as you tried to solve that problem?
3. What was different about our product?
4. Take us to the moment when you realized our product was actually working to solve your problem.
5. Tell us what life looks like now that your problem is solved or being solved.
ROADMAP TASK FIVE: CREATE A SYSTEM THAT GENERATES REFERRALS
1. IDENTIFY YOUR EXISTING, IDEAL CUSTOMERS
Now imagine taking that strategy to the next level. What if creating a special database of existing, passionate customers and communicating with them differently can help you generate referrals? Developing a simple campaign using tools your existing fans can use to spread the word about your brand is key.
2. GIVE YOUR CUSTOMERS A REASON TO SPREAD THE WORD
3. OFFER A REWARD
If you really want to prime the pump, offer a reward to existing clients who refer their friends.
Another way to offer a reward is to start an affiliate program. You can offer your customers a 10 percent commission on the orders they bring to you. This system has generated millions of dollars for thousands of companies. A good affiliate program can do the work of an expensive sales force if you structure the percentages well.
Automate the Work
SOME REAL-WORLD REFERRAL SYSTEMS
A 100 Percent Refund for Three New Referrals Within a Semester. This was the brainchild of an after-school test-prep academy that prepared high school students for the SAT and ACT college admissions test,
Invite-a-Friend Coupons.
Open-House Party. Whenever a home contractor finished a large-scale project, he asked the homeowners if they would be willing to throw an open-house party in exchange for a slight discount.
Free Follow-Up Photos.
A wedding photographer in Syracuse, New York, offered couples a free follow-up portrait on their one-year anniversary if the couple provided three referrals at the time of the wedding.
Amazon cuts affiliate commissions again. What’s next for affiliate marketers?
Amazon did it again.
With its ever-growing power in online retail, Amazon recently cut affiliate partner commissions on many key products in its Amazon Associates program:
Furniture, Home, Home Improvement, Lawn & Garden, Pets Products and Pantry will go from 8% to 3%.
Headphones, Beauty, Musical Instruments, Business & Industrial supplies will go from 6% to 3%.
Outdoors, Tools will be cut from 5.5% to 3%.
Sports and Baby Products categories will go from 4.5% to 3%.
Health & Personal Care will be slashed from 5% to 1%.
Amazon Fresh will be cut from 3% to just 1% as well.
The changes will devastate many affiliates:
Affiliate marketing is a terrific secondary revenue stream, and a terrible primary one.
Amazon’s cuts illustrate this perfectly: affiliate marketing is too reliant on forces outside your control.
Successful affiliates need to adopt this mantra and and aDjust accordingly. Here are some ideas on how:
Build direct relationships with the providers of your most popular products
It’s possible you could work directly with the companies manufacturing the most popular products you sell -- espeically if you are driving significant volume.
These companies pay big margins to sell through Amazon, and working directly with you might improve their margins on the products you sell.
Reaching out is worth a shot.
Search for affiliate managers, directors, business development people at the companies you want to work with. Explain who you are, share yoru site and sales numbers, and start a dialogue.
Find and promote services--not just products--related to your niche.
If your site is in the consumer tech space, could you refer installation services or repair services related to your most popular products?
Another example: you have a site about home pool care.
Can you work with a directory of pool cleaning services? Or companies that generate pool building leads?
Amazon hasn’t eaten the services space (yet). Opportunity exists for affiliates to recommend services that complement the products their audiences are interested in.
Develop your own products
You know what your audience is intersted in—you have the sales data. And your audience is a built-in asset for supporting a Kickstarter project.
Is there something new you can create—your own product under your own branding—that you can sell yourself to your dedicated audience?
Develop your own services
How you can help support the interests of yoru audience with new services? Can you create a software-as-a-service (SAAS) product, sold as a subscription model, to serve your audience even better than product referrals ever did?
Pivot to a subscription model
Services like Substack make it easy to create a monitized newsletter. Is your content good enough that people will pay to read it? If not, can you create a premier content tier worthy of a subscription?
Offer content creation to similar businesses
If you’re a successful affiliate marketer, you know how to audience-build. You understand how to create content that builds and maintains a target audience.
Those are extremely valuable—and highly transferable—skills.
Can you begin to work as an agency helping other people and companies build their own audiences?
Explore traditional advertising models
Grab your favorite throwback jersey and explore a time when the web was monitized by display and text advertising.
Pivot to a related niche
Is there another area where commmissions are still healthy that’s tangentally related to your audience’s key interest?
In the short run, this may reduce your total audinece. But over time you will build back up as you work through your pivot.
Your downside here, obviously, is that if you move to another area of Amazon Associates, you remain at the company’s mercy, with future potential cuts always hanging over your head.
Create related courses.
Sites like Gumroad and Teachable make it easy to create courses. What is your audience interested in learning? Can you create and monetize a course—or work with others to create a course?
Bonus tip: selling courses created by others is a great way to earn high commissions while bringing value to your audience. Research courses in your niche. What’s worthy of promoting?
In the end: diversify risk
All of these ideas boil down to the same principle: diversify risk. Depending too heavily on any one affiliate program is risky. Relying to heavily on affiliate revenue itself is risky.
Diversify your offerings, but always in the best interest and service of your audience. It’s a winning strategy, no matter what Amazon cuts.
Thanks for reading! If you found this post useful, I hope you’ll sign up for my newsletter.
Affiliate marketing: 34 lessons learned
Eleven years is a long time to do anything.
And yet it went by so fast. We grew our affiliate program from somewhere around $7 million dollars to more than $65 million in my last year.
Partners came and went. Some team members came and went. Technology, platforms, and tactics shifted.
But through all the changes, certain principles and facts never changed. Here are 34 ingredients that stood the test of time and fueled our growth.
1. Not all affiliate marketing traffic is equally valuable.
Some affiliates even create negative value. But you have to decide what constitutes negative value.
If an affiliate is intercepting your inbound search traffic and re-routing it through their affiliate link (as some “toolbars” did back in the day …) then that’s an obvious example of negative value (or, to use a more common term--stealing).
Some people feel coupon sites drive negative value because they are lower margin on a sale you would get anyway.
This isn’t a theory I subscribe to. Coupon sites *can* drive incremental traffic, especially on impulse purchases, or in geo-coupon situations, for example. Coupons can also improve conversion.
The point is, be clear about the traffic and behaviors you want to reward, and compensation accordingly.
2. If revenue from a particular affiliate partner seems too good to be true, it probably is.
If revenue from an affiliate suddenly jumps through the roof: investigate before you celebrate.
If you’re managing your program well, you can pick up the phone, call the partner, and learn what new tactics they implemented to spike sales. The activity should be fairly easy to verify if all is legit.
3. A middleman between you and your affiliate marketing partners invites:
🛑Confusion
🛑Misalignment
🛑Miscommunication ...
🛑and even deceit.
Get to know your partners. Council them. Build trust and rapport over time just as you would if you were running a traditional sales team.
Because in a way, you are. Affiliates are an outsourced sales and marketing team, but can function in much the same manner as in-house employees. They need clarity, structure, strategy, and oversight.
4. Relying on affiliate marketing as your primary revenue source is risky for advertisers and affiliates alike.
(Publishers: See Amazon’s recent commission cuts. ✂️)
Relying on the affiliate channel as your main source of revenue is risky, because relying on any one thing for success--or for putting food on the table--is risky.
Affiliates run the risk of publishers changing commission structures, purging partners, and even terminating programs altogether.
Publishers too reliant on affiliate sales leave themselves exposed to Google algorithm changes, affiliates leaving your program or shutting down, competitors offering stronger compensation structures, and other fluctuations outside your immediate control.
5. Affiliate marketing is an 🔥 awesome 🔥 supplemental revenue strategy.
As a supplemental revenue stream (for affilaites) or one of many marketing channels for advertisers, affiliate marketing is awesome. It can drive revenue on its own, enhance your brand through and provide lift for all your other marketing programs.
6. Affiliate marketing channels and tactics change, but the fundamentals do not.
Offering value to a market you understand was effective on stone tablets, is effective on web sites, will be effective in virtual reality, and will work for whatever else comes later.
7. Single-channel marketing attribution is a lie.
Usually, anyway.
An ad agency owner once told me: The tactics in your marketing program should come together like fingers forming a fist, consolidating and amplifying the power of each into a stronger whole.
He was pitching me to get all my employer’s business. But he wasn’t wrong.
Everything you do in marketing, if done well, lifts everything else.
That’s why attribution is so difficult: customers often come in contact with several (or more!) marketing touchpoints along the way.
A customer might see an online display ad for your product. Later, in a search, they may click a Google PPC ad, but not buy.
A month later, they might actually purchase following a recommendation from an affiliate partner.
What channel gets credit?
All of them, to some degree.
Some marketers assign greater value to those touchpoints the customer came in contact with early in the buying process, or “higher in the funnel.”
But all had value. And none worked alone.
8. Marketing data can often triangulate truth. It rarely crystalizes it.
We are awash in marketing data these days, and really as clueless as ever.
Our deep desire to have concrete numbers to rely on, to make decisions on, often can point us in a vaguely correct direction. But rarely does data tell the whole story.
We would like to think we are measuring a single variable, or a small handful, but the world is much messier than that.
Often, the best we can do is triangulate a trend using several different sources. If all lead in a similar direction, then generally we can follow.
But beware hanging your hat on a single report or data source. There is always more to the story.
9. Successful affiliate marketing advertisers are marketing advisors for their partners.
If you run an affiliate program, you should also run a marketing consultancy.
Your success depends on the success of your partners, and you should arm with them your best expertise, tactics, content, and tools.
Good consultants are great troubleshooters. They work with clients to attack problems, identify root causes, and agree on a course of action for correction.
Do the same with your affiliate partners.
10. An effective affiliate marketing strategy can shove competitors off of page one on Google.
Every company wants to be first in search results for its favored keywords, branded and unbranded.
Your affiliates would like to be there, too.
Some companies view high affiliate search results negatively, as though affiliates are “stealing” margin from the advertiser by capitalizing on search results the advertiser itself is trying to capture.
But affiliate search results, while possibly resulting in lower true incremental sales, provide a defensive measure.
If your affiliate partners join you on page one of Google, pitching your offer, guess who isn’t there?
Your competitors.
What is the value of owning each incremental result on page one of the search term you want to rank for? It’s certainly worth an affiliate commission to capture a sale that might otherwise be lost to a competitor.
Affiliate search results build a competitive moat, creating distance and barrier between your potential customers and your competitors.
11. Affiliate commissions are an easy target for cost cutters.
Clearly and consistently demonstrating affiliate program value to management and your peers is much more effective than defending commission expenses later on.
12. When it comes to affiliate marketing partners, “Trust, but verify.”:
As a president once said.
Triangulate data, quantitatively and qualitatively.
Revenue changes should roughly correlate to web site traffic or another metric indicating buyer activity.
And qualitative?
Know what your affiliates are up to. If an affiliate is making a big new push around your promotion, or introducing you to a new audience, be aware of it. Major marketing initiatives on the part of your affiliates should roughly correlate to revenue changes.
13. Don’t boilerplate your affiliate marketing program terms of service.
Protect your:
✅ Unique brand
✅ Paid search programs (especially branded)
✅ SEO strategy
🚫 And prohibit any other behaviors you find unprofitable or unsavory.
Your terms of service (TOS) should reflect and protect your company’s key strategies and brand.
Affiliate programs are unique, just like the companies and products they represent. Your TOS should outline your:
✅ Expectations for affiliates
✅ The support services you provide
✅ Commission structure
Your TOS should also give you cover and recourse when affiliates are unable—or unwilling—to promote your company in the way you want it promoted.
14. Your affiliate marketing program terms of service is a living document.
Your program will change as it grows and matures. Company strategy and key initiatives will change. The way you want to go to market--and not go to market--will change.
All of these changes should be reflected in your TOS, protecting both you and your affiliates.
Revisit your TOS at least annually, and make sure you have alignment with corporate goals and strategies.
Then, share the TOS with your affiliates annually, encouraging them to review it and reach out with questions. It’s another way to facilitate dialogue and rapport with your partners.
15. Affiliate marketing revenue is not 100% incremental.
Just like every other marketing channel you use.
Affiliate marketing is boosted and promoted by your other marketing efforts.
The customer journey isn’t a straight line from a single marketing touchpoint to purchase, but a meandering, in-and-out experience with multiple marketing touchpoints, including the affiliate channel.
16. A healthy affiliate marketing channel brings in about 20% of total revenue.
If your percentage is much higher, you are an affiliate marketing superstar.
Or fraud, tracking issues, or other imbalances are likely taking place.
Proceed accordingly.
17. The primary value of coupon sites lies in helping close sales, not driving incremental revenue.
This doesn’t necessarily apply to impulse-purchase items, when sites like Slickdeals can indeed generate incremental, quick-trigger buying behaviors.
But overall, coupon sites are closing tools, which also have value. But to most marketers, not as much value as marketing activities that take place higher up the funnel, during the customer’s discovery and decision processes.
18. The best affiliate marketing programs are relationship-driven
They are not technology, platform, or promotion-driven.
This comes down to what I’ve been saying throughout this article: know your affiliates. Consult with your affiliates. Understand their goals and objectives and make sure they understand yours.
19. Digital is not the only effective selling channel for driving affiliate marketing revenue.
Affiliates still use offline channels. Direct mail is still a thing, as are phone referrals, outdoor, and direct, person-to-person selling.
If an affiliate can bring sufficient volume to be worth the effort, be flexible and find ways to track non-digital channels.
20. Try to balance your affiliate marketing partner portfolio.
If you get to the Pareto Principle—20% of affiliates driving 80% of revenue—consider yourself balanced.
That said, chase the impossible dream for greater balance:
✅ Regularly recruit promising new partners
✅Assist struggling partners
✅ Eventually, exit non-performers.
21. The total number of affiliate marketing partners is not an indicator of program health or effectiveness.
It’s fine to have targets for total affiliates, but ultimately program success is measured by revenue growth.
22. Have a degree of patience with underperforming partners. But exit non-performers over time.
As part of your affiliate program operating rhythm, churn out non-performers.
Pruning is important. ✂️ 🍇
Create space for new growth and new energy by freeing non-performers to focus on other companies. And free your focus and energy to create new growth.
You might think non-performers aren’t really a drag on your program, but they are. You’ll still reporting on them, measuring their performance, and using mental energy most productively spent elsewhere.
23. Place some bets on small affiliate marketing partners you think have the potential to grow big.
Supporting the little guy early can pay off later. Be early with an influencer or publisher you think has the ability to make it big, and grow with them.
24. There are many ways to design commissions and offers to drive optimal affiliate and customer behaviors.
Be creative and flexible with your commission structure. Reward the behaviors you want to reward, whether that’s higher payments for your most profitable products, repeat purchases, or driving buyer behavior at key times of the year.
But also: keep things simple and easy to understand. A confusing commission structure can drive away good partners.
25. Think of your affiliate program commissions and customer offers as part of the same entity.
Commissions and customer price promotions both reduce profitability, and should be mixed, matched, and measured together to find the optimal mix of volume and margin.
26. Having a strong brand and/or a unique product or service can lower your affiliate marketing commission costs.
Smart affiliates want to align with compelling brands. They know that partnering with companies their audiences trust is good for their own brands and loyalty.
That’s worthwhile and valuable—and can help lower the commissions you ultimately have to pay.
27. Trends, not snapshots at a given moment, provide the clearest picture as to both the health of your affiliate program and the performance of individual affiliates.
Yes, know where you stand at any given time. But just as importantly, understand the current snapshot in the context of prior performance and future expectations.
Use current data to inform your overall program direction and health.
28. Find some affiliate marketing partners that challenge your entire business to improve its products, its services, and to refine its message.
Some affiliates have outsized clout. They may be far larger and have greater brand strength than you do.
They demand nothing but the best in content, products, and services for their own audience.
These affiliates can send a ripple effect through your entire business, improving it. Find these affiliates. They exist.
29. Effective affiliate marketing program leaders give affiliates their:
⏰ Time (relationship building)
🧐Talents (marketing and content expertise)
🔧 Tools (content, guidelines, and best practices)
Spend time with your affiliates. Consult with them and guide them to success to ensure your own.
Equip them with content, strategies, and best practices from other partners to help drive their growth and lead them where you want them to go.
30. Affiliate marketing can be a force multiplier for your business.
But if your product is a zero, applying a multiplier still equates to zero.
31. Great marketing copy and great content drives affiliate sales.
If your affiliates don’t have great writing and content creation capability, provide it for them. ✍️
32. The best affiliates have strong brands and loyal followings of their own.
They provide their own unique value and understand their customers.
As a result, recommendations for third-party products and services are highly trusted—and convert higher than fly-by-night, spam-and-scram operations.
33. The most effective affiliate partner recruiting is highly targeted and personal.
Personal and thoughtful selection and outreach pays the highest dividends, short and long term, relational and financial.
34. Well-run affiliate programs build your brand by aligning with affiliates customers know and trust.
The best affiliate partnerships have a sybiotic brand relationship: the affiliate trades on your brand equity by aligning with you, and you trade on theirs with a recommendation made to a trusting audience.
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Book Summary: Crushing, by T.D. Jakes
“I assure you that He is not out to destroy you. On the contrary, He’s out to remake you, remodel you, and renew you. And He has given His word that your momentary discomfort will bring about the most profitable end.”
The author: T.D. Jakes
T.D. Jakes is the senior pastor of The Potter's House Church, a large non-denominational church in Dallas. He’s written over 30 books, including his latest, “The Crushing.”
Social profiles:
Book overview
Trials and suffering.
None of us get through life avoiding them, though not for lack of trying.
In this book, Jakes takes us through the reasons behind our trials—which he calls the crushing—and the good that God brings out of our challenges.
Jakes compares our trials to the wine-making process, which includes these phases:
Planting in dark places
Pruning
Bearing fruit
Crushing the fruit
Fermentation
Reaping the spoils / the eternal pairing
Pastor Steven Furtick shared a nearly two-hour interview with Jakes, discussing the book’s ideas in depth:
Or, grab the Apple Podcast version here.
Summary of key ideas
God uses everything for his good—and ours.
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28).
Notice that he says all things—not some things, a few things, or the good things. All includes the hard, the painful, the unexpected, and the seemingly unbearable, unimaginable, and intolerable. All includes the losses that you’re grieving right now, the ones you carry around inside you every day. All includes the disasters, divisions, and distractions intruding on your peace of mind. All includes circumstances that leave you feeling powerless, vulnerable, and unsteady on your feet.
The trials of our lives are used as a catalyst for growth, for the betterment of the gifts we have been given.
Now more than ever it’s crucial that we begin seeing that the plans we have imagined for our lives cannot compare to God’s strategy for fulfilling our divine purpose.
Jakes challenges us to reframe our trials, to take a wider view of our lives and to believe that God has a larger plan than we can see in our suffering:
Could it be possible that your current predicament is the winepress God uses to transform your grapes into His wine? Could being crushed be a necessary part of the process to fulfill God’s plan for your life? Could you be on the verge of victory despite walking through the valley of broken vines?
The same God who placed those seeds and gifts within us seeks to cultivate and harvest His initial investment in order to multiply it even more. Our Maker wishes to see these internal seeds and latent talents grow, mature, and bring forth abundant fruit used for something more. Jakes, T. D.. Crushing (pp. 20-21). FaithWords. Kindle Edition.
On the vine
I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. (John 15:1–4)
Since Jesus is the very fruition of God’s Word, He must be the beginning, or seed, of our lives as well. The seed, then, was already present because Jesus is simultaneously the vine and seed. Therefore, the seed and vine are one.
[…]
Since Jesus is both seed and vine, we are the promised fruit-bearing branches that spring forth from Him.
Though He was an adult producing a wonderful harvest during His three years of ministry, Jesus was not meant to simply work miracle after miracle. His life on earth was intended to move from something temporary to something eternal. Though Christ became a physical adult, His spirit carried the even greater promise of an eternal harvest—and not just one made up of miracles that would be temporarily praised. In order for that spiritual promise to be birthed, the supernatural seed had to enter into its own version of development. Like any seed that would sprout, it had to be planted. In essence, everything the seed knows about itself has to end. The seed, then, must die just as Christ died so that He could give birth to us as God’s spiritual children, His divine offspring.
Seed / cultivation
God isloates us in quiet and dark processes to begin new growth, just like a seed sits in the dark earth and begins to sprout.
the sprouted seedling could never understand the process of cultivation from its own limited point of view. Similarly, it is a striking blow to our limited comprehension of God to accept that he would use the most unorthodox procedures and inhospitable environments to develop us into something more, Jakes, T. D.. Crushing (p. 37). FaithWords. Kindle Edition.
To put it simply, the seed doesn’t understand the vine that it’s becoming. Everything that occurs in its life appears to be happenstance because all it can see is the muck and mire that it’s trying to escape. It’s when we are vines that we can look back at what we used to be and notice that what appeared to be accidents, incidents, and coincidence converged to produce what we are and the fruit that hangs from our branches.
“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds” (John 12:24).
I encourage you to allow God’s prison of purpose in your life to do what it was intended to do: develop you into a strong vine. It’s your location of cultivation.
Pruning
Pruning always happens after the harvest. Jakes, T. D.. Crushing (p. 68). FaithWords. Kindle Edition.
God’s pruning of the branches of blessings in my life on the heels of a massive harvest were in direct keeping with the very words of the Master Himself: “Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit” (John 15:2 NKJV). Jakes, T. D.. Crushing (p. 68). FaithWords. Kindle Edition.
On one hand, we are experiencing the inescapable trauma of the Lord trimming from us what we thought makes us valuable. On the other, we have the desire for our comfort that the enemy uses to entice us away from the glorious future.
Pruning is not punishment—it’s the pathway to God’s power in your life.For where God is taking you, you don’t need the weight and refuse of yesterday’s bread. The Master has an expected end for your life, and the trip For where God is taking you, you don’t need the weight and refuse of yesterday’s bread. The Master has an expected end for your life, and the trip
Though it appears that everything you built has been taken from you, the Lord has strategically left a remnant that will give rise to more fruit next season.
He loves you and will never abandon you or harm your ultimate well-being—even when the slice of devastating circumstances cuts you deeply. Have confidence in God’s ability to do the impossible and to surprise you with His joy, comfort you with His peace, and fulfill you with His purpose. Pruning is not punishment—it’s the beginning of your greatest season yet!
[…]
If you choose to dwell on the fruit that has already fallen and spoiled, then you miss out on letting God redeem that fruit by making you into His wine. Jakes, T. D.. Crushing (pp. 90-92). FaithWords. Kindle Edition.
Crushing
The crushing of the grape not only expresses the juice from the flesh, but it also separates the unusable parts of the grape from the juice.
God’s plan often thrives in the lives of those who don’t seem fit for the calling.
We question, and even resist, the calling God places on our lives.
But how can a grape say to the Husbandman, “I don’t want to be used to make wine!” How could the clay ever protest to the Potter about what it was made for?
the first thing God did with the children of Israel after they left Egypt was rid them of what had enslaved them by drowning the Egyptians in the Red Sea. In effect, God was cleansing Israel of all that had stained them for so long. He had already saved Israel from death by allowing an innocent animal to take the place of every person who decided to come up under His protection and enter into covenant with him. The marking set them apart from the Egyptians, who suffered death without the sacrificial blood to cover them, and protected each Hebrew household.
So what we have is a crushing that came first through the lamb, then a self-examination via the mirror of the Red Sea that showed Israel it cannot do without God, coupled with a washing that prepared Israel to meet God in the wilderness. In this progression of three events, we have the first three steps that take place at the tabernacle and the first three steps in the winemaking process.
Right on the heels of crushing the grapes, there is a self-examination via the filter that leaves the Husbandman with a washed product He will use to make wine. This crushing coincides with the initial sacrifice that takes place right when the Israelites would enter the tent of meeting.
Notice the pattern repeating itself? In each case, crushing came first. Although we might not like it, the Husbandman is telling us that the same thing will happen to each individual that would approach Him through the door that is Christ our King. Right when we pass through the outer court gate, the first thing that all of us should expect is the sacrifice of pain that comes from the casting of our flesh onto the brazen altar that is the winepress of our Husbandman. You cannot get around this crushing. You cannot ignore it. You must accept it.
Jakes challenges us to embrace the crushing:
Do you wish a connection and audience with God or not? Do you want more from life than you can ever experience on your own? If you do, you must embrace this aspect of the process, because the crushing is meant to do two things: get out of you what’s in you, and get the true you out of the thin skin that encases you.
your crushing is the first of three stages. Just like your acceptance of Jesus’ death comes first, so does your crushing.
In this crushing process, the enemy of your soul will send obstacles your way in order to convince you to abandon what God is doing in your life.
In this process of crushing, God is switching you from the food of failure to the breakfast of champions. He’s shifting the paradigm of your seed-like mentality of simply producing fruit into the glorious crushing of making wine. The problem with which we all must grapple is whether or not we are willing to pay the price for such a radical shift. And this shift takes time.
Keep in mind that being great is not classified only by financial gain or notoriety. Greatness is the level to which God takes you where you are finally operating with confidence and fullness in the environment he has placed you in. It’s where you are being all you can be for His glory. But no one suddenly matriculates to greatness. It is developed in you over a period of time in which God transforms you level by level into who He has designed you to be. Like a seed, greatness lives inside you, but it must be cultivated as He guides you through the various seasons of change. And it’s in the changes of life that the costliest transactions take place.
For everything you’ve lost, for all that’s been trampled, let’s make wine. For every scar on your body and every fracture in your heart, let’s make wine. For every lost relationship and broken promise, let’s make wine. For every stolen dollar and wasted opportunity, let’s make wine. For every tear shed and every pain suffered, God is at work in your life. Let’s make wine!
Fermenting
When it comes to winemaking, the fermentation stage is nothing more than a waiting area for the grapes.
It’s a holding pattern, just like when you see a plane waiting for the weather to clear so it can take off or for the runway to be made ready for the plane to land.
Some years after I finally accepted my calling, I remember pleading with God to allow me to preach. It was one thing to not even want the calling in the first place. But to be called and then be forced to sit in the background and listen to people speak from books of the Bible they couldn’t even properly pronounce was the most aggravating experience of my life. It was during my inner court period that the Lord was developing my gift. I would be in the shower, preaching to bars of soap and washrags. I would be walking through the woods of West Virginia, laying hands on trees. All of this might sound comical to you, but I now see these moments as part of a season of fermentation.
There was no way God was going to present to the world an unrefined, unfermented, underdeveloped product.
Similarly, the transformation process from death back to life occurred in the darkness of the tomb.
our survival relies on our willingness to surrender. We begin to recognize this in-between moment of time is transitory and transitional. We’re experiencing spiritual growing pains.
During times of change, upheaval, and transition, you become moody, unstable, emotionally irregular, and sometimes even contemptible. I know I can become all of those and more. This is why you have to be careful with people while they’re changing.
The Master Vintner knows when your wine is ready. He knows when your fermentation is done.
Recovery can be painful. Fermentation takes time. And then moving new wine from the vat into the bottle also requires time. So does moving from the cross to the empty tomb.
certain blessings and assets are found only in rest. Better still, some advantages emerge exclusively in and while being alone. I think my best thoughts when I’m alone, and I move faster without weight of other responsibilities and distractions. Plus, the Father loves to speak, especially when there are no distractions between the two of us.
We have to relinquish control
Abram was to follow the path laid out for him by God, and that is precisely where many of us falter. We seek our own way, not understanding that our pride and arrogance lead us into destruction. We hate having to receive instructions from anyone because we think we have a handle on everything in our lives. As a result, we don’t like relinquishing control and walking with God by faith.
The Master always calls us by what he has placed in us and what we will do for him. I submit to you that God calls us what we will be while we’re wrestling with what we were and what we did. When God changed Abram’s name, He increased the distance between who the man once was and who God told him he would be in the future.
God does not only seek your mind, or your heart, or your body. The Master wants the totality of who and what you are because you will receive nothing less from him.
Wine
God’s blessings become reality in our lives when we rejoin the Master’s plan by lining up with it in faith, like Abraham. In essence, when we reconnect with God, we step into what He has for us.
He is a Master totally consumed with reconnecting his children back to Him. For, in that connection, there are promises and blessings the Lord wants us to enjoy because of us simply being in his family. The only thing we must do is be just as desperate for reconnection back to him as he is.
Winemaking basically comes down to three steps: crushing the grapes, allowing the juice to ferment, and collecting the wine. In other words, you mash the fruit, allow the juice to sit, and enjoy the results.
When we face the darkest moments of our lives, there is something on the other side of it.The cross became an emblem of Christ’s crushing and the new wine produced when He emerged from the tomb.
Even after your pain has fermented and you find yourself in a new location, a new job, a new relationship, or a new lifestyle, you will still struggle. Like wine being poured from the vat into the bottles in order to be shipped and purchased and consumed, we must learn to be contained by new shapes. Jesus said, “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matt. 9:16–17).
It is rare that you see God calling someone to a unique destiny and Him allowing them to remain where they’ve always been. I’m hard-pressed to think of a single instance.
God never intended for your temporary to be your eternity.
the first thing a person does when they are brought into a new space is to begin seeking out a way to stabilize themselves in the unfamiliar. Seeing that they can find no recognizable handle to hold onto in a new season, they look backward to something commonplace in order to receive comfort.
God now indwells the hearts of the hundreds of millions of people all across this planet who have placed their hopes and faith solely in Him. Instead of there being one temple, every believer is a temple in which He meets with them and to which every person seeking a relationship with God can visit and become one whom He indwells.
If there’s anything that God has always requested His people to do, it is believe Him. For how can you seek or worship a God you do not trust?
Where we are accustomed to God directing us in manners we’re comfortable with, He steps outside the box and employs something altogether different, yet effective.
The eternal pairing
We know God’s going to do something, but we don’t know when. We know God is going to bless us, but we don’t know how. We know God is going to connect us, but we don’t know through whom. God told you He was going to deliver you, but He didn’t tell you what He was going to deliver you from. God said you’d be together with Him again, but He didn’t tell you everything you’d endure along the way. All of this is preparation for your final pairing with the Master. You’re doing everything to avoid the hidden crushings in the valleys, but those are what’s needed to bring you to the point of being reunited and paired with God. Don’t get lost by the distractions.
As we embrace being God’s new creation in Christ, as we grow accustomed to living as His holy wine, then we begin experiencing new levels of joy, peace, contentment, purpose, and satisfaction. No longer do we wonder why we are here on this earth. We know that everything we have been through is more than worth it because God has used it all, wasting nothing, to bring us to the point in our lives where we are now.
You may struggle to see yourself as God’s holy wine now, and that’s understandable. But the truth of the matter is that you are not what and who you used to be. You are not what you did. You are not your lack. You are not what people have labeled you to be, and God will continue confronting you to make you understand who you are.
Over and over again, I have to thank God for sticking with his timetable for my life and not bending to my will. I can look back over my life and see where God could have answered me right then with what I thought I wanted and allow it to destroy me. With the utmost gratitude, I salute Him for keeping from me what I considered the best thing for me at the time.
God always saves the best for last!
How to find free Kindle books (and save on others)
Today, I will eliminate all your excuses for not reading e-books in the Amazon Kindle app—the technical and financial excuses, anyway.
If your main obstacle to reading is lack of time, well, you’ll just have to get your own DeLorean. I can’t help you there.
Everything listed here works with an Amazon Kindle account, which you can use to read e-books with a dedicated Kindle reading device, the Kindle app for your iOS device, Android device, or on your computer.
The Libby App
Libby lets you download Kindle books for free from your library, and it’s great. Just set up the app—it works on iOS, Android, and Windows—using your library card and your Kindle account, and have at it.
You borrow books, magazines, and audiobooks for a given time period just as if they were physical items at the library.
You can join a wait list for items that are currently checked out, and set up a favorites list of what you’d like to borrow in the future.
Also, even after you return the books, your Kindle notes and highlights stay in your Kindle account so you can refer back to them later.
Library Chrome Extension
Chrome is Google’s web browser, and there are plenty of small programs called extensions you can add to Chrome to enhance your browsing with extra information.
The Library Chrome Extension shows you which e-books and audiobooks are available in your local library as you browse Amazon and a handful of other sites, like Goodreads.
Just look up a book on Amazon—Robert Iger’s “Ride of a Lifetime,” for example—and the Library Chrome Extension shows the book’s (in electronic audiobook format) local library availability on the right side of your screen:
Random House vintage shorts
Penguin Random House has a series of Kindle books ranging from 50 to 70-ish pages on a wide variety of topics, available for $.99 each:
The Vintage Shorts series presents timely reading from enduring classics as well as exciting original works from contemporary voices—exclusively available as eBooks. In a world where different types of media incessantly vie for our attention, Vintage Shorts provide a selection of great reading that you can enjoy anywhere—in any amount of time.
Lots of good stuff here. I’m planning on:
The Art of Noticing for Writers, by Rob Walker
The Writer Before the Page, by Toni Morrison
Hemingway’s Student, Paul Hedrickson
How War Begins, John Keegan
Last Days of the Civil War, by Bruce Catton
Amazon First Reads
First Reads is a program that allows Amazon Prime members to choose a free Kindle book from a pre-selected list every month. Just sign up for the monthly email, review the list of choices (usually around five options) and download your selection.
Kindle Owners Lending Library
If you are an Amazon Prime member and own a dedicated Kindle device, Amazon has over 800,000 books you can borrow for free through its Kindle Owners Lending Library.
Kindles range in price from $89.99 to $249.99, and less if you buy a used model. Using the Lending Library, a Kindle device can pay for itself once you’ve read a handful of books through the free program.
Kindle Unlimited
Kindle Unlimited is a Netflix for books. You pay a monthly fee and gain access to a huge library of books, audiobooks, and magazines.
Amazon has a signup offer which includes three months for $.99 (or two months for free), and then the program renews at $9.99 per month thereafter.
Prime Reading
As an Amazon Prime member, you have free access to a substantial number of Kindle books, graphic novels, and magazines through Amazon’s Prime Reading program.
This is another nice value-add for Prime members—and one I often forget about.
Daily Amazon Kindle Sales
Finally, Amazon kicks out a daily email highlighting Kindle book sales.
There are tons of options to read free and low-priced books without even having to leave the house. Hopefully you can find some options here that work for you.