Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller
After reading Building a Story Brand, you’ll never script a communication without it. For the masses, Miller reveals the art of storytelling in its simplistic brilliance
My Rating: ★★★★★
Length: 240 pages
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Released: October 2017
Applying the book to personal branding
Donald Miller’s Storybrand framework in Building a Story Brand outlines:
A character (your audience is the hero)
Has a problem
They meet a Guide (you). With 1) empathy and 2) authority
Who gives them a plan
And calls them to action
That helps avoid failure
And ends in success
It places your audience - be it your customers or stakeholders - as the hero on a mission. Not you.
In personal branding (and business), two questions are critical. What problem are you solving? And who are you solving it for?
Your personal brand has unique experience, skills, interests and capabilities. And they make you the perfect person to solve a problem. To guide.
The brilliance of the Story Brand framework compels you to begin with these things.
And as personal branding does best, it positions you (the Guide) in service to your people - the real heroes.
Favourite Quotes
Neuroscientists claim the average human being spends more than 30 percent of their time daydreaming . . . unless they’re reading, listening to, or watching a story unfold. Why? Because when we are engaged in a story, the story does the daydreaming for us.
The customer is the hero, not your brand.
The competition may be more talented than you are, but they will never outwork you if you don’t let them. That’s the one thing you get to control.
Companies tend to sell solutions to external problems, but people buy solutions to internal problems.
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.
Brands that invite customers to participate in a larger movement offer a greater, more impactful life along with their products and services.
Great brands obsess about the transformation of their customers.
Building a Story Brand is the kind of book that makes you wonder why no-one has shared this before. But, as Miller reveals, they always have - in storytelling. Miller replaces forgettable marketing jargon with the lexicon of storytelling. And shares it so simply, it’s unforgettable. He engagingly draws parallels mostly from well-known films.
Miller forewarns you that he’s going to ruin movies for you. I still love movies, and now see every storyline use this formula - be it in a book, show, movie or clever communications. It’s near impossible to unlearn.
From a few lines in an email to a blog post, or even an entire website, I adopt this framework in all my communications.
My only regret is not knowing this earlier in my career. I could have saved unnecessary hours agonising over crafting communications. Luckily, for message clarity, Miller is truly the Guide.
Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller: Available on Amazon.
