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Tell YOUR “Distinctive Story”!

Tell YOUR “Distinctive Story”!

Every business has a story to tell, and yours is no different. What sets your story apart from the rest makes it engaging and distinctive. Customers seek a reason to connect with your business, your story must be one they can’t resist.

For a decade, I had the most incredible “side hustle” one could imagine. I was a nationally syndicated movie reviewer. When movies were a couple of weeks away from their release, the studios frequently invited me to participate in what they called their “junkets.” Typically, I would fly to New York or Los Angeles on a Friday, see the new movie before its public release, then spend Saturday interviewing the film’s stars, director, and screenwriter.

My work as a movie reviewer allowed me to interview famous actors from Meryl Streep to Tom Hanks, John Travolta to Faye Dunaway, and Samuel L. Jackson to Bruce Willis.

What I learned is the principles that made for a box office smash were also the precise aspects that every business and professional needed to discover to stand out and earn more. They make up the exact steps required to create distinction.

The steps are easy to remember and are often based on the acronym, S.T.O.R.Y.

  • S – Select your subject (What do you want to be known for?)
  • T – Target your audience (Who needs and wants to know your story?)
  • O – Outline the content (What details will you share?)
  • R – Record your story (How will you tell it?)
  • Y – Your story’s finish line (What’s the point of sharing your story?)

Answering these questions is the key to discovering what makes your story distinctive and engaging. It’s also how to clarify what you want to be known for professionally or in business. You can use these principles to storytelling in a way that not only educates but also entertains, engages, and inspires your audience.

When you understand the elements of what makes for a great story, you can begin to see how it can be applied to business and professional situations. It starts with knowing the steps required to create a narrative that captivates an audience and showing them how to apply your story’s principles in business and life. Here are a few examples:

  • S – Select your subject: In business, this could be choosing what it is you want to be known for. Are you the go-to person for your organization’s product or service? Do you have a unique perspective or method that you can share with others? The First Cornerstone of Distinction is CLARITY. When you’re precise about your subject, you’ve made progress towards achieving the first rung on the distinction ladder.
  • T – Target your audience: This is identifying your target market or ideal client in business. Who are they, and what do they need or want to know? Again, by being precise and clear on who our audience is, we move towards distinction in our story.
  • O – Outline the content: In business, this is determining what details you will share in your story. What information will be most helpful or interesting to your audience? How will you present a story that shows the characters of your narrative overcoming a conflict that your audience will find compelling?
  • R – Record your story: In business, this is deciding how you will deliver your story to your target audience. Will you write a blog post, give a presentation, post it on social media, or create a video?
  • Y – Your story’s finish line: In business, this is the primary purpose of sharing your story. What do you hope to achieve by telling it? Are you looking to educate, entertain, engage, or inspire your audience? Is your story (as Jim Rohn used to say) an example of what to do…or a warning of what must be avoided? Either way, the story’s conclusion must drive your audience to want to take action that benefits you and your organization.

Telling your story in a way that resonates with your audience is essential to success in business. By understanding what makes for a great story, you can ensure that yours captivates and engages your target market. Your story makes you unique, so use it to your advantage to engage potential customers by sharing what makes your business exceptional. If you can capture their attention, you’ll be well on your way to making a lasting impression of distinction.

It’s been my privilege to help professionals and organizations discover how to craft and tell their “Distinctive Story.” I’d love to assist you in this process, as well. Contact us on LinkedIn – or respond to this email – for more information and to start on your journey to captivate customers and prospects.

Don’t confuse skills with tools.

Don’t confuse skills with tools.

Many years ago, my friend George Walther became well-known through a program he delivered for organizations and sales professionals entitled, “Phone Power.” The content was the basis for a famous audio program that sold countless albums, as well as a bestselling book published in 1987 by Berkley Press. Through this variety of formats, “Phone Power” taught how to “make the telephone work for you.”

One of the critical aspects George Walther taught was that communication was the skill – the telephone was merely the tool used to deliver your communication.

Move forward from the late ‘80s to today, and now we’re overwhelmed with email, texting, mobile phones, and more. In other words, the number of tools has expanded exponentially.

Yet the fundamental aspect that distinctive professionals must improve upon remains the skill of communication. You can’t confuse the tools – from phones to social media – with the fundamental skill we must apply to use those tools effectively.

The more tools at our disposal, the greater challenge it will be to break through the clutter to attain and sustain the attention of our customers and prospects. It is also the reason that storytelling is such an important skill for any professional who wants to stand out from the crowd. Remarkable stories connect on both an intellectual and emotional level.

Stories can compel the audience to take action, change their current supplier, identify with your product or service, and relate to how the manner you’re serving your current customers provides an example of why you’re advantageous for them.

Again – don’t confuse the tools with the skills.

Regardless of the tools you use, the real skill is communication. The most powerful form of communication is the well-crafted and expertly told story. Use it to help you create distinction and stand apart from your competition.

If you’d like to discover the strategies and tactics of creating and delivering a distinctive story, a comprehensive course is available as a part of your subscription to the Iconic Inner Circle. And because you subscribe to this weekly message, your first month is free! You can cancel anytime, which means there’s no risk to join – and the Distinctive Story Course is yours! Join NOW – simply visit https://IconicInnerCircle.com

There’s usually more to the story… so tell it!

There’s usually more to the story… so tell it!

We all have customers or prospects who are willing to assume the worst about our intentions. In this time of social media and instant opinions, their criticisms can race around the newsfeeds of our marketplace in dramatic fashion.

Take for example a viral video from 2017 showing a significant amount of food being disposed of at a local Wal-mart store. The video was of an angry man outraged because he felt the food being thrown away could be of good use if it were donated to charitable causes instead.

The problem not mentioned was that a tornado had ripped through the local area days before causing a power outage throughout the community. The food was spoiled and unfit for consumption.

By the time Wal-mart posted the “other side of the story” and their logical and legally mandatory reason for doing what they did, millions had already decided that Wal-mart was not interested in serving the needy in their communities.

  • What if Wal-mart would’ve front-loaded this by Tweeting about the food and their commitment to customer safety and health as they were putting the spoiled food in dumpsters behind the store?
  • What if they would have contacted local media to talk about what they were doing — and encouraged local citizens to check their own respective freezers and refrigerators to ensure they didn’t eat spoiled food?

In other words, what if they would not have waited to tell their story?

Two important questions you should be considering this week:

  1. How have you prepared in your business for those customers who assume the worst about you and use the enormous platform of social media to spread their misinformation/disinformation?
  2. How have you prepared to be proactive in telling your stories about the positive steps that your business is taking?
From sports and movies…to your customer and employee experience

From sports and movies…to your customer and employee experience

This weekend is one of two during the NFL season that is always a combination of difficult and enjoyable for me. My Indianapolis Colts are playing the Tennessee Titans.

While I am fortunate to have many friends and acquaintances spread into every NFL city, there’s an unusual concentration of my closest pals in Music City. This, of course, means that the two times a year these divisional rivals play, I’m conflicted between rooting for my team and hoping to celebrate another Colts win – and not wanting to hear the inordinate amount of grief I will receive from my buddies in Nashville if their Titans are victorious.

  • Isn’t it amazing how many people identify with their local teams? My wife gives me a rough time for how much my emotional state ebbs and flows with the success or failure of the teams I love most!

Yet, there are other products and services where we have emotional investment, as well. If I see someone driving down the road in a car that matches mine, I don’t say, “Look – there goes someone who made an identical choice in transportation as I!” Instead, I exclaim, “Hey – that dude is driving MY car!

If you ask me about my teams or my car, I respond with stories about them. I’ll tell you about how they thrill me…disappoint me…excite me…discourage me. In other words, I won’t give you statistics and percentages about their efforts – I will relate stories to convey my emotional attachment.

  • It’s a bit baffling to consider why more professionals — and the organizations they work for — haven’t integrated this into their approach as they deliver a customer experience.

The dictionary says an “experience” is “an event or occurrence that leaves an impression on someone.” I’d suggest that “impressions” are primarily made by emotions and feelings – which are typically conveyed by stories, not data.

For a decade, I evaluated the effectiveness of the stories told by major movies in my reviews that were seen weekly on television by a million people across the country. I also had the chance to interview and spend time with the artists who were writing, directing, and performing those stories – from Quentin Tarantino to James Cameron, from Barry Levinson to the Farrelly Brothers, from Tom Hanks to Meryl Streep.

I learned many aspects of storytelling from them – and the primary aspect was this: for any story to connect with the intended audience, you must care about what happens to the characters.

  • Therefore, compelling stories are always about people.

“Wait!” you may be thinking, “What about films ranging from ‘The Love Bug’ about a VW to ‘Transformers’ – those aren’t people!” Yet, what is engaging are the people who are dealing with Herbie or Optimus Prime – and that both the car and the Transformer are endowed with human characteristics, making them more relatable.

How are you telling YOUR story? Are you focusing on the features and benefits of your products – or telling a story about how someone is benefiting from using it? Are you describing data about your service – or relating a narrative about how someone’s life is improved because of it?

Your ability to connect with customers and employees will only be as distinctive as the stories that you tell them.

(Go Colts!)

Storytelling

Storytelling

As I’m writing this on my flight to Sydney for a series of meetings there and in Tasmania, this is also preparation time for a new program I’m launching at a large event for financial service professionals next month. After talking with them about some of my past experiences, they asked, “Would you do a program to teach us how to be better storytellers?”

When I launched my speeches on the concept I created — “ALL Business is Show Business” — a significant aspect of my work was teaching the power that a compelling story had to connect you with your audience/customer.

It has shocked me a bit to recall that this was in 1982!

As I was building my speaking business, I was also working as a movie critic and entertainment reporter with my commentaries syndicated to about 100 television stations around the world. As I would review the movies, I would study why some worked — and many others failed. The vast majority of the time, it was because of the script.

I was also afforded the tremendous opportunity to meet and interview some of the great storytellers of our time: James Cameron to the Farrelly Brothers, from Tom Hanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger, from Meryl Streep to Faye Dunaway.

What I learned was striking: most of the organizations and professionals with whom I was working needed to learn the lessons of the entertainment industry.

For example, show business is — in the final analysis — about only one thing: making a compelling emotional connection with the intended audience. The deeper the connection, the greater the success.

It became my viewpoint that business should be — in the final analysis — about only one thing: profitably making a compelling emotional connection with your target customers.  The deeper the connection, the greater the success.

Any business that can create these strong bonds with their customers — in a manner that is fiscally responsible for the organization, naturally — is going to succeed. When we accomplish this task, we have customers that want to repeat their purchases and refer our products and services.

Is it that simple? Well, it bears repeating here something I wrote many years ago: just because something is simple does not mean that it is easy to do. In fact, one of the points I consistently make is this: “Perhaps the hardest thing in the world to do is to make something look easy.”

Put your fingers on a keyboard and press the keys — that’s what you have to do to play a piano. That’s simple. But, try sounding like a distinguished concert pianist, who undoubtably seeks quite at ease on the stage, and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

One of the challenges is that we adopt excuses such as, “I’m not a natural storyteller.” Here’s a clue: neither are most of the great storytellers. On a recent episode of “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” with Jerry Seinfeld, the great Eddie Murphy relates a story of bombing so badly on the stage, the owner of the club refused to pay him. This meant Murphy didn’t have enough money to get cab fare home. He had to call his father to come pick him up (at 2AM!). Murphy’s dad demanded that he quit comedy and get a “real job.”

At this point, Eddie Murphy could’ve said, “I guess I’m not a natural comedian or storyteller.” Instead, he worked harder at his craft. He has put in thousands of hours to make his performances seem effortless.

Most professionals won’t make a similar commitment — even as we know that the ability to relate stories to our team members and customers is one of the most important aspects of leadership and professionalism.

YOUR business is, in fact, “show business.” And, if you want to be relevant in today — and tomorrow’s — marketplace, it’s both an attitude and a skill that you must be willing to work on.