Stories Mean Business - Nick Warren

696: Create and relieve tension

August 08, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

In Episode 681, I talked about Robert Fritz's principles of Structural Dynamics. But Fritz also said something else – which I learned from the guys at TinyLittleBusinesses.com ... ''Tension seeks resolution". When I first had that, I knew that it reminded me of something, and yesterday I found it inside Seth Godin's This Is Marketing. "At every step along the way, create and relieve tension as people progress in their journeys toward their goals." So here's the lesson. When we tell stori...

695: Restraining myself

August 07, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

So the new website went live a couple of days ago – yes, this one, you are looking at. You may notice the acres of white space, the simple design and ... I hope, the speed at which the pages load. I've very intentionally created a smart, slim platform that I can use for a while. Hopefully years. One of the challenges – which I talk about inelegantly in this podcast – is the menu on the homepage, which needs to fit onto a a mobile screen. I have no hamburger menu, and this constraint is ke...

694: Removing friction

August 06, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

For a while now, I've been intentionally reducing the number of apps and services in my daily work flow. This occasionally comes at the cost of features that I might like, but increases clarity, calmness and overall productivity. Here's a quote that sums up this idea: The more complex a machine or procedure or set-up becomes, the less directly it applies its power. Simple forces applied intelligently should carry the day. This is no snub of wile or cleverness or inventiveness, only a caut...

693: Moderately Hard

August 05, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

In 1999, Sung-il Kim – a professor at the Brain and Motivation Research Institute in Korea – ran a fascinating experiment. He wanted to understand what made stories engaging. He asked his subjects to read short stories (that he had prepared) and rate their engagement. Here's an example: A newlywed bride had made clam chowder coup for dinner and was waiting for her husband to come home. Although she was not an experienced cook she had put everything into making the soup. Finally, her husb...

692: Humans have Autocomplete

August 04, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

Stories are proven to hold attention, and one reasons why is the constant need to make predictions about what happens next. This is a super important survival skill, and 'story' is the purest form of training because, in a well-told story, everything that happens matters. There's no noise in a well-told story, it's ALL signal. Yesterday, I was typing into my phone and smiling as the Autocomplete got it wrong, that humans are just like that. We have Autocomplete that's 'on' all the time, a...

691: How do you 10X the value of your product

August 03, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

Last week, a friend put me onto his favourite clothing brand L'Estrange, and said something that got me interested. "They have a really interesting ethos." Full disclosure. I'm not into clothes. I standardised on jeans and black t-shirts a while ago, but I went to the website to see what story [[L'Estrange]] was telling. Turned out of be very interesting. To summarise... "Fast fashion has created a wasteful, throwaway culture. Most clothes are worn less than ten times. We're doing things...

690: When advertising works

August 02, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.68 MB

Most people claim that advertising doesn't work on them – perhaps mostly because the majority of the ads we see are not 'for' us. But I want to talk about a particular time it did work on me – 20 years ago. I was on a train reading a magazine, and I came across an ad for Hugo Boss Cologne. The ad was a 'scratch-and-sniff' thing, and it smelt good, but the copywriter didn't try to sell me on the smell or even the brand. Instead the line was TOTALLY focused on me and the story I might tell...

689: Relentless

August 01, 2021 04:00 - 3 minutes - 3.04 MB

The sea feels like the ultimate metaphor for consistent, relentless action.

688: How we deliver

July 31, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

In episode 686, I talked about the difficulty of endings, and how hard it can be to deliver on our (implied) promises. In fiction or drama, the ending needs to feel surprising, complete and satisfying. But business storytelling isn't like that. We don't want our audience to file our story away, we want them to act! Action – as we know – is driven by emotion, and emotion is driven by change. Not just any change of course, but change that affects the audience enough to open up a gap betwe...

687: Write through your conflict

July 30, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

Three weeks ago I started a trial fasting practice – limiting food to the evenings between 6pm and 10pm. Expecting discomfort, I prepared in a 'stoic-light' way, by writing through my conflict. (Real Stoics would sometimes go without food or sleep or money, just to armour themselves against the fear of losing everything.) My solution is easier, I write a story that shows the conflict AND how I'll deal with it. When hard things happen, I don't want to be working out the solution on the fly...

686: The hardest part of the story

July 29, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

I've talked a lot about how we create and resolve tension in stories ... how opening up gaps can pull our prospects into our world. But what happens next? Every 'list post' headline is leveraging curiosity... every website is offering an 'ethical bribe'. But, that's the easy part. As I said in the final Mad Men episode ... the hardest part of any story is the end – how we deliver on that tension. -- https://StoriesMeanBusiness.com/podcast

685: Why humans love patterns

July 28, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.69 MB

Yesterday, an article on [[Narrative Fallacy]] caught my eye, and reminded me why we need to focus on showing our uniqueness. Narrative fallacy – you'll remember – is our propensity to create [[Cause and Effect]] connections where none really exist. An example that applies equally to ancient humans and our dog, Tala, would be the assumption that thunder in the sky indicates the anger of some divine entity. But it also happens a lot in day-to-day life too. Our brain is constantly trying to...

684: Let's get passionate

July 27, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

I've been sitting on Zoom a tonne today, which of course can be crazy draining. But this wasn't like that. Both the people I talked to were funny, enthusiastic and deeply passionate about their subject. (THANK GOD and all the little fishes.) We talked, we laughed, we went off on wild tangents that led to gold. Time flew by. The lesson here is obvious ... but it's definitely NOT common sense. If you aren't excited about your thing, how likely is it that anyone else will be? (Note: Exc...

683: The rush to tactics

July 26, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

I was chatting to a potential client who was READY TO GO!!! He had the seed of an idea, and was ready to put a logo on it, write a tagline and get it out into the world. He was ready... but the idea wasn't. It was one of those situations where he wanted to pay me, but he wasn't ready. Thankfully, I've not had to take that kind of business for a long time. I bring story and copywriting to my clients, but also strategy. And strategy comes before tactics, every time. Thinking matters.

682: This podcast is a leaf

July 25, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.67 MB

I've talked before about the value of creating a true 'mythology' around your business and brand. These tales revolve around your Origin Story and your Value Proposition, but speak to both your audience (marketing) and your employees (culture). But perhaps nature is a better model for this analogy. Perhaps a tree. Each story – each leaf – is presented in a unique way and captures a unique sliver of light (attention) and brings it back to the trunk (value). The origin story is the seed, ...

681: 3 Principles of Structural Dynamics

July 24, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

In which we link Robert Fritz's three foundational principles to the power of storytelling. To summarise: 1. Energy follows the path of least resistance (ha, like humans). 2. The path of least resistance is defined by the underlying structure. 3. You can CHANGE the underlying structure. And of course, story is all about underlying structure. Stories are a simplification of the real world... that create (and recreate) structure by assigning value.

680: Before and after photos

July 23, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

At the time of recording this episode, I'd been fasting for 40 hours, and was focused on the insanely addictive nature of before and after photographs... where people have dramatically improved their bodies. This is like mainlining change, the fundamental force of story. We also touched on the Structural Dynamics of Robert Fritz, and the book Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson.

679: Space to breathe

July 22, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.73 MB

I just spent 30 mins getting back to Inbox (almost) Zero. You know the feeling ... that small sense of peace you have when you have momentarily mastered the onslaught. I aspire to a minimalist life, but the truth is that we're always battling against complexity ... so much of which we invite into our lives. So here's to our small victories.

678: Signature Content

July 21, 2021 04:00 - 5 minutes - 4.72 MB

Where would you go if you could go deeper? What would you teach? Often, we seem to be living in a world ruled by summaries, hacks (haha) and bullet-points. And it isn't just other people's content, it's our own. Hell, I created the world's shallowest podcast. Why go deep when you can go long? Because deep is where your best clients are ... and where your super-fans live ... and because deep is likely to win you the most valuable traffic ... and because ... hopefully ... you love what yo...

Stories Mean Business - Nick Warren

Episodes

Twitter Mentions