Episode Description

Can you believe we’ve listened to and learned from close to 50 guests in 2017? That’s a ton of valuable information. I’ve gained so much wisdom from our interviews and I hope you have too.

For today’s podcast, we’ve selected snippets of interviews that zero in on building your business. You get to hear from Seth Godin, marketing genius, about speed versus perfection when it comes to launching your product.

You’ll learn how to reverse engineer your goals from Fizzle director, Chase Reeves, and how to get your team to focus on and execute your most important goal from 4DX co-author Chris McChesney. Nancy Duarte will teach you how to structure your upcoming presentation. Finally, copywriting extraordinaire Ray Edwards will reveal the magic words you should use with your customers to make you money.

We know how busy life can be and realize you may have missed some of our most popular guests. So, for the next couple of weeks we thought it would be awesome to play you excerpts from some of our favorite interviews on the Building a StoryBrand podcast from July to December to wrap up the year.

[LISTEN NOW]

Big Idea #1: Do your best work and then engage your audience.

Seth Godin, best-selling author and marketing guru

As a creator, you may have some perfectionist tendencies about your products. It’s tempting to keep your creation hidden so you can keep tweaking and fine-tuning it. But is it possible to wait too long? Seth argues that slower doesn’t necessarily mean better. When it “meets spec” or delivers the quality you promise, you should get it out there and allow your audience to engage with it. That’s the only way you can know whether it’s resonating. Learn more about when you should “ship it” and why you should allow your audience in on the process of perfecting your work.

[LISTEN TO EPISODE #55 ON iTUNES]

Big Idea #2: Choose a goal and reverse-engineer the end result.

Chase Reeves, Creative Director of Fizzle

Often, lack of motivation is actually a lack of clarity. Your heart wants you to do something but your brain doesn’t know how to take you there. Chase shows you how to find motivation by paving a path for your mind to accomplish your goals. Start with the accomplishment, or the end result, and work backwards from that final product. The clearer you get, the more motivated you’ll be. Tap into a more in-depth explanation of how to reverse-engineer your goals in this episode.

[LISTEN TO EPISODE #60 ON iTUNES]

Big Idea #3: Focus on your Wildly Important Goal to overcome the “whirlwind”.

Chris McChesney, co-author of The Four Disciplines of Execution

If you find yourself working harder and longer without seeing any better results, you need to listen to this episode. You’re caught up in what Chris calls the “whirlwind” — a world where ringing phones, unexpected appointments, and other urgent matters dominate your day. Chris will reveal the key discipline you need to overcome the whirlwind — focus on just one Wildly Important Goal (or WIG) that could transform your company. In this clip, Chris explains how to identify your Wildly Important Goal and how to help your team achieve it.

[LISTEN TO EPISODE #67 ON iTUNES]

Big Idea #4: Craft a great presentation by using the structure of a story.

Nancy Duarte, author of HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations

Every story has a three-act structure with a likeable character who encounters roadblocks and is changed by them. The greatest speeches (think Martin Luther King, Jr. and Steve Jobs) follow this structure and we can learn a lot from their perspective. If you align your presentation along storytelling guidelines, you’ll get some dramatic results. In this episode, Nancy teaches you how to apply this story framework to your presentation, placing your audience as the likeable hero who will undergo transformation.

[LISTEN TO EPISODE #66 ON iTUNES]

Big Idea #5: Use these magic phrases to motivate your customers to take action.

Ray Edwards, author of How to Write Copy That Sells

At StoryBrand workshops and in our online courses, we teach you that customers won’t take action on their own. You have to call them to action. In this episode, you’ll learn several magic phrases from copywriting genius, Ray Edwards, that incite your customers to make a decision and motivate them to buy. After you’ve applied a few of these, you’ll see a radical improvement in how your customers respond to your product. Soon, your sales copy will finally be doing its job — reaching the people who need your product and making you money. Learn all eight magic phrases here.

[LISTEN TO EPISODE #63 ON iTUNES]

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Thanks for reading and listening to some of the best of the Building a StoryBrand podcasts today. Tune in next week for another compilation of more great advice that will help you grow your business. I know it’s Christmas, but it’ll be a worthwhile listen while the “roast beast” cooks. Enjoy!