Can you be both a disciplined, focused business leader and a deeply creative person? For us here at StoryBrand, the answer is a resounding yes. In fact, the worlds of creatives and business leaders overlap more than we might assume. If you’re leading a business, you need to embrace your creativity. When you do, you’ll unlock levels of innovation and inspiration in your work that will give you a competitive advantage. And anyone who does creative work needs to focus and master their industry so t...
May 29, 2017•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’ve ever smelled that warm and buttery smell in the mall, and minutes later, had an Auntie Anne’s pretzel in your hand, you’re not alone. Auntie Anne’s has 2,000 locations in 26 countries. They’ve made 1.8 billion pretzels -- enough to go around the Earth 50 times. And their success is about a lot more than just that amazing smell. Auntie Anne’s founder, Anne Beiler, is an incredible leader with a unique backstory. She joins Donald Miller on this episode of the Building a StoryBrand podcas...
May 22, 2017•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Is it possible to live a life of service and sacrifice even while pursuing a career that matters deeply? When you look at the life of sportscasting legend Ernie Johnson, Jr., you can’t help but say yes. On this episode of the Building a StoryBrand podcast, Donald Miller sits down with Ernie Johnson. They share a heartfelt conversation about leading a life of significance and making room to help others, even while we pursue our careers. Don’t miss this inspiring episode. The life lessons here are...
May 15, 2017•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast What if there were a roadmap that showed you all the major milestones your business was going to hit as it grows? Wouldn’t it be great to know what’s coming next and how to navigate well? That framework exists, and we’re going to explore it in depth on this week’s episode of the Building a StoryBrand podcast. Donald Miller sits down with David McKeown of PredictableSuccess.com. He and his father Les have developed this framework over decades, and they’ve seen it prove out in countless companies,...
May 08, 2017•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast The better we understand people, the better leaders we’ll be. And one of the best tools for understanding yourself and those around you is the Enneagram. If you haven’t encountered it before, the Enneagram is simply an ancient personality framework. There are nine core types, and we tend to gravitate toward one of them in our youth as a way of coping with the world. This week on the Building a StoryBrand podcast, Donald Miller talks with Enneagram expert Ian Cron about how to use this powerful f...
May 01, 2017•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast What’s the most powerful tool in the world for captivating the human brain? It’s storytelling. As business leaders, sometimes we struggle to keep our audience’s attention for a few seconds. But storytellers have figured out how to keep an audience’s attention for hours. If we want to captivate our customers, we need to understand the art of storytelling. So today on the Building a StoryBrand podcast, Donald Miller talks with Allan Heinberg, one of the world’s most accomplished storytellers. He’s...
Apr 24, 2017•1 hr 1 min•Transcript available on Metacast Most of us business leaders are glued to our phones. Work can feel all-consuming. We end each day fatigued and overloaded, and everything suffers as a result. But life isn't supposed to look like this. We need what Juliet Funt calls “white space” -- strategic rests and pauses between our busy-ness. This week, Juliet joins Donald Miller on the Building a Story Brand podcast, and she helps us understand the importance of these pauses for our work, the four big reasons we struggle with it, and what...
Apr 17, 2017•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why do some companies stay young, agile, and competitive, while others get bogged down and decline? That’s the big question that this week's guest, Chris Zook, set out to answer. After years of research, he and his team at Bain Insights found three key elements that showed up in successful companies, and they called them “The Founder’s Mentality.” On this episode, Donald Miller sits down with Chris to understand how these three elements make a company healthy on the inside and create more profit...
Apr 10, 2017•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why do leaders fail? It’s not because they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s usually because they’ve failed to listen to and develop their staff. They’ve failed to respect and communicate well with them. Basically, they’ve failed at people skills. To help us master the fine art of people skills, Lee Cockerell, the former Executive VP of Operations for Disney, joins Donald Miller on this episode of the Building a Story Brand podcast. Lee built his sterling career by focusing on people, and in t...
Apr 03, 2017•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Motivation is overrated. If you want to accomplish the things that will grow your life and your business, you can’t rely on it. And today’s guest on the Building a Story Brand podcast, Mel Robbins, is with me on this notion that motivation isn’t the key to success. More than that, she’s discovered a simple mental strategy we can use to bypass motivation in order to make wise decisions that grow our businesses, make healthful decisions, and strengthen our relationships. It’s incredibly simple and...
Mar 27, 2017•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why are most meetings so awful? A lot of us leave every meeting feeling like we’ve wasted our time and gotten nowhere on a problem -- only to get back to our desks farther behind on our “real jobs.” But with a little intention, we can make meetings not just productive, but also energizing and fun. On this episode of the Building a Story Brand podcast, Donald Miller sits down with Daniel Tardy the SVP of EntreLeadership, Dave Ramsey’s business coaching division. They walk through nine strategies ...
Mar 20, 2017•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast There’s nobody like Elon Musk. As the founder and CEO of both SpaceX and Tesla (among other ventures), he is arguably the world’s most visionary entrepreneur. And on the podcast this week, Donald Miller interviews Ashlee Vance, the man who wrote Musk’s definitive (and bestselling) biography. As entrepreneurs ourselves, what can we learn from a pioneering leader like Elon Musk? Listen to this interview for an inside look at Musk’s life and discover the big takeaways we can use to build our busine...
Mar 13, 2017•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Why do leaders crash and burn, taking their companies and families down with them? Is it the inevitable result of pressure or a character flaw? Or can it all be prevented? In this episode of the Building a Story Brand podcast, Donald Miller sits down with leadership expert Stephen Mansfield to talk about the 10 warning signs of a leadership crash -- and how to fix them. The list will surprise you. Listen today and discover how to protect yourself from a leadership crash. Get the worksheet that g...
Mar 06, 2017•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’re trying to start and grow a business, you know it’s not an easy road. Rewarding, yes. Eventful, yes. But easy? Not at all. But like any journey, you’re better off if you’ve equipped yourself properly for it. And that’s why I am so honored to have Carrie Green joining us on the Building a Story Brand podcast. She’s the founder of the wildly successful Female Entrepreneur Association, and in this episode she shares six steps entrepreneurs can follow to grow their businesses. Wherever you ...
Feb 27, 2017•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast According to Greg McKeown, the author of Essentialism , most of us have been living under the assumption that we can have it all -- we just have to cram it all into our lives. As a result, we end up busy (not necessarily productive) and stretched too thin at work and at home. We’re chained to our smartphones, hopping from disjointed task to disjointed task, not really focused on (or even clear about) what we want. Essentialism changes all that. It helps us tune out all the unimportant things vyi...
Feb 20, 2017•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast For business leaders, public speaking skills are critical. Whether you’re delivering a major keynote or simply leading a staff meeting, you’ve got to be able to engage your audience and communicate powerfully. That’s why public speaking expert Mike Pacchione is joining Donald Miller this week on the Building a Story Brand podcast. As a part of the communications consulting firm Duarte, Mike gives 70 speeches a year -- all on the topic of public speaking. He is the talker about talking. And he’s ...
Feb 13, 2017•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast As business leaders, we often get so focused on the details of our company that we forget to step back and understand things from our customers’ perspective. As a result, we talk over our potential customers’ heads in our communication and marketing. Feeling confused, they take their business to another company -- not necessarily a better one, but one they understand. But when we learn how to communicate clearly, we stop confusing our customers and start connecting with them. On this episode of ...
Feb 06, 2017•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast We’re passionate about growing our businesses, aren’t we? But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. In fact, the path of scaling a company is lined with landmines and pitfalls, both personal and professional. This week on the Building a Story Brand podcast, Donald Miller talks with massively successful entrepreneur Chalene Johnson about the five things we can do this year to dramatically scale our businesses without losing our minds. If you want to grow your business the right way, without compromising y...
Jan 30, 2017•43 min•Transcript available on Metacast As a business leader, you’d never start a year without a working budget or a sense of your profit margin, would you? But most of us don’t have the same kind of awareness and discipline when it comes to our personal finances. That’s why we’ve got Rachel Cruze joining Donald Miller for this week’s episode of the Building a Story Brand podcast. She is a personal finance expert and bestselling author. And as the daughter of Dave and Sharon Ramsey, her heart for the topic runs deep. Listen now to dis...
Jan 23, 2017•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’re good at marketing, you know how to make people understand what you offer. But if you’re good at branding, you know how to make people feel a certain way about it. When you master this, you can create exponential value for your business. (For example, branding is what allowed Starbucks to sell a 50-cent cup of coffee for $4.) This week on the Building a Story Brand podcast, Donald Miller talks with advertising legend Don Schneider about the art of branding. He’s the creative force behin...
Jan 16, 2017•52 min•Transcript available on Metacast A lot of us believe that killer negotiators are born, not made. But that’s not true. When you know a few key strategies, you can become a great negotiator and land great outcomes for your business. Best of all, you can do it while treating others with respect. In this episode of the Building a Story Brand podcast, Donald Miller sits down with negotiation coach and expert John Lowry. John walks us through five techniques to improve our negotiation skills so we can strike better deals, increase ou...
Jan 09, 2017•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to 2017! If you’re wondering how to make this year more productive and meaningful, try the 30-day process we walk you through in this week's episode. This system won’t take you more than a few minutes each day, but it will unlock new levels of energy and focus you didn’t know you had. Listen now and discover how to develop new habits, become more productive, overcome procrastination, and complete the major projects that will move the needle for your business this year. http://buildingast...
Jan 02, 2017•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Get our best wisdom from 2016, compressed into a single episode! As we close out the year, we’ve selected clips from 10 conversations we’ve had on the podcast and highlighted our biggest takeaways from them. If you’re traveling over the holidays, this is a great way to find helpful episodes you may have missed or revisit your favorites for fresh insights. Thanks to everyone for listening this year. We’ve learned a ton from our guests, and we hope we’ve helped you clarify your messaging and grow ...
Dec 26, 2016•1 hr 10 min•Transcript available on Metacast As good as your gut may be about your customers, there are some aspects of your business that are too important to guess at. That’s why I’m thrilled to have David Kinnaman joining us on this episode of the Building a Story Brand podcast. He’s the owner of The Barna Group, a market research firm that’s helped thousands of companies better understand their customers through survey data. He’s got 10 excellent tips for sending surveys to our customers. These will help you listen better, pinpoint opp...
Dec 19, 2016•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast 2017 is right around the corner. How can you set yourself up for a great year in your job? What if I said you should fire yourself? It sounds crazy, but it’s exactly what our CEO, Nigel Green, does every year. It gives him the perspective and energy he needs to embrace whatever challenges the new year brings. In this week's episode of the Building a Story Brand podcast, we share exactly how you can do this process yourself and why it works. It sounds super critical at first, but it’s actually a ...
Dec 12, 2016•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast If you’re trying to run and grow a business, you know you’re going to need smart marketing tactics to get you to the next level of success. The trouble is, there is SO MUCH information out there. And not all of it can be trusted to actually work for you. So I’m thrilled to have Amy Porterfield joining me on the Building a Story Brand podcast this week. She’s an actual expert on all things digital marketing, and she has four ways you can dramatically improve your online marketing strategy, no mat...
Dec 05, 2016•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Can we be real with each other? Leading a business packs a big emotional punch. The stress of the day-to-day. The immense pressure to succeed. The isolation at the top. The strangeness of managing an image. It’s a heavy burden to carry around -- and it takes a toll on us. That’s why it’s critical to care for your inner life and develop your emotional intelligence. If you do, you can forge a great home life and company culture. If you don’t, you can destroy it all. I’m thrilled to have Miles Adco...
Nov 28, 2016•1 hr 2 min•Transcript available on Metacast Entrepreneurs, listen up. If you want to bust through that revenue plateau, you’ve got to get good at selling -- even if you don’t think of yourself as a salesperson. We’re pleased to have Nicole Walters of The Monetized Life joining us on this episode of the Building a Story Brand podcast. She quit her job as a top-selling corporate exec and built a million-dollar lifestyle business in a year. (Whoa.) Listen and discover four surprising strategies that we as entrepreneurs can use to dramaticall...
Nov 21, 2016•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast As business leaders, we throw the word “grit” around a lot. It’s hard work, resilience, and toughness all rolled into one. But where does grit come from? And how can we tap into it to improve our companies and our lives? In this episode of the Building a Story Brand podcast, I sat down with Jon Gordon to talk about it. He shared four principles with me to help us develop more grit. And this guy knows his stuff. His principles of motivation and success have been tested and proven by pro sports te...
Nov 14, 2016•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast What do you offer your customers? Sure, you’ve got a product or service. But really, you offer your customers some kind of transformation. And when you fully understand this “before” and “after” journey of your customers, you can reach them on a whole new level. In this episode of the Building a Story Brand podcast, we learn exactly how to map out our customers’ transformation. Donald Miller talks with Ryan Deiss, the mastermind behind Digital Marketer, to talk about a simple four-part process y...
Nov 07, 2016•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
