Park Howell, founder of Business of Story, believes that inside every great company there is blockbuster story waiting to be told. We are going to explore the contents of his new book 'Brand Bewitchery' and you can learn how to use his Story Cycle system on your own business.
For 35 years, Park has helped thousands of purpose-driven leaders master their business storytelling. It's how you can attract and retain top talent, connect with your ideal customers, and grow through a shared narrative that everyone can buy into and prosper from.
On offer to listeners is a business storytelling workbook, written by Park Howell, which will guide you through his proven 10-step Story Cycle system to clarify your story, grow revenue and amplify your impact.
“We are no longer just a used car dealership for credit-risk buyers, but a vehicle to their financial freedom, and we've quadrupled our growth, says ”André-Martin Hobbs Auto, Pret, Partez, Quebec, CA.
It's the power of story and how to create yours which Park will talk with me about on this episode.
Jim James is the Founder and Managing Director of the EASTWEST Public Relations Group. He recently returned to the UK after 25 years in Asia where he was an entrepreneur. Whilst running EASTWEST PR, he was the Vice-Chairman of the British Chamber of Commerce in China, he also he introduced Morgan sports cars to China, WAKE Drinks, founded the British Business Awards, The British Motorsport Festival, EO Beijing, and was the interim CEO of Lotus cars
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This is the third and final segment of my interview with Park Howell, the world's most industrious storyteller. Park recently launched a book called Brand Bewitchery: How to Wield the Story Cycle System to Craft Spellbinding Stories for Your Brand. In it, he says the internet has transformed so much that most people may not even be listening to what we're saying, so I asked him how do we create compelling stories that make us great storytellers? When you think about the massive amounts of channels, and the millions and millions and millions of messages that are being sent virtually every minute, if not every second, we are being bombarded by content, according to Park. Our cerebral frontal cortex has done this brilliant job of building technology that has evolved at the astounding rate of Moore's law that everyone's familiar with in technology, yet you and I are still walking around with our limbic system, the same brain that has not appreciably changed for over 90,000 years when our ancestors were navigating and trying to survive the savannah. It's the same system that has evolved at the snail's pace of Darwin, that you and I here are trying to use to navigate and survive the bombardment on the internet. It's no wonder that we all have a hard time connecting to stand out and be heard in this noisy, noisy world. That's what Park means when he says the masses have become the media. You don't just have a few TV stations and radio stations and print production in newspapers and magazines to choose from anymore to push your story out. Everybody's a TV station, everybody's a radio station, everybody's a different print production house, and they are live 24/7 with global reach from the privacy of their own kitchen table. It's almost like attention deficit disorder has become a communicable disease, and we are all the viruses, and the only way to hack through that noise and hook the hearts is with an anecdote, which is the antidote. From a practical point of view, if you're a business owner, and if you go on Google to search for a product or a company or a service, you get as many competitors as you do the original company you're looking for. This led me to my next question for Park which was, how does Brand Bewitchery serve this amazing wave of digital media? He says that we all live in a land of abundance. We don't operate in scarcity anymore, because there are abundant public relations people to choose from. There are abundant brand communicators and even brand storytellers to choose from, so every company has immense competition. The only way to stand out is to be able to effectively use these primal elements and proven frameworks of storytelling, again, to hack through the noise and hook the hearts of the limbic system to demonstrate what you stand for, why you are different and distinctive, and then how you tell that story, so you actually get through and in between the ears of your audiences. That's the power of storytelling and how it works, according to Park. I previously mentioned the cascade theory by a chap called Watts. Based on that theory, what we need to do is not find one great influencer and hope that they will influence others, but find many other people who are easily influenced, and it's the masses of people with a low threshold to be influenced that will then trigger a cascade, which is where a message or a story would be shared virally across the world. I then asked Park for advice for somebody running a company who wants to create a story that will go viral and benefit from this cascade theory that resonates on a deep level with enough people to make it a worthwhile exercise. First and foremost, Park believes that virality is utter luck. You can get some things set up to maybe make yourself a little bit luckier, but you have to hit it at just the right time with just the right message. Because of that, Park cautions us to not go for virality. Instead, he suggests making a really powerful point with a few people you actually care about, those audiences that you can really help. That's all you need. You don't need everybody. You only need a handful that have great customers that you can embrace, and go from there, and you do that by telling first an origin story. Why do you do what you do? Why did you get into this in the first place? When you can reveal yourself in an authentic and vulnerable way, people are now no longer buying from a brand. They're buying from a business or a person. You have humanized your business, because we want to do business with people we trust, like, and feel like we want in our social network. Brands don't do that for us, and this comes with the fact that with the proliferation of technology, we've become more humanoriented. When we didn't have as much technology, we relied on big brands advertising through the TV, billboards, and the radio. And actually, as we become more enraptured with our technology and almost more distanced through our phones, we reach out even more for that human connection from a company than we did before. Park says we think we're even more connected than we were before, and we are, technically, but the lack of connection people really feel with one another, and especially now with COVID, where everybody is separated and talking basically on Zoom sessions, that people are crying out and they want to have that human interaction and connection, is where the story comes in. There's no product sheet with features, functions, and benefits that is going to matter to anyone anymore. They want to hear about you. Why did you build the product? What can it do for them? That's what they want to know. And then maybe at the very end of that buying cycle, they say, "Well, let me look at the product sheet." But don't lead with the product sheet. Lead with the stories. It could be your origin story and why you started it. It could be the quest story like, "I started that, but then I really wanted to grow here, yet I had this problem, and fell into this hole, and the universe punched me in the nose here, but I overcame that and got out of it. Now, I'm offering this." There are all different kinds of stories. There's the customer story, the case story of showing, "Bob wanted the same thing, but Bob tried to do this, and then Bob tried to do that. But it was when Bob came to us and we helped him do this that now Bob is here." A true story well told is what people are looking for, and that's where storytelling comes in. It can be very simple too. It doesn't have to be these long, drawn out stories. You can tell an anecdote in under one minute that can have an unbelievable power. Conceivably, one of the issues then is making sure that anecdote is understood companywide. Because in the old days, like when I was young and worked in a shop selling furniture and toys and so on, the shop and everything in it told the story. But now, we're buying things without actually even going anywhere. So presumably, the story and everybody knowing the story internally becomes even more important, because there's less brand infrastructure items that we used to have to wear or work in. Park suggests thinking of them as the cast in your narrative production of the brand or business that you are operating. Everyone knows the drama that you live day in and day out, so they are already living in your narrative. But if you, as the business owner, don't control that narrative, they will make up their own stories about you, and it's probably not a story you intended unless you intentionally tell the story. The business owner, Park says, is the producer or the director. The audience is the hero. If you're talking to your employees, place them at the center of the story, because it makes you have to understand who they are, what they care about, and what journey they're on, so that you, as the producer and director, know what kind of story to create and to connect with their worlds to help them achieve what they want. Help them get what they want, and they'll go out of their way to help you get what you want. The beautiful thing about this is stories. Truth and trusts are two of Park's nine one-word descriptors. "Stories are a vehicle that deliver the truth that creates the trust." For instance, he says it could be bad news. You share that in a story, and be truthful about that bad news. It creates trust in your audiences. They believe you. But if you lie and tell a made up story to try to overcome or add a sheen to something that's gone haywire, you will be found out. The truth will eventually materialize. I then asked Park for two case studies about how story and working with Park made a difference to someone's business. The first one is very customer sales-centric, Park says. He was in Melbourne, Australia in March 2019 with his wife Michelle, and they were out there with one of her old childhood friends who had moved to Melbourne many years ago. That friend had a boyfriend who was a Swedish sailor, and he was talking about story and storytelling. He had, as a young man sailed from Stockholm. He was 22 years old on a 24-foot sailboat by himself, and he spent 6-8 months at sea to Melbourne all by himself. He got there, and he loved it so much. He remained in Australia and sold high-end German carwashes and serviced them into Australia. He was asking Park very skeptically how to "story," because he didn't understand storytelling in business. Park asked him, "Could you take me to a time like Tom Hanks in Castaway when you were at sea, and it seemed like all was lost, and something supernatural happened, like the whale came up and flipped water on you?" He laughed and said, "No, it never happened," and then Park just gave him a long pregnant pause. Then the Swedish man said,"Well, there was that one time I was sailing through the Galapagos Islands, and I came down to a channel I had never sailed before. The sun was starting to go down and starting to get dark. It was early evening. Back then, we didn't have GPS. We just had a sextant and compass and dead reckoned our way through. I didn't really want to take on and navigate this water that I didn't know at dark. So I decided to weigh anchor and hang out in the mouth of this channel, and I would get up early in the morning and go. They next day, I woke up to the sound of dolphins screeching. I went up top on deck, and there were eight dolphins circling around my sailboat and screeching at me. I looked around, and I realized the tide had gone out much further than I had anticipated. In about another 30 minutes, me and my boat would have been impaled on these lava rocks. So I pulled up anchor and successfully navigated the channel and made it to my destination." The next case study is an event in which Park was speaking at Park then asked him, "Do you think they were warning you?" He goes, "What else were they doing there?" And then this sly grin came over his face, and he says,"Park, I just realized. Every Shortly after, Park and Andre sat down, and Park took him Social Media Marketing World, the largest gathering of social through the story cycle system, and uncovered all these elements media marketers in the world in San Diego every year. This was big sale I ever made of a carwash came after I told about four or five years ago. Park was invited to do the very of it. It came down to his brand purpose, which is, "Your vehicle first workshop on business and brand storytelling which ticked off the whole event, which was great fun, Park said. As he was to financial freedom." In Canada, it takes you two years someone about my sailing adventures. It had nothing to do finishing up, a young man approaches him. Andre Martin Hobbs is his name, and he had this French accent. He said, "I of dutifully paying your bills off, so this car is going to do loved your presentation. I want to talk to you about helping brand my business," to which Park replied, "Who are you and that every month for you to repair your credit to where you what is your business?" He goes,"Well, my business is selling with business." Park said, "Why do you think that is?" "I have used cars in Quebec, Canada to at-risk buyers," so he sold to can level up. Before you can buy a car at Andre's dealership, you people that had poor credit. Park thought to himself, "I don't know if this is really the kind of brand I want to work with. I work with purpose-driven brands, and I could just picture the car shark out there taking advantage of people that want have to go to a two- or three-hour financial planning these cars." Park was so glad that Andre circled back with him, because once they started working on his brand story, he found out a no idea." Park said, "I'll tell you why. Because in the telling whole other side to Andre's brand story. His thing is not session where you reveal completely where you are. about just selling a used car to an at-risk buyer. The purpose of Financial planners will help you figure out how much you can his brand is to help people repair their credit. Andre said to Park, "These are people that have lost their credit, not because it's their fault. Things have just conspired against them. It could have been the global recession. Maybe they got actually afford to pay on that car and then work with you after a divorce. Maybe they had healthcare issues that drained them of their money. Maybe they lost a job. But these are of that personal story, of your courage and your journey at sea, genuinely good people that have had bad luck, and I want to help them repair their credit through the purchase of a car." It made the purchase to make sure you do that, and that you're Park go, "Wow, that's really fascinating." accountable to it. Today, they are now the #1 car dealer in Park's parting words were, "As your readers or listeners are people get to know you. They say, 'I think I want this guy on Canada for at-risk buyers, not because they're car sharks just selling them anything, but because they are helping them repair their credit. They have a bigger goal and purpose in life. my team. He's industrious. He can get himself out of trouble. That's why they are their"Vehicle to financial freedom." becoming better storytellers and working through this, I want them to remember that the most potent story you'll ever tell is That's a wonderful story. It really shows that there are many He's willing to take risks. I want a guy like that to have my hardships at the moment, but many great stories will come out the story you tell yourself, so make sure you make it a great of it. back if I'm going to spend a lot of money on a German carwash in one." Today, we had Park How ll, the world's most industr ous storyteller and author of Br nd Bewitchery, share with us teps and tips from his bran story cycle to guide us on ow we can effectively tell our wn story. With that, I hope you put into praactice everything yo've learned from Park and that y Australia.'" That is the power of story, a true story well told. u share your great business st ry with the world. To learn more about Park, you can go to his website. There, he has a lot of free tools and information there for you to use to start crafting and telling compelling brand stories that sell. He's also got his podcast which is five years old and has over 265 episodes and ranked among the top 10% downloaded shows in the world, and it's all focused on working with storytellers from around the world to help business leaders of purpose-driven brands understand how to use story in their life. If you're interested in his book, you can find it on Amazon, both in print and Kindle version.