The Brand Storyteller Mindset | sneak peak at the course

We’re a little over a week away from the release of the first ever Storytelligent course: Brand Storytelling Fundamentals | Crafting an Authentic Customer Testimonial.

Enrollment officially opens August 1st, and I’ve got to say, this course is going to provide some serious value to your brand storytelling journey. So if you want to craft meaningful stories that also achieve business goals, if you want to be person your company, or clients turn to for authentic, human-centered stories, then this course is for you.

Across 8 modules, you’ll learn my step-by-step process that systematically led to my 3 Regional Emmy Awards. You’ll receive a Customer Testimonial Toolkit, packed with the 5-step story framework, question sheets, email templates, project brief, and sample waiver. And you’ll get access to a private community filled with growth-minded brand storytellers from across the world. We’ll be there together, encouraging one another, and I’ll be leading live group coaching calls focusing on specific modules.

In this episode, I’m giving you a sneak peak into the course. Because it's not the process and steps alone that will make you a great storyteller. It's the mindset from which you carry out the process.

The attitude from which you do the work, that's what will truly set your stories apart.

Without the right mindset, you won't dig for the meaning required to raise your story to the next level. And without the right mindset, you won't be able to establish the trust you need to tell these stories. Whether that be trust from your team, clients, leadership, or the story subjects themselves.

You’ll Learn

• The role of the storyteller is that of a servant and shepherd.

• The responsibility of the brand storyteller is to be a source of blessing and honor.

• The concept of Planned Authenticity

• Stories are tools of empathy & understanding

• Marketing is relationship building at scale.

• You must reward the audience for their attention.

• Life is based on cycles.

Transcript

Hey, Brand Storyteller. What's going on? Bryce McNabb, the director of McNabb Storytelling and the founder of the Storytelligent™ System, and your host of the Storytelligent podcast. Welcome to Episode 37, where we are doing a bit of a special episode today because in one week, just a little over one week from today, I am releasing my first ever storytelling agent course, covering brand storytelling, fundamental tools.

The course is crafting an authentic customer testimonial. This course is going to give you an introduction to my brand storytelling process. So if you're sitting back wondering how do we hit this sweet spot between meaningful stories, that actually achieve business goals. If you're wondering how you actually crack that, not how you're able to balance both the two discourses for you.

This is an introduction into the system that I created that systematically resulted in my three regional Emmy Awards. And for the first time, I'll be walking you through step by step. I am so excited about this.

Enrollment is open August 1st. So that's next Tuesday, August 1st.

And so what we're doing in this episode is I'm going to give you a little teaser of the course, giving you the ability to experience some of the lessons and what we're talking about here isn't the system itself. We're not talking about the steps, we're not talking about the process. We're talking about the mindset that you must have as a brand storyteller to effectively walk out this process, enjoy.

Now, before we rush in, we start learning the process. There is one core foundation to my personal philosophy.

I am very much concerned with making intentional, proactive decisions versus being reactive and making just haphazard, hard decisions. What I don't want to happen is as you start to learn this process, you just blindly follow the process.

Now, granted, part of that is necessary because you need to be able to put this process into action. You need to make sure that you're adhering to the steps and such a way so that way you finally internalize it. It becomes second nature, and then you can adapt it to serve you in the best way that it should.

However, what I mean is that you shouldn't just blindly go into this process thinking that that's what's going to make you a great storyteller. The process didn't make me a great storyteller. I discovered this process by approaching storytelling from a very specific perspective and mindset. So the perspective that you have, which in a way comes from taking on the mantle of being a storyteller, embodying the identity of being a storyteller.

This process, as a result of that. So step one is we have to get united around who is a storyteller and what mindset should you be carrying into your work?

First and foremost, as a storyteller, you are a servant and a shepherd. That's your role. We tell stories out of service with the responsibility of shepherding other people's stories.

I've got to say this again. Storytelling is an act of service.

We are basically becoming the vehicle through which someone else's story is told. That's what we're doing. That's the whole point. And therefore, we have to approach it, understanding that this is an act of service.

And in a way, what we're doing is we're showing up to honor and bless kind of three different stakeholders here.

Primarily, our allegiance in a way, is chiefly to the brand that we're serving. That's where our primary allegiance is. Okay. Because we have to make sure that the stories that we tell are benefiting their business, are benefiting the growth of their organization or helping them to accomplish their mission and do the work that they're setting out to do.

Our success as a storyteller is demonstrated by the success that the story makes for their organization. If the story we tell doesn't benefit their organization at all, we have failed. So that's the primary thing. We're balancing the other two stakeholders that we're balancing is the story's subject themselves and the audience. So our brand story, subject and audience, we have to be a blessing to the people whose story we're shepherding.

So chiefly the story subject ends up becoming the person that we need to build the most trust with that we have to demonstrate to them that that we are here to tell their story. Now, I'm approaching this with a very, like, deep, empathetic perspective, which in certain industries may be completely blown out of proportion. Right. So if you're telling a business person's story, you want to make sure that, yes, I'm on your side, I'm here to communicate your story, but you're not going to explain it to the level of depth that I just did.

But when you're telling stories of certain subject matter in certain industries, say you're working in mental health industry or health care, suddenly these stories end up becoming, you know, like pretty heavy at times. And therefore you have to come into it with this mindset of you are there to honor and bless them. Even when I'm telling a business owner story.

I'm always approaching it with this mindset of my role. And my job is to honor and bless them. Because if I approach it like that, every action I'm making, everything that's coming out of my mouth is coming from that core belief that my role is to be is to honor them and to bless them, to be a source of honor, to be a source of blessing.

It's critical for building that trust that we need to build in order to tell a meaningful story. But it's not just about me getting access. It's about me being a great storyteller. If I'm not approaching my stories from that perspective, I'm never going to dig for the meaning that is available in that story. The meaning is there. It's going to be your mindset that's going to determine how deep you push to pull it out.

Okay. And then the audience, our goal is to honor the audience, to give them something that they're actually going to watch. Because if we're just making crap content, well, now we're not telling an effective story. The story's never going to accomplish the its purpose. It's going to be worthless to the to the brand because it's not engaging to the audience.

So we have to make sure that whatever we're crafting is engaging to the audience.

All that to say is every single creative decision that you make should be made out of a place of service,

we are not here to cast our vision onto this situation. What we're here to do is to collect information and use our expertise and our creativity to solve a problem for our client or for the brand that we work within.

Shepherd This story subjects a story to the best of our ability and creates something that wows the audience. That's the balance that we're playing. And so every single creative decision that we make is for that purpose is from a place of service. Storytelling is not a selfish act, specifically, business storytelling is not a selfish act. We're not writing Harry Potter.

We're not writing a fiction novel. And even when you start writing fiction, you're writing for your audience. Storytelling is not a selfish act. It is extremely unselfish. And therefore, we have to approach it from a place of service.

The next core principle I subscribe to is that authenticity is everything. Authenticity is the key ingredient to building trust. And the second you cease to be authentic is the moment that you break the trust of the audience that you lose their trust. And that is also the moment that you damage the brand you're representing. Because Broken trust with prospects that is going to damage the reputation of the business, put their business, their ability to grow their business at risk.

People are very sensitive. We're communicating now to a highly sophisticated audience. They're very media sophisticated. They they're able to especially if you're communicating within a business to business sense or where where I'm from, you know, the high risk consumer purchases. People just grow up watching television. We grow up consuming media. We're constantly consuming media. And so our our B.S. radar, our ability to to know and judge whether something is genuine or not, whether someone's trying to pull something on us or not very well refined.

So I always approach it from that perspective of the audience isn't stupid. The audience is very sophisticated and therefore we are putting ourselves at risk if we're trying to show up and lie to them. So authenticity throughout the entire process needs to be preserved. How do you be authentic with a process? Well, it's basically it's like you have to create an environment that allows authenticity to shine through, that allows people to be them, to be their authentic self.

So it's our responsibility then to use this process to create those environments where people will be authentic.

Stories themselves are a tool of empathy and understanding. So we tell stories to connect with other people and understand their world. So stories allow us to have, in essence, two layers of understanding a knowledge based understanding and understanding of the information, understanding of like the setting. It's mind based understanding and then heart based understanding, which is empathy, which is an emotional connection.

And we use stories in order to accomplish both, because what we're trying to accomplish with these stories is communicate very specific information about this business. So that way we can help that business achieve its goals and then also communicate very specific information about what's going on internally with the customer. So that way we can create that bridge of connection between the story and the audience.

And the deeper we can dig into that customer's emotional and psychological and identity journey, the stronger the connection we can make with our audience. And stories are how we do that.

The reason why we want to create that strong connection is because what we're doing here is building relationships. Marketing is relationship building at scale.

That's the whole point of of these tools, specifically a customer testimonial. It's a relationship building tool. It's there to add credibility. It's there to add legitimacy. It's there to solidify the trust between the audience and the brand.

That's what we're doing. And so these things that when we talk about like sales and getting revenue and stuff, we've kind of cast a bad light,

which is ironic because we live in a consumerist capitalist society. But there's this bad shade that the that just the whole process of business and monetary exchange has has gathered because we just assume that it's it's morally bad and and that whoever is trying to sell is trying to take money from us.

But really, if you talk to any really, really great salespeople, they understand that what they're selling is the relationship that they're forming with their customer. And trust me, I've talked to tons of salespeople throughout my career, and this is the one unifying thing amongst great salespeople. Great salespeople aren't stealing from people. They're not trying to convince you to do something that you don't want to do.

Okay. That's what terrible salespeople do. All right. A great salesperson understands the customer is buying them that they are basically investing in their relationship. And it is up to that salesperson to form a very strong relationship with them. Marketing is simply salesmanship at scale. And so what we are creating are relationship building tools. You are basically creating a gift that you are giving to the audience that will reward them.

Which leads me to my next principle. We must reward the audience for their attention.

There is a value exchange that is happening within content marketing that that is taking place prior to somebody actually doing a monetary value exchange with a brand. And that value exchange that happens before people pay in dollars, they pay attention. Personally, to me, paying in attention is often more significant than paying in dollars, because it means that they're giving you a slice of their life.

Attention equals time, and what you're requiring for your audience is their time, which means that you're asking for a piece of their life. So it makes sense. So in order for to to ask of something that great, what you create has to be worth a slice of their life.

And when we're talking about value, we also have to understand that value cannot be dictated. It must be felt that we can't merely tell somebody how great a product is. We can't we can't tell them how awesome a service is. We can't tell them how much value it's going to add to them.

They have to experience it for themselves. Value is never proved through facts. Value is proved through emotion. And this is why stories and customer testimonials specifically are extremely powerful. Because, like I am going to say throughout this entire course, it provides the audience the ability to experience that value for themselves.

the last core tenant to be aware of is that life is based on cycles, that we are creatures of habit. What has happened before is happening now is going to continue to happen on into the future. What do I mean by this? Just look at a conventional clock. It's in a circle that's telling you a truth about reality, okay?

That life just goes like this and we spiral through life like this. The sun rose today much in the same way that it rose yesterday. The earth is round. The earth spins right. The earth orbits the solar system. In a cyclical pattern. Life is based on cycles and people are creatures of habit. We tend to repeat the same behaviors over and over and over and over again.

And it's with. I know that this is ridiculous and it seems very deep. Okay. But I'm telling you, this is a key principle that makes me a better storyteller. Understanding this one principle helps me immediately embrace the fact that story structure is a thing that there is a process to every every creative work, that every time we enter into a creative work, we're doing it by default from a process.

Even if we might fight it and think that we are approaching it from a blank canvas, that there's always a system, there's always a process to what we do and that people aren't original and nothing is really unique and that over time we all just tend to fall into the same patterns. And when a business, it's very important to understand this because when a business selects a very specific ideal customer to serve, you're at an advantage understanding that life is based on cycles.

Because as you start to do your research, what you're looking for is patterns. And what you can assume is that there is a shared pattern of behavior. There is a shared pattern of lifestyle, there is a shared pattern of interest among this group of people. And the more you identify these patterns and the more you pull them back and the more you can unify them, the more effectively you can tell their story.

because you can now see that their stories trend along this path, that you're going to understand that there's going to be a common way that this ideal customer finds this company. There's a common way that they interact with this organization.

There's a common way that they respond to what the organization does. There's a common way that they respond to the services that they're provided. But they have shared visions, shared ideals, shared desires, shared driving desires. The better you can understand that, the more closely you can mirror the stories you tell with the ideal customer, the more strongly you can draw those customers to the brand that you serve and the more valuable you become as that brand storyteller.

All right. I hope that was helpful. I hope that gives you a sense of the mindset that you need to have as the brand storyteller. And if you're curious about the steps to take about what this process is. Enrollment opens for the course next Tuesday, on August 1st, the first ever storytelling agent course is available to take.

And I want to invite you to be part of the inaugural class. So as we start learning how to craft an authentic customer testimonial, the course is going to cover eight modules, laying out my process step by step by step. And I'm a bit nervous about that, what I'm teaching in this course, because I'm kind of giving you a crash course into my whole storytelling process.

It's my whole operational process of how I gather research, get key stakeholders aligned, research the story subjects, pull that into a story, plan, send that off for approval, prepare for the interview, run a conversational interview, and then when you have the story, how to get the most value out of that testimonial. So over the course of eight modules, we're going to be going through this step by step.

You also get a customer testimonial toolkit, which will include email templates, story frameworks, question lists of a waiver template that you can use and send out. It's all the tools that you need to tell these stories on repeat over and over and over and over again. But by being part of the inaugural class, you're also going to have access to our Facebook group.

We are going to be setting up a very active community where you can connect with other like minded storytellers who are also growth minded, who are also serious about about developing their own career and telling meaningful stories. So you'll be able to learn not just what people in the United States are doing, but across the world. We've got somebody in the UK who's going to be involved, so it's just going to be like a really great opportunity to see how stories are told across the world.

And then also you'll have direct access to me because I'm going to be actively involved making sure that these lessons are sinking in, being able to ask to answer questions as they pop up.

and I'll be walking everyone through life coaching calls as we focus on specific modules and, and start to think about how do we integrate these lessons into the work that we're doing

I would love to have you join us in the brand storytelling fundamentals. Crafting an Authentic Customer Testimonial Course. Enrollment opens next Tuesday. Visit BryceMcNabb.com/course, and I'll see you inside. See you in the next one.

Take care.