Introducing The Story Compass

My new book, The Right Story publishes today. I can’t wait to hear how you’re using the new tools in the book to help you craft your messaging and engage more deeply with your customers. The Story Compass is one of those tools in the book. It’s designed to facilitate powerful, purposeful storytelling. It will…

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Be A Powerful And Purposeful Storyteller

*The following post is an extract from my new book The Right Story.* Throughout history, the technology of the day has always influenced how its users communicate and share ideas. How we think about spreading ideas is shaped by the resources available to us. How we connect and persuade is affected by the way we…

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Is Your Marketing Working?

Last week I visited the local camping store to buy a gift card. As I was paying at the point of sale, a one question survey popped up on the keypad. The store manager asked if I’d seen their TV ad. When I said I hadn’t, she hit ‘no’ on the survey. I couldn’t resist…

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The Right Story

What makes some bad ideas successful, and why do many good ideas fail? It turns out that there’s no such thing as a bad idea or a good idea. There is only the wrong story or the right story. The right story is one that is trusted. It is believed because it is told by…

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Be Ambitious

In our culture ambition is both celebrated and frowned upon—not always in equal measure. Ambition is encouraged and rewarded, but only to a point. Perhaps it’s not ambition itself that’s the problem, but rather, our narrow definition of it? We aspire mostly to the ambition of accumulation. We want to be more and have more.…

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Forget Marketing

Forget marketing. Instead, sit down and reflect on what you want your customer to know about why you’re building what you’re building. Tell them everything. Write it down. Start with how you got to this moment and how your journey to it has equipped you to help them. Tell your customers how you’re going to…

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More Customers Vs. More For Customers

Every business begins with the founder’s intention about the outcome he or she wants to achieve. Every aspect of its development stems from that original intent. As businesses owners, leaders and creators, we can adopt one of two strategies. We can build a business with the intention of getting more customers, or we can want…

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Why Didn’t It Work?

We’ve been learning by trial and error since we were six months old when we first noticed the effect of our actions on objects. As children we developed skills by learning from our mistakes, paying attention to what didn’t work as well as to what did. As adults, we are not so keen to see…

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Necessary Work

Last week I reached out to two different digital companies for technical support via email. The first company promised to respond within 24 hours. Their eventual reply was a copied and pasted generic email, that likely went out to every person with a similar issue. It was obvious the busy person dealing with my support…

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The Convenience Trap

The homeless man sitting at the Brunswick Street junction doesn’t look up as people walk past. He doesn’t try to catch the eyes he knows are trying to avoid his. He lets the cardboard sign at his feet do the talking. The headline in red crayon tells us that he’s genuinely homeless. There isn’t enough…

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