Crafting Compelling Narratives That Transform Brands: A Chat with Park Howell (Part Two)

Forbes Books presents the Startup Science Podcast with Gregory Shepard, brought to you by startupscience.io. Greg is an entrepreneur who has built and sold 12 businesses. He's a recipient of 4 private equity awards and is a featured TEDx speaker and Forbes author. Here's Gregory Shepard.

I'm back with Park Howell, the author of Brand Bewitchery. We've been talking about how his business of story has helped big businesses clarify their brand narrative and connect authentically to their audience. We also broke down the power of Park's simple ABT story framework: and, but, therefore. Now, Park, let's get into failure. How do you deal with a scenario where you make a big mistake and you need to use the ABT framework to make up for that mistake?

You come clean on the mistake, right? I love this and I was going for this, but then I blew it by doing this and this was the outcome of it. Therefore, here's how I'm going to rectify the situation and move forward. There's your setup, problem, resolution dynamic again, right?

Is there variation, though, between like if you're talking to a customer or an investor or mentor Or an advisor, you know, or a partner or a vendor? Like, are there variations to this or are you using the same structure regardless of who you're talking to, at least in the beginning of the conversation?

You know, I use no variation for the framework itself. Now, the content's going to vary depending on who it is, of course. But that setup, I really always like to start with a statement of agreement. So say I blew it with you, Greg. You know, Greg, I was so excited to be on your podcast and it was great that we've got this set up, but I completely blew the time zone and missed our appointed time. Therefore, I'm hoping your, you know, your heart will be open and we can still have a chance moving forward on this. So I always like to start with a positive aspiration up top to get them nodding. Yes, we agree. Then insert the problem. Now you can do it backwards. You can start with the problem up top, but that statement of contradiction needs to contradict the problem, and but then introduces your solution. Therefore is the way forward. We have found that that is not nearly as effective for one major overriding reason. When we start with the problem or what we perceive to be the problem for our audience, sometimes we miss the mark, and they'll say, "Mark, who the hell do you think you are? That's not the problem I see at all." Or we're the outside consultant looking in and we know what their problem is because we have the benefit of clarity from the outside looking in. But they haven't bought into the fact of our problem. They think their problem is still over here. So what we do when we lead with a problem is we can often set up a divisive relationship that now I've got to prove my point that this is what your problem is. And nobody likes to be in that situation. So instead, we always like to start with aspiration, a shared vision. You know, is— can we agree that this is what we all want? Yeah, yeah, you're dead on. But we don't have it because of this problem. You're correct. Even if they start thinking, you know, we're off on the problem, at least we have that shared statement of agreement or mindset going in. Then we can work through the problem. If you do this really well, you will win them over to the way you see the problem versus the way they think the problem is. So set up problem resolution agreement. Yes, that's right. You know, conflict. Uh-oh. Oh shit. Here's our problem. Therefore, resolution. Here's the way forward.

You could use it for crisis management. You could use it for reputation. You could use it to educate. Like, one of the things is a lot of founders that are starting new businesses are disrupting something, which means that they have to, in some cases, explain that there is a problem in the first place. The people don't even know there's a problem. Right? So they have to start out by educating the customer so that they're aware of something, so that they're interested in buying. In that scenario, would you apply ABT the same way, or would you take a very variable— because it sounds like it's just an algorithm that you could use. It's beautiful because it's so simple. You could use it for anything all the time.

Yeah. Well, think about it this way. Say, Greg, do you play an instrument?

No, I, I play the computer. The computer is my instrument.

All right. You call me up one day, you see my piano back here, and you say, Park, I want to learn how to become a jazz musician.

Awesome.

I need you to first learn the 1-4-5 chord structure. The and, but, therefore. Is that interesting that you see this, this tripartite structure to story everywhere? I want you to play Mary Had a Little Lamb. I want you to play all these things. 1-4-5-1 and get that down. When you get that down, you go out and you start playing for people and they go, wow, check that out. I never knew Greg could play the piano. That sounds really awesome. Now you start leveling up and you go, Mark, I want to, I want to have some more fun with this. All right. You've got the structure down of the ABT or the 1-4-5-1. Now it's your job to start improvising on it, but only until you really nail that ABT or that 1-4-5-1 structure. So Once you get good at this and to get good at it takes— gosh, I've been doing it a long time and I'm still learning how to do it in lots of different ways. If you apply it to your work for 4 to 6 weeks and I'm talking about emails, you got to write emails anyways, write 3 emails a day starting with an and, but, therefore. It's going to require you to burn a few calories upfront, spend some energy to really get focused on your audience and your message. But you're gonna find, number one, that it's a fabulous place to practice learning ABTs to build that narrative intuition. Number 2, your emails would get responded to a lot faster because you were so crystal clear. You were not making that Homo sapiens storytelling monkey on the other end of that email trying to decipher what the hell you're saying. And number 3, it has a built-in call to action to it. So the thinking here again is going back to your initial question. Get the structure down first and then feel free to improvise on it once you start getting more comfortable with it. And by the way, it's fabulous for A/B testing. So say you've got a LinkedIn campaign out there, go ahead and write your typical LinkedIn post and then rewrite it as an and, but, therefore. Run them side by side for a month and I guarantee you, you will see 400% to 600% increase, 4 times to 6 times increase in engagement simply because you put it in this narrative framework.

That is just so beautiful. It's like, I took my daughter to self-defense. And it, you know, there's a lot of moves in self-defense, right? And the instructor was like, listen, I'm going to teach you 3 punches, 3 blocks, and 3 kicks. And once you master those, you can put them in different combinations. And it's like, it's the same kind of thing, right? You master those, and then you learn how to do variations of those things when appropriate.

That's so right.

People need to master the ABT, right? And then from there, start doing their own versions of the ABT. I totally get it. Let me digress for a second and ask you a different question, which is— I'm really interested in the answer here. Who do you think is a master at ABT in the, in the— like, if you look at the Elon Musk and the Steve Jobs and all the guys that are out there, the Bezos and the Larry Ellison and Marc Benioff and all these You know, classic CEOs who who would you say or leaders I should say or thought leaders whatever who would you say is got this down Richard Branson Yeah, who does it naturally Steve Jobs did it absolutely naturally.

In fact, there's a video out there on YouTube of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs sitting at some conference, and they were asked the question about where why did Apple go to Microsoft for their floating point. Something rather, and they first went to Gates, and Gates just bumbled through this thing. And just when you see Jobs in the background, he gets more and more frustrated as as Gates is trying to explain this, and Jobs go, "Now let let me tell the story," and he literally took all that logical mumbo jumbo and told the story of Wozniak, who wrote this great code. But it was just, it wasn't floating point. And he kept asking him to do it, but he wouldn't do it. Everybody was asking for it, and therefore they went to Microsoft to be able to use that. When he tells that, you can watch his video online. It's, the whole piece is about 90 seconds long, but you see a marvelous example of the left brain, non-narrative communicator trying to connect with an audience, and all he ends up doing is confusing them. to the right-brain storyteller. And as you hear Gates or Jobs tell that story, you will hear there are 2 embedded ABTs in it. And it's that perfect 5 primal elements of a short story. Now, Jobs is just doing this intuitively because he didn't know anything about the ABT or these elements of storytelling. He was just a gifted, intuitive storyteller. And Greg, my argument is All of us as Homo sapiens are intuitive storytellers. It's what separates us from all other beings in the world. We think, plan, organize, and act in story. What I want people to do is become intentional about it by using this simple and-but-therefore framework or algorithm that they can use to make their messages land right the first time. Every time.

So a couple things here. So I really want to give you an opportunity to talk about your books. And I want to tell everybody that I was so convinced after talking with Park that we actually are integrating this into the Visionaries platform by Gregory Shepard, which is the platform that all the founders can learn from and stuff we talk about. It's actually being integrated in there. That's how good this is. But he's also got a couple of books. Maybe you could talk about a couple of the books that you have, and you have your own podcast.

Yeah.

Maybe use this opportunity to plug some stuff. I'm all for that.

Number one, Gregory, I am so delighted to be a part of your program. I'm a huge believer, of course, in the startup world. I mean, that's where all of our vision and new techniques and technologies come from. So thank you for allowing me to be able to teach this to your attendees. Yeah, I've got a couple of books out. My first book I wrote is called Brand Bewitchery, and it uses my 10-step story cycle system that I got from Hollywood, from Joseph Campbell and the Hero's Journey was that inspired.

Love Joseph Campbell stuff. That's so cool.

Yeah. And I saw that, you know, how this all came about real quick is I was running my ad agency out here in Phoenix, Arizona. And as the internet hit and social media started blowing up, I realized that the way we used to brand and market and communicate, communicate companies no longer worked. And I was fortunate because our middle child, our son Parker, was going to film school at Chapman University, a very prestigious film school, from 2006 to 2010, graduated. Now he's down in Austin, Texas working with virtual reality. I said, Parker, send me your books and your recorded lectures when you're done with them since I'm paying for them because I want to know what does Hollywood know about story and story structure to be able to compete in, you know, the most competitive storytelling market in the world, LA. That's when I first learned about Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey. And Greg, it hit me right upside the head. I'm like, oh my God, this— here's a map to storytelling and communication. How come this has never been taught in any communication course or advertising program that I've been a part of? That's when I boiled it down and we started using it for brand development, brand narrative strategy development.

You simplified it a lot because, you know, the hero's journey is kind of It's a way more— it takes some time to get it down, but you've got it to the point that it can be digested.

And the hero's journey is a one-and-done circle, right? You got a hero in their ordinary world, they have a call to adventure, they go to this extraordinary world, they get put through trials and tribulations, they learn something about themselves, they get leveled up, they return back home. Well, I took that and said, you know what, this is actually in business really a narrative spiral. It expands with the telling of your story to expand engagement. So it's not a one-and-done thing at all. The idea is to invite people into your story, get them as, you know, repeat customers. And more importantly, maybe, is to get them sharing your story with their world because there's no more powerful form of advertising than free word-of-mouth marketing, right? We can all agree to that. So I was teaching that and worked with a lot of brands on it. And then I found the and-but therefore about 10 years ago through my good friend, Dr. Randy Olson. Harvard evolutionary PhD scientist turned USC Film School graduate. He's written several books on using narrative in the science world to be able to communicate their big complex ideas, simplify them, clarify them so the rest of the world can learn. And when I found the ABT in his second book, again, written for the science community, I'm going, oh my God, Greg, this is like the holy grail for branding and marketing. Talk about being able to take a complex pitch message and simplifying it from our audience's point of view, giving you that narrative framework that that limbic buying brain loves. And I'm like, is this thing too good to be true? And so I started researching it. You know, think about nursery rhymes. Almost every memorable nursery rhyme Is an and, but, therefore. When I say nursery rhyme, do you have one that pops to mind?

Yeah, I mean, I like Dr. Seuss stuff. Yeah. But I was just— when you were talking just now, I was just thinking about like, there's something immensely valuable. I mean, first, let's talk about your genius, right? You have taken and studied all these different ways to tell a story. And then you have digested these and compressed them into a— and distilled it down to a very simple way of teaching that. And then you've created a way to go about this in a book and outside of a book. It's genius to begin with.

Thank you.

So anybody that gets involved here, it's not like you're just getting, you know, this Park Howell's approach to this, right? You're getting everybody's approach to this distilled down for you. There's— that's pretty, pretty amazing, man. That's freaking pretty awesome. I just have to say that. I'm just like, this is, it's one thing, you know, like when I wrote the book on the startup lifecycle, I studied startups for 30 years and read all these books and, you know, learned all these different operating systems, all this stuff to do it. And then people get all of that experience distilled down. It's the same thing with you. It is a, it takes a special genius to understand the opportunity. Like you were talking about that you read it and you were like, oh, this is perfect brand. Not everybody could do that, right?

Yeah.

So you, as a listener, you're getting to take advantage of his genius and all of the study that he— all the studies that he did and the people that came up with those. It's pretty special.

Well, thank you, Greg. You've got Steve Jobs right over your shoulder there. So he's obviously a hero in your life. We're right along Einstein there. Would you say that Jobs was an inventor or an integrator?

He's definitely an inventor. I mean, He's a visionary, right? He wouldn't be— without him, you know, I have a lot of arguments with, 'cause I used to be a coder, right? So, you know, you have coders that go, well, he didn't write any code. And I was like, code is worthless until somebody can tell a story about it and get it sold, right? They're both necessary. So on one side you have Einstein, who was the integrator, and on the other side you have Steve Jobs, who was the visionary. You look at Steve Jobs as much more, In terms of his ability to create and maintain and monetize business as compared to Einstein, which everybody else did it on his behalf, you know.

Or I think about Jobs. A lot of times people make the argument that he was more of an integrator. He did invent like the iPhone, but he didn't invent a lot of the different parts of that iPhone. He saw them in the world and said, if we take some of this, integrate it with some of this and integrate it with some of this, Voilà, we have invented a brand new product. It's kind of where I was going with that. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. If you look at it from the writer who wrote that book, Rocket Fuel, then you see it that way. Yeah, sorry. I was using that compared to visionary versus—

Because I haven't invented anything here. The and-but-therefore has been around since the beginning of time. The hero's journey. I mean, in the very first recorded book of Gilgamesh follows the hero's journey precisely. It's just this archetype, you know, it's this structure to narrative that we've always seen and used around us because people will argue we can embrace the hero's journey because it's simply a reflection of how we experience life. So when we see it in movies, it's just inherent in how a story is structured. I just simply integrated that into the business world. Now, the hero's journey is way too woo-woo for lots and lots of B2B business minds. And I say to them, you know, B2B doesn't necessarily mean business to business. It quite often means boring to bored. Why would you bore your audience? You know, when you have this marvelous business offering, use these templates that we've seen in the world since the beginning of time. And we'll go back to real quick on like the nursery rhyme thing. Here's one. Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet eating her curds and whey. Along came a spider who sat down beside her and frightened Miss Muffet away. Perfect and, but, therefore. And people would argue, well, Park, there's an and, but, and therefore don't even exist in that. And I say, yes, but they're all implied in the framework. For instance, Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet and she was eating her curds and whey. That's our setup. That's act 1. That's agreement. Now here's the complication. But along came a spider who sat down beside her, which triggers our limbic problem-solving brain, begs the question, what the hell happened next? Leads to our statement of consequence. Therefore frightened Little Miss Muffet away. You know, I mean, you see it everywhere in the tripartite structure of the story. So why don't we use it in founders' pitches? in explaining our complex ideas and making them very simple from the point of view from our audience and underscoring the outcome. What is the benefit of this without overriding or overdoing what we're making in the widgets that are so near and dear and special to our hearts? Nobody cares. They just want to know what do those widgets lead to? What is that outcome?

Yeah, you're right. I always tell founders that, you know, they oftentimes forget, you know, there's the ICP, the ideal customer profile, which is the business, and then there's the Persona, which is the person. And a lot of times when they do marketing, they focus on the business and they forget that they're having to convince a person. The person isn't always in favor of what the business is in favor of, especially if it's going to cost them their job or create stress or make them go to their CFO and ask for more money or whatever those sort of things, right? It becomes so this is a way to talk to the person and then turn that person into your champion, and then they're willing to march. march through the battle with you in order to get the thing to the people that need to make it happen for the company.

Greg, are you familiar with Christopher Lockhead? He is a brilliant, brilliant branding mind, category design mind up in Silicon Valley.

Yeah, I went to a— he was a keynote at a lecture I went to. Yeah.

Yeah. And he wrote with his partners one of my favorite all-time branding books, especially for the tech sector, called Play Bigger. And he had me on his podcast about a year ago. And I introduced to him, and he's all about POV, that point of view of where your brand and how you can design a category, become the category king by being the first to market with it and really owning it. And I showed him, told him about the ABT. Then the very next day, he puts it in a text, he uses the ABT for text, sends it out to the world, Takes a screenshot of it and sends it to me. And he goes, I don't know what the hell this is or how it works. But here's the first thing that has happened to me using the ABT. Let me quickly just read the tweet for you. Says most entrepreneurs would love to design a new category and build a billion-dollar business. There's his statement of agreement. But there is so much startup bullshit on Twitter, it's hard to know who to listen to. Therefore, meet David Sachs. He knows a few things. And then there's a link to his show interviewing David Sachs. So perfect ABT. But here's the thing. In under 6 hours, Christopher Lockhead got over 60,000, almost 70,000 engagements on that one tweet. And now this is a very prolific social media contributor out there. And he goes, Park, I have never seen anything like this before. And now he uses it to set up his podcast interviews, his Substack articles, he uses the ABT throughout. There's a good example of the power of it in your world from a guy who's made a very nice career out of creating POVs or category designs, and how the ABT does this, as he says, fantastic double-click on their approach to category design.

So if we were to give then the audience some resources, first of all, how do they get in touch with you? What books should they buy? Is there, you know, what blogs? Like, what are all the resources that they need to learn ABT? I'm sure anybody that's listening right now is just sitting there going, holy shit, how do I get a hold of this thing?

So I've got Business of Story podcast. I've been doing it for 8 years. I have been rolling out a special series on brand bewitchery. Instead of me just sitting down and trying to read this book and putting out the audiobook all in one fell swoop, what I did is I decided to chunk it. And every episode, starting with episode number 420, I read you one chapter and give you a bunch of examples so you can sit down and listen to Brand Bewitchery on your drive home. I've got— I'm halfway through the book, so that's one place to go. On my podcast as well, episode number 400, Is I take the listener through my 10-year journey with the ABT, have Dr. Randy Olson on who first introduced me to it, and a number of other people that have used it. And it's a way to understand all of the different applications of the ABT. That's a great place to go. Third thing I'd say is I've got this book that I co-authored, and I mean, it's a little one with Dr. Randy Olson, and it's a quick little hand guide, if you will, as you are sitting down to write ABTs. It's called The Narrative Gym for Business. And as you start applying the ABT, this will give you a lot more case studies and examples and take you on a much deeper dive than we could do today on how to use the ABT, ABT 201, ABT 301. And then of course, your course will be teaching the ABT, The 5 Primal Elements of a Short Story for Big Impact. And the 10-step story cycle system that you can use for presentations, pitches, and long-form communications right with your Startup Science course.

Right on. So we'll put some of that stuff into the show notes. And man, I got to tell you, I just had a great time talking to you at the show and listening to you. And this was really fantastic. And I think it's a real honor. Like I said, it's— you're so humble and it's real easy to, to forget about how much talent it takes to recognize an opportunity and then execute on it. And then, I mean, it's easy to make something simple complicated. It's really hard to make something complicated simple. And you've mastered that. And I'm, you know, just gratitude, Park. It's a, it's a real benefit for everybody to have you around. And I appreciate your time.

Well, Greg, thank you so much for being here, or for me being with you. I'm so used to hosting my own show, I'm thanking you for being on my show, which you were on a few weeks ago, or a few— a month or so ago.

Yeah, yeah, I'm excited to be able to talk to you. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

Thanks, man. You too.

And that's it for another episode of the Startup Science Podcast. Founders, as a thank you for leading the changes in our world, I'm offering free access to my Startup Science Platform, Visionaries by Gregory Shepard, a one-stop shop for founders. It has everything from a startup academy to investor match, grant finder, pitch finder, virtually everything in the startup ecosystem there for you. Go to gregoryshepard.com, click on Visionaries to get access, and use the code FOUNDERS, all capitals, for free access to the platform. Check it out for yourself. And if you enjoyed the show, We would love it if you could subscribe so you never miss an episode. I'll see you next time. Namaste, my friends.

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