How Story Attracts Attention to the Unnoticed Entrepreneur Part 2

Hey there, welcome or welcome back to The Business of Story. If this is your first time here, I'm your host, Park Howell, author of Brand Bewitchery: How to Wield the Story Cycle System to Craft Spellbinding Stories for Your Brand, and the new book, which I wrote with my good friend, Dr. Randy Olson, called The Narrative Gym for Business, which will take you on a deep dive into how to craft compelling and, but, and therefore, ABT statements to hook Your audience from the very start. I am so glad you are with us today. So I got a question for you. Have you been burning the midnight oil to build your business and you are producing a ton of fabulous content to capture your ideal customer's attention, but you feel like you're going unnoticed?

Well, if so, we've got just the guest for you today with an intention-grabbing process that You know, very few entrepreneurs either like the communications part of the business or have got the time for it. Worry about cash flow, product development, suppliers, recall. We've all got lots of things to think about, but we need to have a consistency of approach, Park. So knowing how often and where you're sending your information is the 5th part of Speak PR.

Man, oh man, I am the entrepreneur Jim James is talking about right there. So involved, so busy building the business. Sometimes it's just really hard to focus on your content and story marketing. Well, today he shared with you the 5th step of his speaker PR process. And throughout the show, you are going to learn about the other 4. Jim, the Nut in the Hut, James, welcome to The Business of Story.

Thank you so much for inviting me.

Yeah.

So amplification, you know, and I, of course, I think I've got the best thing in the shed, but amplification is just, is about letting people know, but it's also about getting other people to share your content. So the cascade theory, which is by a chap called Watts, who I think now works at Google, but cascade theory really talks about people sharing being the most efficient way, the most effective way to get amplification of your content. So amplification, yes, is sending it out on Twitter, Facebook, and so on. That's, if you like, 101 amplification. That's just about setting up enough tools that send your content out. The next level of amplification is when it goes viral, when other people share your content. And there's a Professor Dobbs as well in the US at a university over there, I think in Massachusetts, and they talk about the need to get people to go from being uninterested in your content and receiving it to flipping a switch to being both interested and willing to share your content. Okay, so actually most people get information, but they're not— they're interested to read it but not to share it. What happens is, in order to change that position of inertia, you have to give them enough reason to want to share it with their network. And that's where that content needs to be simple to understand because they don't want to share something that they might have got wrong. And it needs to be new enough for them to want to share it because they want people that receive it from them to see them as someone who shares interesting and new things. So if we look at anything that goes viral, then I brought out the idea of the Uncle Tom. Did you, did you see Captain Tom? Sir Captain Tom? Park in America?

No, I didn't. What, what, what is that?

He's the English man who in his 90s walked around his garden to raise money for the NHS.

NHS?

The National Health Service.

Okay.

So basically what happens under amplification is Captain Tom is a 90-year-old man who decides to raise money for the National Health Service, and over a period of the next 8 weeks, I think it is, he raised $50 million, like £35 million, because actually around the world what he was doing got amplified. People took pictures and shared them and shared them with their networks. And it— because it was a very simple to understand guy in his 90s wants to pay back for his hip replacement. And the story is, I just want to pay back for these people that are helping us during COVID And people gave money from around the world. He got knighted in the—

Is that right? So now that's a great story in and of itself, because here's a 90-year-old man walking around his garden, making, you know, all this money for the National Health Service. So that's unique, but most companies don't have that. Do you have an example of maybe a company, a client that you worked with that you guys were very successful in capturing a unique story for them that got amplified?

Well, I think if I can talk about Morgan Park, which is the car brand I launched in China, we use this amplification technique to great effect because I didn't have a big budget and I was selling a hand-built bespoke car. But the secret part was to have the customer in the picture, not me, to have the car in the picture, not me. And I got the customer to take pictures of themselves. in the car. And I put these cars actually sometimes outside schools, for example, sometimes in restaurants, sometimes in shopping centers. So I put them in a context that people would like to be seen with the car. And then I used a quick response code on the car. So when they scanned it, they would be sending a picture of the car and all the materials about the car. So within a 5-year period, Parth, we went from zero visibility to quarter of a million, 250,000 unique visitors to our website, all through using this kind of amplification technique. So if you look at Apple, Apple's a great example. Apple does very little actually of their, of their own marketing. Everyone that has Apple is an evangelist. So what we're talking about under amplification is when, when the brand becomes amplified by the users, then we get what we call evangelists, right? And, and Apple's a great example. Tesla's another great example. Of that. Virgin is another great example.

Yeah, Virgin is amazing what they do. You know, I had a chance to go to Necker Island in March and meet Sir Richard Branson and did storytelling training out there. We were the first group to come into Necker since COVID And so, we spent about a week there and had a chance to interact with him. And he did this fireside chat that was just over an hour on the first night we got to meet him. And he just talked about his companies. And all the failures he's had that most people don't know about because you get to look at the successes. But he says, at the heart of every brand story, it's always about the failures. That's what people wanna know. What have you been through that I can relate to?

Mm.

And that you've gotten through it to this next major success because I wanna learn what happened to you in case it ever happens to me, essentially. But talking about one of my all-time storytelling heroes, I even got my book Brand Bewitchery in his hand. So I'm just waiting, Jim, for that phone call Any moment now for Sir Richard to call me back down to the island and go through some of his branding with him.

Wow. And did you— I mean, I feel like I should be on my knees going, we're not worthy. You can't see this on the— you know, we're not worthy. I can't. So I kind of know.

It's just one of those things that came out of nowhere, Jim. I mean, I got a call from a local agency here called Digital Airstrike in Scottsdale, and they're the ones that had put together the event for their customers, and they wanted some more training to happen on the island besides just hanging out with Sir Richard. and, you know, and having fun there. And so it all went down in about a week. You know, you were talking about COVID earlier. We had to go through a series of COVID tests to get into the British Virgin Islands and onto Necker and then back off and back to the US. But it was just one of those things, you know, like Joseph Campbell says, you know, when you follow your bliss, like I am with storytelling, doors will open where there were only walls before. And that was a door that just opened out of nowhere. And in under a week's time, we went from snowy northern Arizona Arizona to a speedboat clipping across through the Virgin Islands, British Virgin Islands, to land on Necker. Um, but I digress. But I want to come back to saying this is what's so interesting.

It's your, it's your show, Park, and of course you don't make me feel any worse for being the nut in the hut with that story. Um, I'm— I now, I know I'm on my journey to bliss. I just seem to be on the slightly rocky road part of the journey at the minute. But no, I think, look, Virgin, as we all know, he's one of the greatest storytellers that there are. So I talk about how I've used it in China as someone that didn't speak the language and built a brand that was unknown in the world's largest car market. So if I can do it, it's not just the preserve of billionaires, even if they got there that way.

Yeah.

So I think what I'd say about that, Park, is that the reason I have personalization around avatar being the avatar that you want to work with rather than about yourself is that if you start this journey of your communications program with your customer, partner, employee in mind rather than yourself in mind, you create different content. Otherwise, you're going, oh, it's all about me, so I need to put myself in these positions. I need to do this for me. I need to do— If you say, actually, no, it's about your member of staff or it's about your partners, about your customer, then actually it's quite liberating because then you can get case studies, you can get testimonials, you can send goods to people to try. So that's why I love the idea. And amplification, sure, it's about technology, but I think if there's a takeaway for the listeners, Parag, it's that true amplification is when your consumers or your staff or your partners become your evangelists. Right. And that's when a brand takes on a life of its own, where people are selling for you. And that is really where we should all be getting to. And they'll only do that if they believe they're the center of that story. If they think I'm the center of the story, then why should they bother making me famous?

Absolutely. So we've got your 4. Let's go to number 5. And so storification. Personalization through identifying your avatars. Engagement, engaging them by placing them at the center of the story and giving them new, novel, simple-to-digest content. And then you want them to amplify it. They really need to become a part of your story because they become your storyteller in essence. What's number 5?

Well, number 5 is just to know. It sounds a simple thing really, but sort of to quantify really. And When I say no, what I like to think about is the metric about how much work you're putting in, Park. So there's a little term I'm trying to work on called the Active Communications Index. Because as any of us know that go to the gym, or if you're saving up, it's actually how often you go to the gym and the weights you lift that give you the fitness. You don't get the fitness. There's no point in measuring the fitness actually. You need to measure— how much you put in. The same if you're saving money, you don't get there without saving dollars a day. So the Active Communications Index is to help business owners to identify how much work they should do. And the key here is to do it consistently, Park. So I had a conversation with an entrepreneur the other day in Sweden. He said, well, how much should I do? I do a lot sometimes and not some the other. And I said, the key actually isn't the volume, it's the consistency. So what many people do is they have a product launch or move office, or they hire somebody, or they raise money, and they have this big flurry of activity, and then they, they tail off. So the Active Communications Index has 3 indicators. It has content times channels times consistency, or times frequency. So the idea is that if you consistently create content and send it through those channels each week. If you just multiply one by the other by the other, you get a number. Very simple. And I'm not— I'm a PR guy, not a mathematician, right? But if, if you can keep that active communications index the same every week, then you're going to be building a brand over time. And, and the, the really the, the association with this, Park, is that if you're going to have a friendship with someone, You need to maintain it. You need to nurture it, right? So if you're really big and throw a big party for everybody once and no one sees you again, you've kind of wasted your effort, right? So the knowing is about knowing how much you're doing. Build that into a number because with the number, you can set up some systems and those systems can then be automated and delegated. Because it's, you know, very few entrepreneurs either like the communications part of the business or have got the time for it. Worry about cash flow, product development, suppliers, recall. We've all got lots of things to think about. But we need to have a consistency of approach, Park. So knowing how often and where you're sending your information is the 5th part of Speak PR.

And is there a rule of thumb there? And the reason why I ask is I'm just rereading the book, The One Thing. And it's a really great book about getting super focused on what your one thing is and what is the one thing I need to do today in such— in doing it, that's gonna make everything easier or maybe even unnecessary. It's just a way to really boil down your thinking. And in the book, the author talks about going from a maniac working 12, 14-hour days and outworking everybody to the point of his health and his personal relationships all got, you know, Impacted by this to simplifying and just to taking it not less seriously, but not putting nearly as much effort into it. And I bring that up because so many people are just cranking out content. And I try to stay very consistent. I've got my show and it goes out once a week, um, and is promoted through all channels and my email, so forth. And people keep prodding me to say, Park, you need to be writing more blog posts, more content, more content. And I don't know what is that balance? Or have you found something for, say, that young growing company and they don't have a lot of time and money to put it in there? Does your Active Communication Index say, let's start with this index number and see how it works for you, and then we can build from there or subtract from there?

It's a really good question and a very frequent one. I mean, there are some ideas of common best practice. Once a day on LinkedIn is enough. The half-life of a tweet is about 30 minutes. So people say you can kind of be tweeting as much as you like and that's okay, but at least one an hour. Instagram, the shelf life is only about 2 hours. If you do a YouTube video, it has a shelf life of about 2 days. So one of the problems, Park, is that The shelf life of content is so short that actually, if you're not careful, you get on a huge hamster wheel. What I do again is to think about what is comfortable for you. You should be driving this, not the social media platforms. And if you think about the key channel or channels that you want to be on, that's the other point. So If you're comfortable creating content once a day or once a week or once a month, that's okay as long as you're consistent doing it. What— and if you think of, for example, rock and roll bands or people like Spielberg, they don't create content all the time, but people buy their albums or their movies or a book author. So it's about being consistent. And when you turn up, you turn up with something that's new and easy to understand. But I think the secret really is to not have a huge amount one day and then nothing and then a lot. But so to determine what it is, but the key is to make sure that what you're sending out is adding value. So, Park, I have this little matrix that I created for the ACI, and can I share that with you?

Absolutely.

So you're going to have to talk us through it because it's audio here. It's audio. So with the Active Communications Index, you have— if you have a 2 by 2, so you have, you know, 4 quadrants. In the 12 o'clock, you have the word consistent. Okay? In the 6 o'clock, you have the word inconsistent. In the 3 o'clock, you have the word innovative. In the 9 o'clock, you have the word dull. So if you're sending out dull information inconsistently, which is your bottom left, okay, you're what I would call unnoticed. If you're sending out dull information consistently, you're a follower. If you're sending out interesting information— innovative interest— sorry, innovative information inconsistently, you're an opportunist. And if you are sending out consistently innovative information, then you are an influencer. I can send you the graphic. Apologies for—

No worries at all. Send me the graphic. We'll put it in the show notes, but I got it now. That's perfect.

The key takeaway here is create something that you think would be interesting and schedule the creation and distribution of those so that they're They can be relied upon. Okay. There is no point in creating content for the sake of creating content because that's wasting your time and other people's.

Yeah, without a doubt. Well, this is fascinating. So your book, The Unnoticed Entrepreneur, you've got 50 different thought leaders, influencers, whatever in there, but they're all covering these in different areas, these 5 different stages of your process.

Exactly. So what I've done is I've been lucky enough to interview you and JLD, but also people like Erin Arlett, who runs a company called Elasticity over there in St. Louis. And I've been able to interview a chap called Nitin Pandey, who runs a parent network in India with over 5 million parents around the world of Indian extraction worried about parenting. So what I've done with the book is to take information from entrepreneurs and from technologists and from practitioners to really illustrate each of these different points. So that if you look at my definition of storification, but it's through your eyes how you explain it. But the idea of the 5 chapters really, Parag, is that entrepreneurs can read lots of tactical information on the internet now and there are lots of clickbait which says download this, download that. But I think what's lacking is the strategy. Mm-hmm. You know, entrepreneurs say, oh, I hired an influencer but it didn't work. I went to an agency and they said I should do a release. But I think what they need, what entrepreneurs need, is an overall approach to the PR program, and that will help them to make better decisions and spend less money on tactical, you know, consultants or content that isn't getting them anywhere. Just in the same way as they need a financial framework for their business to understand cash flow Rather than just, let's look at a receipt, you know, is that a good purchase? They need to have a financial plan. Speak PR hopefully gives them that, but also gives them some case studies where they can see other entrepreneurs like Howard Kaufman, who runs a company in oral care in America, how he's building his brand by building one toothpaste tribe at a time.

That's one toothpaste tribe at a time. There's an avatar for you.

Exactly, exactly.

Well, Jim, thank you so much for being here. Where can people find your book and learn more about the great work that you do?

Well, thank you, Park. They can find me, Jim James, on LinkedIn. And I'm lucky enough just to have my name, Jim James, at EastWest Public Relations. Or they can come to eastwestpr.com and there are links to the book, The Unnoticed Entrepreneur, and also to the whole methodology that we've been talking about, including the course that we have, Park. So thank you so much for letting me slightly probably baffle you. I'm sorry with my quadrants. I'm in PR, obviously. No, I'm obviously not.

No worries, no worries. So once I get video up and running, we wouldn't have this problem because we'll just show it on screen. But no, you talked us through it. That's great.

So thank you. Thank you so much. So obviously, I would love to talk to anyone about what we're doing. And really, Park, I'm grateful to you because your whole brand story methodology really is the headwater, really. Once people start and have understood your narrative, it enables them to flow down through the rest of the program. So I'm really grateful to you. I don't think I've stolen anything specifically. Oh no, I haven't stolen it. And I've completely credited you with everything. But you've done a huge piece of work as a pathfinder to help companies make their business into a story. So, I'm very grateful to you for that.

Well, thank you, Jim. You and I share that. I mean, I've got all of my knowledge through other people and other work. I didn't invent anything. I just pieced it together so it would work in business. A little bit like Steve Jobs. You and I are like Steve Jobs. He didn't invent anything. He found technology and batch worked it together and brought a product that people love. So, I just really appreciate being in your book.

Thank you. I appreciate you being in the book and sharing both on my podcast as you did so animatedly and letting me come and share my story. I hope I don't get just known as the nut in the hut, but also maybe as the international entrepreneur that really is the champion of the unnoticed. I'm really here to help entrepreneurs. To find a way to get noticed using technology so that they can do this for free and unlock the value in their business. That's really my mission, Park, is many, many entrepreneurs can use the technology that's available to them to compete with big companies without any real investment other than understanding an approach and putting people at the front of the business and following a very simple methodology, Park. So that's really why I'm here. So thank you for letting me share that message.

Well, it's awesome. Then it's worth repeating, The Unnoticed Entrepreneur: 50 Ideas for Your Company to Stand Out by Jim James. We'll have links to all of it in the show notes. And so just like to thank you all for listening to this edition of The Business of Story, where we've got Jim coming to us from England. I'm up here in Northern Arizona and we kind of are two nuts in our own huts, I guess, at this point.

If you've been on Necker Island, you've been the band on the sand, haven't you?

Well, there is, there is that. There is that. I hope I can get Sir Richard on the show someday. That would be quite a, quite a boon, but we'll see how that goes. But—

If anyone can, you can.

Yeah.

If anyone can, you can, Puck.

Well, thanks, Jim. And thank you all for listening to this edition. You know, Jim was talking about my book Brand Bewitchery, which did come out about a year and a half ago. And it's all about my 10-step Story Cycle System process to help you craft and tell compelling stories for your brand. And it's complex. I'm the first one to say the hero's journey is complex. The Story Cycle System takes you by the hand so you can do this to craft your own story for your brand, but it is complex. And as Jim said earlier in the show, it's about being simple and novel. And that's why I now am a huge proponent of starting all of your storytelling with the and button, therefore the ABT. I wish I went from the complexity of the hero's journey, the 10-step Story Cycle System, down to the 3 words of the and, but, and therefore, because I feel like this is truly where all storytelling begins. I have my new book out with Dr. Randy Olson, who introduced me to the ABT 10 years ago. It's called The Narrative Gym for Business. It's a 75-page guide. Download it. You can digest it in under 90 minutes and have it at your side as you start crafting these and, but, and therefore's, these ABT's, to really build your narrative intuition of setup, problem, resolution. Everything else, once you've got that, becomes much easier. Of course, I've got my companion course called the ABT's of Selling. You find that at businessofstory.thinkific.com. In under 18 minutes through 3 short videos by me, I take you through each of the and, the but, and the therefore statements so that you can start crafting these for emails, for your overall brand story, for your origin story. You can use them as a story listening tool. I mean, the use for the ABT across the board is pretty mind-boggling. So check it out, The Narrative Gym for Business, the book. You can get that on Amazon, both Kindle and print version. And of course, the ABTs are selling at businessofstory.thinkific.com. And join me back here next week when I'll have another amazing story artist right here for you like Jim. And until then, remember that the most potent story you'll ever tell is a story you tell yourself. So make it a great one. Thanks so much for listening.