654 Tell Your Story with Donald Miller

THERE'S ONE THING EVERYONE LIKE: A GOOD STORY. A strong story can move the masses. It can inspire a generation or change your life forever. Storytelling is also one of the most important tools we can use in business. Good storytelling can take your business to new heights. There is a secret to good storytelling: make other people the hero. If you’re the hero of your own stories, you sound conceited. Instead, make others the focus. If you want to take it to the next level, make your audience the hero of the story. To dive into the power of storytelling, I wanted to bring back an interview with Donald Miller for this episode of 5 Minute Friday. Donald unlocked the power of storytelling and quadrupled his business in no time. Then he started to get calls from the biggest companies, like Pantene, Ford-Lincoln and even the White House! Learn from the grandmaster of storytelling, on Episode 654. In This Episode You Will Learn: The thing everyone should do (00:34) How Donald quadrupled his revenue (1:26) What stories are all about (2:09) How “what ifs” can help your life (2:31) The story that’s most inspiring to Donald (2:52) Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is Five Minute Friday.

• 0:09Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to this very special episode with Donald Miller and really dive in a little deeper about the power of story and really how our own story is important, but really in our businesses, in our lives, how making other people the hero of the story is the most important thing.

• 0:33Donald Miller?

  Writing a movie about yourself and working with very good editors to find out what's interesting is something everybody should do.

• 0:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 0:41Donald Miller?

  If you get a chance. You don't pass up the opportunity. So I studied story in order to figure out how to live a better life and then studying story to me was like discovering how to compose music, how to compel a human brain, how to captivate people's attention, how to teach moral lessons. All that happens in story and it is the most powerful tool to compel a human brain. The average human spends 30% of their time daydreaming unless they're listening to a story. Stories hijack the brain. So when you're in a movie.

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  Captivate you.

• 1:13Donald Miller?

  They captivate you. The movie is actually doing the daydreaming for you.

• 1:17Lewis Howes?

  Can't wait to think about anything else when you're.

• 1:18Donald Miller?

  You're plugged into the matrix. So I knew it was a very powerful tool and then I actually took the elements of story and created a marketing filter, a communication filter, using them filtered my company's messages through that filter. So we came down with very simple, bite-sized, compelling statements about what we do, why it's important to our customer, what kind of life they could have if they engage it. And we quadrupled our revenue. And then my buddies said, man, you gotta take this framework, share it with other businesses. And so I kind of put out feelers out there saying I was willing to take some plumber through it.

• 1:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:55Donald Miller?

  And Pantene called, Procter & Gamble called.

• 1:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:58Donald Miller?

  And then Ford Lincoln called and then Chick-fil-A called and then Berkshire Hathaway called and then the White House called and then, and pretty soon I realized, I think suddenly I'm a. Brand story consultant. There you go, yeah, yeah. Stories are all about what ifs. So I used to do this experiment when I was writing. If I got stuck, I would say, well, let's come up with 25 what ifs right now. Yeah. Uh, what if the guy got pulled over and he had something in his car? What if a meteor hit the earth? What if? And usually, one of those what ifs would go, okay, I'm gonna write that one. But the cool thing is, it works in life. Yeah. You know, you're having a, you're having a bad day and what if I quit my job? What if I went camping this weekend? What if I asked that girl out? What if I sold the house? What if?

• 2:43Donald Miller?

  And one of those, you're gonna go, man, that piqued my interest. Well, let's pay attention to that. Sure, sure. Cause that's a story guiding you somewhere, right? There is a story that's just been so inspiring to me and so hopeful to me. I, I've fallen in love with the Israeli Palestinian issue and, and the Israeli people and Palestinian people. I don't know why, I just love that region of the world. And I've been over many times and, um, and on one trip, we met with Israeli guards or Israeli generals and members of Knesset and also members of the PLO on the Palestinian side in the West Bank. And, you know, there's a lot of tension there. Yeah. And I came away thinking, this might be a hopeless situation. I mean, they're, you know, they're, they just can't seem to compromise on any of this stuff.

• 3:27Donald Miller?

  And, and with good reasons on both sides. And I read the story in the New York Times about some, one of the things that we kept hearing in the West Bank is, we just wish we could go to the ocean. Cause they're locked in. They're not going anywhere. Right. We just wish we could see the ocean. It's just right there. We can't get to it. Wow. Cause the walls that the Israelis have built up. And, um, there were these Jewish women in Jerusalem. I mean, just like our wives, you know, your girlfriends, just Jewish women who, who'd, uh, who kept hearing these, about these Palestinian women and they, they couldn't go to the ocean. So they drove into the West Bank, these women. And they started befriending Palestinians and got to know some Palestinian women.

• 4:12Donald Miller?

  And kinda dressed them up in costumes and because they were Jewish, they didn't get stopped at the checkpoints. And they got them out of the West Bank. Wow. And, and they would literally just take them to the ocean. Wow. They'd all just go swimming for the day. You put them back in the car, they take them back home. And these women just started going in there, finding women who wanted to go swimming, and taking them to the ocean. And I just thought, you know, beneath our leaders, who are doing a decent job keeping us all safe, there's this heart, there's this heart in human beings that wants to break through that conflict and compromise. I just always have thought, Donna, at the core, problems really are, they can be resolved.

• 4:55Donald Miller?

  If you find the people who are tender and willing to take action and do something. So, I just love that story. I think it's the only story. If I could only tell one story, I'd probably just go around and tell them now.