Every human being wakes up identifying as a hero in a story. The hero is character that wants something and overcomes conflict to get it.

So as it relates to your business, my question to you is, what's the conflict that your customer is trying to overcome?

They are the hero in the story. You never want to position yourself as the hero in the story.

The reason is that's a weak character. That's your customer. Your customer is a weak character. Every customer out there has a problem and they're looking for somebody to help them. And so what you need to do is position yourself as the guide helping the hero win. And all of a sudden people start paying attention to you. I always say if you want to grow your business, talk 75% about the pain your customer is in and 25% about your product. Your sales will go up.

Welcome everyone to the Main Street Business Podcast. This is Matt Sorensen and I'm honored to be

joined in studio by Donald Miller. Best Selling author teaches people how to consult and grow businesses

and has worked with probably thousands of business owners in growing small businesses. So

it's a pleasure to have you in the studio here today. Great to be here. Yeah. Well, we've got an audience of Main Street business owners. This is the Main Street Business Podcast after all. A lot of small business owners, some big business owners, some people with a side hustle, some people trying to launch a business. I know you've got a lot of books out there, but I wanted to start with your flight plan on how to grow a small business. I've listened to some of your podcasts already, and I've ordered your books. I should have had them here before you got here, but I've been listening to a lot of your stuff, and I was really captivated by how you talk about an aircraft and how people should be thinking about their small business. Yeah. I'm an accidental business guy.

I mean, I started out as a memoirist and had a really successful career there and then

wrote a business book about messaging and suddenly had a staff of 35 people and a thousand

certified coaches and all this kind of stuff.

So I found myself moving very quickly from sitting

around on my underwear writing books to actually having to put on pants and go to an office,

which is just very foreign to me. And I don't tend to do well if things get complicated or confusing.

And so one of the things that I had- If you don't like to buy, that's complicated.

Well, yeah, that's the case too.

But also, I need very simple frameworks and processes in order to run my operation.

And so created those in order to grow my business.

And they worked very, very well.

And then I would share them with friends.

And basically, the realization that I had when I was trying to figure out, without a

business degree, trying to figure out how to run a small business and grow it is that a business

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