This is 5 Minute Friday!

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 and our lives how making other people the hero of the story is the most important thing.

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

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 has been 30% of their time daydreaming unless they're listening to a story.

Stories hijacked the brain. So when you're in a movie, you're right.

Captivate you. They catch it. The movie is actually doing a daydreaming for you.

Can't really think about anything else when you're in it.

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 to very simple bite size 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 buddy said, man, you got to 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 and panting called rocker and gamble called and then Ford Lincoln called and then Chick-fil-A called and then a virtue halfway called and then the White House called and then and pretty soon I realized I think suddenly I'm a brand story consultant.

Stories are all about what ifs. So I used to do this experiment when I was riding. If I got stuck, I would say, well let's come up with 25 what ifs.

Right now. 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 going to write that one.

But the cool thing is it works in life. You know, you're having a bad day and what if I quit my job. What if I went camping this week. What if I asked that girl out. What if I sold the house. What if and one of those you're going to go, that's peaked my interest.

Well, let's pay attention to that. Sure. Sure. Because that's a story guiding you somewhere. Yeah. Right. There's a story that's just been so inspiring to me and so hopeful to me. I've fallen in love with the Israeli Palestinian issue and the Israeli people and Palestinian people.

I don't know why I just love that region of the world and have been over many times 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. And I came away thinking this might be a hopeless situation. I mean, they're, you know, they just can't seem to compromise on any of this stuff and with good reasons on both sides.

And I read the story of 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 because they're locked in. They're not going anywhere.

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