Donald Miller – The Story Brand Workshop
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Key Takeaways
- The StoryBrand Workshop clears up your brand message using a simple framework that makes your customer the hero and your brand the guide. Use it all over your marketing to eliminate confusion and increase conversion.
- Apply the BrandScript to capture your message in a brief, tweetable form. Get your teams and vendors on board with the BrandScript so they communicate consistently across channels.
- Lead with empathy and authority so customers trust you as you discuss their problems and what they want to achieve. Outline the customer’s path providing appropriate offers and direct calls to action.
- PREFERS SIMPLE, JARGON FREE MESSAGES THAT ITS BRAIN CAN SCAN, UNDERSTAND, AND REMEMBER QUICKLY. Test messages for clarity and adapt according to performance and feedback.
- Get ready for our live, hands-on workshop by analyzing your existing content and establishing your objectives. Dive in, get feedback and accountability partners to keep implementing.
- Implement changes immediately on high-impact assets such as your website, email, and sales funnels. Track metrics like engagement, conversions, and revenue to measure ROI and guide ongoing optimization.
Donald Miller – The Story Brand Workshop is a marketing framework that helps brands clarify their message using a simple, seven-part story outline. Structured around a “customer-as-hero” mindset, it emphasizes the problem, a trusted guide, and a plan on the path to a specific outcome. We hear from many teams who use it to trim jargon, craft landing pages, script email sequences, and outline sales scripts. The workshop has live coaching, worksheets, and practice with real brand examples. It teaches you how to build a one-liner, wireframe for a homepage and sales funnel that fits that same story arc. To get at what it is, how it works, and when it fits, the next sections break down steps, use cases, and common pitfalls.
What is the Storybrand Workshop?
A 3-hour branding workshop by Donald Miller that clears up brand messaging with the Storybrand Framework. This workshop assists small business owners in creating a straightforward, customer-centric narrative that fortifies campaigns and transforms poor marketing messaging into compelling marketing messages that draw in potential customers. Sessions, held over Zoom or in person, are limited to 5 participants for intensity and immediate feedback, with an optional 2-week replay.
1. The Framework
The framework breaks messaging into steps: define the customer’s goal, name the problem, present your brand as the guide, offer a clear plan, call for action, explain the stakes, and paint the success. Each step compels clear language and one promise, which can keep messages focused on websites, ads, and emails.
Customers = the hero It’s your job to arm them. For instance, a fitness app ceases to say “we’re innovative” and instead says, “we create a daily schedule so you can run 5 km in eight weeks.” The pivot focuses on the customer victory.
Using this model reduces clutter in campaigns. Teams come together around an outcome, a call to action, the core problem to solve. It turns into a schema for anything from homepage copy to sales decks and onboarding scripts.
Think of it as a checklist. If a message doesn’t pass any step, fix before launch.
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2. The Guide
Brands gain trust through a blend of compassion and credibility. Demonstrate empathy for the customer’s challenge, then verify that you can assist with tangible successes, straightforward strategies, and peer validation.
Map the journey: where they start, what blocks them, and what change they want. Customize answers to that trajectory instead of standard features.
Partnership counts. Use words like “we help you do X,” align milestones, report progress. That consistent, assistive voice builds loyalty and buzz.
3. The BrandScript
The BrandScript is a our printable PDF that captures the full story—character, problem, guide, plan, calls to action, success, and failure. Teams populate it during the workshop and depart with a finished draft.
Leverage it to maintain copy consistency across channels. Present it with agencies and freelancers to stay on-message during campaigns. It distills complex offers into a few tight lines that sales and support can repeat.
4. The Goal
The goal is to create a compelling brand story that drives sales and fosters connection among potential customers. Look for cleaner funnels, increased CTR, and improved ROI as confusion declines. Utilize the workshop to repair muddy value propositions, confusing CTAs, and inconsistent voice, ensuring effective marketing efforts resonate with your target audience.
Why Storytelling Works
Storytelling is how small business owners look for meaning, connect, and decide. It captivates for extended periods, connects information to emotion, and enables businesses to rise above noisy marketplaces.
Primal Brain
Stories tap into the part of the brain that seeks out threat, reward, and purpose. A crisp plot—where a potential customer desires something, encounters a problem, and meets a mentor—indicates pertinence and ignites motivation to take action. This is why Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework effectively maps the customer as the hero and the brand as a guide, enhancing the effectiveness of marketing efforts.
Complicated deals appear simpler when they are wrapped in a compelling narrative. Instead of overwhelming potential customers with a long list of features, showcase a short scene: a buyer facing a challenge, a clear plan, and a positive outcome. We tend to remember narrative beats better than mere facts and figures because structure links details to intention, making it a powerful tool for small business owners.
Emotion drives decision-making, even when we think we are being logical. Research shows that stories can activate the brain’s default mode network, associated with empathy and memory, which aids in message retention. By illustrating risk, relief, and payoff, businesses can reduce uncertainty and build customer trust, making a quick before-and-after narrative far more impactful than a technical spec sheet.
Cognitive Ease
They’re easier to process and remember. Our brain conserves calories when the messages take a tried-and-true route, such as Joseph Campbell’s timeless template across cultures and time.
Cut the jargony Swap ‘robust omnichannel enablement’ for ‘one inbox for all chats and emails’ Short words, straight verbs, and metric units reduce friction and accelerate comprehension.
Cognitive ease boosts both engagement and conversions. A homepage that says the hero’s problem, the plan in 3 steps, and the stakes, will often convert better than copy-dense copy. Test for clarity: read aloud, A/B test headlines, and ask users to explain the offer back in one sentence.
Human Connection
Stories create a sense of community. They want power and connection and self-realization, and they seek out brands that mirror these goals.
Post real customer moments from different parts of the world. Then reveal the conflict, the mentor’s strategy, the transformation. Keep facts truthful and provable.
Good stories take satisfied customers and transform them into evangelists who tell the story. This endorsement goes farther than buying ads.
Humanize the brand with names, faces and results. Storytelling can even assist people reframe setbacks, which intensifies long-term bonds.
Who Should Attend?
Who it’s best fit for: small business owners, founders, marketers, and sales teams in need of a repeatable method to cut through the noise with a compelling message. Valuable for many businesses, including SMBs and solopreneurs in tech, healthcare, finance, and retail who need a unified narrative and effective marketing strategy that delivers.
Founders
Founders gain a crystal clear picture of the brand’s narrative, mission, and brand promise, essential for successful marketing. The workshop’s proven communication formula—rooted in the narrative structure used in thousands of films—helps define a simple arc: customer as hero, brand as guide, plan, and call to action. This clarity informs culture, hiring, and everyday decisions, ultimately honing marketing materials like investor decks and elevator pitches.
Founder participation establishes the mood. When business owners own the message, teams align more quickly, reducing wasted effort and ensuring product roadmaps reflect customer needs. Use your BrandScript to communicate vision in all-hands, onboarding, and client briefings – it cuts down on mixed signals while enhancing customer trust.
Champion the story inside and out! Boast about it in site copy, keynote slides, and press notes. Keep it small, test it with potential customers, and iterate on real sales calls and support tickets.
Marketers
Marketers can leverage the workshop to refine content, digital, and social plans. The story framework steers your headlines, landing pages, email sequences and ads so every asset is referencing a specific customer problem and a straightforward plan.
Use your BrandScript across channels to maintain consistency of tone, benefits, and calls to action. This increases click-throughs and decreases bounce, whether you do paid search in Europe, a webinar series in Asia, or a newsletter to a worldwide list. It works for copywriting, email marketing, and public speaking — from product demos to conference talks.
Checklist for marketers:
- Define customer problem, stakes, and success.
- Write homepage wireframe with clear CTA.
- Outline email nurture (3-5 notes) in guide-plan-CTA flow.
- Align social captions and visuals to one core promise.
- Update ad copy with a crisp one-line message.
- Prepare a straightforward metrics dashboard (open rate, CTR, demo requests).
- Train teams with a one-page BrandScript brief.
Sales Teams
Sales teams need to weave the brand story into discovery, demos, and follow ups to connect quickly and handle objections with less friction. Nothing like a clear, aligned message to increase confidence, reduce meeting times and keep the pitch on benefits and not features.
Embed the framework into decks, one-pagers and call scripts. Use the plan step to explain next steps in simple and clear language. In complicated, cross-regional deals, this common narrative keeps multi-lingual teams aligned.
Trust storyodel It makes your pitch crisp, your promise tangible and your close easy.
The Workshop Experience
A hands-on, interactive 2-day format facilitated by StoryBrand Certified Guides focuses on helping small business owners refine their marketing efforts. Small groups—usually five, sometimes as many as eight—keep feedback intimate. It’s hands-on, working in real time on your BrandScript, website copy, emails, keynotes, and elevator pitch. Sessions mix instruction, directed writing, and group feedback. VIP choices include private coaching blocks, custom audits, and extra Q&A to enhance your digital marketing expertise. Join me on Zoom or in person, and a two-week replay backs review. At the heart of the curriculum is the time-tested story structure behind thousands of blockbusters, guiding you to turn potential customers into loyal buyers.
Duration
While the majority of cohorts operate as a two-day virtual livestream marketing workshop. Some groups meet in real life with the same schedule and flow. Content is timed for sustained work, not extended lectures.
Schedule open calendars as well. Shut down instant message apps, put everyone on away status messages, and protect the time to construct your BrandScript with concentration.
It’s a lean format. You add focused learning and live coaching–without a long commitment or steep fees.
- Block both days, plus 1–2 hours after Day 2 to polish.
- Collect links and benchmarks for your prime pages and e-mails.
- Draft a simple customer profile to speed exercises.
- Test Zoom, mic, and camera; bring headphones.
- Choose two real offers to shape.
- Give your team goals, so you can move quickly afterward.
Materials
You get tools pre- and post-workshop, printable or on-screen. Keep them handy during drills.
- Printable PDF BrandScript template
- Digital workbooks and fillable worksheets
- Messaging and website checklists
- Sample wireframes for home and product pages
- Email sequence outlines and subject-line banks
- Slide and pitch templates
Come armed with your existing homepage, a recent e-blast, a pitch deck and any ad copy. Apply them on live edits with guide feedback.
Make one folder, with obvious names, then take notes as you learn. This reduces friction when you apply after the workshop.
Collaboration
Jump into group discussions and breakout rooms to try out your message quick. Read drafts out loud. Lame lines jump straight out.
Use the space. Cross-field peers offer fresh angles you might miss. A SaaS team could hone a healthcare tagline, and vice versa.
Address live problems collaboratively. Exchange headlines, cut buzzwords, and chart CTAs that align with your purchaser’s journey.
Work in pairs for accountability. Establish check-ins each week to maintain momentum. With the replay for a fortnight and optional follow-ups, you transition from draft to launch. By the end, you have a completed BrandScript primed for your site, social, and beyond.
Beyond the BrandScript
The workshop is not just a template; it trains a thinking lens, decision lens, and leadership lens for small business owners. Teams discover how to frame the seven-part story framework across each touchpoint, ensuring potential customers understand the value in five seconds. Leaders continue to polish the marketing messages as the market, offers, and users change, championing the approach to enhance customer engagement throughout the organization.
Mindset Shift
Customer-first means the customer is the hero, not your brand. They scan fast, their brains are noise filters, and they want a clear trail to survive and thrive. Make the problem the antagonist, not the competing brand. Show the guide role: your product as a plan that solves the hero’s challenge in steps they can follow.
Old habits die hard when you trim ambiguous assertions and convoluted copy. Use simple language, concise sentences and graphic elements that meet the five‑second test. Connect each feature to a distinct customer desired result.
A clear message creates consistent trust. Teams guess no more what to say on a site header or ad or email subject line. They know the one story, and they stick with it.
Flip the switch on workshops and briefs. Utilize before and afters so the transformation seems tangible, not conceptual.
Internal Alignment
Alignment transforms separate teams into a single voice. Leadership leads by example. Marketing scribes it Sales demonstrates it in the field with actual calls and notes.
Hold short, periodic reviews to compare headlines, decks, and scripts to the story. Drop extras that drag the message. Add proof only where it aids the plan’s sense of security.
Clarity trims flab. Less edits, less crossed wires, less “What do we say here?” chains. The same story arcs from landing page to demo to invoice.
- Name the villain (customer problem) and the stakes.
- Define the hero (customer) and the guide (your role).
- Map a simple plan: steps, proof, and risk reduction.
- Write one core message and three support points.
- Train teams, role-play, and record real examples.
- Set a review cadence and owners for updates.
Lasting Clarity
The workshop establishes a foundation for clear, consistent messaging across your site pages, ads, sales calls, onboarding and support. Apply the framework to construct collateral that’s scannable and hard to misunderstand.
Return to the BrandScript once a quarter or following significant product pivots. Refresh the villain, stakes and plan as customer needs change.
Short, tight messaging makes recall and trust rise over time. It keeps customers with you because they feel recognized and directed.
Track results: bounce rate, time to value, lead-to-sale rate, support tickets, and message recall surveys across regions.
Post-Workshop Implementation
Immediately put the workshop insight to work on live assets and plans. Focus on your high-impact surfaces first—website, email, and sales funnels—where a straightforward brand story can lift conversions fast. Define metrics, monitor each week, and iterate with actual data. A clear message strategy will boost conversions and reduce bounces, as it’s simple to see how a business serves a customer’s need.
Website Overhaul
Revise headers, banners, and top-fold copy to ensure visitors understand the problems you solve and the value you provide, all while presenting a clear call to action. Leverage the finished BrandScript from your workshop to guide your marketing efforts in crafting headlines, subheads, and image captions, which will help potential customers grasp your message without confusion.
Utilize the 7-part framework to strategically plan your page: character, problem, guide, plan, call-to-action, success, and failure. The secret to rocking small business websites lies in applying this digital marketing approach effectively while avoiding excessive jargon. Keep your copy scannable, ensuring the main button remains visible at every scroll depth.
Make your CTAs immediate, such as “Get a demo” or “Start free trial,” and include a low-risk step like “Download guide.” Use customer-centric language that resonates with your audience: “you,” “your team,” and “your goals.” By monitoring key metrics, you can significantly enhance customer engagement through a compelling marketing message strategy within just 30 days.
Email Marketing
Build campaigns that follow a simple narrative arc: the reader’s problem, your plan, and a next step. Storytelling lifts open rates, clicks, and sales because the framework leverages the proven power of story to direct the brain.
Chunk lists by job role, sectors, lifecycle stage, or product usage. Deliver personalized sequences—onboarding for new trials, reactivation for lapsed users, nurture for prospects. Make subject lines obvious, benefit-led and concise.
Use email to nurture leads and grow trust: weekly tips, short case wins, and simple CTAs. Monitor open, click, reply, and assisted revenue. Test subject lines, preview text and send times — and iterate based on the results.
Sales Funnels
Map the StoryBrand framework to each step: awareness ads show the problem and stakes; consideration assets show the strategy and evidence; decision pages focus on specific calls-to-action. Deliver message and visuals consistent with your BrandScript at every handoff.
Build ads/landing pages/lead magnets/follow-up scripts that correspond to one step, not all. Constant message enhances lead gen, qualifying and conversion across channels.
Set goals per stage: cost per lead, MQL rate, sales cycle length, win rate. Track funnel drop-offs, then patch the leakiest spot first with story-led hacks. The workshop gives you everything you need, the optional follow-up sessions. To do the best you can, pair the framework with the right initiatives and keep those feedback loops humming.
Conclusion
A clear story gets people to care and act–to come and stay. The StoryBrand Workshop provides a clear strategy to mold that narrative. Teams come away with words that resonate for the brand and the customer. Sales pages get pointed. Emails are clear. Pitches take off quick. Actual leads rock up in lead growth + deal speed.
To press the edge, choose a small goal for the next 30 days. For instance, test rewriting one home page with a oneliner promise, 3 obvious offers and a direct buy call. Or do a mini email trail with one problem, one plan, one win. Trace clicks, replies, and sales. Share victories with your team. Save the good. Trim what doesn’t.
Need assistance to begin. Book the workshop or come to the next live session.
