Park Howell: 0:00

Imagine increasing engagement by 400%, which we've proven you can do when you use the and but therefore narrative framework. It helps evolve you from being an intuitive storyteller to an intentional storyteller, so that instead of winging it, you are winning with it every time.

Joeri Billast: 0:23

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories Podcast. My name is Joeri Billast, I'm your podcast host, and today I'm really excited and honored to be joined again by Park. Hey Park, how are you? Joeri, I'm doing fantastic. Great to see you again. Great to see you again. Yeah, actually, guys, Park Howell is my guest today, and I was on his show not so long ago. We will see which episode will be published first.

Park Howell: 0:52

Well, you'll be out on mine in just a week or so to promote your fab fabulous, fantastic new book. Can't recommend it highly enough.

Joeri Billast: 1:01

Thanks, Park. And if guys now, if you're now wondering who is Park Howelll, it's it's it's a big name in podcasting, in storytelling. You know, I like stories, that's why this podcast is called Web3 CMO Stories. And Park is an Emmy winning business storytelling coach. He helps you as an entrepreneur, as a marketer, as a founder. Excel through stories you tell for your branding, your leadership, your sales, marketing. He's also an author of Brand Bewitchery and the Narrative Gym for Business. And it's a top 10 podcaster. Actually, when I met Park the first time at social media marketing world, I won his book. Do you remember that, Park? I won your book.

Park Howell: 1:46

That was a few years ago.

Joeri Billast: 1:48

Yeah, it was a few years ago. And you know how that was that was the time when I won a lot of things at social media marketing world. I met Park too.

Park Howell: 1:57

Your winner, what can we say?

Joeri Billast: 2:00

Yeah, and I like the way you know how to pronounce my name because that's not always the easiest way, the easiest name that I have, you know, for you.

Park Howell: 2:07

And if I butcher it, I apologize in advance. You honor it.

Joeri Billast: 2:11

Don't worry. But to start this podcast episode with, I am curious because times are changing. We live in exciting times. You have you have you helped brands grow through storytelling for decades already, Park. Now, how has the role of story evolved today in the AI-driven marketing landscape?

Park Howell: 2:32

Well, yeah, great question, Yori. And stories haven't evolved. They've always been around since the beginning of time, I think. What is evolving is the storyteller, because you know the frameworks remain the same and they're very powerful, they're very proven, including the and but therefore narrative framework, which I teach everybody. I call that the DNA of storytelling. And it's been around since the beginning of time. I didn't invent it, so it has not evolved. The five primal elements of a short story where you can tell an anecdote that makes your business point for you. Been around since the beginning of storytelling. And even my 10-step story cycle system is based on, of course, the Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. I just didn't necessarily evolve it, but I brought it over into business so that business people could really make sense with it. But what is evolving is us, the brand storyteller or the business, sales marketing storyteller. And AI is having a really big impact on that. And Yori, from all the work you've done with AI and in your book, how people are still frightened about it. There's AI fatigue. They think, I don't know, that it's just going to go away. And I'm telling you, I've been in the advertising, branding, marketing world for 40 years, and no new technology development goes away, especially something as powerful as AI. And it is evolving the storyteller. And I believe in making us better storytellers, not by writing our stories for us, but by us collaborating with this brilliant artificial intelligence to make us better storytellers using these frameworks, using the consistency of AI to be able to share our stories. And so that's my long-winded way of saying storytelling hasn't evolved. The storyteller is evolving at record pace.

Joeri Billast: 4:30

Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned the ABT. In the ABT, there is always a but. So then I like because I like to apply this actually to my podcast because we started with you there is AI, and you know, you have done storytelling for years, but people make mistakes. You know, what is the biggest storytelling mistake that you see founders and marketers making these days?

Park Howell: 4:56

They are telling their stories from their point of view. They are telling the stories as if the brand is the center of the story. They are themselves may be the center of the story. And that's the single biggest paradigm shift that I really coach people in is that your story is always about your audience from their point of view, no matter who you're communicating with. Even if you're telling a joke and you're a stand-up comedian, you need to connect with that audience and get them to see that joke from their point of view. And you get the biggest laughs when they can see that joke happening in their lives because you are essentially communicating an absurdity or truth that we can all see around us. The same as with your brand storytelling or business storytelling. People don't care about what you make, don't care about your product, they don't care about your service, they don't care about your widget. They only care about what you make happen in their life. Outcome trumps offerings in your storytelling every single time. So that's the number one mistake I see. Even very seasoned creators and chief marketing officers make is telling their story from their brand point of view instead of from their audience's point of view.

Joeri Billast: 6:15

Yeah, let me try to make then the ABT, yeah, that you are a marketer and you have a great story to tell, but you feel difficult, you have difficulties, you know, to tell the story from the point of view of your of your audience, your customer. Therefore, you need a framework. So tell me a bit, Park, about you know, about your approach. You can explain the ABT also a bit further if you want, but you have this 10-step framework you mentioned already.

Park Howell: 6:46

Let's use the ABT you just used, which was really excellent, and let's use that as the framework. Oh, sorry about that. Stop that phone ringing. I thought I'd turn that off. Let me do make sure I got that turned off. Yeah, there we go. So the U, the AND but therefore is a framework that uses the three forces of story of agreement, contradiction, and consequence, or another way to think about it is setup problem resolution that our primal pattern-seeking, problem-solving, decision-making, buying limbic brain adores because it delivers content to it in the way it wants to receive information. So let's take yours, for instance. You started right by speaking directly to your audience. You, and let's add a little bit more specificity to it, as a marketer, want your stories to connect with your audiences. And if you tell them from their point of view, then you are going to move them to action to increase your overall growth. That's what we call the end statement of agreement. And gets you nodding, just like you're nodding right there. You want your audience to say, yes, that's what I want. I typically like to make those aspirational, positive. It's a shared vision for the future. Then you introduce the complication, the problem in your butt statement. And I like to follow that with an emotion. But you're frustrated. And then I like to use the word because there's been a lot of research that demonstrates when you link these two ideas, you're frustrated because of this problem that the limbic brain really embraces it that much more. But you're frustrated because you are not connecting due to your stories always being about you and your brand versus your customers. So you're going, okay, yeah, I know this is what I want, but I'm not, don't currently have it because of this major problem. I'm not connecting. Therefore, what do I do about that? Therefore, imagine the engagement you will get when you start putting your audience first in your story and telling your story from their point of view. So set up problem resolution using the three forces of story agreement, contradiction, and consequence, which I also believe in all the years now that I've used the ad buttons there for, it creates the three forces of trust building. And those are understanding, appreciation, and empathy. By introducing your audience first in the ABT, you are showing them, illustrating to them that you understand who they are. And then when you say what you want and why that's important, you demonstrate that you appreciate what they want and why that's important to them. But then when you introduce the problem where they don't currently have it, you are demonstrating your empathy. First, starting with an emotion. But you're frustrated, you're overwhelmed, you're anxious, you're nervous, you're disgusted, whatever. Throw in a negative emotion there because of this major problem that is thwarting you. Therefore, that trust has been built. And in your therefore statement of consequence, you have a natural call to action in it. You don't begin with the call to action. You begin with what getting your audience to picture what that positive outcome is going to be. Imagine increasing engagement by 400%, which we've proven you can do when you use the and but therefore narrative framework. It helps evolve you from being an intuitive storyteller to an intentional storyteller, so that instead of winging it, you are winning with it every time.

Joeri Billast: 10:32

I love always, you know, how you explain that. I have your book somewhere here on the bookshelf uh behind me, but when you hear it, you know, it totally makes sense.

Park Howell: 10:42

That I co-wrote with Dr. Randy Olsen, who taught me about the Anbet therefore 12 years ago. Narrative Gym for Business, short little book that will teach you everything you need to know about how to apply the ABT.

Joeri Billast: 10:54

Yeah, and I remember also how you added the if then also, you know, in the statement to make it a really full, powerful statement. Now there is this story cycle system, your framework that you have. Can you uh take us yeah, take us through that?

Park Howell: 11:11

Yeah. It all began with this, Yori. As you when when you were probably sitting in my social media marketing world storytelling training, I probably went in depth about this too. And where it came from is I've been doing branding marketing for 40 years. I've been at this for a long time. And you know, over 20 years ago, I started seeing a major problem with our as us running our ad agency, and that was traditional advertising and marketing was no longer as effective as it was before with the advent of the internet and e-commerce and social media and that sort of thing. And I went looking for an answer. How do we hack through this noise and hook into the hearts of our audiences? And at the time, our son Parker was going to film school at Chapman University in Orange, California, a very prominent film school. And I said, Parker, send me your books and your recorded lectures when you're done with them, because I want to know what Hollywood knows about storytelling. And I had to remind him and send them to me since I'm paying for them, right? And so that's when I really learned about the hero's journey. And when I saw the hero's journey, I thought, well, this is a customer journey, an owner's journey. This is all of our journey. Why don't they teach this in sales and marketing and branding and so forth? And so I simply took it and mapped it to business and created my 10-step story cycle system, which we have used over the past 20 years to help brands grow by as much as 600% by really dialing in their brand narrative strategy using this very proven framework to deliver messages and strategies in the way the brain wants to receive them, right? Um, and so have grown brands, yeah, like you mentioned 600%. It is that powerful. And we have since then created using AI, have created the Story Cycle Genie platform that enables brands to be able to use this process, this brand development process, which used to take two to three months and up to $50,000 to do. Now they can literally do it in about two hours. And it might cost them $50 when it's all said and done, maybe $150 when it's all said and done. But that is one of my most exciting evolutions as a storyteller myself, is tapping into AI in a very narrative, native platform. Our Story Cycle Genie is the only brand development platform that uses the and but therefore at the core of it, builds out these stories using the five primal elements of a short story for big impact, and it's all guided by our 10-step story cycle system. So your content is always on brand and it's always written in story structures so that you don't have to be a story theorist on how to make story work for you.

Joeri Billast: 14:02

I would already say to my listeners, because you know, Park is so passionate and all this information that he gives. I will put them in the show notes. You know, there will be a blog article, you know, based on the podcast episode. All links will be in there, you know, parks, books, and so on. So, yeah, there is a lot of value in everything that you explain for you. It's like, you know, business as usual for people listening to say, Wow, it's it's eye-openers. I know that because I was there, you know, in the room when you were speaking at social media marketing world. And it was also interesting, Park, that you know, you made action analysis of I think my brands. So I'm curious to hear what you have to say about that. You know, for me, I've I've written the book. I know that I need to implement a bit more of the ABTs in there, but there are also some points that you thought were good. So yeah, happy to uh that you give an analysis of uh what I what I have done on my website.

Park Howell: 14:57

Yeah, what we did when Yori came on my Business of Story podcast, and I do this with all my guests, is I take the URL from their website, his website, and I put in some other links like to his book and so forth. And then I had the story cycle genie do a quick analysis. It'll do an assessment of the brand of how he's showing up in the world currently. And that usually takes about two minutes. And then you get a pretty detailed assessment. And then you can go in and say, run the story cycle and process. And what it does is takes that assessment and everything it knows about your brand, in this case, Yori's brand, and it creates a narrative strategy based on our 10-step story cycle system. Everything from your audiences to their and but therefore is it. In fact, maybe the best way to do this is just to let me look at it on my end. Yori, I don't know if you have it up on your end, but we could talk about some of these things and you tell me how accurate they are about your brand. Does that work for you?

Joeri Billast: 16:00

Yeah, I don't have it right away, but just go over it and you can you can give me some points and then I can give you the feedback.

Park Howell: 16:06

Yeah. Let's said it identifies your top three audiences in order of importance. And I always like to underscore to people that you're you have one customer persona that typically makes up 80% of your revenue. So who is that? Let's put them right at the top. And then, of course, you're serving some other people. So you've got three different audiences it will call out here. And sometimes if you're working with a big enterprise or larger company, I'll also encourage you to put in, tell the genie to put in a fourth audience, your employees. Because if your employees aren't bought into your brand story, then of course you're missing a major cog in the ability to tell that story. But in this case, it said your number one audience is traditional business leaders, CEOs, CMOs. And then what the genie does is calls out what are their emotional triggers? What are the things that drive them? And these are really important because you're going to use these in your content marketing and your storytelling. So, first, challenges for the traditional business leaders. It says challenges are navigating Web3 complexity while maintaining business stability and proven ROI. What do they fear? Making constantly mistakes with emerging technologies that could damage reputation or waste resources. Frustrations. What frustrates them? Finding practical Web3 guidance that isn't too technical or theoretical for business application. And then four, what do they aspire to? What do they want? They want to achieve competitive advantage through early Web3 adoption while maximizing or I'm sorry, while minimizing risk. So does that sound about accurate for your top audience?

Joeri Billast: 17:58

Yeah, actually, the the only thing I would would add here, and this is maybe something for my side I need to clarify, but is the definition of Web3, of course, right? How do you define this for someone who is quite technical and who is in blockchain? It's pure blockchain, but for the traditional people I'm talking to, actually, it's more an umbrella term for me for emerging technologies like Web3, like AI, like maybe augmented reality, and so all of that. When you have a look at my podcast, it's also stories around marketing and emerging technologies. So this is about branding, about storytelling around that. I want to make it clear that it's an umbrella term, and maybe that I can add more clarity, I would say. But for the rest, it's it's spot on actually.

Park Howell: 18:47

Terrific. And so again, this is pulling from what it knows about you. And the beautiful thing about the Story Cycle Genie is you don't have to answer a bunch of questions in there. You don't have to answer any question. It just pulls up and says, here's how you are showing up in the world. What do you want to change? What do you want to iterate? And anything you want, you could go in there, Yuri, and tell it, say, uh please define what I mean by Web3, and here's what I mean. And you write that out, and boom, it goes into the genie brain. And the more you iterate in it, the more, the smarter it becomes about your brand, and the faster it comes in delivering you the strategy and the content based on your brand brain you're building here. The other thing that you just identified here, too, is we have learned after running a couple hundred brands through the genie that it number one validates what you're already doing well. It reveals gaps. In this case, you're saying, you know, maybe I need to really define what I mean by Web3. So it identifies gaps that you can easily fix to make your story even more powerful. And it even inspires you with new ways to think about your stories. So that's audience number one. We won't go through audience two and three. But two is marketing professionals. Audience number three is innovation-focused executives. But since we're limited time here, we won't talk about their emotional triggers. What I want to do next is jump to the ABT statement that the genie wrote on your behalf, following my ABT framework for your number one audience. And now that all of you viewers and listeners know how to structure an ABT, you're going to hear it here. And so it reads as a CEO or CMO leading a traditional business, you want to leverage Web3 opportunities for competitive advantage. And you understand that staying ahead means embracing emerging technologies before they become mainstream necessities. That's our statement of agreement. All we want them to do is nod yes. You understand who I am and appreciate what I want and why that's important to me. Now let's introduce the problem. But you feel overwhelmed and uncertain because Web3 appears complex and risky, with most resources either too technical or too theoretical for practical business application. Oh my gosh, that's the problem that you are here to help solve for them. Let's go to our therefore statement of consequence, your call to action. Therefore, you can confidently navigate Web3 transformation and achieve measurable business growth with Yorry Bissat Bellis. Sorry about that. I blew your last name. Proven assessment first methodology that translates emerging technologies into practical marketing strategies. And then the Genie in Italics will give you just a quick little sentence on what it was thinking. And it says, here about you. This ABT positions traditional leaders as heroes, seeking competitive advantage while acknowledging their legitimate concerns about complexity and risk. All right, I'll take a breath there. How's that sit with you?

Joeri Billast: 22:10

Yeah, it's actually sounds right. And actually, what you said with it therefore when you talk about marketing and emerging technologies, that's actually the sweet spot that I'm working on, right? Where those two come together. And I just need, you know, to fine-tune a bit about Web3. And people, when I meet people, you know, in a network event, that's how I explain a Web3. Now, depending on what their background is, I might, you know, go away in the direction of blockchain or in AI, or but it's it's it's the umbrella term because I'm not a technical guy, but I'm the guy that sees the solutions and make it and makes it work and and in an understandable language for a CU or for a CMO. Yeah. So uh really helpful apart.

Park Howell: 22:56

So again, as you like go in and say, hey, let's define what I mean by Web3, and then it will sprickle that definition throughout and dial in everything that much more. But it writes these ABTs in the framework and the way I have found it to be most successful, and it does it automatically for you. So you actually learn the process as you go. It's not like you're just handing off your agency to the story cycle genie and the AI that helps drive it, but it's teaching you and showing you these frameworks in process so that you can do use them on and offline with and without AI to make your writing better, to make your storytelling better, and certainly to make your brand story really, really vibrant and powerful. So it writes ABTs for each of your other two audiences. We won't talk about them here just because of the given time. But then then the next thing it does, it will write a position statement for you, your unique position in the market as it understands it from not only what it reviewed about your website and other marketing content, but the input it's given you, you've given it when looking at your number one audiences or your top three audiences, their emotional triggers and their ABT statements. And it came up with this for you. This is the only Web3 marketing strategist who transforms traditional business businesses into future ready market leaders through practical assessment first methodology that eliminates overwhelm and delivers measurable competitiveness.

Joeri Billast: 24:35

Sounds great, actually. Yeah.

Park Howell: 24:37

As a core business, yeah, position statement. If you boil it all down into one sentence, does that sound like what you do in the marketplace?

Joeri Billast: 24:46

I like the the word future ready too, because we want to be, you know, future ready. There is a traditional marketers and they, you know, traditional CEOs, and they see a lot. The world is going so fast, you know, with AI, it's it's crazy. They are you know, they are a bit scared of all these changes, and now I show them how they can stand out when it comes to their marketing, to the if they want to grow their business, what they can do, how more AI can assist them, you know, not replace them, but assist them in their business with their marketing, and and this based on, you know, a bit like you do too, uh kind of an assessment to see where are the gaps, where can AI assist you, and where can we optimize what we are doing with AI. Yeah.

Park Howell: 25:33

Absolutely. And is that a term you have used before, the future ready market leaders?

Joeri Billast: 25:41

Actually, in my book, uh, you will see it a few times. Future ready, like the future CMO could also mean like future ready CMO of modern CMOs. I had a discussion actually with my proofreaders about that. About the the right terms to use. Future ready sounds uh sounds good because that's actually what it is. And the future CMO, it's a great title. It's actually based on my keynote about the CMO of the future, which is actually what people should be doing. And uh yeah, I would think that future eddy doesn't want to be future edit parks. Yeah.

Park Howell: 26:19

Well, that's good because it picked up on that when it then wrote your unique value proposition. So again, the genie is bringing in all this knowledge about your brand from your audiences to their emotional triggers to their ABT statements to the position statement. It's all systematic in how it builds your brand narrative based on my 10-step story cycle system that I wrote about in brand bewitchery. And it arrived at your unique value proposition as future-ready marketing transformation without the overwhelm. Right.

Joeri Billast: 26:52

Sounds sounds really good to work on that and to implement, you know, because it's good that they already have this website. I did the thinking, I did the book, writing a book also helps, you know, to make sense of stuff. This was actually also a question that I had, Park. Those those you know, leaders you work with around storytelling, are they also going through a, I would say, a personal transformation themselves while embracing, you know, the storytelling approach?

Park Howell: 27:23

Without a doubt, when when any of us in business go through a major change or we're leveling ourselves up by getting educated about doing something or other, it totally impacts our personal lives and those in it. Storytelling does too, because when I teach them, I see not only the transformation in business, but I get emails of how people have used my approaches, especially the and but therefore, for just their own personal development, their own personal influence development and persuasive development. In fact, one gal, Laura Lowell, Lauren Lowell, who is an accounting executive at a digital agency called Digitas here in Arizona, she used the ABT on her father to get him to buy tickets for the second World Series game last year between the New York Yankees and the LA Dodgers. And she said she tried to get him to buy those tickets in an earlier email, and it was crickets. I was there teaching their agency how to use the ABT. She used it on her dad, and within three hours, he bought tickets and they ended up at that game. One of my favorite ROIs of all of last year is Lauren Lowell being able to go to the World Series on her dad's dollar, basically. So, yeah, people use it not only in profession, but in personal lives. And as you grow as a more confident, compelling storyteller, then your influence, your persuasion, and even your respect goes up in the room because you're not wasting people's time. Even if you're at a cocktail party, you're not blah, you know, blathering on and on. You have succinct anecdotes and fun stories to tell that make you engaging and more of the life than the louse of the party, right? So you could use storytelling across every aspect of your life.

Joeri Billast: 29:17

Amazing. Well, you know, it's amazing also to listen to your stories here on the podcast. Um, Park. I always like to end around half an hour because then people are still hungry for more. And you could talk for hours. I know that. I could. So if people, you know, Park, they they want to they want to follow you, they want to know where they can find your books or they want to learn more about ABT. Where would you like me to send them?

Park Howell: 29:43

Sure. Come on over to businessofstory.com and in my resources tab there, I've got all kinds of free resources for you. And if you want to test the strength of your current brand story for free, just go to story.com. Cyclegenie.ai. There's a white button there on the homepage. It says get a free brand assessment. Click on that. No credit card required. Just put in your email and the URL of the brand that you want to test. And in under a minute, it's going to give you a grade from F minus to A plus and a 14-point storytelling assessment on what you're doing. It'll reveal some gaps so that you could clean up quickly. And it'll inspire you with new ways to think about your brand story. So do it. Test your the strength of your brand story for free and just go to storycyclegenie.ai.

Joeri Billast: 30:40

Amazing. And if people want to find your books or buy your books, where can they find them?

Park Howell: 30:46

Yeah. All you know, Amazon, find them there. Apple Books, they're there. Brand Bewitchery andor the Narrative Gym for Business. Brand Bewitchery takes you through the 10-step story cycle system. Great companion piece to the Story Cycle Genie. And then the Ann But Therefore is all covered in the narrative gym for business that I co-wrote with Dr. Randy Olson. 75-page guide. It's just a companion piece to help you really use and write powerful ABTs in your work.

Joeri Billast: 31:16

Amazing. Well, Park, it was really a pleasure to have you on the show. It was actually the second time, the first time you came when the podcast was quite new. You know, I was just starting out. And now you're back in season five. Thank you so much.

Park Howell: 31:30

Congratulations on your success. I know I've had my podcast for nine and a half years, and it's a lot of work. People, I don't know if they appreciate how much effort we all put into it. So I want to congratulate you on the success of your show and sticking with it because you are really doing a tremendous service to all of your viewers and listeners to help them really understand what Web3 is all about.

Joeri Billast: 31:55

Thank you so much again, Park. Guys, that is the podcast episode. Also, when I am a guest on Park's podcast, I will also put the link in the show notes. And I would say at the end of this podcast episode, as always, share this episode with you know people around you, friends, family, other entrepreneurs, other marketers. Because ABTs, like Park says, you can use it everywhere. So be sure to share the podcast episode. Be sure to follow the show if you are not yet a follower. If you haven't given me a review yet, these 5 stars will help me reach an even bigger audience. And of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.