This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, and Jarie Bolander, Entrepreneur, Author, and Marketing Strategist. In this episode, Jarie talks about how storytelling is important for achieving successful product sales, making or breaking even the greatest brands, and provides an in-depth analysis of successful companies that have mastered the art of storytelling. Jarie also offers up his secret to telling compelling stories crucial to scaling successful startups.
This episode features a conversation between Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks, and Jarie Bolander, Entrepreneur, Author, and Marketing Strategist.
Jarie is an engineer by training and an entrepreneur by nature with over 25 years of bringing innovative solutions to markets such as Bluetooth, USB, RFID, and Semiconductor DNA sequencing. Having launched six startups and published six books, he offers a unique perspective on the power of storytelling for businesses and why the best story trumps the best technology.
In this episode, Jarie talks about how storytelling is important for achieving successful product sales, making or breaking even the greatest brands, and provides an in-depth analysis of successful companies that have mastered the art of storytelling. Jarie also offers up his secret to telling compelling stories crucial to scaling successful startups.
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Guest Quote
“You want a clear, concise and compelling message story that anyone can tell. Not just the founder, not just the C level suite, but the customer service person, the engineer, because that's how it grows. They're gonna tell their friends and they're gonna tell their friends, right? The easier it is to reproduce, the more it'll spread. The more complicated and it'll die on the vine. And this is what you see in a lot of technical startups.” - Jarie Bolander
Episode Timestamps
(02:22) Jarie’s current role
(04:11) His background in tech
(06:50) Overcoming infliction points in life
(13:37) Examples of excellent storytelling
(18:55) Distribution channels and tools for stories
(23:43) Describing the story funnel
(29:42) How to tell a good story
(43:46) Complex brand stories
(45:42) Advice for scaling startups through storytelling
Links
Phil Dillard: Hello and welcome to Thruline to the Fourth Sector, where we're exploring fourth sector capitalism and impact investing as an invitation to innovation and changing the world. I'm your host, Phil Dillard, Founder of Thruline Networks. This episode features a conversation with Jarie Bolander, entrepreneur, author, and marketing strategist.
Jarie is an engineer by training and an entrepreneur by nature. With over 25 years of bringing innovative solutions to the market, having launched six startups and published six books, he offers a unique perspective on the power of storytelling for businesses, and why the best story trumps the best technology.
In this episode, Jarie talks about how telling compelling stories is crucial to scaling a successful startup and how it can make or break even the greatest brands. To learn more about Jarie's work, visit thestoryfunnel.co. And to learn more about our work at Thruline Networks, visit thruline dot com. You can find links for both companies in the show notes. Now sit back and enjoy this conversation with Jarie Bolander, entrepreneur, author, and marketing strategist.
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Thruline to the Fourth Sector. I'm your host, Phil Dillard, here with an amazing guest today, Jarie Bolander. How you doing, Jarie?
[00:01:33] Jarie Bolander: Phil, as I love to say, how you doing today, sa?
[00:01:38] Phil Dillard: I'm just amazing. If anybody gets that joke without talking to us, in extra special prizes. Yeah. You win
[00:01:45] Jarie Bolander: the award for knowing cultural references at an excerpt .
[00:01:49] Phil Dillard: That's right, Especially if you're a Gen Z or a young. Yeah,
[00:01:52] Jarie Bolander: if you get that reference, then you're at a
[00:01:53] Phil Dillard: whole other level.
If you could tell what I've got inside this magic envelope, ,
[00:01:59] Jarie Bolander: you would really know. You'll know. And so, yeah, please, please, uh, let us know if you get the joke. So
[00:02:04] Phil Dillard: yeah, definitely that would be a wonderful, in the top of the show notes. Otherwise they'd be like, What are you guys laughing about? But it's okay.
You like to get started, kind of warm on these shows and it's great to, great to have you here. Um, And a long time coming. Yeah. So you have done a lot of things in your career. You've been an entrepreneur, an author, uh, just doing some amazing things. How do you describe you, uh, what you do now and your reason for being on the planet?
Wow,
[00:02:31] Jarie Bolander: that's a great way to start off. Stories to me are the most powerful thing in the. Weapons of mass destruction of nothing on a good story, right? So I like to say that I exist on this planet to help organizations tell better stories because most organizations tell really awful stories or. They have such a muddled story that they really can't like solidify their place in the world and kind of gather people around them in order [00:03:00] to do the great work that they want to do.
I've sort of now dedicated my life to understanding story, helping organizations tell better stories, specifically tech startups because they are the worst. , like a hundred percent the worst at it, most of them. I'm a techy guy too, so I get why they're bad. Uh, Yeah, that's sort of the thing that I'm really excited about because I think.
Not only does it have a huge place in the world to pull people's ideas, their, their motivations. They're sort of like what other people are good at. But it's in our dna. I mean, we've been telling stories around campfires for thousands upon thousands upon tens of thousands of years. I mean, Phil, you and I are sitting here today on Zoom talking to each other because our a.
Told the best story, ,
[00:03:56] Phil Dillard: they told the best stories of the storytellers in the tribe and thus they [00:04:00] survived. They excelled and survived. Yeah. Okay. I mean, cuz you're telling stories about things all the time. I guess, you know, I could relate that to the negotiating background. You can relate that to business development and sales.
Can you share before we get into story, a little bit about your tech background with, so that people who are these tech entrepreneurs who are listening to show can uh, relate a little bit to.
[00:04:23] Jarie Bolander: Yeah, yeah, sure. So I'm a 25 plus year entrepreneur. Been at six startups. I went to school for electrical engineering.
My specialty was semiconductor physics. So I'm a hardcore hardware, hardcore hardware nerd. I've got over 10 patents. I've invented all sorts of wacky stuff, like beyond wacky. Some of it I can't even talk about it. So wacky and or you know, that shall not be named. Yeah, I originally started out as an engineer and, and really loved technology, was at a lot of semiconductor companies, was at a Bluetooth company, R [00:05:00] F I D company, DNA sequencing company, software as a service, i o t, digital health, like all this wacky stuff.
And so I'm intimately familiar with how technology works. That's why I can talk about it, right? I mean, that's part of the reason, that's my secret sauce, right? Some founder will be like, Whoa, we have this great SaaS, blah, blah, blah, ai blah, blah, blah, machine learning, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, Oh, well that's cool.
Yeah, I was doing that 20 years ago. Well, what, what, what? Like, yeah, I worked on one of the first neural network chips. Almost 25 years ago. So I'm like, Yeah, this stuff's no brainer. Easy, easy peasy, lemon squeezy, but so what's up? What's special about you? Yeah, they get a little shell shocked cuz I, you know, you could kind of tell I'm kind of pulling their leg bit facet, you know, like poking the tiger, right?
It's to prove that look. Yeah, that's. But in order to really get this thing out in the world, right, you gotta talk about it in a way that, in a language that people can [00:06:00] understand, like the great living color, um, band you're making
[00:06:02] Phil Dillard: another Gen
[00:06:03] Jarie Bolander: X bracket, ,
[00:06:05] Phil Dillard: these are these tricks. I don't even know what you're talking about, but good thing I have an older brother and
[00:06:09] Jarie Bolander: parents.
Yeah, I'll drop a lot of these. I, So what's interesting is, so since I'm Gen X right, I've got this attitude. You know, and I'm being facetious when I say this, I hate boomers and I hate millennials. Like we're just in the sit in the between, right. I think it's sort of up to us to like solve all the morass.
Now it's like, oh great. Drop it in our lap. Right? The slacker, dazed in confused generation. So, but yeah, the engineering stuff was just awesome. Still ignored . Exactly. Still, still, Yeah, exactly right. What what was really cool about this engineering journey is, and the startup journey in particular, is I just loved creating.
And writing and talking about technology is just another form of creation and it's just been a great journey and it's just fascinating cuz the reason I do this is because of a great story, right? I, I met a [00:07:00] girl, and we fell in love. We got married and a little bit over a year after we got married, she got leukemia.
And at the time I was at a digital health startup doing, you know, I ot, internet of things, Bluetooth, low energy beacons and stuff. When she got sick, it's like we had to make a decision as a family, like what do we do? Um, and it turns out that she actually had a PR marketing firm, which is what I run today, J S Y P R Marketing.
Mm-hmm. . And so she's like, Well, buck up buttercup. You're gonna be a PR maven whether you like it or not, . I mean, she said it in a little bit better way than that. It was in a loving. Um, so stopped doing my startup, started doing PR, marketing and storytelling, and 15 months later she died,
[00:07:49] Phil Dillard: which is, uh, unfortunate and always sad to hear, and not, not how you want the story to end, but you've learned and, and built so much because of that.
And through that, do you care to share a little bit [00:08:00] about that?
[00:08:00] Jarie Bolander: Yeah. Yeah. So it's a very good point, right? When there're these inflection points in life when you sit down and you're like, What the hell am I doing? , literally the day she died, sat down and said, What the hell am I gonna do with the rest of my life?
Mm-hmm. . And that may seem like, Well, why would you think of that? Well, that's, which is a valid point. Of course. I was very sad. I was completely shell shocked. I mean, I had no idea what the hell was going on. The whole world was like, when you open your eyes under the sea and you just, things just burn and it's all blurry and you're like gasping for breath and it, you just like have no idea what's going on.
But I, I sat there and like really said, like, What the heck am I gonna do with the rest of my life? Like, you know, this is a really traumatic thing, right? So, yeah, that sort of led me down the path of, well, you know what Jane taught me, Her name was Jane. What Jane taught me about pr, marketing and [00:09:00] storytelling.
I was getting really good at, and it was something that was a lot more scalable than the engineering stuff I would do, and there was a lot of demand for it, and it still is a lot of demand. In fact, that demand is only accelerating for good stories, especially when you look at all of the stuff going on with artificial intelligence and machine learning and things generating your copy for you and all these things that are like, Oh, these great tools that are gonna kind of push us towards.
Kind of automating the drudgery of what I do. And it was just this kind of profound moment in life. It's like when they talk about a crossroads. Mm-hmm. the fork in the road. It's like this is a pretty big fork. Right? And so I decided with some soul searching, I said, You know what? I'm gonna dedicate the rest of my life to helping people tell better stories.
And I'm gonna do that not only to remember Jane, but I can't think of one thing that I know how to do that's as powerful. As that, and then I just took me a [00:10:00] while to kind of get on the right track, you know, as you can imagine with the trauma and grief and sorrow of that. But what was beautiful is that I met another girl.
Woman. Mm-hmm. , you gotta say girl, cuz that just sounds better. . Sure. You
[00:10:13] Phil Dillard: know, she's a woman. Every woman likes to be a pretty girl. I think I,
[00:10:17] Jarie Bolander: well, yeah, I think so. She's a pretty girl. Yeah. So I met. Beautiful, smart, funny, intelligent woman right after Jane died. That was just this phenomenal force of good and kindness and loving, and helped me a lot realize that there was life after being, you know, I was a widower at 46 like that.
I don't, a lot of people can say that, right? And that was also a defining moment because one of the things that, in one of the things that I'd always talked. With relationships and with Jane in particular is how much of a tragedy and a waste would it be if I went down the path I had been on and that path was filled with [00:11:00] alcohol and.
you know, smoking too much pot, right? I mean, it was waste of my life because of the sorrow, right? Mm-hmm. , because you find, like in these transitional periods in life, you're like, Well, boy, life's tough. This sucks , I don't wanna do this. Right? Like, what's the point? And instead of, you know, falling back, you sort of fall forward.
So that's what I found. And a lot of that had to do with Minerva, who's, who's now my fiance, which is awesome. And understanding. There's a purpose for your life. We all have a gift. This gift is a very important gift for us to share. And thankfully, I found the gift. I mean, had to go through tragedy to find it, but that focused the mine pretty well.
So that is sort of the way, now I live my life. Like every day is a gift. Yeah. How can I help people?
[00:11:53] Phil Dillard: Well, I mean, thanks for sharing that. There's a whole lot of, whole lot of detail in that and of, I think a couple really important [00:12:00] points for people listening to this, right? I mean, I think the first one that comes to mind is you never know what's really gonna happen.
And that I'm sure a lot of people over the past thinking, reflecting on the past 18 months. I mean, we're shooting this August 10th, 2021, uh, over the past 18 months, a lot of. Have dealt with unexpected trauma and grief and challenges, making them think about the, the forks in the road. I've had a number of conversations with people running companies, people looking for jobs, people doing their career transition, all those sorts of folks who are at a certain crossroads.
Now, it may not be as unexpected and painful and, and and tragic as, as a loss of Jane, but I think people can at least have a empathy with that. And then the thought of thinking about. How do you drive that to what you do? And I find that people who have a passion, who have a, a mission behind what they do and a real reason.
If you found your why, uh, I lost Simon Sinek, right? Mm-hmm. , uh, or even Victor Frankel, Your man's search for meaning to complete that thing [00:13:00] for which he or she was really believe that they're here to do. Right. We exist to kind of. But there are, these organizations rely, Networks exist to try and chart a path for people from where they are to where they want to go.
And if they have it, figured it out, help them figure it out. Help them guide their way along. So that whole journey that you've experienced to getting to this point where you're like, I have this amazing thing to bring to the world. You've gone through that path and you can reach back and guide people through it, which is awesome.
And that's the reason now I am tempted to, I wanna, I wanna tease people a little bit to wait and see a little bit what this thing is about to ask a question about. Storytelling. Mm. And ask, can you think of a really great story, whether in marketing or pr or tech or otherwise that you think is an example of an excellent.
An excellent piece of storytelling.
[00:13:50] Jarie Bolander: Wow. Put me on the spot, .
[00:13:52] Phil Dillard: I can tell you about what I, I I can, I can give you
[00:13:55] Jarie Bolander: some stories. Oh, no, I've got some. I've got some. No, no. This is why I like you so much, Phil. You're [00:14:00] pushing me. You're pushing my comfort zone a little bit. Well, you know, first and foremost, let's just talk about stories in general.
So great brands tell great stories. It doesn't even matter what the real product is. Right. As long as they can tell a good story around that. And there's been time and time again where actually an inferior product one, right. You know, Beta Max first VHS is the, you know, the Gen Xer equivalent of everyone knows why.
Beta was better, but VHS beat it out. No one knows why, which Google that if you want. Right? DVD
[00:14:33] Phil Dillard: versus Blueray if you still what? DVD
[00:14:35] Jarie Bolander: versus blueray. Right? MP3 versus, you know, And now look at the story about vinyl. If we pull that thread, Vinyl is actually one of the best stories of nostalgia and a resurrection of a format and a feeling.
Defies all logic. Mm-hmm. , you know, all my buddies that love like rec spinning records are like, Well, you know, man, you [00:15:00] can just like feel the sound more like that digital stuff is just like not as deep. And I'm like, really? Like, are you insane? Yeah, they are insane because why? Vinyl is such a cool nostalgia thing.
And the story behind vinyl is it's like, this is what it is. Like the musician has put their heart and soul into the vinyl. It's etched in the record, right? Mm-hmm. , it's total bullshit that it's more fidelity, High fidelity. Yeah. That's bull. That's total malarky. It doesn't matter. Right? And you see there's a huge resurgence of vinyl as an example.
Another great, uh, That I use pretty much daily is Canva. I don't know if you know what Canva is, but Sure. Yeah.
[00:15:47] Phil Dillard: You know, my team
[00:15:48] Jarie Bolander: uses Canva. Yeah, right. One of the biggest challenges with graphic design is that it is really hard to do well, but like you and me, [00:16:00] and your team. We don't have to be designers to build like little social media things or little slides or whatever.
Like we need to be able to do some design things so we can kind of play around. Right. Enter Canva. and it's just explodes because huge need, huge untapped story of how people want to create. Mm-hmm. . The same with like, Unsplash is another good one. Mm-hmm. , it's like, gosh, I gotta, you know, they're now bought by, uh, Getty Images, right?
Mm-hmm. . But another good story is like, well, I just want to create cool things on the internet. I need an image. Oh, you mean I gotta pay for it? Like, ugh, I wonder if someone wanna do this. It turns out they do because why? Hey, I'm a hobbyist. I just want to do cool things with photos, right? Mm-hmm. .
[00:16:50] Phil Dillard: Um, and you, and you get past all the, the, the trickiness of, Okay, is this creative commons?
Do I have the license to do this? Which, that, the other, to the point of the story is, [00:17:00] you know, tell me I can be a designer without being a designer. That's my, that's my TikTok reference, right? Yeah. Do do it easy, Do it simple. We make it easier for you to do what you gotta do and get on with your life. And it resonates a lot with people when they go, I can breathe these knowing that that's, And safe.
And they thought through all the bits
[00:17:21] Jarie Bolander: and pieces. Yeah. And also, you know, people may think that that would cut into actual professional designers being, Oh, well now all these people are just gonna do it and not pay anyone. Well, turns out that's not the case. Mm-hmm. . Cause the more. Stuff on the internet.
The more photos, the more design out there, people are just gonna want more of it. And then now they know a little bit, right? And now they're like, Well, I need something better. It's kind of like free content on the internet, right? Mm-hmm. like, Oh, you know, you have a blog. I have a blog. You're doing this podcast.
In one sense, the story of all this is we need to get the word out right? You need to get the word out about throughline and for [00:18:00] sector capitalism. For sector, whatever you're gonna call it . Yeah. For sector capitalism, right? For sector capitalism. How you get the word out about what I do, we come together and we talk about it because this content sort of lives on and we're trying to tell a story about why it's important.
You as listeners should be listening and then maybe like look at some of the stuff we do. So, Yeah.
[00:18:24] Phil Dillard: No, that's an interesting point though. It makes me. Does making storytelling easier, make storytelling better, make better stories that more people demand? Or does it lower the bar for storytelling? Like in the visual saves base?
Covid made a low grade production. A lot more of the norm. It was great to see the news man on television doing the news and with his, you know, bookshelf in the background and then his kid kind of popping through where the cat coming over Right. And throwing something off. It made people a little more personal.
Yeah. So it changed what the bar was for the standard [00:19:00] and opened a little bit of creativity. How does something like that work for, um, for storytelling with if you have better tools or better distribution channels?
[00:19:09] Jarie Bolander: I mean, yeah, that's, that's a very astute question because, you know, we're all storytellers.
I mean, every single one of us has told a funny joke, a funny story, to someone that loved us or not loved us, or we convinced our girlfriend or our honey, because we're of our wedding charm, right? Mm-hmm. . But we all tell stories. We tell stories to. The next generation tells the story of this generation.
Mm-hmm. in our dna. That's how we learn. Like the best instructors tell stories and then craft the knowledge around there. Right? Sure. So I tell I need stock knock jokes. Exactly. See, it's me going, I love it. Right. And of course, you know, Minerva's daughter always wants me to tell her stories about when I was a kid and all the funny, hilarious things we did when, you know, we were latchkey kids, walk roaming the streets until the proverbial lights went on and it was time to go get.
Hungry [00:20:00] man. Swans and TV, dinner, . Cause that's how we, She's like, What? No play dates. We, we just roam the universe. Right To your point, which I think is a really, really powerful one, you gave the analogy of, okay, Canva is to graphic design right now look at Grammarly as to content, like right when you get past the kind of mechanics of it and can really be free to create your expression.
Cuz a lot of times when people look at the blank page, they freak. , Right? I hear people all the time like, Hey Jar, you wrote six books. Boy, that's really hard. I'm like, It's not hard. You just have to sit down and do it, right? Mm-hmm. . Well, the problem is, is the barrier. It's the huge, massive barrier to like, how do I create, and this is especially hard when it comes to writing works.
For whatever reason, people have writers block, Right? Which I never get because it's not really, you're not really blocked, You're. Don't have the tools to start. Right, because anyone can write anything and you could actually, if you, [00:21:00] if you wrote 250 words a day, you would be pretty much onto a book by the end of the year.
Easily. Easily. Right. I think that as you start to put the tools in place to lower the barrier for the actual creative process, like creating stories, like that's why I love flash fiction. That's why I like haiku. That's why I like Twitter. Like people are like, Oh, well, like poo poo. It's not really.
Literature, it's like, well, no, there's some people that do some really creative things. Mm-hmm. on the constraint of X, and I think creativity is best when it's constrained, but yet getting started with creativity is always the hardest part. Like when I wrote The Entrepreneur Ethos, the book that my podcast is based on, kind of hard from like, what am I gonna write about?
right? Mm-hmm. , right? This is a huge thing, right? Like you with the through line or with forced sector capitalism. How do I start? Mm-hmm. . So I think having the knowledge of story structure, that all stories have a beginning, a middle, and an [00:22:00] end. That there are certain, like patterns to a story. There's certain persuasion, you know, Um, Aristotle had the ethos, the logos, and the pathos.
If you're gonna try to convince someone or influence someone, you gotta have those three things, right? The patho is emotion, the logos is the, the logical explanation and the ethos is your credibility. If you know these things, one sense, you're constrained cuz it has to fit the mold. But the other sense, you're free.
Because now you just gotta think about what to write the rest of it's like, Oh, I need this, I need this, I need that. And that's why frameworks and all these things, like what you're trying to do with throughline. Mm-hmm. , it's a beautiful thing. You're like, Oh, force sector capitalism is important. There's a lot of barriers to it because it's new and there's these new ideas.
We need to lay the foundation to get people productive as fast as we can. Mm-hmm. so that they can get onto the creative part. Creating things we can see if they work. Because entrepreneurs, we all know this, [00:23:00] sometimes it's just random luck, right? So
[00:23:02] Phil Dillard: Right. You got, you can't sit there and say, I wanna write a book.
I wanna write a book. I wanna solve this problem. I wanna, I wanna make a difference. And watch from your window and like, well, sooner or later, cuz if you stand there on the edge of the pool, you're, you're never gonna get wet. Right? You gotta jump. Right. And the phase change is uncomfortable from going from the, from outside in the water.
But you know, you want to be in the pool and you don't wanna be swimming. And once you're swimming you're like, Ah, it's okay. Right. You know? And that to me feels like the same sort of thing for the writing, right? Mm-hmm. , if you get the first couple of thoughts, you get that first couple of pieces out there, then you know like, Okay, I have an idea of what I wanna say, but how do I put all.
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And now back to the interview.
But you've built something that helps people kind of put all that, put all that together. Would you, how do you describe the story funnel? How do you
[00:24:53] Jarie Bolander: describe this product? Yeah, so the story funnel is all about nailing your next launch without blowing [00:25:00] budgets. Creeping features and annoying customers by getting your story straight.
And those three things, blowing budgets, annoying customers, and creeping features are the three top things I hear from every tech startup about how they can't launch a product. And all three of those things are. That last part, the story has not been straightened out, and this is a strategic thing. This is why I like to sometimes say I do strategic communications because everyone in the startup world knows about tactics and growth hacking and product market fit and bigger, better, better, faster, cheaper, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Like that's all tactical. Mm-hmm. , you know, even Lean Startup, which is a great like nugget of an idea. It's based on tactics. Like it goes down to the tactical. The problem I've found is that, well, what do you feed into this tactical engine? Like what do you feed the beast with? You know, when I talk to tech [00:26:00] people, they're like, Uh, well, what do you mean?
I go, Well, if you want to grow a company, if you wanna launch products, if you want to get out of the trough, Of sorrow or the valley of despair as Gardner puts in its hype curve, how you do that is you have to have product market fit and go to market with the thing that's gonna go viral, the thing that is scalable, not your idea of what that is.
And a lot of that has to do with how you're gonna talk about what you've built.
[00:26:28] Phil Dillard: What I started thinking about was the technology entrepreneur who could tell you all the different features of their product or service. Oh, it can do this and it can do this, and it can do this. And they'll go on and on and on, and I'm like, I heard what it can do.
I. I don't understand what it does do or why I should care. Like tell me what problem you're solving or like, you know, I go to value proposition canvas, right? Tell me the job to be done and the pains and gains. And if you're, if you can't really tell me that, then you don't know the [00:27:00] customer, you don't know me, and then you can't build the thing that actually delivers the pain and relief for the gain creation.
So going to Lean Startup, I put it in a tactical frame, and you put this in a, in a strategic frame. What is it? Telling the story, right. That enables people to avoid those three things you talked about. Cause I get it, but I don't get it. I go, Well, wait a minute. They're very smart people. They built this amazing thing.
What is it about the story that brings it all together?
[00:27:26] Jarie Bolander: Before we get to that, you touched on a perfect way to explain it. Mm-hmm. , it's like, why do I care? Mm-hmm. , because everyone's attention, right, is distracted and so you don't have very much time in order to get someone to say, Oh, tell me. But yeah, this is why I care, right?
Mm-hmm. . Um, and a lot of times when you're, when you're a tech founder and you're building your technology and you know, look, you think you've got product market fit. You know, the reason why you're doing this is you've got this need. You're scratching your own itch. All the buzzword bingo you can think of, right?[00:28:00]
Typically, and it's very rare that this ever happens. The first shot out, what you first put out is not what you end up with. Sure. Partly because you have no idea really what the market wants or needs. Basically, you're kind of shooting in the dark and it's incredibly difficult to align your entire team to row the same way to give a boat, right?
Mm-hmm. The story that you tell, and this is also part of your culture. This is a part of your strategic vision. You can drive this through your mission, vision, and values and all that sort of things. Everyone's like, Well, what's my brand about? Well, first and foremost, your brand is about the story you tell your people there, you're working for, and your customers or your employees, or your teammates or whatever.
If you do not tell a consistent story throughout all of those stakeholders, then everything gets muddled. Right, And so the way I always think about it is you may build the best SAS [00:29:00] platform for. Grants for the government, like open grants. Mm-hmm. , you know? Right. And that's great. And technically it may work, but what need is it really filling?
Mm-hmm. , what's in your heart? Why do people care? Like why would they say, Tell me more. If you can't explain that and have your team explain it to someone else quickly, then you don't really understand it. And that's where the story is so powerful. You want a clear, concise, and compelling message story.
That anyone can tell, not just the founder, not just the C level suite, but the customer service person, the engineer, because that's how it grows. Cuz they're gonna tell their friends and they're gonna tell their friends. Right. The easier it is to reproduce. , the more it'll spread. Mm-hmm. , the more complicated it'll die on the vine.
And this is what you see in a lot, in a lot of technical startups, right? Mm-hmm. , tech, tech startups, you look at their webpage, you're like, What do they do? Like I see all these [00:30:00] great features, but why do I care? What problem am I trying to solve? What's the pain that they're solving? Right? And that has to be Sesame Street Simple.
Like you, you. Spend 20 minutes, heck you got maybe 10 seconds to explain it to someone, right? Mm-hmm. . So I always like to say, if you can explain it to your grandmother and she understands it, then you're on the right track. Mm-hmm. . Sure. A
[00:30:23] Phil Dillard: grandma test is a, a grandma test really is a really good one right now.
Um, Through lean, we would talk about build measure learned cycles to, we would talk about customer development and refining the value proposition and the value proposition canvas to iterate towards someone and, and really get it, get it there, or at least get an understanding of this is the market, this is what they need, and all the underpinnings of a great product or service if you're telling the story.
How do you do that? How do you develop the understanding of what a good story is and the like, the right structure or cadence for telling a story? Cuz you said it's got a beginning and [00:31:00] middle and end. Um, but it's not as simple as I have a headache. I take Tylenol of the pain goes away. But maybe it is, but I think there's more to it.
[00:31:09] Jarie Bolander: If you can get it that simple, then you've got a billion dollar company . Cause look at how much money Tylenol makes. Right? Sure. Right. And and then that's a really, actually a very astute question because a lot of the things that I've seen when, even when it comes to some of the storytelling stuff, I mean like I'm not.
This super genius that's like, Oh, I created something from nothing. No. I pulled together all of these things that I've just been seeing as trends. Right? It's not a revelation that people love a good story. I mean, people love comedians cuz they tell good jokes. Jokes are just stories with a punchline. We love to go to the movies.
We love listening to music like cuz it moves us because it's hooking into our very guttural like primitive feelings about things. Right? Akin to the Lean Startup stuff where you've got like a cycle, Like the story funnel is what I like to call a growth [00:32:00] flywheel. And the reason why I say it's a growth flywheel and the reason why I talk about it is launching because as a startup, as a company, you are constantly launching things.
There's never a time, you're never gonna stop launching a new product and new feature, a bug. Like it's a constant struggle even to keep up. Right. So I think of it as a flywheel where you have to have feedback in the feedback loop. So for us, what we start off was this thing called the brand story guide.
And that just literally is like a style guide like you'd have for your logo. And it just fundamentally sets up what am I gonna talk about? Like, what am I gonna talk about with the prospect? What am I gonna talk about and, and nurture, you know, build up my customer base. And then what do I want an advocate to say about my brand, right?
Cause ultimately in the end, The advocate, the word of mouth is the most powerful marketing story you can tell. If, if you feel said jar, you need to go by, blah. I'm like, If I need [00:33:00] blah, I'm gonna take your recommendation because we trust each other. Right? You've built some goodwill. We always want to build advocates that can not only tell us the next thing to build, but also tell other friends, right?
And how you do that, um, traditionally in the startup world is through this thing called product market. The question is how do you measure product market fit? That's always the challenge, and we've actually come up with a, a way to survey existing customers to understand if you've got product market fit, as well as do some machine learning and some artificial intelligence to kind of understand sort of the trajectory that you're on.
Because this is an iterative process. This is not a one and done. This is an evolution of a company, a brand, a culture. Hopefully your story stays consistent throughout, but sometimes you gotta change your story. Sometimes stuff doesn't work. Sometimes you pivot, right? Like, mm-hmm , we all know this. The other powerful thing is, okay, now once you sort of know what customers think, you got your story straight.
Well, now you gotta tell your team [00:34:00] primarily like your development team, your marketing team, your customer service team, what to build and what processes to. So that's that part of, it's what's called product led growth and product led growth. A pretty, I wouldn't call it a new phenomenon, but it's very, you know, agile, lean startup ish, right?
Where product is really driving the growth as opposed to some ads on Facebook or whatever. Like, you know, people kind of bash back and forth marketing, PR stuff, but generally they're. Doing it in a different way, and that's product led growth. So we feed back in to the product led growth team, which for us is the whole team, Hey, this is what's working.
This is what you need to build, this is what you need to fix. This is like some processes to improve. It could be as simple as when we ship our product, we don't send out an email. We need to do that better. Or customer service needs to know that these are the top three problems people are running into and have answers for them, right?
So, This constant flywheel [00:35:00] just keeps spinning. And if you adjust your story, depending on, you know, who you're talking to and what stage of your story funnel, right? Are you looking at prospects? Are you looking at customers? Are you looking at advocates? Those are the sort of the macro, you know, Macros kind of stages as well as trying to tighten up the loop and get some guardrails in place to sort of know where you're at.
Because one of the other challenges and problems that I've seen, right, you got a smart dev team, they spend a couple years developing a product, I don't know, spend a couple million bucks or whatever. They launch and they're disappointed. It didn't go viral, or whatever. Mm-hmm. like, Oh, this is easy. It's like, No, no, no, it's not.
It's probably gonna take you as much time and money to market and sell it as it did to develop it. And
[00:35:48] Phil Dillard: you convey that message to people cuz it was something I was thinking about. Right. I'm thinking, okay, you're gonna work with these people. You've gotta first convey to them that you have something that they're missing.
Right? Yeah. Everybody thinks that they know strategy. [00:36:00] Everybody thinks that they know that they know. No marketing. So they find themselves struggling with it and they go, Okay, well maybe I need a little, learn a little more about marketing and branding and communications and strategy and things like that.
So then they're a little more open to working with you. I mean, how do you get people from this blue set of, I feel like I need a little help, or I wanna be smart, so I'm kind of get ahead of things to actually building the trust. Building the relationship to actually convey this message and deliver it to them so that you can work with them to get them to this other, other level.
It seems like a whole, a whole process in and of itself.
[00:36:35] Jarie Bolander: Yeah, it is. It sometimes can be challenging and it also depends on the attitudes of the founders and the team. Sometimes people get lucky and you know, they make such a great product that they kind of, it almost sells itself, quote unquote. Those are very rare, super rare, but sometimes you get lucky and you know, in the startup world, pr, marketing, even sales, early stage sales, Tech [00:37:00] founders don't understand any of that, and they're like, Well, show me the roi.
Show me the, you know, all the metrics and stuff, which we have in the story front, you know, trying to develop, But they're pretty mushy. Like I can't tell you as an example, what's the ROI on a public relations campaign, Right? It's hard to do it just in general, hard to do because it's hard problem, Right?
You're talking about. You know, doing things that could be hit and miss. I mean, that's part of the reason to create a framework and just kinda see where you're at. That's what we're, we're trying to do. So I say, okay, one, we set up guardrails to understand where you're at so that if there are things you can try and they don't work, we know.
The second thing is you just gotta look at history. Some of the best companies in the world took longer than the, you know, prevailing wisdom. Like, look at any big company, any company that you care about, it took way longer for them to go viral or to scale than it did. Probably even develop the product, right?
Yeah,
[00:37:59] Phil Dillard: sure. You know [00:38:00] what the, the most recent one that comes to mind for me is like it Zoom was like that, right? Yeah. I remember when Zoo was pretty new because I was talking with an early stage investor about another video conferencing software, and I was like, Okay, well, we're already using X. Why is this better?
And he brought up a couple things and I said, Oh, okay, great. And I've been using Zoom for years and then comes a pandemic, and now it's a, it's a household world. There's this brand new thing. I'm like, Well, no, not, not really. It's been a, it's been around for a while. And you know what? Interesting. I would say from my experience, they weren't telling an incredible story that made their growth take off, but they were delivering incredible value at the right place, at the right time where they could take advantage of the opportunity.
Do you see that the same way, or do you see some of the They did some fundamental story things right at this time. They, they did send to be the, the solution of choice.
[00:38:47] Jarie Bolander: Yeah, they did some great things to make that work. It does have to do with the story they told people, right? So you can also use story as part of your offering.
So why [00:39:00] did Zoom win? And not like Skype. Skype or WebEx or all of these other been around like go to meet, been around forever. Uber Conference is another one. Mm-hmm. , like, why didn't they win? What was it about? , and if you sort of look at where Zoom came from, Zoom was founded by some ex Cisco people. I don't remember the guy's name, but I know he came from Cisco and I think it was formed six, seven, maybe even eight years ago.
Mm-hmm. , right? Yeah. And so fundamentally, the story Zoom was telling by, generally its interaction by how you used it, is all those other video conference platforms, you know, video over IP, are all horrible and awful to use and cumbersome. We are simple. We'll prove it to you. Try it for free. It's a simple story, but they were a hundred percent right.
Even the Uber con, even the ones that were free, other ones that were free were not as good because they were cumbersome, hard to use. If you ever tried to [00:40:00] use WebEx or go to meeting, oh God, you know, it's horrible. Okay, yeah. This
[00:40:04] Phil Dillard: client do this thing, do this other thing. Sign up for this download that, upload
[00:40:08] Jarie Bolander: the other.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's horrible. Right? If you are a corporation that needs security on a note, like all those things, then those are the platform. You have to, you have to do that, right? Even Microsoft Teams has got a video thing. It's prob, you know, Google, um, Google Chat had a video thing too. Like they all these things.
Now zoom's a verb. I mean, like, you know, we're an A, like, we're gonna go, you know, we're gonna get on a zoom. Right? Like, Right, right. It's, it's like bandaids, you know, It's like aspirin, right? Yeah. Well the reason is, is the, they told a simple story and the everything around how they marketed, that was all about ease of use, give us a try.
And they just constantly, They did this product led growth strategy. They literally listened to the people. And so if you were to look at, probably one of the best examples of, you know, like what a kind of a [00:41:00] story funnel methodology would be is those guys. , they did not care about some fancy marketing thing.
They're just like, What do you need? What do you need? Like they constantly would feedback and you can see that now with what they're doing with every time you log in or they're like, Hey, come to a free, Like they're communicating ease of use. They're communicating so much value in their simplicity. You know, Even when they had the problem with Zoom bombing as an example, like I remember when the Zoom bombing happened.
People were up in arms. Oh, they're gonna crush. This is gonna completely crater zoom. I'm like, No way. No way. They did exactly what they should have. Oh, we're sorry. This is bad. We're gonna fix it. Here's how. Yep. And then they fixed it
[00:41:47] Phil Dillard: and they communicated along the way, and then had the ability to expand their offering to more and more folks because consumers were using Zoom and like, Ugh, why do I have to use this XYZ corporate?
The system is slowing me down. I'm working at home. Can't I [00:42:00] just use this already? I saw that a number of times. So that's a very interesting, very interesting
[00:42:05] Jarie Bolander: point. Yeah. So what's the big idea for Zoom? If you were to like look at the big idea, it's core idea, the thing that like drives their brand, what?
What do you think it would
[00:42:16] Phil Dillard: be? I would think it's a ubiquitous video conferencing for every. Anybody anywhere talks to somebody real time sees,
[00:42:25] Jarie Bolander: feels 'em. Yeah. It's just super simple video conferencing that it just works. Yeah. Yeah. And grandma can use it. I mean, how many times have you been on the phone with Grandma on Zoom During a pandemic, right?
Sure,
[00:42:38] Phil Dillard: sure.
[00:42:39] Jarie Bolander: Uh, you know, Or your parents or your kids, right?
[00:42:42] Phil Dillard: Yeah. I was just kind of connecting the dot. Same sort of thing happens with Expensify. What does Expensify do? Expensive reports that don't. That's their thing. Yeah. And I was like, Well, I don't know. First time CFO was like, Click, click, click. I was like, Oh wait.
Yeah, we're using this , you know? And he was like, [00:43:00] Exactly, why do I gotta go this? I was like, Take out your receipts. He's like, Okay. And I was like, Take out your iPhone. He's like, Take a picture, take a picture, take a picture. Hit that button. I was like, You're done. He's like, That's it. I was like, That's it.
He's like, I love you. This is right on. We go, Next thing
[00:43:13] Jarie Bolander: on. Good. Right? I mean, you know, Zero for accounting, right? Same. Canva for graphic design. Like you can see the themes of the stories within this, and this is why those brands are successful. They tell a great story about the one thing they do really well, and then once they do that one thing really well, then people trust them.
Right? And once someone trusts your brand, then you can offer them other things as long as it's not too far straight from the core, your core value of your brand, right? Sure. So, You know, another great example is this startup called RU Respond, which I think I've talked with you about. I love RU Respond.
This guy Zas, the ceo, and it's all about outreach, pr, outreach, media, outreach to get more stories, more links, like get on interview shows or whatever. [00:44:00] I love respond because they do something one thing really well, and their whole shtick. Build relationships, don't spam people. And I'm like, Yeah, I do this all day.
You know? Mm-hmm. . Cause I run a PR and marketing firm, so my job's to pitch people all day, like, why would I not want something that's gonna make this less spammy? That's the reason, that's what pieces people up all the time about. Right. How many, like, just think about it, how many. Spam cold emails you get that are just awful.
They don't even know who you are. They don't even put your first name . Right, right, right, right,
[00:44:35] Phil Dillard: right. Sure. Right. Yeah. I mean that's, that's a great one. That's a great one. It makes me think of how is this different for throughline networks? We're focusing on impact startups, right? Mm-hmm. , mission driven companies, we want to help become impact unicorns, right?
Who are sitting at the intersection of impacted financial returns, right? Mm-hmm. , how does it different for comp? Does it. For a company telling a story that might be a little more [00:45:00] complex than, you know, have a headache, take Tylenol, headache goes away. How does it differ? Is, does it differ, Um, or is it more or less important?
[00:45:08] Jarie Bolander: It doesn't differ. The story has to be clear, concise, and compelling no matter what. Mm-hmm. and, you know, impact investing or impact companies that are four sector companies, I wouldn't say they have a bigger burden. Because generally people buy because they, they find a need and fill it and they're solving a problem.
Mm-hmm. and more and more it's gonna be okay, how does this company being responsible for whatever, like, community environment, like, that's why coffee shops right are so popular. It's like, Oh, there's a local artisan. I feel good about supporting my local coffee shop or my local bar. Like, it's not a different story.
It's not more complex. , you still have to have a good story to tell and it can't just be centered around, Oh, I'm a B Corp, or I'm in, you know, I'm impactful. It's gotta be like I am filling a need for a community as an example, and I'm doing it responsibly. [00:46:00] Mm-hmm. . Right? I don't think it's any, I don't think it's any more complex.
I mean, in fact, Well, you know, actually you might be right since it might have a bigger arc of an evolution. I, Right. Since it's, This is a new thing. This is a new thing, right? You may have to have a little bit more story around it, but fundamentally, people buy products and services and support brands because they know, like, and trust them and they, they're bought into the.
[00:46:30] Phil Dillard: Sure. Okay. Uh, makes sense to me. So if people like say, Okay, I get it, Jar, I understand, I gotta tell a story. There's, I gotta be strategic, um, you know, um, I need to write , I need to get this out. How do, how do, how do I get started? Or if I, if I'm, if I'm just gonna go, Uncle, I really don't know. How do, how do I reach you?
Like, where would you recommend someone should start? How could they. Do this. If they're trying to do it on their own, we always wanna try and help people out with some free game. Um, Yeah. But if they're really to the point where they're like, I don't wanna screw this [00:47:00] up and I wanna get it right. How, what, what do you recommend for them to do
[00:47:04] Jarie Bolander: the story?
funnel.co has got a bunch of materials on this and we keep on updating it, so that's a good place to sort of understand, um, how, how this sort of stuff works. I also run the firm, you know, J S Y P R Marketing. That's js y p r.com. I think, you know, getting started with storytelling for your company, uh, is.
Can be very overwhelming just because a lot of people, that's not in their wheelhouse, right? I'll had to write an essay in college and I hate writing. Like, I hear this, I hate, just hate to write. But um, I think it really boils down to, you know, what you want to build and why you're doing it, what you think.
It really serves people because that's like the fundamental part of it. The people that say, Oh, I'm in it for the money. I want to exit via unicorn. . That's a very fleeting goal. That probably won't happen , like probability wise, right? Not gonna happen. You [00:48:00] gotta have a higher, higher goal. Higher good, higher.
Why? I would say look deep in your heart as to like, Well, why am I actually doing this? Is really the start of that could be as simple as like mine. Like look, I had this tragedy in my. , I had to come to some grips with my mortality in the rest of my life. Mm-hmm. and I decided that I need to help people tell better stories.
So that's what I'm gonna go do. And that drives me whether or not I get paid or not, because mm-hmm. , it's a higher mission. So I'd say, What's your higher, why your higher need, You know, like what you talked about before. And then, you know, read, you know, go, go look at brands you admire. And instead of like looking at their products and services, like what stories are they telling?
Like ones that you like the, What I always tell people is if you open their email every time it comes and you like read it, then that's probably a brand you should study or Sure. A newsletter [00:49:00] like I really love, you know what I mean? Like I love the hustle and trends like mm-hmm. , those newsletters are awesome.
Or CB Insights is another great one for these newsletters. Mm-hmm. Sure.
[00:49:10] Phil Dillard: Fine. Fine. And that's a really, that's a really good one. That's really good. I hadn't even really thought about it that way, but that's great cuz in lean we would refer to that as a value test. And one of the first value tests, I would say is like, will people give you their contact information?
Right? Will they give you their email or phone number so that you can actually reach out to them and follow up with your message? If so, the value that you conveyed them passes the first test in the discussion and then, , you would say, Okay, you pass that first. What's the next one? Right. When they open your email, will they read it?
Will they click and respond? Will they engage? Right. Or will they actually give you dollars for your product? A lot of times though, there needs to be a lot of time engagement before you're gonna get to an actual product engagement. Yeah. Or a purchase. So the, the time commitment from folks is a really significant thing, and if, and if that brand cuts through is a noise for you, you could say, Why?
[00:50:00] How do they do that? And then when you. How someone actually does it and how they convey that value to you. Then you're like, Wow, okay. That's really interesting. That's, that's a really, really, really good
[00:50:09] Jarie Bolander: one. I like that. Yeah. Just, just, you know, the brands that you admire, the brands that get you to take action, just analyze why, What is it about what they say?
[00:50:20] Phil Dillard: Because it's authentic to you and it helps you get clear about you and what works for you, and then how you can represent yourself by pulling a little bit of this and a little bit of that and a little bit of the other, and making your own secret sauce. I mean, to me that's the, that's the mission. I knew there was always this thing about science.
And there's always this thing about building and exploring and there's always thinking about like creating and connecting people together, but you know, didn't know how to put it all together. I described it to people as like putting a bunch of keys that fit into a lock. Into a lock, but not, it wouldn't turn.
So you got the right key and you moved it the right. Then you figured out by which ones didn't. Which one does work, then you [00:51:00] can open the lock and like, haha, I have found it, and now you're on to the next, next fe. To me, that's unlocking the thing around the story of, of the throughline of forced sector capitalism and mission driven entrepreneurship that we're trying to put out in the world.
But everybody who's saying, I wanna address this issue or that issue, or I want to, I have a vision of the future. I try and break it two ways. What pain are you trying to solve? Or what vision of the future do you have that you're trying to build? And once you have that, now you're, you're starting on your journey with your keys to unlock the bits and pieces of your business, of your story, of your, of your mission.
[00:51:34] Jarie Bolander: Yeah, it's a great way to put it. Unlocking each part of that cuz it's a journey, right? No, no one knows what the journey's gonna be until you get on the journey. And you know, I could tell you till I'm blue in the face, all these things, but until you experience it, have a little success, have a little failure, really like internalize it.
It doesn't mean anything. That's why I always encourage people to like just start doing stuff, you know? And it's important because [00:52:00] it's through the experimentation. I mean, that's why the framework's the way it is. It's an experiment. We're running experiments and you know, hopefully we're smart enough to tick the right ones,
[00:52:10] Phil Dillard: Right? And if we don't, we iterate a long, long time and we, and we. Over time, some learned faster, some learned slower. Some are lucky to start in the right place. Some are smart enough to start in the right place, but at least, you know, we get people moving in the right direction. So I'm really glad that we started this experiment that we stepped down this road and, and that you made the time to invest in, in, in us, and the, and the mission that we're trying to deliver and, and share your message with the world.
Um, I really appreciate you and I hope everybody else does too. We're out of time, but thanks for coming and we, we'll have to do this again sometimes down the road.
[00:52:44] Jarie Bolander: Yeah, it'd be great. Thanks for having me. Yeah.
[00:52:46] Phil Dillard: It's a pleasure to have you. Thanks everyone for joining and we'll see you next time on the next episode of Thruline to the fourth.
I see. Thank you for listening to this episode of Thruline to the Fourth Sector. I'm your host, Phil Dillard. If you enjoyed the show, please leave a rating and tell a friend. To learn more about the fourth sector economy, visit thrulinenetworks.com. That's T H R U L I N E networks.com. Thanks again, and we hope to have you with us in the next episode.