Categories: Articles

In The End, It's All About The Stories We Tell

Marketing is about telling great stories. Living a happy and successful life is about the stories we tell ourselves.

Sometimes, we forget how important a story can be. Sometimes we don’t think hard enough about the stories we constantly repeat in our minds. Almost all of the time, we forget that whatever story it is (the one that gets someone to buy something or the one that tells us we’re depressed) can be changed, reinvented into whatever it is that we want it to be.

The people who change their stories are the ones who usually overcome tremendous challenges. The brands that change their stories are the one who usually become unforgettable.

Chris Brogan (author of Social Media 101 and the co-author of the best-selling business book, Trust Agents, along with Julien Smith) passed me his copy of the book, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, by Donald Miller (you can see his video book review below) while we were in Salt Lake City together. The truth is that I have been falling behind in my book reading, but based on Brogan’s rave review, I dove right in. It is an incredible journey. I devoured the book in less than 24 hours. Miller is a very funny, poignant and spiritual person who deconstructs what makes a story (and the stories we tell ourselves) work or hold us back (note: the book is published by Thomas Nelson and does have some spiritual Christian content within it).

This is an amazing and important book for everyone in Marketing… because it’s the furthest thing from a Marketing book that you will ever read but 100% relevant to everything we do… everyday.

I sent an email over to Michael Hyatt (the CEO of Thomas Nelson) to let him know how much I enjoyed the book and how much it moved me to think differently about what it takes to tell a great story (I am connected to Michael through these Social Media channels), and he offered to give 10 copies of the book away to the Six Pixels of Separation community.

Here’s how you can win a free copy of the book, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years, by Donald Miller:

Thomas Nelson has asked that you leave a comment below about the importance of story in your life and then post a link back to this Blog post via your own Blog or on Twitter or Facebook. I’m going to ask a couple of my fellow team members at Twist Image to act as judges (and they’ll pick the 10 best ones) [full disclosure: I am being very lazy here. Chris Brogan ran a similar contest, so I am just stealing the same question he asked because I thought it was perfect – thanks Brogan!].

So, what is the importance of story in your life?

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.