Order of Man - DONALD MILLER ｜ Build Influence and Authority Through Telling Stories

00:00:00.340 Stories are what make the world go around, from selling a product, service, or podcast like this one, to dating, raising kids, and building friendships.

00:00:09.060 The stories you tell yourself and others are either going to unlock doors and open up opportunities, or close those doors before you even have the chance to see them there.

00:00:18.540 Donald Miller is an expert storyteller and an expert helping other people articulate and share theirs.

00:00:24.360 Today we talk about why humans are so interested in storytelling, what foundational elements make a good story, the importance of what Donald calls a story loop to get others to buy into what you're sharing by making them part of that story.

00:00:38.740 Whether you're a marketing professional or just want to help your son deal with his first bully at school or anywhere in between, this podcast is for you.

00:00:47.320 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path.

00:00:53.120 When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.

00:00:57.840 You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged, resilient, strong.

00:01:02.900 This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become.

00:01:07.120 At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

00:01:14.280 Gentlemen, welcome to the Order of Man podcast.

00:01:16.840 We are rolling with 2025, and we're off to a very good start.

00:01:20.980 We've had some great conversations, and this one today is no exception.

00:01:24.140 If you're new here, I want to give you conversations that help you be a better man.

00:01:28.080 That's it. We're trying to bring in great guests, people with great information to share, interesting ideas and unique ways of sharing them like Donald does today in his storytelling, business and career and movement.

00:01:39.960 And continue to do this.

00:01:43.000 We've got events. We've got programs. We've got courses. We've got resources.

00:01:46.180 If you want to be a better man, this is your one-stop shop for all of it, so I'm glad that you're tuning in.

00:01:51.580 Before I get into the conversation, just want to mention my friends over at Montana Knife Company.

00:01:57.480 I just got a big shipment from them. We're going to be doing some giveaways and giving these knives to people that are a big part of this movement.

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00:02:29.460 All right, guys, let me introduce you to my guest. It is Donald Miller.

00:02:32.640 He is a master storyteller. You'll hear that.

00:02:35.320 Honed by years of speaking with some of the largest organizations in the world on stage and also in front of thousands and thousands of people.

00:02:46.500 He shares his lessons with his work as a CEO of StoryBrand, Business Made Simple, and Coach Builder.

00:02:52.420 He is the CEO of StoryBrand, Business Made Simple, Coach Builder, but he's also the author of How to Grow Your Small Business, Marketing Made Simple, and his latest book, Building a StoryBrand 2.0, Clarifying Your Message So Customers Will Listen.

00:03:06.960 And with his latest tool, storybrand.ai, Donald is helping you take writing compelling stories into your own hands.

00:03:13.580 Donald, great to see you, man. I have been a longtime follower, probably, well, probably about eight or nine years at this point.

00:03:24.180 So to have you on the podcast, I'm very excited about it.

00:03:26.480 Yeah, Ryan, pleasure to be with you.

00:03:28.460 Yeah, we were talking offline about your attire. I have to say publicly, I approve.

00:03:36.160 Not that you need that, but I love the camo. Do you hunt? We talked about hiking. Do you hunt at all?

00:03:41.520 No, I fly fish. I had to make decisions. As I got busier, you've got to pick one hobby and one sport.

00:03:49.140 So it's fly fishing and football is all that's left in my life.

00:03:52.680 Awesome. Yeah, no, that's fair. I don't know if I have the patience for fly fishing. I do enjoy hunting.

00:04:00.320 I guess hunting can be very much the same. I mean, I sit in a tree stand for three to four hours.

00:04:04.960 It's like baseball. It's like nothing happens and then everything happens.

00:04:08.340 You've got to pay attention. Yeah, fly fishing is the same. You know, it's mostly the buddies to me.

00:04:14.880 I got a group of fly fishing friends. We go fly fishing either Montana, Colorado or Wyoming once a year.

00:04:20.800 And then they all come to my house. My wife and child leave for a few days and all the boys come to my house to watch the national championship.

00:04:28.360 So that's coming up in a couple of weeks. I can't wait.

00:04:30.280 Oh, that's awesome. Where in the states are you?

00:04:33.580 Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville. I need to get back out there. I love Nashville.

00:04:38.080 It's no, it's a great incredible. It is incredible out there.

00:04:42.320 Not too long ago, I went and visited the Ramsey team, which they're in Franklin, I think is what right just outside of Nashville.

00:04:48.280 But it's still Nashville. Yeah. Yeah. Sean Ryan's out there.

00:04:51.660 He's a good friend and he's he's he's going viral right now for better or worse.

00:04:57.140 But it's a great town for sure. Yeah. The people here are, you know, I'm so I'm amazed at how much culture is coming out of Nashville now.

00:05:05.640 And, you know, Nate Bergazzi is here. And obviously the music scene is here, the country music scene, the Christian music scene out of Franklin.

00:05:12.800 But then a lot of business thought leader folks are out of here.

00:05:17.520 Michael Hyatt, John Acuff, Dave Ramsey, obviously. Amy Porterfield moved here.

00:05:23.120 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I even hear Patrick Lencioni is moving here, which I hope he does.

00:05:28.980 He'd be killer. You know, even in the even in the somewhat culture commentary or political space,

00:05:34.800 you know, Matt Walsh is out there and he's making waves right now.

00:05:37.920 Daily Beast is out of here. You know, pretty cool. Yeah, it's that's pretty neat.

00:05:42.700 I mean, I didn't realize that I moved here because the geography was so great.

00:05:45.900 I lived in Portland, Oregon for 20 years and I was having to travel a day before I spoke.

00:05:51.400 So when I got married, Nashville saved me 20 travel days a year with the same speaking schedule so I could be home.

00:05:58.700 You know, so that's a marriage saver right there. And so that's a great. Yeah.

00:06:02.620 Yeah. And then the people it took me a year to believe the people were this kind.

00:06:06.880 I was kind of like, what's your angle? You know, what are you selling?

00:06:09.880 And they weren't selling anything. That was just, you know, we pulled the we pulled the U-Haul truck into our driveway

00:06:15.180 without knowing anybody on our street and had three meals provided for us by neighbors by the time.

00:06:21.100 I love it. It was crazy. I love it. It's really nice. I love it.

00:06:24.520 I don't know. You know, I hear what you're saying and I don't want to discount that.

00:06:27.920 But also, there hasn't been a place that I've been where I haven't met good people.

00:06:33.480 And I just wonder if it's more attitude of the person moving in than the person or the people who you're moving into.

00:06:39.500 You know, there's a difference between a town and Portland was like this, too.

00:06:42.700 There's a difference between a town where the population is not growing and you move there.

00:06:47.760 And there's 800,000 people moving to Nashville in the next 10 years.

00:06:51.840 800,000.

00:06:52.260 I bet it's more than that.

00:06:53.380 I mean, that sounds low to me, but we'll see.

00:06:55.920 I bet it's more than that.

00:06:57.100 It's insane. It's insane.

00:06:57.900 We were driving out of downtown yesterday after dinner.

00:07:01.360 My wife and I went out to dinner and I said, hon, everything in the front view windshield is new.

00:07:10.160 Every single building that you see looking at downtown is new.

00:07:14.140 Yeah, it's really it's crazy how fast this is growing.

00:07:16.800 But I will say there's something about a town where a bunch of new people are moving in that everybody feels, you know, sort of like a transplant.

00:07:24.080 And it creates a sort of familiarity.

00:07:26.220 There's no old money that's dominating the town or old, you know, cultural ties.

00:07:32.180 It's all new people.

00:07:33.380 And so to me that this Nashville feels a little bit like a West Coast town to me for that reason.

00:07:41.220 We've just loved it.

00:07:42.400 The only concern I have about that is the idea of assimilation, you know, take Nashville, take other towns people move to. 0.98

00:07:51.620 I mean, a lot of people are migrating from the West Coast over to Florida, Nashville, obviously.

00:07:57.140 And it's it's it's it's good because you're going to move to a place that maybe embraces your ideals and the things that you stand for.

00:08:07.200 But also when you get that mass migration, it seems like the idea of assimilation to a culture or belief system is lessened the more that people move there.

00:08:18.840 Does that make sense?

00:08:20.040 I'm not sure if you do you mean like if you move to California, you're going to become a liberal or if you move to Texas, not necessarily conservative or whatever.

00:08:27.280 I would say, yes, I would say more more that way is that if you have mass migration towards Texas or Nashville or Florida, I don't know that it gives the same ability to assimilate to the values.

00:08:40.840 You know, people will come from California to southern Utah, for example, and say, oh, we love this vibe.

00:08:45.880 We love this feel.

00:08:46.820 We love the small town.

00:08:48.040 And then they come in droves and they want to change everything about it at the expense of everything that you move here for.

00:08:55.740 Don't let them elect a mayor.

00:08:57.220 That's all you got.

00:08:58.420 That's fair.

00:08:59.140 Fair enough.

00:09:00.140 Fair enough.

00:09:00.680 The Utah Constitution is like you got to live here 10 years before you can actually vote.

00:09:05.260 There you go.

00:09:06.240 There you go.

00:09:06.780 I like that idea.

00:09:07.720 I see what you're saying.

00:09:09.180 Well, I mean, you know, geez, I mean, Portland, when I was in Portland, you know, people people are going to shoot me for saying this because it's not true now.

00:09:17.540 But I'm telling you, it was true now.

00:09:18.680 It was the best city in the country.

00:09:21.180 When I moved there 30 something years ago, it was very much like Pittsburgh when I moved there.

00:09:27.240 And, you know, the fact that I could get on a bike and ride 50 miles without crossing a road, you know, or get into town or I would ride.

00:09:37.040 I would put a kayak in the water and kayak into downtown if I wanted to do something downtown.

00:09:42.060 I mean, it's just a great if you wanted to live outdoors.

00:09:44.460 And then, you know, what happened in American politics happened.

00:09:48.280 The left moved way ridiculously further to the left.

00:09:51.200 The right moved way ridiculously further to the right.

00:09:53.580 The left took over our city governments and ruined city after city after city.

00:09:57.900 And, you know, that that's what happened. 0.75

00:10:00.680 And it just stinks.

00:10:02.140 And it's one of the reasons I wasn't sad to leave Portland is because it had become a.

00:10:07.720 You know, I remember being in Portland and like I had this penthouse apartment, this killer bachelor pad.

00:10:16.060 And there were a lot of sort of older liberal women, including the former governor, lived underneath me, a female former governor who's a great person. 1.00

00:10:24.040 But they were all like leaning over the balcony to make sure I was recycling when I put out my trash.

00:10:29.080 I mean, just stuff like that.

00:10:29.980 And I remember just going, what is this?

00:10:31.720 This is familiar.

00:10:32.440 I can't figure out what this is.

00:10:33.520 It's really familiar.

00:10:34.220 It's really bothersome.

00:10:35.120 I can't stand it.

00:10:36.640 And you know what it reminded me of growing up in a Southern Baptist church?

00:10:40.020 I was like, these people are legalists.

00:10:42.260 That's what it is.

00:10:42.820 They're controlling.

00:10:43.840 They want to control your morality and they want to get in your business.

00:10:46.680 And I tend to not I don't like that from the right or the left.

00:10:50.640 And the left has taken over Portland and Chicago.

00:10:53.840 And, you know, they're figuring it out.

00:10:56.720 And, you know, but it's just sad that people have to pay for it.

00:11:00.740 Yeah, well, that's true.

00:11:01.680 I kind of feel it's a little bit similar to, you know, I've never been to Portland, so I can't speak from experience.

00:11:08.320 Well, I'll give it another couple of years.

00:11:09.340 It's trying to come back.

00:11:10.840 Well, I hope it does, because I kind of get the the Austin, Texas vibe.

00:11:15.840 You know, Austin's Austin's a great city, but it has it has potential to not be a very great city.

00:11:23.580 So, well, you know, luckily they can learn from Portland and Chicago and other cities.

00:11:28.660 They can they can see what happens when your idealism, you know, takes over.

00:11:36.040 And, you know, I grew up in Texas and then moved to Portland and now live in Nashville.

00:11:41.460 So I was in Texas till I was 21.

00:11:43.840 Austin's a great town.

00:11:44.680 Of course, I you know, my my idea of what's a great town is like, OK, show me your Tex-Mex, you know, it's all very shallow. 1.00

00:11:53.280 But Austin's still it's still a great town.

00:11:56.560 Yeah, well, good.

00:11:57.960 Well, look, I want to shift gears here.

00:11:59.680 I didn't think we'd start off by talking about it, but we did.

00:12:02.680 And you told some stories in there.

00:12:04.460 You know, you're a master storyteller.

00:12:06.760 You talk about the power of stories and we could talk about it from a marketing perspective.

00:12:11.500 And selfishly, I'd ask you a lot of questions about that because I am a business owner.

00:12:16.440 But I think a lot of guys are are curious as to why stories are so powerful.

00:12:20.640 I don't think it's a question of if, you know, whether it's stories of, you know, cavemen sitting around by the campfire telling stories to each other or parables in the Bible or the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter.

00:12:36.560 There's something about storytelling that we really resonate with.

00:12:40.920 And I don't need to know that's important.

00:12:44.480 We all know it is.

00:12:45.340 I want to know why that is so crucial for this human existence.

00:12:50.700 Yeah, that's an age old question.

00:12:52.500 And smarter people than me have tried to answer it, including Joseph Campbell and Christopher Booker and Robert McKee and Blake Snyder and, you know, on and on Nancy Duarte.

00:13:00.380 But it is true. 0.90

00:13:03.640 And the first thing to understand is that stories are or are we have a human yearning for them from a very early age.

00:13:11.720 In fact, this morning, my wife got up a little bit earlier than me.

00:13:15.920 Normally, I wake up our daughter, but she went and woke up our daughter who's three and a half and put her in bed with me. 1.00

00:13:22.460 And the very first thing that Emmeline asked me was, Daddy, tell me a story.

00:13:28.540 You know, she she she wants and what she's really wanting is she's a human being.

00:13:33.140 And so human beings want something to to take their brain somewhere.

00:13:42.320 And a story does that like nothing else.

00:13:45.880 There's no there's no other thing or mechanism that you can use to compel a human brain like a story.

00:13:52.200 In fact, 30 percent of time of the time, human beings are daydreaming.

00:13:56.880 So the average brain daydreams or checks out about 30 percent of the time, which, by the way, is in some ways is you telling yourself a story.

00:14:05.580 The brain, when you're sitting down to watch a movie or you're reading a book or somebody's telling you a story, you immediately stop daydreaming for the length of that story.

00:14:15.000 If the story is told right, that is that there is no other tool known to man that can do that to a human brain.

00:14:21.580 So so the first thing to understand about story is it is it is an attention getting device.

00:14:29.300 And, you know, I've written a ton of books now, 12 or 15 books.

00:14:32.760 And usually my first pass is a lot of bullet points, a lot of ideas.

00:14:37.160 And there's always the same thing wrong with it.

00:14:39.340 There's not enough stories.

00:14:40.460 And so I'll start deleting some of the bullet points and illustrating what I'm trying to say with a story.

00:14:46.720 You know, if you if you look at, you know, the way that even if you go back from a Christian perspective in the Bible,

00:14:56.300 if you look at all the theology, reformed theology and all that kind of stuff,

00:15:00.900 those are post-enlightenment thinkers turning things into bullet points.

00:15:05.780 If you look at what Jesus did, all he did was tell stories.

00:15:09.360 There wasn't a single bullet point in his entire lexicon of narrative.

00:15:15.540 None of never.

00:15:16.600 It was just always the kingdom of God is like a guy who had some treasure and buried it in a field.

00:15:23.100 You know, it's always just like parables and stories.

00:15:29.120 And I think what that speaks to is that truth itself, and I'm getting a little complicated here,

00:15:34.080 but truth itself is probably technically impossible to explain using language, using words, because words are limited.

00:15:45.100 But you can kind of grunt toward it and point toward it with a story.

00:15:48.920 And so I think I think the longing for a story in part, the reason to answer your question of why stories,

00:15:56.940 why we have such an insatiable appetite for stories is because we actually have an insatiable appetite for truth.

00:16:04.680 We have an insatiable appetite for our bearings, where we fit on the planet, why we're here, what our purpose is.

00:16:12.080 There are fears that we have, the fear of death, the fear of loss, the fear of loneliness, the fear of isolation.

00:16:20.220 Stories equip us to, you know, prepare ourselves or defend ourselves from threats.

00:16:29.220 You know, for instance, if you hear a story about, you know, a courageous person dying,

00:16:34.600 then that teaches us to die with courage.

00:16:37.220 You know, they're helping shape who we are.

00:16:40.600 And then finally, I think, you know, the third thing that story does is it helps us kind of figure out our own identity.

00:16:48.240 That when we're watching, you know, James Bond disarm a bomb or whatever,

00:16:52.960 we sort of vicariously identify with that character and we want to be a little bit like him.

00:16:59.900 And because we have vicariously identified him as he does this heroic thing,

00:17:03.600 we actually do become a little bit more like him.

00:17:05.920 You know, how many of us watched Braveheart and came out a slightly different human being out of the theater?

00:17:13.560 I think we all probably did that.

00:17:16.020 And so, you know, there's a moral lesson in most stories that I think appeal to us.

00:17:20.720 But, you know, I can't pretend that I've just explained the three reasons we are attracted to

00:17:25.860 or there is a demand for story.

00:17:28.360 But I think those are three reasons.

00:17:31.920 The rest of it, I mean, it's just a complete freaking mystery.

00:17:36.340 You don't need to know it all.

00:17:37.760 What's not a mystery is what sort of stories work and what sort of stories don't work.

00:17:43.680 That's not a mystery.

00:17:44.460 That's a good question.

00:17:45.240 That's not a mystery.

00:17:45.780 I want to get into that.

00:17:46.720 We understand that.

00:17:46.980 Because I want to know what we can do to tell stories if we're in business or on a personal front,

00:17:54.440 a family front, as a father, a husband, a business owner, et cetera, et cetera.

00:17:58.600 You know, it is interesting when you talked about Braveheart.

00:18:01.740 I was fortunate enough to have the writer of Braveheart, Randall Wallace, on the podcast.

00:18:08.720 And it was interesting.

00:18:10.120 He said this, and this stood out, and I will always remember this.

00:18:13.080 He said, when people quote William Wallace, they're not actually quoting William Wallace.

00:18:18.660 They're quoting me.

00:18:20.680 I'm the one who said those things.

00:18:22.360 Which is pretty cool.

00:18:23.580 It is cool.

00:18:24.680 But I referenced it through William Wallace.

00:18:27.020 And to be frank, William Wallace is a much more convincing character than Randall Wallace.

00:18:33.600 And that's not an indictment against him at all.

00:18:37.560 But he represents this ideal that most human beings we just don't have because we're conflicted and we're sinful and we're prideful and we're arrogant.

00:18:47.700 But William Wallace was not that because he's – yes, I know he's a historical figure, but the Braveheart version is a character.

00:18:56.180 It's not a real person.

00:18:57.660 Right, and that's true in most instances where you're taking a factual account and fictionalizing it in some way to make a two-hour story.

00:19:07.840 You've got to do that.

00:19:10.000 But yeah, it's true.

00:19:10.840 And what a moral lesson that he taught in that movie, that freedom, of course, is the value.

00:19:18.000 Tyranny is the villain, the willingness to die for a cause I think is something that every human being wants, especially men.

00:19:30.680 So what a cool way to spend your life, teaching people through narratives.

00:19:35.620 And you look at – cultures are shaped by the stories they tell.

00:19:39.860 That's why Hollywood has shaped our culture in the way it's shaped it probably more than pastors in the last 40, 50 years.

00:19:53.020 For better or for worse, they've shaped the way we see the world and what we think is good and bad and right and wrong.

00:20:03.620 And stories do that better than anything else.

00:20:06.340 So it's very, very powerful tools.

00:20:07.800 Well, you know, you mentioned pastors.

00:20:10.760 I go to a Baptist church and the preacher got up and pastor got up and he was talking about the Bible and referencing scripture and all that, which is good.

00:20:21.740 Like that's – nothing wrong with that at all.

00:20:23.980 And I was – you know, my eyes were glazed and glossed over like most men when they go to church and that's kind of how it was. 0.88

00:20:29.900 And then he started talking about his own personal journey where he went to jail and he had some addictions he was dealing with and how he was able to redeem himself through repentance and through his rehabilitation and all that sort of thing.

00:20:44.200 And that's where I perked up.

00:20:46.100 Yep.

00:20:46.320 I didn't need to hear you quote Matthew 7, 3 or whatever.

00:20:50.240 I don't even know what that scripture says.

00:20:51.540 But when he started talking about his own personal story, that's when I began to resonate with him and I noticed there was a definitive change in the congregation itself.

00:21:06.460 Yep.

00:21:06.600 I mean that's just the nature of story, period, and that's true of every congregation in America.

00:21:11.940 As soon as the – you know, they're talking about the Hebrew, you know, translation is X and blah, blah, blah, and then they say, you know, it reminds me of when my uncle and I tried to jump the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle.

00:21:24.760 You know, everybody's like, what?

00:21:26.340 Let me hear that.

00:21:27.160 I want to hear that story.

00:21:28.200 Yeah, and what he did was, without knowing it probably, is he opened what's called a story loop.

00:21:33.760 And the second you open a story loop, everybody starts paying attention.

00:21:37.640 But, you know, the Hebrew translation of X is Y doesn't open a story loop.

00:21:42.840 But if you actually say – you know, a lot of you don't – there was a guy that I was talking to the other day that was just – you know, that said, you know, a lot of people don't know that, you know, 20 years ago I went to prison for something.

00:21:54.600 And now the story loop that gets opened is, what did you go to prison for?

00:22:00.020 And how did you get out?

00:22:01.200 What happened?

00:22:01.640 And that's why stories are so powerful.

00:22:05.100 They actually dangle a carrot in front of you.

00:22:07.960 You know, if I'm writing a rom-com, I've got about three minutes to open a really good story loop.

00:22:13.680 So if my – the first scene of my rom-com is a woman is sitting in a cafe, you know, guy kind of spills coffee near her, cleans up the coffee.

00:22:21.900 They enter into a little bit of conversation.

00:22:23.580 He sits down.

00:22:24.700 There's clearly chemistry that night.

00:22:26.560 She invites him to have dinner with her parents.

00:22:28.560 The parents really like him.

00:22:29.500 The next scene, they're getting married.

00:22:30.960 This is a terrible movie because there's never any – you're opening and closing story loops too quickly, right?

00:22:38.780 So – but if you actually say, okay, he walks into the coffee shop, spills a little coffee.

00:22:42.920 They hit it off.

00:22:43.660 There's clearly a lot of chemistry.

00:22:44.800 And then she says, this is inappropriate for me to be having this conversation.

00:22:48.300 I shouldn't be talking to you.

00:22:49.960 I've got to leave.

00:22:51.360 She bolts with her briefcase.

00:22:53.660 He never sees her again.

00:22:55.580 Now we've got an open story loop because this guy's clearly got affection for a woman that has disappeared. 0.98

00:22:59.880 Let's say, you know, six months later she shows up with his brother who's a jerk and a con man at the family dinner and he's explaining, this is my new fiance. 0.97

00:23:11.780 Now we've got a story, right? 0.99

00:23:13.000 Because he's got a – how is he going to wrestle the woman, the love of his life away from this con man?

00:23:19.000 And how is he going to do this without splitting his family?

00:23:20.720 So the more story loops you can open, the more an audience is actually interested in the story.

00:23:26.740 And so if you ask why are stories interesting, it's because they are – it's like a – if I say knock, knock, who's there?

00:23:35.360 And you say – and I say banana, you go banana who?

00:23:38.240 There's a story loop open, right?

00:23:40.600 And the story loop is he's got to finish the joke.

00:23:42.700 And so if I say I'll tell you tomorrow, then you're wondering – you're probably not because it's not that good of a story loop.

00:23:51.240 But if, you know, you're wondering what's the end of that joke.

00:23:53.100 It's a little weak, but I get the point.

00:23:55.700 It's a little – yeah.

00:23:56.880 So, you know, if I say the treasure is buried somewhere in your backyard, I'm going to tell you where it is tomorrow.

00:24:04.640 The first thing you're going to ask me when you get up is, hey, you said where's the treasure buried because there was an open story loop.

00:24:10.000 So the reason that story loops open and close is because it keeps people's attention.

00:24:15.300 And by the way, as a man, this is very important if you want to lead your family.

00:24:21.980 It's – you're going to say, well, Don, I'm not going to tell stories, so I'm going to stop listening to this podcast.

00:24:25.520 Okay, do you want to be a good father?

00:24:26.660 Do you want to be a good husband?

00:24:28.120 If you do, my question to you is what story loops are open in the mind of your family that you have opened?

00:24:34.420 Because that leads to engagement in your family.

00:24:37.800 If your family is more interested in movies – by the way, we watch movies, nothing against them – or if your daughters are more interested in what's going on with their school friends, it's because you as a man have not directed a very interesting story.

00:24:52.700 And they should be more interested in what you and your family is doing than they are in their friends or whatever.

00:24:58.040 Look, as a leader of the family, as a leader, period, you are competing against Hollywood, you are competing against peer pressure, you're competing against social media, you're competing against screens, you're competing against drugs, you're competing against all sorts of stuff.

00:25:13.980 And I would say step up and compete.

00:25:15.860 And so what that requires is you establishing a vision for your family that is very – that's interesting and can be engaged in and that your family says, I wonder how this is going to turn out.

00:25:30.960 Because we decided as a family we're going to become a foster family or we decided as a family we're going to contribute both money and volunteer to a community center that is trying to affect X.

00:25:46.400 Or we have decided – we have created a bingo card as a family and on that bingo card is shot a deer, ran a 5K, identified 25 different species of birds, memorized five poems, read 10 books, and there's $500 to the first person who can finish the bingo card.

00:26:14.460 Well, now you've got everybody engaged, right?

00:26:18.040 And that's what leaders do.

00:26:20.040 And I think we've – I think it's the most important part of leadership is casting a vision other people step into and take action on.

00:26:29.400 And that's why we – that's why it's important to understand storytelling.

00:26:33.820 It's not because we're going to write a screenplay.

00:26:35.440 Almost nobody listening to me is going to write a screenplay, although you may.

00:26:38.580 I don't know.

00:26:38.960 But you can apply this stuff to dating, to marriage, to being a dad.

00:26:45.440 If I sat down and I said, hey, where is your dad taking the family?

00:26:52.340 My question is, does anybody in your family actually have an answer to that?

00:26:56.100 You know, I went and saw – we went and saw – a buddy of mine and I, Thad, we went and saw Francis Ford Coppola's new movie, Megalopolis, which was a giant turd.

00:27:09.320 It's the single worst movie.

00:27:10.760 I haven't even heard of it, so okay.

00:27:11.580 It's the single worst movie I've ever seen 20 minutes of.

00:27:14.820 And, you know, but it's Francis Ford Coppola.

00:27:17.800 You know what I mean?

00:27:18.220 Like, the guy's a genius and it's – he's 80-something and here's his – supposedly his work that he's been working on for 20 years and it's got Adam Driver in it and all these celebrities and Jon Voight.

00:27:28.940 And I'm like, this is going to be good.

00:27:30.980 And, you know, we pay our 20 bucks.

00:27:32.580 We go in.

00:27:33.020 We got some popcorn.

00:27:34.400 And it's about 25 minutes in.

00:27:35.880 I'm going, I can walk out right now. 0.99

00:27:37.440 This is the most ridiculous film I've ever seen. 0.96

00:27:39.920 And my buddy, Thad, said to me, do you know where this movie is going? 0.97

00:27:44.940 And I said, Thad, I don't know where the movie is going, but the Seahawks are on television and the Crow's Nest bar is across the street.

00:27:53.900 I'd rather see that game.

00:27:55.080 He goes, let's go.

00:27:55.880 We get up.

00:27:56.280 We walk out.

00:27:58.340 If you don't know where the story is going, it's because he hasn't opened good story loops.

00:28:04.160 By the way, that was a hundred and something million dollar movie to make and it made 13 million at the box office.

00:28:09.580 Right?

00:28:10.840 So they lost a ton of money on that.

00:28:12.520 Catastrophic failure.

00:28:13.220 Catastrophic failure.

00:28:15.440 You said it.

00:28:16.000 I didn't.

00:28:16.700 And I would actually say most leaders of their homes are, you know, good people, tender people, kind people.

00:28:25.180 That's 80 percent of it.

00:28:26.460 But in terms of casting a vision that opens a story loop in the people who depend on you to lead, I would say catastrophic failure.

00:28:33.840 That you literally can't even explain where we're going.

00:28:37.960 Yeah.

00:28:38.260 And why we're going there.

00:28:40.140 Here's another thing.

00:28:40.920 Let me ask you this.

00:28:41.800 What is your family against?

00:28:44.120 Because a hero has a villain that they're fighting.

00:28:48.240 You know?

00:28:48.660 So we have a mission statement for my family and it's this.

00:28:52.840 In a world tempted by cynicism, we believe life can be beautiful.

00:28:58.980 It's very strategically written.

00:29:00.940 We don't believe life is beautiful.

00:29:02.600 We believe life can be.

00:29:04.560 We also don't believe life will be.

00:29:06.960 But we believe it can be.

00:29:08.160 And our enemy is cynicism.

00:29:11.040 And, you know, we've stated that as a family.

00:29:13.860 We just, it's going to be tempting, but don't give in.

00:29:17.680 We believe it can be beautiful.

00:29:19.220 And we, and then we have core values, grounded, helpful, fun, and attuned are the four core values that we have.

00:29:30.880 And we live into those so that life can be beautiful.

00:29:33.760 You know, so there's a structure around kind of what we're doing.

00:29:36.520 And it's a loose structure.

00:29:38.620 You know, we don't try to script everything that we're doing.

00:29:41.800 But, you know, at least we're for something, the fact that life can be beautiful.

00:29:46.960 We are against something.

00:29:48.380 We're against cynicism.

00:29:49.580 And there is some characters that we are going to live into, characteristics that we're going to live into in order to actualize this vision.

00:29:56.740 And then we figure out how we're going to do it, right?

00:29:59.300 So if life can be beautiful, that means for us, you know, we grow a garden and we eat mostly, not mostly, but, you know, close to 50% out of our garden.

00:30:08.840 And we host events.

00:30:10.520 We had a toddler New Year party.

00:30:12.180 We rang in the New Year at noon.

00:30:13.880 You know, we support.

00:30:15.400 That's about my speed, too.

00:30:16.620 So not just toddlers, but I'd much rather do it at noon than midnight.

00:30:20.180 Yeah, that way I can get to bed by 830.

00:30:22.340 So, you know, there's just things that we do.

00:30:24.600 Okay, well, if we say life can be beautiful, what does that mean?

00:30:26.640 And so I'm not talking about something like really complex, like something, you know, Braveheart-ish.

00:30:33.880 But if I said, what is your family for?

00:30:36.140 I wonder if your family could answer.

00:30:37.500 And if I said, what is your family against?

00:30:39.480 I wonder if they could answer.

00:30:41.840 Gentlemen, let me just pause from the conversation very quickly.

00:30:44.520 You've heard me talking about the after-action review for years.

00:30:47.140 And in case you haven't heard me talk too much about it, the after-action review is, as it sounds,

00:30:52.040 a review for ensuring you've learned everything you need to know about your performance.

00:30:56.600 Not only that, but an after-action review helps you identify exactly, exactly how you succeeded or failed

00:31:03.420 and helps you get clear on what you need to do better.

00:31:06.280 I do this after every podcast, speaking engagement, conversation, quarterly review, essentially everywhere.

00:31:13.100 And we've made a year-end review available for free to you.

00:31:17.020 So if you head over to orderofman.com slash AAR, orderofman.com slash AAR, you can pick up a free copy of your after-action review delivered straight to your inbox.

00:31:27.600 So you can make 2025 the best year possible.

00:31:30.660 Again, orderofman.com slash AAR.

00:31:33.200 Do that right after the show.

00:31:34.880 For now, let's get back to it, Donald.

00:31:38.120 Yeah, I mean, I can tell you, like, for us, I don't want to ask that question because I don't think they'd be able to answer it.

00:31:45.720 I have it in my mind, but now that you say that, I don't know if I've articulated it.

00:31:49.460 So I, in my mind.

00:31:50.040 Well, and that's the bigger challenge because I, you know.

00:31:52.460 I mean, that's what it is.

00:31:53.780 That's the bigger challenge because it's the messaging campaign.

00:31:57.240 Right.

00:31:57.800 And so for me, it's, okay, we're going to fight against the natural man.

00:32:01.480 People have heard me say that.

00:32:02.520 My kids have heard me say that.

00:32:04.020 And we're going to fight against the doctrine of popular culture.

00:32:06.680 We're not going to slip into degeneracy.

00:32:08.960 We're not going to slip into being tossed to and fro based on what an entertainer or a musician or an actor or a corrupt politician tells me.

00:32:18.620 Like, we're going to maintain the standard.

00:32:21.760 Yeah.

00:32:21.880 But I don't know if I've done a great job in articulating that message to them.

00:32:24.820 Well, you know, I bet you they're picking it up a lot.

00:32:27.240 I bet they're picking it up a lot more than you think.

00:32:30.140 They may not be able to articulate it, but there's a vibe about we are upstream people.

00:32:35.360 Right.

00:32:35.800 We do not go with the current.

00:32:37.500 We swim upstream.

00:32:38.600 We swim against the current because the current is leading toward darkness.

00:32:43.660 You know, so we swim up upstream.

00:32:46.740 I bet you they feel that.

00:32:48.260 However, it's not a bad idea to sit there and come up with some sound bites that you repeat.

00:32:52.120 And one of the things that I that I say to Emmeline all the time is Emmeline, you know, instead of just saying, hey, did you just lie to me?

00:33:01.160 You know, because she'll say I'll say, did you feed the dog?

00:33:04.160 And she'll say, yes.

00:33:05.240 And, you know, she's three and a half. 0.99

00:33:06.460 She doesn't know.

00:33:07.060 She probably thinks she did.

00:33:08.320 And I was like, Emmeline.

00:33:09.320 Oh, no, she knows.

00:33:10.420 Is that true?

00:33:10.880 Is that true?

00:33:12.520 And then I'll say to her, Emmeline, and she'll say, no, it's not true.

00:33:16.440 And I was like, well, let's go feed it together.

00:33:17.820 I'll go with it.

00:33:18.900 And then I'll stop her and say, hey, Emmeline, Millers don't lie.

00:33:23.320 So it's not just don't lie.

00:33:25.360 It's wrong.

00:33:26.260 It's we as a family don't lie.

00:33:29.940 That's who we are.

00:33:31.100 It's our identity.

00:33:32.920 Millers don't. 0.83

00:33:33.620 Millers do hard things.

00:33:35.240 Yeah, there you go.

00:33:36.400 Right.

00:33:36.660 My kids know that.

00:33:37.520 They roll their eyes when I say it, but I say, Micklers do hard things.

00:33:41.320 Yeah, man.

00:33:42.240 And you know what?

00:33:43.060 They roll their eyes.

00:33:43.940 But when they're 26, they're going to just be so freaking grateful because it's not just something that's true.

00:33:49.880 It's their identity.

00:33:51.060 And I really think that the reason that we invite our families into stories is because the number one reason it shapes their identity and their identity defends them against the dark forces.

00:34:05.080 That's what's going to defend them against dark forces more than anything else is who they think they are. 0.99

00:34:11.460 I am not somebody who does that.

00:34:13.600 Right.

00:34:14.120 I'm not somebody who gives into that.

00:34:15.740 Another thing for a three and a half year old girl, she heard me say it this morning.

00:34:19.460 Hopefully, I've said it every day of her life.

00:34:21.820 You are beautiful.

00:34:23.420 I said, Emmaline, who's beautiful?

00:34:24.560 She goes, I am.

00:34:26.040 And the reason I do that is not just because I want to make her feel good.

00:34:28.920 It probably actually doesn't make her feel good right now because she could care less whether she's beautiful or not. 0.98

00:34:33.280 She's three and a half.

00:34:33.900 But what I want to do is shape that identity so that no man can get to it, right? 0.99

00:34:41.560 No man can where she – because some jerk is going to come along and make her feel beautiful in some way that's inappropriate, and I don't want her to fall for it. 0.98

00:34:50.360 But, you know, I wanted to go out. 0.98

00:34:52.900 I'm actually not lacking in the feeling of beauty, but thanks for speaking up.

00:34:56.640 You know, I don't need to jump through your hoops.

00:34:59.140 That's an interesting perspective, and I think about that when you say who's beautiful.

00:35:06.280 I know a lot of people will automatically jump to physical beauty, you know, but I imagine you've given context to that.

00:35:14.760 I tell my boys sometimes, are you a man or not?

00:35:17.560 And people – when I say that, on the surface, people say, well, you're telling them to be a man or toughen up.

00:35:26.040 Yes, I am, but there's –

00:35:27.420 Yeah, you're shaming them.

00:35:27.860 That's what they think.

00:35:28.220 And I'm not because there's context to it. 0.99

00:35:31.500 I'm not telling them they're being a pussy or something. 1.00

00:35:34.900 I'm telling them, hey, are you being honest? 0.99

00:35:37.360 Are you being sincere?

00:35:38.500 Are you doing hard work?

00:35:39.900 Are you doing what's right in spite of the consequences?

00:35:43.640 But that – there's context.

00:35:45.160 Yeah, you're saying you're not acting up to your potential.

00:35:47.960 You're not acting up to who you are.

00:35:49.560 You are a man.

00:35:51.040 And they know what that means.

00:35:52.740 And you're not acting like one.

00:35:54.620 I love that.

00:35:55.800 There's a gap. 0.99

00:35:56.780 There's a gap between what they're doing and – there's also safety there because they know that you love them no matter what, but you're calling them on their crap, right? 0.97

00:36:05.200 And that's what directors of movies do, right?

00:36:10.060 They're like, hey, here's this character, and by the way, you're not acting the way I need you to act.

00:36:15.900 And I just think your story is not going to work out.

00:36:20.240 You're ruining your story if you keep filling it with pages of sitting down in the basement and watching video games here.

00:36:25.340 So I mean I love that.

00:36:27.760 It goes back to something you were saying earlier, which I took a little bit of issue with, and so I want to see if you can clarify for us.

00:36:35.060 You talked about the importance of storytelling when it comes to truth.

00:36:38.960 When I hear the word truth, I think of absolute truth, truth with a capital T.

00:36:43.760 And I don't really think it needs to be that because what you believe is true for raising kids is probably – I'm sure we're very much aligned, but it's probably slightly different in some ways than mine.

00:36:56.520 And there's other people who would tell stories to get people to do vile things.

00:37:03.020 For example, the greatest example I think would be somebody like Hitler or Stalin, which can create tremendous atrocity and horror for millions of people with the power of telling stories.

00:37:16.280 I don't think it's a requirement that it's absolute truth.

00:37:19.740 I wonder what you have to say about that.

00:37:22.180 Yeah.

00:37:22.440 I mean I studied Hitler and Churchill, and both of them were fantastic manipulators of story and story structure. 0.91

00:37:31.380 And by the way, Churchill told a lot of lies when he was trying to get the allies.

00:37:36.400 You know, like we're ready and we're going to defeat them.

00:37:38.700 And meanwhile, he'd go home and go, there's no way we're going to win this war.

00:37:41.640 And it's interesting that history didn't say they were lies.

00:37:45.060 Yeah, he's casting a vision.

00:37:46.440 But I would actually say stories need to be – first of all, if you're dealing with reality, if you're not open about the fact that this is fiction.

00:37:57.240 In other words, if I write a movie, I can do anything I want, right?

00:37:59.680 I can have people flying around in space without a helmet.

00:38:02.120 But, you know, if you're a leader, you've got to tell the truth.

00:38:06.260 You've got to tell the truth.

00:38:07.540 And the truth is those actually aren't bad guys.

00:38:10.620 You know, they have a reason that they're upset.

00:38:12.120 So Hitler was amazing at positioning the German people as two things, the slighted underdog after World War I, the unfair recipient of all sorts of post-World War I slights. 0.65

00:38:32.120 And then also he positioned the German people as the Christ figures of the world who would sacrifice to create a better world.

00:38:44.400 And it's on us to go out and take the gospel of Nazism to the world so that the world can be a more beautiful place. 0.97

00:38:54.460 And, of course, a lot of the German people didn't know what was really happening, but they shouldn't have fallen for that in the first place because you're going around and, you know, killing people in Poland and in France and in northern Africa. 0.73

00:39:08.500 In the name of creating a beautiful world, I mean, it's very perverted and corrupt, a unique figure, by the way, in world history, Adolf Hitler. 0.89

00:39:20.760 So, you know, I would say it's not the story or the – it's bad.

00:39:25.160 The story is just a tool.

00:39:26.400 It's like a hammer or a cordless drill.

00:39:28.140 But what you're doing with it makes it good or bad.

00:39:31.620 And, you know, that's an age-old question is how do you have the moral high ground?

00:39:35.980 You know, how – you know, Churchill was going to kill people too and did and Hitler was going to kill people. 0.71

00:39:43.500 So which one is right for killing people?

00:39:45.780 And, you know, that's an age-old question.

00:39:48.320 And, you know, I would argue that territorial sovereignty, you know, is important.

00:39:55.120 But that – I would say that's a moral absolute.

00:39:58.540 That's why I support Taiwan publicly against the Chinese aggression. 0.61

00:40:04.100 But they don't see it that way.

00:40:06.580 You know, Xi Jinping would say, no, Taiwan is made up of Chinese people who went over to this island that was once historically a part of China.

00:40:18.420 By the way, so was Pakistan.

00:40:20.700 And therefore, we're going to reunite China and we have the moral right to do so.

00:40:25.100 Well, that's two very conflicting narratives.

00:40:27.480 These people don't want – Pakistan doesn't want to be part of China and neither does Taiwan.

00:40:31.640 Well, and if you're an American, you can't buy into that story.

00:40:35.560 I mean –

00:40:35.900 Which story?

00:40:36.520 Xi Jinping?

00:40:37.920 The story of, hey, these people went to Taiwan to be representatives of China.

00:40:43.860 If you're an American, you can take the same –

00:40:45.640 Oh, no, I mean they didn't do that.

00:40:46.760 They did that because they – they did that to escape the communists is why they went to Taiwan.

00:40:50.020 Of course, right.

00:40:51.220 So, you know, he – so we – I agree with you, by the way.

00:40:54.260 And that is – by the way, that's the United Nations perspective is territorial sovereignty.

00:40:58.540 But, you know, but Xi Jinping has to counter that narrative very strong with a propaganda campaign and shutting down and censoring the internet.

00:41:10.720 And, you know, there's one camera for every three human beings in China that has facial recognition.

00:41:16.460 They know what you're doing.

00:41:17.360 You know, so it's all control, control, control, control, control, which, you know, to me is just an obvious – that's an obvious villain and doesn't matter.

00:41:26.360 But, you know, you could frame some speeches by Xi Jinping and play them on some college campuses in America and they would go, he's right.

00:41:34.060 He's right.

00:41:34.820 Everybody should have food and everybody should have a job and everybody should have – you know, and he's got to free his people from the capitalism and all the stuff that has caused this poverty.

00:41:46.520 Meanwhile, he's got 40 percent unemployment and it's absolutely dope.

00:41:49.620 So, you know, I think, you know, we're talking about propaganda and I think when you're using the incredible power of story to do evil things, you know, story itself is not morally good.

00:42:04.760 It's just a tool.

00:42:06.360 It's just –

00:42:07.000 What I hear you saying is that if you've got the tool, if you've got the ability to utilize the tool, then I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you have a moral responsibility and obligation to use it righteously is what I'm hearing you say.

00:42:21.860 Yes, that's it.

00:42:24.020 That's it.

00:42:24.620 And it's one of the things that scared me about when I wrote Building a Story Brand 1.0, which came out seven years ago.

00:42:32.200 I studied Hitler and I almost put it in the book and thought, well, this is a book about marketing and messaging.

00:42:38.680 I'm not going to distract everybody with some anecdotes about Hitler.

00:42:42.200 But it was terrifying to see how he had used that – the framework.

00:42:47.760 I mean he didn't know what it was.

00:42:49.060 It was just a narrative framework.

00:42:50.620 But he was a – he was very much a student of communication.

00:42:54.940 I mean he would stand in front of a mirror and film himself and go back and watch his mannerisms.

00:42:59.380 Oh, yeah.

00:42:59.400 You can't deny it.

00:43:00.300 In order to brainwash an audience.

00:43:02.160 And so – but he was using it – he was using it for evil.

00:43:07.640 And, yeah, then that begs the question, well, how do you know?

00:43:11.040 And I would say, you know, there's a deal in my – I wrote my eulogy that I read almost every morning.

00:43:20.640 And the end of it said that Don believed – the end of my eulogy says Don's core belief was that all human beings are children of God and have dignity.

00:43:32.020 That doesn't mean they're all right.

00:43:33.500 That doesn't mean we don't fight some of them. 0.98

00:43:34.640 Don't mean, by the way, some of them shouldn't be put to death if they're going to hurt somebody or kill somebody or do something to a child that you got to shoot them.

00:43:44.300 But I – but what I – what I mean is anything that says those people don't matter is a belief I do not share with you. 0.54

00:43:54.020 And Hitler had that. 0.94

00:43:55.580 And Churchill was trying to free the German people from the tyranny of their own leader. 0.94

00:44:00.840 You know, he wasn't saying Germans don't matter. 1.00

00:44:04.160 We should just kill them all. 1.00

00:44:06.040 He was saying they're wrong and they've been brainwashed. 1.00

00:44:08.340 And because of that, we have to take care of this. 0.83

00:44:10.800 Because, you know, but Hitler was actually saying the Jews don't matter.

00:44:14.540 I mean all the way to the point where it's like if you don't have blue eyes and blonde hair, which he didn't, which was kind of hilarious, you don't matter.

00:44:22.060 And so, you know, I think that to me that's core value number one.

00:44:26.020 And Xi Jinping very, very clearly doesn't think all people matter.

00:44:31.420 I mean we see the same thing throughout –

00:44:32.800 I mean even recently you see Israel and Palestine or maybe more accurately Hamas, but it's the same story that's been painted out and played out over all of human history.

00:44:46.300 You know, you have to be careful how you talk about it because I have to be careful how I talk about it.

00:44:49.560 I was just with my friend who's from Israel and he's sort of a diplomat, comes over to the United States and courts, influencers, you know, on behalf of the nation of Israel.

00:45:00.140 And I've met with him many, many times, gone over to Israel to be with him and, you know, great guy.

00:45:06.400 One of the things that I said to him was that what's missing in the Israeli-Palestinian narrative is Christ.

00:45:16.340 He's just not there.

00:45:18.400 It's not even part of the – the idea of loving your enemies is not present at all.

00:45:24.900 The idea of turning the other cheek is simply not present.

00:45:30.140 And because of that, blood runs through the streets.

00:45:33.380 Now, I'm not saying one side isn't worse than the other, but I'm saying both of them are void.

00:45:38.300 Both of them are saying that side doesn't matter.

00:45:41.420 Their kids don't matter. 0.98

00:45:43.860 You know, we want to find these like binary good guys and bad guys. 0.79

00:45:47.700 Sometimes two –

00:45:48.740 Sometimes a bad guy and a much worse guy get into a fight.

00:45:52.980 And a good guy is actually not actually in the bar.

00:45:57.300 That's fair enough.

00:45:58.320 That's a valid point.

00:45:59.920 Yeah.

00:46:00.400 I mean both sides – I would just say both sides are denying Christ and both sides are paying for it.

00:46:05.280 So what makes a – whether it's in this conflict or any other conflict throughout human history, what makes a compelling story?

00:46:16.420 Because one of the things you led off with earlier in the conversation is there's a right way to do it and there's a wrong way to do it.

00:46:21.980 Yeah.

00:46:22.180 And I'm very curious as to a few key metrics of what makes a compelling narrative versus something that is not.

00:46:28.720 So if we're getting away from like – how do you know if somebody is manipulating you into doing something evil using narrative structures?

00:46:37.040 That's a different question.

00:46:38.500 If you're actually asking what makes a story interesting, there are a few things.

00:46:43.200 One is a protagonist or a group of protagonists who wants something that has been clearly defined.

00:46:49.400 Rudy wants to play for Notre Dame.

00:46:51.620 That's what the movie is about, right?

00:46:53.940 That's what the movie is about.

00:46:55.080 Benji wants to get home.

00:46:56.820 Luke wants to destroy the Death Star.

00:46:58.580 You know, whatever it is, there has to be something that is clearly defined that the hero wants.

00:47:07.280 And the reason is is it posits a story question.

00:47:10.480 The second thing that has to happen in order for the story to get even more interesting, and it has to happen all the way through the story increasingly, is there has to be problems.

00:47:21.620 The hero can't get what he wants because the hero's love interest is dating his con artist brother, right?

00:47:29.700 Now we've got an open story loop, and it's got to get worse.

00:47:34.820 The deception of the brother has to be revealed, and the naivete of the young woman also has to be revealed, and the jealousy of the love interest hero has to be revealed.

00:47:45.940 And, you know, you've seen the movie a million times.

00:47:47.840 You've got to play that out.

00:47:48.840 So a problem has to keep the hero from getting what they want, and that makes the story interesting.

00:47:56.160 And then another thing that makes the story interesting is the stakes get higher and higher.

00:48:01.320 So let's, you know, if we're writing a rom-com, you know, my brother's going to marry the woman of my dreams six months from now, and he gets a call, and it says, we're actually on a plane.

00:48:14.620 We're eloping.

00:48:15.340 We're on our way to Vegas right now.

00:48:16.780 Well, all of a sudden, the urgency, because of the time constraints, just made the movie way, way more interesting.

00:48:24.000 So define what the character wants, put challenges in their way, and increase the stakes.

00:48:30.520 Those are the three things that make a story much more interesting.

00:48:36.020 It seems like there's an element of an external and a deeper internal journey as well, and maybe that comes down to stakes.

00:48:42.640 So, for example, in this scenario you just painted, the external is, I love this woman, I want to marry her.

00:48:49.700 The internal is, why do I seek validation from women, or why do I seek validation from men, or whatever.

00:48:55.000 You know, like come up with your internal struggle that, like Luke needs to destroy Darth Vader, but internally he's having a disconnect between him and not having a father figure in his life, and he needs to overcome that and triumph over that.

00:49:11.500 With a cool twist at the end on that one.

00:49:14.040 For sure, yeah.

00:49:15.100 Yeah, so they call them, or I call them, I don't know what screenwriters call them, but in Building a Story Brand, I call them external, internal, and philosophical conflict.

00:49:24.120 So the external conflict is Luke has to destroy the Death Star, there are external lasers being shot at him through, you know, whatever, you know, Darth Vader and the gang, the Rebel Army, or the Imperial Army.

00:49:39.340 The internal conflict, as you suggested, is, I'm not quite sure I'm a Jedi, I have self-doubt, and the philosophical, which is the third level, is good versus evil.

00:49:51.400 So in a really good movie, you're going to have an external conflict that is manifesting an internal conflict that is all part of a bigger stage play, that is the philosophical conflict.

00:50:05.120 When Luke destroys the Death Star by shooting the proton torpedo, the photon torpedo, whatever it is, I always get letters, people are like, you claim to be an expert in movies, but it wasn't a proton torpedo.

00:50:14.860 The, you know, it's, whatever that thing is, when he destroys the Death Star, the external conflict of can he destroy the Death Star without getting killed is resolved, the internal conflict, does he have what it takes to be a Jedi, is resolved, and the philosophical conflict of good has defeated evil, at least for now, is resolved.

00:50:33.520 And it's all resolved in one single shot.

00:50:36.480 If you watch the movie, King, King's, the King's Speech, when King George, at the end, delivers the speech without stuttering, the external conflict is resolved.

00:50:45.820 He delivered a speech without stuttering, which was the story question the entire time, is he going to be able to do this?

00:50:49.780 The internal story question is resolved, and the internal was, am I actually the right person to have been appointed king?

00:50:59.040 Because he actually states that question to his wife earlier in the movie, specifically to open the internal conflict loop.

00:51:05.820 The philosophical conflict, again, is almost always good versus evil, because Hitler is threatening to invade the UK, come across the channel. 0.56

00:51:15.920 So, again, he gives the speech without stuttering, the internal-external-philosophical conflict is resolved.

00:51:23.360 When that happens in one shot, you tend to get an Oscar.

00:51:27.220 You tend to get a standing ovation.

00:51:30.020 And that's the threat.

00:51:32.840 Now, what that means is, for us as dads, is the external conflict is, are we going to start a garden and be able to eat 50% of our meals out of this garden?

00:51:45.920 The internal conflict is, do we really have what it takes to become farmers, right? 0.89

00:51:52.980 And the philosophical conflict is, we shouldn't be eating the crap that corporations are selling to us in the form of processed foods. 0.78

00:52:02.260 We should actually be eating what God made, which is a tomato, right? 0.95

00:52:06.520 You know, we don't talk about that as a family.

00:52:08.980 But what that does is—

00:52:10.680 But it's there.

00:52:10.980 Yeah, it's there.

00:52:11.960 But it puts your kids in a position where they are resolving internal-external-philosophical conflicts.

00:52:17.460 Now, the magic of a story is at the end of the story, the hero is transformed.

00:52:22.760 The hero became—Luke Skywalker was largely inept, very, very willing and eager, did not have what it takes, was unable to lift an X-wing fighter with his mind, was not a Jedi, didn't think of himself as a Jedi, thought of himself as a wannabe Jedi.

00:52:38.140 And by the end of the movie, they're putting a medal around his neck saying, you have changed and you are different.

00:52:43.840 That's why it's so important as dads for us to, even at 13 or 14 years old, to give our kids a challenge.

00:52:51.600 And when they accomplish that challenge, to actually sit them down and say, I want you to know you're different.

00:53:00.120 That you didn't used to have what it takes, but now you have what it takes, and I watched you do it.

00:53:07.080 And that is the point of what's called punctuated evolution, where they change in an instant.

00:53:13.920 Now, the whole—they've got to go through the conflict and the challenge and the failure and the learning from their mistakes and getting up and doing it again in order to accomplish it.

00:53:21.660 But it's when you actually, as the guide, step into their life and say, you are different, that's the point where they actually change.

00:53:27.560 And I think so many young men, me included, you know, my dad split when I was two, didn't have anybody there to say, you're a man now.

00:53:38.900 So I would say my thinking of myself fully and completely having transformed into a capable man, capable of raising a family, providing for a family, protecting a family, and leading a family.

00:53:54.860 I would say I stepped fully into that identity in my mid to late 40s.

00:54:02.040 I mean, that's frickin' late.

00:54:05.240 That should have happened to 25, right? 0.95

00:54:08.900 Because there wasn't somebody there saying, hey, you're not doing it right.

00:54:12.120 Let me show you how to do it.

00:54:13.080 By the way, I love you, but you're not doing it right.

00:54:14.940 So let me show you how to do it.

00:54:16.120 Ah, you got it.

00:54:16.880 You did it, right?

00:54:18.660 There wasn't anybody there when I bad-mouthed my mom to pull me aside and say, hey, that is not the way a man talks to a woman. 1.00

00:54:25.160 Yeah.

00:54:26.220 And there wasn't—for me, especially like dating relationships, you know, if a gal that I dated had dated somebody else

00:54:35.820 who was stronger than me, better looking than me, more masculine than me, I can't tell you how much that tore me up inside.

00:54:42.980 The sort of—the feelings of inferiority that I can't measure up.

00:54:48.060 Because there was never a dad there to say, hey, you're a man.

00:54:52.240 And that guy, he's a man too, and you got nothing to worry about.

00:54:55.300 You guys are equals.

00:54:56.540 And yeah, you can shoot a jump shot, but you can write a book, man.

00:54:59.500 There was nobody there.

00:55:01.560 So you're operating out of a sense of insecurity and inferiority.

00:55:05.980 So, you know, these stories that so many people are growing up in America living are stories of heroes floundering without a guide to teach them or affirm them.

00:55:14.080 And it's just going to take them a heck of a lot longer.

00:55:16.480 You ask any woman today, you know, in her late 20s, tell me about the market out there and men, and they're going to start complaining immediately. 1.00

00:55:27.700 For sure.

00:55:28.700 Men are going to do the same about women, by the way. 1.00

00:55:30.740 So I don't know if that's just a perpetual problem or what.

00:55:32.480 Not as much. 0.83

00:55:33.180 You know, I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm 54 now, and, you know, I could throw a rock and hit a good woman. 1.00

00:55:40.940 I wouldn't because that's not what a man does, but they're everywhere.

00:55:44.940 You know, and most of the good men are married, right?

00:55:47.960 They're married and they're doing great jobs and they're whatever because, you know, but there's—you could throw a rock pretty easily and hit some 40-year-old adolescent

00:55:55.820 who hasn't figured it out yet.

00:55:57.880 And I don't think that's totally their fault.

00:56:00.780 I think they need to take responsibility for it, but I think somebody didn't hand them the baton very well.

00:56:07.900 Are you familiar with John Eldridge, specifically his book Wild at Heart?

00:56:13.320 Yeah, John's a friend.

00:56:14.600 I love John.

00:56:15.120 Oh, yeah.

00:56:15.920 His book Wild at Heart, he's been on the podcast a couple of times, but his book is probably one of three at the top of my list.

00:56:23.760 Yeah, think about what he did.

00:56:25.320 He explained the story a man lives within.

00:56:29.880 He explained the character that they need to play, and then he taught you how to do it.

00:56:37.200 I mean, that's, you know, that is a fantastic example of what I would call a narrative leader.

00:56:45.300 A narrative leader—

00:56:45.760 He also does something incredible with regards to the internal struggle.

00:56:49.780 He asked the question—he poses this question that all men are either consciously or subconsciously trying to answer, 0.53

00:56:58.500 and you alluded to this, do I have what it takes?

00:57:01.780 Yeah.

00:57:02.360 Well, think about it.

00:57:02.900 That's almost every hero in every story.

00:57:05.740 It's King George.

00:57:06.540 It's Luke Skywalker.

00:57:07.540 It's Bridget Jones.

00:57:08.600 It's, you know, it's everybody you can think of.

00:57:11.520 Do I actually have what it takes?

00:57:13.040 And I think it's the internal struggle of, hey, and let's, you know, if you want to get theological with this,

00:57:19.140 where does this deficient identity come from?

00:57:23.740 We're all born with it.

00:57:25.540 A good dad or a good mom being affirming or a good mentor being affirming to you helps a lot, but it doesn't heal it.

00:57:33.200 And I think it comes from the separation from God and the brokenness of man.

00:57:39.720 You know, if you ask yourself what's missing in most men, it's the affirmation of a deity that you matter.

00:57:46.360 There's a separation from that that, you know, I can't get into.

00:57:51.540 It's Genesis 3, right?

00:57:54.560 I mean, I say I can't get into it.

00:57:55.660 I can't explain it.

00:57:56.580 It's pretty, pretty complex, and language fails to fully articulate what's going on inside of our souls.

00:58:05.720 But, you know, in my opinion, that's where stories come from, period.

00:58:10.400 It's creation.

00:58:11.540 Yeah, it's the creation.

00:58:12.880 It's the fall of man is what created conflict, period, or at least the emotional conflict that we experience and some of the physical conflict.

00:58:21.300 I think there was conflict before the fall of man.

00:58:23.300 And I think it's part of a, you know, Adam was lonely for a woman before the fall of man.

00:58:30.020 So people say, well, you know, a woman can't complete you, only God can. 0.99

00:58:34.320 No, that's not true.

00:58:35.740 God was very, very close with Adam, and he was incomplete.

00:58:39.040 He wanted a woman. 0.98

00:58:40.880 He didn't know it because he didn't know what a woman was. 1.00

00:58:42.960 So that's indication that, no, God actually created you with a longing for him and for other things.

00:58:50.200 And for something else, yes.

00:58:51.680 And for a lot of other things, work, work that you love, a woman that you care for, you know, a child.

00:59:00.480 There's all sorts of things and longings that God gives us that – but what's missing in most of our lives is the actual connection with God that is the big one.

00:59:09.700 Well, and I think what's so crucial about that, we're getting a little bit into the spiritual realm, but I think it's important because we're both believers it sounds like.

00:59:18.000 But God is immovable, and his love is never-ending, never subject to the way that you act.

00:59:28.180 You know, but you could take a lifelong partner, somebody – you know, maybe you've been married for 30 years, 40 years, and you can get into an argument, and she's going to love you a little bit less, even if it's for 15 minutes.

00:59:42.980 And it's all subjective.

00:59:44.280 You're lucky.

00:59:44.980 15 minutes sounds great.

00:59:46.040 I'm using that as hyperbole, but I'm just saying if that's what it is.

00:59:49.400 But she's going to love you a little bit less in that moment.

00:59:53.820 Listen, there's a poet called Francis Thompson.

00:59:56.840 Yeah, there's a poet called Francis Thompson, and he wrote a poem called The Hounds of Heaven.

01:00:01.960 And one of the lines in that poem is, human love needs human meriting.

01:00:06.400 How is that merited?

01:00:07.300 How is that merited?

01:00:09.600 And that's what you're getting at, right?

01:00:12.020 That there is – you're not going to get unconditional love from anybody.

01:00:16.360 And by the way, don't complain about it because you don't give it either.

01:00:21.020 Right.

01:00:22.800 It's not like you're this unconditional love giver and your wife is, you know, not.

01:00:28.880 You know, we're all that way because human love requires human meriting.

01:00:32.220 How is that merited?

01:00:33.260 And God doesn't.

01:00:34.600 And there is no merit that God is looking for.

01:00:37.240 He is the merit that operates in you.

01:00:39.460 So, you know, these are all deep theological concepts.

01:00:41.300 But it gets – you know, I think that's where – I think when we're playing around with story, we're playing around with the meaning of life and the principles and the actions that have happened in ancient history that have caused these longings.

01:00:56.200 That's why we resonate with stories so much.

01:00:58.940 I'm glad that you brought up Nancy Duarte I think is how you pronounce her last name.

01:01:05.180 I haven't read her work for probably seven, eight years, but she is incredible as she researches and breaks down Martin Luther King's famous speech of I Have a Dream and JFK and all these incredible speeches that we've heard.

01:01:19.640 But I was reminded as you were talking about a story that I had with my oldest son, and this was probably eight, nine, ten years ago, he was getting bullied at school.

01:01:32.680 And I remember we sat outside of the sliding glass door of our dining room at the time, and we sat on the concrete steps, and I said to him, in a moment of clarity – I'm not taking credit, just a moment of clarity – I said, I remember the first time I got bullied too.

01:01:49.640 Oh, yeah, yeah.

01:01:51.280 And he was like, what? What happened? So there you go. Compelling, right?

01:01:55.060 Yep.

01:01:55.680 What happened? And then to go back to your framework –

01:01:58.120 At that moment, he's not alone.

01:02:00.140 Yes. And so we had the framework of the internal, the external, and the – what did you call it? The moral? I can't remember that third component.

01:02:10.720 Philosophical.

01:02:11.480 I like moral. I should have used that word. That's a better one. The moral.

01:02:14.600 So the external was getting bullied. The internal was, hey, I can't stand up for myself.

01:02:20.180 The philosophical, when we talked about what I did, he's like, what happened? 0.91

01:02:23.280 I said, well, I punched him in the face.

01:02:26.460 And he said, well, did you win the fight? I'm like, no, I don't think there was a winner or loser.

01:02:30.700 We just kind of rolled around on the ground for a little bit.

01:02:32.700 We were young, and that was it, and he never bothered me again.

01:02:34.960 And so the external was getting bullied. The internal was, can I stand up for myself?

01:02:41.120 And the philosophical was, am I allowed to use violence in order to protect myself?

01:02:47.380 Well, in some ways –

01:02:48.720 Good versus evil, right?

01:02:49.620 Yeah, it's good versus evil. Yeah, it is.

01:02:51.740 I mean that's what a bully is. A bully is a microcosm representation of evil.

01:02:58.980 I don't want to say some kid on the playground is evil, but you know what I mean.

01:03:02.280 No, we all know what you're saying.

01:03:03.880 Yeah, and the moral of the story is bullies will take until you push back.

01:03:11.100 So push back soon.

01:03:14.300 Create a bottom. You're at the bottom now. We're done.

01:03:18.300 Otherwise, they keep taking.

01:03:20.600 So I love that.

01:03:22.360 One thing that I've started to do that's really been fun is – in fact, I'm going to start using AI to do this.

01:03:28.800 I'm going to start using StoryBrand.ai to do this.

01:03:30.700 I was curious about that. I wanted to ask you, so I'm glad you're bringing this up.

01:03:34.440 Yeah. I mean, StoryBrand.ai is a marketing and messaging application platform that I've created.

01:03:40.100 By the way, if you have a business and you want us to write a tagline, you want me to write your tagline for you.

01:03:43.620 Go to StoryBrand.ai and I'll do it for free.

01:03:45.600 I'm going to do that myself, actually.

01:03:47.380 Yeah, there's something called the StoryBrand Brain and there's something called Blank Canvas that helps you sort of like write a Word document and interact with AI the whole time you're doing it.

01:03:54.420 And, you know, our core values as a family are helpful, fun, grounded, and attuned.

01:04:01.480 And so what I've started doing is – like this morning, Emmeline said, Dad, tell me a story.

01:04:06.100 And I said, OK.

01:04:07.820 This is a story about Princess Emmeline.

01:04:09.860 And there were two squirrels who lived in a tree.

01:04:13.540 They didn't have any food.

01:04:14.960 And so Princess Emmeline went down to the store and got some nuts and kind of put them on a plate and served them to the squirrels. 0.98

01:04:22.380 I'm just making stuff up, right?

01:04:23.480 But because Princess Emmeline is helpful and Millers are helpful. 0.99

01:04:29.200 I'm starting to tell stories about her where she vicariously plays the hero that happens to have her name who does helpful things.

01:04:38.080 And so – or Princess Emmeline was at the toddler New Year's party and she noticed Alexander was there and Alexander didn't want to play.

01:04:47.540 And she went over and asked him, why don't you want to play?

01:04:49.760 And he said, it's because so-and-so took my toy.

01:04:51.460 And the reason Princess Emmeline went over and asked Alexander that she noticed that he was actually in a bad mood or he was in pain because Princess Emmeline is attuned to the feelings of other people.

01:05:02.180 So I'm actually taking our core values and telling stories about Princess Emmeline embodying those core values.

01:05:10.680 Well, I'm teaching the core values.

01:05:11.920 So you could actually go to Perplexity.ai or ChatGPT or StoryBrand.ai and say, hey, I want to tell my kid a story in which they play a character that has courage or that is compassionate or that is moral or whatever.

01:05:28.460 And I'm thinking I want some animals involved and I want a big challenge, but I need it in bullet points so that I can remember it tonight when I'm putting them to bed.

01:05:37.640 Can you tell me that story?

01:05:38.760 And it will do it for you.

01:05:39.980 It's just crazy.

01:05:41.080 And, you know, you can go back and kind of edit it the way you want and then read it a few times and then tell your kid that story that night.

01:05:48.080 You know, if you do that three nights a week, you're going to be the best dad in the world in terms of because those kids are actually identifying with that character.

01:05:58.180 And story hijacks your brain.

01:06:00.260 You're actually living as somebody else for a little percentage of your brain.

01:06:05.760 You know, the imaginative center of your brain is allowing you to vicariously live in a story in which you have just shown courage.

01:06:11.700 And now you're practicing.

01:06:13.140 You're practicing those characteristics all through storytelling.

01:06:17.420 I actually watched Jocko Willink, who I'm sure you're maybe somewhat familiar with, Jocko, way of the warrior kid.

01:06:25.040 Oh, yeah.

01:06:25.400 No, he got tired of this, like, diary of a wimpy kid and these sorts of things.

01:06:30.040 And he said, all right, let's tell a tough narrative, like somebody who's tough that's conflicted but wants to be strong and capable.

01:06:37.280 And I watched him tell this story in front of a group of 100-plus grown men all at a jujitsu camp.

01:06:44.480 He was reading us a children's book.

01:06:46.480 But it doesn't matter whether it's children or adults.

01:06:49.060 It's all the same storyline.

01:06:50.660 It has all the same characteristics.

01:06:52.520 You could even do ChatGBT or MidJourney.

01:06:56.300 I don't know if StoryBrand AI does imagery or not, but you could even put together imagery with it and print out an actual book that you could read to your kids every night.

01:07:05.840 Yeah, absolutely.

01:07:06.760 I mean, AI is incredible for purposes like this.

01:07:10.060 And, you know, as a dad, you should be using it all the time in order to – how do I – you know, when my daughter says tell me a story, everybody's heart sinks, right?

01:07:17.860 Like, okay, uh, yeah, I don't know what to say.

01:07:22.800 It would take five minutes to sit there with AI and have some index cards, and you could just get – you could go right into it.

01:07:29.580 You know, I tend to sit in the same chair every night, read my daughter a stack of books that are next to me.

01:07:34.920 I could just set those cards right there.

01:07:36.600 She would love it.

01:07:38.320 Yeah, that's amazing.

01:07:39.600 Well, Donald, I appreciate you, man.

01:07:41.920 Like I said, I've been a follower for eight years or so now, and your work has actually been instrumental in helping me to – I don't want to say create a narrative, but articulate a narrative.

01:07:55.740 I've always had it kind of up here, but how do I communicate it effectively?

01:07:59.160 How do I take my ideas and communicate it in a way that's influential, that actually serves people?

01:08:05.220 And your work has been very powerful for me personally.

01:08:08.620 I know it is for a lot of other men.

01:08:10.180 Can you let the guys know outside of StoryBrand.ai where you would want them to connect?

01:08:15.400 And, of course, you've got the book out now too, the 2.0.

01:08:19.040 Yeah, Building a StoryBrand 2.0 is available on Amazon.

01:08:21.860 It's on Audible also in that format.

01:08:24.480 And then StoryBrand.ai is an incredible tool we launched yesterday.

01:08:29.300 We've been working on it for a very long time.

01:08:30.880 And it will actually write your tagline, your brand script, talking points.

01:08:35.340 It will create your website, your landing page, nurture emails, sales emails.

01:08:40.140 There's like 20 – there's a crazy number of assets in there that it will create.

01:08:44.480 So we're super proud of that if you need some help.

01:08:48.020 And I'm Donald Miller on Instagram.

01:08:50.000 Just follow me on Instagram.

01:08:51.140 You can see pictures of my family mostly.

01:08:55.000 That's good.

01:08:55.600 That's who it should be of.

01:08:56.480 Well, like I said, I appreciate you.

01:08:58.360 Thanks for taking some time to join us today.

01:08:59.780 I know it's going to be invaluable to the men who listen.

01:09:02.400 Ryan, I appreciate it.

01:09:03.300 Couldn't be helping a better cause.

01:09:04.280 Glad to be here.

01:09:07.580 Gentlemen, there you go.

01:09:08.380 My conversation with the one and only Donald Miller.

01:09:10.780 I really, really enjoyed this conversation.

01:09:13.240 Donald and I hadn't talked up to this point, but I felt like talking to an old friend.

01:09:17.260 And I think that's probably a testament to his ability to relate and articulate ideas

01:09:22.740 and connect with people through his great ability to tell stories and keep people interested.

01:09:27.440 And if you're looking to do that, and I think you should be because you're probably in the

01:09:32.460 business of having clients or raising kids or being partnered with a woman.

01:09:36.200 And so anytime you have another person involved, our ability to tell stories powerfully and

01:09:41.220 with relatability is going to spell the difference between, in a lot of ways, success and failure

01:09:45.780 in building that influence and authority with others.

01:09:49.220 So check out the copy of his latest book, Building a Story Brand 2.0.

01:09:53.240 Clarify your message so customers will listen.

01:09:56.340 And then also pick up the free after action review that we put together for year end 2024.

01:10:02.220 It's at orderofman.com slash A-A-R. 0.88

01:10:06.020 Orderofman.com slash A-A-R. 0.90

01:10:08.460 All right, guys.

01:10:09.120 We will be back tomorrow for my Ask Me Anything with Kip Sorensen.

01:10:12.720 Until then, go out there, take action and become the man you are meant to be.

01:10:16.700 Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast.

01:10:20.560 You're ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be.

01:10:24.580 We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - January 21, 2025

DONALD MILLER ｜ Build Influence and Authority Through Telling Stories

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