Episode 195 - Donald Miller Tells the Story Behind Growing a Business
Donald Miller's books—such as “Blue Like Jazz,” “A Million Miles in a Thousand Years,” and “Scary Close”—have spent more than a year on the New York Times Bestsellers list. Don has since gone from writing bestselling books to tapping into the power of story for businesses and individuals. Every year he helps more than 3,000 business leaders clarify their brand message. Listen in as he challenges entrepreneurs to lean into their own story, creatively develop and execute the story of their team, and understand the story of their customers so they can serve them with passion.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
Rusty Rueff: Hey, everyone, it's the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast you found us once again. Thanks for doing so. Donald Miller is the CEO of Story Brand, and every year helps thousands of business leaders clarify their brand message combined. Donald Books have spent more than a year on the New York Times bestseller list. Today, he is going to challenge entrepreneurs to lean into their own story, creatively, develop and execute the story of their team and understand the story of their customers so they can serve them with passion. Let's listen in.
William Norvell: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We are so overjoyed today. We get to talk about a man who needs no introduction, but he's going to get one anyway. You've already heard about who he is a little bit in the intro, but not a Miller who has influenced so many people through his writings for so long. I mean, gosh, I mean, 20, 25 years. How long have you been writing? I mean, it's just amazing. About 25 years. That's amazing. And we were just talking. Don and I have a mutual friend, David Price, who we will, for certain, make sure is listening. We met about five years ago. It was monumental in my life and a very small footnote in Don's. But he claims to remember me slightly, which means a lot to me. You know, that goes a long way on the heart, and we are just so excited to have you for our audience. We're so excited to help people hear about story, brand and business. It's simple. I'm pretty sure a lot of people have before, but for those that haven't, you're in for a special treat. So, Don, welcome to the show.
Donald Miller: Yeah, it's good to be with you.
William Norvell: And as we do just get started, as our audience knows, one of the things we love to do is just start at the beginning a little bit. Who are you? What brought you to where you are today and why do you continue to do what God's called you to do?
Donald Miller: Well, in my heart? I'm a guy who just loves to write. I mean, that's been my thing for a long time. And I started, of course, writing memoirs and in order to write good memoirs, I had to study story because I was very interested in keeping the reader interested in my books and turning the page. And so I discovered story is the best way to get somebody's attention, and stories are very, very formulaic. I mean, you know, this happens, then this happens, then this happens on page thirty three. This happens on Page 42. This happens. So I learned all those formulas for writing stories, and we wrote a screenplay and released a movie and those kinds of things. Definitely amateur stuff. There are real moviemakers and better writers than me, but you know, I enjoyed studying that stuff by the time I wrote my seventh memoir. I didn't have anything else to say. The publisher keeps coming back and saying, Hey, you know, these are sound pretty good. Can we get another memoir? And I just at one point just said nothing else has happened. I have nothing else to give you. I went camping and I can't write a book about that. And so I was asked by a company called Accenture to create a project management framework that would unite a team and help them accomplish a mission. Using everything I knew about story and I did that, and it was the first time I'd ever taken a story based message into business. It did well with Accenture. Then I wrote a book saying, Look, you know, this also works when you're thinking about your marketing or how you talk about your company, how you tell the story of your company, how you invite customers into a story. And I ended up writing a book about that, and I genuinely thought the book was going to sell moderately well, but I was just curious about it. I just wanted to write the book anyway, and it sold about 600000 copies and that launched my company called Story Brand, and we helped companies create very, very clear marketing messages. And so since then, my career has taken a pivot. I never, ever saw it coming. But I absolutely love it because, you know, I got to write seven memoirs, and I think every human being has this desire to be heard and have their story heard and to be known and to be listened to and be affirmed. And now I feel like I kind of got the Thanksgiving meal of that. And if I go the rest of my life and nobody ever hears any more of my story, I think I'm OK with that. I think other people sort of deserve to be heard. And so my career has taken this pivot where all these incredible entrepreneurs are trying to get the story of their story, their product, the story, their product story, their brand story, their team, the story of the customers and the transformation that they're having using their product. And now I get to go in and sort of consult with those companies and help them figure out how to tell those stories. So for me, you know, at the root of it all, is this love for words, this love for story and the fact that I got to tell my own and now help others, I think, is an incredibly fulfilling journey.
William Norvell: That's amazing. And you've got to do that in so many different ways. Of course, from blue like jazz to where you are today, could you go down a layer deeper and tell us, what is it about the power of story that's so impactful? And in your experience, why are people so connected to that form of learning?
Donald Miller: Your story is powerful because it asks. Questions that we want answers to. That's why you pay attention to a story when you're sitting down to watch a movie somewhere early on in the movie, the storyteller, the director, the writer of the story, the actors who come together to tell the story, they're going to positive question. And that question is going to be so interesting to you that you're going to spend 90 minutes to two hours trying to find the answer to that question. The last two nights in a row, Betsy and my wife have sat down, you know, gone through Netflix, trying to find something to watch, and we found Sherlock Holmes, the Robert Downey Jr. version. We watched the first one two nights ago. Watch the second one last night. You know, the very beginning of those movies. It's a whodunit. It's a murder mystery. You're wondering who the killer is, and you pay attention for two hours to find out one who the killer is and to. How do you do it? And that was the same story. Question for the first movie was the same as the second in the sequel. So, you know you got a positive story question, and that's what keeps us interested in the story. The fascinating thing is, if you ask the question well enough, you will actually compel a human brain to pay attention for a long period of time, which is nearly impossible to do. About 30 percent of the time the human brain is daydreaming. We're actually wandering off in our minds or meandering through the daisies. And when the brain daydreams, what's actually happening is the brain is saying, there's nothing in my environment right now that I can find that is going to help me stay alive or move ahead or get something that I want. So we're going to turn the brain off. The brain burns about 800 calories a day processing information. And if it's not processing information, that's going to help it survive. It will just tune out. So almost nothing you can do about it. What's fascinating about stories is it overrides that mechanism, and it's the only thing known to man that overrides that mechanism. It will pay attention and burn very, very valuable calories, processing information that has nothing to do with its survival. So the reason I bring that up is because if you have a brand or if you're a leader, if you're a political leader and you're running for office, we work with a lot of those. If you own a company and you're trying to sell a product, you've got to get people's attention and you are in a race and in the competition with your competitors to get that attention. So then you have to ask a question in this campaign that we're running to sell this product or grow this company or get this person elected. What's the story question? And if you can't figure out very quickly what the story question is, neither can your customer and they're going to start daydreaming. So for instance, for my company, I run a company called Story Brand and we say, Look, if you clarify your message, customers will engage. Well, you need customers to engage in order to stay in business. And so the question that you would ask yourself is, I wonder if I clarified my message, would my company grow? I wonder how I can clarify my message. I wonder what my message would be. There are enough story questions in there that compel an audience to pay attention to what we are doing. And that's what we teach other people to do. For instance, recently I was working with a company called Calix, and Calix is a broadband service company. The owner of Calix sold his other company for $7 billion. So it's a well-funded company, and they're growing very, very quickly. And occasionally we get on. We do these strategy sessions where I just look at the documents that they're releasing to the public, their websites, their sales letters, their proposals, and I just give them my thought about how they're doing. I looked at a proposal that they were going to send out. This proposal was for a particular piece of hardware that they could sell to broadband companies. It was going to be multi-millions in the deal. And I said, Look, you know, this is a great proposal. It's spelled out very clearly what you offer. But when I look at a proposal or a sales letter website or anything, I usually look for three colors red, yellow and green sentences that I want to highlight, read or sentences in which you're talking about the customer's problem. Sentences that you highlighted yellow are sentences in which you talk about your solution. The sentences that you highlight in green are sentences in which you are describing what the customer's life will look like if they use your product. Every document that goes out should have red, yellow and green and in that order. And when I look at your document, all I see is yellow. There's no red. You're not talking about the customer's problem. There's no green. You're not talking about what their life will look like. If they use your product, you're just talking about your product. That's not a story. If you want to invite customers into a story, I need to see red, yellow and green. So that's a little sort of tip on how you should look at the communication that you're sending out as a company. We see these mistakes all over the place. You know what, we study political campaigns a little bit. I don't particularly associate with the Republican or Democratic Party. I think both of them quite honestly, are wasting a lot of taxpayer money just fighting with each other rather than actually being creative and bringing solutions to the table. And so I personally don't love any of them, but I do watch the parties and watch the campaigns and sort of critique in my mind. And you know, you look at somebody like Jeb Bush and his campaign match or when he lost to Donald Trump in the tribe areas in the primaries was was. Jeb can fix it. OK, well, if Jeb can fix it, we're being invited to watch a story about Jeb. We're not being invited to participate. Jeb is the one who's going to get the glory and he's going to fix it. So if I invited you to a movie about a guy who was going to fix it, the first question you would ask is What's it? And that means nobody's going to go see that movie because they can't figure out what the movie's about. You know, Hillary Clinton, her campaign mantra when she lost to Donald Trump was, I'm with her. Well, I'm with her going where I'm with her trying to accomplish what? How is this going to help me survive? You know, it just wasn't very interesting. So the words that we choose to describe what we're doing are as important as what we're doing. The words that we use to describe what product we sell are actually just as important as the product. Because if you get the product right, but the words wrong, the words are the bridge to the product. If you use the wrong words, there is no bridge that people can actually engage your product. That's the importance of inviting people into a story. And the idea is your company, your leadership, whatever it is that you're trying to advance in the world. You want to invite the customer, the voter, the stakeholder, into a story in which one of their problems is going to be solved. And so I'll just give you a little formula to do that because I think that's why you're all listening. The formula to do that is start with the problem. When somebody asks what you do, don't say, Well, here's what to do. Say Well, you know how a lot of people struggle with, you know, how people get frustrated when you know how much it hurts to see people x start with a problem because the problem is actually the hook. Then once you start with the problem, now you can talk about your product. My product solves that problem. And then step three is so that people can live this way. People have this problem. So I created this product so that people could live this way. That's a story. A hero has a problem, overcomes a challenge to make that problem go away and lives happily ever after. So if you use that formula in your sales letters and your keynote speeches, in your elevator pitches, on your websites and your lead generators on and on in your proposals, if you use that formula, you will find that people pay attention to you rather than ignore you. It really is the key to explosive growth.
William Norvell: Oh, that's amazing, and thank you for walking through a bit of the story brand framework. I want to. We're going to jump into that and say, I want to jump back, though, and give you the opportunity to tell us about your startup story. How did story brand? I mean, I heard how you made the transition from writing, but tell us about the company growth and how you grew the company and just your entrepreneurial journey a little bit.
Donald Miller: Yeah, there's many aspects to my entrepreneurial journey. I mean, in a way, a writer who succeeds has to become a business person. They really have to manage a tiny staff, have to manage a schedule, they have to manage all those kind of things. So I've been doing that for a long time. You know, we have 30 employees now, and that's a very different dynamic. It's not a big company by any stretch, but I'm managing something much larger. You know, really, though, my entrepreneurial journey is just about consistently following curiosity. I was curious about story, and so I studied story. I was curious about how story could affect project management. And then I was curious about how story could affect marketing. And of course, that took off. And we just kept chasing curiosity. What are we curious about? And we would create curriculum and content based on our curiosity and the results that the products that we created would give to people. So, you know, that's basically my entrepreneurial journey. I just kept chasing curiosity. I mean, I was pretty good at always figuring out what was sustainable, you know, how to make cash come into the company. And so I also chased that path to but for me, you know, nothing beats curiosity. And I was always curious about these things.
William Norvell: Well, that's great. OK, so jumping back past the framework, which you kind of walk through a little bit with us, I'm curious for entrepreneurs listening because I'm guessing you could have a lot of fun with 100 pitch decks that we will not send you. But I'm sure, well, maybe, maybe we will. Who knows? You know, we'll test it out later. Why is it? Why do brands make this mistake so often? Why do they put themselves in the shoes of the hero? Why do they only talk about their product? Why is that the normal way to think and why can't they figure it out, right? Like, what are people missing and what are our entrepreneurs missing when they stop to think about selling this product? That, of course, they put so much time, energy and effort into, and they're missing the story of how to sell it? What's that disconnect?
Donald Miller: Well, I think the disconnect is natural. It comes from insecurity. You know, when we're really insecure and we don't believe that we have the authority to be in the room or be on stage. We talk about ourselves and we try to sell everybody on the fact that we are good enough to be here, valuable enough to be here. Those kinds of things. And, you know, people just smell it as weakness. When people are hurting or wounded, they talk about themselves when they're strong and competent. They talk about others. And so what we look for in leadership and we look for and brands that are supposed to help us solve a problem. So we look for strength. A brand is just like a person. It has a personality. And when you think about the people that you like the most, the people that you like the most and click with the most actually aren't the most successful people. You know, they're actually the people who do a great job listening to the people who do a great job mirroring your emotions, restating what you just said in such a way that maybe you feel like they understood you and they heard you. That's part one. And then part two is people who actually take whatever it is that you share with them and give you back some wisdom or some advice that you find helpful. Those are the people that we like the most, and those are the brands that we like the most. We really like two things when it comes to choosing leaders, choosing brands, choosing authority figures, choosing to give our trust to somebody who's competent. We like two things. We like empathy. We like that people can understand our pain. Feel our pain. The best definition I've ever heard for empathy is shared pain. And literally, it's when you share the pain that somebody else is feeling. And then part two after empathy is competency. It's not good enough for a brand or a leader just to share our pain or understand our pain. They also need to be competent to help us out of it. They need to be able to say, Look, I've helped a thousand people deal with this and got most of them out, and I think I can get you out to. I don't think you're going to have to deal with this anymore. So it's that one two punch of empathy. Fee and authority. That's really what we're looking for in a brand. What we tend to do a lot of is leave out all of the empathy. We don't even think about the customer's pain. We're all so insecure about whether or not we belong here that whether or not we're sure people should buy from us. We just go on and on about how great we are. And that's a giant turnoff to most people.
William Norvell: Oh, that's great. I can feel that in so many things that,
Donald Miller: yeah, we all do it, I wish I teach this stuff, but like every fifth time I pitch it, I find myself through the exact opposites. But there's there's grace.
William Norvell: That's good. That's good. They say, you know, the best things you learn is as you're teaching them, right? So you're going to be an expert in about 20 years that 20 percent is going to be down to about two minutes before you die.
Donald Miller: You're going to get your head around this.
William Norvell: You're going to nail it. You're going to nail it. And the kingdom and the heaven will, you know, God will welcome you in and say, you can now teach this in heaven.
Donald Miller: There you go. Right.
William Norvell: So that's fascinating on how that changes the pitch right of the product and how we shift that. How have you experience with the companies you work with? How does that change the company from the inside out? How does that change the people when people can get their story right as an organization? How does that change what happens inside?
Donald Miller: You know, it actually happened to us, even though we teach this stuff, you know, we have a great framework, but a company really works a lot like a person, you know, when it's a fledgling new company. It works like a fledgling new person in the sense that all a baby really thinks about its survival. They think about food, they think about a little bit about play, they think about love and nurturing. You know, it really isn't until like probably the 12th year of being a human being that that initial first thought enters the brain of. I wonder if I should get somebody else something for Christmas. Yeah, it's like it takes. It literally takes that long. And I think companies are similar, and I think we should give ourselves a lot of grace in those first few years because you're really just trying to make cash, you know, bringing cash to make payroll, you're trying to keep cash flow going. You're trying to sell things you don't quite know. And then when we have sort of bad economic stability, a beautiful thing begins to happen in the life of the company. And that is most of the times you become as interested in building a community as you do in building a company. You become as interested in your team feeling nurtured and cared about so that they can nurture and care about customers. You begin to care about customers connecting with each other and connecting with your brand and a lot of that luxurious because you don't have to think about the bottom line anymore that the company's actually doing well. But interestingly, right when that transition begins to take place is usually the time when the company starts to see explosive growth, which tells us something tells us. So I wish we could have done this five years earlier, but sometimes that's not possible. But you know, that's the big difference that we see when we teach the story brand framework, because not only are we teaching a framework that's going to bring in a lot more revenue. We're also teaching a framework that says, think about what your customers are dealing with, think about their problems. Get your mind off yourself for a second to right this sales letter from the perspective of the person that you're talking to. And really, there's no other way to put it, except when you do that, you begin to open up your heart and you begin to practice more empathy. And that always changes us.
William Norvell: Hmm. Amen and Amen, amen a little bit around here is the esoteric Bible question guy. So every now and then I slip one in, so I've got to talk about I've got to get your perspective on Jesus using so many stories. Maybe just riff on that for a couple of minutes. Why? How did it work? How did it motivate people as you read through the scripture and you see you've spent so much of your life studying story, how why did Jesus use that method and how was it effective?
Donald Miller: Well, I think Jesus used story for the same reason so many of us who communicate use stories. And it's because words actually fail. You cannot tell the truth with words because the truth is much bigger than words, and words are a really amazing tool to sort of point toward truth. But you're not going to explain it. So when Jesus says, you know, the Kingdom of God is like a, you know, a mustard seed, I would hope that the Kingdom of God is not a master is quick because we're not going to fit right? They're very small. But here's what he's saying. He's saying Look, your little bitty brain is never going to fully comprehend the bigness of what is actually true. You know, like G.K. Chesterton said, if you can get the truth of theology into your brain, your theology isn't very big and your God is actually very, very small. So it's pretty arrogant of us to think that we actually fully understand, you know, the universe that is Christian theology. All we can do is sort of point toward it with stories that's really all we can do. You know, I'm in an interesting place right now in my life. Within about a week, my wife and I are going to have our first child. We're expecting a daughter. And it's been fun at forty nine years old. All of my mentors are now 20 years younger than me. They're all like Don, hold the baby out. You know, these guys, it's really a fun. It's a fun season of life. And but you know, they'll tell me things like a whole other compartment opens up in your heart. You're going to experience a kind of love that you didn't know existed. Nobody, nobody can actually explain it. Nobody now. Does that mean it doesn't exist? No. I'm going to feel that in a week and then feel a lot of other things like no sleep and those kinds of things that they tell me about, you know, so all we can do is really tell stories and grunt with these weak words toward a truth. And one of the things that I think helps us understand one of the reasons I actually pray to Jesus is a man of faith is because he use storage. One of the reasons that Christian leaders who have all the answers are not interesting to me is because they're quite naive. I'm sorry, you don't actually have all the answers. There's an enormous amount of mystery involved in this, not because there isn't a truth out there, but because our brains are simply not able to comprehend it. One of the great metaphors that I've heard is, you know, right now my baby daughter, her name is Emeline. She's inside of this womb and her brain understands probably warmth. It probably understands some nutrients when those come in through the umbilical cord vaguely hear some voices that may seem friendly. Has no comprehension of the unbelievably magical world she's about to enter into a world that includes ladybugs crawling on leaves, a world that includes a little dog named June Carter that she's going to meet and grow up with has no comprehension of any of that. And I think about the Kingdom of God and maybe the passing from this life is that. And so for us not to be excited and anticipate the bigness and mystery of what is to come and instead believe wrongly that we have it fully under wraps and we can answer every question I think is something that Jesus never tempted us with. He told Stories. The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. So I think that's one of the reasons that I trust him. So much is he just told stories and said, You know, it's kind of like this fully knowing our brains were absolutely not capable of understanding.
William Norvell: Hmm. Congratulations on everything. What an amazing story. Yeah, gosh, I will not. Our audience is tired of hearing about Liam and Louise, but I have a I have a three year old and a one year old and oh my god.
Donald Miller: I'm more than a lot. So you don't hear s you look, you look rejuvenated about the world.
William Norvell: So don't believe all this. You know, your life is going to change forever. It's so awful. You never sleep again. No, it's the greatest joy in the history of the world. I am so ecstatic for you, and I'm so, so excited to hear you've already named her as well. My wife and I have done that with all of our children before, and there's something special we feel when we get to talk to them before we get to meet them, you know? Oh my gosh. We're going to have you on to talk about that afterwards. There you go. That's a guarantee. I want to hear the story of you holding her and welcoming her into this world. Yeah. So we do have to transition a little bit as we come to the next segment of our time here. I want to hear about business made simple. So we've talked about story brand as the organization and a lot of times, you know, people feel things. I mean, I think we've all been victim right of reading the book that quote on quote changed our life and then we do nothing with it, right? I read a great quote the other day that said, Be a book doer, not a book reader.
Donald Miller: I also said it
William Norvell: was so good. It was so good. It might have been you on Instagram. It doesn't sound like it, but I did it. I don't remember where I saw it, but I saw it somewhere. I was like, Oh, that that hits my soul, right? I I take in a lot of information. I don't put all of it into action. And I think that's a little bit of where you know, you've gone with business made simple and the coaching network a little bit. Could you tell our audience a little bit about that and how that works alongside story brand?
Donald Miller: Yeah. You know, Story Brand is a company and we grew it as a company and as we grew the company teaching a marketing and messaging framework we had to create in order to grow that company a framework on finances, we had to grow a framework on talent management. We had to grow a framework on management and execution. We had to grow a framework on sales. We had to grow a framework on cash flow. We had a growth framework on keeping overhead down. We had to create a lot of frameworks just to run our company. And because I'm a teacher at heart, I started turning around and teaching these frameworks to other businesses that were wanting to grow as well. And what everybody said to me was, Don, you're really good at making a very complicated things simple and actionable, and I consider that a compliment. And so I wrote a book called Business Made Simple that just teaches you how to grow a business. And the truth is, I never went to college. I didn't graduate from college. I hung out at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, for about three years, which studied humanities. You know, I didn't study business, and I always had a sort of insecurity about that until I began to hire people with MBAs and degrees from Ivy League schools and realized, you know, they don't know anything. I don't know anything else. You know, the schools are teaching us how to read a white paper on trade with China in case we become chairman of the Fed. They're not teaching us how to actually run a business. We've all had to figure that out, let's be honest. And so I thought, Man, I really want to put it very simply, you know, how do you create a mission statement and guiding principles? How do you clarify your message? How do you create a marketing sales funnel? You know, how do you run a team? How do you get everybody united around a purpose? How do you check in with people once a week to make sure they're doing their jobs? How do you write their job description? All the just kind of basic stuff that you need to actually grow a business? And I put it into a book it. Actually, it's I think it's 20 dollar book, and it comes with 60 videos that are free that you watch that teach you how to run a business. My goal was to create a better than Ivy League MBA education for twenty dollars. And I hope we've done that. A lot of the reviews have said we have, and it's just everything I know, taking a company from $0 to sixteen and a half million in about five years. With a 64 percent profit margin and no debt, no venture capital, no loans from banks, we've been able to do that. And I think one of the reasons we've been able to do it is because I just didn't learn to do it the wrong way and we figured out the right way. And so I wanted to pass that along. So we actually it was so successful that we created a mother company over story brand called Business Made Simple and Story Brand is the messaging and marketing arm of business made simple. And so that book is out there. You know, I also did it in microlearning. It's a business education in microlearning and short daily reads with short five to 10 minute video that you can watch, and you just sort of figure out how to run a company by osmosis. And then the more you put it into action, the better your company does. I'm super, super proud of it. I grew up in a really poor home. Dad split when I was about two and mom and me and my sister stood in line for government cheese. She was a secretary her whole life, just to the last possible guy you would ever think would run a business and have it be successful. But you know, if I can do it, you can do it. And I just don't think business should be a minister. I really don't. I don't think it's actually all that hard. It's not easy, but it's not all that hard. If we just have some practical knowledge
William Norvell: and all, that's amazing. That's amazing. And there's a book, you've got a podcast for those listeners who haven't found you yet, you have a pretty active Instagram feed you're reading in your house right now, which looks pretty fantastic, so you can find down a lot of places. I want to ask you what's one of your favorite stories of one of the people that have gone through the business made simple program.
Donald Miller: Yeah, we hear every day somebody's going through story, brand or business made simple who has doubled, tripled, quadrupled their revenue. I have a friend named West who was it was pretty risky for him to become one of our we call him story brand certified guides. They make sales funnels for people, but he turned down a job. Then it was a $27000 a year job. He turned it down and he became one of our story and certified guides and within three years was making just shy of seven figures. And you know, that's a complete life change. Another woman named Amy Lacey runs a company called Cauliflower Foods, and she was $250000 in debt. And the company came to her and said, Look, you know, for twenty five thousand dollars a month. If you go get a loan or get, some investors will handle all your marketing. And she said, No, you know, let me get back to you. I'm going to go to this story brand thing and figure out how to clarify my message. She did that. She did not hire the firm. She just did it herself. And that was five years ago. Now she's preparing to sell the company for $100 million. You know, you got to love it, and everybody listening to me knows what I'm talking about. It's just a neat thing when your product works, you know, because let's face it, we put it out there like, Oh man, I hope this work. It worked for my uncle. I hope it works for everybody else, and it's pretty neat when it actually does. And so we collect those stories. We get them almost every day and they get funneled into a slack channel. And anytime anybody on staff needs some encouragement, they just go read What's happening to our customers?
William Norvell: Well, that's amazing. And fortunately, as we head to a close here, one of the questions we always ask at the end is we would love to ask basically where God's word is coming alive to you, and we love that as a bridge between our guests and our listeners. And and that could be a passage you've meditated on your whole life. That's still with you. It could be something you read this morning, right? Could be something you're meditating on this season, but we just love to connect everything through God's word at the end of our episodes here.
Donald Miller: You know, something that has guided my life for a really long time. I would say if I had a conversion experience, it was right out of high school. Even though I grew up in a church and was involved in the youth group, I had this really amazing encounter with God reading the book of James, and there was just something about the idea that faith without works is dead and worse than no faith at all. And coupled with another idea from the Book of James, you know, go into your prayer closet and pray in secret and don't be one of the people who sort of publicly do things. Yeah, I understand it's professional ministers and they need to pray in public in those kinds of things. But that was a big faith experience for me, where it just became a part of that. Acting on my faith rather than just believing it or talking about it was critical. And I'm so grateful to talk to a group of people who are people of faith because what I've found is over the years that if I didn't talk about my faith, but I actually acted on it. And if I prayed about something but prayed in secret that God showed up, it was, I mean, I think the passage literally says, you know, those who pray in public get their reward in full. And what that means is everybody thinks they're awesome and then that's it. God doesn't actually do anything. I mean, that may not be what it means. I don't know. But I've just noticed that as my faith becomes more real and I do things and I act on it rather than talk about it, God works in pretty amazing ways. So to me, that idea, I think, is what's governed at least the last 15 years of my life, and I feel like I've been richly rewarded for it.
William Norvell: That's amazing. It is amazing when we take God's word seriously and it works right. Turns out he said it for a reason. Well, what an amazing place to end. We can't thank you enough for spending time with us and our audience in the last 30 seconds. Are there other places I didn't name where people could find out more about you and business made simple and story brand? Are there other places where people can go to learn more about the work you're doing?
Donald Miller: Yeah. All the work that we're doing on my team is doing is it business made simple dot com and of course we'd love to. We'd love to hear from you. Do anything we can to help.
William Norvell: Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us.
Donald Miller: My pleasure.