Four Keys to Content That Drives Action

Have you ever wondered why some things you read or watch compel you to want to take action and some things simply entertain you?

I've wondered about this a lot. I've spent most of my career trying to create better communication that drives action from either a screen or a stage.
But I never really knew why something worked or didn't work until I had a framework to compare different pieces of content to.

In 2018, I was introduced to and trained in the Story Brand framework and things started to make more sense. I had the framework that I needed to do good comparisons between different pieces of content that we created.
The more you can turn messaging into a story format, the more it will engage people. People love stories.

Most of us resonate with a good story more than we resonate with logic or facts. That's generally why storytellers who paint a clearer picture of the future beat policy wonks in elections, and actors and rock stars generally have bigger followings than accountants.

For the record, I love wonks and accountants. I worked in finance for a time and I have a business degree, so I have spent my fair share of time building spreadsheets.

The main 4 things that I've learned about telling great stories that drive action are:

1. Make sure you're telling the story from the right perspective. In marketing material, we tend to make ourselves and our companies the heroes. You'll get more buy-in if you make your customers the hero of the story and position yourself as the wisened guide, working to help them accomplish their goals.

2. Set up the problem that you're solving for your customers or audience really well. Good stories don't exist without good problems to solve. The better you set up the problem, the better the engagement you'll have with your audience.

3. Tell how you or your organization can uniquely solve the problem you've set up. Talk about yourself only in the context of how your expertise helps your client. People are always listening for how something affects them, so when you talk about what you do, tell them just how it helps your audience.

4. Give one clear call to action. It's hard to get someone to take a next step. It's lightning in a bottle to get someone to do two next steps. Just ask for one thing and people are more likely to do it.

There are, of course, lots of other things that make a great story: humor, aspirational identities, stakes, time devices, and much more. For tips on more creativity check out my blog here, and here.

But starting with the above points gives me criteria to evaluate why something worked or didn't work. Happy storytelling!

How To Be More Creative Pt.2 “Get Outside”

There's a reason many of history's greatest creative breakthroughs happened during walks. From Einstein to Steve Jobs, creators have long known that something magical happens when we step outside.

Science backs this up. Research shows that time in nature boosts creative problem-solving by up to 50%. It's not just the exercise - it's the separation from screens, the natural patterns, and the change in perspective.

One of my favorite books from last year was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Be Useful: Seven Tools For Life and in it he devoted an entire section on problem solving to telling about how whenever he gets stuck on a problem his first solution is to get outside and go for a walk. It’s amazing how our brains seem to open up when we get active but not to the point that we’re over exerted and we’re getting fresh air and sunshine all at the same time. 

In my own creative career I owe a lot of my best ideas to something very similar. I got an electric bike and used it to replace a car for our family for 5 years straight. It was my daily vehicle for getting to work and it would take me about 50 minutes each way. I LOVED those rides. I was able to accomplish so much more mentally, get clarity on issues, and come up with new ideas for projects when I was on that bike than anywhere else, by a long shot. I still use the bike a whole lot and it helps me get unstuck so often.  

You don’t have to go on a grand adventure or take it to the extreme like I did.  A simple walk in a park, sitting under a tree, or watching clouds pass can reset your creative mind. Nature operates on different rhythms than our digital world - slower, more organic, full of unexpected connections.

The key is making it intentional. Schedule your outdoor time like any other important meeting. Leave your phone behind. Let your mind wander.

Remember: creativity needs space to breathe. Sometimes the best way forward is to step outside.

How To Be More Creative Pt. “Creative Elbow Grease”

Creating anything is hard. It doesn't matter if it's music, a book, a blueprint or really anything that didn't exist before someone sat down had a sliver of a thought and then got started building that thought into something tangible. 

It always sounds fun to be creative because we think of the final product rather than the work it takes to actually produce the product. It's kind of like going to the gym, we all want to be fit but not as many of us love to work out everyday and skip the dessert line at our friends' parties. 

Having run a company with "creative" in its name, and previously working on a creative team for nearly a decade, I've had countless conversations about creativity - both with people far more creative than myself and with those seeking creative advice. I've learned from Grammy Award-winning musicians, New York Times bestselling authors, and passionate creators who make things purely for themselves.

After all, "the new oil is ideas" according to Naval Ravikant. If that's true, then the new tycoons will be those who can come up with kernels of ideas and then build on those until something brand new is created. 

The first and probably most important thing I've learned about creativity is this: 

Don't wait on inspiration, show up relentlessly. This is by far the most common thing I've heard from successful creatives. If you wait to be inspired you might be waiting for a long time. The most important thing is to show up everyday or at least on a consistent schedule and put in your time. 

It's so hard to be diligent about doing anything consistently, especially in the age of distraction we live in but it's extremely hard to put away the distractions and dive into something completely unknown like a creative session. When it comes to this I always think about one of my favorite singer-songwriters from one of my favorite bands, Glen Frey from the Eagles. 

Glen Frey told a story about moving into an apartment next door to another successful writer and musician, Jackson Browne. He said that every morning he would hear the same thing. Jackson's coffee pot would go off at the same time, and then he would hear Jackson playing the same chords on his guitar about 20 times over. There would be silence for around 20 minutes, and he would come back to his guitar and start trying to build into the next part of the song with what he had been writing during the silence. He would repeat this process over and over until he had a finished product. I'll never forget what Glen Frey said about what this revealed to him, "oh that's how you write a great song it's about elbow grease."

The Eagles went on to be the only artists to have two albums in the top ten best-selling albums of all time, but it may have never happened without Glen Frey learning to write using creative elbow grease.

For being creative, like getting in shape, there are a million effective ways to do it. But showing up and putting in the work can't be replaced. Elbow grease is the only way.

What Makes a Great Story?

If you want to see the video version of this article, check it out here.

I've got a question for you. What makes a great story? In today's world, the term "storyteller" is ubiquitous. It may be even a little overused, but it makes total sense because we as human beings absorb way more information when it's given in the form of a story than if it's just raw information by itself.

But what makes a great story? I get so many different answers on this, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about it myself. I've developed a framework for how we put together stories at Tree City Creative, whether that's for a video campaign or producing a live event.

This is how we think through things. A great story begins with a problem. There's no story until there's a problem. We human beings are problem-solving machines, and we don't pay attention and don't kick off a story loop in our heads until there's a problem that needs to be solved.

Then we're paying attention. Think about the greatest film franchises of all time. One of the biggest ones, James Bond movies, always has some huge problem that James has to solve. Someone's trying to blow up the world or steal all the money in the world - it's a well-defined problem.

Sometimes it's complex and multi-layered, and one problem leads to another like a nesting doll of problems, but there's always a big problem he needs to solve. When you define a problem well, it begins to narrow the range of solutions you can have. That's how I think it ties into great marketing - when we define a problem well, it helps us write the form of the solution we're presenting to our customers or clients.

Let me give you another example from Donald Miller's fantastic book "How to Grow Your Small Business." In it, he gives an example of meeting two different people who do the same jobs at a party.

You go up to the first person and ask, "What do you do for a living?" They say, "Well, I'm an at-home chef. I come to your house and cook and clean up so that you don't have to." As a nice and curious person, you'd have an informative conversation with this chef and learn about what they do, but you probably wouldn't consider hiring them.

Now think about the next person. Same question, but this person says, "Do you know how many Americans don't have time to sit around the dinner table anymore and have dinner together and connect? Well, I'm an at-home chef. I come to people's houses and cook and clean up so they have more time to spend with their family."

If you have this problem, which many do, you'll automatically begin to see this person as a potential solution because they've defined the problem so well. This person hasn't mentioned anything about quality, ingredients, or cooking style, but you're already thinking this could help your life.

That's the power of defining a problem well. The problem must be defined in terms of something people really want. Many people want to connect better with their family - it's aspirational. If you tie your problem-solving to that, it will make a big difference in your marketing.

It reminds me of James Joyce's quote: "In the particulars lie the universal." He was talking about writing "Dubliners," meaning if he could define the problems of Dublin's people well enough, it would translate globally because we're all human beings with similar problems.

If you spend more time thinking about the problems, you can spend less time thinking about solutions and being creative on that side. That's why we like to start there - if you start with the problem, the solution will often be partly written for you.

I've got so much more to share about this, and I can't wait to tell you more, but I hope you enjoyed this and I hope it helps you make better content this year.

Give Away Your Secrets!

Give away the secrets, sell the implementation. - Alex Hormozi

These words changed the way I thought about marketing my own company and the way that we help other companies with their marketing. Particularly marketing for companies in the service sector, which makes up 70% of US GDP so I think there is a good chance this may resonate with you as well.

First let me confess something. I have been a DIY addict and sometimes even an all-star for the last 9 years, since we bought our house. I've done everything from plumbing work, to tree work, to siding and structural work, and it all culminated in my magnum opus, which was replacing our entire HVAC system this past summer with a central heat pump, which actually saved us about $8000 dollars.

I enjoy learning and I loved the feeling of accomplishment I got when I finished a project and the savings have been life altering but, do you know the one thing that all of my home projects have had in common? Each time I finished a project I would say to myself, "I'd love to hire someone else to do this project the next time".

We live in an age where we can find information on just about anything we want to tackle. This information rich landscape is amazing because it gives us the ability to choose whatever we want to learn and leverage our free time and energy to accomplish things that would have been impossible, or at least would have taken way longer any time before the last 15 years.

I've spent years learning how to perfect the work that Tree City Creative does and my natural tendency has sometimes been to guard the knowledge that I've worked so hard to learn, synthesize, and then package in our own unique way. I'm proud of the system we've developed to do video marketing, branding, and events and I know it works so why would I want to let anyone in on what I do?

However, I learned everything that I know from somewhere or someone. I’ve synthesized everything in my own way and I've built an approach to communicating through video and on stage that I think is special but I'm not guarding the Coke recipe or the Crown Jewels.

I think the best way to market most service companies in today's digital economy is to teach people exactly how to do what you do.

That may seem weird but here are three of the main reasons I believe this to be true:

1. You are providing value before anyone ever pays you a dime. This generates a lot of good will between your potential customers and you. 

2. You are demonstrating mastery of your craft by showing that you know it so well that you can easily communicate it well enough to teach someone else how to do it.

3. You are solving one problem while revealing several more problems.

I can show people how we work on our messaging, how we shoot, and just about anything else that we do. They could go out and do the work themselves and do it better from what they've learned and I hope some will do that and get an amazing value, but a lot of people will quickly realize just how much time, technical skill, and mental energy it takes to produce content in the way we do it.

They might also have a better understanding of how expensive the equipment we use to get the aesthetics we want, and that you have to store it, maintain it, and carry insurance on it. 

Someone who knows my "secrets" may be the best future customer because they understand more about the nuances of what we do.

I know how to do tons of stuff around my house after nine years of big DIY projects and whenever I actually hire someone to do something that I don't have time to do myself I constantly get told how nice of an experience it is to work at our house. I think that is because I've done so much of the type of work that they're doing so I have extreme empathy when someone comes to my house and goes in my hot attic or my freezing, creepy crawl space.

Knowing more about how to do something actually makes you a more educated and empathetic consumer. 

Just because I now know how to replace my HVAC it doesn't make me more likely to do it myself the next time, it needs to be replaced. It might actually do the opposite. The job was so big that I'm more likely to hire it out next time and I'll treat the technicians like absolute life savers because I know exactly what they are saving me from.

Effective teachers who are open handed with their knowledge and skills are winning in today’s information economy.