Seth Erickson | Storify Agency
Seth Erickson started his career in web design but quickly realized that without a good story, the website (and other marketing efforts) would fail to perform. That’s when he decided to become an expert in storytelling.
Seth spent months studying not just the discipline of storytelling, but the neuroscience behind why stories are so effective, and shared what he learned in his book How to Hack Humans: Storytelling for Startups.
In this episode of The Inbound Success Podcast, Seth breaks down the must-have components of an effective story, as well as the neural triggers that happen, and what marketers need to know about all of it to get better results.
Check out the full episode to learn more.
Resources from this episode:
Connect with Seth on LinkedIn
Visit the Storify Agency website
Get your copy of How to Hack Humans: Storytelling for Startups
Visit www.storify.com/inboundsuccess to get a free copy of the first chapter of Seth’s book
Seth and Kathleen recording this episode
Kathleen (00:01):
Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Seth Erickson, who has the best title ever. He is the chief storyteller and mischief maker for Storify Agency. So welcome to the podcast, Seth.
Seth (00:37):
Oh, thank you for having me. And I'm glad I have the best title ever. That's that's awesome. That's what I was going for. No, I love that. Do all these other titles?
Kathleen (00:46):
Yeah. Yeah. It's it's great. And, and I think we have to start out by then talking about like who you are and what you do and what certify is, because I'm assuming that this title is very on brand for you and your agency. So can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
Seth (01:00):
Yeah. So so story I, well, where did we start? I ran a very successful web design agency. You know, I came outta school learned design and was told design changes the world. And so my goal in, in my business was to design the most beautiful things ever. And, you know, that was gonna make a huge difference. Unfortunately reality set. And I started to realize that while we were designing beautiful websites, we were winning awards. We had really happy clients. It wasn't actually moving the needle for our clients in their business. So, you know, we'd launch a new website, they would be super excited about it. And then like a couple months later I'd be like, you know, are you getting more sign up? So are you getting more of this? Are you getting more of that? And they would be like, no, but we're really happy with the website.
Seth (01:51):
And I, I got into business obviously because I love design, but also because I wanted to help people. I, I, I like doing that. Like I want people to win. I want them to succeed. I love, you know, you know, hearing that like they've, you know, achieved this thing or that thing through something that I helped them do. Right. And so in 2015 I started to realize we don't know anything about marketing, right? Like we're great designers, we're super technical. And we needed to learn about marketing so that we didn't just, you know, create pretty things that people went, Ooh, that's really nice. And then kind of moved on with their day. And so we kinda had to transition into this into something new with the business. And so we actually studied a ton of marketing for years.
Seth (02:42):
I think it was like three years and sleep. Most of the marketing that I ran across I didn't like, I didn't feel like it really fit with us. I felt like a lot of things that I, I learned about were really like kind of scammy and pressure tactics and manipulative. And I just didn't like that. And finally a friend gave me this book called Winning the Story Wars by Jonah Sachs. And it, it was about storytelling and all the narratives that are around us and that kind of opened my eyes. And I was like, well, this is fascinating. And after I read that first book, I then and on a tear through Audible and read over 50 books on storytelling, you know, I read the classics like The Hero With a Thousand Faces story by Robert McKee. I read several books by Lisa Kohn.
Seth (03:31):
She has some really great books on, on storytelling and how to write. And I, I like, so yeah, I just, I kind of went wild on, on Audible. I think I single handedly raised their stock price in a, in, in that year. And and it, so that was really great, but then I was like, okay, but what, you know, being somewhat technical, I was like, well, what's the proof, right? Like, everybody's like, storytelling's amazing. Okay, great. I got that. I, I love it. Like now, how do we, like, is there any science around this? And that's where I started reading scientific journals articles that referenced other scientific journals and started pulling it all together. By the way, don't do that. Like that is, that is like the worst possible thing you could do to yourself because the irony of the whole thing is like, they're talking about all this amazing stuff that's happening in the brain.
Seth (04:24):
When you hear a story, except they don't apply any storytelling to, to their, their scientific articles. Right. They're like storytelling does this and we learn this and the brain does this. But we're gonna write it out, like the most boring college professor ever, you know? And so like, you're, you're like reading through you're slogging through really through this through these research articles to find what are the key points. And instead of using a story to explain their key points, just it's, it's written like scientific literature. So yeah, so we got to that point started going, okay, there is something to this, besides people going stories are great. Right. And then we started taking that and applying it to our customers. And then we started seeing you know different things happen time on site going up by, you know, percentages click through rates, going up by like four and 5%. We started seeing, you know, open rates on email campaigns that we were doing. And obviously we're doing a little bit more of the outbound stuff, but we're seeing, you know, we're starting to see on, on our end crap, this works like, this is actually, we're actually helping our customers, you know, it's like mission accomplished. So, so so yeah, that's that, that's where we ended up.
Kathleen (05:54):
It's so funny that you say that, the sort of crap, this works thing, cuz you know, I owned a marketing agency for 11 years and of course I believe that everything we did works, but, but you do kind of have those moments where you're like, damn it really does work. Right. and it's, I love those. I love those times when you can really see the product of what you've done and it's measurable and there's something concrete there to point to because it does sometimes feel like marketing is a little bit of a dark art. And, and anytime you can prove it is, is a really satisfying thing.
Seth (06:26):
Yeah. It's like, like a light shines down from heaven, the, the clouds part, you know,
Kathleen (06:31):
It's awesome. So one of the reasons I was excited to talk to you is you have developed this like expertise in, in the neuroscience of storytelling and you talked about pouring through scientific journals and all the things you did to get there. And, and I was intrigued by this because I think a lot of us, when we hear storytelling, it, it, it always has seemed more like an art than a science. And you know, you kind of have this perception that the people that are good at it, it's like, it's a creative profession. Right. And so I'm interested to hear your take on this, the science and like, why is it a science? And, and I'm not even sure where to really start, but I guess we would, we can start with you maybe debunking that storytelling is purely a creative discipline.
Seth (07:20):
Yeah. So I think, I think one of the first things to, to start out with is that we, as humans are basically all storytellers. Most people it's, it's kinda like one of those things where it's like breathing, right. We all breathe. We don't really think about it. But you know, in the past 20 years we've learned all kinds of amazing things that you can do with breathing if you're controlling your breathing and how you do that. And you know, like, there's that crazy guy Wim Hof who can like sit in like zero degree, 10 oh, outside
Kathleen (07:51):
Never. Well, I, he sits in those cold ice baths and I'm like, that sounds, I really like my hot tub. Let me just put it that way.
Seth (08:00):
So, so he, he started looking at something that we just take for granted, right? We're just like, I breathe, you breathe, humans, breathe. Well, storytelling is very much the same way. The difference is, is that some of us are, are better at it than others. And and the reason being is like, you know, no, nobody goes to school and is told you're gonna become a storyteller, right? Like people are interested in stories or they're not. And so they go and they, they learn and they learn how to like write stories, but they're not really getting into the scientific side of like, why does this work, or how does this work and answering those questions. So that's one of the first things I wanted to say. The the other thing is, you know, on the science side, there are just so many fascinating things, but I'll just try to pull out a few.
Seth (08:51):
So one of the studies that they did I think it was 2010. They had a person stand up in front of an audience. It was a pretty large audience, several hundred people. They hooked everybody up to brain scans and that included the the speaker. And so the speaker started to tell a story. And then what they saw was that the speakers the think his brain frequency was running at a certain kilohertz or whatever. Over time, everybody in the audience started to sync to the speaker's brain frequency. So they all went to the same frequency together. So that's really fascinating, right? Like that's some science fiction type stuff, you know, it's like, this sounds like mind control. And yeah, so they, they all started to sink together. And so what it shows is, is one is that stories are they help connect us together in a way that we just didn't realize was happening.
Seth (09:49):
I mean, you know, granted, we all you know, we feel connected with people sometimes for very various different reasons, but when there's a story for whatever reason, we all kind of get on the same page, if you will. So that's one interesting fact about the neuroscience of storytelling. Two, and I, I think people have probably heard this before, but it's worth reminding them is that when the brain hears facts and figures on only two parts of the brain light up it's the Brocka's area and the Wernicke's area it's basically hearing and then understanding what the language is. And so I always say, this is why you can sit through a PowerPoint for like two hours and walk away and go, I don't remember what this person said at all. We've all been there, especially if you're in corporate
Kathleen (10:37):
That's the phrase death by PowerPoint.
Seth (10:39):
Yes, yes. But when what they saw with the brain scans with storytelling is that up to seven different parts of the brain light up. And so essentially what's happening is that the brain is being engaged into a SIM what they call stimula it. So in a story quite often, what happens is whether you're watching it listening to it you know, however that story is coming to you. You start to create a simulation in your mind, and then your brain puts, puts you in that story as the center, as the center figure of that story. And then you, you, what it's doing is it's trying to figure out how would I respond in this situation, right. So I'll give you a perfect example of how this happens, cuz people don't realize this is happening all the time.
Seth (11:31):
A friend comes to you and says, I got in a fight with so-and-so well, what, what, what do you do? You go, well, what did, what did you say to them? And then how did they respond? Right? You're you're in that simulation, you're putting yourself in that, in that situation, in your mind, it's kind of happening you know, in real time. And the reason you're asking those questions is because one, you wanna learn something from them about the situation, but then you're like, but then you'll say things like, well, did you say this right? Because that's what you would've said, because you ran that simulation and you were like, well, if so, and so said this to me, then I will respond this way. So simulation is also happening when you're, you know, watching movies. This is another reason why you can go to a movie and lose two hours. Right. Like,
Kathleen (12:18):
Oh, I do it when I read books. Like I literally, yes. I, I don't feel like I'm reading. I feel like I'm, I'm like living in that world.
Seth (12:25):
Yes. Yeah. So that's, that's your brain creating a simulation, trying to understand, trying to learn, trying to gain insight into, you know, what the proper response is. And it's basically a survival mechanism speaking of survival mechanisms. So we'll go into the I was gonna say the anthropology, I guess that's the right word. But then I started thinking into that furniture store. So we were basically telling stories before we were even painting on the inside of cave walls. And the reason that, that we did that was we had to pass information from generation to generation. This is how we basically stayed alive. So the simulation is, is part of a survival mechanism, but is storytelling itself. So the reason being is that, you know, you had to tell people eat this Berry, don't eat that Berry, do this in the winter, do this in the fall, don't pet saber tooth tigers, they bite.
Seth (13:28):
Right. And, and that information had to be passed on from generation to generation to generation. Well, we actually haven't changed that much. Right? Like, however, however, however we got here, you know, whatever the, the perspective is really doesn't matter. What matters is we, we are still wired for story, if you will. So so the neuroscience, you know, brings all this together. You know, there's a lot of other tidbits about like so this so the sinking right where we all sink on this on the same brave brave, ah, wavelength is called neural coupling. Well, we also have this thing called mirror neurons. And what's interesting about mirror neurons is that the they've done studies where they'll have somebody dribbling a basketball and then they'll have somebody watching somebody dribble, a basketball, and the same neurons are firing in the brain of the person who's watching, even though they're not actually committing the action. And again, it's part of that simulation. But it's all. And
Kathleen (14:33):
Is that basically why like your heart races, when you watch a horror movie?
Seth (14:37):
I was, yes. I, I was just gonna get to that. You jumped ahead of me. Yeah. So that's why when we see things like a hero being in peril, you know, if we care about the hero, then, then the mirror neurons start to fire. But if we don't care about the hero or whatever, we're like, eh, whatever, you know, like charge our banks, you know, the dude.
Kathleen (14:59):
This is the reason I always told my husband, I can't, I refuse to watch horror movies because they stress me out and like, I don't wanna feel stressed. And so I must have a lot of empathy for, for heroes in these movies.
Seth (15:13):
Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, it's like I said, it's, it's part of how we're designed. And so it's not to say, like, I will say this, like if a story isn't resonating with you, for whatever reason then it will bounce off of you. Right? Like, you know, let's say, you know, I'll give you another example. You're scroll scrolling through Netflix. You're trying to find something to watch. Like, we've all done, you turn something on. You're like, I don't know what this is. I'll try it out. And then it doesn't grab you. Right. And then it, it is a story technically. But for whatever reason that story's not resonating with you and, and it just, you turn it off, go to something else. Right. And so while the while storytelling is absolutely amazing and it does all these crazy things in the brain, it is not a magic bullet. I wish it was, I would, I would love the magic bullet formula, but you know, your story has to actually resonate with your audience. Right. And that goes into kind of like under understanding who you're talking to and all that fun stuff. But yeah,
Kathleen (16:16):
That's so interesting. And so I'm, I'm, I'm curious like where this goes a little bit, because the parallel I've come back to in my head, and this is a bias I have, cuz I was raised by two parents. One of whom is in real estate. And he used to, to talk about like, when you go to buy a house, don't picture your furniture in it. And is it that same like brain mechanism where as soon as you put yourself in the story, like that's what you're doing, right. When you picture your furniture in the house, you're putting yourself into the story in this case, the story of the house. And like he, he would always say, as soon as you do that, you, you lost your objectivity and you can't negotiate on prices effectively. And so is it sort of like the same concept that we're talking about here?
Seth (16:59):
Yeah. Yeah. We, we create SIM simulations for just like all kinds of things. And so again, it's a, it's that survival mechanism kicking in going you know, this good is this bad, you know, that's a lot of what your brains go, trying to figure out. Bias is another thing that, that is really interesting that you just, so you, you brought up the word bias, so bias acts somewhat like a firewall. The reason we have bias is it creates shortcuts to a understanding. So people are like, oh, you're so biased. Well, yeah, everybody's biased. And the reason we have bias is because we literally could not get out of bed in the morning. If we didn't have bias, you have a bias that the floor is gonna be there when you stand up. Right. It's, it's something that is assumed.
Seth (17:54):
And so one of the things that I learned about in, in, in all this storytelling stuff was that there is a thing called narrative bias and what narrative bias means. One humans, fur story to information, right? And that's goes back to the two parts of the brain or two versus seven parts of the brain lighting up. But also what happens is you can tell somebody a story though, and, and then come back and say everything I told you was completely false and they, the brain will still hang on to that information as if it was true. So that's another
Kathleen (18:34):
Interesting, I mean, that explains a lot about the last couple years. I'll just say that and leave it there. But cuz I definitely, this is a marketing podcast, but speaking of marketing, so, okay. So storytelling is something that a lot of marketers talk about, right? We, everybody says you, you need to be a storyteller, you should be telling stories in your marketing. And I feel like this is one of those things that everybody talks about, but nobody really knows what they're talking about when they say it. And so I wanna kind of like shift into understanding why, and we've talked about why stories are so powerful and why they're, you know, very much grounded in, in hu like our humanity and our, the anthropology of humans, et cetera. And why they're necessary, but like in a marketing context I think it, it, it, I, first of all, I guess I'd like to ask, why do you think it's so important to be a storyteller? Like I think I know the answer to this, but I'd love to get it from the neuroscience perspective, why it is important for marketing to use storytelling.
Seth (19:37):
Yeah. So so I've, I've been asked this question a lot and, and usually it comes in the form of well is storytelling and marketing the same thing. Right. And here's what I'll say. I'm going to say things now some marketing uses storytelling, some not all of it. Right. And, and, and, you know, people kind of get, 'em confused. They're like, well, marketing is storytelling. Well, if you're coming from a, a storytelling perspective then yes. But if you're not coming from a storytelling perspective of quite often, what happens is you get a lot of information, but the information is not organized in a way that the brain goes, okay, I'm following along. I can understand this. Part of the, part of the reason or or part of what happens with information versus storytelling is the brain, once it delivered in a certain fashion, right?
Seth (20:37):
There's an, almost like an order of operations to to storytelling. Whereas information could just be a lot of tidbits, a lot of ones and zeros, just kind of all over the place. And that's, this is where I think a lot of a lot of times people make the mistake of they they're like, well, this makes sense. It, it actually doesn't. And, and, and the reason is, is that the brain is highly efficient. It wants to burn as few calories as possible. And so you, when you line everything up in a story, the brain goes, okay, I got it. We're going from point a to point B to point C and I totally understand this. I'm gonna capture this information and save it. But when, you know, you're just giving, you know you know this thing I'm selling is 32 ounces. It's blue color it's made with no dyes. You, the brain goes okay. And
Kathleen (21:30):
That's the equivalent of like the PowerPoint with facts and figures.
Seth (21:33):
Yes. Yeah. It just, and, and it dumps the information, right? Because it's only going into two parts of the brain versus seven. So when it's going into seven different parts of the brain, the information's being duplicated across multiple areas. And that's why you, you can have something where a smell reminds you of something, a song reminds you of something a facial expression, right. Tho those are all the, you know, different cues because what, for whatever reason that memory stuck in those places part of what the brain does is it, it goes through, it just wipes your memory again, to try to be efficient, like if you could recall what you had for lunch two months ago, and every piece of information up until right now, you wouldn't be able to function like you, your brain would just be overloaded with all this data and whatnot. So it has to go through like Ram and clear out of your memory. Sorry. I think I lost my point
Kathleen (22:32):
There. No, no, no. This is super interesting. And I like where you're going with this, because it, it, I, it feels like what you're basically saying is that the brain needs a, a rubric or a framework within which to digest information in order to make sure that it can recall it effect and that the story, the framework of a story is that rubric that, that helps the brain make sense of the information and process it in a way that makes it easier to fully recall. Is that correct?
Seth (23:01):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there was another study that they did. And again, it was like the facts and figures versus story. The recall on just straight information was some, somewhere around 30%, and that was literally like five minutes after somebody stood up, gave a presentation and then they had somebody else stand up and tell a story. And the recall was somewhere between like 70 to 80%. Wow. Right. And so what, what people miss when they're, you know, dumping all this information on us through marketing or blogs or whatever, is that they're not actually getting comprehension. Right. Like, and it's not, it's not being delivered in a way that's getting stored. And so I, I kind of like to say, it's the difference between data, which is just one's one's at zeros and actual information or, or
Kathleen (23:56):
Insights.
Seth (23:58):
Yes. It like, yeah, I messed up my analogy. It's fine. We'll move on. No,
Kathleen (24:01):
No, no, I totally get it because like, we actually, where work, we sell a software platform that pulls data in from a ton of different places. And we Al we always talk about how, like, nobody actually really wants data. Funny enough, like you, I've had people sit there and say to me, like, I don't want more data because that just introduces more noise for me. Like, I just really wanna know what to do with the data. And it's sort of, I feel like there's a parallel here where it's like, nobody really wants the data. They, they want the story because the story tells them what to do with the data. It makes it easier to like, absorb all of that and make sense of it.
Seth (24:38):
Yeah. It creates comprehension. Right. Totally. Otherwise, it's just, like you said, noise. And so, you know, it's the different between signal and noise, right? Yeah. Like noise is just kind of static and all this stuff, but a signal kind of has a wave. It goes up and down and, and you can kind of follow it and go, okay, I get that. There's, you know, something there in a very basic sense, but yeah. So you know, to circle, to circle the back, you know, what I see a lot of, a lot of marketers doing is they're giving information and they're, they're trying to be helpful. Right. Like, but it needs to be organized in a way that the brain can comprehend it and storytelling is the way to do that.
Kathleen (25:20):
Okay. So that's super helpful and really interesting. I guess what I'd love to shift into now is how, right. Like, that's the, that's the part that I think so many marketers struggle with is they understand they should be using storytelling. And we all have this general sense of like the hero's journey. But like, I don't know. I mean, can you, can you maybe isolate in a, in way that's actionable and tied to neuroscience, like, are there certain things that good stories need to incorporate, because those are the things that trigger the brain receiving and storing that information in the way it should.
Seth (26:03):
Well, yeah. I mean, in general you know, so I'll, I'll try to simplify this so that everybody can kind of go, oh, that's an easy formula. I can run with this. Every story has a problem, a solution and a transformation, right? No hero ever starts the beginning of a movie and is the same at the end of the movie, right? Luke Skywalker does not go back to moisture farming on tattoo cat. I don't think goes, you know, doesn't go back to being, you know, a poor country girl who, you know, hunts, right. Luke becomes, you know, a Jedi master or a Jedi knight becomes a beacon of hope and, you know resistance, right. There is a so, so the transformation aspect is really important, right? Because we wanna look at other people and learn from them, you know, again, how the brain works.
Seth (26:59):
We wanna look at another person and go, they did, oh, maybe I can do it too. Right. It inspires us to kind of all move forward. The reason you start with a problem is because problems are danger and the brain goes danger. I don't like danger. That, that starts to help focus you in now thing I will say is that, you know, if the problem's not relevant to the, to the audience you're talking to, then, you know, again, it'll bounce off of, but if the problem is relevant to them, then it's gonna start to focus the brain in and go, okay, there's danger here. So, you know, if, no matter what you're doing, if you wanna teach people something new if you wanna sell a product, you know, whatever it is start with a problem and then take them through, you know, what that problem looks like.
Seth (27:54):
I, I call it sticking, sticking your finger in the wound, you start with a problem. And then you explain why that problem is actually more than you realize. There are, there are a lot of steps, like you said, the hero's journey is 15 steps. Christopher Vogler's hero's journey is 12 steps. I mean, we can go into all that, but then we'll, we'll start going into like some boring lecture, like all these, all these aspects. So so problem solution transformation, beginning, middle end three act, play, right. Very simple. You, you know, if, if you're creating content, you know, you're going for the inbound thing and you're creating all this content or writing a blog or whatever you can use those three, three points in your in your content and people will start, it'll start to resonate with people more. You know, you could learn more about storytelling and you can start to understand, you know, concepts of like the inciting incident and setting the stakes and, and the natural and the supernatural world and, you know, and, and all these other things that will help make your stories more interesting. But I would, I would start with those three
Kathleen (29:05):
So that I love how simple you made that. First of all, because I think that, I feel like that makes it approachable and actionable. And as soon as you were describing the problem solution transformation kind of rubric, it immediately made, made me think of like case studies, right. I feel like that's the classic format for everyone's case study, right? This is the problem the client had. Here's how we solved it. And here's what it did for them. So great. That explains why we do case studies that way. But, but like, how do you, because I, because what I'm hearing you say is that this can be incorporated in a lot of different ways. So like, how would you incorporate something like this framework into an email, for example, if you're doing a marketing email?
Seth (29:47):
Yeah, so we we always start with, with the problem in, in our email. So I have one client they work in the enter enterprise tech space. IE is going away in June, right. And the reason that's the problem is because there's a lot of legacy apps that were built 10, 20 years ago that still require IE to function. And those companies don't want to they don't want to pay to have those apps recoded into a modern browser. So they just keep IE around. And, and once that goes away, there, there's all these different things that are gonna start to happen with like redirects and all this different stuff and bouncing through different browsers. And, well, what if your enterprise is, is Chrome you know, and, and stuff's gonna start breaking. So we would start, and we have, we started the email with, you know, in June 20, 22, IE going away.
Seth (30:43):
Right. So there's your problem? What does that mean? Well, that means that, you know, XYZ is gonna start breaking, right? So we're expanding on that problem. And, and like I said, sticking our finger in the wound, and then we're moving to having some empathy, you know, we understand this is really frustrating, you know, you, as it are expected to fix everything while the house is burning down, you know and then we transitioned to the solution. But if you, you know, bought this piece of software it would make your life simpler. And instead of having to do all this, you could do that. Right. And, you know, problem solution set up. And then we talk about the transformation, which is also like in screenwriting called setting not setting the stakes getting all my terms mixed up future pacing.
Seth (31:36):
Right. A lot of marketers understand what future pacing is. So we start painting that picture for, for the customer of like, well, what would life look like if you had this piece of software and you could do these things with that software. Right. And we've taken 'em through a story. Our emails, we don't, we specifically try not to make them very long. That's the other thing that like, people miss is like a lot, like a lot of email marketers will tell stories, but they're telling they're like, you're just scrolling forever and you're going get to the point.
Kathleen (32:09):
So that was gonna be my question is that, like, I think in so much of marketing, brevity is, is really important because people have these short, they have a short attention spans, unless you've proven to them that there's something worth sticking around for. Right. And so, yeah, it's, the whole journal is concept of don't bury the lead. You know, the, the Buzzfeed click bait thing, like, but so with, with something like an email, how do you balance, you know, the, like you wanna tell the story and you wanna create that build, but you also want somebody to stick with it. You know what I mean? Like if somebody's gonna come in and make a split decision about whether I'm gonna, whether, whether it's worth me reading all of this, like, how do you account for that?
Seth (32:54):
Yeah. When we write emails, I, we can tell a complete story in about five to six lines. Right. so it's it's, it's about what words you're using how you're using them, but also, you know, we're using a pattern that the brain understands. And, and I think too, it's understanding where your story exists, right? If you're on a blog, like people are fine with going to a blog and reading a lot of information in email, people are quite often task oriented, so they're going, what is this? Right. And if you're not grabbing them with whatever it is, like you said, don't bury the lead. They're just gonna move on. And so often I see these emails that are like, you know, are like three pages deep. It's like, this might, might as well have been a blog.
Seth (33:42):
It's got a thousand words on it. I don't wanna sit through that or sit and try to read that because I'm just, I'm not in the mode where I wanna sit down and try to read and learn something I'm in the mode where I'm just going, what is this email? Why are these people emailing me? And okay this is what they're talking about out. Delete junk, mail, whatever. So yeah, so you gotta so by telling a story, you know, and, and this is another thing that people also miss is quite often, they want to tell the story about themselves. So we've all gotten the email. That's like, hi, I'm so, and so from X, Y, Z company, we've worked with these companies, you should buy our stuff.
Kathleen (34:23):
Me, me, me, me, me.
Seth (34:23):
Yeah. Yeah. The whole conversation is about you. So one of the things that we haven't touched on is in storytelling, the customer is always the hero in their own mind. Right. Cuz we are self focused and that's okay. We're humans. This is how our species has survived. So when you, you know, it's like going and meeting a person for the first time and all they do is talk about themselves. You're like, oh, okay, okay. I I'm gonna go over here somewhere else. Like you're, you're not an interesting person. You're not engaging me. We're not having a back and forth. So we always tell the customer, or we always tell, worry about the customer where we're, we're saying you, your we're not saying us, we our right. And so that's another thing that is important is when you, when you tell that story, you wanna tell the customer or you want to talk like you're talking to them, hit my mic. You wanna talk like you're talking to them. You don't wanna just about yourself. So that's another thing that gets the brain engaged is because, oh, you're talking to me, oh, now I need to pay attention. Cuz you're, you're talking to me. You're not just talking about yourself.
Kathleen (35:34):
Yeah. When I used to own my agency, we did actually a lot of websites. And one of the things that we would do just when we first looked at somebody's website, if we needed to do a critique of like, Hey, here's what you need to change. One of the first things I would do is look at their homepage and count the number of times they said, I, or we versus how many times they said you and make exactly that point. Like you are talking all about yourself. You are not actually talking about your customer here. And, and it was, it's fascinating. Like the, the volume of sites I would see were, it was 90 to a hundred percent all I, and we,
Seth (36:11):
Yeah, I would say the majority of sites are, are still like that. Right. Like nothing's changed unfortunately. And again, it's that, it's that self focus on ourselves. So I build a website I'm yes. I wanna sell it to customers, but I'm still thinking about myself the whole time, because I'm the hero in my story. But then, you know, this other person comes, who's a hero in their story and they're like, I don't, I don't care. Right. Like, or, or maybe they do care, but like the pain has to be pretty bad where they're like, okay. Yeah. Well, you know, I'll get this thing. So yeah, that's just another aspect of, of storytelling.
Kathleen (36:51):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, can you gimme some examples of companies that are doing this well and they could either be your customers or just out in the wild? I, I would love to know if there's examples out there for folks to go and look at to see who's nailing this.
Seth (37:08):
Yeah. so Abbot construction, they're a really large construction company based in LA and, and Seattle. We actually redid their site last year. So the construction, so this is another, another thing. So this kind of goes into differentiation. Almost all construction companies say you know, built on time on budget. Right. And so it, it, they're almost, they almost become a commodity because there's no between any of the, you know, this construction company or that construction company. So we, we took them through the storytelling process and we said, you know, what is the problem that the customer has? And they're like, well, they need a building built. I was like, no, I know that they need a building built. What, what challenges come up when you know, these buildings are being built and the, the team started digging in and they went, oh, I know what it is. So I don't this, I don't know if this is just California or if this is across the us. But when they start a building, the client is not a lot to be on site until the building is finished. Right. So depending on the construction company they could go months without the client could go months without knowing what's going on. Hmm. You know, are we, you know, how are like, is everything okay? You know, some construction companies will be like, okay, your building's done. You can come see it.
Seth (38:47):
So they wanted to tell the story of, of being being lost and, and kind of being in the dark a right. And and so they analogized it like the analogy that they gave me was like, it's like, you know, somebody's like, I'm gonna take you, you know, to this place. It's gonna be really great, but first you need to get in the back of this U-Haul van and I'm just gonna shut the thing. And then the client sits in there and the bounces around and, you know, and they're just completely lost. So so they wanted to tell that story. And now they have something very unique and different to say to their customers when they're like, well, why should I pick you? Mm. You know, they, they talk about the problem, them, of clients being kind of left in the dark and not being communicated with and not really knowing what's going on. And so they've differentiated themselves and, and their service by talking about a specific problem that, that every customer gets a building built, at least in California has. Right. I'm
Kathleen (39:52):
Looking forward to checking out their website. Now. It sounds really interesting.
Seth (39:56):
Yeah. It's A B B O T T construction.com.
Kathleen (40:00):
Cool. All right. Well, we are reaching the end of our time. And so I wanna ask you a question that I ask all my guests at the end, which is, has to do with learning. And you just, it was fascinating in the beginning of this interview, listening to you talk about how you learned all of this. So you might have already partially answered this, but I wanna broaden it a little bit. Which is, you know, a lot of the marketers, I talk to say that the biggest challenge they have is keeping up with everything that changes, particularly in the world of digital marketing, because there's, you know, like there's algorithm changes and platform changes and new technologies and this and that. How do you personally keep up with everything?
Seth (40:43):
Well, yeah, I, I do I do my own personal continuing education, right? Like I, I read I read about a hundred audio books a year. So that's one thing. And then on top of that, I, you know, I buy courses, I read, you know content on blogs. I watch YouTube videos. I love going to YouTube and just, you know, searching out specific topics because then I can sit there and have somebody tell it to me instead of having to read it. Which is why I like audio books,
Kathleen (41:15):
Any particular like audio books or, or courses or blogs or YouTubes that you're like a real big fan of that you wanna share.
Seth (41:26):
So I love Ted Talks, like, because there's, it, it, there's just a wealth of information. You can go down all these different rabbit holes and learn from like, you know, people about specific topics that are bite-sized. You know, as far as like audio books go, yeah, I like the search bar is my friend. I just go in there and I'm like, I wanna learn about this. You know? And then I look, I go through and like a lot of people I go which one of these books on this, this, you know, marketing thing have the most highest rated reviews I'll start there. And then, you know, if I learn about that, maybe I'll read more books on that subject. That's kind of what what I did with storytelling. But yeah, I mean, I don't know, like I'm just consuming information all around me constantly. And so I don't necessarily look to one specific source.
Kathleen (42:21):
Got it. All right. Well, you have a book, you mentioned this earlier. Can you share the name of the book and tell, tell us a little bit about it?
Seth (42:30):
Yeah. So the book is called How to Hack humans, Storytelling for Startups. It is it is probably the farthest thing away from your traditional business book that you could get. I tell jokes in the book. I swear my book has a soundtrack, so every chapter has a song that goes with it and you can find the playlist for the the soundtrack on Spotify and YouTube. I love it. So, so yeah, so some people have actually listened along as they were reading. And the song captures either the feel of the chapter or it, it kind of relates to what I'm talking about in the chapter. I don't even think I mentioned the book. Did I? It's called How to Hack Humans, Storytelling for Startups. I need to edit this later.
Kathleen (43:14):
No, this, this is awesome. I love it.
Seth (43:17):
One of the highest compliments I received about the book was that somebody said it was like Ryan Reynolds ghost wrote a business book.
Kathleen (43:24):
Oh my God. Now I really wanna read it. That's awesome.
Seth (43:27):
Yeah. in the in the book, one of the other things that I do is that so first part is, is really the science and I try to break it down and make it super easy. The second part is, okay, how do you tell a story? Right? And then the third part is what I call the steal my shit section where I literally go through and explain things like, how do you write an, an email? How do you create content for your website? I do you start applying this, the story stuff to things that you already have in your life right now. So anybody who reads the book can literally oh, and it only takes two hours. It's only 125 pages. And the reason it's only 125 pages, not the traditional 200 pages is that I didn't want to add fluff. I, and spend a bunch of time, like repeating myself. And I also didn't want to give you the what and the how or the what and the why, but not the how, right. Like, that's another thing that pisses me off. It's like,
Kathleen (44:30):
That's my whole premise for my podcast is I literally would go to marketing conferences and sit in sessions where people were getting these amusing results and they're great marketers, and I'd leave after an hour and be like, they spent an hour telling me why to do this thing and not how to do it. And that drives me crazy.
Seth (44:46):
Yeah. So that's, that is literally what the final third of the book is, is how do you do, how do you start applying what I'm teaching you in, in real world situations like writing an email again, I know, you know, people listening are, you know, doing the inbound thing, so you can take those principles and apply it to any content writing that you're doing. Right. And it will start to become more effective. Yeah. And then I don't know, what else can I say about the book? Oh, the audio book version is gonna be coming out this summer. It is going to be the unrated. Director's cut.
Kathleen (45:25):
Are you gonna get Ryan Reynolds to voiceover?
Seth (45:28):
I, I wish I, I, I wish the guy's hilarious, but yeah, so the unrated directors cut is kind of a throwback to me and my absolute obsession with movies and how, when you get those DVDs, you get a you know, there's a directors cut of a movie and it's different from what was theatrically released. Well, that's what the audio book's gonna be also. There's gonna be a making of the book. So yeah, it's, I go way off script in the audio book. It's about halfway done at this stage should be getting the rest of it done in, in the next couple of weeks. And then it needs to go off to the get mastered and all that stuff. But yeah. So if, if you enjoy the book yeah, I mean, here's the thing. If you don't have a sense of humor, don't buy the, a book it's not gonna be for you, right?
Kathleen (46:16):
No, it sounds great. I mean, you had me at Ryan Reynolds ghost wrote a business book. So, so where, and is it available on Amazon?
Seth (46:24):
Yeah, it's available on Amazon. You can get it in Kindle paperback and hard cover if you, if you're feeling fancy. Awesome.
Kathleen (46:32):
No, that's sounds great. All right. Well, definitely check that out. And if you and you can always also head to the show notes of the blog, I'll put a link in there and speaking of the show notes if somebody wants to reach out and has a question for you or wants to learn more about what you're working on, what's the best way for them to connect with you?
Seth (46:50):
Yeah, so they can go to www.storify.com. People sometimes forget the I. And also I created a landing page. So, you know if you go to storyify.com/inbound success, you can download the first chapter of the book free. That's the chapter that focuses is solely on, on neuroscience. There's other chapters that focus on the science, but that one is specific to that. So yeah. Yeah.
Kathleen (47:23):
Cool. All right. Well, I will put all those links in the show notes, and those are located at Kathleen booth.com. So head there to get those links and to connect with Seth. And this was fascinating. I really, I enjoyed it. And I'm definitely ordering the book. So I will I'll give back to you on whether I think it's Ryan Reynold's like, or is it more hug Jackman, like, right. Cause isn't that the big rivalry or but no, thank you so much for coming on the show set. This was, this was a ton of fun and I learned a lot.
Seth (47:56):
Yeah. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Kathleen (47:58):
Absolutely. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode head to apple podcasts and leave the podcast or review, cause that helps other people find us. And if you know somebody else, who's doing great marketing work tweet me @Kathleenlbooth, because I would love to make them my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you again, Seth, for joining me.
Seth (48:19):
Thank you.
