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How Clear Messaging Turns Noise Into Revenue with Donald Miller · Sales Against the Odds

• [00:00:00] Donald Miller: If you learn to communicate clearly, you have a competitive advantage and people will follow you, people will buy your products, your marketing will work better, but it’s got to be associated. It’s got to be memorable, repeatable soundbites associated with the survival of the person you’re talking to or you’re trying to convince. And the statements themselves have to be zero cognitive load. [00:00:20] Lee Brumbaugh: There’s no silver bullet in sales, but on Sales Against The Odds, we’re here to give you the best shot at building a sales infrastructure that helps you scale. I’m your host, Lee Brumbaugh. Welcome everyone. This is Lee Brumbaugh, CEO of Sales Xceleration, and this is Sales Against The Odds. I’m joined today by Don Miller, CEO of StoryBrand, bestselling author and one of the world’s leading voices in marketing. Don, as building a StoryBrand, I still have the book, Don, for those watching in YouTube. Mine is very marked up because I have bent back lots of pages over the years, one of the best business books I’ve ever read. So Don’s company and his book has helped thousands of companies clarify their message so customers actually listen. Don, thank you so much for joining us today. [00:01:07] Donald Miller: Thanks, Lee. Good to be with you. [00:01:09] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, so let’s jump in. A lot of this will revolve so much around StoryBrand that I want to talk through. But as you think about at the beginning, you talk to customers and I remember in your book, you refer to it overwhelmed by the noise. So when you think about that problem, specifically with the noise, how does that impact from a sales and marketing perspective and how does StoryBrand help clarify and take that noise out of the picture a little bit? [00:01:33] Donald Miller: Yeah. Well, the average consumers used to be getting about 3,000 commercial messages a day. Now they’re saying five to eight. So if you think about that, the human mind is just, it can’t deal with that much information. So it’s going to tune you out. And otherwise life is just unmanageable. And so what we have discovered at StoryBrand is that not what we have discovered, the research that we did indicates that the only messages people listen to are messages that are short, they’re memorable. So you’re talking about soundbites. But the most important aspect of that is they need to be associated with the survival of the person that you’re talking to. That the human brain is always scanning its environment for resources, products, ideas, leaders, philosophies. It doesn’t matter. Things that is going to help it survive, the person survive because the dominant job of the brain is to keep you on the planet. [00:02:31] Donald Miller: And by the way, if it wasn’t, we’d be dead because you’re looking both ways before you cross the street, trying to figure out what you’re going to have for dinner. You’re trying to establish great relationships that are beneficial to you. And so I think the mistake that so many people make is they waste their words. If you are talking about how your grandfather started a company or how you’ve been in business 75 years, you have to understand the person that’s listening to you is trying to figure out what that has to do with their survival. Used to, you might be given a minute, now you’re given seconds and you’re probably not even given seconds anymore. So that’s one of the reasons that if you look around the world and you look at who’s paying attention to who, who’s getting attention, I guarantee you the people who are getting attention and the brands that are getting attention are brands that prioritize survival soundbites, whether they’re doing it intuitively or not. [00:03:27] Donald Miller: Those are the ones that we pay attention to and everybody else we ignore. So if you spend a million dollars on an advertising campaign and you do not within that advertising or marketing campaign prioritize the survival of your customer, some aspect of your product that helps them survive. And we can get into that. That’s very complicated, but that’s a waste of money. You literally will lose all your money because that’s the only thing that people pay attention to. [00:03:51] Lee Brumbaugh: A lot of the tuning in will be the SMB world, right? And they’re using all these tools. Obviously you’ve got email campaigns going out there, now we’re doing LinkedIn and automation. How do you keep it concise and short and still grab attention knowing that most business owners are going delete, delete? How do you resonate and drive interest early for those of thinking like tangible examples of that? [00:04:14] Donald Miller: Yeah. Well, your subject lines and your emails need to be … I see them all the time and I delete them all the time. “Hey, one more thing or 50% off or something like that. That works if it’s a familiar brand, but a subject line such as should you fire your sales team. That to me, if my sales team is underperforming, that’s probably something I’m going to pay attention to. Now it’s not something everybody’s going to pay attention to, but if I have Sales Xceleration, that is my market. That’s my target market. And you would then open it up and say,” Hey, we do sales consulting for a living and I’ve got an assessment that’ll tell you whether or not you should just fire your sales team or whether or not we can fix them. “Well, now we just did two things that is going to give me open the email and take the assessment because you are offering something that’s going to help me survive. [00:05:06] Donald Miller: Now, if you open up with how we help sales team like yours, that is not as pressing and also how we help sales teams like yours is one step connected from my survival. How to double your sales team’s ability to close. Okay, well now that has to do with my survival because my sales team needs to make more revenue in order for me to pay the bills. Do you see what I’m saying? And I think that most people, most of the time just are one step off, they get it wrong. And so the first critical element is it’s got to be about the survival of the customer and it can’t be indirectly about the survival of the customer. For instance, if we’re all hungry for food and I offer you raw chicken and the person next to me offers you a cooked chicken sandwich, you see what I’m saying? [00:06:02] Donald Miller: If you’d have just cooked that statement a little more and finished it, and I think that’s where people go, “ Well, Don, it’s food. Yeah, it’s food, but it’s not cooked food. It’s not done. “And so for whatever reason, I’m able to see that really clearly and a lot of people aren’t, which gives me job security, but I think that’s important. And then the other thing is the statement itself … Now remember, I’m being bombarded with at least 3000 messages a day, commercial messages a day. The statement itself needs to be what I call zero cognitive load. And what that means is a cognitive load is, in my translation, how hard something is to understand. So if I say to you, “ We want to maximize opportunity, we help your sales team maximize opportunity. “You’ve given me what I would consider a relatively high cognitive load statement. [00:06:54] Donald Miller: What are you talking about? What do you mean? But the only problem is in marketing and messaging, I will never ask you what you’re talking about. I’ll just ignore you. That is a worthless message. But if you say, for instance, if you say,” We train brand new salespeople on how to close sales, giving them 10 years of sales experience in one month, so that they will close twice as many sales this year. “That’s the sort of language that I would consider zero cognitive load. And I don’t have to think to try to understand how that benefits me. And I see it everywhere. I was just talking to a group out of New York and they were talking about why Mandani won the New York mayoral election. They wrongly posited that the market had moved to the left. It hadn’t moved to the left. The market wasn’t attracted to the left or the right. [00:07:46] Donald Miller: The market was attracted to clear messaging. And if somebody would’ve come on on the far right and had clear messaging, they would’ve won. And you’ll see this over and over. Well, culture is shifting this way. No, culture will always go to the clear message regardless of the ideology. And so if you learn to communicate clearly, you have a competitive advantage and people will follow you, people will buy your products, your marketing will work better, but it’s got to be associated. It’s got to be memorable, repeatable soundbites associated with the survival of the person you’re talking to or you’re trying to convince and the statements themselves have to be zero cognitive load. [00:08:25] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah. And look, as you were saying it too, you’re giving me these examples. I’m literally painting a … You could picture it, right? It’s a visual. It’s not hard to understand. I mean, so much of it is telling the story that we get emotionally attached to as well. The other thing that stood out to me that I see companies miss, and you hit upon it a little bit, I’d like to expand upon it, is that call to action. We get this hook, there’s interested, and now it’s like, “ Well, let me come out for a two hour meeting with you. “So what’s a good call to action look like that people can digest and will actually kind of respond to and act upon? [00:08:56] Donald Miller: When somebody is making a decision, Lee, is it okay if I just use your company as an example? Yeah, please go. If somebody’s making a decision, the reason that they’re going to say yes is that they have connected your solution with their problem. And so the best way to connect your solution with their problem is to say this, if you are struggling with X or if you want to fix X, or if you’re tired of dealing with X, buying Y is the right solution, and that’s it. What you’ve done is you’ve done the math for them. You’ve connected the dots for them with your words. So if I’m running for office and I would say,” Look, if you’re tired of Republicans and Democrats fighting with each other, getting nothing done all the while wasting your tax dollars, vote for me because I’m going to deal with it. [00:09:53] Donald Miller: “It’s a fantastic political message. Listen, National Security is an account and they’re trying to shrink congressional authorizations. And so they’ve got to go to Congress and justify all these bills. And there’s so many new members of Congress or new members to these committees that don’t even know what the NSA does or they don’t even know why it’s important. So we came up with the soundbite, both intelligence prepares us to win and intelligence means victory. So now we are associating the product that the NSL produces, which is intelligence and also counterintelligence. And we’re saying,” It means winning wars. “Okay, so now I know why to spend these billions of dollars on this. Now we’re going to get into the details that a tagline’s not going to win it over, but for me, that’s the other thing. It’s got to be a short, memorable soundbite associated with the stakeholder survival and it’s got to be zero cognitive load. [00:10:50] Donald Miller: And then the fourth element, it’s got to be repeated. So if I am attempting to get a congressional authorization, I’m going to say, as we all know, intelligence means victory. And if we don’t have the intelligence, we’re likely to lose wars and that’s going to cost us lives. Okay, just associated with the survival, but I’m talking to a member of Congress. And so what’s the survival for the member of Congress? Intelligence means victory. And if we laugh in intelligence, it means that we could lose wars and that’s going to happen on your watch, which of course your voters are not going to be very happy. Now I’m associated with their literal career survival. So you got to kind of do this on the fly and you got to think about they’re translating it in real time going … But the person you’re talking to is always saying,” What are they trying to say? [00:11:38] Donald Miller: And if I can’t figure out in a millisecond, zero cognitive load, I’m going to ignore them. If I can’t figure out how this is going to make me survive, I’m unmotivated to keep listening. “So these are the rules of soundbites, if you will. [00:11:52] Lee Brumbaugh: That makes a ton of sense. So you’re the marketing company. You’ve got a sizable company enough to have a marketing department and a sales team. And I know a lot of times the connection between the two is that sometimes it’s great, sometimes it’s okay, sometimes it’s bad. You’ve got a marketing department, they go through this concept, maybe they come to one of the StoryBrand workshops, they nail it, they’ve got it right. How do you then disseminate that down to the sales team? How does the sales team make that message resonate with customers? How does it help from a connectivity with customers, customer engagement? How do you take it from marketing to sales and make it sticky? [00:12:26] Donald Miller: Well, it starts with the landing page. It probably actually starts before that. There are three sort of pillars that you need to build if you want to build a sales pipeline and marketing pipeline. The first thing you got to do is you got to get attention. And so I’m going to go on YouTube, I’m going to create videos, I’m going to go on social media, I’m going to write books, I’m going to do paid advertising, and that’s going to get me attention. And that attention needs to be short, memorable soundbites that are associated with your stakeholder survival. And then in every single one of those attention getting pieces of collateral, I’m going to point to one lead generator. I’m going to say, Hey, go to, for me, it’s go to weeklysoundbite.com and sign up. I send out every week an analysis of a marketing campaign and I dissect it so that you can learn something for your business. [00:13:14] Donald Miller: I get a hundred people today going to weeklysoundbite.com and that’s really great. And then at weeklysoundbite.com, we’re going to do a little intake, you’re going to get these weekly videos, we’re going to find out a little bit more about who you are. And let’s say that I’ve got a product, I’ve got a product, a consulting product that might be something where I can help you with your pitch decks and figuring out how to close this big account. What I’m going to do is I’m going to start to warm up that lead through emails and videos and I’m going to start saying, look, we’ve got this product, this is what it is. Here’s how I’ve helped these people. I’m probably going to use a visual roadmap of what the journey’s going to look like if you actually buy this product. And I want to do all of this before you ever talk to a sales rep. [00:13:57] Donald Miller: And then I want to say, probably in every one of those, I’m going to say, if you’re ready to talk to somebody right now, click this Calendly link or give a call to Round Robin or whatever it is, but I want to be really careful to warm up that lead. Now what I want to do is I want to give a pitch deck with all of the information repeated to my sales rep so that the sales rep is actually repeating the information that this person read in the emails, saw on the videos, read on the landing page, and maybe for 52 weeks has gotten my newsletter and those sales … So now my sales rep is on third base instead of home play looking at pitches coming in and we can close that deal much easier. And then I’m going to also give them the sound bites to repeat in the sales pitch itself. [00:14:47] Donald Miller: And after that, it’s really just listening, right? It’s actually just making that human connection and having that person feel like they’re understood. And also, I mean, the way you do that is you try to understand them, right? You don’t fake it. And that normally does pretty well. [00:15:03] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah. And we see that a lot. You and I know the stats, right? Whatever you read, it may be six, eight touch points. It takes eight touch points for somebody to engage. And so many times we’ve get sales team members and they start this campaign and they take the time to do the one email and they don’t get the reply and then they stop. And what I try and teach is this is an attraction, whether you call it an attraction campaign, a nurture campaign, you said it well. We’re trying to warm them up so at the end of the day, we’re engaging with people that are in that see that we’ve got something and that can help them survive. [00:15:34] Donald Miller: We think they buy products. They do buy products, but they buy them from familiar sources. And so offering value over time makes your company, your brand, your products familiar. And once you’re familiar, you can sell to them for the rest of your life. I mean, there are clothing brands who reach out on Instagram or text message me or whatever. And once they become familiar, I’m much more likely to buy from them the 23rd or the 25th time I get a text message and then they’re having a 50% off sale, so let me see what they’ve got. If you think about it, you almost never buy from somebody the first time that no matter how great it is, you buy if you’re referred, if a friend told you they loved it, well, that creates familiarity. So these messages are really important and sales reps continuing to follow up and reach out and be in that person’s life is also very important. [00:16:30] Donald Miller: I like what you said. [00:16:31] Lee Brumbaugh: And again, you’re trying to provide some value to those you serve, right? And you’re warming up their use of the brand, but you’re also providing Sales Xceleration. And I know you guys, StoryBrand do such a good job of this. Look, if we can help them provide insights, provide value, it really helps us gravitate. That’s why we do the podcast, right? Because we’re trying to provide value to those in the SMB community. We’re actually launching after our annual summit coming up in a couple of weeks, we’re launching this value-based campaign where basically we’ll do workshops around CRM best practices, how to do an attraction campaign, because at the end of the day, I’ll take 60 to 90 minutes with one of our 200 plus advisors so they can provide some value and get to know the customer. If we do that, we’re so much more likely to be able to be successful. [00:17:13] Donald Miller: Yeah, absolutely. [00:17:15] Lee Brumbaugh: Most companies don’t have the bandwidth to build a high functioning sales department to allow them to meet the revenue targets. With Sales Xceleration, they don’t have to. Our experienced fractional sales leaders consult and implement your sales strategy, infrastructure, management, and team development. Discover how we deploy these proven sales solutions to address your sales challenges by going to our website, filling out the contact form. We’d love to hear from you. So obviously you’re crafting this message, right? And there’s so many tools we know out there from an AI perspective. How is AI working in with where StoryBrand is a company is heading? And also talk a little bit about your guides out there in the marketplace with know how AI is fitting with them. Just give us some perspective of where is AI is fitting with your company and from your guide perspective. And if you need to explain your guides, I’d love for you to do that as well. [00:18:09] Donald Miller: Yeah. We have a certified guide community. So these are freelance marketers who we train in the StoryBrand framework. We literally train them. I am vehemently opposed to most marketing. I mean, as you can imagine, I just think it’s a waste of money. It’s a rip-off. It’s criminal that any small business owner would spend money on a website that doesn’t work. I mean, if I paid somebody to clean my pool and I walked out and it wasn’t clean, I’d call them, right? But we have people make our websites and then we don’t get any business and we pay them anyway. It’s just ridiculous. So we train our StoryBrand certified guides to get the words right first and to understand the human brain that it’s attracted to survival that will only listen to short, simple messages with zero cognitive load and you have to repeat those messages. [00:18:53] Donald Miller: So our StoryBrand certified guides, it’s about 350 of them are trained to create campaigns that are much more effective, I think, than the average marketer. And how are they using AI? I mean, as a writing copy partner, AI is just absolutely terrific. But what I’ve found as a writer is you have to know the difference between good writing and bad writing because AI really doesn’t. And I need to tell it, no, I need it to be more clear. I’m using AI to write my copy. I’m using AI to write a lot of stuff. It actually takes me longer to use AI than it did without it, but the result is better. I would say me and AI make a better writer than me. AI is a bad writer, but me and AI is a pretty darn good writer. So I use it for that. The other thing is you can just dump a ton of information into AI and you can use it as a chatbot on your website so that people, they’re qualifying themselves, they’re learning, they’re asking questions. [00:19:56] Donald Miller: That’s a really great one too. I don’t think we’ve replaced people yet. I don’t think we’re replaced sales teams or anything like that. There’s still that human touch that is never ever going to go away, but AI is being used in all sorts of really effective ways in sales and marketing. [00:20:11] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah. We see that a lot with our advisor community. We have companies that try and write their sales process. They put it in, they got to document, but at the end of the day, is the sales team going to use it? How do you have connection points between the sales team, the operations team? There’s nuances there that have to be worked. And what we’re trying to use is from an efficiency tool. If we can get from here to here, take more data, input, there’s so much that can be done, but it’s still always going to take that human interaction to take it from good to great. So I think that’s well articulated. [00:20:41] Donald Miller: Yeah. [00:20:41] Lee Brumbaugh: So what are you excited about in Verizon? And tell me, from a StoryBrand concept, what are you guys excited about in 2026? What’s some focal areas that we can start to look for from you guys? [00:20:51] Donald Miller: We were doing our workshops live stream since COVID. And for the first time ever, first time since COVID, I should say, we’re bringing back our live workshops. So we have a StoryBrand, your business workshop. You come to the workshop for a couple days and you figure out those soundbites, those taglines, those controlling ideas that you need in order to connect with customers. And then we give you best practices on where to put them in terms of an actual marketing campaign, including sales rep talking points. So we opened that up and sold out the first two really, really quickly. We’ve got a third one if you go to storybrand.com. I believe it’s in April that still has some seats left. So we’re very, very excited about that. And then we’ve worked with a ton of StoryBrand certified guides to build marketing businesses. And we have developed just recently, we had a junk drawer of services and templates and all sorts of things people could use to grow a marketing business. [00:21:45] Donald Miller: And we have since sort of streamlined that into three phases and 15 steps, attract leads, close leads and deliver great results. And I’m very, very excited about that. And so anybody who is a freelance marketer, go to storybrand.com/guide and you can read all about it. So those are two kind of new products or new evolutions of products that we’re putting out there and really, really excited about delivering those. All of those certifications and trainings and workshops are live in the room. I probably should have been a professor. And so now I get to teach in front of a live audience and I’m looking forward to that. [00:22:22] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, that’s great. So I’m going to take a little back, and that’s great of where you’re going. Now I’m going to go where you’ve been in the past, right? So this is just a personal, just would love to hear kind of the story behind this. So when you’re going through and you’re building this StoryBrand concept, and obviously it makes sense, it resonates, was there an aha moment going back where you’re like, we put it in a company like, “Oh, this really drives real ROI.” Was there a light bulb moment of like, “We can make companies a lot more money if they follow this framework or more successful or more…” Is there any aha moment where it’s like, “This is going to be [00:22:58] Donald Miller: Big?” I mean, the first call we got before I ever even wrote the book, when I just put it out there that StoryBrand is going to be a thing and we’re going to help you clarify your message using narrative concept. I think the first call we got was Procter & Gamble. The second was Ford Lincoln. And so we knew we were onto something, but at the same time, Lee, a guy like me has a theory and you’re not sure if it’s going to work. I know I can sell the theory, but if they execute on the theory. So there’s countless stories now of … I mean, there’s got to be thousands of stories of 100% increase in revenue. There’s hundreds of stories of 400% increase in revenue, literally just changing the words that you’re using, countless examples. I think of confusing messaging is almost like building a wall between you and your customer. [00:23:46] Donald Miller: And we just come in and we tear down the wall. I mean, I remember a dairy called us and this guy, he’s a farmer, but he’s having to do his own marketing. He’s a dairy farmer. He’s having to do his own marketing. And he came to a StoryBrand workshop and he left and he called me about three weeks later and he said, “Sales were already up by 400%.” And it’s just because he was making it hard for people to figure out what to buy from them, right? He’s talking about the quality of the milk and all that kind of stuff. But when he actually just said, when he launched a milk subscription program and he tackled the real problem, which never carry a heavy gallon of milk from the store again, we’ll deliver it to your door, he saw a 400% increase in the product that he already sold. [00:24:24] Donald Miller: So it’s figuring out what the problem is, putting it into zero cognitive load message, putting it out there. And there you go. I’m working with a company now. Actually, I meet with them on Monday called ID Me. And IDMe is the online identification product that you would use to file your taxes. So it’s basically a digital wallet with your iPad. Yeah. Well, go to EFPBS and it shoots you through there. Yeah, I’m tracking with you. I think I did that the other day. That thing does 50 million things. I mean, it’s the ID that you can use to check in your hotel in some places. It’s the ID you can use to get a discount at Chipotle. It’s the ID you use to file taxes. It’s the ID, this and that. But the problem is it’s very hard to explain all the benefits of ID me. [00:25:05] Donald Miller: So how do we expand the number of people who sign up for it? And so a message that we’re probably going to run with, we’ll decide down the road, but one of the things they do is they really stop artificial intelligence from pretending to be you online, which is terrifying for people. So if we said, “Don’t let AI pretend to be you online, cover yourself with ID me, get your online ID right now so nobody can get it first,” on and on and on. To me, it’s really playing with words. Honestly, Lee, there are times when I feel like Harry Potter in the sense that you’re playing with spells to see if you can make the thing and except instead of spells working magic, it’s words affecting human psychology leading to sales. And I get to do that every day and it’s like figuring out a puzzle and I just love [00:25:57] Lee Brumbaugh: It. Well, I remember my first reading and it was like, I went back and it was the Star Wars. That’s what stuck out for me, the Star Wars movie and Luke moving along the way and the Jedi and all that stuff. I mean, you told the story in the book and it’s just like aha moments that came across. And the other question is, did you get free milk for the rest of your life from the … I mean- [00:26:15] Donald Miller: I didn’t. You know what? I did the first time I’ve ever thought about negotiating that. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. I mean, I remember the fresh milk. I mean, you should get the preferential treatment on that one. He is in [00:26:26] Donald Miller: Iowa, so that would be a long drive, I think, for him. [00:26:28] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, that’s fair. That’s fair. Well, exciting where you’ve been and where you’ve gone. Other question is, so we’re looking at this for business. So I’ve got a nine and an 11 year old, will all these concepts work on my children of clarity. I mean, you’re bringing in Paul, and I say it tongue in cheek and somewhat jokingly, but it’s true, right? How does just all of this impact of how we look at the world and life in general as well? [00:26:51] Donald Miller: That’s a great question. I use soundbite psychology on my four and a half year old all the time. I got married at 42, became a dad at 49, so I’m an old dad. But the number one priority for me as a dad is that to sort of protect my daughter’s self-esteem. We all know what happens to little girls when they have low self-esteem. It’s not good, and that can be a really hard life. So there are things that I don’t just say, there are things that I repeat. And so I don’t know that there’s been very many days, at least in the last year, when I haven’t said, “Who’s beautiful?” And she says, “Emmeline.” And then I say, “Who does daddy think is beautiful?” She says, “Emeline.” I said, “Who does God think is beautiful?” She says, “Emeline.” Then I say, “Who else does daddy think is beautiful?” She says, “Mama.” And I said, “Who else does God think is beautiful? [00:27:42] Donald Miller: Mama.” And so that happens every day and it has to … And I’m programming her to memorize those ideas. Another one is, “Emily, what do we do with mistakes?” And she says, “We learn from them.” And I said, “Yes. Is it wrong to make a mistake?” No, it’s never wrong to make a mistake. What do we do with mistakes? We learn from them. So words are extremely powerful. Everything that you are … I would argue that everybody watching this podcast or listening to this podcast, I want you to think about something. The world that you have built, that you live in could have looked a bunch of different ways, but the world that you live in, the world that you enjoy, the person you’re married to, the amount of money that you make, the sort of friends that you have, the world that you were live in was built with the words that came out of your mouth. [00:28:35] Donald Miller: And you got to sit down and say, “Hey, what words am I using? Am I criticizing other people? Am I complaining? Am I acting like a victim? Am I talking like a victim? How have the words that I’ve used built my world?” And then you just say, “Okay, what words do I need to stop using and what words do I need to start using?” So I’m just a big believer in the powerful of words. And by the way, when you realize you need to stop saying certain things because it’s making your world worse, the next step, and it’s the obvious next step, is to stop thinking those words. So yeah, it’s fun to play with that stuff. [00:29:12] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah. It is amazing. I like to stop thinking of the words too. There’s so much … I was reading the other day on the Navy SEALs and when they switched this positive self-think, not even letting negative words put it, and they saw their Navy SEAL rate like triple of people that were able to get through it. I mean, it’s a powerful thing to not only say it, but believe it and put it into your everyday life. So I think that’s really impactful. So SMB owners are going to be listening. Any one last thing we’re the start of 2026, you’re a $4 million company, been stuck there for five years at $4 million. You really want to get to 5.5 or six. Anything that, if you were that owner, from your perspective, that last resonating area that you think they should be focused on for this year? [00:29:55] Lee Brumbaugh: Sure. [00:29:56] Donald Miller: The number one piece of advice I give to grow your business, and it’s Bigger than just messaging. You can really only be known in the market for solving one problem. It’s very hard to be known for solving two or three. Now, if you have 50 different products, each product can solve one problem. And at that point, you’re a brand with a suite of products. But I think it’s very important that if I said to you, if you own a small or medium sized business, if I said to you, “What problem can you guys solve for me that you have an answer?” You can’t say, “That’s a good question. There’s a lot of them. Okay, you’ve lost me. “ If there’s a lot of them, you’re asking me to encounter and engage and metabolize a very high cognitive load statement. If you said to me, Don, from a career standpoint, if you said to me, “Don, what problem can you solve for my company?” I’d say, “I’m going to solve the problem of confusing messaging and that is costing you a lot of money. [00:30:47] Donald Miller: I’m going to do that by clarifying your message. I’m going to give you repeatable soundbites that customers actually listen to. And what you’re going to find is people stop ignoring you when you do that and they engage and they buy.That’s my soundbite. And when I give it, people tend to do business with me. [00:31:02] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah, that’s really well put. I even think about our company. I mean, as you know, we’re doing sales fractional sales management and sales coaching and building sales infrastructure, but at the end of the day, you’ve got a company that’s stuck. We’re going to come in and build you a sustainable structure to help you grow. It’s really that [00:31:19] Donald Miller: Simple. No, that’s the solution. The problem that you solve is underperforming sales teams. [00:31:23] Lee Brumbaugh: Ah, like that. [00:31:24] Donald Miller: I mean, everybody understands what that is. So if the only people who shouldn’t call me are sales teams that are performing at their highest possible capacity. Well, which sales teams are doing that? None of them. So your target market is everybody. But if you have an underperforming sales team, I’m your guy. That’s your soundbite. It gets repeated a trillion times for the next 10 years. We turn around underperforming sales teams. If you have a underperforming sales team, call me. If you’re not sure if your sales team is underperforming, call me. But we turn around underperforming sales teams. If Sales Xceleration, turning around the underperforming sales team was the tagline, you would increase in business. [00:32:03] Lee Brumbaugh: My marketing team is going to be watching this right after this. Trust [00:32:06] Donald Miller: Me. Here’s the other thing real quick. You want to own a problem. Everybody listening to me wants to own a problem. I own unclear messaging. I own it. And you can own underperforming sales teams. We said, Don, there’s a lot of people who turn around underperforming sales teams. Listen, if they’re not saying it, you can own it. So you’ve got to beat them to that and you might even want to trademark it so that they can’t say it. But the key is own a problem in the marketplace. And turning around underperforming sales teams is a very lucrative problem to own in the marketplace. [00:32:36] Lee Brumbaugh: Yeah. And then it doesn’t matter if you’re small, you’re big, what verticallane, what market you’re in, you’ve got that problem and that’s a survival problem as we started off at the onset of this conversation. So Don, this has been great. Really enjoyed it. Big fan of what you’re doing, excited for the success and the ways we’re partnering as well as we move into 2026. So thank you for giving us the time and being with us today. [00:33:02] Donald Miller: My pleasure, Lee. [00:33:03] Lee Brumbaugh: All right. This has been another episode of Sales Against The Odds. Please tune in in two weeks where we’ll have another thought leader in the sales space. Thanks, Tom. You’ve been listening to Sales Against The Odds. Be sure to hit that follow button so you never miss an episode. And if you want more resources on scaling sales, check out our website at salesxceleration.com.