Red Door Designs

Heather Sager has a rule about scripts, and it is not a gentle one.

Her point is that none of us are A-list actors. When you recite something you wrote down, people can feel it, even when every word is correct. The brain checks out somewhere around sentence two.

And that ties back to the thing she said earlier in Episode 86 of From Click to Client. It was never about getting it right. It is about resonating. A perfectly recited script can do the first one and completely miss the second.

🎧 Full episode: https://www.reddoorstories.com/why-polished-brand-messaging

Here is how to find your angle on a topic a hundred other people already cover.

Dr. J.J. Peterson does this with clients all the time. Somebody says they want to speak on a topic, and instead of helping them organize their thoughts, he asks something different. What does everybody else get wrong about this?

That one flip hands you a sentence you can actually build on. Everybody thinks this is one thing. Here is what it really is.

On Episode 85 he called that the moment you stop having a topic and start having a point of view. I have watched this happen on messaging calls and it is a real shift.

🎧 Full episode: https://www.reddoorstories.com/business-storytelling-ai-has-to-borrow

Your best story is probably one question away from being useful.

Dr. J.J. Peterson has a story about being in a Missy Elliott music video where his character was called Fat Michael Jackson. For years it was just a great story. It killed at parties, and that was the whole point of it.

Then on Episode 85 he described asking himself a different question. Not is this a funny story, but what did I learn from it and how have I changed because of it.

That is when it stopped being an anecdote and became something he could teach from. Most of us have one of these sitting in the drawer.

🎧 Full episode: https://www.reddoorstories.com/business-storytelling-ai-has-to-borrow

You can share your story. Just share the part someone else can walk through behind you.

Dr. J.J. Peterson made a distinction on Episode 85 that cleared something up for me. Saying you cannot be the hero of your own story does not mean never tell it. It means the part you share should work as a guide for people headed the same direction.

His example landed. If you were born a billionaire and your advice is just start a business, nobody can see themselves in that. But if you struggled, got overlooked, and found your way through, now I can see myself in it. And I can start to believe there is a way through for me too.

🎧 Full episode: https://www.reddoorstories.com/business-storytelling-ai-has-to-borrow

If nothing changes, it is not a story. It is an anecdote.

Dr. J.J. Peterson gave me the cleanest test for this on Episode 85. A hero is never the same at the end of a story as they were at the beginning. Luke Skywalker starts out an orphan on a planet and ends up a Jedi. Katniss becomes the Mockingjay.

Then he made it simple. Ask what someone had for breakfast, they say eggs, and nobody cares. But if the eggs taught them something, now it is interesting.

A lot of the stories on business websites stop at the eggs.

🎧 Full episode: https://www.reddoorstories.com/business-storytelling-ai-has-to-borrow

In a recent client conversation, Sara told me she is at her best when she is telling the truth. Marketing had never let her do that, because everything she wrote before was manufactured, or made for someone else, or made into what it was supposed to be.

That is where a lot of brand story work quietly fails. The copy reads fine and it still does not sound like the person saying it.

Now when Sara pulls up the work we did together, she can use it, because it is true. In her words, she is telling the truth that I helped her find the words to say.

Finding those words is the whole job. If yours have never quite fit, that is worth a conversation. https://www.reddoorstories.com/

I follow a copywriter named Ian Stanley, and he shared something in an email worth repeating.

His real dream is comedy. Selling out stadiums, huge rooms, the whole thing. And he realized he had gotten so caught up in the end goal of being a wildly successful comedian that he forgot to embody the fact that he is a comedian right now, and to enjoy what that identity gives him day to day.

That lands for a lot of business owners. You can spend years working toward the business you want and miss the one you are already running.

Full conversation with Katherine Wehler is live on Episode 84 of the From Click to Client Podcast. 🎧

🎧 Full episode: https://www.reddoorstories.com/astrology-attracting-wrong-people

Showing authority does not make you the hero of your own marketing.

This one trips up a lot of the people I work with. You have heard that it should be about the client, so you strip out anything that sounds like credentials. Then a visitor lands on your site with no reason to trust you.

Dr. J.J. Peterson put it cleanly on Episode 85. Empathy for your customer's problem, then authority to solve it. A little proof. And the only proof you are showing is proof that you can help somebody else, which keeps the story where it belongs.

🎧 Full episode: https://www.reddoorstories.com/business-storytelling-ai-has-to-borrow

Making your customer the hero is not a nice idea. There is research behind it.

On Episode 85, Dr. J.J. Peterson told me the studies are clear. When you make your business the hero of your story, it has measurably less influence than the version where your client is. It just does.

What I loved was what that meant for him. He said it was the moment he realized he did not have to sell anything anymore, or push, or try to sound better than everybody else. He got to show up and serve as the guide.

That is a relief for most of the people I work with.

🎧 Full episode: https://www.reddoorstories.com/business-storytelling-ai-has-to-borrow