“Nobody wants to hear your story, they want to be invited into a story,” Donald Miller told me, in a recent interview about his new book, Building A StoryBrand 2.0.

That’s it. That’s how financial planning—or perhaps more accurately, financial planners—have got the story all wrong. And regardless of the type of business that you’re in, I’m betting that the same holds true.

We’ve made ourselves, and/or our solutions, the main character in the narrative of our client’s financial planning, rather than ceding that role to the natural actor, our client.

This wise counsel comes from the StoryBrand guy, Donald Miller, and Miller’s story deserves attention because it’s instructive. He’s not the first to talk about how to use narrative theory in branding and marketing, but it is safe to say he’s done the best job of telling us precisely how to use stories to help people better understand our businesses. And it’s not by telling our story, but by helping others to see theirs.

This is likely because Miller isn’t, or wasn’t, a marketing guru, but a practitioner. An author. Before writing StoryBrand, Miller had published seven books that fit into the memoirist category, including one of my all-time favorite titles, Blue Like Jazz. But after finding success in that genre, Miller says, “I ran out of books to write,” so he began, “an exercise in curiosity” to explicate how narrative structures work and how to use that to clarify a business’s message.

And the big takeaway? As businesses, the story isn’t about us; it’s about those we serve.

StoryBrand 1.0

In the original Building a StoryBrand, Miller shares the SB7 framework—the seven plot points in every great story, whether it’s a novel, TV show, commercial, epic movie, or yes, a business or brand. And it doesn’t take more than a second glance to see where we go wrong as business owners or developers.

From Star Wars to Hunger Games to Top Gun: Maverick to Apple, Miller shows us how this plotline plays out in every great story and iconic brand. But nobody dreams of winning Best Supporting Actor as a kid, so we naturally default to jumping into the cockpit and calling ourselves Maverick.

And there is the fatal flaw we commit, making it too much about us. Our services, processes, and accolades—all of which matter, but only to the degree they serve the protagonist, the client, and their story.

The good news is that we play a vital role in this story—it’s just not the starring role, and the sooner we accept our rightful supporting role, the sooner we can better serve more clients. And everything becomes crystal clear when we see it that way—especially as financial advisors.

StoryBrand Financial Planning

Our clients are the main character, the hero. Our job is to get to know them well enough to understand their problem or challenge, and then we can settle into our rightful role as the client’s guide.

And there’s no better metaphor for the posture of all truly great financial advisors, by the way, than guide. We teach, but we’re not teachers who have a necessarily condescending stance toward their students. We navigate the technical, but we are not technicians who often get stuck down rabbit holes of specialization. We consult, but we’re not consultants who diagnose, recommend, and then walk away, leaving a hefty bill in their wake. We persuade, but we’re not salespeople who are driven more by transactions than transformations.

Instead, we are guides for whom experience, wisdom, and the skills of teaching, specializing, consulting, and persuading are all prerequisites.

Then comes planning, a process best navigated in collaboration with our clients. Miller also clarifies here that the plan should be delivered “in the form of baby steps,” a truth we’ve learned from the field of behavioral finance. This, too, contrasts with how most of us learned financial planning. Yet while great financial planning must be comprehensive in its scope, great financial plans must be modular, lest they overwhelm and result in inaction.

Here’s where the skills of persuasion come in handy, in calling our clients to action—actions of their own choosing and architecture—and providing the pivotal role of accountability. We grossly underestimate this as part of our role, perhaps because we love the creative planning at the center of our work. But here again, we are reminded that the plan is no more the hero than we are—and the best unimplemented plans in the world are utterly worthless unless clients take action.

Said action can result in success—Yay!—but plans succeed to varying degrees, and circumstances often change. Some plans even fail. Enter the plot twist, when new circumstances or suboptimal implementation allows us to re-engage the perpetual cycle of story all over again, as we address a new problem or challenge and strive for success anew.

And please remember, the best movies have numerous plot twists. If you’ve already run through Plan A to B, C, or even Z, it only makes your story more compelling.

StoryBrand 2.0 – The Controlling Idea

So, StoryBrand 1.0 does an amazing job helping us identify our proper role and re-write the story. I also asked Miller what was new for readers in StoryBrand 2.0, and there’s another gem that could turn our marketing on its head: the controlling idea.

He writes, “Certainly a story can present multiple ideas, and those ideas are sometimes subjective, but very few stories are commercially successful if the plot is up for interpretation.” Hmm. Can you give us an example?

“If our controlling idea involves a lost dog returning home to his family, who realize how much they loved the previously neglected dog,” says Miller, “we should not include too many scenes about a food critic attempting to start their own restaurant.”

The controlling idea, then, is the main plotline in a nutshell, which isn’t any bigger than a run-on sentence and may be much smaller. StoryBrand 2.0 describes the controlling idea of the classic Lion King plot as “A young lion must gain the confidence necessary to confront his evil uncle, who murdered his father, so that he can take his rightful place as king of the jungle and return order and life to his homeland.”

Meanwhile, Miller strategized with a client who owned a gym franchise and was struggling to differentiate from all the other gyms out there. The gym’s unique feature was targeted resistance training—20-minute trainer-led sessions twice per week—for those who didn’t have time to live at the gym. The essence of the controlling idea ended up being distilled all the way down to three words: “twenty minutes, twice.”

Bang. Then, once you’ve got your controlling narrative for your business and brand, the discipline required is to run 100% of your messaging through that singular lens. If it builds on that narrative, great. If it distracts, it’s out.

The question StoryBrand 2.0 leaves us with, then, is, “Have you defined a controlling idea?”

StoryBrand.Ai

And considering the answer for most is some version of “No,” the biggest new addition to the StoryBrand script isn’t even contained in the newly revised edition of the book—it’s a website and tool, StoryBrand.Ai, which I have trialed and must confess left me jaw dropped.

In a matter of minutes, StoryBrand.Ai delivers a brand script, tagline, product service or name, description, packaging copy, website wireframe, lead generator ideas, lead-generating PDF, domain name suggestions, sales emails and talking points, a compelling one-liner, video scripts, social media post ideas and captions, a brand or product story, and nurture emails. Not bad for $39 per month.

The goal of all of it, though, must be remembered, in what I believe is the “controlling idea” of StoryBrand itself, and the quote from Donald Miller that sparked this post: “Nobody wants to hear your story, they want to be invited into a story.”

How can you apply that wisdom in your business or practice?

TikTok went dark on Sunday for US users as a new law banning the app took effect at midnight.

Users logging into TikTok were served with a message reading: “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now.”

“A law banning TikTok has been enatched in the U.S.,” the message added. “Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now.”

The alert also mentioned President-elect Donald Trump by name saying, “We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office.” On its website, TikTok told users they could still login to download their data.

Access to the platform began getting cut off for some users about 90 minutes before the new law took effect. The app was also unavailable via Apple’s App Store. Videos intermittently loaded on TikTok, but the app also showed a blacked-out screen indicating network issues.

Saturday night’s cutoff for US TikTok users followed a report from The Information which said Oracle (ORCL), which manages TikTok’s US servers, was set to begin shutting down servers that host TikTok’s data as early as 9:00 p.m. ET.

In an interview with NBC on Saturday, Trump said he would likely grant TikTok a 90-day extension to work out a deal with the government and keep the app up and running.

The law itself doesn’t outright ban TikTok, but rather it prohibits users from accessing the platform through app stores, like those run by Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL), and cloud services unless parent company ByteDance sells itself to an owner that is not controlled by a country the US considers adversarial.

Congress has accused ByteDance of having close ties to the Chinese government and alleges that the Chinese Communist Party could force the company to provide it with information on US users or otherwise spread propaganda on the platform.

But the outcry from users and TikTok’s backers has forced President Joe Biden and Trump to respond. Even if Trump assures Apple and Google that his administration won’t enforce the law, it’s not guaranteed that it will do so in the future. And each time the companies don’t comply with the law they’d have to pay a fine of $5,000 each time a user accesses the social media app.

Trump will have to either convince Congress to overturn the ban or find some other way to work around it if he wants to keep the service up and running, and neither of those is simple.

The biggest winner could be one of TikTok’s long-term critics, Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In particular, Instagram, owned by Meta, could see a sizable uptick in advertiser dollars if TikTok bites the dust.

Story Continues

“In general, it’s a good thing for Meta,” William Blair research analyst Ralph Schackart told Yahoo Finance. “We estimate in a note potentially 60% to 70% of TikTok spend could move to Instagram and it monetizes at around 3x the rate of TikTok.”

Social media companies have been chasing TikTok’s formula in an attempt to copy the social media platform’s success for some time. Reddit (RDDT), for example, offers its own short-form video feed that could entice former TikTok users looking for a broader kind of social media site complete with various message boards and communities.

Advertisement

Snapchat (SNAP) could also grab users who would have otherwise spent time on TikTok — and the advertising dollars that follow. But as Morgan Stanley managing director Brian Nowak points out, Snap would have to ensure it can keep those TikTok refugees coming back over and over again — as TikTok does — if it hopes to hold onto that ad revenue.

Pinterest (PINS) also stands to get a boost if TikTok is forced to go dark. While the app doesn’t have much in common with TikTok as far as overall design, it could offer an opportunity for online retailers looking to drum up e-commerce sales, something TikTok has managed to do thanks to its army of influencers.

It’s now up to Trump and Congress to determine if and how TikTok will continue forward.

Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed.

Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.

Click here for the latest technology news that will impact the stock market

Advertisement

Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance

We recently compiled a list of the Blackrock’s 30 Most Important AI Stocks. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE:IRM) stands against the other AI stocks.

In the third quarter of 2024, investment titan Blackrock released a commentary on the market outlook for artificial intelligence heading into the closing months of the year, stressing that investors were becoming cautious about the scale of AI spending by tech firms and thus diversifying investments into energy, utilities, real estate, and resources tied to AI infrastructure (for more on this click on 30 Most Important AI Stocks According to BlackRock). Following this warning, in September 2024, BlackRock, in collaboration with Microsoft, Global Infrastructure Partners, and MGX, announced a new AI partnership aimed at investing in data centers and supporting power infrastructure. This initiative was part of a larger strategy by the investment firm to enhance American competitiveness in AI while meeting the growing need for energy infrastructure to power economic growth.

The investment giant also expanded product offerings to cater to the growing interest in AI. In October 2024, the firm launched two new exchange-traded funds (ETFs) designed to provide investors with exposure to the burgeoning AI market. These ETFs aimed to capitalize on the increasing demand for AI-driven investment opportunities. Though still in their early stages, the initiatives appear to have paid off. BlackRock reported a net profit of $6.37 billion last year, marking a 16% increase from the previous year. Revenues rose by 14% to $20.4 billion, and assets under management expanded to $11.55 trillion. The firm has attributed a major part of this growth to advancements in AI technologies and projected that AI will be a significant driver of US equities and economic expansion in 2025.

The BlackRock Investment Institute notes that AI innovations are expected to outpace similar developments in Europe, with private markets playing a crucial role in funding AI-related infrastructure. BlackRock’s 2025 Global Outlook suggests that the global economy has moved beyond the traditional boom and bust cycle due to transformative mega forces such as AI technologies, net-zero carbon emission efforts, geopolitical fragmentation, demographic shifts, and the digitization of finance. The firm believes that significant investments, akin to those of the Industrial Revolution, are needed, particularly in infrastructure tied to AI and green technology. The claims made by BlackRock in relation to AI are shared by investment firm JPMorgan.

Story Continues