Mastering the Hero’s Journey in Business: How to Craft Your Origin Story

Is your business selling a process or a transformation? Master storyteller and founder of Story Miners, Mike Wittenstein, joins Jake to reveal why process-based pitches kill sales... and how emotion-driven narratives transform customers into lifelong advocates.

From running one of the world's first digital agencies to navigating IBM's e-visionary landscape, Mike brings decades of experience to help businesses discover and articulate their true brand promise. He dives deep into experiential storytelling, showing how small business owners can leverage the "hero’s journey" to stand out in a crowded market.

Mike also shares the surprising hidden principle behind Walt Disney's massive empire, the secret to building organizational resilience by empowering the frontline, and why your brand's biggest win might just come from how well you recover from a mistake.

Key Insights:

0:46 Getting fired from IBM & the birth of Story Miners

1:32 What "finding your story" actually means for business value

4:40 Why strategy isn't just doing more—it's architecting the future

7:02 The “tinker toy” map of Disney's interconnected business model

8:16 The invisible first principle driving Disney's success

9:37 Why service businesses sell personal transformation, not services

11:58 How recovering from a mistake creates the best customer stories

19:00 Process vs. Emotion: Two ways to pitch a dry-cleaning business

24:20 The Skyscraper Analogy: Empowering your frontline for brand resilience

37:00 Clarifying your business future before going public with it

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