Do you have any brainstorming rituals? What are they?
It’s often difficult to brainstorm beyond your own bias within a project. It’s easy to unintentionally paint yourself into a corner because you have so much institutional knowledge about your company—or even about a project you’ve spent a lot of time researching.
I typically do three things:
- Remove myself from my usual environment. Whether it’s renting a workspace or just going for a walk, some of my best ideas have come from being physically somewhere else. Changing my surroundings helps me play a different role mentally, which leads to step #2.
- Mentally role-play as the customer or primary user. I ask myself: “If I were purchasing and using this product, what would I absolutely need in order to become a customer?” It sounds obvious, but actually having this conversation with a co-worker from that perspective often uncovers nuances that are hard to discover on your own.
- Ask, “Six months from now, if this fails, why?” This forces me to confront potential objections now instead of resting the product’s success on hope.
What was the biggest pivot you had to make when working on a project?
Years ago at StoryBrand, our primary product was registrations for in-person workshops. The company was growing, and attendance at each event kept climbing. Then in 2020, when the world shut down, we immediately met as a team and decided we weren’t going down without a fight. During an all-day leadership meeting, we mapped out what the next 12 months would look like. Almost overnight, we pivoted all workshops to livestreams and built on-demand versions of every training.
The result? The biggest growth year in company history.
It was hard work, but the team’s willingness to be agile, lean into our systems, and execute quickly led to extraordinary success.
What’s the first thing you look at when you view an entry?
The first thing I look for in an entry is whether the customer is positioned as the hero. Too many companies make the mistake of casting themselves in that role, but there’s only room for one hero in a story—and customers know it.
