Building a Story Brand book review

Kyla Denanyoh
Jan 27
4 min read

Updated: 4 days ago

All stories aren't created equal, or are they? Keep reading to find out what is a story brand and why you have to have one. Today, I am writing about the book Building a Story Brand. I love this book. It's written by Donald Miller and it is a phenomenal read. The genre of the book is non-fiction and the theme of the book is marketing business. I picked up this book because I wanted to market my podcast a lot better. I was trying to figure out ways to really get the story out there that this podcast is for you. We're talking to lawyers who either don't practice or do different things with their degrees. Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me. That was what I wanted.

I wasn't quite getting that across, so I wanted to start reading some marketing books.

I ran into this book, and I never looked back. I've been hosting the podcast for the last two and a half years, and when I started, I heard I needed a website. It was just really, really important. I started playing around and designing it, and I'll pop that up here. It wasn't terrible, but I showed it to my husband who works in UX/UI (user experience and user interface) design, which is user interface, and he was like, Let me tweak it. Let me do a little bit of this. Are you married to this color? We changed it, and this is what we ended up with.

But I knew I had to have a website, so we started building the website and the tagline changed after reading this Building Your Story Brand book. The tagline used to be, You are a lawyer. We share the experiences and successes of law school graduates who created their own paths to career success. After reading this book, was like, I need a short bite. What is You are a Lawyer? You are a Lawyer is bam, so promote what you've done with your law degree.

You look at it, Oh, promote, promote, I want to promote. Law degree. I don't have a law degree, so it's not me. Promote what you've done. This is about lawyers. Yes. Just like that, you can be on the website and be like, I'm not a lawyer, it's talking about law degrees, so do I know a lawyer who wants to promote themselves? Promote what you've done with your law degree is exactly what the You Are A Lawyer podcast does. I was beside myself that I was able to, not necessarily rebrand, but definitely change the headline of my website, because now it exactly says what I'm doing. Important quotes for me. There were a lot. I mean, there were a lot. But one quote that jumped out at me that I cannot stop thinking about is this. People don't buy the best products. They buy the products they can understand the fastest. Light bulb moment. They buy the products they can understand the fastest.

And the book has a number of different examples of different products, you know, clothing, food, retail, all these different things. If you can understand it, if you can look at it and immediately know that's how this will be included in my life, you will grab it. I will say that since changing the headline on my website, I definitely get a lot more people pitching themselves to me, saying, "Hey, I would love to be a guest. Hey, is my cousin a lawyer? Can they be on here? Hey!”

I get a lot of people who actually contact me, and it makes me feel really good because I feel like it has to do with that. You look at the website, and you know what's happening here. That is why this quote is important to me because it is a very, very simple sentence. People do not buy the best product. They buy the products they understand the fastest. I was like, how can I get people to understand the podcast faster so that we can get this going? I do believe that it's helped.

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Lastly here, would I reread this book? Yes, I have picked up the book twice. The second time I picked it up was when I was trying to start a blog, and then the next time was when I was helping a friend start her small business. I was like, Have you read the brand story book? What is your brand story?

I got to about maybe forty-five minutes into it the audiobook and realize that I have to buy this book.

I read both physical books and audiobooks. I did read this book via audiobook. I need to write in the margins. I need to underline stuff. I have to purchase the book. Also, when you purchase the book, you get access to the brand story website. Anyone can go to the website, but if you enter, I think it's either your order number or there's a QR code that's in the book, and then it will open up this brand story page. I'll show you that here, where you can scroll through, write your own brand story, go through the seven aspects of a story because all stories have these seven things in common. Don't believe me, believe Donald Miller. They all have these seven things in common.

So you'll want to do that if you have a brand and are trying to figure out its story.