The framework · Win With Words
→ StoryBrand is the framework behind everything we build. Here’s how it works.
Ashton Ivey
Founder, Win With Words
Every story you love follows the same pattern. A hero wants something, runs into a problem, and meets a guide who hands them a plan and calls them to action. In his bestselling book Building a StoryBrand, Donald Miller turned that pattern into a marketing framework now used by thousands of businesses around the world.
The idea is simple: your customer is the hero of the story, not your business. You are the guide. Our brains are wired for story, so when your message follows this shape, people understand it, remember it, and act on it. When it doesn’t, they get confused, lose interest, and go find a competitor who made it easier. Here are the seven parts, and what each one means for the way you talk about your business.
Every story opens with a hero who wants something. In your brand’s story, that hero is your customer, not you. So the first question isn’t what you want to say about your business. It’s what your customer wants, and what their end goal looks like. Start your message there and speak directly to it. The moment you talk only about yourself and how great your company is, the hero loses interest and the story ends early.
Heroes face obstacles, and naming your customer’s obstacles is how they know you understand them. The framework looks at their problem four ways:
Most businesses only ever talk about the external problem. Customers buy solutions to the internal one.
Your customer isn’t looking for another hero. They’re looking for a guide, and that’s the role your business plays. A guide worth trusting shows two things: empathy, so the hero knows you understand their problem, and authority, so they know you can actually help them overcome it. This is where your experience, your reviews, and your mission belong. Not at center stage, but standing confidently beside the hero.
A good guide always hands the hero a plan, and yours should be three simple steps a customer can say yes to right away. Your real process might have fifteen steps behind the scenes, and that’s fine. The customer doesn’t need to see them to get started. If you confuse, you lose. Keep the path simple.
At some point the guide has to ask the hero to act. Don’t bury your call to action or dance around it. Decide the one thing you want customers to do, say it plainly, and repeat it across your website. You actually need two kinds: a direct call to action for people ready to buy, like Start a Project or Schedule a Call, and a transitional one for people who aren’t ready yet, like a free guide or a calculator. Some visitors are ready to commit today. Others just want to get to know you first. Serve both.
In a good movie you always know what the hero is fighting for. Your customer should know too. Paint a clear picture of what life looks like after they choose you: the problem solved, the pressure gone, the goal they’ve been chasing finally reached. Then show the transformation.
Your hero goes from stuck and frustrated to confident and winning.
A story with no stakes is a story nobody finishes. Your customer needs to know what happens if they do nothing: lost sales, wasted ad spend, more months of watching clearer competitors win. You don’t have to be dramatic about it. You just have to be honest. Stakes are what turn interest into action.
Run your business through all seven parts and you end up with a BrandScript: the one-page story your whole brand tells. That is exactly what we build in every Word Strategy Playbook, and it is the blueprint behind every StoryBrand Website we launch. One story, told the same way on your website, your ads, and across the counter.
The framework is a powerful tool, but like any tool, it takes time to use and learn. Most owners are too close to their own product to see it the way a first-time visitor does. The good news is Ashton founded Win With Words to do all the heavy lifting for you. Instead of burning time and energy on learning how to StoryBrand your business, we’ll do it for you and more.
Let’s put the framework to work on your message and your website.
Start your project →