The StoryBrand Guide Podcast

The StoryBrand Guide Retreat is less than a week away, and we don’t want you looking across the table at something brilliant and realizing it’s sitting at home on your counter.

Annie and Tyler sit down with two veteran Guides and conference regulars, Katharine McMahon (Phoenix 818) and Brian Davis (Stokelite Video and Marketing), to unpack what’s actually worth bringing to Nashville.

Got something we missed? Add it to the packing thread in the Ask the SB community.

Connect with our guests: phoenix818.com and stokelite.com

Want to become a StoryBrand Certified Guide? Visit storybrand.com/guide and tell us you heard about it on the StoryBrand Guide Podcast.

What if the best words for your client’s BrandScript are already sitting in their customers’ mouths?

In this episode, Annie Figenshu and Tyler Pigott sit down with Curt Stockwell, founder of Well-Dressed Walrus and a StoryBrand Certified Guide since 2018. Curt starts every engagement by interviewing his client’s customers, not just the client. He walks through how he runs a “voice of the customer” process before a StoryBrand day session. He also explains why the room stops arguing when the problem, the feelings, and the guide’s position come straight from real customer feedback. And he shows how “authentic intelligence,” meaning AI tools grounded in real interview transcripts, keeps your messaging from sounding like everyone else in the industry.

You’ll hear:

• Why even 30-year marketing veterans rarely start with customer conversations
• How Curt recruits interviewees and structures 15–20 minute calls
• What a 100-year-old ice cream machine manufacturer learned from customer feedback dating back to World War II
• How customer interviews surface hidden revenue, broken onboarding, and a client’s true uniques
• The smallest first step you can take on your next engagement

Plus: how to scope and price a workshop for 70 employees, and a community win featured in Bon Appétit.

Not a StoryBrand Certified Guide yet? Apply at storybrand.com/guide and tell us the StoryBrand Guide Podcast sent you.

Great marketing gets you the call. Sales gets you the client.

In this episode, Annie Figenshu and Tyler Pigott talk with StoryBrand Certified Guide Brooke Greening, who has led over 100,000 sales conversations across a 20-year career. Brooke shares the most common sales mistake marketers make, why you should follow up until you get a real answer, how to respond when a ready-to-buy prospect suddenly gets nervous, and the one question she uses to open every first sales call.

Plus, newly certified Guide Zach Manor shares how he hit his 90-day goal in 60 days, landing two clients with nothing more than a one-page website and a willingness to launch before it was perfect.

Take Brooke's free sales conversation assessment: https://scorecards.buildingmomentum.info/assessment

Want to become a StoryBrand Certified Guide? Apply at storybrand.com/guide

Most StoryBrand Guides don't have an information problem. They have a shipping problem and a deciding problem. This week, co-hosts Annie Figenshu and Tyler Pigott sit down with Shell Gower and Macy Robison to unpack Foundation Fridays, the weekly working session built to help first- and second-year guides take action on their own business.

In this episode:

• What Foundation Fridays is, and how the new format gets guides applying StoryBrand to themselves
• How the Four Rules are being used to pressure-test problem soundbites and one-liners
• A real example of the curse of knowledge, and why your client may not know they're in the hole
• Why a two-hour block (one to learn, one to do) works better than dropping in
• The monthly sales session with Brooke Greening
• Question of the Week: lead gen vs. demand gen, and why professionals want to be measured
• Guide success story: Dominique launches The Growth Architects Table
• The Circle "picnic game" ahead of the StoryBrand Guide Retreat in Nashville, October 26–28

Find Foundation Fridays under Live Events in the Circle community. If you know a guide who needs to hear this, share the episode.

The StoryBrand Guide Podcast is the only show made for StoryBrand Guides, so you can get the most from your certification.

Missed the quarterly call with Donald Miller? We've got you.

Annie and Tyler break down everything guides need to know about the Messaging Canvas: what it is, why StoryBrand moved from the SB7 to Soundbites to the Canvas, and how to put it to work in your business this week.

In this episode:

• How to price and position a Messaging Canvas for clients of any size (and why $5,000 isn't crazy)
• Why strategy alone sits in a drawer, and how implementation leads to repeat work
• The four steps to take this week after the call
• How to partner with other guides when a client needs something you don't offer
• What's coming next: a Canvas keynote deck and filled-out examples
• A guide win: how one Messaging Canvas cut the insider language for a niche medical practice

Every StoryBrand Certified Guide has access to a weekly resource most people don't know about. In this episode, Tyler pulls back the curtain on office hours: what it is, what Guides actually ask, and the aha moments that come from workshopping your offer, your Soundbites, or your next move with someone who has built and sold an agency.

Also in this episode: Kenneth asks how to generate new coaching leads, and Tyler shares what worked over ten years (roughly 40 quarters) of running an agency, including the one outreach habit he's never seen fail. Plus a success story from Sarah, a hot take on when new Guides should start showing up to community events, and the burning question of when fall actually begins.

Links in the show notes: Office Hours in Circle, the StoryBrand Guide Retreat in Nashville (Oct 26-28), the Ask the SB Community thread, and how to become a StoryBrand Certified Guide.

The StoryBrand Guide Podcast is the only show made for StoryBrand Certified Guides. New episodes every other Wednesday. Hosted by Annie Figenshu and Tyler Pigott.

Tyler and Annie open up the State of the Guide Community report and walk through what separates guides who are growing from guides who are stuck.

Drawing from the January benchmark survey and a review of 248 guide websites, they cover the five patterns that show up again and again: 82% of guide businesses are solo or micro-teams, 51% don't mention StoryBrand on their homepage, half have no positioning anchor, growth is happening but it's built on referrals instead of systems, and revenue goals are outpacing operating capacity.

Tyler shares what he learned routing every incoming guide lead through his own inbox for 90 days, and why "I work with manufacturing companies" is useless if it's not written down anywhere. Annie shares the casting-director story that taught her why "I can do everything" gets you zero callbacks.

Most guides don't actually have a client problem. They have a "treat your own business like your best client" problem.

In this episode, Tyler Pigott and Annie Figenshu unpack the Guide's Journey, the new Marketing Business Playbook inside the StoryBrand Guide community. It's a three-phase, fifteen-step map for building an independent marketing business: attract leads, close leads, deliver results. You'll hear why the steps are ordered the way they are, how they connect back to the StoryBrand messaging campaign triangle, and the mindset shift that makes attracting clients a lot easier.

Plus, a real question from a fellow guide: how do you take your one-on-one messaging work and run it for a whole room? Tyler and Annie cover who to get in the room, how many people is too many, how to structure the sessions across a few calls, and how to price it.

Whether you're just getting started or you've been guiding for years, this one will help you get more out of your certification.

A prospect just told you your rate is too high. Now what?

In episode 10, Annie Figenshu and Tyler Pigott answer a question from the Ask the SB Community about pricing a first proposal, and the answer is not "discount it." They cover why you should never eat your own travel costs, how to trade value for value instead of cutting your number, why three options beat one, and the reason you should deliver proposals live whenever you can. Annie also shares the out-loud practice drill that makes saying a bigger number feel normal.

Then Tyler breaks down the StoryBrand Messaging Canvas: the Four Rules of Messaging, how the free download, the web training, and the mini guide fit together, and why the Canvas functions like an order form that shows a CEO exactly what they're paying for.

Plus a success of the week from a Guide who cut a 40-hour build down to six.

The StoryBrand Guide Podcast is the only show made for StoryBrand Certified Guides, so you can get the most out of your certification. New episodes every other Wednesday.

A lot has changed since January, and even more is on the way. In this episode, Annie and Tyler host the unofficial mid-year kickoff call for StoryBrand Certified Guides, breaking down everything that's launched in the first half of 2026 and everything coming in the second half.

Have a question for a future episode? Drop it in the Ask the SB Community thread in Circle.