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Worldbuilding > Storytelling

In this Outside Insights episode of Permanent Podcast, guest John Fio (Founder of Fio Companies and entrepreneur behind Gravity Blanket, Moon Pals, Moon Pod, and Birthdate Candles) talked with Brent Beshore and David Cover about how to find the truth of a product, serving something greater than yourself, the difference between storytelling and world-building, balancing the artist and the warlord, and why the next Disney won't look like Disney.

John’s journey revolved around  figuring out that he not only wanted to build products, he wanted to build outstanding products that customers obsess over – those offerings that solve real problems and answer real needs that people will always have. 

For John, that looked like three months and hundreds of iterations of a tag line for Gravity Blanket to get to "a 25 pound blanket for sleep, stress, and anxiety."

That kind of attention to detail might seem like a waste of time in developing a marketing campaign, but when John plays the tape, those seemingly small decisions are a key part of the pathway to success:

"The nice thing is that when you put the work in and you really stay committed to crafting and creating and finding that thing that is true, when you put it into the market and you give it to the world, you are rewarded."

Part of the reason this works is that John doesn't think of how he talks about products like the Gravity Blanket or Birthdate Candles or Moon Pals as storytelling that exists outside of the product. In fact, his initial reaction to that term, which is making the rounds on marketing resumes and LinkedIn, is pretty abrupt.

"[Storytelling] is one of those words that doesn't mean anything... So I would say I actually don't really think about product marketing as storytelling. I think about product marketing as a part of the design process of the product. So that sentence actually crafts the literal design and the experience of the product. They're all intermingled and they're all interconnected. If you change one of those words, now you have to change a seam on the product.

And, how you talk about it changes. So... I think storytelling can probably be better defined as having these levers as a part of the organism that you're building, and every sentence that you communicate about that affects every other sentence.

If you're not aware of how those sentences ebb and flow and play off of each other and affect literally every piece of your business, then you're missing something. And if you understand how those levers work and you understand the mechanics within that thing that you're building, [then you understand] what it's like to build a world.

You take one thing away, something else comes in; you take another thing away, another thing comes in. And then through that process, you're going to have a very clear understanding of what the most important sentence is and how to say that directly to the right customer in the right place at the right time."

On the ground, world-building (in contrast to storytelling), means centering and recentering your customer at every opportunity and turn. Three pieces of advice from John Fio on getting to the true and best version of a product – and what that truth does for your relationship to your customer:

1. Talk to the customer. "I think the one mistake I see when I work with factories and they're trying to help me come up with products is that they're trying to avoid the scariest, most confusing part, which is the customer... What the customer might tell them might end up changing the materials that they get and how their manufacturing line is set up and who they need to hire." But, there's nothing more valuable than a deep understanding of what you're making, for who, and why.

2. Don't try to trick people. "I am not capable of being smarter than anyone else to trick massive swaths of people to give me their money for a long period of time... Cons and these tricks can work, but only on a very short timeline and you have to get the timing perfect... The way things are funded, the way things are financed, the incentives, what you're expected to do, the story that you're telling that you have to deliver to investors, like you are really playing the lottery. And at the end of most of those games, when you look at what's behind the curtain, it's not real."

3. Harness humility and ego. "I know that I am incredibly hard to impress, and I know that I don't give my attention to anything unless it's amazing. If that's true for me and I know that I'm not better than anyone, then I have to make something absolutely amazing for myself. And if I can get myself to think and want that [product], if I made that formula and I'm able to do that for myself, then I can honestly take that to market and I can honestly sell that, and I can honestly, confidently know that someone is going to give me their money for that product forever because it is the truth."

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