Business of Story

Park Howell, Brand Story Strategist
  • 4.9 (162)
  • Marketing
  • Updated Weekly

The Business of Story helps sales and marketing leaders excel through the stories they tell. Hosted by Park Howell, known as The World's Most Industrious Storyteller, this popular weekly show is ranked among the top 10% of downloaded podcasts internationally and is the #1 Business Storytelling Podcast according to Feedspot. #StoryOn!

  1. 7h ago

    #585. Attia Qureshi: How to Negotiate Sales and Marketing Into Telling One Story

    Most organizations don't have a brand storytelling problem. They have a negotiation problem. When sales, marketing, and IT each champion their own version of the company story, the result is narrative entropy — the slow fragmentation of your brand message across every channel, every team, and every customer touchpoint. And in the age of AI-powered search, that fragmentation doesn't just confuse your audience. It gets scraped, amplified, and fed back into the market as your brand identity. Attia Qureshi knows how to stop it. A negotiation and influence expert with two decades of experience, Attia has brokered agreements in Fortune 500 boardrooms, university classrooms, and conflict zones around the world — including negotiating with cartel-controlled farmers on behalf of the U.S. State Department in Colombia. She is a former MIT faculty member, adjunct professor at the University of Michigan, founder of Attia Qureshi Consulting, and author of the national bestseller Never Settle: Persuasion and Negotiation Skills to Get What You Want, which Daniel Pink calls a book that will "train you how to move through the world." In this episode of the Business of Story, Park Howell and Attia explore how relational, interest-based negotiation is the missing discipline inside StoryOps — the practice of developing, operationalizing, and governing your brand narrative across every department in your organization. In this episode you will learn: Why sales and marketing fight over brand story — and the negotiation framework that ends it How to map the interests of every internal stakeholder so you can build genuine cross-departmental buy-in around one sovereign brand narrative Why narrative entropy accelerates in the age of AI — and how StoryOps, powered by negotiation, is your best defense Resources mentioned in this episode: Attia Qureshi Consulting: atiaqureshi.com Never Settle by Attia Qureshi and John Richardson — available at all major retailers Free internal influence guide: atiaqureshi.com/story Business of Story Brand Story Genie™: businessofstory.com

    #585. Attia Qureshi: How to Negotiate Sales and Marketing Into Telling One Story

  2. Sep 7

    #584. Matt Beezley: AI Is Either Ignoring Your Brand or Reinventing it. Here's The Fix

    Your brand is being described right now on platforms you don't control — and AI is assembling those fragments into a story you'd never tell about yourself. Matt Beezley, Senior Strategist at Red Fan Communications and creator of the Brand Authority Index, calls it narrative entropy. And in this episode of the Business of Story, he explains exactly why it's the defining brand challenge of the AI search era. Matt has spent more than a decade helping B2B companies across fintech, insurtech, sustainable technology, education, and supply chain find the story that holds through IPOs, acquisitions, and high-stakes go-to-market moments. He built Red Fan's brand positioning methodology from scratch — and then built the Brand Authority Index, a diagnostic tool that quantifies the signals large language models actually use to evaluate, cite, and recommend brands to potential buyers. What those signals reveal should concern every brand marketer: over 80% of AI citations come from earned media, not your website. Query-based rankings barely correlate with what AI actually says about you. And if your brand is described differently on your website, LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and Google Knowledge Base, AI will either ignore you entirely or invent a Frankenstein version of your brand and serve it to buyers at the exact moment they're making a decision. In this conversation, Park Howell and Matt unpack the concept of entity coherence — messaging consistency across every platform where your brand exists — and why it's the single highest-leverage fix available to brand communicators right now. They explore why gated content is killing your AI citation rate, how the prism model helps one core story speak to 25 different B2B buying stakeholders without fragmenting, and why the brands winning in generative engine optimization are doing the same things great marketers have always done — just doing them with discipline and consistency. You will learn why AI detects and discounts AI-generated content, how a three-question monthly sales feedback loop starts closing the narrative entropy gap immediately, and why training AI on your own proprietary data produces results that are, in Matt's words, "light years better" than anything pumped out from a generic prompt. If your brand is invisible in AI search — or worse, misrepresented — this episode is your diagnostic and your roadmap. Connect with Matt Beezley and Red Fan Communications at redfancommunications.com and explore their Brand Authority Index diagnostic. Find Park Howell and the StoryCycle Genie™ at businessofstory.com, and subscribe to Park's Brand StoryOps™ for Agencies newsletter on LinkedIn.

    #584. Matt Beezley: AI Is Either Ignoring Your Brand or Reinventing it. Here's The Fix

  3. Aug 31

    #583. Lindsey Busfield: Own Your Niche. Govern Your Story. Win Your Market.

    What separates the brands that dominate their category from those that disappear into digital noise? Two things: a ruthlessly focused niche and a brand story governed with such precision that your ideal client finds no other logical answer. Lindsey Busfield, co-founder of Optimize My Firm, built the nation's most recognized SEO agency for personal injury attorneys by doing exactly that — going so narrow, so deep, and so disciplined in her StoryOps™ that competitors simply can't follow. In this episode of the Business of Story, host Park Howell and Lindsey unpack why niching down is the most powerful brand strategy available to any business, how governing your story with clarity, consistency, and coherence makes you the category king or queen of your market, and why AI-driven search now rewards exactly this kind of high-fidelity storytelling. You'll discover: Why casting a wide net produces shallow results — and how radical niche focus turns your brand into the signal, not the noise How personal injury lawyers use story to win cases — and what every business can steal from that approach to govern their brand narrative How to build your digital footprint across SEO, AEO, and GEO so that Google, Perplexity, and every AI search engine serves you up as the definitive answer in your market Lindsey is also host of the Personal Injury Marketing Minute podcast and author of How Personal Injury Lawyers Get Leads: What Works, What Doesn't, and Why — available now on Amazon. Connect with Lindsey Busfield: Website: optimizemyfirm.com Email: lindsey@optimizemyfirm.com LinkedIn: Lindsey Busfield Learn more about the Business of Story and StoryOps™: storycyclegenie.ai

    #583. Lindsey Busfield: Own Your Niche. Govern Your Story. Win Your Market.

  4. Aug 24

    #582: Gavin McMahon: The Arrow of Coherence That Unifies Your Brand Storytelling

    Gavin McMahon: The Arrow of Coherence That Unifies Your Brand Storytelling Business of Story Podcast | Host: Park Howell Most brand stories fragment the moment they leave the marketing department. Gavin McMahon has a name for what stops that — and it may be the most important concept in business storytelling you haven't heard yet. Gavin McMahon is a recovering mechanical engineer, founder of a 25-year leadership and storytelling consultancy, and author of Story Business: Why Stories Rule the World and How They Can Reinvent Your Business. He joins Park Howell on the Business of Story podcast to introduce the Arrow of Coherence — the cause-and-effect narrative logic that connects every layer of an organization, from the C-suite to the front line, into a single governing story world. The problem Gavin diagnoses is one every business leader will recognize: the synonymous mess. Most companies tangle purpose, vision, mission, and strategy into one undifferentiated blob of corporate language. The result? Thousands of employees making daily decisions — small and large, value-creating and value-destroying — without a coherent narrative to guide them. In a pre-AI world, that fragmentation was a slow burn. Today, ungoverned AI scales that fragmented story at machine speed. The Arrow of Coherence is Gavin's answer. Borrowed conceptually from Nassim Nicholas Taleb's idea of an arrow of relationship, Gavin defines the Arrow of Coherence as the cause-and-effect logic that must shine through a brand — the same governing logic that makes the world of IKEA, Apple, or Patagonia feel coherent whether you encounter it in product design, customer service, or a thirty-year-old marketing campaign. When that arrow is present, every decision in the organization points the same direction. When it's absent, you have drift. In this conversation, Park Howell and Gavin McMahon explore why brand storytelling is not a marketing function but an act of world building — and why the best brands govern their stories through something closer to a show Bible than a brand guideline. They discuss why the CEO is the most underutilized storyteller in any company, how to build a coalition of the willing to embed story culturally rather than hierarchically, and why AI will amplify your narrative entropy unless a governing Brand Brain is installed first. Gavin also shares the two things he wishes he had known in the 1990s when he was leading digital transformation at Gartner — lessons about human decision-making, the stories people tell themselves, and why the truth is never driven by facts alone. What you will learn in this episode: What the Arrow of Coherence is and how to apply it to unify your brand story across every department and channel. Why most organizations suffer from a synonymous mess of purpose, vision, mission, and strategy — and the single narrative move that untangles it. How show Bibles differ from brand guidelines and why that distinction determines whether your story survives scale. Why your CEO is your most underutilized brand storyteller. How to use AI as a collaborator without surrendering your story to it. The three practical steps you can take today to start building your own Arrow of Coherence. Gavin McMahon is the author of Story Business: Why Stories Rule the World and How They Can Reinvent Your Business. Learn more at storybusiness.com. Park Howell is founder of The Business of Story, creator of the Story Cycle System™, and author of Brand Bewitchery and The Narrative Gym. Full episode show notes, transcript, and resources at businessofstory.com.

    #582: Gavin McMahon: The Arrow of Coherence That Unifies Your Brand Storytelling

  5. Aug 17

    #581: Rain Bennett: Why Your Brand Story Belongs to Operations, Not Marketing

    Rain Bennett — award-winning documentary filmmaker and author of The Chief Storytelling Officer — joins Park Howell on the Business of Story to make the case that your brand story doesn't belong to marketing. It belongs to your entire organization. And if no one is governing it, AI is fragmenting it faster than you can fix it. In this episode, Rain introduces his Narrative Operating System (NOS) — a living, governing architecture that threads a single coherent brand story through every department, every touchpoint, and every AI tool you deploy. He explains why the Chief Storytelling Officer is not a communications role but an engagement role, and why the brands winning today built their story alongside their product — never after it. You'll discover: — Why marketing, sales, and HR are telling three different brand stories right now — and what to do about it — How Rain's Narrative Operating System governs story across Vision, Mission, Brand, Product, Marketing, Sales, and Feedback Loops — Why the Chief Storytelling Officer is the most important role most companies haven't created yet — How to extract the story your organization is already living before you try to tell the story you want to tell — Why AI has turned narrative drift from a slow burn into an exponential emergency Rain Bennett is the founder of Elamir, a documentary filmmaking studio producing human stories for the tech industry. His new book, The Chief Storytelling Officer, is available now at rainbennett.com/businessofstory — where listeners can also get a signed copy for $10. Park Howell is the world's leading brand storytelling advisor. For 40 years he has helped organizations grow by up to 600% using his Story Cycle System™. He is the host of the Business of Story — one of the world's top-ranked business storytelling podcasts — and co-creator of StoryCycle Genie®, the AI-powered brand narrative platform. Before you govern your story, know where it stands. Get your free Brand Story Grade — an A+ to F assessment across 14 narrative dimensions — in minutes at storycyclegenie.ai/brand-story-grader. Story on.

    #581: Rain Bennett: Why Your Brand Story Belongs to Operations, Not Marketing

  6. Aug 10

    #580. Sharon Toerek: Don't Sell What You Do. Profit from How You Think

    Sharon Toerek: Don't Sell What You Do. Profit from How You Think — Libsyn Description Most marketing agencies are unknowingly giving away their most valuable asset — and AI has quietly turned that mistake into a legal emergency. IP attorney Sharon Toerek, founder of Legal+Creative and host of The Innovative Agency podcast, joins Park Howell to reveal the intellectual property and AI legal risks every agency principal needs to understand right now. Sharon is the agency industry's most trusted legal strategist on IP protection, trademark, copyright, and AI governance — and she's seen firsthand how fast agencies are falling behind. In this episode you'll discover: • Why generic AI-generated content may legally belong to no one — not your agency, not your client, not anyone — and what that means for every deliverable you produce • How feeding client data into generic AI tools is a hidden data privacy violation waiting to happen, and why most agencies don't realize they're doing it • The five moves every agency must make now — from internal AI policies to errors and omissions insurance — to protect their IP, govern their AI use, and build an agency worth far more when it's time to sell Sharon also makes the case for the most important strategic shift in the agency business model: stop competing on execution and start commanding premium fees for your thinking and strategy. Because what goes on between your ears is your most valuable and protectable asset. Connect with Sharon Toerek: • legalandcreative.com • The Innovative Agency Podcast • LinkedIn: Sharon Toerek Craft your vibrant brand story with the StoryCycle Genie®: storycyclegenie.ai

    #580. Sharon Toerek: Don't Sell What You Do. Profit from How You Think

  7. Aug 3

    #579: Collin Henderson: The 5-Part Mindset Storytelling Method for Confidence

    What separates elite performers from everyone else isn't skill, strategy, or preparation. It's psychology. Collin Henderson knows this firsthand. A former Division I wide receiver at Washington State University, seven-time author, and host of the Master Your Mindset podcast, Collin has spent his career cracking the code on peak performance — training number one NBA draft picks, Heisman football finalists, and top sales teams at Nike, Amazon, Salesforce, and Alaska Airlines. His new book, The Oz Method: Psychological Secrets of Influence for Sales, Leadership, and Life (IdeaPress, 2026), delivers a parable-driven framework inspired by L. Frank Baum's classic — and it just might change the way you sell, lead, and communicate forever. In this episode of the Business of Story, Collin reveals why sales psychology beats sales strategy every time. We unpack his five-part story framework — Set the Scene, Establish the Challenge, The Growth Journey, Face Your Fear, Resolution — and explore why the brain is hardwired to respond to problems before solutions. Collin also shares why your identity is the hidden ceiling on your performance, how "trauma, drama, daddy and mama" shapes the way high achievers either freeze or fly under pressure, and why boring will put you out of business faster than any competitor. This is a masterclass in the psychology of influence, the neuroscience of storytelling, and the courage it takes to communicate when the moment gets biggest. What you'll discover in this episode: The five-part story framework every seller, leader, and communicator needs to master. Why psychological readiness trumps preparation in high-stakes moments. How to close the gap between what your team can do and what they actually deliver Connect with Collin Henderson at thecolinhenderson.com and on LinkedIn and Instagram @ColinHendersonCoach. Find The Oz Method wherever books are sold. Learn more about the Business of Story at businessofstory.com.

    #579: Collin Henderson: The 5-Part Mindset Storytelling Method for Confidence

  8. Jul 27

    #578: Find Your One Word and Become Impossible to Ignore, With Brian Burkhart

    What does it take to stop competing on price and start commanding attention? One word. Your core belief. In this episode of the Business of Story, host Park Howell sits down with Brian Burkhart, founder of Square Planet and one of America's top communication strategists, to reveal why most businesses become invisible commodities — and exactly what to do about it. Brian has spent decades helping Fortune 500 leaders, CEDx speakers, and senior executives find the single galvanizing word that transforms how teams align, how audiences feel, and how brands compete. His insight is simple and powerful: if you can't name what you stand for, you won't stand out. In this episode you'll discover: How to distill your core belief into one powerful word that galvanizes your entire organization Brian's 10-step ancient Stoic framework that works for any presentation, pitch, or keynote How to reverse-engineer your core beliefs directly from your daily actions Why your audience decides with feelings first — and how to make art that activates them The Mad Men "It's Toasted" moment that proves one idea beats every feature list Brian Burkhart defines art as "the unnecessary done on purpose to make someone feel." Sprinkles on cupcakes. Colorful hospital walls. Hotel turndown service. None of it is necessary. All of it creates enthrallment. And enthrallment is exactly what separates unforgettable brands from forgotten commodities. Whether you're preparing a Monday morning presentation, a keynote, or a company-wide initiative, this episode gives you the tools to find your North Star — and make it impossible to ignore. Guest: Brian Burkhart, Founder of Square Planet Contact: info@squareplanet.com Free 45-minute consultation: mention the Business of Story Host: Park Howell, Founder of the Business of Story and creator of the StoryCycle System™ Learn more: businessofstory.com

    #578: Find Your One Word and Become Impossible to Ignore, With Brian Burkhart
See All (586)

4.9
out of 5
162 Ratings

About

The Business of Story helps sales and marketing leaders excel through the stories they tell. Hosted by Park Howell, known as The World's Most Industrious Storyteller, this popular weekly show is ranked among the top 10% of downloaded podcasts internationally and is the #1 Business Storytelling Podcast according to Feedspot. #StoryOn!

Information

  • Creator
    Park Howell, Brand Story Strategist
  • Years Active
    2015 - 2026
  • Episodes
    586
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Park&Co Marketing Communications, Inc. All rights reserved, 2016.
  • Show Website
    Business of Story

You Might Also Like