In almost every ballroom or board room I walk into this year I’ve noticed that something interesting happens when I ask leaders to tell me the story of their business. They either hesitate, or they give me the consultant’s perfectly polished word for word script someone coached them on within an inch of their life…but it doesn’t connect. It doesn’t feel like them, it often lacks emotion and feels like my boyfriend (Claude) wrote it for them. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for getting help to refine your story and elevate it. It’s just that so many leaders are not investing their time to elevate it.

Some leaders have built genuinely excellent businesses and yet leave their most powerful asset—their story—sitting untouched, unused, unexplored. It’s amazing to me that they can speak confidently about their results, process, and even their expertise, yet when I ask them, “Why should I choose you before anyone else?”—the room gets quiet, people look down avoiding my gaze and my question, or searching for the perfect answer.

Why do they choose you?

That silence is the gap we outline how to fix in the ENTICE lever in our Experience Elevation Model.™

ENTICE exists to answer one essential question your potential client is asking long before they engage you: “Why should I pay attention to you?” (Notice it’s not “What do you do?”!)

Your story earns attention before a proposal is sent, before a product is presented, before a price is discussed—yet it is often overlooked as a point of differentiation for you and your team.

The brands that do this with breathtaking elegance understand something most businesses overlook. Your story is not your biography. It is the emotional reason your client chooses you.

Think about American Express. They have never been in the business of selling a card. Instead, they sell access, recognition and the unmistakable signal that you belong to a certain tier of life (especially if you have a certain color of card!).

Every piece of communication, every invitation to the Centurion lounge, every moment of personalized service tells the same story: you are the kind of person whose time and taste matter to them. That narrative justifies the premium before the conversation about features ever begins and people pay for that privilege and they buy into that story (I know it’s why I love my card to get me into all the airport lounges I am not a member of!).

Sotheby’s does something equally sophisticated. When a luxury real estate agent from Sotheby’s walks you through a property, they are not describing square footage, they are narrating provenance (the place of origin, the source, the documented history). You will learn about the history of the land, the story of the architect, the lineage of the neighborhood and they will paint a picture that makes you want to live in that neighborhood in that home. Price becomes secondary when the story gives the property its meaning. We attach ourselves to the meaning. The narrative is what justifies the (sometimes crazy) number. We buy the story first.

This is the ENTICE lever in its purest form.

Story creates desire before logic ever arrives.

Story In Action: Eleven Madison Park

I have been thinking about this a lot this week, because I have the privilege of facilitating an incredible dinner this week at the three Michelin Star resturant ​Eleven Madison Park​ in New York. If you are not familiar with ​EMP​, it was once voted the best restaurant in the world, and it is the subject of one of the most fabulous books on hospitality, Will Guidara’s​ Unreasonable Hospitality​. Gathered around the table will be senior leaders from some of the most impactful non-profit organizations in the country, brought together by​ FundRaise Up​, a technology company doing brilliant work to elevate the donor experience across the sector, so we can chat about how to apply the lessons from luxury in my book, Exceptional Experiences to their organizations.

I had the joy of speaking for their Donor Experience Summit in Brooklyn last year and it was so much fun! This leadership team understands that generosity deserves as much strategic attention as any luxury brand gives its very best clients.

The reason I am telling you about EMP specifically is that Will and his team understood that the restaurant’s story was as important as the food. The menu, rituals, obsessive attention to what a guest might need before they ever voiced it is part of the brand story. And when a story is told well enough and lived fully enough, it becomes the book. One of the most famous stories is about a hot dog served in this 3-star Michelin restaurant! It becomes the subject of hundreds of dinner conversations. It becomes the kind of thing that draws leaders around a table to learn from it years after the doors first opened. It even becomes a story line in the hit Hulu show The Bear in the form of Chicago Deep Dish. (If you haven’t watched the 2018 Netflix series called 7 Days Out, episode 2 showcases the opening of EMP—such a fun watch!)

When I wanted to celebrate the launch of my book,​ Exceptional Experiences,​ I chose EMP as the perfect destination and my bestie Michael flew up from DC (literally just for dinner because he is that friend), and it is still one of our most favorite meals and memories we’ve had together.

Will and I were chatting about our books last summer at Virutoso Travel (where we were both speaking), and we said, “his book is like a love letter to the industry, and mine, is like the Playbook.”

Will does something on his Instagram that makes me smile; he regularly shares stories from people around the world showing how they have applied the principles from Unreasonable Hospitality inside their own teams and organizations. It is not a book tour. It is proof of concept, told in real time, through the people the story has already changed. That is the IGNITE lever working inside the ENTICE story. And it is something every leader with a methodology, a message, or a mission can learn from.

Your brand story, told with consistency and intention, becomes the asset that works even when you are not in the room.

So what can you do this week to help your team understand, and tell your brand story to attract the attention of clients you want to work with?

Need help with that, send me a note, love to chat more about that and suggest additional resources for you.