Why Storytelling Is the Antidote to AI-Generated Sameness with David Ebner

AI can generate a thousand posts before lunch, but it cannot manufacture empathy. That’s the tension we dig into with David J. Ebner, founder of Content Workshop, as we talk about what actually makes brand storytelling work when buyers are skeptical and content feels interchangeable.

We break down the practical difference between story-first marketing and content-first output. A strong brand story doesn’t spotlight the company, it makes the customer the hero and gives them a believable path from problem to progress. David explains why emotional connection is the real driver of recall, how testimonials capture a transformation arc, and why better word choice and tighter editing can separate you from the sea of sameness that AI has amplified.

Then we zoom out from words to full brand experience. We talk about where stories live (especially on your website), why mismatched web experiences weaken even great messaging, and how experiential marketing at events can create memorable moments without relying on expensive gimmicks. Finally, we land on leadership: setting values, living them visibly, and using a simple filter for every deliverable: who does this help and how does it help them?

Subscribe for more conversations like this, share this with a founder or marketer who needs a sharper brand voice, and leave a review with the one story you think your audience actually remembers.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates, visit 5starbdm.com
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And don’t miss Grant McGaugh’s new book, First Light — a powerful guide to igniting your purpose and building a BRAVE brand that stands out in a changing world. - https://5starbdm.com/brave-masterclass/

See you next time on Follow The Brand!

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Background

SPEAKER_01 0:01

I want to welcome everybody to the Farbrand Podcast. This is your host, Grant McGall. I am in the Midwest. I got another guest here from the great state of Florida. They're making me missing Florida. I wonder why I'm missing Florida when it's only 30 degrees outside. It's probably 80 degrees where David is located right now, but that's okay. This is the time of year like, hey, everybody wants to be in Florida, but we don't want to be in Florida usually in September, October because you know it's hurricane season. So there's always a bit of a trade-off, no matter where you live. So, David, give us a little bit of peek into who you are and why you're here.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Sure. Thanks uh uh for having me, Grant. Um, I'm uh David Jay Ebner. I tell people the Jay is silent because if you Google David Ebner, you're gonna find you know, there's a furniture artist um that is very successful named David Ebner. There's a few other David Ebners out there, but if you put the Jay in there, I am I'm all over your first page of Google. That's all me. Um I I run uh Content Workshop, which is a brand storytelling agency we've been operating for a little over 13 years uh now, uh telling brand stories in every single medium you can possibly think of. So happy to talk more about that on the show with you here today. Um, I live in in Dunedin, Florida, a tiny little town that uh is is populated by um a handful of locals and a bunch of people visiting, um, which is a fantastic little town to live in just outside of Tampa. I actually grew up in Northeast Ohio, so I've spent my time. I like to say I did my time up there in the winter. Um, you know, got that lake effect snow, got all that, those cold mornings, uh, and I'm done with that now. I'm just done with it, right? So I've settled here with my family. I have uh a wife and two kids here in Dunedin.

What Storytelling Teaches About Sales

SPEAKER_01 1:41

Beautiful. And I hear you think I I escaped, right, for 30 years. Why would I run back to that? You know, but then there's reasons for the seasons for everything. I do kind of miss the seasons, you know. I I I I was looking forward because I got back in the spring and I saw the season. The summers are just like it is in Florida, it was really no no difference. But then you start seeing the leaves falling, you get into the the to the seasonal aspects of it, it's all great. Usually, when you really to be very honest, transparent, when you don't really like being in the Midwest when it's cold, is January, February. And I'm gonna tell you the worst is really March because you think it's gonna get warmer. You're ready, it's spring, and it's still cold. It is so so annoying when that happens, but we'll get to that. I still get to travel a lot, so don't feel too sorry for me, anything like that. And I do love the Midwest. There's a lot of things going on here that is very exciting. Uh, that's a story, right? And you you talk story. I loved this conversation we're gonna have because we're gonna first unpack this around origin story, right? So, David, I know that you started as a creative writer before funding your content workshop, right? Right. I want to know this. What did storytelling teach you about business that traditional marketing never could?

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Wow, that's a great question, Grant. Um, you know, I I think storytelling taught me a lot about um sales. As an entrepreneur myself, how to effectively uh sell to people. Now, I'll say that uh what makes great stories like effective is emotional connection. That's it. I mean, in a nutshell, you've got somebody telling a story, somebody receiving that story, listening, viewing, whatever it may be, and you're trying to build an emotional connection between those two entities, right? So much so that when you're not right in front of them with your story, they're still thinking about it, right? They can recall your story and they can recall the emotional feeling and what you made them feel when they consumed that story. That's true uh effective storytelling. And I think that actually plays out in a lot of different aspects for businesses, of course. But like in the sales process, I think having a good brand story um will help you make the viewer or the person you're trying to sell to um feel like an active participant and a character in that story, so much so that they'll see that you are essentially the thing that will help them um become the hero of their own story. You are what will uh allow them to overcome their challenges and reach their goals. It's you, right? It's you as a brand and as a company uh coming to them. And that's truly, I don't know, like that's really all brand storytelling is. We spend a lot of time and energy thinking about ourselves and our own companies, but really the brand story is about the your audience, your target persona, the person you're trying to, you're trying to make them the hero by helping them solve their problems, by having them help them with a better quality of life, by saving them time, by saving them money, whatever it is, you have to make them a hero. And if you can do that, you're you're telling your own brand story in the process.

Story First Versus Content First

SPEAKER_01 4:43

And that story, as you said, once you can get it in real life, people like that's why testimonials are so big today. If you need a real testimony, that's something that everybody can tell that you're doing like, no, this really happened, and I achieved this goal or this positive outcome because I took all these cues from David and I applied it. And now look at me now. I mean, that trans that transformational arc, as we call it, you know, that's great. And stories are memorable, right? You I don't know how many I get a lot of sales pictures, right? People come in, they're maybe it's an investment banking firm, they they come in, they tell me what they're doing, and I think that's great, and like, all right, that's wonderful, and they leave. But if it's very generic, very commoditized, meaning was it impactful to your point? Was it a was there an emotional connection that took place? A transference, just like when we started out here, we had the first kind of where where are we, you know, similar? Oh, Florida, Florida. Oh, okay, we got stories around that. Midwest, women, oh, stories around the weather-related one, it gets things going, right? And then, you know, I can leave this podcast later, but he probably, oh, yeah, that grand guy, yeah, he used to live in Florida, but he's in the Midwest. Because that's the emotional connection uh that's there. I think there's a lot to be said around that, you know, that story versus content. A lot of people, especially when you're selling, they give me a lot of content, but they're are you really telling a story? So if you're very intentional about that story first, not just content first, and I want to ask you this what is the difference between story first and content? Content first, and why does that matter right now?

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, so uh not all uh content has story, but all stories are content, I think is a great way to think about it. So if you're if you're telling a story as a brand, um, that is content. That's that's what content is, right? But like your content, content devoid of a story, uh, is not something that's going to build resonance and like emotional connection, right? Um, so that that's really the big difference is what are you leading with? Um anything with words, graphics, audio, or video is content. Um, you know, we have this joke around here, uh, one of our team members will hold up a mug and be like, is this content? Like, well, sure, that's content, but does it actually have an emotional connection with an individual, right? Is the question. So that that's the big difference. And and I know that seems very uh tangential. It's like really hard to like bite into the idea of it being a story, but but how we tell uh share this with other people is like really to think about the pain points, um, the problems that your target audience needs to solve and how you can help them. Um and your content should really be focused on on that, providing solutions to their problems, not just telling people uh buy from me, but like here's how to solve some of your problems. And also another way to solve some of your problems might be that we, you know, have a chat. Um yeah. That's that's really I think the difference.

Where AI Helps And Where It Fails

SPEAKER_01 7:41

I think you you and here here we are now. Speaking to the the the big elephant in our room all day is artificial intelligence and AI, you know, does it change the story or does it not change the story? It's not, it doesn't have what they call context. You know, it's information, it's data, it's recall, it's a murder, you can bring a lot of things to the table. You can generate a lot of content instantly. I mean, boom, here's the content. But is it a story? I mean, does it does it really can it really you know build that emotional connection that that's really there? And uh, you know, has it changed storytelling or it really hasn't changed anything at all? What's your opinion on that?

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, a AI is uh is obviously a hot topic, and I'm you know, we'll listen to this this podcast in 10 years and be like, well, duh, it still is, right? Like that's it's not it's not going anywhere. However, I think where a lot of people get um a little tripped up with AI is that they look to AI to solve uh the problems from a strategic point of view. They say, okay, like AI, write my brand story. Well, AI can deliver you content, um, it can deliver you words very fast. Um it it can't mask empathy, right? Uh empathy is a human-to-human emotion, which is really try the core emotion you're trying to get across with any piece of content is like, do you do you believe me? Do you also feel this way? Can you feel this with me right now? Um, so AI is a fantastic tool to uh help speed up the process of producing words. Uh, but you still need a human to uh to add discernment, to add context, to add editing, QA. So if you really think about AI less as like uh it's going to do the content for you and more like just another tool to be used in the step in the process of generating content that you have at your disposal to speed things up, um, then that kind of changed the the viewpoint a little bit, right? We like to think of AI around here as um uh we call it the human AI sandwich, but like the creative ideas, the input and stuff should be triggered by um by humans because we're far more creative and actually intelligence than these systems are, and we know how emotions are built, and we know our brain better than anything would. You have a trained AI system that knows about your brain to a degree, knows how you like to talk, knows like the words you like to choose, things like that. You can feed it information and data, and then you have a human at the end doing some sort of QA editing to like refine that and make sure it actually does what you want it to do. Um, at this point, you can you you still need to have those human touch points at the beginning and the end to produce good storytelling.

Escaping The Sea Of Sameness

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Yeah, those endpoints, those endpoints. I think people have downplayed where they fit in the in the workflow to a certain degree, understanding that situational awareness, emotional intelligence, not just the raw uh you know, data input or information that's in front of you. Because what happens when you read something, you read it and you have to put it into context, right? This is why, like when when in the um the story of Jaws came out, I always like this story, Jaws, Jaws. Everybody, some people have seen the movie, some people have read the book. The book is way more descriptive, way better than really the movie. You come out with different um scenarios in the book than you do in the movie. The movie was a great movie, don't get me wrong, it's a great movie, but it's different modalities. AI is a modality, in my opinion. It it it can get you to a certain degree to your point, and it can get you quicker, you can get some context. And some people get writer's block, right? Maybe get you started. Let's start that engine. But within yourself, as a human being, you have that creative power and that creativity, imaginative, and at at in a moment's known, like the light bulb goes off. Something that a machine really doesn't do at this point. You know, it fails when it comes to context, and it fails when it comes to to wisdom because that's it's not a it's not a living thing. Now, when it comes to mathematical computation and correlation of words and patterns, forget about it. You know, it can really do some things, but it can get you to a point. But as they always say, beauty is an eye of the beholder. Some people that are watching us now, you know on video can see that painting behind you. I think it's a very beautiful piece of art, right? Someone else may not, may, may disagree. And I know that you only you, I can either infer a story about where that piece of art came from or why you bought it and all that. I can infer it might not be correct, but you're the only one that really knows the story of the origin of that art, what you're doing now, and maybe even you know how it fits into the overall arc of what you're trying to accomplish. This is the beauty of it. But I I like how you place AI in your in your stack and how you utilize it, and why actually I think it can amplify what you're doing as you go as you go forward. Now, here's the dip, because there's a lot of saturation in this world, right? How do you stand out in saturation and in technology and all these different brands that you're looking to to influence when everything starts to begin to sound the same? How do brands break through when buyers are overwhelmed or skeptical, in your opinion?

Word Choice And Visual Story Power

SPEAKER_00 13:12

Well, we call that around here the sea of sameness, which uh definitely happening. AI is the is the perpetrator on that front, of course, right? Like everything sounds the same, everything, there's a lot of volume out there, a lot of noise, not a lot of signal. That's AI. It's people relying on AI to be the strategy. Um, and and they're producing tons of content. We like to think of it as, you know, great, great content, great stories have always come from from human thought, right? Uh, and to your point, it all comes down to uh the context, which is a layer that every individual person has a lens that they see the world in. They have because they have past experiences, you know, uh we've loved and lost, we've we've had um triumph, we've had failure, we've had all of these past experiences. We went with our family to Hawaii that one time, right? Like AI can't have any of those experiences, right? So we bring that to the table with us. So when we look at something, our contextual lens is everything that's ever happened to us, right? So it's a lot. There's a lot that we bring, um, we bring to it. So when we're we're coming up with these creative stories and ideas, that the idea would be to like know your target audience so well that you have an idea of their lens to a degree. Now you're not gonna know all the personal things happening in their life, but you're a little, you know their work things, right? You know how like what their work life is like. Um if you don't, uh then how the heck would you ever solve their problems to begin with, right? Like you know that context. So you bring that with all of the experiences you've had to come up with ideas of ways you can help them and provide them value via content. And we think of uh the content um function as a funnel, right? Like for those of you watching at home, you can make a nice funnel with your arms like that, right? But like as you know, uh what goes in the top uh less comes out the bottom than what goes in the top. Lots of great ideas, but not all of them really make it to the page because along the way you decide, you know, that's not actually not hitting the target that I wanted to hit. Unfortunately, the CS sameness is creating kind of a hallway where like everybody's ideas, they're just publishing all of it. Everything that gets started in the top of the funnel is going out the backside, which is not ideal and it's causing this um this all that that noise. So the best thing to do, actually, it's it's both harder than ever, but also easier than ever to stand out today in content. It's harder than ever because you have to you have to work against all these people doing the same thing. However, if you're ziggin when everybody else is zagging, then you're gonna stand out, right? Um and and by doubling down on value, uh giving away some of the secret sauce of your company, um, as in like why things are important, how to do them, but maybe you like you say what to do to achieve the goals, like that's something you you uh sell yourself. Um, by producing value at that level, you will stand out because other people are not doing that. And and let's talk about word choice just for a second. Yeah. Word choice matters, like words matter. Uh so just simply by having like good sentence structure, you know, AI likes to produce things in a certain way. Like they have their base model, which produces a lot of like uh segues between paragraphs, yeah. It likes to uh delve in, it likes to stay in the age of XYZ, whatever it is. It has it uses M-dashes a lot, uh, which is unfortunate because like M-dashes have been like uh uh core uh value to me. But now when I use them, people think AI wrote the content. But um, all you have to do is, you know, zig, right? Like uh train your AI system to not do that or do the editing yourself instead of giving a bunch of like similar sentences, break it up. You know, like the words you choose can actually do have the effect on the page. And and you as an individual just taking a layer of editing and not just taking whatever is spit out and publishing after you do your your own um layer of editing is is gonna help you there.

SPEAKER_01 16:48

100%. And I want our audience to lean in on what you just said about word choice. Understand what a word is. A word is a part of an overall picture or scene, like a video, uh a flow of pictures. I know I think in the Asian Japanese language, it's exactly how they set up their uh Apple button things like that. They they're caricatures. But this is how the human mind works, it sees in pictures, it thinks in pictures, not really words. They convert, we convert the words into pictures. So when you're reading something, or you're like you said, you're creating story-like content, a story is very visual. That's the cool thing I think about a good story. I could I could visualize myself being there, I could see myself on the edge of the cliff. I can see that I can feel the emotion of falling off the cliff, going into the cold water, cold dark water below, where I then found the submarine and I was saved. You'd be like, whoa, wow, you know, so but that was a visual context, right? It's very, very visual. You can really see it. That's where I think when you start looking at AI, it's not that it it it it fails at I call the emotional layer, it fails at the imaginative world. You can train it to try to get there, but you're gonna have to fiddle with it for a little bit. It's okay, but when you just need word choices, it's fine. It gets I I use it to get me started, it gets me in the ball game, and then I can begin to massage it and play with it like a like some play-doh, right? I get my little play-doh and I can move it around and I can I can you know play around with it and and get there. Um, but visual context in the story, I think that's a core fact of humanity, and we think about our origins as a civilization and how we think and act and who we come from, it's all in story, right? Our religious context is all in story. Our beginnings of civilization is all in in story, but those are things you remember back to that memorability. I think you have a great uh skill set and value that you bring to the table because you probably see this, you wouldn't be in business if you're if everybody can create great stories, you'd be out of business. Do you find that that's really the key? Like, hey, hey, but I gotta come to you because I don't know how to create this into a story.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

It's definitely a differentiator. And I I think uh there's a lot of people who will put like brand storytelling next to their name in different things. But my my approach at least has been from an academic point of view, right? Um, I I have a master's degree in in fine arts and creative writing. Um and actually that's how our business got started. I was in graduate school, uh, learning all of these uh skills on an artistic front, uh, still having a hard time paying the bills, working, you know, I was thinking of selling shoes at the time or something like that. And I was like, whoa, wait, all these things I'm learning, character development, uh, dialogue, uh, narrative thread and flow, those are directly applicable in a commercial sense in in marketing. Um, so we started like providing that service. I got other graduate students together that uh and said, hey, would you want to do this with me? And we were just kind of like this co-op of freelancers. Um, and uh that's been our our entire genesis. But we we came from it from an artistic um foundational setting and applying those skills um in a in a commercial setting. And I think that that does help quite a bit. But by no means do you need to have like a master's degree in creative writing to be good at this. Like there's plenty of people who who are fantastic at it, but like uh with in the age of AI, to use an AI phrase, uh understanding the foundations as to why things work and how how they actually operate is extremely important because if you don't, you'll never know how to train the AI system to do it effectively or edit against it. Um you will assume that everything it gives you is correct, but it may not always be. I mean, there's there's great examples with people who who who vibe code, I guess is the term, right? Where just uh tell AI to do things and they write code and then they get errors and they can't understand why this is not working, um why their code isn't being deployed, why things aren't working. And they'll ask the AI and they'll say, Oh, it's this, oh, it's that, oh, it's this, oh, it's that. It's always AI is always looking to solve a problem, even if one doesn't exist. And we tell you that you are the best at what you do, you're so smart and so right all the time, even when you're not, right? Um so that's where like the foundations of those things help. And I I think that's why people still hire us today. Um, we actually do help companies build their own internal AI ecosystems, train those systems, help them like we train people like individually how to operate them. Um, you know our goal is to help tell great stories in whatever way we can. Um, and if that means that we're actually telling the story for them or we're teaching them how to do it, that's it's all the same to us.

From Words To Brand Experiences

SPEAKER_01 21:46

It's very important to understand that. And I think it's a core differentiator in business. If you can get across, when you think about some great brand stories that are out there, just do it. I can just say just do it. It automatically goes back to Nikes. You know, that's that's that's an incredible powerful tool if you can if it can resonate at that level, and that's from brand storytelling, right? People remember that. If I started telling you all the bits and bites about tennis shoes or or something like that, you'd be like, that is the most boring, un flattering piece of content whatsoever. I don't want anyone to see you know what Nike does. But obviously, if you see a young kid, you know, that may be a little bit overweight, who's trying to lose weight, he's putting forth the effort, and then he has on your brand, man, it goes a long way. Because you can see yourself in the story, to your point earlier. Can you see yourself, your ideal audience, in the story? Am I in the story? And can I achieve my goal without you? And then then then you both are heroes, you know, in that story. I think that's important. That's I call that real differentiator in the sea of AI content. No one can tell your story. No one has the exact story that I have, no one has the exact story as you have. You say, hey, David J, which is silent ebner, like you know, that but you tell that story because no one else can tell that exact story. I think that operationalizes your creativity, especially in this world. But my question as we move from like content to experience, I know that content workshop, you know, you acquired a web and technology studio, I think this year. Correct me wrong. But what does that say about where storytelling is headed from words to full brand experience?

SPEAKER_00 23:44

That that's a great question, Grant. And and we try to think of that as the next evolution of storytelling is it's it's always been very much thought of as like words, graphics, and then audio and video. Now with with fantastic podcasts, we're getting a lot more audio stories being told. Um but that that is just just uh like the the product, right? That's the the delivery mechanism. Where those stories live um are is a whole nother aspect of this, right? A lot of them live on websites, right? Um this um we we did acquire a uh a web and and tech studio earlier this year. It's called Lush Concepts. They're not part of of content workshop, and we build websites now from scratch for people so that the stories we can tell have a beautiful home and platform on which for them to be told, right? It's like like having uh, you know, uh a Ferrari, but parking in the garage. Like that's no good. You need a street, you need to like take it out, right? And and great content is is awesome. But if it's living on a site that's not optimized or doesn't match the the story of the brand, then then it doesn't really matter. Um and and then that also extends to applications and and proprietary tools that the team can build. Uh and and additionally, the next stage of that is is experiences, right? Like actual physical experiences. Brand storytelling um at events is huge. Huge. Uh and uh that's our we have a whole experiential team that does that as well. They build like these, they can use virtual reality, augmented reality tools, they can build digital screens and and displays, and um, they can use uh like LiDAR and radar so that you can actually move in a space and things can happen. So if if you have a a uh story, a brand story, the the idea of like somebody walking past your booth, maybe at a convention or uh coming to your to your own like user conference or something like that, uh you want to immerse them and get a memorable moment out of them somehow. And that's really hard to do. There's a lot of kitschy things that people will give you tons of swag, right? That'll probably end up in a dumpster at some point. We can talk about that a whole other time. Uh, there's there are you can give away things, you have an exciting reason, you can have a raffle, you can enter people into whatever it may be, but like the idea that they could physically engage in your brand story somehow is is extremely memorable. Uh so I think that's the really the next evolution of this. It's just really about where the stories can be told. Um, they don't always have to be, you know, a lot of people are hearing this and are probably like, well, there's no way I'm gonna like design my own video game for my convention. Like that's that's way too expensive and like a lot of work. Yes, it is extremely expensive. But uh, there's lo-fi like things you can do, low-tech um activations to tell a story. As an example, we just um sponsored a uh marketing conference for uh uh cybersecurity marketers. And our our theme was like the greatest stories ever told. So we literally uh decided we were going to um bring out these lucha libre masks we had made in Mexico, the Mexican wrestling masks, allow people to decorate them and like do arts and crafts on them. And then we took pictures of them with a Polaroid and stuck them to a board, and people voted with stickers. Like it couldn't be more lo-fi than that, but engaged people at such a deep level and they were creating their own story. They all became a wrestler the second they put on that mask to take the picture. And then the next day we hosted a wrestling match, which we wrote the entire script for the match and themed it around cybersecurity, right? So, like all the characters. So, like there's there's ways to do this on a low, low-tech, uh, lo-fi way to engage people in what you do. We tell stories as a brand, and that's exactly what we did there and allowed them to engage in it. So I think that's the that's kind of like the next iteration. That's why we we started working with that company, yeah.

Leadership Values And Authentic Brand Voice

SPEAKER_01 27:25

You'll start you you hit on a very good point, especially a lot of these uh social media platforms now. They want to see engagement and immersion, more time spent in the content that you create. So that means you you're gonna have to start creating a more uh uh a deeper experience, uh whether it's on your website, your social media, or whatever it may be, that so they they stay there longer, right? That's why long-term video, people like, oh, you know, long-form video is out. Like, no, you can always take long form and create it even short form or make it uh a doorway into a deeper experience. There's different things you can do, and I I love that you are being innovative, like, hey, this is what we need to do to expand our brand experience to be deeper in this, right? And I think for founders and executives that are listening around this, around leadership and brand voice. Here's here's my question for you is gonna be what role should leaders personally play? Um, you talked about, hey, you know, this is too expensive, this is this, you know, but they don't really know. But if they really start thinking about it, we gotta start thinking about how they can play in shaping the brand narrative in the age of AI.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Another, another great uh question, Grant. And and I think there's a couple things that they can do. First and foremost, especially if you're a founder, you have to come to the realization at some point in time uh to grow your company that that your story is not the brand story all the time, right? Um, that's great. You have an origin story of why you started the company and the problem you solve and all that kind of stuff and your background. Um, but really just focusing on the customer and how you help them and how their lives are better, like uh detaching yourself a little bit personally from the brand itself and the company and their story, I think, is extremely helpful. And a hard thing for a lot of uh uh early stage entrepreneurs to do, but eventually they usually get there if they're gonna grow. Um, so that's that's extremely important. The other thing I'll say, which has really nothing to do with marketing or anything like that, is the as a company, you need to have values as a company. You need to set those values at the leadership level, executive level. You need to include feedback from people on what those values should be. People need to be bought into what you stand for as a company. And I'm not saying you have to have an opinion about everything. You do not have to as a company, right? But you have to have values. And then you, as a leader, you need to espouse those values and live up to them and share them um all the time. Share them wildly with people. Um, because that level of authenticity that you can provide as a leader to your team internally, but also your clients will see it too, and your potential clients will definitely see that, will uh will just create a bunch of co-conspirators in your success. Uh, that's the way I think about it. Like, I like to share my goals with people, even if they're wild and crazy. I don't worry about not achieving them and then looking like somebody who can't uh be successful. Every time you tell somebody what you're trying to accomplish, you just create one more person looking out to help you accomplish that. They can't help. If I told you my goals, you'd you'd at some point in time you'd be like, oh, I heard this thing and David mentioned this thing. I'm gonna send it to him, right? Uh happens all the time. So as a leader, I would just make sure that you're living up to that kind of like that uh value action alignment as a leader, being the authentic self and presenting the brand that way. And then you can also trickle that into your brand story as well, too, right? Um, what you do and how you do it should align with those values that you've created as a company and as a brand and promote that, put it out there. Um, tell people what you stand for and how you how you do that in the world. Um, I think that that level of authenticity is is going to lead to growth for you. Certainly will lead to a team respecting you. And if a team respects you and cares for you, your goals become their goals because they're they're one and the same, right?

The One Fix For Content Strategy

SPEAKER_01 31:20

And if it's visible, you know, that point of view, your point of view on this particular issue topic, or whatever it may be, this is why I do think that emotional connection that you talked about. You know, you you you see some of the brands that are out there now, they're connecting it to social impact. I believe in this, I'm gonna stand in this, and I'm gonna actually create a living, you know, out of this because it's important. And and then you then people are like, you're authentic in your brand, in what you're talking about. You know, the the story resonates. There's an alignment uh of authenticity throughout the brand experience that I that I'm getting from you. So that point of view, I always start. You gotta start a point of view to get into that personal story, then your platform to make it visible, and where is that where does that position you in the marketplace? I was talking to another gentleman just earlier this week, he said, I'm in a commoditized world of software engineering. What makes me different is my story and how I do things and how I make it actionable, but it resonates with my client. My client, I'm on that same mountain that you're on. And to your point, if you share, like, oh, let me help you up the mountain, or that you know, and vice versa, uh, so you can get uh the assistance that you need because we're all trying to accomplish you know a particular goal and what that's gonna look like. Before I let you go, this last question, you know, as we look in, we're going into the next year, 2026, what was happening, what's separating brands some from others? They keep getting it's a very flooded, crowded marketplace. Here's the question: if a company could only fix one thing about its content strategy going into next year, in your opinion, what should that be?

SPEAKER_00 33:10

Oof. Uh, one thing to fix, assuming it's broken, right? And it doesn't, it needs to be fixed, or at least this is something you should focus on, even if it's not broken, right? Um I would say I would start asking myself questions about every single deliverable, every single campaign, and and asking myself, who does this help and how does it help them? Um and if you don't have a s a clear answer um there, then you probably shouldn't spend your time on it. Um I I think also uh asking potentially who does this hurt is important too. And something we don't think of as marketers or entrepreneurs is that like sometimes we take um without giving. And we do that by uh, you know, taking people's time and attention, right? Without providing value, um, or having that value be something only about us and what we can get from that person and not what we can give to that person. Um I think that's a great way to think about content, right? Think about content as corporate philanthropy, right? Like to a degree you're helping people. That's all you're and guess what? That's what selling is anyway, is just helping people, right? Um, so I would take that lens to my campaigns, to my strategy and look at it and like for every single campaign and asset, put a put a little line next to it and say, who does this help? And answer that question. And it needs to help somebody that's not just you, right? It doesn't need to be like, oh, this will help me reach my league goal, right? Like it needs to be this will help this persona solve this problem that's common for them, or help them uh understand where to go look for more information or whatever it may be. That's what that's what I would do.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

I like that. I like it's a service-oriented uh lens and viewpoint. That's beautiful. Uh and I and I lied a little bit. I said that was my last question. I have one more question. It's a very simple question. You've been on a lot of shows, you've been on a lot of podcasts. This is your first experience on the Follow Brand podcast. You've now gone through a whole you know 30, 40 minutes with me. How did you feel about this show?

SPEAKER_00 35:12

That's a fantastic format and show. I mean, I you know, I'm a storyteller at Heart Grant, so like the fact that this is kind of your format, um, I think not only serves the guests, not only serves you as the host, but it certainly serves the audience. It it serves in helping um really instill the messages that that are going to be delivered on the on the show by by by grounding them in story, by grounding them in emotion, allowing people to be expressed freely who they are um and how different we all are, I think is important. And when I get to tell my story, that's what I get to do. So uh I think uh I I wish more podcasts were kind of on that level, honestly, Grant.

How To Connect And Closing

SPEAKER_01 35:54

I like that. I like that, David. Really appreciate that. You got to tell us how to contact you. Then there's a lot of people out there now listening, like, all right, I need I need I need David's service. How would they do that?

SPEAKER_00 36:05

Yeah, there's a lot of different ways to get a hold of me. Um, you know, you can go to LinkedIn and and search David J. Ebner, you'll find me. I've got a little like Groucho Marks emoji with glasses and a mustache, is kind of like my thing. Um, connect with me over there. I accept every connection request I get. Maybe I shouldn't grant, but like everybody can connect with me and I'll chat with you. If you go to our website or work website, contentworkshop.com, there's a little like chat window in the bottom right corner and it's got my face, and there's a little message from me that actually comes to my phone right here. And look at all the messages I've got on there, right? Some of the uh happy to chat with you anytime. And like I said, I say all the time, my friendship is 100% free. If if I can help you in some way, um, please do not hesitate to uh to connect with me.

SPEAKER_01 36:48

Well, I really appreciate you being on this show and sharing your story. Stories have value, and it helps us along our way in in the episode of life that we're we're in. I think life is very episodic, there's different episodes that we find ourselves in. And I encourage your entire audience to take a look at all the episodes of Fall the Brand, and that is at Five Star BDM. That is the number five that is star B for brand, D for Development Informasters.com. I want to thank you so much again for being on the show.

SPEAKER_00 37:20

Thanks for having me, Grant.

SPEAKER_01 37:22

You're welcome. Take care.