The part that trips most people up isn't the channel. It's knowing what to actually say in it. We blame attention spans for this. People have the focus of a goldfish, three seconds and they're gone. But that's not really true. You'll sit through a two-hour movie or read a whole book if it's good. So it was never an attention problem. It's a "do I care about what you're telling me" problem.

This episode is about the oldest fix there is, which is storytelling. It's the thing you already do without thinking. When something interesting happens to you, you don't lead with the ending. You go "you're not gonna believe what just happened," and the person leans in. That instinct is the same one your marketing keeps forgetting it has.

Your marketing doesn't have to be about your product at all. Nike isn't selling shoes, they're selling the dream of what happens when you keep pushing. Patagonia talks about the planet more than the jackets. When a company tells you what it cares about and you care about the same thing, you don't feel sold to. You feel found. That's what branding actually is, by the way. Not the logo or the colours. The story underneath.

I also get into two ways I build stories, the three-act structure and a way of working backwards from the end, so you walk away with something to try this week and not just a nice idea. Because the goal underneath all of it is simple. You want people to remember you and choose you over the noise. And the only way that happens is if you make them feel something first.

This show is hosted by Jiun Liao, owner of Lobo Media Marketing:

Website: https://lobomedia.ca

Newsletter: https://lobomedia.ca/subscribe/

Chapters

02:02 Storytelling Is in Our DNA

05:11 Marketing and Storytelling

07:17 Storytelling Examples in Marketing

11:28 It Doesn't Have to Be About Your Product

13:28 What Branding Actually Is

16:30 The Three-Act Structure

20:13 Building Stories Backwards

23:32 Making People Feel Something

You already know the internet is noisy. You know the algorithm isn't your friend. So you did what everyone told you to do. You got busier. More posts, more platforms, more ads. And it worked, sort of. But the clients that actually came? They came the same way they always did. A referral, a conversation, someone who already trusted you.

That's the gap most business owners don't talk about. All that activity, all that effort, and the thing that actually moves the needle is something you weren't even doing on purpose. You've been treating busyness like it's the same thing as strategy, and nobody told you it wasn't because everybody around you was doing the same thing.

In this episode, I get into what strategy actually is and why it's different from planning, from tactics, and from just doing more of everything. I talk about why the marketing funnel, a model that's over 126 years old, doesn't fit the world we live in anymore. And I introduce a different way of thinking about it that I call world building. Instead of a linear path that you push people through, you build a world they choose to explore. Like a choose your own adventure book where every path eventually leads somewhere meaningful.

I also talk about why your audience is a community whether you think of them that way or not, why 85% of the people who are perfect for you aren't ready to buy right now, and what marketing strategy actually looks like when you stop confusing it with being busy.

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This show is hosted by Jiun Liao, owner of Lobo Media Marketing:

website: https://lobomedia.ca

newsletter: https://lobomedia.ca/subscribe/

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Chapters

00:00 Strategy Is the Thing Nobody Does

01:30 Strategy Is Context

03:00 Strategy vs. Planning

05:05 Busy Is Not a Strategy

07:48 The 126-Year-Old Funnel

15:33 World Building

22:06 Your Audience Is a Community

28:56 The 85% Aren't Ready Yet

31:08 What Marketing Strategy Actually Is

Every business owner I've met has the same story. They started something because they're good at it. Then they Googled "how to market my business" and fell into a hole they haven't climbed out of yet.

It's not that the advice is bad. It's that there's too much of it, and all of it sounds urgent. So you try to do everything, and you end up doing all of it poorly. Meanwhile the thing that would actually move your business forward is sitting underneath the noise, waiting for you to slow down long enough to notice it.

In this episode, I talk about what actually matters when you're going from zero to one. Why picking one or two channels beats spreading yourself across everything. Why being yourself saves more time than building some corporate alter ego. I get into the only number that matters in your reports and a concept I think every new business owner needs: the kill switch. A way to know exactly when something isn't working so you stop dragging it along out of hope.

The gap between zero and one doesn't close by doing more. It closes by doing less, better, and showing up again tomorrow.

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This show is hosted by Jiun Liao, owner of Lobo Media Marketing:

website: https://lobomedia.ca

newsletter: https://lobomedia.ca/subscribe/

---

Chapters

00:00 Intro

00:59 A Brief History of the Internet

05:41 Why Everyone Sounds the Same

10:02 How Algorithms Got Here

12:30 AI and the Content Flood

14:49 The Attention Paradox

17:23 Small Communities and the Rise of Real

23:19 The Meaning Economy

27:16 Perspective Over Productivity

30:27 How to Show Up Differently