PS. You’re not the hero… You’re the guide.

In a previous post I talked about the Hero’s Journey. It's a powerful and encouraging picture when we stand back and look at our own lives’ struggles, challenges, risks and victories. Life never does a neat line steeply. It’s way more of a zig zagger.

So how is this useful beyond understanding life’s ebbs and flows? Applied to business it’s transformative. I think when I finally grasped this as a designer - it became my game changer. Apply it to your marketing and creative effort - it’ll change how you see every type of post, ad and site you interact with.

If you’re designing anything - it’s not about you. And it most certainly not about your client. It’s understanding who fulfils the following roles:

Who’s the hero?
What’s their struggle?
Who will guide them?
How will you overcome this challenge?

The Hero
Whoever is buying the end product or using your service. Service is the key here - who are you serving?

Struggle.
There’s always a struggle - what’s the obstacle this product or service overcomes. What’s the person’s pain point? How does a business show up to take away this pain. No pain - nothing to fix. It doesn’t have to be dramatic or life changing. It can make things that bit more awesome, smoother, all in one place, faster or intuitive.

The Guide.
That’s you. That’s you if you’re serving a business. That’s the business or client serving the end customer. You are not the hero. Never.

But you are powerful and influential as the guide. Also this paradigm applies to leadership. There’s more in the mix than just offering support - but challenge, champion others, protect and go ahead to pioneer - all fit the guide’s role.

If you’re short on time and want to unpick these ideas quicky, two fab resources are How to Write Copy that Sells by Ray Edwards and Storybrand. Massive thank you to Revelator Studio for introducing me to these.