We were lucky to catch up with Mike Wittenstein recently and have shared our conversation below.

Mike, appreciate you joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started sooner or later?

This question needs a third answer. Did you start your business at just the right time? At the time, I couldn’t tell. In retrospect, I couldn’t have started Storyminers at a better time. 

It was 2002, right after Y2K and when the dot com boom became the dot com bust. Clients weren’t buying and companies weren’t hiring. Atlanta marketers at Delta and Coca-Cola we’re being laid off by the thousands. If you were in the business of helping others sell services, things looked gloomy. Fear and uncertainty prevailed. (Sounds a lot like 2022, doesn’t it?)

When catastrophes approach from all angles, it’s important to remember that the so-much-change-at-once feeling simply represents new needs. It means people have changed the way they work, how they serve clients, how they decide, and how they buy.

So, it was the perfect time to start Storyminers and enter a market that was ready for fresh thinking, solutions, and ways of work. Looking back, one of the things I love about the timing (which I get no credit for, it just happened) was how ready clients were to consider new ideas. Fresh ways of looking at old problems became our signature. It remains so now.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

Hi, I’m Mike. I help leaders tell their stories in less time.

What’s the twist? Transforming strategies into stories people care about.
Who works with Storyminers? Leaders with a vision who can’t articulate it or with teams who can’t hear it.
What do they get? Crystal clear language about who they are and a succinct picture of the future state everyone wants.
What are the deliverables? Future Stories that everyone can use to see how they will fit in and what their contribution might be.
What makes Storyminers special? We listen before we speak. We use design to think about people, platform, product, and planet at the same time.

The life experiences that make that possible include:
– first business at 13
– learned 4 languages at UF, Middlebury, and in-country in Brazil and Russia
– MBA in services marketing (Thunderbird, now ASU)
– 5 professional service start-ups, including the digital agency GALILEO, IBM, and Storyminers
– $2+ billion in value created for 1,000+ clients in 24 countries
– deep experience in strategy, story, and customer experience

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Sales are closed from the promises you make. Reputations are earned from the results you deliver.

Over time, promising only results that you can deliver and creating the greatest value for clients is what brings you the best new clients.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Over a period of 20 years, 90% plus of our new business has come unsolicited from referrals. No matter how hard I try to automate sales and marketing and to turn strangers into clients, I’ve witnessed that many company leaders prefer finding trusted talent through people they already know. I wish I could say there was a magic click funnel or algorithm to turn all the world’s information into a shortlist of great future clients, but so far what has worked is doing great work for each client and making sure they see, understand, and measure its value.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.storyminers.com
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/mikewittenstein
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/mikewittenstein
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/storyminers

Image Credits
Cindy Brown Karen Hagerman Cady Studios