About
everything starts with a story
Looking ahead at what’s to come, then looking back at what happened is a fun-yet-truthful endeavor. It turns out that, along the way, we we have been just where we needed to be for that time. It doesn’t mean we didn’t make mistakes; we made our share. It does mean that each turning point led us to new opportunities and new ways to create value for clients. Here’s a quick insider’s journey…
Like most new firms, Storyminers was born of necessity, opportunity, and desire. After being downsized from my eVisionary role at IBM Global Services, I wanted (and needed) to work. There was a growing demand for better customer experiences and better company operations, given all the digital developments of the dot.com era. Also, I felt an inner urge to see what kind of good I could wreak on the world with new tools that gave voice and volume using my people-centered and outcome-oriented mindset.
It was 20 years ago today (November 29, 2000) that the dot-com bubble burst. After rampant speculation and a NASDAQ gain of 400%, the high-tech market lost 78% of its value by October 2002, thanks to companies that had more bark than bite.
I was unnerved that year, yet I felt heartened. I knew that the tools co-founder Thom Milkovic and I were starting the business with had their roots in creating real value. The kind clients can measure. There was nothing speculative about the approach.
Before going on, I’d like to tell you about Thom. He’s a Renaissance guy born in our age. An artist, photographer, filmmaker, designer, UX expert, and copywriter. Thom has a way of stripping all the BS away from an idea then shaping it into something people want to be with, use, and enjoy. I always feel lucky when I get to work with him.
Thom and I pooled our resources, leads, and thinking, and sold six clients on six calls. We learned that the name, Storyminers, and the story about helping companies find their stories first worked. We were on our way.
Thom and I enjoyed helping several mid-market companies pivot their brands to take advantage of digital. We helped the first:
- pure-play digital insurance brokerage launch in the southeast
- privately-owned digital payment processor in the community banking space to attract additions to its leadership team
- automated linen service for hospitals to expand into new products and markets
- digital film house to circumvent Hollywood’s distribution monopoly
- trial-prep software company to refine its product line-up
Then, we leaned into experience design because I saw what it could do for IBM’s clients and eagerly wanted that success again. It was hard. Clients weren’t ready yet to undertake customer experience and business design work (yet). We had to work extremely hard to earn our position in the customer-experience-with-operational-improvements space.
Next, Thom found love, focused on photography (we continue to collaborate occasionally), and moved to California.
Eventually, the business world woke up to Customer Experience, and Storyminers found itself well-positioned, busy, and with larger clients. With a new, now-signature, teams of specialists, we were asked to:
- update a top-10 travel management company’s brand
- rebrand and introduce new services at professional service firms and tech companies
- evaluate the feasibility of presenting patient charts hands-free in hospitals
- fine-tune the brand and culture at an international contract manufacturer
- develop a signature client experience at a product development consultancy
- launch a new brand, including service and customer experience designs for a print/ship/office franchisor
- improve the customer experience at a national party store franchise
- reimagine the car-buying experience for a multi-brand family automobile dealer group
The results encouraged us—and helped build our reputation. We advanced our methods on each assignment, shortened our delivery times, and brought about better outcomes for clients and their customers.
We practiced innovation internally and developed numerous new techniques to help clients find their next direction, then get there successfully. These include but aren’t limited to:
- See What You Say
- Human Prototyping
- Undercover Tours
- Culture Architecting
- Case Stories
- Storymining
- Sounding Board
- Virtual-First
- Future Story
It was about half-way through all of this innovative work that we realized what our superpower was:
WE HELP PEOPLE GET COMFORTABLE WITH THE FUTURE.
We realized what our clients already knew. We were in the buy-in business. Clients hire us to help them see which ways they can go, get everyone on the same page, and stay around to ensure that what they build for the business is on-brand and delivers value.
So we got to work on complex and highly impactful customer experience engagements. Organizations’ innovation teams asked us to help them find their ways forward, then make the paths clear. We also supported significant transformations. Company leaders asked us to stay on after the innovation phase to help with adoption. For every big brand we helped, we helped at least a few mid-market and smaller ones. Here are a few from Storyminers 2.0:
Piedmont Healthcare—elective surgery
Transitions Optical—retail store of the future
TELUS—future-state service design
The University of Phoenix—metro center student center experience
That’s great, but then the world changed again—big time.
As early as 2018, I was getting signals that a bottoming out was occurring within many professional services markets. Larger players began prospecting smaller companies. Prices started to erode, and more freemium business models gave rise to more do-it-yourselfers (even within larger corporations).
In 2020, the pandemic, the election cycle, and weather disruptions to global supply chains made doing business unlike any other year in recorded history. We are all impacted.
The customer experience part of the market wasn’t immune. I started thinking about which way to turn Storyminers. I had my ideas on what would be helpful, profitable, and fun, but I knew I had to turn to clients and future clients to get it right.
So, I started talking with them. Over 18 months, I had over 100 substantial and focused chats to uncover where our clients’ needs were most significant and where we could help the most.
Leaders offered ideas, fears, and advice. They complained. They almost always emphasized how amazing it would be if their teams, partners, suppliers, and future customers could align around their efforts. Coming up with ideas wasn’t the most significant challenge; it was getting their people on the same page.
This notion of helping leaders earn buy-in for the ideas that will mean the most for their companies’ and their employees’ futures was a no-brainer for us. It felt like we could return to that comfortable place where we are relevant in our efforts and rewarded for our work.
All we needed to do was tell a new story. Right?
Yes, but it wasn’t that easy. Being good at helping others develop their stories didn’t teach us to do it for our brand. Like our clients, we needed help. We had no lack of support from clients, specialists, friends, and colleagues. (I’m skipping a big part here because of how not easy this was. Maybe I’ll share in a future blog ;-)
Now, we’re well-poised to face 2021 with a full set of services, new supporting technologies, and a host of affiliate and service partners. We know where to play:
Still, we felt that we were missing one essential piece–a way to deliver on the idea that Storyminers helps people get comfortable with the future. We have already developed several leading-edge ideas to prototype experiences. Now, we needed something to prototype the operations of an entire business.
We knew there was a need to help clients both envision what’s next and relevant AND adapt their operations at the same time to deliver it. So, that’s what we built.
We call it Future Story.
A future story translates business strategy into operations, concrete, and tailored steps to help any company make things happen on-brand and tackle their transformations with success.
Future Story helps clients develop their ideas so they turn heads in seconds. Game-changing-yet-practical ideas that can quickly become reality. Future Story not only gives clients a peek at the future, it gives their customers and experience that’s so remarkable, they want to share it with their friends. Future Story isolates resistance (internally among staff and externally with clients) and builds support for what’s new. Wrapping around existing capabilities, Future Story gives organizations the freedom to think boldly about how those capabilities can be expanded.
What makes Future Story so unique and effective is that it uses a story to express the selected strategy. Whatever the form, written narrative, video, live-action, or animation, everyone can understand where the company is headed and their role in helping it get there. Future Stories have a fixed core but are open-ended to evolve with the journey and allow for employee participation (and buy-in) along the way. Future Stories are profoundly personal, and that’s why they work.
great results happen by design
Focused on your most important outcomes
Each of our teams (your teams, really) have 3-5 smart, experienced, articulate specialists who accelerate your learning so that you can envision, design, and lead your future-state enterprise through tough-to-navigate challenges like pandemics, digital transformation, new products and services, and changing client demands.
Your team will be focused on helping you nail your game plan in weeks not months and on making sure your story is straight so that everyone can get on board and get things done.


Mike Wittenstein
Founder + Managing Partner
Mike defines the firm’s direction and voice, and works with clients. Visionary yet practical. Approachable. Quick, creative thinker. Ego in check. Four languages.
Storyteller, strategist, digital agency lead, IBM eVisionary, consultant, coach.
Four languages, 100+ cities, 800+ engagements.
MBA, BA, CSP, CCXP, CMC, DTM
Travels from ATL (Atlanta, GMT -5)
Husband, Dad, hiker, woodworker, traveler, civic volunteer.
Always curious. Sometimes funny. Polite in all cultures.
Management Consulting
Strategic Planning
Storytelling
Leadership
Business Design
Service Design
Creative Direction
Customer Experience
Coaching
Facilitation
Public Speaking
Thought Leader
we utilize amazing partners. You can too.
Storyminers is a unique brand and business. We’re proud of that. The truth is, we run on many of the same ‘parts’ as others do and that you can too.
Here, we share them. Why? Our many suppliers and tool partners work hard so we can do well. Why not do the same for them? After all, we’re in this together!
We encourage you to check out our tech stack and learn how we do what we do. If you’d like a warm introduction to any of our suppliers/partners, just ask!
CUSTOMER-FACING TOOLS
Moosend
We didn’t pick moosend because of its name. We picked it because of its functionality, ease-of-use, value, and flexibility. It does email marketing, subscriptions, tracking, personalization, newsletters, and landing pages (but we host our own).
One cool thing we learned is before you send out an email, it will show you how it will be received on many different platforms. So, you can make your adjustments BEFORE you hit the send button. Smart Moose ;-)
Check out these blog posts for more on moosend


Complex eMail campaigns made simple
Beautiful.ai
Beautiful.AI saves us 60% of the time we used to spend developing client reports and presentations.
Beautiful.AI produces beautiful slides for all kinds of content: charts, images, videos, timelines, lists, flowcharts, and more.
It automatically sets colors, arranges content, and focuses your audience’s attention beautifully. As you change, say from 3-4 items across, it automatically resizes and aligns every element instantly.
We use it for internal work-in-progress meetings, planning, pitch decks, on-line reference materials (during live sessions), and for keynotes. It literally can be learned in an hour.


Save 60% of your presentation prep time
Zoom
Everybody knows about Zoom now. But, did you know that Zoom also lets you record and transcribe meetings, run webinars, and livestream to your favorite social apps.
Zoom can fit into your workflow and even enhance it. When people book meetings on our site, zoom is automatically set up to put a custom meeting link into the invite. Features like that save hours each month!


Voice-first video presence
Mural
MURAL also supplies many templates so that you can share and develop your ideas in context. They’ve got prebuilt backgrounds to help with storyboarding, user experience, journey mapping, business planning, research, product/service design, and more.


- Learn more about Mural
- Sign up for a free Mural Trial
- See how Mural stacks up to other solutions


Get your thinking on the Same Page
VideoAsk
Today’s marketing is all about trust; and that’s what VideoAsk delivers. Use this tool to personalize messages, share important new ideas, and get fast feedback.
If you’re in sales, marketing, market research, or product development, VideoAsk will help you know sooner so you can serve better.
Check out the demo below, then check out VideoAsk!


Build stronger business relationships
Wordly
Wordly.ai is like having an entire United Nations interpretation staff in your pocket. Their amazing software lets Mike speak in one language, while everyone else hears him (or reads what he’s saying real-time on their devices) at the same time. Mike used Wordly in Colombia at an international conference last year and in a workshop. The levels of audience engagement, especially during Q&A, were off the charts.


Simultaneous, real-time, interpretation in 17 languages at once
BEHIND-THE-SCENES TOOLS
Nimble
Nimble is our CRM because it puts people first. Using Nimble lets us focus on relationships over pipelines (but it does sales pipelines well) and lets us treat each individual personally. We also like how easy it is to learn and how efficient it is to use. For example, it only takes a couple of clicks to populate an entire record with information (like social handles, site links, descriptions, a picture, etc.).
Every day, we get started with a glance at the dashboard which tells who needs attention and what we have to do. One more thing, most people think of CRM solutions as pre-sales.
Nimble also helps us manage relationships and communications after the sale as well. Clients get a smooth experience from first touch to final outcome. Thanks, Nimble!
Check out these blog posts for more on nimble


WP engine
We chose WP Engine for hosting because it’s rock solid when it comes to reliability—and we don’t have to do all the updates manually. It’s super-secure and offers at-the-edge-of-the-internet speed and ability.
Web hosting software is rather invisible. You don’t know it’s there until something goes wrong. WP Engine has automated most of the you-used-to-have-to-do-it-yourself steps for us. We love that. And, their customer service is the best!


Full-service, robust site hosting
PeopleHum
peopleHum is a next generation people platform. It goes way beyond stand-alone HR. peopleHum lets you see and manage how well the people in your organization are connected. AI with predictive capabilties helps you match the needs of candidates, employee, and customers, so you can make better people decisions.




The people platform for employee experience
Airtable
Airtable lets us store all kinds of information in the cloud and integrate it into our daily workflows.
With AirTable, we get the benefits of long-term storage and last-minute use at the same time. We use AirTable for content management, testimonials, brand standards, client deliverables management, and intellectual property and methods management.
AirTable’s advanced features let you automate your workflows as well and make applications that fit into your workflow. The product is much smarter than stand-alone spreadsheets, text documents, or flat file databases because with AirTable, they can all work together.


Makes finding things predictably easy
Elementor
Elementor makes it so easy to edit your website. Remember WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get)? This is easier.
Elementor is our editing plug-in. With Elementor, tasks that used to require an experienced HTML specialist can now be done by people who primarily carry admin or project management responsibilities.
Even the seemingly most complex on-screen interactions are just point, click, drag, drop easy. We believe that using Elementor saved us about 40% of our production budget and countless hours.


Website content editor for everyone
Asana


Project Management that saves effort and time
WP Rocket
Spending time managing a website is not ‘fun’ for us. Having a product that makes it one-button easy is fun ;-)
WPRocket saves us dozens of hours each year AND gives the peace of mind that things aren’t breaking without us knowing about it.
WP Rocket makes our site super-fast which makes it a great experience. WP Rocket is the only caching tool allowed on WP Engine’s system, so we trust them. So far, they haven’t let us down!


Optimize your site
eSpeakers
This online service (and app) makes it uber-easy to run the speaking side of our business.
Popular among professional speakers and most speakers bureaus, eSpeakers handles bookings, calendar, travel, contracts, and events (through semi-automated support).


Run your speaking business like a pro
iWorker
iWorker matches people who need tasks done with high-performing remote professionals who live in disadvantaged economic areas.
As an employer, you get a handler who gets to know you and who personally makes your matches. You get easy transactions, full accountability, and flexibility as your work levels rise and ebb.


Get help from people who need work
Lavender
L A V E N D E R helps you write so that people respond. It’s like having a mini focus group for each paragraph you write.
L A V E N D E R is part art and part science. As a Chrome extension nestled in your Gmail inbox, it shows you important social data about the people you e-mail, then analyzes and scores your e-mail for understanding, emotional intelligence, and your likeliness to get a positive response.
Visually, you get a letter grade (A-D) on a helpful graph and prompts that guide you to an ever-better score. We’ve seen nearly double the open rates after using it!


Write thoughtful and effective emails
Smaply
Smaply makes it easy to envision your future state customer and employee experience journeys. When you can capture each step your customer takes before they take them, you can be ready to serve them better and do so at lower cost.
Smaply was one of the first companies to enter this category and they are still at the front of the pack. We like how quickly we can go from scratch to a finished vision and how we can get a quick start using templates.
Smaply is available for individuals, small firms, and enterprises, with licenses and features to important to each group.


Visualize each customer’s experience
ecamm
ecamm lets us do what’s called ‘Live Editing.’ It’s where you switch images, camera angles, and content, all by pushing a few buttons–and without taking your eyes off the screen during a Zoom/Team or other video call. Think about the evening news and how you see all kinds of content. It keeps your interest. That’s what ecamm does.
This is a game changer for us. We use ecamm in day-to-day meetings, presentations, webinars, and all other sorts of online events.


Turn your Mac into a live broadcast studio
Fenix
Fenix empowers your business with a simplified, robust solution, combined with intuitive technology, to instill confidence and help customers and staff feel safe.
In today’s ever-changing world, compliance and health and safety protocols are continually shifting. This can leave your business feeling like you’re trying to hit a moving target when it comes to policies and procedures.
Fenix exist to allow you to devote your heart, soul, and focus to operating and growing your business. Through science and healthcare-backed solutions, we identify risk and provide remediation recommendations that are immediately actionable.


- Learn more about Fenix Verify
- Sign up for a Fenix Verify


Make sure you’re up to The New Normal
Grammarly
We’re pretty good writers at Storyminers. Grammarly helps us write even better.
How? Grammarly spots nuances in our language and alerts us to them so that we can be accurate and keep our writing style on-brand.
We love that Grammarly works wherever we work (in the app, on our phones, in emails, when filling out forms, etc.). Grammarly is one of the highest value software tools we use.


Raises your writing
Moviecomm
We like including clips in our presentations, training, and even social media and email campaigns. In a swipe-fast world, MOVIECOMM helps your message stay relevant.


Short and famous movie clip; big impact
Colibri.ai


Easily record your meetings in real time
PodMatch
This podcast guest and host matching service uses artificial intelligence-powered matches to produce high-quality interviews. Podmatch is an easy-to-use software service that makes getting the right talent in front of the right audience easy


Find podcaster and guest matches using AI
Vimeo
Vimeo is a video hosting, sharing, and services platform that gives brands and professionals total control of their online video experience. Operating on subscriptions, not ads, Vimeo gives producers all the tools they need to store, manage, and stream content with full analytics and even integrations with popular editing programs. We’ve been using Vimeo since 2008. It’s one of the subscriptions we’ll probably never give up!


Video Hosting made easy
Affiliates and Companies
Consorteeum
One dozen market-proven experts from around the world provide support for leaders who want to grow, innovate, improve customer experiences, and create digital transformation.
Highly skilled and digitally ready to work anywhere in the world, Consorteeum members work individually and with each other to help leaders succeed with change.


Global experts help leaders navigate change
Customer Institute
The Customer Institute is an independent, global, not-for-profit organization setting the gold standard for customer experience, as well as enabling and recognizing excellence in customer centricity.
The Customer Institute uses a panel of leaders, lecturers, innovators, consultants, and practitioners from all fields of customer centricity to certify tools and companies on their CX prowess and progress. The Customer Institute does not certify individuals. That’s its difference, and its greatest value.


Certifications for customer experience tools and training