Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
Hi there rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Sam writes a weekly newsletter about making real pizza at home.
It started with a backyard pizza oven and became his weekend ritual.
He's sure a great pie is a Friday-night skill, not a chef's secret.
Sam's readers live it — delivery is boring, but homemade feels too hard.
⛳️ Problem:
Sam opens every issue talking about himself.
His oven, his dough journey, his ten years of trial and error.
By paragraph two readers have drifted away, and almost nobody makes the recipe. We've all been there.
His struggle:
He makes every issue about himself, so readers stop reading before the good part.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Hero Seat
Picture a coach who runs onto the field and takes every shot himself.
His players just stand there — it stopped being their game.
Your readers feel the same way when you're the star of every issue.
That's what Donald Miller figured out.
He grew StoryBrand into a company that makes around $16.5 million a year.
His book on the idea, Building a StoryBrand, sold over a million copies.
His take: most messaging flops because you cast yourself as the hero.
But readers don't care about your story — they care about theirs.
So make the reader the hero, and make yourself the guide who helps them win.
People don't act on a message about you.
They act on a message about them, with a clear next step you hand over.
🚗 So Sam tried it his way.
Here's Sam and his newsletter on making real pizza at home, again.
He'd been opening every issue with his oven and his ten-year dough journey.
So he flipped it, and made the reader the hero instead.
Turns out the fix was who he put first, not more writing.
Before, paragraph one was all about Sam.
Now it opened with what the reader wanted: a crispy, blistered pizza on a Friday, better than delivery.
His whole ten-year backstory shrank to one line: "I burned a hundred pizzas so you won't."
Then, instead of more about him, he handed over a simple plan.
"Tonight: hot oven, thin dough, less sauce" — three moves, and they knew what to do.
Spoiler: that issue got opened, forwarded, and actually cooked.
The story stopped being about Sam, and his readers finally became the heroes.
Ta-da — reader in the spotlight.
🧸 Readers don't act on your story. Make them the hero, and be the guide who helps them win.
The prompt below rewrites your message with the reader as the hero.
You just tell it what your reader wants and what you help them do.
🏄♀️ The prompt
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt, or just run it as is. Your AI sidekick will use the example values and give you an output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If my ICP / Audience doc exists, target that reader. Otherwise, use the audience below.
Inputs:
What my reader actually wants (their desire, in their words — the win they're chasing):
{e.g. a crispy, blistered homemade pizza on a Friday that beats delivery}
The bio/story I keep leading with (the about-me stuff I open with that's really about me):
{e.g. my pizza oven, my ten-year dough journey, all my trial and error}
The simple plan I can hand them (the 3 moves that get them their win):
{e.g. hot oven, thin dough, less sauce}
For Audience: {e.g. home cooks who are tired of bad delivery and crave a real pizza they made themselves}
For Outcome: {e.g. a rewritten opening + a clear plan that makes the reader, not me, the hero}
Outputs:
1. The hero's goal — one line naming what my reader wants, in their words, that I can open with.
2. My guide line — a single empathy-plus-proof sentence (max ~12 words) that replaces my long origin story.
3. The simple plan — the 3 clear steps I hand the reader toward their win. Plain verbs.
4. The rewritten opening — the first 3-4 lines of my next issue, reframed so the reader is the hero and I'm the guide.
Then point out the ONE place I'm still making it about me, and how to flip it.
That's it, my fellow rebels!
Yours 'showing you that building a business is fun, not a drain' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️