Archive for November, 2013

The Art of the Origin Story: Putney, Inc.’s founder, Jean Hoffman

Jean Hoffman and CatWhether you are a solopreneur, a small business owner, or a fast growing Inc. 500 company, you need to tell a compelling Origin Story.

In this post, you will hear a stellar example of this story genre.

Why do you need to tell a compelling Origin Story?

First, your Origin Story separates you from your competitors. Only you have your particular Origin Story. It’s what makes you unique.

Second, your Origin Story humanizes your business. Because it tells the story of who you are and why you came into being, your Origin Story taps into the business truism “People do business with people they know, like, and trust.”  Your story allows people to connect with you on a more human level, rather than as impersonal organization or generic business entity.

Third, your Origin Story communicates your reason for being. When people understand what inspired you to go into business, what inspired you to start THIS business, it helps them get to know you and understand why you and your business are important to this world.

Fourth, because your Origin Story talks about The Why of your business, it helps attract talent. This is especially important with the Millennial or Gen Y employee, who place an especially high premium on working for a company that is doing something worthwhile in the world.

The Origin Story you are about to hear is from Jean Hoffman, founder and CEO of Putney, Inc., a company that produces  generic medications for cats and dogs.

Putney, Inc. is not only on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies, it was also identified by Fortune magazine as the tenth best small to mid-sized company to work.

In an interview earlier this year, I asked Jean how she uses stories in her role as leader. I asked her if there were any particular archetypal, “go to” stories that she used, whether in communicating with the marketplace or with employees.

In this excerpt, she shares her favorite.

You can listen to her tell her Origin Story (about 4 minutes) or read it below. I recommend listening for maximum effect.

It is a stellar example of how to tell an Origin Story

As you listen (or read) notice the rich detail in her story that not only makes it easy to picture the scenarios in your mind, but also makes it more interesting. Notice also the human element and how that makes it easy to bond to Jean as she tells the story.

 

The most archetypal story here, at least in my mind, is the story of my first inspiration about starting a generic drug company for pets, which involved an old cat of mine who’d been rescued from a shelter.

We had an old cat named Dude. Dude had been adopted from an animal shelter in East New York. My husband at the time and I went to adopt one cat, and we came home with two cats because this cat Dude was just so sorry looking that clearly no one else would adopt him and clearly he would be euthanized. We just felt sorry for him.

When he first came home he was the most terrified cat. He obviously had had something terrible in his life and he was severely underweight. He spent most of his time hiding in the back of a cabinet by the dishwasher where it was warm. He didn’t even come out.

He turned into the most wonderful loyal member of our family. He would go for walks with me when my son was little. He slept with my son. He sat next to him on his dictionary when he was a little guy and a little bit of a sloppy eater, and Dude would reach out with his very dexterous paws and very gently sweep a little piece of scrambled egg over to his side and eat it.

As Dude got old, as is common in many older kitties, he developed hyperthyroidism and he had to have medication, initially once a day and as he got older his condition worsened and he had to have it twice a day. It cost $30 a month for the cat, and the medication had to be split in two which wasn’t easy. I had to get the pill in Dude, which also wasn’t easy.

I did some homework. Being in the generic drug industry I knew how to think about developing drugs. I thought there should be a cat formulation of this that is the right dosing for this little animal that is palatable so he’ll want to take it on his own and not require me to stuff it down his poor little throat, and that is affordable for people who can’t afford $30 a month. Later on it was $60 a month for my cat.

So that was really the genesis of thinking about the opportunity and the crying need for a generic drug company that would develop drugs for pets, and a company that would solve some of the dosing issues in cats which are a very under-served market. Even the Big Pharma animal health companies, they don’t develop many drugs for cats.

 

Isn’t this a great example of how to tell a story?

So…are you telling your Origin Story? If not, how about getting to work and either write it out or speak it and have it transcribed, and then get feedback and/or coaching around how to tweak it.

Also, if you look at the About David Lee section on this blog, you can read my Origin Story, to see another example.

For a really sweet video Origin Story about an 8 year old girl, Vivienne Harr, who decided to start a business to make a difference in the world, check out that post.

Also, if you want to get better at finding stories you can use to make your presentations come alive, check out the Google Hangout I’ll be doing with ASTD’s Juana Llorens on November 22nd

Nov 17, 2013 | 0 comments View Post

“Where do you find stories on different subjects?”

This is THE number one question I get asked.

People who attend storytelling teleseminars, webinars, and seminars get it that storytelling is powerful, but… don’t know where to find stories.

The short answer is…stories are everywhere, all the time.

If you pay attention and know what to  look for, you can extract cool teaching stories out of everyday life.

For a longer answer and more “how to’s” sign up for the upcoming Google Hangout I’ll be doing with Juana Llorens of ASTD on Friday at 2 PM ET (no worries if you can’t make it live, you can download later), but…what I would love for you to do IF….you want some free coaching from moi, is to:

Post a question or better still…describe a key teaching point or take away message you often communicate in your presentations that you would like to come up with a story to illustrate, and….

I will pick the best ones to use as illustrations…i.e. I will share my thought process in how I come up with stories and analogies.

How cool is that? 🙂

Here’s the link:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c2gq97qk497jo8gkv4okg3rvg30

Now…in the meantime, read on for more quick how to tips:

 

Colin from Ontario posed this question to me when he signed up for the upcoming “Wrap Your Message in Bacon” webinar.

Thanks for the question Colin.

Here’s my answer…actually answers…

 

1. Practice Mindfulness–Pay attention to all of life, even those simple,  “ordinary” moments that offer a potential lesson, remind you of some important principle, surprise you, amuse you, or make some kind of emotional impact.

2. Practice Thinking in Analogies–I’ll be teaching this in depth in the upcoming storytelling webinar series, but for now, practice thinking “Hmmm…what’s this like?” “What can this be an analogy for?” whenever you experience something interesting.

3. Write Down Your Thoughts As Soon as Possible–This is huge, especially with “Constructive Conversation” stories where the actual words you used are an important part of the story and are quickly forgotten. As I mentioned in the ASTD webinar, I use a simple, two column  Word table with a story per row. The left column is for searchable key words or phrases and the right with narrative, so I can recall the story later.

4. Practice, Practice, Practice–After doing this for over 20 years, my brain has become a story-catching, analogy-recognizing machine :-). It just comes naturally now, just like it will for you if you work at it. A good friend of mine, after taking an NLP and storytelling seminar from me 15 years ago, told me at the time that she wasn’t good at thinking in analogies because her medical training had so oriented her toward analytical, “no nonsense” thinking, she felt she had lost the more right-brained, analogy-noticing and analogy-creating ability.  Now, years later, she is an amazing analogy-creator.

Five Recent Story or Analogy Finding Examples…

So…let me give you some examples of stories that came into my life (or awareness) in the last few days:

1. This week I had a really positive coaching session with a manager who had made excuses for not delivering on her responsbilities on several occasions–i.e. she used the “I was so busy” as an excuse for not doing what she was supposed to do.

I struggled with how to confront this in a way that wouldn’t trigger defensiveness, but still have her look at this behavior. I was feeling very judgmental and had to do some serious work to get to compassion and non-judgment. We ended up having an amazing, honest conversation about this. This will be one of my Let’s Talk for a Change seminar stories in the future.

2. One of my dear friends sent me an inspirational video this morning. I thought…”Hmmm…what’s the lesson here that we all can use?” and posted the video and a bit of narrative at my WhateverLifeBrings.com site.

3. When I tried to post the link on Facebook, I was notified that my password was wrong. I had just changed it and had forgotten what it was. When I went to open my email account to get the link to reset it, I discovered I had forgotten that password, too (I had just changed that also). I found myself thinking “Hmmm..what’s this like?” One analogy that came to mind was ‘My operational inefficiency was hampering my creative output”. That made me think of how I could use it as a simple analogy in the future for how a business’s or a solopreneur’s lack of organization, or efficient processes can seriously hamper their innovative ability and productvity.

4. I heard someone remark about the upcoming election: “This is going to be the opportunity for Americans to decide whether we want to be a nation of children or a nation of adults”, referring to his perception that as a society we seem to be wanting government to take care of us, remove all risk from life, tell us what to do, etc. It made me think about how often “old school” command and control, “We think, you just do your job” management  and organizational practices often lead to a “childified” wokforce that isn’t willing to think for themselves and demonstrates child-like behaviors–like gossiping, blaming, focusing on what their employer can do for them rather than how they can provide value. So…his remark made me think of the corollaries beteween a parental organization and a parental government, and what they elicit in “the masses.”

5.  Another manager I was coaching yesterday shared her struggle as a new manager coming into a team that is very set in their ways and how they bristle at her suggestions. We are going to continue working on it today. It will be a really useful teaching story I can use in upcoming seminars and articles.

So, you see…stories are everwhere. You (we) just need to practice being mindful, ask “Hmmm…what’s this like?” and “What lessons does this teach?” and write it down ASAP.

Thanks for your question Colin. Hope this helps.

Again, the Google Hangout link is:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/c2gq97qk497jo8gkv4okg3rvg30

Sign up and post your key take away point or question you would like me to work with.

Nov 14, 2013 | 0 comments View Post