Check out Liz Welch’s interview with NYC chocolatier Jacques Torres for a great example of an inspiring Origin Story. His story is also a great example of how stories provide both “inspiration and simulation” (one of my favorite quotes from Chip and Dan Heath of Made to Stick fame).
Not only does his story capture the challenge and drama of the start-up experience–and make him and his company more fascinating–it also provides useful lessons to start-up entrepreneurs, including:
1. His firm decision to NOT take outside investment money and why.
2. Taking lemons–in the form of Valentine’s Day lollipops that weren’t selling–and turning it into lemonade–by adding a quirky twist. The result: a blockbuster hit.
As you read it, notice that it doesn’t come across as a documentary, but as a drama, complete with struggle and overcoming. That’s what you want in your Origin Story.
If you’re looking for examples of how to tell your business’s Origin Story, here’s a good example to study.
I just came across a stellar example of how to tell your Origin Story as well as how to do a sincere video that captures who you are, what makes you different, and the difference your business makes.
It’s a video that tells the story of how Dan Price, founder of Gravity Payments started his business (that story starts at 1:08 into the video) and what they believe in.
I highly recommend any business owner–especially if you are in the start-up mode and want to garner media attention–to study this video.
I challenge you to watch it and not come away thinking “This guy and his business totally rock!”
Whether you are a non-profit that wants to generate interest for your event or an association that needs to find a way to communicate to corporate sponsors the value of underwriting your conference, tell the story of your event. Capture it’s feeling tone, its purpose, and the difference it makes.
This video by the Maine Cancer Foundation is a great example of how to tell your story visually, capture the ethos of your event and communicate the impact that it makes in the lives of others.
For an example of a low budget, simply produced, video of the good that your organization does, watch this video that tells one of the many heart warming stories from the Animal Refuge League of Greater Portland.
I just heard a great comment by JD Roth, who started a personal finance blog titled Get Rich Slowly, and sold it for 7 figures.
In an interview with Jaime Tardy, author of The Eventual Millionaire and the successful podcast of the same name, Jaime asked JD about whether great content is enough to separate yourself from all the other people in your field shouting their message.
He responds by explaining how you won’t differentiate yourself simply from your advice, because there are millions of others giving same or similar advice. In other words, just having good content will not make you stand out from the crowd.
In the interview, he uses the example of someone writing about why people should invest in index funds. Well, notes JD, there are thousands of articles out there on the value of investing in index funds. You won’t differentiate yourself by writing another article giving this advice. What will make you different is the story of WHY YOU became a fan of index funds–i.e. YOUR story.
This is what I call a Pain and Promise Story. You talk about the Pain you were experiencing due to the problem your audience is currently dealing with, your discovery of a way to solve that problem, and the “good news”–aka The Promise–of what it’s like after you have solved the problem. So in JD’s example with the index fund article, you might write about all the years you spent time you didn’t have trying to track and compare various funds and still find they underperformed the market, and how you discovered just how much you were paying for an “expert” to manage these funds, yet their management didn’t translate into better returns, just a higher management fee…etc. etc.
You get the picture.
By telling YOUR story, you become much more real. Much more bond-able than if you simply make your recommendation from On High.
Besides being more interesting and persuasive, storytelling also helps you accelerate the Know-Like-Trust process, which accelerates your ability to persuade and therefore your ability to make a positive difference.
To listen to JD talk about this, go to 17:35 in the interview (although I recommend the whole interview if you are a blogger).
If you’re an entrepreneur—or any expert for that matter—who wants to be a more powerful speaker and someone the media wants to interview—tell short, punchy, captivating stories.
You cannot speak in 30,000 foot generalities and hope to get media attention or keep any listener’s attention.
When you talk, the listener needs to be able to play a movie in their head of what you are saying. Better still, you want to create a virtual reality experience.
So how do you get good at telling stories? One obvious place to start is paying attention to people YOU find mesmerizing, people who grab and hold your attention.
Notice how they do it. What do they do that captivates you?
Chances are, a big part of how they do it is by telling stories that make you feel like you’re there, going through the experience they are recounting.
Want a great resource for listening to great storytelling in action?
Check out the daily podcast EntrepreneurOnFire.com by John Lee Dumas. Each day he interviews an entrepreneur and asks them to share stories that illustrate key teaching points, such as an AH-HA moment, their proudest moment, and a failure that proved to be a great learning experience.
It’s no accident that EntrepreneurOnFire.com provides listeners with a rich tutorial on how to be a captivating storyteller. John Lee Dumas explains to his guests in their pre-interview conversation: “They want to hear your journey, not generalities, not vague, aerial perceptions of what you think failure means. They want to resonate with you as a person. I want you to tell a story…to really tell of a specific time in your life. We want to feel like we are there with you…we are all about the story
Here’s an example from a great interview John did with Mike Michalowicz, the entrepreneur behind three million-dollar businesses, and the author of The Pumpkin Plan and The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur.
John asked Mike to share an AH-HA moment.
Here’s Mike’s answer (I edited it a bit to make it read smoothly. If you’ve ever read transcripts of great speeches or interviews, the spoken word and written word flow very differently)
The AH-HA moment for me actually came in another dark day, which I was referring to, but has become the most important moment of my life and I think it always will be…
It was the day I had lost all the money I made.
After I sold that second company, I told you I became an angel investor, but I also became arrogant. I believed that my worth was represented by what I had, not in what I was contributing.
So I bought three cars. I bought the Viper, the BMW, the Land Rover… literally all on the same day.
I moved into the biggest house in town; I had all this stuff.
I promised myself I would never be that guy, but I became that guy.
I was a dick, a total dick. I wasn’t rude to people, but I thought I was better than people, which is the rudest thing of all.
After about three years of living this arrogance, I lost everything.
I was investing and losing. I was buying and losing. I was living off savings.
I wasn’t making money. I was trying to figure out what I’m going to do next.
I came home one day, had another fateful call with my accountant. He said, “Mike, your taxes are due now and you owe $50,000 in taxes.”. I literally had $30,000 left in my bank account.
I was like, “I can’t pay my taxes.” He’s like, “Oh, you may have to declare bankruptcy.” I was like, “I’ll never declare bankruptcy, but holy crap.”
I came home and I was sobbing, in front of my family and just saying, “I’ve lost it all.”
Everyone was blankly staring at me because they’d never…I mean…this is your father or your husband, who has done everything to protect the family.
Now he’s lost it all.
My daughter ran away…
She was eight or nine years old at the time.
She comes back about a minute later with her piggybank, and she puts it on the table and she goes, “Daddy, we’re going to make it.”
What I learned in that moment – and I’m choking up now as I remember it – what I learned in that moment is that we are not our number.
We are not our stuff.
We are our authentic self.
That was what taught me about authenticity. My daughter just put out the most of her that she could in the moment, and it changed the moment.
I realized if I put the most of me in the situation, if I put my authentic self out there, that’s where I can change moments and help change people.
So that was my biggest learning moment. It was in my darkest period where my eight-year-old daughter taught me the lesson, the ultimate lesson…
(BTW, at the end of the post, I’ll give you the link to the actual interview, so you can hear him tell the story)
As you read Mike’s story, couldn’t you just picture it? Didn’t the story just grab you and refuse to let go?
That’s what stories well told do and that’s why you want to get good at telling stories.
Think about how different it would be if John asked Mike to share an AH-HA moment and Mike said something like “After building and selling a multimillion dollar business, I felt I had arrived. I felt like I had it all figured out….and then I lost it all. That was a really hard thing to go through…but fortunately…I picked myself back up and now I once again have a successful business.”
How inspiring would you find that?
What about if you are an entrepreneur going through tough times, not generating any income, racking up credit card debt and thinking “Will this every change?”
Wouldn’t you find Mike’s story just the dose of inspiration and perspective you needed to realize “This tough time is just a chapter in my life’s story…it’s NOT the whole story.”
That’s the difference between speaking in generalities and platitudes and telling a riveting story.
So…I highly recommend you listen to EntrepreneurOnFire both for the inspiring and instructional content from the entrepreneurial perspective, but also from the “How to Tell Great Stories” perspective.
NOTE: The story I shared above starts at 13 minutes in the Mike Michalowicz interview. However, I recommend listening to the whole interview. It’s one of EntrepreneurOnFires’s best.
About John Lee Dumas: EntrepreneurOnFire is a top ranked, 7-day a week business podcast, hosted by John Lee Dumas, interviewing today’s most successful and inspiring Entrepreneurs. We share the journey of our spotlighted guest, highlighting a failure and lessons learned, an AH-HA moment and the steps taken to turn that moment into success, and the LIGHTNING ROUND where John asks five questions that extract nuggets of wisdom from his guests.
Since EntrepreneurOnFire’s launch in September of 2012, we’ve had the pleasure of featuring Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Barbara Corcoran, Tim Ferriss, Chris Brogan and over 500 inspiring Entrepreneurs.
EntrepreneurOnFire is all about inspiring YOU to take YOUR entrepreneurial leap. We know that by hearing the failures, AH-HA moments, and successes of others, you can begin to craft your dream and take inspired ACTION!
About Mike Michalowicz: Mike is the entrepreneur behind three multi-million dollar companies and the Author of The Pumpkin Plan and the business cult classic, The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. With a popular, quirky website at MikeMichalowicz.com, he is a globally recognized entrepreneurial advocate. He is a former small business columnist for the Wall Street Journal and now hosts the business make-over segment on MSNBC’s Your Business.
Whether 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
I first heard about Bob Terson, author of Selling Fearlessly, through Steve Lahey’s Small Businss Talent site. I was struck both by his wonderful use of stories and how his goodness and desire to help others was so evident.
In the interview, Steve Lahey noted that Selling Fearlessly was story-based, rather than a dry, techincally written book. Bob said he consciously chose that format.
Bob knows the power of stories.
I ended up purchasing Selling Fearlessly (loved it) in part because of the focus on courage and stepping outside your comfort zone and in part because, given Bob’s interview, it seemed like a great example of how to use stories to make your point come alive.
I wanted to share with you my favorite story in the book because its a message we all need to hear now and then…especially if we are going through challenging times.
It’s an example of what I call the “If I could survive THAT…I can survive THIS!” perspective and how to use a story to remind people that they have the courage and ability to prevail over the “dark night of the soul” they are going through.
OK…enough of the preamble…Here’s the opening of the story and then a link to the rest.
I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” – Christopher Reeve (1952-2004)
In the Introduction I quoted Olympic pole-vaulter Bob Richards: “Every day ordinary people do extraordinary things.” Now I’m going to tell you about an extraordinary event, 41 years ago, which turned my life around forever; I call it “The Mound Road Story.” It encompasses all three sides of the selling Triangle (see Chapter 9, “The Triangle”). I’ve told this true story, maybe, a hundred times; and each time I tell it, a tidal wave of incredulity sweeps me out to sea and I ask myself: Would my professional life have been markedly different, would the success I achieved been lessened, if that remarkable event had never taken place? It truly makes me wonder.
Here’s some background to help you appreciate that improbable night and morning. I trained four weeks before going into the field alone that Wednesday; my first town was New Lenox, Illinois, approximately ten miles east of Joliet. I lost two presentations that first day and two more the following day, Thursday. I also set up an appointment Thursday to present to two women, partners in a beauty salon; forty years have faded their names into oblivion, but we’ll call them Margaret and Joanna. They were in their mid-thirties and, as I recall, quite attractive. So I was 0 for 4, a bit shaky mental-attitude-wise—my fantasies had foreseen instant record-breaking numbers—and a dark shadow of desperation stalked me as I drove over to that beauty salon.
Bob Trudeau, who taught me the telephone-book-cover advertising business, used to say, “The first olive out of the bottle is the toughest; they start pouring out after you get that first one out.” I craved that first olive out of the bottle.
My subconscious must have been working in overdrive, because when I got there, I re-qualified them to make sure they were the sole decision makers; it’s a good thing I did.
“Well, actually,” Margaret said, “we’d have to get our husbands’ approval, too; it takes all four of us to decide anything.”
The sound you would have heard was air exploding from my lungs via my agape mouth. You’ve heard about the deer caught frozen in the headlights? Well, that was me. I thought I’d properly qualified them earlier, but obviously not—a rookie mistake. I was making too many of them. Oh, God, what else can go wrong?
About Bob Terson: Robert Terson writes the Selling Fearlessly blog and is the author of “Selling Fearlessly: A Master Salesman’s Secrets For the One-Call-Close Salesperson.” He has retired from a 40 year career in sales, including owning his own company, to write, speak, and help others succeed; to give back for a lifetime of blessings.
In an interview with Jonathan Fields of the GoodlifeProject, Nancy Duarte, author of Slide:ology and Resonate, explained what inspired her to write the book Resonate and what turned her into a passionate believer in the power of storytelling in business.
I recommend you watch the whole interview (you can also download the MP3s when you sign up at the GoodLifeProject website), but the part I want to share with you now comes at 27:46 when Jonathan asks Nancy Duarte about what prompted her to write Resonate.
Notice how she tells the story.
Notice how she creates a movie in your mind of the moment she realized the changed landscape of the creative industry she was in, and what she needed to do next to remain viable.
The story she shares is valuable both in its style and its message.
First, it illustrates how to make your point come alive with a story and why telling stories make your ideas more interesting and memorable.
Second, it communicates the importance of becoming a storyteller, not only in business, but in life.
This was one of the stories I heard shared by a participant at a Dan Kennedy seminar on using stories to make your marketing more fascinating and persuasive.
They were exploring how to mine your past for fascinating stories you can turn into great marketing stories that made people WANT to listen to you.
Now…here’s the deal….
You don’t have to have stories as bizarre as this to make your presentations more interesting, your ideas more fascinating, or your message more inspiring.
But if you want to make a difference in your world….
if you want people to really CARE about what you have to say and not brush it off…
If you really want people to LISTEN when you talk in a meeting or in a presentation…
You need to talk in ways that wake people up and create an experience, an emotional response.
Well told stories and clever analogies do just that.
Before I give you a really practical tip on how to find stories and analogies to use, I want to give you a heads up about two things…
http://storiesthatchange.com/fascinating-inspiring-u-workshop
2. will be giving a free webinar on this topic on April 24th from 2PM-3PM EST
http://storiesthatchange.com/fascinating-inspiring-u-webinar/
OK…here’s the tip:
You don’t have to have wild and wooly stories to make an impact.
One of the most common questions I get from people is “Where do I find useful stories? Where do I find stories I can use as teaching stories?”
The answer….
Your life.
Past and present.
Here’s a simple, but powerful practice that will help you become more tuned into useful little moments from everyday life that you can use as teaching stories and analogies.
Here’s an excerpt from a pre-work assignment I gave to a group of coaches on how to use storytelling.
Notice things that happen to you this week that trigger an emotional response or caught your attention for some other reason. Jot them down on index cards or a notepad, so you remember them. Some of the most useful stories come from the most subtle, easily forgotten experiences. When you jot down your notes on the experience, include just enough detail you would need to recall the situation if you came back six months later and read your notes. You don’t want this to be a big chore, because if it is, you probably won’t do it. Make it simple and easy…so just enough detail.
Notice and record situations that:
Play with them and see how you might use them – See if you can come up with how any of your experiences could be used as an analogy or teaching story related to any of the ideas or issues you talk about, whether in formal presentations, informal discussions, meetings, or if you’re involved in sales, sales presentations.
Do that and you will catch a bunch of interesting stories that you ordinarily wouldn’t even notice.
If you want to get better at this whole business of communicating in a powerful, fascinating way, check out the program descriptions:
The Maine Workshop:
http://storiesthatchange.com/fascinating-inspiring-u-workshop/
The Webinar:
http://storiesthatchange.com/fascinating-inspiring-u-webinar/
Or…if you want to bring this material to your group or get personal coaching, email me david@storiesthatchange.com
