Storytime

I’m an organizer for my local 1 Million Cups community, and I find myself often repeating the same advice in our weekly meetings: starting with the simple question: what’s your story?

Several of our organizers are language experts, and we’ve come to think of ourselves as the Story Folk (I’m trying to make Story Squad happen, but that’s a story we’ll have to wait to finish). Regardless of the product or structure, most of our presenters need to invest more time developing their company story. Without a clearly-structured, easily-repeatable narrative, it’s very easy to lose the company’s larger focus and to stop word-of-mouth in its tracks.

Storytelling is, arguably, what makes us human. Academics say it sets us apart from other animals: see Jonathan Gottschall’s The Storytelling Animal. Business leaders apply that thinking to marketing as a way to connect with potential customers: see Donald Miller’s Storybrand. These are just two examples of the cross-section of storytelling and business; since my business is communication, storytelling is much of what I help clients achieve.

The thing is, I see fledgling businesses get caught up in the model story–that is, the story of the person who presented the problem they’re trying to solve, or the case study customer that’s helping guide their next steps. While these can be helpful, they’re not enough to help most of us understand what your business is about or why we should use it/recommend others use it.

The story doesn’t have to be about you, the founder/CEO/visionary of your company. It doesn’t have to be about a person at all. It does need to have, clearly defined:

• A protagonist
• An antagonist
• A beginning, middle, and end

The protagonist/antagonist relationship can and often is framed between your company and the problem it’s solving. That relationship can also be framed in terms of how you’re differentiating from similar companies, or what specific empty niche you’re working to fill. We just need some tension to sink our teeth into–some reason to care about what you’re doing.

Descriptions of your company should include some kind of resolution for your audience to carry forward: at this point, we’re offering this solution can be an ending to the story of how you’re working to solve a problem. So can here’s how our product improved this customer’s life. But if you’ve set us up with a lengthy framing of why you’re in this business to begin with, we need some kind of release to that tension you’ve built.

And it never hurts to close the circle by nodding back to your beginning: at 1MC, our presenting businesses often leave with questions that help get them thinking about who/what the characters actually are and who/what they should be moving forward. That should in turn clarify everything from their core mission statement to their marketing decisions.