Storytelling For Startups
University accelerators in the Middle East asked me to me to teach a course in my sweet spot: storytelling for startups. I thought it might be worth sharing my thoughts:
Authenticity
This workshop is for entrepreneurs who want to discover the secret ingredient to most great startups: the story behind the passion that drives a company even if all the odds are against it.
Our goal is discover or uncover that passion as the energy source for your entrepreneurial spirit—and to end this workshop ready to start a company or to bring any ongoing enterprise into alignment with what matters most to you as a person.
For young entrepreneurs, that means the most important thing is what drives you to make the leap from employee to owner responsible for everyone and everything in your company. The connection between the personal and the professional is critical when hard times come as they inevitably do. A story—and a startup—without the passion of the founders is very likely to fall flat on its face.
If you don’t have a personal connection to your business you can still be successful, but it’s far better to be driven by what’s inside of you rather than looking outside for motivation. That can be the difference between quitting in exhaustion and succeeding in a life-changing way.
The key ingredient in this journey of storytelling discovery is personal authenticity. Authenticity means the impulse to start a given company is really coming from inside of you—internal not external. If you need to think of it in a single word to explain it, that word is true.
Think of it as being true to yourself, connecting a startup to what you care about the most.
Remember you have the ability to directly connect the company to those things that matter most to you—things that don’t need to be relevant to anyone else. That might be the environment or electric cars or maybe you want to go to the moon. So be it. What matters most is the passion you can bring to a company that becomes the vehicle of your desire.
No one can tell you who you really are or what your company should look like. Everything is possible and at the beginning of the journey you have complete freedom. Make sure to use it.
Aspirations
To aspire to something means something you want deeply that might be out of reach at the present moment. You aspire to something you don’t have but really want. In the context of startups—in life for that matter—never underestimate the importance of being aspirational.
You can aspire to be something—and you can aspire to do something. The best of both worlds comes when who you aspire to be connects directly to the company you want to start.
Role Models
A key piece of this process is to find the right role models. The obvious models for founders are Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. But as you investigate those you most admire in business, it is important not to limit yourself to billionaires and/or unicorn founders—or men.
In your daily life, try to notice people in business who are simply happy. Maybe it’s one of your parents—or both—or someone in your family. It might be the barista at the local coffee shop or the owner of the neighborhood fruit stand who loves what he or she or they do (or does).
Think about what would really make you happy. You don’t need a billion dollars to be incredibly successful and to live happily ever after.
Eschew the obvious and look for role models in unlikely places.
Success
The most important outcome of this process for the entrepreneur(s) is to decide what success looks like to he or she or them.
What’s the point of striving, sacrificing, and succeeding if you don’t come out happy in the end?
Happiness in the startup space invariably includes money and wealth but you have to establish those benchmarks for yourself. If you don’t, you might succeed and end up in a situation you don’t want with people you don’t like. You might not even like the person you have become in the bargain.
So have a broad definition of success that speaks to you personally. Getting any company off the ground is cause for celebration. Assembling the right team is a monumental achievement. Raising money from credible investors should always be an incredible moment in the life of a startup. An exit that leaves you ahead financially—like being acquired or merging or going public—should bring lasting happiness, especially if your company is consistent with who you are as a person.
If you don’t know who you are or why you’ve started a company, it’s literally impossible to build a corporate culture that starts with you.
Questions
Here are some key questions to ask yourself. Write as long or as short as you want.
What is your story?
What is your company’s story?
What do you aspire to be?
What do you aspire to do?
What do you really care about? What matters most to you?
If you could write a blank check that allowed you have anything you wanted, what would be on that check?
Who are your role models? Why?
If you only had one chance in my life to start a company, what would that company be?
In what industry?
In what country?
Why do you want to start this particular company?
Can you do it alone, or do you have a partner(s) in mind?
What would the core team look like?
What do you want your company to be?
What do you want your company to do?
What is unique about your company?
What would success look like to you?
How much money do you need from the startup not to worry about money again? Is that your goal? Or something else?
Do you want to make a good living—or do you aspire to generational wealth, enough money to pass down to ensuing generations?
Upon reflection, what is your personal story’s connection to your company’s story?