Most people would expect me to have a bias in favor of telling any story, because I’m a writer and telling stories is what we writers do.
Bias stipulated.
Having said that, I want to say something to companies who never tell their stories because they don’t think they’re interesting or worth telling – or that anyone would want to read them:
Your story is very worth telling, and entirely worth reading, simply because it is yours.
I don’t mean this in a Stuart Smalley sort of “good-enough-and-smart-enough-and-people-like-me” sort of way. I simply mean that your company would never have come into existence if someone didn’t want to accomplish something with it. That’s a great story. Every single time.
Did you succeed right out of the gate? That’s a great story.
Did you struggle? It’s always interesting when people overcome.
Did you fail and/or change directions – perhaps multiple times? Fascinating.
Did you learn things along the way? Let’s hear about it.
Content marketing tends to focus on products, services and customer value because that’s seen as most relevant to the target audience – and that, after all, is what you’re trying to sell. That should certainly be a central part of the story.
But the journey lays the groundwork for the whole thing, especially because it’s yours and yours alone. No one else has traveled that journey exactly the way you have, which means there’s something in it from which everyone else can learn.
Some company founders prefer to stay quiet and humble and just do their work. I am not going to try to twist your arm into seeking the spotlight if that’s just not you. But if company leaders are keeping their stories under wraps because they don’t think they’re interesting enough or relevant enough, I want to disabuse them of that notion.
If it was worth devoting this much of your life to building, it’s 100 percent worth telling about and hearing about.
And if you’d like us to help you tell it, we’d be honored.