Build Your Story

Whatever information you give them becomes part of the box.

That's not necessarily a bad thing.

Human beings need shortcuts to understand each other.

The problem comes when the box is incomplete, confusing or belongs to a version of you that you're trying to leave behind.

If you don't help people understand you, they'll do it themselves.

I've met plenty of fascinating people who become considerably less interesting when they explain themselves.

Not because they aren't interesting.

Because they tell you everything.

They start with university.

Then their first job.

Then why they left.

Then the next company.

Then something they started.

Then another business.

Then something completely different.

Five minutes later, you've been given twenty facts and still aren't quite sure who the person is.

They think:

I've explained everything.

You think:

I'm still not entirely sure what you do.

That's the problem we're going to solve.

A good story isn't everything that happened to you.

It's the thread that helps somebody understand why those things belong together.

A chronology tells me where you've been.

A story helps me understand why it matters.

Imagine somebody tells you:

“I started in logistics, moved into PR, then retail, then operations and eventually started a business.”

On paper, that can look disconnected.

But talk to them properly and perhaps something else appears.

Maybe throughout every one of those jobs they were the person bringing different people together, creating order from complexity and getting things moving.

Now the story changes.

“I've always been drawn to situations where lots of moving parts and different people need bringing together. That's taken me through logistics, relationships and operations, and eventually into building businesses.”

The history hasn't changed.

The interpretation has.

That's what we're looking for.

What thread explains your moves better than your job titles do?

This becomes particularly important when you want to change direction.

Imagine somebody has spent twenty years in finance and now wants to work in education.

They may think the finance career has become irrelevant.

It hasn't.

Perhaps the real story is:

“I spent twenty years learning how organisations make financial decisions. What increasingly interested me was helping other people understand those decisions. Now I want to use that experience in education.”

Same past.

Different narrative.

You don't have to pretend the previous twenty years didn't happen.

And you don't have to invent a new identity.

You need to understand which parts of your past provide credibility for where you're going.

Your experience doesn't necessarily need changing. Your emphasis might.

There is another side to this.

The story you repeatedly tell doesn't only influence other people.

Eventually it influences you.

If you've introduced yourself as a finance person for twenty years, it becomes harder to imagine being anything else.

If you've always been “the operations person”, you may stop noticing your creative ability.

If you've spent years describing yourself through one company, leaving it can feel like losing part of your identity.

If you've taken time out to raise children, you may start introducing yourself through the absence from work rather than everything you have become during it.

A useful story creates coherence.

But it shouldn't become a cage.

So while we build your story, we're going to ask another question:

Is the story you've been telling about who you are making the next version of you harder to see?

You may hear this described as building a personal brand.

That's useful language, but I think people sometimes make it more complicated than it needs to be.

This isn't about turning yourself into a product.

It isn't about pretending to be an expert in something you've just discovered.

And it isn't about creating a polished version of yourself that bears little resemblance to the real person.

Start somewhere much simpler.

If somebody spends five minutes with you, what do you want them to understand about you?

Then:

What do you want them to remember tomorrow?

And eventually:

If they introduced you to somebody else, what would you hope they said?

That's reputation.

And reputation matters.

It affects who people introduce you to.

Which jobs they think of you for.

Which projects they invite you into.

Whether they see you as a potential founder, investor, partner, leader, employee, adviser, creator or something else.

A clear story makes you easier to understand, easier to remember, easier to recommend and easier to introduce.

That's why this work matters.

You never really know where the next opportunity will come from.

It might not come from the person you're speaking to.

It could come from their friend. Their employer. Their investor. Their former colleague. Their brother. Their aunt. Someone they meet three months later.

But there's a practical problem.

They need to know what to connect you to.

If somebody leaves a conversation thinking:

“Interesting person. Not entirely sure what they do.”

you've made their job difficult.

If they leave thinking:

“She understands how to turn scientific ideas into businesses and she's looking to work with early-stage biotech founders.”

the connection becomes much easier.

Your story isn't only about presenting yourself well.

It helps other people know what to do with you.

There are broadly three situations where this becomes particularly useful.

Someone who doesn't know you yet. They need clarity. Who are you? What makes you interesting? Why should they remember you?

Someone who already knows you one way. They may need to understand that you're changing. Perhaps you've been known as an operator and now you're investing. An employee becoming a founder. A finance professional moving towards education. A parent returning to work in a different field.

Your reputation may need to catch up with you.

Someone who could help you get where you're going. They need to understand why your past gives you credibility for the future you're describing.

This is where a good story becomes commercially useful.

Founders often become very good at explaining their business and surprisingly bad at explaining themselves.

But investors, employees, customers and partners are also asking:

Why you?

Why did you notice this problem?

What happened in your life that made you care?

What have you learned that gives you an unusual perspective?

Why are you capable of bringing this particular idea into the world?

The answer shouldn't be manufactured founder mythology.

We're not going to rewrite your childhood so that everything somehow led inevitably to your startup.

But if there is a genuine connection between your experience and what you're building, we should find it.

A strong founder story creates coherence between the person, the problem, the insight, the mission, the evidence and the future.

Most biographies spend far too much time on the past.

That's understandable.

The past is factual.

The future feels less certain.

But if you're trying to change direction, your story cannot spend 95% of its time reinforcing the identity you're trying to move beyond.

We're going to look at three things.

The past. Which experiences actually give you credibility? Not everything you've ever done.

The present. What are you doing now? What matters now? What are you building, learning, changing or exploring?

The future. Where are you heading? What are you trying to become known for? What do you want more of?

You don't need to pretend you've already arrived.

But people should have some sense of the direction of travel.

There is one more problem with personal branding.

You cannot simply announce what you want people to believe.

Imagine someone says:

“I'm passionate about artificial intelligence.”

Fine.

What have they done? What have they learned? What have they built? Who have they met? What events have they attended? What have they written? Which communities are they part of?

Where is the evidence?

Your story is the beginning.

Then comes:

STORY → EVIDENCE → VISIBILITY → REPUTATION

If you want to become known for something new, we'll also work out what you need to do so that the story becomes increasingly true.