How to Tell your Businesses Origin Story

What’s up, all you beautiful people? Welcome back to the podcast. I just got my hair cut, just got it styled. It’s not how I usually style, so it’s very tall. I feel very vertical right now on camera, but I appreciate you guys being here today. I want to share with you one of the most common pieces of advice that I give when I go and I consult with eight figure businesses. And just for context, I charge $10,000 for 6 hours of consulting. So this right here is a very lucrative, very valuable piece of advice. And it seems to be the one that I give the most frequently.

Regardless of whether I’m talking to big businesses, little businesses, new entrepreneurs who are just starting off, this seems like the most common piece of advice that I give. And from my own personal experience, if you can take this lesson, if you can implement it into your business, it’s going to pay massive dividends. And it’s simply this. You need to learn how to tell your story better. You need to learn how to tell your story better. Most businesses, most entrepreneurs, most founders, most services, they don’t know how to tell their story in a compelling way that influences the behavior of the person on the other side. And the thing is, story is the source code of human behavior. It’s how we connect with other humans.

It’s how we give a sense of meaning to the universe around us. The example I always like to give is that if you took away the story of your husband or your wife, your significant other, if you didn’t know the story of who they were and who they were to you, they would just be a stranger. If you took away the story of your household or your childhood home, it’s just a pile of bricks, right? If you took the story of your wedding ring, if you took it away, it’s just a circle of metal. That’s it. It’s the stories that we tell ourselves about the things in our lives that gives those things meaning, purpose, and value. And so our role as the business, as the entrepreneur, is that if we tell our stories in a compelling way, it is the vehicle through which our customers can see themselves working with us. They can see themselves in our product. And so our ability to articulate that story is paramount.

So what I want to do right now is I want to share with you four ideas, four hacks, four tricks for telling a better story. In particular, there’s all sorts of different types of stories that we can tell. But what I want to focus in on here is your origin story. Every business has an origin story. There was a reason that you decided at some point to start your business and start offering this service to this demographic of people. There was a reason for it. And your ability to tell that reason in a interesting, compelling way is what gets people bought in to you. So here’s the four things that you’re origin story needs to have.

Number one, it needs to have a character that wants something. Every great story that’s ever been told has a character that wants something. They’re not happy. They’re not content with the status quo. They want to go out into the world, and they want something more, but they’re not yet ready to do it. And so for you, let’s take an example of somebody who goes off and starts their own accounting firm. The character who wants something could simply be. I was working at this big four accounting firm for all these years because I thought that was the path to, you know, success, the american dream, to getting everything that I ever wanted.

This is what my parents had told me. And all I found was that I worked around the clock, 24 hours a day. I didn’t have any time to go do the things that I love. I didn’t have time for my family. It was breaking up my relationships. Right. So the character that wants something is. I wanted a different way.

I wanted a way that I can control my life right now. How you tell that that beginning story doesn’t actually need to be laid out in those terms. I don’t need to tell you that stuff. I can infer a lot of it, right. Or I can tell you it as the story goes on. But what every story needs to have and where it should start as close to as possible is our second tip. That is the inciting incident. The inciting incident is the lightning bolt from the heavens, the thing that finally catalyzes our character into taking action.
There has to be a moment. There has to be this definitive, climactic line in the sand. Our character finally crosses over and from which there is no going back. This is important because most people are discontent with their lives, but they’re comfortable enough with that discontent to stay. So the pain of staying is not yet greater than the pain of going in their minds. And so they remain. Classic example of this. Two old men, they’re sitting on a porch.
One of the guys, his dog is sitting on the deck next to them, and he’s laying on a nail, and he’s groaning about it. And the other old guy looks at him, and he’s like, your dog’s laying on a nail. Why doesn’t he just get up and move? And the other guy says, well, I guess it doesn’t hurt bad enough. And that is most people in their lives, that character who wants something, everybody wants something, but most people will never leave home to go get it, right? This is the class. This is 99% of humans out there, right? But because you’re listening to this, you’re an entrepreneur. You’ve gone off on this different path. You’re not. The pain of staying is now greater than the pain of going for you, and you’ve chosen at some point to leave home.
So what was that inciting incident? What was the inciting incident for the business? Right. And when we’re talking about the business, maybe it’s a big brand and there’s not necessarily a human that we’re talking about, but there can still be the character, the avatar of the company. And the inciting incident is that avatar, realizing the world is a certain way and that they want to make a difference in that world, they want to change it. For some reason, they go off on this quest. So we want to start our story as soon as we can, as close to that inciting incident as possible. So a story I tell a lot from my origin story is that twelve years ago, I got a phone call out of the blue. It was my fiance telling me she’d had enough. I can’t do this anymore.
Next thing I know, I’m kicked out of the house, I’m living in the back of the van, and I have $80,000 of debt with no clue what to do next. Inciting incident. This thing, finally, this thing has happened. A lightning bolt from the heavens has disrupted my life, and now I am at rock bottom. Right? And you can infer. I don’t have to tell you that this character wants something for his life, right? I can tell you all those things. I’m homeless, I’m in a van. I got $80,000 that no clue what to do.
And you can infer that this character wants something, which is to not be in that situation anymore. I don’t have to. I don’t have to tell you that part. It’s inferred in a lot of ways, but sometimes you can just straight up tell people. Right, okay, so the third thing that your story needs, then. So we have our character who wants something. We have the inciting incident, the moment that finally kicks the bird out of the nest, and they have to go out into the world, and they have to go fight to survive. Now, the third thing is they have to struggle.
It’s the fight to survive, like I just said. So we don’t admire the things that you’ve accomplished. We admire the things that people have overcome. And the hero, the magnitude of the hero is in direct proportion to the magnitude of the obstacles they had to overcome in the quest. Right. So the bigger the struggle, the more we admire the individual for what they’ve done. And so this is the part where we show, like, hey, I was in that van, and I didn’t know what to do, and I was homeless, but I knew I had to do something, and so I went, and I tried this, and I went and I tried that, but it wasn’t working. It wasn’t clicking.
I still wasn’t making the progress, and I was giving. I just felt hopeless. But slowly but surely, this, you know, this friend came in. He pointed me in this different direction. We started going down this other path towards building our own business, and it was hard, and we didn’t know what we’re doing. We knocked on all these doors, hundreds of doors, every single day, and nobody would ever let us wash their windows. But then we got one sale and then another sale, and slowly but surely, we could start to. We started to build a little bit of momentum, right? So we have to have the struggle.

It can’t just be all sunshine and roses. You can’t just have a character who wants something that gets kicked out of the nest and then starts soaring. No, we need to see the bird fall to the ground, get hurt, get back up, because we admire when the bird gets back up, and then we need to see him flapping on the ground, trying. He can’t figure it out. And then it starts raining. And so now he has to live in a hole. Now he has to come back out in the sun. He’s like, I’m gonna fly.

I’m gonna fly. I’m gonna fly. He still can’t do it. And then he finds a friend who takes pity on him and shows him how to flap his wings just the right way. And now it finally takes off. Right? Huzzah. Okay, so we need to have a struggle. Number four, the fourth and final thing that your story needs to have.

There’s. There’s a lot of things your story could have, but, like, these are the main bits. Like, you ought to have a character who wants something. The inciting incident, the struggle, and then finally, the transformation. The transformation is important. Every good story is a. Is a. Is really distilled.

You could distill every great story down to a 32nd moment. Of transformation. And this is where the hero goes from having, wanting the thing, struggling for the thing, to either getting the thing that they wanted, or realizing that the thing that they wanted wasn’t actually the thing that they needed. And they had this moment of realization. That’s the transformation. And then they went into a different direction, then they got the thing. Right. So for you and your business, this could be the transformation.

As I finally figured out how to unlock all this stuff, I started making the money. But what I realized in the process was that money wasn’t the thing I was after. It wasn’t actually the solution. Money solves all your money problems, but it doesn’t solve, you know, all your other problems. And what I realized was that money was just a vehicle for solving those money problems. So then I could free up my time and my energy to solve the more meaningful questions of life, about meaning, purpose of making an impact. Right? And so that’s the transformation. And now being on a journey, like, what I try to do with this podcast, as an example, is to try to help entrepreneurs who were in a similar position.

You know, five, six figures, or maybe even seven figures. They’re just trying to scale, they’re trying to grow, and they’re trying to do it in a way that maximizes their return on life. Right? So that’s my transformation. What’s yours? That’s the question. What is your character that wants something? What’s this something that they want? Why don’t they go after what’s the inciting incident? What’s the struggle? And then what’s the transformation? If you can package all that together with your transformation ultimately being the solution that you offer to your, your, your clients, they are going to buy in to you, and they’re going to buy into your products far more quickly than you could ever imagine. This is the secret to scaling, like, telling your story in a compelling way. So that’s all I got for you guys today. Take this.

Run with it, please. I want to hear your story. So get to the comments. Shoot me a DM, take a picture of this podcast, share it on social media, on Instagram, and then write up like, what is your, your story? Give me your character that wants something. The transformation, I’m sorry, the inciting incident. The struggle and the transformation. Tell me the details of your story, and that’ll do it for me, guys. We’ll see you in the next episode.