Why You Need To Tell Your Founder Story (especially when you're afraid to)

Your "boring" journey is the secret weapon your business needs (even if you're a plumber, a baker and yes, a candlestick maker)

Photo by Engin Akyurt via Pexels

I’m a sucker for a good life story - those authentic real-life experience that makes you sit up and take notice of what’s happening to you and makes you take notice.

But what about your founder story?

• That thing you can't stop thinking about

• The problem you solve in your sleep

• Your obsession everyone calls weird

• The story that tells everyone exactly why you started doing what you do

This is your goldmine - the journey that will turn your passion into profit.

So why do so many people get this wrong? They tell the wrong story, or rather, they don't tell their story.

Somewhere in those startup pitches, brand messages and 'About Us', the real authentic story, the passion, gets lost.

Your Founder Story IS Your Lightbulb Moment

Let's roll back a bit - the term founder... what does that actually mean?

It sounds lofty. In common parlance (aka LinkedIn), a founder has come to mean:

• Someone who has a Silicon Valley SaaS startup pitching VCs for millions of dollars

• A tech innovator who had a major heart issue and developed a lifesaving app

• An engineer who creates a new type of corrosion-free composite brake pads (This one is real because I am the proud auntie of said engineer.)

Does being a 'founder' mean invention, investment, and innovation? Absolutely.

The Truth About Being a Founder

According to Indeed.com: A founder is a business professional who starts a company. Founders take an idea and use their own skills and knowledge to build a business from nothing.

And Hubspot says: A founder is an individual who forms and establishes a business or organization. The founder is typically responsible for setting the mission and vision of a company.

Let's rephrase that.

A founder dreams big. A founder takes an idea from think to do. They are the light, the spark, the person who sets the mission and values. No pressure, right?

And here's where we get right down to it. We are all founders.

The Power of Your Founder Story

Many times, people with great ideas, founders, have difficulty expressing the WHY they created their business.

Their why needs to align with the goals of their business offering and somewhere along the line, they forget their truth, trying to fit a mold.

The easiest founder story is the 'phoenix from the flames' - the hero's journey from rags to riches, from illness to health. The idea that a tragedy becomes a success story is embedded in our psyche of what makes a story interesting.

But what happens when the founder doesn't have that dramatic story to tell? Or can't explain their passion because they're stuck on what it 'should' be?

Case Study: When Authenticity Feels Like Impostor Syndrome

Helen's company helps patients make decisions about their health care. She has an impressive degree as a therapist from a top university and worked for many years with companies in the healthcare space.

Helen knows her stuff.

She saw a gap in the market - becoming a consultant for patients with a particular health issue - and started a business.

But when faced with the question 'Why did you start your company?', Helen felt like an imposter. She had never experienced the health issue her company solved but she felt she had to align herself somehow because she truly was passionate about her value proposition and mission.

So what did she do? She tried to fit the square peg in a very round hole.

She created a story about having a health scare that was minor and had nothing to do with the problems her potential clients were facing.

Her origin story didn't resonate with many of her customers and she came across as inauthentic.

The result? Helen felt like an impostor.

Crucially, her insecurities about why she started her business created a larger problem of inauthenticity throughout the company's mission and value and ultimately, their marketing messaging.

If the founder didn't feel her origin story was authentic, why would potential clients want to pay for her services?

Helen was not an impostor. Helen had valuable experience of a subset of the healthcare vertical that was easily translatable to a valid origin story.

She just didn't know how to tell it.

The Power of Shifting Your Perspective

Helen shifted the story to focus on her compassion, her network and her entrepreneurship. Her experience as a therapist, hearing hundreds of stories of people who were suffering with this illness, provided her with a lightbulb moment.

As an entrepreneur at heart, she knew that her compassion and her network of resources within the space, her drive to help people who were struggling, was a more believable story because it was the truth.

From Pipes to Purpose: A Plumber's Founder Story

Justin is a plumber who spent 5 years as an apprentice with a larger plumbing contractor, before launching his own business. He had a website and an Instagram account but struggled with getting potential clients who saw him as inexperienced and not old enough to be credible.

As we talked about the why of his business, I asked him about the years between high school and now. Justin had spent two years doing random jobs to fund his passion project - traveling through Africa and Asia.

As he talked, his eyes lit up. He recounted stories of his adventures, visiting remote villages in Malawi and taking overland buses through Asia.

"There are so many people who don't even have basic plumbing or water sources in their homes," he told me. The experience gave him insight into how important these 'basics' were, and when he got back home, he enrolled in an apprenticeship course to learn plumbing.

We had his origin story - the experience that made him sit up and take notice of a problem that needed solving.

Together we wrote his 'about' page, filled with photos of his travels and provided a view of the real Justin, and how his passion became his profession. Potential clients now had an understanding that this young man had the experience and a passion for making their lives better, to solve a problem that everyone has.

Justin was relatable. Justin became believable and human.

Your Founder Story Matters (Yes, You're a Founder Too)

Let's take back the term Founder because really, we are all founders. If you identify as someone who has a great idea and are looking to build a business around that idea, you are a founder.

In a world where we don't always know what is real or not, authentic storytelling will always make a bigger impact.

Everyone has a valid founder's story. It doesn't have to be a big dramatic life vs death origin story.

People want to know who you are, how you had the guts to take your amazing idea and make it a reality.

Your Next Steps: Crafting Your Authentic Founder Story

1. Reflect on your journey - what really drove you to start your business?

2. Identify the problem you're passionate about solving

3. Consider how your unique experiences contribute to your approach

4. Write your story focusing on authenticity, not drama

Ready to unlock the power of your founder story?

I'm offering free 15-minute strategy calls to help you craft your narrative.

Let's make your story work for your business!