How to Tell Your Origin Story Without Sounding Like a Brochure
Start at a specific moment rather than at the beginning. Keep the detail that costs you something. Name the doubt and the person who voiced it. A story with no friction in it reads as marketing, and audiences discount it automatically.
Almost every origin story on a business website has been polished until it is frictionless, and frictionless is forgettable.
Start at a moment, not at the beginning
"I have always been passionate about helping people" is where bad origin stories start. It is a summary, and summaries are not stories.
Start at a specific moment instead. A date, a place, a thing somebody said. "In August 2013 I was sitting in a parking lot in Valencia deciding whether to go back inside." That is a story, and everyone will listen to the next sentence.
Keep the detail that costs you something
Every good origin story has a moment the teller would rather leave out. The money that ran out, the person who was right to doubt you, the job you were bad at.
That is the part that makes it credible. Take it out and you have a brochure, because brochures never contain anything the author would prefer to hide.
Name the doubt
Almost every real decision had somebody who thought it was a mistake. A spouse, a parent, a colleague. That person is a character and their doubt is the tension the story needs.
Stories without opposition are just sequences of events. The doubter is what turns a sequence into something worth hearing.
Do not resolve it too neatly
- Avoid ending on how everything worked out perfectly.
- Include what it cost that you have not got back.
- It is fine to say part of it is still hard. That reads as true because it is.
Length and delivery
Ninety seconds spoken. If you cannot get through it in ninety seconds you are including things the listener does not need.
And do not rehearse it more than once. An origin story delivered for the fiftieth time sounds like it, and the whole point of telling it is that it should sound like it happened to you.
Questions, answered
Where should an origin story start?
At the specific moment something changed, not at your childhood. A date and a place in the first sentence does more than any amount of scene setting.
How long should a business origin story be?
About ninety seconds spoken. Long enough for a turn, short enough to hold attention. If it runs longer, you are including detail the listener does not need.
Should I include the hard parts?
Yes, and specifically the parts you would rather leave out. Friction is what makes a story credible. A frictionless origin story reads as marketing and gets discounted.
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