The Founder Story Kit has four exercises, and it takes about 90 minutes over two sittings. You'll record the story you tell when someone asks how you got into this, find the tension in it, write it at three lengths, and build an About page around it. It also includes 8 of the 64 interview questions from The Story Excavation Method.

Paid subscribers get the kit as a Google Doc you can type straight into, just like the first two toolkits.

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That story is where I'd start, because it carries the most useful thing I know about brand stories. Credentials make people respect you. One specific, slightly unexpected detail makes them remember you, and remembering is what gets you the call.

Most About pages are written for a skeptic

Most of the About pages I read are working hard to prove something, with years in business, degrees, and a row of client logos. All of that is true, and it's worth including. But it's written for a skeptic, and most people who land on your About page aren't skeptical yet. They're curious! They want to know who they'd be working with.

And yet when founders sit down to write that page, the dinner story is usually the first thing to go, because it doesn't seem professional enough.

What the dinner version has that the website doesn't

The dinner version starts in a moment. "I was standing in my kitchen at 4 a.m. with forty dozen cookies and no oven big enough to bake them" puts the reader somewhere before you've asked them for anything. "Founded in 2015, we're a family-owned bakery committed to quality" doesn't put them anywhere at all.

It also has a problem in it. Something went wrong, or cost more than you expected, or didn't make sense until later. That tension is why people lean in when you tell it, and it's the first thing that gets sanded off when the story moves to a website.

And it sounds like you. Nobody has ever said "committed to quality" across a dinner table.

How to get it onto the page

Tonight, before you type anything, tell the story out loud to your phone, the way you'd tell a friend who asked. We all tend to sound more like ourselves when we talk than when we type, and the recording keeps the parts your typing fingers would tidy away.

If more than one story comes to mind, or none does yet, The Story Excavation Method has 64 interview questions, organized by the chapters of your life and career, to help you find the one that's yours.

Then play it back and listen for the first moment where something specific happens. That's where your About page starts. Keep your credentials, but move them lower on the page. By the time a reader reaches them, they'll already want to believe them.

If you'd like to know where your story is weakest before you start, the free Story Gap Diagnostic takes about four minutes and shows you the one gap to close first.

Next month, I'll be looking at why most origin stories start too early, and how to find where yours really begins.

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