Telling stories for fun and profit in the cutthroat world of serious business
The title on my business card reads, “Raconteur.”
It’s a somewhat archaic term that simply means storyteller, but it’s a hell of a lot better than consultant. The word itself has a rapscallion air to it, as if describing someone who might very well be a bit of a scoundrel, yet one with a sense of style and a flair for the dramatic. The type of gentleman grifter we don’t see much anymore.
It’s not a professional word, or even a particularly safe word. There’s an element of danger involved, with an almost mystical aspect to it, as if the police had hired a psychic to solve a murder. It’s certainly not something most people would list as their occupation on a form or post on their LinkedIn profile.
It’s a bit like saying you’re a professional wizard.
In today’s confusing world of AI Slop, data farming, optimization, and the total enshittification of the internet, developing a strong brand narrative can be an invaluable tool, and the more human and relatable you can make it, the more it can cut through the bullshit and connect with people emotionally. This is the way to carve a unique path in a crowded marketplace and stand out from the crowd.
It does require a little magic.
To be a writer, a good writer, is to be a storyteller, and in the world of business, storytelling can be a valuable skill, assuming you can learn to wield and promote it correctly. Storytelling has always been about connecting the dots for people. A way to explain complex subjects in ways that can be more easily understood, regardless of whether it’s the origin story of the universe or a particular sneaker’s rise to prominence in the zeitgeist. Whether it’s metaphorical or symbolic, we tell stories to illustrate a point and put the issue at hand into a framework that is more readily understandable. Stories make a complex world more accessible. They create the cracks that allow the light in.
In my former life, we called it marketing. A creative presentation of ideas designed to connect with consumers on an emotional level and motivate them to engage in behavior that was beneficial to the client. That’s all an ad campaign really is, or ever was. A short story about a product or service that enticed you to abandon your usual routine and try something new.
With branding, you have to get much deeper into the business because a brand is the core of who a company is, not what its messaging is. If there is no soul, no meaning behind the money, then you’ll have a soulless company. Most companies, at least the entrepreneurial ones, are rarely soulless, but many are lost and confused because they don’t know how to tell their own story, or even what their story is.
Not everyone has a dramatic origin story. More often than not, someone came up with a solution to fulfill a need, and they took a leap of faith. It’s often not any more complicated than that, but unless you want to be in the business of selling a commodity based on the lowest price, you’re going to need something more. You’re going to need a story.
If you wanted me to give you a more traditional answer about what I do, a more traditional business answer, I would tell you that I’m a branding consultant, but that’s a lot less entertaining and, to be honest, fairly meaningless when it comes to describing what I do. I’m a storyteller, and I get hired by companies to help them tell their story. It’s not all writing, of course. In fact, one could argue that the writing is only a very small part of it. Most of it is listening, with a little showmanship thrown in for good measure.
There are the usual strategies and tactics, of course, but also graphic design and typography, photography and filmmaking, and all manner of tactical executions that require craft and expertise derived from a lifetime in the business. At the end of the day, you are trying to tell a story, one designed to elicit a particular response or emotion that will connect with the audience on a deep, personal level, to convince them that your client’s product or service can help them escape their worst fears or realize their most cherished dreams. There’s a lot at stake. Your job is to make it look easy.
Similar to the old actors’ trope of searching for motivation, our job is to understand the motivation of the customer. We must understand who they are and then determine what they want. What drives them? What motivates them to make decisions, and specifically, what is most important when it comes to making the type of decisions required to choose your client’s product or service? What is it they want? It’s not always quite that simple, because most people have no idea what they want.
One way to discover this is through extensive research, which can be costly and takes time, but even if you don’t have big data on your side, you have to make an educated guess and develop a theory for the case. As Roger Martin of the Rotman School of Management once wisely said, “A plan is not a strategy.”
According to Martin, a plan is a list of things you’re going to put resources against, whereas a strategy requires that you make a case for winning. It is, quite literally, a plan for how you’re going to win. Most people come up with a plan for how they’re going to spend their money without connecting it to any desired outcome.
If they succeed in spending their budget in the way they intended, they will have succeeded in fulfilling their plan, whether that made them successful or not. They will have achieved their goals, but they will not have won. This is a better way to frame your business strategy. How are you going to beat the competition and take their market share, and why do you believe it will work?
Now that’s a strategy.
I once heard someone talking about how success requires taking leaps of faith, and that it’s a lot like rock climbing. Often, when confronting unfamiliar terrain, you will get to a place where there is no obvious move forward. There’s nowhere to grip or place your foot. Everything is just out of reach. But if you have experience, and you trust your instincts, you can identify that finger hold just out of reach and go for it. Not a ridiculous leap of faith, either, just the courage to let go of your safe hold to grab onto another. Obviously, this requires confidence and strength, but if you can do it, suddenly there is a new path forward, and you are on your way.
What storytelling does, what it’s always done, is show a path forward where none currently seems to exist. It not only allows you to imagine what could be, what might be possible just beyond your line of sight, but it also allows your audience to see it as well. It requires vision, that thing that all business leaders claim to have but very few understand, because vision is seeing what is not there, or at least what is there but not immediately apparent. Once one person finds the path, everyone else will follow close behind because now everyone can see it, and it seems obvious, but it’s the true leader who has the vision to see the path and the courage to be the first through the breach.
Good storytelling in business is more listening than talking, more patience than decisiveness. It’s the process of being comfortable in the unknowing and waiting for the answer to come, which can be scary for anyone who lacks self-confidence. You have to be supremely confident to be a consultant who is willing to say “I don’t know,” but this is the most powerful thing you can say.
An expert who knows everything is completely useless, despite how antithetical that might sound. In storytelling, you have to be open to anything, and when you are confident about what you know, you stop searching for answers. An expert is a consultant who can tell you with great authority what’s already been done, but can’t tell you what’s possible. A storyteller finds the story in the chaos. That’s the craft.
In my line of work, storytelling takes many different forms, and it’s often nonlinear in practice. It rarely begins as a single narrative, told from beginning to end, but instead comes from a series of observations that come together to form an idea. There’s something vaguely scientific about it. If I can develop a hypothesis based on observation and reach a logical conclusion that rings true, I can create a narrative that explains it in a way that strikes at the heart of the matter. It’s also why I’m so interested in the mechanics of comedy.
A joke is an equation about life, that when solved, is not only self-evident, but surprising. You laugh involuntarily at the truth of it because while it may seem obvious, now that you know the answer, you’d never considered it from that perspective before. That’s what a good story can do. It can explain something to you in such a way that it seems both fresh and obvious at the same time. That will stay with you.
An effective storytelling strategy in business is to create a framework that is both familiar and new. You are showing the hero’s journey, and a transformation is required, but you have to begin with a world that is recognizable before you can show a future that has yet to be imagined. If you create a logical progression, the reader will follow along until they, too, can see the way forward.
E.L. Doctorow famously wrote, “Writing is like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Our clients, the readers, are no different. They will follow you the entire way, one step at a time, as long as you lead them in the direction they want to go. It can’t be a fantastical story. It has to be grounded in reality, but if you tell it well, you can take them places they’ve never imagined, and they will thank you for the ride.
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