How to tell the story of your business

How can you capture in writing the soul of the work you do? Tell the story. It's that simple.

Written Jan 08, 2009, read 646 times since then.

I'm standing in front of a class in my art studio in Lowell, Massachusetts. Around me are easels, a paint spattered tabourette, half finished abstract paintings, messy twisted tubes of paint. Round metal studio lights throw beams that crisscross along the white washed brick walls. The students sit at long tables that are caked with dry acrylic paint.

The eight students range in age from 20 to 60. Half want to learn to write fiction, the other half to write better marketing material for their business. I am a fiction writer/visual artist/writing coach. I actually pitched the class for these dual purposes, creative and business.

How is it possible for fiction writers and marketing writers to get what they need out of the same class? Learning how to tell a story is the same if you're writing a novel, or if you're trying to sell your business. You must tell a story and tell it well. It's that simple.

Most inexperienced business owners want to write clever copy that sums up their products. This is useful for some sections of marketing material, but fully understanding and expressing the story of your business is a soulful way to attract people. And it can help to attract more compatible clients and customers and weed out the time wasters.

I use myself as an example. I'm a 45-year-old novelist and visual artist. I used to be an international journalist. I want to revamp my website copy for my personal art/writing website. How do I begin?

I must tell the story of how I went from journalist to visual artist.

How do I do that?

Pick a provocative scene to begin the piece, something very specific that was epic in your life, something you can't get out of your mind. If that event is deep and soulful and touches you, it will touch the reader. If you tell it step-by-step and add visceral detail, it will engage your reader too. Write a rough draft straight through without stopping --beginning, middle, end. Just tell it.

Here's how my rough draft looks. Notice how I put myself in a real moment in the past and how I give specific details. God is in the details, as they say, or the devil. I get quite personal below, but it's a rough draft and I can take some of the more personal stuff out if I need to. I remember that this is for an artist/novelist website. My customers want to buy my art or publish my novels, and I may want it to be provocative. For more professional purposes, you may want to pick an incident to begin the piece that's related to the work you do, to the product you have to sell. Here's the piece:

I'm sitting in a newsroom and the police scanner is on at the next desk. It buzzes with news of violence. Not the sort of news we're editing to put in the newspaper, but events that are happening in real time. A woman's cracked voice from her car after an accident. A man's desperate pleas that he's lost his child in the mall. I am breathing this all in like smog in a dirty city. It fills my body as I edit and polish other stories on the daily traumas of our modern life.

Sometimes even I am surprised by the course my life has taken. I grew up on a farm in Missouri where I butchered animals. Right out of college, I got a writing/editing job at an English-language newspaper in Tokyo. Suddenly, I was in the Orient as a journalist. I loved it. It was epic. I left the Tokyo daily after three years and became a travel writer for a year through Asia. I ended up in Great Britain. I worked at London dailies for several years.

As I sit in the newsroom, my arms are going numb again. I've been having problems with my arms from typing so much. Around me a half dozen other journalists pace and type and fret, working diligently. You can hear the tap, tap, tap of myriad fingers filling the cavernous open-plan newsroom like miniature drumbeats. Why are my arms so numb? I rub them. I know deep down that for a long time I've been getting Repetitive Strain Injury, not carpal tunnel, but something at my shoulders. I know but I ignore it.

I have so much work to do, I don't have time for these arm issues. I rub them again and then force myself to focus on the story on my computer screen. On the scanner comes a small boy's voice. He's under the bed. He's grabbed the cordless phone, and snuck under the bed to call 911. Daddy has a gun and is going to kill Mommy. His voice trembles. I can't believe this is the background noise of my life. I stop working. I stand up. My arms have gone completely numb. Something has snapped and I can't use my arms.

Thus was the beginning of a severe case of Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, a condition where nerves are pinched at the clavicle and result in something the doctor's call Dead Arm Syndrome. It took me more than a year of treatment to get my arms back. I would never work in a newsroom again. My epic life was over.

I have a lot of energy. The worse thing you can do is take away my work. During the long relentless hours of no work, I memorized short fiction pieces in my head and promised myself I'd write them or voice them when I was better. I started to use my hands to make art. I received myriad forms of healing. I became a healer. A friend said: In that newsroom, it sounds like you just couldn't "handle" it anymore. I just couldn't handle the life of storytelling that was all about violence.

I understood from that point forward that I needed to breathe in beauty and soul and have that come out of my hands. Today, I'm on my second novel. I can type in short spurts again and I use voice software. Today, I run a successful writing coaching business. Today, I have an art studio and massive canvases that shout color and light. Today, I am hired as a design consultant for page and web design in developing countries all over the world.

What story do you have to tell? What specific incident marks a turning point in your life or your business. Write out the incident. Tell the story. You'll engage your clients and customers in a soulful level. As the Hopi proverb goes: "The one who tells the stories rules the world."

Learn more about the author, Caroline Allen.

Comment on this article

Posted by Dan McComb, Seattle, Washington | Jan 08, 2009

Bravo, Caroline. I used to be a photojournalist and hadn't thought of the rich material that provides for telling a personal story that relates to what I'm doing in business today. Thank you for helping me connect the dots.

Follow Biznik on Twitter
Posted by Barbara Breckenfeld, Mountlake Terrace, Washington | Jan 08, 2009

Thank you, Caroline, for demonstrating story telling with your personal example. Business is indeed personal, even when we are writing marketing materials. The social media are making it more so.

Ultimately people buy for emotional reasons. By that I mean that I could go to any number of doctors who are qualified, but I go to my doctor because I like her and she knows me. I trust her, and feel safe.

Stories are a direct connection to the emotions of our desired audience of clients.

Thanks Caroline!
Posted by Jane Blinka, Ferndale, Washington | Jan 08, 2009

Caroline, you have touched my soul this morning. Through the story of your life dancing you to a more awake and enlivened purpose, you teach us all of the wonder and beauty of listening to the inner wisdom of our bodies and souls. And your timing is a great gift, as it affirms me today in my own desire to tell my story. Your brilliant reflections here further the swelling, dazzling avalanche of souls now creating a new wave of conscious, peaceful Life on the planet. Thank you for sharing your gift; it is received with tears of hopeful joy.
Posted by Kirk Davis, University Place, Washington | Jan 08, 2009

Caroline, your story really connected with me. I really appreciated your advice about picking a provocative scene to begin my story. I have also believed that if it touches you deeply it will touch the audience. It was great to get a confirmation of that.

I liked your reminder that God and the Devil are in the details. I tell my clients that if they are in the details of their work then God is in the details. If they are not in the details then the Devil is in the details.

Great article! Your other articles look very interesting as well.
Posted by David Kuhns, Kirkland, Washington | Jan 08, 2009

Caroline! Funny how your voice and my voice combined at almost the same time (sorry for the rhyme) to discuss the power of the stories. Enjoyed your article; would love to discuss how you set up your writers' workshop/classes!
Posted by Colleen Wainwright, Los Angeles, California | Jan 08, 2009

Stories are in the air today. I saw two more stories about telling your story this morning, going through my RSS feed.

To ease the minds of people giving this a shot for the first time, also please give yourself permission to write what brilliant writer Anne Lamott calls the "shtty first draft." It's easy to fool yourself into thinking it's easy, reading good writers like Caroline writing even rough* drafts.

And in addition to a great tip, Caroline, might I say that's one helluva great story.

Translating truth into various media since 1961
Posted by Caroline Allen, Haverhill, Massachusetts | Jan 08, 2009

Thanks everyone for the fantastic comments. I kept thinking all day while I was at my studio that what turns tragedy into poetry is how you frame the story. How might we frame the financial crisis? A necessary world adjustment? A forced but needed re-alignment? How might it change the anxiety for everyone to tell that story differently?
Posted by Caroline Allen, Haverhill, Massachusetts | Jan 09, 2009

Also, I agree with Colleen about rough drafts. I've been writing nearly every day since I was 18, and I'm 45 now. It's not important to be eloquent on your rough draft. Just tell the story. Use a stubby pencil and the back of an envelope if you want. The equipment doesn't matter. Just get the story out of your head and onto the paper. That's a very necessary first step and it doesn't have to look pretty.
Posted by Mark Walters, Seattle, Washington | Jan 09, 2009

"Pick a provocative scene to begin the piece" Great advice - You have a future as a trial lawyer (or consultant helping them come up with a compelling trial theme and opening statement).
Posted by Kate Phillips, Carnation, Seattle, Washington | Jan 09, 2009

Hmm... If you're trying to contrast the newsroom with the farm, the example of "butchering" your own animals actually named a type of violence that, for me, connected the two experiences.

The detail of the boy under the bed dailing 911 really caught my attention and would be a fantastic way to open that piece.

I love the observation that you couldn't "handle" it anymore. (Very Louise Hay.)

Thanks for sharing your story and your observations.

"Financial Healing" and Practical Prosperity
Posted by Caroline Allen, Haverhill, Massachusetts | Jan 09, 2009

Thanks Kate. I'd connected the butchering and newsroom violence together a very long time ago. It's one of the themes that resonates through my novels Earth and Air.

I was in Armenia a month ago at a dinner party at an American Embassy official's house. Beside me were two Peace Corp workers, other development workers like me and two young American military guys.

On the shelf was a copy of Stephen King's On Writing. I pulled it out and told the party that I thought it was one of the best books on the writing process, even if you didn't read Stephen King. I told them I've recommended it to hundreds of my writing students and clients.

One of the military guys took it from me and showed it to his buddy. He said: "Oh, it's like the book On Killing."

We all laughed, thinking he was joking. He wasn't. I got back to Boston and got a copy of On Killing by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a book on the psychological effects on a human of killing in war.

The author begins the book with the butchering of animals on a farm and shows how because we've all gotten used to understanding food as something that comes from behind suction plastic, killing has become a secret and turned into a perversion, as evidenced by all the murderous TV shows and films.
Posted by Carol Skolnick, Santa Cruz, California | Jan 15, 2009

You tell it well. I predict a class or at the very least, an eBook coming from you on this subject!
Posted by Lisa Williams, Seattle, Washington | Jan 15, 2009

Wow, this is the most powerful piece I've read on Biznik. Thank you. I'm looking forward to trying to connect a poignant personal story to my business goals. I've been searching for a way to differentiate myself from my competition, knowing that the only real difference between me and them is that I'm me and they aren't! But I've been struggling with how to communicate to clients who I am and why they should work with me. Your article has been incredibly thought provoking!
Posted by Caroline Allen, Haverhill, Massachusetts | Jan 15, 2009

Thanks Lisa! It was very powerful to write. I've had a lot "come up" around it in my life since I published this article. They say that you should learn as much as your readers when you write something, that it should be as transformational for you to write as it is for readers to read. I really believe that.

I help people tell the story of their business as a writing coach, if you need any help coming up with and writing that poignant story that sets you apart!
Posted by Joan Hitchens, Olympia, Washington | Apr 27, 2009

Thank you, Caroline, for this personal inside look at you and writing. "It sounds like you just couldn't 'handle' it anymore" What a great line. This reminds me of talking back to our dreams and listening to the funny poet and statements they make back to us. Writing does bring out the subconscious if we are willing to listen.