Once Upon a Time

“Why did you move to Tulsa, Oklahoma?”

That’s a question I’ve been asked repeatedly over the last 2 and a half years, ever since I persuaded our family to pack up our belongings and relocate from our beautiful home in Washington State.

Here’s the simple answer.

My company, which helps employees develop soft skills for the future of work, got funding in 2021 from a venture capital firm based in Tulsa. The VC firm offered to provide substantial in person assistance as we built out our business strategy. My co-founder was in Raleigh, NC and was willing to move as well, so this was a great opportunity to work from the same place in the formative years of our company.

Now here’s the same answer, told in a different way:

At the end of February 2020, my co-founder and I shook hands on starting a new business. We didn’t meet again for over a year.

Our company was built on a simple idea – that work was changing dramatically, and employees needed new stills to thrive in this environment. Now, suddenly, Ryan and I had to change the way we worked as we tried to build our new business, 3000 miles apart from each other while a pandemic was raging.

Physical whiteboards and coffee shop meetings were out, Zoom was in.

Building a business this way wasn’t fun. Co-founders help each other in a bunch of ways, but one is by sharing the experience – celebrating the wins and commiserating the losses with a beer, or sometimes just with a grin or a groan. But we persevered, and after dozens of false starts, a potential investor reached out to us with real interest.

“We’d love to meet you to talk more” they said “Can you come to Tulsa, Oklahoma? Flights and hotels are on us…for both of you”

“For both of you”. Hang on, that means we will actually get to hang out, as co-founders, and work together on this thing in real life! We both said yes, almost before they had finished asking the question.

2 weeks later, we were there in Tulsa, and finally our company felt like it was shifting from a theoretical idea to a real business. Every minute we had between meetings we’d find a room and frantically sketch ideas together, treasuring every moment we’d been denied.

At the end of the week, the offer came. The investors wanted in, and wanted us to move to Tulsa so they could get closely involved.

Tulsa? Neither Ryan nor I had ever even thought about Tulsa. And we both had families to consider….But, the week had been amazing. Imagine what we could do if every week was like that?

What the heck, the world is crazy right now anyway. Let’s have an adventure. So, we moved. And we are still here today.

Each of the answers I just shared is 100% true, but only one of them is in any way memorable. Of course, the second answer is longer, but stories don’t have to be long at all to have an impact. You may have heard of Hemingway’s famous 6 word story:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

6 words, just 6. Crafted in a way that makes the reader care.

Spending time constructing stories can be fun if you are into that sort of thing, but do they actually make any difference in a business setting? The answer is an absolute yes. Every day investments are made and people are hired because of story. The reason? Well, partly it’s about emotional connection, but that’s not the only reason. Stories provide us with two benefits. Firstly, because they deal with universal human themes, they give our brains a reason to care enough to remember them. But also, the structure of a story give us an organizing structure for the facts themselves. This is why mnemonists often use stories to help them memorize dry facts.

Underlying all of this is a simple truth. If you are communicating with others, it’s not their job to be engaged, it’s your job to engage them. You don’t have to be Shakespeare to accomplish that – you just have to learn some basic storytelling techniques, and practice them every time you can.

If you would like to learn more about how we can help you become a better storyteller, tell me why by e-mailing me at paul@billionminds.com.