Make it yours

You just can’t hide it. Anyone can tell immediately whether you’re committed to your business story -- or not. Is it your vision? Is it your strategy? Is it your passion? It comes through loud and clear as soon as you open your mouth. So if you intend to exercise your jaws, make sure that the story you’re about to tell comes from deep within you. Otherwise, you’ll get busted -- big time. Believing in your story is the first step toward using it to boost your business. Of course, there’s more to it than that.

Make it stick

Unfortunately for you, there are lots of other great stories out there. So you have to work pretty hard to make yours stand out. It doesn’t hurt to follow the wonderfully explicit advice offered by Chip and Dan Heath in their book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. They recommend stripping your idea down to the core, wringing everything out that isn’t absolutely required. After that, you’re ready to make it sticky. The Heath brothers propose the SUCCESs checklist of characteristics for sticky ideas that includes simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, and emotional -- leading up to stories. In other words, the actual story can be thought of as the final dab of glue that makes your idea stick in people’s minds. And don’t forget that your story should follow all of the other Heath principles that make ideas sticky.

Make it work

Of course, it doesn’t do any good to have a great story if it doesn’t match the reality of your business. Some entrepreneurs get off track by thinking that their story is a marketing gimmick for external consumption only. In fact, it needs to be the guiding light for your company. So put it into practice in your daily operations. Remember that fact truly is stranger than fiction, and it is almost always more interesting in entrepreneurial businesses. So by grounding your story in reality you’ll actually come much closer to achieving the principles of stickiness and, through an iterative process, you’ll develop a story that is both exciting and operationally useful.

Make it theirs

The true mark of a great story is that it is repeated often by others. If you’re serious about reaching the tipping point, get as many people as possible spinning your yarn. You’ll achieve two major objectives. First, you’ll cover a lot more ground by having others carry the torch. After all, if your story gets attention for you, it will probably get attention for them as well. Second, you’ll amass more credibility by having influential people talk about your company. So throw them a killer story, and make it easy for them to sow the seeds of your success.