I got a gift I wasn't supposed to see yet

My wife couldn’t resist. I’m so glad she didn’t wait.

My daughter dictated her very first story, word by word, so it could be written down and saved and handed to me wrapped on Sunday.

Then my wife saw me after the kids were asleep and the dishes were put away and caved. “You have to see this.”

I am the biased father that got a sneak peak and I am struck by not just the cuteness but the lesson within for us leading our family businesses.

She told a story. Her first one. And she told it the way humans have told stories since before we had writing, before we had business, before we had anything to sell.

Storytelling is as old as language. Storytelling is timeless. It was man’s first form of entertainment. It will outlast everything.

Here is how the story went.

There was a little princess who got lost in a deep forest…

(That is the whole set up. One line. She told me exactly what we were solving for before she told me anything else.)

Lost in the forest, a dragon named Cackahoo came to help her… 

(The guide was a dragon that helped her get out of the deep forest by taking a left turn.)

The left turn brought her home. To the palace, to her parents, to eat cake for dessert…

A set up. A problem. A guide. A turn. A payoff. 

She built the hero’s journey without ever hearing the words. 

Think about what you and I actually do for a living.

We are in the deep forest not knowing exactly how the future is going to unfold every single day.

Family business is disappointment over and over and over. 

We are problem solving machines. That is the whole job. We live in a fallen world. A customer leaves. A competitor is immoral. A family shareholder is upset. A board member disagrees with you. A succession stalls. A teammate’s ego blinds their ability to see the consequences of their actions.

Here is what my daughter instinctively understands.

A story without a hard problem is not a story. The problem is the point. It’s okay to be in the deep, deep forest.

The problem is what makes the cake in the palace so very sweet.

If my daughter had just written that a princess ate cake in a palace, then I would not have written this note this week about her story! 

We are sitting on decades of stories with problems that can help us move forward and inspire our family business.

Every family business is a vault of left turns. The time your grandfather put in a bid to do something with no idea how to do it and winds up being the only bidder. The time your great grandfather mortgaged his house just to make payroll. The handoff nobody thought would survive. 

That is content. Real content. The kind no investment firm can copy, because they did not live it like your family has lived it.

Institutionalizing the spirit of a family business is our secret weapon, and most of us leave it locked inside the heads of the people who were there.

So write them down. Say them out loud. Then repeat them constantly. 

Be the Chief Reminding Officer in your family and your business.

I love the line: Repetition doesn’t spoil the prayer. 

What story from your history belongs at your next town hall?

What story does your newest teammate need to hear on day one, so they understand what they actually joined?

What story has your board never heard, the one that explains why the family still holds on?

What story will you tell at the dinner table this week?

You already own the stories. The only real question is whether you capture them and tell them before the people who lived them are gone.

Onward,

Matt

P.S. My daughter’s princess did not find her way alone on a straight road. She found her way home with a hard left turn with her dear dragon guide, Cackahoo. Find your mentors to go on this journey with you. 

P.P.S. If you need a Cackahoo, then send me a reply and I can point you toward some dragons ready to point out left turns.