What’s your founders’ story?

I love working with entrepreneurs. To succeed as an entrepreneur, you have to be creative, resilient, and persistent. What we see as ‘overnight success’ is the cumulation of many years of hard slog, rejection, and disappointment. I love asking them about how they started. What was the trigger, the idea, the opportunity they saw that got the ball rolling? This is the essence of the founder’s story.

Richard Turner is a serial entrepreneur, founder of Zen energy, and author of The Essential Entrepreneur. This is his founder’s story behind Zen Energy

“I was in the cubby house at the bottom of our garden enjoying afternoon tea with my daughter. It was getting late in the day and starting to get dark, but we were having so much fun that I didn’t want to stop. I started thinking about how I could install lights in the cubby house.  Running electricity from the main house wasn’t practical and it would also be very expensive. And, as every parent knows you never want to have something that requires batteries because invariably the light gets left on and you are replacing the batteries every second day.

‘Ahhh’ I thought, ‘What we need is a small solar panel to put on the roof and we can run lights off that.’

So, the next day I went into my local solar shop, explained what I needed, and thought that I would be able to install something that day. I was met with a confusing array of products and connections and complexity, and I thought to myself ‘This is way harder than it needs to be,’ and the seed of Zen energy was planted.”

We all have a founder’s story, it’s the fork in the road, the catalyst for change, the burning desire.

Here are some ideas to trigger your own story

1. What was the catalyst for this change?
2. What did you want to be when you grew up?
3. What prompted this research/area of study?
4. What enduring lesson did you learn from your parents?
5. Why did you choose to live and work in this city?
6. What journey have you come on to be here today?
7. What are the dead ends you ran into before you became successful?

Stories engage, entice, and excite. They make our message sticky and provide insight into you and your personality.

Time to share, what’s your founder’s story?

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Sharon Ferrier

Sharon Ferrier, through her business ‘Persuasive Presentations’ consults to organisations and individuals who have a need to improve their communication, presentation skills and confidence in public speaking.

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