Expressing your why: The Brand Origin Story

Let’s dive into the meatiest one of all your foundational brand content—the Brand Origin Story. If you’ll think back to our house diagram at the beginning of the series, you’ll remember that the Brand Origin Story is your doors and windows. This is what lets people see inside your brand to the person within. It’s a powerful way for your ideal client to understand you and feel like they can relate to your story, making it easier for them to trust you with their business.

The diagram below is something you may have seen in writing classes or even in regards to brand storytelling. It’s a diagram of the Hero’s Journey, which is Joseph Campbell’s mythic storytelling structure. You’ll see this structure in so many of our most beloved stories—from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings to Harry Potter to Captain America to Guardians of the Galaxy to Bridget Jones’s Diary. It is everywhere. And it’s everywhere because it’s a story structure that humans have been telling and hearing for centuries so that we are hard-wired to understand it.

If we look at the diagram, the hero starts in the normal world. Things are going along just fine and dandy until something happens that necessitates the hero to leave the normal world to solve a problem. This is the Call to Adventure. Shortly thereafter the hero Meets a Mentor—Obi-Wan Kenobi, Gandolf, Hagrid—the guide who is going to teach the hero what they need to know to solve the problem, and help them as they move into the unknown.

That first step into the unknown is Crossing the Threshold. From there, our hero undergoes Trials and Failures and gains New Skills and Growth until they run into a challenge they cannot overcome.

The setback, called Death & Rebirth is catastrophic, and it has the potential to derail the journey entirely. This transformative moment leads to a great Revelation that puts the hero back on her path with renewed purpose. She’s able to make the Changes—usually to mindset—to push through and finally make things right through Atonement. The hero is then rewarded (Gets Gift), and Returns Changed to the normal world.

I always think of the end of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (the movie, not the book) as the perfect example of Returning Changed.

“It feels strange to be going home, doesn’t it?” asks Hermione. 

“I’m not going home. Not really,” answers Harry. 

He’s hopping on the Hogwarts Express, heading back to the normal world. But he’s changed, Hogwarts has become the place where he belongs, and Number 4 Privet Drive will never be home again.

Let’s take a look at how the Hero’s Journey can help us build a compelling Brand Origin Story for a wealth management enterprise.

Example: A Nonprofit Strategy Coach

• The Call to Adventure: Joe was living an ordinary life, selling insurance in his mid-sized town. He couldn’t help but feel that there were better ways to be serving his clients’ needs, but it was a vague feeling with no readily accessible solution. He knew he could be doing something more, but didn’t yet know what it was. Then, one of his clients died. While the insurance he had sold the client did what it was supposed to do and kept the family out of dire straights, their lives were changed financially forever. They were adrift and without most of their income, and now looking at a future where nothing was certain. This was a pivotal point for Joe. He could have better prepared this family for change by making sure their full financial picture was in order. But he didn’t. 

• Meeting a Mentor: Joe confided in a friend, Abby, who then leant him a book on comprehensive financial planning and the idea took hold in his brain. Abby had already added more financial planning to his own practice, and was preparing to take the CFP exam.  

• Crossing the Threshold: After Joe's experience with the family, there was no going back for him. He knew he needed to be serving his clients in a different way, and the path his friend had shown him aligned with his own vision of how he saw himself making an impact. He brought Abby and a CPA he had frequently worked with, Barton, together and pitched the idea of them bringing their small firms together. It was that evening over chips and salsa that Safeguard Financial Planning was born. 

• Trials & Failures: But as Joe, Abby and Barton stuggled to integrate their businesses, they also struggled to articulate their vision to clients. Those who were used to going to the partners for insurance or tax prep didn’t think of them as financial planners. Transitioning clients to the new model was slow, and Joe often wondered that first 18 months if this was going to be a viable business model. 

• Growth & New Skills: Once all three partners obtained their CFPs, they watched their business slowly gain traction. they worked together to identify the types of clients they really wanted to serve. All were focused on regionally based families who were in their prime earning stages and getting the itch to ramp up their retirement savings, and terrified that they’d waited too long to “get serious.” Most of their existing clients didn’t fit this model, so for the first time, the partners had to learn how to market to a new audience. By leaning into their unique skills, the partners developed a concept for a financially-focused segment on the local morning show. At that point, their business really started to take off. 

• Death & Rebirth: About 4 years after starting Safeguard Financial Planning, the company had about $400 million under management and momentum wasn’t slowing. At the annual leadership summit that year, Barton told Abby and Joe he’d be leaving the company to stay home with his special-needs child. The two partners were shocked. They knew what a struggle it had been to continue running the business while things at home got more and more complex, but they hadn’t seen this coming. Many of their best clients had come through their tax planning offering, which Barton headed. The future of Safeguard Financial Planning started looking very uncertain. 

• Revelation: As Joe and Abby talked through the options and how they could continue to generate lead flow with such a dramatic loss to the tax planning department, Abby had an epiphany. Families like Barton’s are exactly the ones Safeguard is here to serve. So serve they did. 

• Finally Changes: Joe and Abby worked with Barton and his spouse to rework their own financial plan around the services and support they would need to create an amazing and wonderful family life for themselves and their child. As a result of this plan, Barton decided to stay on in a contract role to continue to advise the tax planning team and develop his second-in-command into the team leader. 

• Atonement: What Safeguard was able to do for Barton’s family was deeply moving for everyone involved. The company immediately reached out to a local respite care organization for special-needs families and shared an idea: Safeguard would provide pro-bono financial planning for any family the organization served. 

• Gets Gift: As the financial planners at Safeguard continued providing pro-bono services to the respite care center’s clients, Abby and Joe were brought in to meet with one of the organization’s donors, who was the head of one of the state’s most wealthy and philanthropic families. She thanked the pair for the life-changing work they’d been doing with the organization’s clients. The donor, it turned out, had a sister with special needs, and that’s why this organization was so near and dear to her heart. She had just gone through a life change of her own, and was wanting to move assets from her former financial planner. After a few meetings, she signed as Safeguard’s largest client and has since been a prolific source of referals for the firm. 
• Returns Changed: Now at the 10 -year mark, Safeguard is sitting at $3.5 billion of assets under management, one of the fastest growing RIAs in the U.S. Their focus has continued to be on preparing special-needs families to live with intention, no matter what life throws at them. This message has resonated with HENRYs and HNW prospects who share a profound desire to protect and provide for their special-needs loved ones. Safeguard may have started as a scrappy financial planning firm who didn’t know exactly how it wanted to serve clients. Today, it’s a firm with a calling to serve special-needs families across the economic spectrum. And that calling attracts clients nationally and brings in top financial planning talent.

How to use the Brand Origin Story 

Once you create your Brand Origin Story, you can use it in multiple ways: 

• As the About page on your website
• As your speaker bio 
• As your About the Author section in an eBook or other long-form content piece 
• Repurposed into multiple long-form social media posts or blog posts.

The structure presented here can be used for more stories than just yours. Imagine using this for client stories and case studies. The Hero’s Journey structure can paint an emotional picture of how your services can transform people. Use the client stories as case studies, blog posts, long-form social media posts, or anecdotes in your presentations. You’ll hear it from me a lot—repurposing is the name of the game.  

Once you understand the structure of a Brand Origin Story, you’ll start seeing it everywhere there’s a beloved brand. Apple’s origin story is standing up to the artless, soulless and overly complex interfaces of the first personal computing devices to create simple, functional, beautiful technology.

Tony Robbins’ Brand Origin Story is about wanting to help people NOW, but the psychiatric establishment was moving too slowly, so he became the breakout hero.

Dyson vacuums came about because of James Dyson’s frustration with vacuums that lost suction and his obsessive, super-nerdy quest to figure out why.

Frequently, the community built around a brand is proportionate to the strength of the Brand Origin Story.