Storytelling for business: a founder's guide to telling stories that sell

A Singapore start-up called Global Bionic Optics once asked me to make a corporate video about their lens, and the verticals in their business. First, I asked them what the purpose of the video communication was... To raise investor finance.

Then I looked into their lens technology, and discovered that it was invented by an Academy Award winning inventor. They wanted a corporate video, but I pitched them something else: a documentary about their co-founder, Jim Frazier. That film became The Impossible Lens. National Geographic picked it up and aired it in 2013 as The Aussie Who Baffled the World.

A corporate video would have explained the product. The documentary made people care about the man who built it. (GBO ended up closing a $10M fundraising round after the release of the documentary).

That's storytelling for business in one example. It's also why I wrote a book about it.

In short: Storytelling for business means explaining what your company does through people, change and belief, rather than features. It works because stories hold attention, stick in our memory and get retold. Founders can use it in five steps: Origin, Worldview, Invitation, Participation and Amplification.

What is storytelling for business?

Storytelling for business is the practice of communicating your company through a person, a problem and a change, instead of through a list of what your product does. It applies everywhere you need someone to care: your pitch, your website, your sales calls, your hiring and your marketing.

A feature list answers "what is it?" A story answers "why should I care?" Most founders are fluent in the first question and quietly stuck on the second.

In documentary we never start with the thing. We start with a person, what they want and what's in their way. Business is no different. Your product only matters once someone understands the problem it solves for a person like them.

Why does storytelling work in business?

Stories work because they do three jobs a feature list can't: they hold attention, they stick in memory, and they get passed on.

• Attention. A story creates a question (what happens next?) and people stay to find out. A spec sheet creates no questions at all.
• Memory. Chip and Dan Heath describe an exercise from Chip's Stanford class in their book Made to Stick. After students gave one-minute persuasive speeches, 63% of the audience remembered the stories told, but only 5% remembered a single statistic.
• Retelling. Nobody forwards a features table to a friend. People retell stories, and every retelling is marketing you didn't pay for.

There's a fourth job that matters most for start-ups: trust. When you tell people why you started and what you believe, they can judge your motives. That's a big part of why people buy from someone new.

What's the difference between business storytelling and marketing copy?

Marketing copy describes the product. Business storytelling describes the change in a person's life that the product makes possible.

The right-hand column isn't fluffier. It's more specific. Good business stories are concrete: a real person, a real place, a real before and after.

Where should founders use storytelling?

Use stories wherever a stranger has to decide whether to trust you. For most start-ups that means five places:

1. The pitch. Investors hear the same market-size slide fifty times a week. They remember the founder who couldn't stop noticing a problem.
2. The website. Your homepage and About page are where people decide if you're their kind of company. Lead with the problem and the belief, then the product.
3. Sales conversations. Replace the demo opener with a short customer story: who they were, what changed, what it meant.
4. Hiring. Good people join a story they want to be part of, not a job description.
5. Marketing content. Every post, email and video should advance one story, not fifty disconnected messages.

How do you tell a business story? The five steps

In Storification I break business storytelling into five steps. Each builds on the one before. Here's the short version; the full framework post goes deeper.

1. Origin. Why you started: the problem you couldn't stop noticing. Not your company history; the moment.
2. Worldview. What you believe about the world that your competitors don't. It's what makes people say "they're my kind of people".
3. Invitation. A clear first step for someone who shares that belief. Not "buy now", but "if you see it this way too, start here".
4. Participation. Your customers stop being an audience and become characters in the story.
5. Amplification. Once people see themselves in the story, they share it, and it travels further than any media budget could push it.

Most businesses jump straight to step five: "we need it to go viral". It never does, because steps one to four aren't there to carry it.

A worked example: Xero's customer stories

In 2009 Xero was crossing the Tasman from New Zealand into Australia, up against accounting software everyone already used. Their head of marketing and I tried something different. Instead of making ads about the product, we asked Xero's own customers to tell their stories.

Over about two years we made more than a dozen short films about small businesses, including Melbourne's St. ALi Coffee. They weren't about accounting software. They were about people building something, and Xero happened to be part of how they did it.

That campaign used all five steps:

• Origin: each film started with why the owner went into business.
• Worldview: small business owners deserve tools that give them their evenings back.
• Invitation: Xero asked its own customers to come forward and tell their stories.
• Participation: the customers were the cast, not a voiceover.
• Amplification: the businesses shared films about themselves with their own customers and networks.

This campaign had a full circle moment when we became the first Australian production company to use cloud based accounting for a feature film, while producing my writing/directing debut Love is Now... and we got paid to make a testimonial talking about how we used Xero.

What are the most common business storytelling mistakes?

• Starting with the product. It's the natural instinct and almost always wrong. Start with the person and the problem.
• Making the company the hero. The customer is the hero. Your company is the guide, the tool or the ally.
• Telling a history, not a story. "Founded in 2019, we've grown to 40 staff" is a timeline. A story has a turning point.
• Being vague. "We're passionate about innovation" says nothing. Name the person, the place, the moment. Show what you have sacrificed to stay innovative.
• Telling a different story every time. Pick one core story and tell it everywhere until you're sick of it. Your audience is only just starting to notice.

Try this today

Finish this sentence in one line: "I started this because I couldn't believe that…"

Then read it out loud. If it sounds like a brochure, go back further, to the actual day and the actual conversation. That sentence is the seed of your Origin, and the first step of your business story.

Want a head start? The free Story Engine asks you a few questions about your business and drafts your Origin, Worldview and Invitation for you in about five minutes.

Frequently asked questions

What is storytelling for business? It's the practice of communicating your company through a person, a problem and a change, rather than a list of features. It's used in pitches, websites, sales, hiring and marketing.

Why is storytelling important in business? Stories hold attention, are remembered far longer than facts and figures, and get retold. They also build trust, because they show people why you do what you do.

What is an example of business storytelling? Xero's early Australian marketing used short films about its small business customers rather than ads about its software. The films were about the people; the product was part of their story.

How do I start telling my business story? Start with your Origin: the specific moment or problem that made you start. Write it in one sentence, then build out what you believe, how people can join you, and how customers become part of the story.

Is business storytelling just for marketing? No. Founders use the same story to pitch investors, recruit staff, open sales conversations and align their team. Marketing is where most people see it, but it starts inside the business.

Sources

• Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick (Random House, 2007): an account of the Stanford exercise
• Paul J. Zak, "Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling", Harvard Business Review, 28 October 2014
• "Jim Frazier (inventor)", Wikipedia
• "Xero (company)", Wikipedia

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Jim Lounsbury is a filmmaker who has made films and brand stories in more than 20 countries. His work has been seen in cinemas and on the world's most viewed networks, including Apple TV, Prime Video, STAN, National Geographic, and more. He works with organisations and start-ups to find and tell their story. His book, Storification, is out 20 November 2026. Pre-order it here.