Why Telling YOUR Signature Story Is The Cornerstone of Your Brand

One of the best parts of my job is helping people reveal and tell their stories.

most clients who contact us think that we are going to be promoting their “product” in most cases with my clients this means music.

But, our job is actually helping our clients realize it’s stories and the deeper connections that telling them create, either visually or with a narrative that is key.

Having a signature story is the foundation that makes all of the difference

Back in the day, stories didn’t matter as much. Advertising used to equal marketing and so, the brand with the most money for ads won marketshare just by saturating the market (remember all those bad CDs you bought for $20 – $25 in the 90’s with only the one song that was worth it?

Telling a story wasn’t necessary then, forcing the music down people’s throats was.

Fast forward to the present day.  We live in a world over-saturated by choice.  It’s no longer about advertising (i.e. shouting loudly from rooftops) because now with social Media, advancements customer reviews and recommendations you are insane if you think any music without a story will mean anything to anyone.

Great products in the present day come with great stories

We buy Toms shoes because we love the story that a child with no shoes gets a pair every time we buy,.

I never trust a website advertising a service based product unless I can find out something about the people delivering the service.

They matter to me and their stories matter to me, and I bet they matter to you too…

As I was thinking about all of this, I realized.  I have never really told my story. I thought I would share mine

Music saved my life as a child…

At age 7, I was thrown out of a prestigious private school on the Upper East Side in New York City. In the middle of 2nd grade my parents got bad news; I was not going to be invited back for third grade, due to the fact that I was not reading as fast as my classmates. In a panic, my parents began a long journey to help connect me with a tutor or a teacher who could help get me up to speed, and I spent extra hours with tutors learning things that the other kids were picking up naturally in school.

My parents enrolled me into a less competitive school and for years, I spent my lunch and after school hours in tutoring. One tutor discovered something that changed my life; I couldn’t memorize multiplication tables or understand how to conjugate French verbs and reading was a true struggle, but I could remember lyrics to songs – lots of songs. Music class was the only thing that I did not struggle with because I had dead on pitch. I couldn’t read music, but if it was played once, I could sing it along with the rest of the class effortlessly. As soon as my tutor began to teach me in singing, I started to catch up with the rest of my classmates. I learned to rhyme my times tables to my favorite songs and that made them easy to memorize. Singing and rhyming everything, from the state capitals, to proper grammar got me through. I caught up to the rest of my class graduated high school and college as an A student.

Me with my staff, Boulder, CO, 1997

After school, I moved to Boulder, CO because music there took me there.  The artists that were playing live  there, the venues that they played in took me there, and I had the privilege of working in those venues.  My whole life at that time centered around building a business that could support that love.

Here’s the biggest lesson I have learned so far in my life: Everything is learnable and achievable if you set your mind to it.  The key to success is you must figure out a pleasureable way to get there. It’s critical that you don’t forget to add  joy and expression.

There is no magic pill that can solve the quandary that this “new” world  has presented us,  but I’ve overcome some seemingly impossible personal battles and I’m up for the challenge