Chronicle Your Quest
When I’m not writing novels, entrepreneurs hire me to write about what they’re doing and why it matters.
I start by reading about the company and interviewing founders, employees, board members, customers, and partners—basically anyone with skin in the game and a unique point-of-view on the business. Then I synthesize what I learn into an essay about why these particular people are seeking to solve this particular problem in this particular way—here’s a recent example.
Having a canonical prose narrative explaining what you do and why it matters is surprisingly high-leverage. You can send the link to prospective recruits, investors, partners, customers, friends, and press to help them understand you better, faster. You can fundraise with it. You can use it to inspire and align your team. You can spin an entire content strategy out of it. Its value compounds over time, and, if something important changes, you can update it.
Telling your story in this format is so straightforward that it shouldn’t be differentiating, but it absolutely is. It’s hard to see the full arc when you’re the protagonist. Very few companies do it well because their communication assets—websites, decks, videos, blogs, social feeds, reports, ads, etc.—focus on marketing themselves to specific target demographics, not explaining themselves in a way that’s accessible to the rest of us. But people have to make sense of you before they can care about you, and narrative structure gives them the context they need to figure you out.
I used to think that writing these essays for companies was an interesting, useful, and remunerative complement to writing novels, but now I realize they’re parallel art-forms. Both are about documenting how a small group of people set out into the unknown and overcome adversity on a mission to make the world a better place, lighting a beacon for fellow travelers.
Every worthy quest deserves a worthy chronicle. If you want me to write yours, apply here.
Eliot Peper is the author of Foundry, Reap3r, Veil, Breach, Borderless, Bandwidth, Neon Fever Dream, Cumulus, Exit Strategy, Power Play, and Version 1.0. He also consults on special projects.
“Consistently makes step-function leaps in imagination.”
-Brad Feld, managing director at Foundry Group