Recently we’ve been wondering – and finding answers – to important storytelling questions. How to make love stay (between your brand and your customers), how to find the right people who’ll love your business, and how your brand story gives your marketing a purpose.

But let’s consider another essential question. Why the core brand story is so important? Why your small business can make miracles with it?

To give you a thorough example why the core story of your brand is something you need – and is there to stay, let me share a few thoughts here. Warning: involves an elaborate parallel with mountain climbing. Now proceed.

The long path of patience

Say, you are a great mountain climber. You just live wild and climb anything without fear. Any rock would be crying under your feet in no time, whether Kilimanjaro or Anapurna.

But what stands behind this boldness and invincibility?

Years of hard practice and perseverance.

Or, something that suspiciously resembles the path of a small business owner.

Maturing, the hard way

The great mountain climber that you are now started as the young fellow who would spend weekends hunting new peaks. You probably didn’t have good equipment, nor sound knowledge of mountaineering. But you still did it. And tried again and again. Until it worked.

And that’s what you’re doing with your business. You start exploring, learning while doing, achieving small steps on the way. Nobody gets born with the ultimate entrepreneurial knowledge how to make it; mistakes are your best teacher.

Living the story

Being a mountain climber requires a set of skills – and a solid mindset, that need constant work. But they make for a curious character, great plot twists and turns and a lot of suspense.

Probably you were inspired to start trekking and climbing by a great friend or relative you had, or an awesome mountain climber. By somebody who impressed you by living the “no guts, no glory” way. And that’s how inspiration to dare and make it comes.

What are the chances that for your small business endeavor, you also found inspiration from a great example? A friend, a family member, the old guy in the bookstore, anybody. They were living their life in a coherent, inherently meaningful for themselves way. And that touches hearts, inevitably. And it did touch yours.

So you wanted to be like them, or to continue their legacy, or just to use the power you saw in them for boosting your own path. And it worked.

Telling the story

How would the world know that you’ve just conquered the Himalayan monster K2, if you don’t tell them? And tell them all the impressive, heart-warming, tear-bringing details of your adventure?

The same goes for your business. It has its authentic story, from the moment it was conceived in your head. Your ideas, your path, your difficulties, your battles, your victories. They’re all integral parts of your brand’s story. Of its beating heart, the one that’s always there.

And how would anybody know and appreciate your hard work and great product or service if you don’t share? But if you reveal the full story, even painful details, it will open people’s hearts.

The story goes on

So that’s why your brand – which anyway has a great story already – can reach more people and achieve more if it has its core story in place. Well-told.

Since your brand story is there from the beginning, your business has no other more permanent asset that this. It’s just a matter of recognizing and employing it in your every bit of your brand’s representation and services.

And the best part it: the story goes on, along with your business’s development.

Where to start?

The Detective Brand Story Canvas, Edgar’s free brand story discovery tool, is here to give you a hand. Go, storyteller, go!