The Life Beneath the Work

Branding today demands a story.

Not just a name or an offer — 

a story.

A crisp arc. A clean “why”.

But for most — that story doesn’t feel neat.

It doesn’t feel written.

It feels like something lived.

Your life, whispering back through the work.

You didn’t choose it.

It chose you.

Yet branding asks you to flatten it.

To shape a tidy narrative —

one that fits in a pitch deck,

sits easily on a package,

or works on an About page.

But those kinds of stories —

the ones shaped to fit —

they’re flimsy.

Hold them up to the light, and they vanish.

Take this, from a snack company’s About page:

Our story started at the kitchen table… 

We spent years perfecting our almonds.

We hope they bring you as much joy as they bring us.

It’s fine. Friendly.

But it might belong to anyone.

And then, buried deeper in the site:

A young person’s death changed everything… 

Time with the ones you love is precious. 

So we started a business together.

Those first lines?

They stop you cold.

Grief. Urgency. Love.

A heartbeat in the static.

A truth flickers into view — raw, unguarded —

and just as quickly, it’s covered back up.

What if branding didn’t ask you to cover up your story —

but to honor one?

Not the story you want to tell.

The story you can’t not tell.

The one that hums under the choices you make —

in your voice, and elsewhere —

long before you ever named it.

This isn’t just storytelling for branding’s sake.

It’s the kind that grows from something lived.

Something real.

Like the child who would become an astronomer,

traveling to Death Valley

to peer through handmade telescopes beside John Dobson—

and never stopped chasing the feeling of infinity.

The social worker who fights for forgotten families —

because she remembers being one.

She knows what it is to find the fridge nearly empty

and what it means when someone gives a damn.

These aren’t brand stories —

they’re the truths that shaped you.

Less polished tales—

more the kind that smudge and scar,

that carry memory

and a stubborn why.

Because when a brand’s story rings true,

it’s not cleverness that holds us.

It’s honesty.

So the next time you consider your story —

start here:

What truth keeps tugging at your sleeve?

What stays close, no matter the distance?

That’s the story worth telling.

✦

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