Be a Storyteller

I was alone in my little car, zipping down the GW Parkway at 6 pm on a Thursday evening. It was 2002. The Potomac River shimmered russet and gold in the sunset, and I could see the stately buildings on the Georgetown University campus off in the distance to my left. I might have been wondering at that moment where my own education had gotten me, which right now was precisely nowhere. The conversation I had just had in my office was still spinning in my head as I switched over to the travel lane and drifted my way from the suburbs toward my home in the city for the perhaps last time.

“Sorry, we have to lay you off.” The General Counsel at my company had said to me unexpectedly that afternoon. It was the third time in about four years that I had lost my job. It was never actually my fault unless you could blame me for picking bad places to work.

And thus began my story of business ownership.

I was 30 years old and didn’t have any business ownership, retail, or hardware experience. I had worked in a jewellery store for two months in college but hadn’t really learned much. I spent a year working in my hometown hardware store in high school, but the girls were only allowed to run the cash register. Neither of those experiences prepared me to run the show myself and one of the first lessons I learned, storytelling, might seem a little out of place.

It didn’t take me long to discover that storytelling is one of the strongest secret weapons that local businesses possess. It’s not only the oldest form of communication, but it allows us to connect with the people around us in ways that don’t seem “sales-y”. For example, when you talk to a customer about the paint they are choosing for their new nursery, sure, you can tell them about the health benefits of your zero-VOC option. But couldn’t you also paint a picture of how the soothing yellow might be easy on a new-born’s eyes? Or how choosing a vibrant orange might entice their teenager to wake up faster?

What stories are you weaving into your company’s narrative?

Do you tell the stories in your marketing campaigns? On your website? When interviewing potential new employees? The more often we tell our stories, the more they become living, breathing elements of our business success.

The fact that I launched our first store being as green as I’ve described above, is an important part of my story that I repeat often.

I believe that retail is a three-legged stool comprised of Places, Products, and People. Chances are you already have the place solidified – a physical location in a welcoming community. And you know what products you’re selling – hardware. Then the third, and maybe the most important leg of the stool is the people. And telling stories about people is a great way to start.

My first employee was a returning citizen (former prisoner) named Tommy who taught me a valuable business lesson. As best we could tell, Tommy had spent 17 years in prison and had a lot of time to make up for. And he could talk anyone’s ear off. All day long. It didn’t matter if the customer was a plumber, a dad, or a woman in a business suit from the fanciest neighbourhood, Tommy would make a friend for life, and in the process, gain the store a lifetime customer.

He worked in the nuts-and-bolts aisle and treated it like his kingdom. It was spotless, full of sunlight, and always organised. I would send a new customer to see Tommy, never worrying that they wouldn’t be helped, and they might reappear five or 25 minutes later. She would be holding a bag of hardware worth $0.45 or $1.50 or maybe three whole dollars. Tommy didn’t care if he had to talk all day to make a little sale. In fact, he never thought of it as “had to”, he thought of it as “got to”.

His gift of gab taught me to see the lifetime value of our customers. He seemed to intrinsically understand that the longer he talked to our guests, the more likely he was to win us a customer for life. She might only spend $2 that day, but the next week she’d come back for a hammer, then a gallon of paint, then maybe an expensive BBQ grill.

Tommy worked with us for 12 years before moving on and I can still hear his laughter ring throughout the store. His story, intertwined with ours is now part of our DNA. We provided the place and the product so that Tommy could live up to his potential of being the best person for the job and this story.

In her 2020 Ted Talk, Karen Eber, CEO and Chief Storyteller of Eber Leadership Group explains why storytelling is so impactful, and it’s not just because humans have told stories forever. As leaders, we often think we must lead with numbers and data — cold facts from a spreadsheet that paint a business picture that really is in fact incomplete.

I often quote John Venhuizen, the CEO of Ace Hardware who is fond of saying “Businesses keep score with money, but business isn’t about money, it’s about people” and that gets to the heart of Eber’s speech. She gets technical to start with though – by explaining a phenomenon called speaker-listener neural coupling which happens when the brains of speakers and listeners “couple” up when a story is being told. Eber tells us that sensors in our brains light up in the same way for the person telling a story and those listening to it. A good storyteller engages all our senses – smell, touch, sound and so on that transports an audience right back to the event itself – ultimately creating a connection through empathy and emotion between the parties. How cool is that!?

When I speak to audiences, I ask them to close their eyes and think of a main street that they love. How does it make you feel? What do you hear as you walk down that main street? How does your favourite place smell to you? I can imagine little lights in every audience member’s head glowing with loving memories of favourite places. And in the case of my best memories, a reminder of the people in those places and what they meant to me.

Tommy’s chatter, the customers laughter when he told them a joke, the smell of my first hardware store and its creaky old floorboards. All sensory reactions that transport me back to that time.

Every time I visit Ireland I am regaled with tales as old as the country itself. Storytelling might be part of Ireland’s DNA, but how about that of its hardware store owners? How are you weaving stories into your business day-to-day so that your customers and community are reminded of just how special you are?

Sometime around 2016 one of my teammates came to me and said, “You know Gina, this place is known as ‘Recovery Hardware’ in the community.”

That little phrase jumpstarted a book by the same name that tells so many beautiful stories of the people that helped grow our business.

This article was originally published in the Hardware Journal.

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