What makes someone go from listening… to believing?
You can be clear and still lose the room. Because clarity is not what drives action. Connection is. People do not act on what they understand. They act on what they feel.
In this issue, I’ll show you why, backed by both science and founders who get it right, along with how to apply it to your own story.
You’ll walk away with:
3 practical takeaways to help you build real connection into your story
A data-backed insight showing how connection increases action by 261%
An example of how a lumber mill proves actions connect more than words
Enjoy building the connection…LG
Founder Story Tip: Building a Connection to Your Audience
Your audience is not waiting for more information.
They are waiting for a reason to care.
A founder story moves through three stages.
Attention. Connection. Reaction.
Skip one and the whole thing falls apart.
The first gets them to look up (more on that here). The third gets them to act. The middle one (Connection) is what decides whether any of it matters.
And if you don’t make that connection, your audience may nod or politely listen to the rest of your story, but you are not going to get the result you want.
In my experience, it is the one most founders understand the least and get wrong the most.
Because connection is not louder. It is not flashier. It is not a bigger promise. It is the quiet shift from "I hear you" to "I get you."
That shift is the whole ballgame.
PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY FOR CONNECTION
Here is the good news. People are hungry for connection.
Not in a soft, emotional way. In a biological one. Studies show social connection impacts everything from decision-making to lifespan.
Research at both the psychological and physiological level to back this up.
But the proof is often simpler than that.
Your audience agreed to show up.
They gave you their time.
That alone tells you they are looking for something to connect to.
The challenge is that they also have their guard up.
A thousand things pulling at their mind. Ten minutes until their next meeting.
Already halfway to no before you open your mouth.
So the connection does not just happen on its own.
You have to build it.
THE EMOTIONAL BRIDGE
Connection is what happens when your audience stops listening to your words and starts feeling your story. That is the bridge. Without it, you are just information.
Information does not make people care. It gets processed. It gets filed. It gets forgotten.
The primary thing that makes an audience care is emotion.
Something they feel before they think. Something that reaches them before their analytical brain has a chance to weigh in.
Scott Harrison built one of the most famous bridges in founder storytelling. After a decade as a New York nightclub promoter, he walked away, volunteered on a hospital ship off the coast of Liberia, and came back broke.
On his 31st birthday, he threw a party and asked every guest to donate twenty dollars. That was the birth of charity: water, the nonprofit he has since grown to bring clean water to more than 19 million people.
The story works because it is not just about him. It is about the shift that every person in their audience wants to believe is possible in themselves. From empty to meaningful. From lost to useful. He does not lecture. He invites.
That is what a bridge does. It carries your audience from where they are to where your story wants to take them.
WHY EMOTION IS THE ENGINE
We like to think we are rational. We weigh the pros and cons. We analyze the data. We make an informed choice.
The problem with that theory is that it is flat-out wrong.
Antonio Damasio, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Southern California, studied patients who had damage to the part of the brain that generates emotion.
These patients could still process information. They could list pros and cons. But they could not make a decision. Not even a simple one, like what to order for lunch.
Emotion is not a nice-to-have. It is the engine.
We make decisions emotionally and then use rational thinking to justify them after the fact. Investors are deciding whether to write a check. Customers are deciding whether to buy. Journalists deciding whether to cover your story.
All of it runs through emotion first.
Without it, there is no bridge to walk across.
PEOPLE CONNECT TO PEOPLE, NOT PITCHES
Data informs. People connect.
A deck full of bar charts gives your audience something to evaluate. That is not a bridge. That is a spreadsheet.
A bridge shows up when the audience sees a human face inside your story.
Yours.
A customer’s.
A team member’s.
Their own.
Even a made-up person.
Someone they can root for. We all love rooting for people in some way.
Jamie Kern Lima did this in one move. She was a TV anchor with rosacea who could not find a foundation that covered it. After years of rejection, she got one shot on QVC in 2010.
On live TV, she wiped the makeup off one cheek, showed her rosacea to millions of women, then reapplied her own product. She sold out 6,000 units in ten minutes. Six years later, L’Oréal bought IT Cosmetics for 1.2 billion dollars.
Lima did not sell makeup. She sold women the feeling of finally being seen. The bridge was her face. The second it appeared, the audience stopped evaluating a product and started pulling for a person.
SHOW THEM YOU ARE ONE OF THEM
One of the fastest ways to build a bridge is to show your audience you are one of them. You have lived what they are living. You have felt what they are feeling.
Carley Roney did exactly that. Her own 1993 wedding was one of the most miserable days of her life, and she did not want any other bride to go through what she had. In 1996, she co-founded The Knot (full story here), which grew into XO Group, valued at around 500 million dollars at its peak.
Roney did not win by listing features. She won by being vulnerable. The moment she admitted her own wedding was a disaster, every bride reading felt permission to admit the same thing, and a connection formed instantly.
That is what vulnerability does. It builds the bridge faster than anything else.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Attention gets you in the room. Connection is what keeps you there.
The bridge is not a device in your story. It is the relationship between you and your audience. It is what earns you the right to be let into their world, and what makes them willing to let you stay.
Build the bridge, and your audience moves beyond just listening to a founder. They start trusting one.
Storytelling Lessons: Turn Listeners Into Believers
Connection is a skill, not a personality trait. It is built on purpose, using moves you can practice. Here are three lessons to apply to your own story this week to build that connective muscle we all have inside us:
Lead With Feeling, Not Facts
Most founder stories open with what the company does. That is a pitch, not a bridge. The first thing out of your mouth should make your audience feel something, not evaluate something.
ACTION: Look at the first two sentences of your founder story. If they describe your company, your product, or your market, cut them. Replace them with a sentence that names a feeling. Your audience should feel what you felt before they know what you built.
Put a Human Face Where the Data Used to Be
Numbers give your audience something to analyze. Faces give them someone to root for. Jamie Kern Lima could have opened her QVC segment with market data on the concealer category. She showed her rosacea instead. The data would have been ignored. The face was unforgettable.
ACTION: Pick one data point in your current pitch. Replace it with one specific person whose life is inside that number. Name them. Say what they were trying to do before you existed. Let the number sit underneath, not on top.Say the Thing You Would Normally Hide
Vulnerability is the fastest way to build a bridge. Not the airbrushed kind. The real kind. Carley Roney did not hide the fact that her own wedding was miserable. She led with it. That one admission gave every bride reading permission to admit the same thing.
ACTION: Find one moment in your founder journey that still feels uncomfortable to share. A failure. A doubt. A reason you almost quit. Work it into the early part of your story. That is where your audience decides whether you are human enough to trust.
Fun Fact: When Connection Pays 261%
Neuroscientist Paul Zak, founder of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, ran a series of experiments showing that character-driven stories with emotional content cause the brain to release oxytocin, the same chemical associated with trust and bonding. In one of his studies, when a public service announcement spiked both oxytocin and attention in viewers, donations to a related charity were 261% higher.
Meaning = when your story makes someone feel something, their brain is literally rewiring itself to act in your favor. That is the bridge showing up in the bloodstream.
Video to Watch: Proof Over Promises
This anthem video by Zip-O-Log Mills shows how even a lumber supplier can build a deep connection in a heavy civil construction market. It opens with a moment that has nothing to do with selling wood and everything to do with showing up when it matters most. That is the difference. They are not positioning themselves as a supplier. They are showing what it means to be a partner.
It works because it does not talk about values. It shows them. And that is what makes people believe. Watch here:
ZIP-O-LOG MILLS: Zip-O-Log Mills Brand Anthem Video: 79 Years of Innovation and Evolution!
Need help with your story? I got you.
Send an email to [email protected] and someone from my team will circle back with you.
P.S. This one’s for my BFF as she finally brings her vision to life. #betheONE