The Story Isn't About You (Even If You're In It)

Best man speeches almost always break the same promise.

The job is simple: say something warm about the couple, sit down. Instead, the best man spends four minutes on a story about the time he and the groom got lost hiking in college. It's a good story. It has nothing to do with the couple.

By the end, the room remembers the hike. Nobody remembers a single thing about the marriage.

This isn't a wedding problem. It's a narrator problem. Whoever's holding the mic tends to make themselves the subject, even when the assignment was to talk about something else.

Pitch decks catch the same disease.

A founder gets to the story part of their deck — because there's supposed to be a story — and defaults to the one story they know best: their own. Grew up in a small town. Always loved building things. Had a moment of clarity in a garage, a dorm room, a layoff. It's sincere. It's also, from the investor's chair, a memoir slide.

The book's point is that a pitch needs a story where there's a problem worth solving, and you're the hero who solves it. Notice the order. Problem first. You, second, and only in relation to the problem. Not: here is my life, and somewhere in act three, a business appears.

Every transition in a good pitch is really answering an implied question — why are you here, why does this matter, why you. If your answer to "why does this matter" is a childhood anecdote, you've answered the wrong question. The investor didn't come for your origin story. They came to find out if there's a problem big enough, and a hero equipped enough, to bet money on.

Tell them about the problem like it's the main character. Then walk in as the person who happens to have the exact tool it needs.

That's a story people remember on the way out of the room. Your hiking trip isn't.

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More on building a pitch that actually holds together: The Pitch Deck Book — https://www.amazon.com/Pitch-Deck-Book-Business-Investors/dp/B098PKPL73

Composite characters, invented companies. The mistakes are real; the people aren't.