St. Louis, MO – August 17, 2022 - What have you done to preserve your business story? Is the full extent of our corporate archive a framed dollar bill or the certificate from the Secretary of State showing your corporate filing?

Does your archive look like a variation of the above image?

I get it. When you are running a business, who has time to be a historian.

Sure, you are keeping good records and making sure your accounting is in order, but what have you done to preserve your unique story? Preserving your business story starts with maintaining a well-organized corporate archive.

Believe it or not, every business has a story. Make that plural. Stories.

More often than not, those stories include the founder’s story. The why and how you became the company you are today. It speaks to your values and your uniqueness.

Sam Walton opened his first Walmart in Rogers Arkansas in 1962, after running Walton’s Five & Dime in Bentonville, Arkansas and several Ben Franklin stores throughout Arkansas.

Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft on April 4, 1975.

In 1881, Chris van der Ahe purchased the Brown Stockings barnstorming club, renamed it the St. Louis Browns. In 1892 the Brown, also called the Perfectos joined the National League. In 1900 the changed their name to the Cardinals.

It is interesting history isn’t it?

Your history is just as important. It should be preserved.

Here is the key thing about history…it is the story we tell about what happened in the past. The word hi story contains the word “ story ” right? That is exactly what history is...a story about the past.

I remember enjoying lunch with a few journalist friends a couple of years ago and offering the provocative idea that history isn’t actually what happened, it is the story that was told about what happened in the same way a news account of an event isn’t what actually happened, it is the story about what happened. That didn't go over well with my journalist friends.

I’m not saying a New York Times or Post-Dispatch story about an event is “fake news." No - to the contrary. I am being precise in saying that is simply the story about what happened. History is what we know about people, events, things and, alas, even companies when someone takes the time to share the story about it. It is much harder for a historian to piece together history long after the fact. That is why maintaining good records and a great archive is so critical to telling your story accurately.

What we know about a period of time like the Civil War in the United States comes from historians who comb documents like newspapers, personal letters and public documents from that era. We also have limited photographs from that period. Historians piece it together based on the best available resources. It is not a perfect science.

Truth is anything involving humans isn't. We could both experience an event and have very different points of view.

Contemporary events like what is happening today is covered by traditional media and social media. You have facts, circumstances and individual points of view. News media covers it and so do those involved with their social feeds. They share the story.

The point of it is to tell a story, someone has to play the role of storyteller. Who will play that role with your business?

So let’s get to heart of the matter. Why preserve your business story? It comes down to why market your business? Why should anyone do business with you versus one of your competitors. Why should someone work for you versus another company?

Your story is uniquely yours. Your values are wrapped up in your founder’s story. It is something that should be preserved and shared, just like your family’s story.

So what is preserving your story look like?

It could be a simple as keeping good records. It could look like digitizing those records and then organizing them in a way that makes them easy to find.

Company archives could include marketing materials and advertising. I suspect that if Walmart posts an old flyer from Sam Walton’s first year in business, it could go viral. When I was with the Cardinals, few things performed better than team history posts. Fans loved it. We had a pecking order of performance. Player posts were at the top of the pyramid, followed closely by stadium food and heritage-based posts.

Other important elements of your corporate history are oral histories, written documents and any photographs or video. You should take the time to preserve all these things.

Our work for clients in this space starts with helping them get a handle on what they have in bankers boxes and scattered in files. If you want to produce a short documentary film that tells your founder’s story, it is extremely helpful to get your archive organized.

Over the last year, I’ve spoken to half a dozen writers who specialize in helping companies write books that capture the founder’s story and the one element that is common in all of their approaches is some level of archive work. Getting the facts together. It helps with being a memory prompt and clearing up any conflicts with individual accounts that come during interviews.

In talking to authors, I’ve come to learn that some brands spend from $50K to well over $1million on publishing a coffee table book for their brand community. Much of the work begins with pulling together all the images, documents and doing basic research. It is followed by a series of interviews before the writer begins a manuscript.

I will tell you that our video storytelling approach mirrors that process. In some respects, the archive work is even more important on our end because video is a visual medium. In future posts, we will walk you through the simple steps you should follow to digitize and preserve your history.

The first step in the process is to recognize its importance and begin to assemble everything you need to tell your story.

About STORYSMART

If you want to be remembered, share an amazing story on screen. Whether developing a brand for your business or preserving a family legacy, nothing is more powerful than a great video story.

While there are a lot of DIY apps out there to help you produce a video, no app will turn you into a great filmmaker. Telling your story well with video can be hard. You need the right skills and equipment, not to mention time, money and talent to do justice to your story.

STORYSMART helps you tell your story in the amazing way you deserve with our done-for-you premium video storytelling service. Using a nationwide network of talent, STORYSMART provides you an experienced television reporter or journalist filmmaker to tell your story professionally following our proprietary STORYSMART system.

STORYSMART provides a nationwide premium video storytelling service that empowers individuals, families, celebrities, small businesses, and other organizations to have their stories told professionally while still retaining their intellectual property rights. Learn more at getstorysmart.com