There are good and bad places to say, “I don’t want to be a pirate.”
Saying “I don’t want to be a pirate” on a 90’s sitcom is a good place.
Saying it on a pirate ship is a bad place.
Saying “I don’t want to be a pirate” on the Jolly Roger when you’re friends with Peter Pan is a great place.
But what about in business? When someone’s job is to steal attention or squeak out a few more dollars, do they say, “I don’t want to be a pirate?”
At Those Stories, we don’t want to plunder. We want to take over the ship and navigate a new course. We want the kind of ship that brings joy and delight when people see it. We’re not interested in the boat that sinks to the bottom of the ocean, with its only legacy being a map to the treasure.
If rebelling against conventional wisdom to elevate stories is pirate-like, then sign us up.
Some believe that conventional wisdom exists because all other options have been extinguished. Instead, it’s more likely that the traditional path is the one of least resistance. You can create movement without extra effort. It works like a machine.
Of course, machines only surprise us when they break in some way. We can largely ignore them, which is not how we want to feel about our relationships, our community, our culture and ourselves. All of these elements make up stories.
We want to invest in these places. We want to feel surprised, inspired, emotionally moved and excited.
We don’t want to wait until the machine breaks. The railroad barons were just fine until highways showed up. The record companies were king until the Internet broke the music industry.
Machinery is now applied to storytelling. The term is co-opted as a fancy way to talk about marketing. Marketers use storytelling to dress up products that aren’t great.
We’d rather make products, cultures and events better. Forget dressing up the language. Spend energy, make better things. Then we’ll tell a story of purpose.
We want to tell the stories that sell themselves. We believe that better stories elevate people’s lives. We want to elevate people’s lives.
We do not want to be pirates, but we are setting sail.