To Uncover Your Purpose, Start with Telling your Story
I once led a workshop for the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO) on personal storytelling. The goal was to help the group of CEOs uncover their personal stories and connect them with their extraordinary companies. One of the CEOs admitted to being teased and ridiculed as a boy because of a stutter. His name is Asheesh Advani, and he went on to found CircleLending, a business that helped pioneer the business of peer-to-peer lending between relatives, friends, and social network members.
“My speech therapist would give me a word like “buttons” and ask me to speak fluidly for a solid minute on the topic of buttons,” Asheesh recalled to our group that day. “Buttons aren’t something most of us don’t think much about, so I had to learn how to think ahead and form associations about buttons: buttons on my shirt, buttons on my pants, buttons that have been lost, or buttons that I’ve found lying on the sidewalk.”
Today, he is CEO of JA Worldwide (Junior Achievement), a global NGO that provides hands-on educational programs and experiences related to entrepreneurship, work readiness, and financial literacy. JA Worldwide was nominated for a 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.
Asheesh traces his passion for developing confident and capable entrepreneurs directly to his own struggle to gain confidence as a stutterer. Asheesh is also the author of Modern Achievement: A New Approach to Timeless Lessons for Aspiring Leaders—due out August 13!
My colleague and our chief storyteller at ScalePassion, Steve Klinetobe, works with business owners and leaders to learn how to connect personal stories to brand strategy to business strategy, all to ensure that impact never gets squeezed out of the picture as the business grows. Steve says every leader should have a “leader’s anthem:” a profound, emotionally charged testament to the why behind your quest. And it all starts with your very personal story.
I love Asheesh’s story because it shows how something private and personal can fuel a remarkably productive career. Would the story be more complete if Asheesh had become a renowned speech therapist rather than business leader? Rarely is the connection between your life and your organization’s purpose that obvious.
The connection lies in the passion to make a difference. Once that is articulated and harnessed, it’s a difference you’ll be making! I hope this four-part series has given you some useful tools for harnessing this superpower called purpose. And just in case you desire to go deeper with this, by all means reach out to our ScalePassion team.
Rob Craven
