Founder Insight: The business you start isn’t always the business you build

I didn’t build StoryOne from a beautifully mapped-out business plan. I built it 'accidentally, may I add, by paying attention.

When I first went out on my own at the start of the year as Em Flaxman Consulting, I had a fairly clear idea of what I thought people would pay me for. I assumed it would be linked to the things sitting neatly on my CV: marketing strategy, brand, new business, content and all the things I’d spent years delivering for big businesses and brands. The reality was much more interesting.

I also discovered pretty quickly that saying “Em Flaxman Consulting” out loud made me cringe slightly. Why do we hate saying our own full name? More importantly, I wasn’t particularly good at explaining what I actually did. I could do lots of things, which it turns out is not necessarily helpful when somebody asks you the very simple question: “So what does your business do?” Ironically, I was experiencing exactly the problem I now help founders solve.

As a marketer, I started marketing myself to my network, and people started getting in touch. Former clients, friends, people I’d met through work, chance conversations and even colleagues I hadn’t worked with for 15 or 20 years suddenly appeared in my inbox. You spend decades building relationships without necessarily thinking of them as a “network”, then one day you start your own business and realise that network has quietly been doing a lot of work in the background.

One conversation led to a brand story, which led to a website. Then came sales decks, thought leadership, PR, awards, personal brands, marketing plans, content strategy and broader growth work. The business was starting to take shape, but not quite in the way I had expected. What people were really paying me for wasn’t just a website, a deck or a LinkedIn post. They were paying me to untangle things, take everything swirling around in their heads, work out what actually mattered, find the story, spot the opportunity, and increasingly give them the confidence to do something with it.

Somewhere along the way, I realised the common thread in my career had never really been the deliverable. It had always been helping people move forward. Alongside my marketing roles, new business delivery and leadership work, I spent years heading up mental health and D&I teams and became known for being calm when things felt complicated. I found I was good at helping people see things they perhaps couldn’t see themselves and lifting people up rather than needing to be the loudest person in the room. It turns out that’s a pretty useful skill when you work with founders.

Growing a business isn’t only about having a better website or a sharper marketing plan. Sometimes a founder needs help understanding what makes their business genuinely valuable. Sometimes they need someone to turn 47 thoughts into one clear story that somebody else can actually understand. Sometimes they have brilliant ideas and expertise, but absolutely no desire to stand on LinkedIn shouting about how brilliant they are. In a few cases, I realised the biggest thing holding the business back wasn’t the proposition at all. It was confidence.

That’s what StoryOne has gradually become: a growth partner for founders and ambitious businesses, helping them become clearer, more visible and more confident. For some clients, that means helping shape the business brand and the story around it. For others, it means building the marketing, content, PR, thought leadership or sales tools that help that story travel further. Increasingly, it also means working with the person behind the business.

On more than one client call, I’ve found myself thinking: you have SO much to say, why aren’t you saying any of it? I’ve always had a natural ability to help people see their own strengths, so I decided to put some proper rigour behind that too. I’ve trained in neuroplasticity coaching, giving me additional tools to help founders work through the confidence, habits and thinking patterns that can stop them putting themselves out there. StoryOne has evolved again as a result, not just helping founders work out what they need to say, but helping them believe they’re the person who should be saying it.

There’s something quite funny about the fact that the woman who started the year struggling to explain her own consultancy now spends a lot of her time helping other founders explain theirs.

I thought I was building a marketing consultancy. What emerged was a business designed to help founders thrive: to clarify their message, build the brand around it, create the marketing that gets it noticed and help the person behind it have the confidence to step forward too.

None of that was quite what I wrote down when I first decided to work for myself, but perhaps that’s how businesses really take shape. You start with what you think you’re selling, pay attention to what people actually value, listen to what they keep coming back to you for and notice the accidental meeting, old colleague or unexpected conversation pointing you somewhere new.

Eventually, the business tells you what it was supposed to be all along.