If you practice servant leadership people want to get to know you through your origin story. Sharing it will help you boost your brand and enhance your marketing. I discuss how to create and develop your origin story in this episode with my guest, Adrienne Wilkerson.

As Co-Founder and CEO of Beacon Media + Marketing, Adrienne is driven by a passion for developing people and fostering a culture where innovation thrives. In her early 20s, she realized she would make a much better boss than an employee, which led her to found her own company in 2001. Today, she is a visionary leader who’s company has earned it a spot on the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest-Growing Private Companies for three consecutive years.

The Origin of Adrienne’s Servant Leadership Origin Story

One of Adrienne’s favorite things when she gets to talk to founders, CEOs, business owners, there’s almost always a powerful story behind why they’re doing what they’re doing. Why did they start their own business? Why does this matter?

That “why”, that story, has really created them as leaders and created them in the business space. That’s why Adrienne believes that’s why that origin story is so important. It’s a powerful connection piece. Entrepreneurship is a lot of Adrienne’s origin story. Her father is an entrepreneur and a business owner, so was my grandmother.

Adrienne has a lot of entrepreneurs in her family and hence she had a lot of excellent examples of entrepreneurship in her life. Her grandmother together with a partner started the very first art gallery in Anchorage, Alaska way back in the day. She was just an entrepreneurial person. Adrienne’s father started one of the first counseling and medical clinic combinations with the idea of taking care of the whole person and the medical and the counseling working together. It was a beautiful vision and there was a reason behind that. Those origin stories and what both of them accomplished spoke to Adrienne as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, and as a leader.

Growing Up Entrepreneurial

Adrienne’s father is a therapist that started his own therapy clinic. So she was raised by a therapist. There was a lot of times where she would have to tell her dad, “I need you to be my dad and not my therapist right now”. And he’d be like, “okay. Right, right. Thank you”. Then we would laugh and switch gears. He passed on his insights into people and his understanding of what drives people and how people work and tick and interact with each other. It was that experience and that knowledge that he had through school, through working with a lot of leaders.

He passed a lot of that on to Adrienne organically. He was a natural teacher. Even with the circumstances that Adrienne would grow up in, such as dealing with personal conflict at school, at college, and just even in relationships, he would just walk her through a lot of resolutions. He would tell her you must ask these questions and you understand what’s really going on in each situation.

He told Adrienne if you’re going to lead, there’s a guiding relationship there. She remembers coming back from high school one day from class very frustrated because she was the year book editor in chief and we were co just coming off a big deadline and she did all the work. She was venting that her team didn’t do this and that. Adrienne had to take over for that them and had to do this person’s job and that person’s job. She wondered why can’t they just do their jobs?

Her father’s feedback was: You met your deadline. You got across the finish line. How much of your team came across the finish line with you? Or did you just plow through and make it happen and leave the rest of them in the dust?

Leadership Lessons Learned

That was one of those moments, one of the lessons that hit Adrienne upside the head and shifted the course of how she viewed leadership. Adrienne learned it’s not just enough as a leader to accomplish a goal. You have to try your best to guide your team to come with you. Now granted, not everybody will choose to walk across that finish line with you.

If they don’t choose to, that, that’s their choice. As long as you as a leader are doing everything that you can to create that kind of environment where people want to grow with, want to accomplish the goal with you, and it’s not really leading. If you do everybody’s job and cross that finish line by yourself, it was a great hike, but that’s not leading.

There are things like that, stories like that, that Adrienne’s father wove in those lessons that he wove into her life that have really shaped how she chooses to lead now. Adrienne definitely doesn’t nail it on the head every time. That’s part of the process of learning and growing.

Creating and Leveraging Your Origin Story

As a business owner or a CEO, there are stories that make up your origin story. Those are powerful because they are what connect with people and make people want to buy from you. They hate to be sold, but they love to buy. We know this concept in business, and who do they want to buy from? They want to buy from somebody they know, like, and trust.

So, in this digital age, how do we as business owners, as CEOs, how do we connect with our audience, with our ideal client profile? We do it in part through our origin story, through those stories that shaped us and shaped our company because those connect with people. That story could connect with somebody else who had a therapist as a father.

There’s lots of aspects of that formula, but that’s why the origin story and even some of the really raw parts of your origin story, your failures, your successes. That’s what makes you human, and that’s what provides the opportunity for people to connect and to feel like they know you, which means they’re going to trust you.

That’s a kind of a 10,000 foot view as to why that origin story is so important. Adrienne believes, at least if you don’t have, and what you said, including raw details an origin story, that’s what its servant leadership is getting people to follow you and eventually developing them, but getting people to follow a mission.

We also dive into topics including:

Why it’s ok to say “no” to servant leadership opportunities if the people involved don’t fit your ideal client or ideal partnership profile.
The structure that makes a great origin story.
Why you need to start with your “Why”.
Why it’s important to include your failures and what you learned from the challenges you overcame.
How your origin story shapes your servant leadership journey.
Why if you’re not failing you’re not trying enough new things.
Knowing when sharing your trials and tribulations becomes oversharing.
The responsibilities of a servant leader.
Why people won’t always follow what you say but they will follow what you do.
How to create an environment of trust, or a safe space, within your business.
Why putting other people first pays dividends as a servant leader.
The one thing, above all else, that you need to do to create and live your servant leadership origin story.

…and other golden nuggets of advice!

You can get my book here: “Idea Climbing: How to Create a Support System for Your Next Big Idea”

About My Guest

Idea Climbing Podcast Adrienne Wilkerson

As Co-Founder and CEO of Beacon Media + Marketing, Adrienne Wilkerson is driven by a passion for developing people and fostering a culture where innovation thrives. She is a visionary leader who guides her team to find opportunity in every challenge, pushing creative boundaries to deliver impactful results.

This approach has established Beacon as an award-winning digital ma...

How to Create Your Servant Leadership Origin Story with Adrienne Wilkerson