Tell Your Story

Today I sent an email to a TV news station about a project I’m working on called ProtegaText. The station had recently reported about a school who’s level of trust is being torn from its community because of an inappropriate relationship between a teacher and student fostered partially through private text messaging. As I put the email together, I tried to add that personal touch to share not only the “business” side. I’m not quite sure how I did, but I think there’s plenty of room for improvement.

The thing is, this all started off as an idea to encourage a small group of about 10-12 kids in my own home town. As we ventured down that road, we hit some roadblocks and warning signs, and I started to see the bigger picture of what we might do with this, but all along, though, what still matters is that same group of kids. The ones I know. The ones who know me. We may be planning to achieve a larger scale, but going back to that initial glimpse of seeing how I could personally connect with these kids in a medium that works for them still makes me smile.

When you scale that up, though, it’s easy for that “story” to get lost in form, function, and features. Suddenly what matters is not a handful of kids but scaling up to cover costs and make a profit or defining scope so that you don’t get too big, too fast.

A trusted friend walked into my office today and offered me a “don’t forget” reminder. “Tell your story,” he told me… “That’s what is powerful.”

And so here I sit, stepping back a bit to remind myself a little bit about where we came from – not to reminisce, but to make sure we’re on track, to evaluate where we’re going, and to praise the Lord that the two are still tightly knit, no matter how awkward the process of bringing a novel idea to life may be.