There's a Story in Here Somewhere

On curiosity, asking questions, and finding the good stuff hiding in plain sight.

I've spent much of my career asking questions, listening carefully, and learning how businesses work from the inside. Over the years, I've worked across aviation, agriculture, banking, retail, and construction. I've toured manufacturing facilities, interviewed executives, talked with farmers, and spent time with the people who know their businesses better than anyone. It's given me a fairly eclectic collection of knowledge. Some of it surprisingly useful, some of it downright obscure.

It's also taught me something important about storytelling. The most interesting information rarely arrives neatly packaged in a company overview or a prepared set of talking points. More often, it emerges halfway through a conversation, when someone mentions something they hadn't considered particularly significant. That's usually when I start asking more questions.

Getting past the official version

Ask someone to describe their business, and they'll often begin with the familiar introduction: what they do, who they serve, how long they've been operating, and what makes them different. It's useful information. But it's on their website. I know, because I did my research.

What interests me is what comes next. The employee whose experience has shaped how the company operates. The customer relationship that began with a small project and grew into something significant. The clever solution to a problem that everyone else had accepted as part of the job. These are the details that make a business interesting, and they're often hiding in plain sight.

According to 2025 research from Clutch, 69% of consumers consider transparency about a company's processes or materials a sign of authenticity. The same research found that 59% view generic or robotic messaging as something that undermines their trust in a brand. There's a good argument here for showing people more of what actually happens inside a business, rather than relying on the same familiar marketing language.

Ordinary to you. Fascinating to someone else.

One of my favourite parts of this work is watching someone become animated when they start talking about something they know exceptionally well. It might be a manufacturing process, a complicated customer challenge, or a small improvement that saves their team hours every week. What seems routine to someone who's been doing a job for 20 years can be genuinely fascinating to someone encountering it for the first time.

I've always enjoyed getting out from behind my computer and seeing things for myself. Walking through a factory, meeting employees, or watching someone demonstrate a process reveals things that no amount of desk research can uncover. You notice the pride people take in their work, the problems they've solved, and the little traditions that make a workplace its own. None of that necessarily makes it into the corporate overview. But sometimes it should.

Authenticity starts with paying attention

Authenticity has become one of those words that appears in just about every marketing conversation. Everyone wants their brand to feel authentic, relatable, and human. But authenticity isn't something you manufacture by adopting a more casual tone or posting the occasional behind-the-scenes photograph. It comes from understanding what makes a business different and finding ways to share that honestly.

There's nothing particularly memorable about saying your company has a passionate team or takes pride in quality. Those things might be true, but they're also what everyone else is saying. Show me what that pride looks like. Introduce me to the people behind the work. Tell me about the decisions, challenges, and experiences that have shaped the business.

In Sprout Social's 2026 research, 33% of consumers identified original content as something that makes their favourite brands stand out on social media, second only to product quality at 44%. And originality doesn't always require a groundbreaking idea or an elaborate campaign. Sometimes it's simply sharing a story that only your business can tell. That's why I believe good content starts with learning the business, rather than filling the content calendar.

After more than a decade working across different industries, I'm still fascinated by how much there is to learn. Every business has its own history, characters, challenges, and way of doing things. And every workplace has people whose knowledge and contributions shape the business in ways that aren't always obvious from the outside.

That's a big part of why I started Worthy. I want to get to know businesses, understand what makes them tick, and help them share the stories that deserve more attention. Sometimes it's a customer success story. Sometimes it's an employee who's been quietly making a difference for years. And sometimes it's something nobody thought to mention because it's simply part of an ordinary workday. The best stories aren't always the most obvious. Sometimes you just need to know where to look.

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