You know those moments when you're at a
work event, maybe a networking cocktail
party, maybe a sales meeting, and someone
says, tell me about yourself, you know,
give us a little backstory and then you
break into a slight sweat because while
you obviously know your backstory, you
lived it, you don't know how to tell it.
Maybe every time you do it sounds
different, or you just kind of clam
up and stammer out some bullet points.
You know, I worked here from this year
to that year, then I went here from this
year to that year and blah, blah, blah.
The person smiles and nods in their
head, sends some nicety about a
place you worked and then moves on.
Me too.
That was me too.
And yet, while that was happening
to me, I was building a career, a
reputation, a business, telling the
stories of other people and raising
a whole lot of money on Wall Street.
8 billion dollars that led to 30
billion in follow on assets under
management for new funds, startup
firms for founders against the odds.
I mean, I can tell a mean
backstory, just not my own.
And you know what?
The same was true for those founders.
I was out there telling their
stories, but if you asked
them, they were just like you.
And.
Bumbling stumbling.
Not powerful at all.
I'm starting with this very odd line of
thinking for a very important reason.
We're all in the same boat.
You.
Me, the founders, you'll hear
from on this podcast, the
experts who will give us advice.
No one is 100% confident at telling
their backstory in the beginning.
No one kills it out of the gate.
And that, my friends, is the
first rule of this backstory club.
We all start at the beginning.
It's what we do.
How we use our words, how we tap into
our authenticity, why we're driven
to use story to shape outcomes.
That's what matters.
We start from the bottom.
Now we're here, or we will be together.
So today I wanna share with you
the five questions that I am most
frequently asked about Backstory.
This is basically the backstory of back.
Because we all might be thinking
these questions and you might
be surprised by the answers.
I also want to share this as a
way to encourage you to start
exploring your own backstory.
, whether it's just with yourself in
solitude or with other peers in your
industry or with your friends or family.
These five questions set the
foundation for why working on
your own backstory is important.
I'm gonna walk you through the questions
and some of the key points I want.
You to take away so that you have the
theory behind the framework, a glimpse
of how to use the framework, and you
can learn from the common mistakes in
backstory work so you can avoid them,
or at least recognize them when they
happen and learn from them the next time.
So here are the five most frequently
asked questions I get around backs.
Question number one, what is your
backstory and why should we care at all?
? Okay, so I love this question.
It basically goes to the beginning
of, of the conversation here.
I love this question because it
gives me a chance to show the power
of story on the story I know best.
My own, and I say that with a
pretty healthy dose of humility
because it took me a very long
time to be able to tell my story.
As I said, I was much more comfortable
telling the stories of others and much
less comfortable telling my own story.
For years.
But here's the thing.
I saw backstory and storytelling
in general work for them.
I saw it raise billions of dollars for
these founders of investment boutiques.
I saw it literally change their
businesses and now jumps up to today.
I am seeing firsthand the power of
story is changing my business too.
I mean, my goodness,
it's changing my life.
So let me tell you my backstory.
I'm gonna go back to the beginning.
My name is Stacy Havener.
I'm the founder of Havener Capital
Partners, a sales and marketing agency
that helps investment boutiques grow.
In my career, I've raised over 8 billion.
That has led to over 30 billion
in follow on a u m for new funds.
Startups, investment boutiques against
the odds, and we're just getting started.
Our mission is to level the playing
field in asset management, or at least
put a dent in it by helping boutiques
raise a hundred billion this decade now.
on paper.
None of what I just said makes any sense.
I'm a blue collar kid from a working
class town who got the wrong degree
from the wrong school, and I'm a woman.
I didn't grow up with dreams
of working on Wall Street.
I wanted to be a college professor,
but soccer changed everything.
I went to Western Connecticut State
University in Danbury, Connecticut.
My hometown at the time, and my
freshman year was the first year they
had a women's varsity soccer team.
So to say that we were under.
Is a huge understatement.
We were the bad news bears , but
when I left four years later, we were
ranked third in the nation in division
three, and it was my first experience
building something as a founder.
obviously has direct ties to what
I do today as a day job, but that's
just one part of the soccer story.
Soccer played another part too.
I majored in English literature.
I was a poet, uh, a writer, a
storyteller, and I had dreams of
becoming a literature professor, but
I had paid my way through undergrad
and I was going to have to pay my.
For grad school too.
Um, my high school soccer coach
and I had kept in touch over the
years because I was basically still
home and he would come to my games.
He was an incredible
father figure in my life.
And while I thought he was just a soccer
coach, he apparently had a day job, which
was running a billion dollar small cap
equity shop, a boutique asset management.
and he knew my situation
and he offered me a job.
He said, you know, you
can come here, work here.
You can save some money for
a couple years, and then you
can go back to grad school.
He wanted to launch a fund
for the first time and he was
like, you can help me do that.
So I'm like, coach.
That's all well and good,
except I know nothing.
About stocks.
My dad was a math teacher, so I
liked math, but again, poetry and
writing, that was really my jam.
He was like, I'll teach you.
So I did.
I went there.
I learned aun.
I learned how to launch
a fund, how to structure.
I learned everything that goes into it.
And then basically once the fund was
launched, she handed me, this is gonna.
Me here, but whatever he handed me,
which was the basically a list, the s
and p Blue book, and he was like, let's
figure out how to raise some money.
Here's a let of start,
you know, calling people.
And I went to what I knew best.
I, I was way out over my skis.
I was way out of my comfort zone.
I didn't know that there was a
way air quotes to, to raise money.
So I went to my comfort
zone, which was stories.
We raised 500 million in two years.
I was hooked.
I never went back to get my degree.
I felt like for a girl who loves words,
I had found a home in an industry
filled with men who love numbers, and I
built a career telling stories of these
boutiques, these underdogs, and helping
them go from the beginning to billions.
. I mean, it makes total sense in some weird
way and, and so the backstory is important
because this is more than a job for me.
It's really a mission, it's a passion,
it's a calling because standing
for underdogs is very near and
dear to my heart in so many ways.
I was one.
. So that's my backstory.
I share it with you, not only because
I'm the host of this podcast and I
want you to get a chance to know me,
but also because the more we hear
people tell their backstory, the more
it helps us get in touch with our own.
And that's what I'm hoping
this podcast is gonna do.
It's not just let me tell
you how to do the things.
It's also, let me show you, let.
let you hear other people share their
backstory, because just in that process,
you are going to find more competence
in authentically telling your own.
So with that, let's
move on to question two.
question two, most frequently asked
question I get around backstory is
what is the theory behind storytelling?
Like, why, why should we
even believe in this at all?
Okay.
Very fair question.
I would say the theory
isn't even about story.
It's about human behavior.
. To me that's at the root of everything
and, and especially storytelling.
So human behavior is, scientific
Studies show that 95% of
decision making is subconscious.
Now this is not a stat that anybody
in the investment industry likes.
Or probably wants to believe,
but this is a human thing.
This is not an investment thing.
This is not another
different industry thing.
It's a human thing.
And if we layer down and think
this through, if the decision
making is happening in our
subconscious, that's emotion.
And the way to connect
emotionally is through story.
And that goes back to the beginning of.
, the storytelling is the art, but
the theory is based on science.
So in the investment space or
any industry really, um, when you
launch something, people ask you,
you know, what are you building?
There's that question, who do you wanna
be when you grow up and you look around
as a founder and you, you look for.
The other firms that are
successful and you, you point to
them and say, I wanna be them.
That big successful firm over there in
the investment world, you might point
to BlackRock, they're the biggest.
But that could happen
in any, any industry.
You, you see the bigs and you envision a
future that looks a lot like them, and so
then your rational mind goes, okay, great.
Well if I wanna be them, then
I should use their playbook.
. And the problem is that
playbook doesn't work for you.
You can't use their playbook.
It's a playbook for the big,
it's a, it's not for you.
It's not gonna work.
And so now you have all these startups
and specialists trying to use the wrong
playbook and banging their head on their
desk going, why isn't this working?
It doesn't play to the
strengths of a startup.
Or a founder led specialist.
The analogy I often give
here is David and Goliath.
Again, we just talked about underdogs.
I mean, David is the, is the pen
ultimate underdog who beat Goliath?
The pen, ultimate powerhouse.
And how did he do it?
Did he use Goliath's playbook, which
was, you know, artillery and armor
and all this heavy equipment and, I
don't know, probably master plans,
documents, a whole squad of people.
David beat Goliath with a slingshot
because it just so happens that David
was a real badass with the slingshot.
And if he had tried to beat Goliath with
Goliath playbook, would he have won?
Definitely not.
Instead he went to his specialty.
That's how he beat Goliath.
And so we as boutiques need to find our
slingshot and it's not going to be using
the playbook of some big, one of the
reasons the Big's playbook doesn't work
as well for boutiques is big's downplay
people, individuals, I mean, really
our whole industry does the investment
industry prioritizes numbers and data.
Over words and stories.
It values performance over people.
And that's wrong because every
business is a people business.
Even the investment industry,
people do business with people.
People invest with people, and
people connect with people.
Story is where it starts.
All right.
Let's go to question three.
What makes a good backstory?
Great question.
Very tactical.
Before we go to what makes a
good backstory, let's start
with stories in general.
Let's go to the movies, right?
Classic books.
Let's go to Joseph Campbell's, the Hero's.
screenwriter use these classic story
arcs, but they can apply to any story,
not just movies, not just books.
And if you Google this, which I encourage
you to do, go down the rabbit hole on
all the story arcs, all the frameworks.
Find something that resonates with you.
. There are a lot of different frameworks
for how to write a good story, and
they have varying levels of complexity.
Some have five phases, some
have seven, some have 12.
I'm going to break it down to three.
Super simple.
Okay, here we go.
Here's the story arc.
You started here, something happened,
some obstacle or conflict, and you
ended up over here, changed that.
I'll say it again.
There's some ordinary world
that you're starting in.
You encounter a conflict or opposing
force, and you emerge changed.
That is the makings of a great story,
and you can layer in the rising action
as the conflict builds and the following
action as you resolve the conflict.
But any good story is a
journey, a transformation.
Every good story also has high stakes.
In other words, would you have cheered
for Rocky if he was the favorite?
Like he had the best trainers and the
best record, and every time he stepped
into the ring, he just won every match.
You're like, great.
Uh, this guy's crushing it.
And what's the point of this movie?
Like we can't cheer.
, right?
I mean, it's just like, why are we
watching this or Liam Neon and taken,
what if his daughter wasn't kidnapped
by terrorists, but she was just like
at the mall and forgot to call home?
What?
Why do we care about this movie at all?
We need steaks.
We need a reason to care.
We need a common shared experience,
even if we haven't lived.
Being an underdog.
Fear of losing someone we love or
losing something important, a journey,
a life-changing adventure, whatever
that is, it needs to have stakes
and it needs to tap into emotion.
Yeah, emotion.
I know even in the investment space, Every
portfolio manager is cringing right now.
I'm not saying you need to pour
your heart out in meetings.
I mean, you can.
I'm here for that.
But you do need to bring some
vulnerability and authenticity
to the conversation.
You can shy away from matters of
the heart, but, but your story
isn't gonna resonate as well.
So let's take an example.
If you spent the bulk of your career,
Working for a great mentor, maybe an
investing legend, someone who took you
under their wing and for years you were
beside them learning, investing, building
a company, and then something happens.
They retire, they pass away, they
leave the company to someone else.
There's a change.
There's a lot of emotion around.
and no one believes you.
If you say there isn't, because
it's just not true, right?
I mean, you don't spend the bulk
of your career working for someone
building something amazing and not have
feelings about that, be it good or bad.
So you can share what you loved about
one part of your journey and what
frustrated you about another part.
Give people a reason to
care and to connect with.
. That's vulnerability.
That's authenticity.
Has nothing to do with your personal life.
It's just getting to the
messy parts of any story and
vulnerability and authenticity.
These concepts are, are
important as you raise capital,
and they are a daily practice.
But there's another element
that matters in story.
, it's really important.
I'm blathering on, and I don't care
because I want you to have all this.
So who is the hero of the story?
There's a sort of asterisk on that,
which is there can only be one.
There can only be one hero.
So in 99% of the stories you.
Your client, your prospect, your investor.
The other person is the hero.
And you are not the hero.
You are the guide.
Okay?
They are Luke Skywalker.
You are Yoda.
They are Harry Potter.
You are Dumbledore.
They're Catniss.
You're Haage.
Okay.
Almost all the stories you
tell are are not about you.
You aren't the hero.
Why?
Because people don't care about you.
They care about themselves.
They care about what
you can do to help them.
So they're the hero except for one
story, which is your backstory.
And if you imagine the movies.
because the movies are so much
of storytelling, and if you
think of any movie where there's
a hero and a guide set up.
So let's take the last one.
We did Hunger Games, Kanes and Hamit.
So in a movie, the Hero
does not choose their guide.
, they're just handed the guide, right?
Kanas didn't have a lineup of 10,000
potential guides in the movie,
and she had to pick one, right?
She just got handed Haage.
But in the investment industry,
in the asset management industry,
there's tons of funds you could.
There's tons of boutique asset
managers and not boutiques, bigs.
Every flavor active has a, there
are a ton of choices for whom
you're gonna pick as your guide.
There's a conscious decision
that needs to be made.
around who you're gonna choose, and
that's why this part of storytelling,
the backstory is so important.
Your prospects have a choice and
the backstory helps them choose you.
That's why the vulnerability and
authenticity are so important because they
aren't just buying a fund or a product or
a service or whatever industry you're in.
They are hiring a human.
They are choosing a guide.
Okay.
My gosh, that was a lot.
I basically blacked out there.
So let's recap framework of a good story.
Just three things that you
need in the story itself.
Started here, encountered a
challenge, emerged changed.
Perfect.
But you need to have a conflict.
You need high stakes.
You need a motion and vulner.
And you need to know you aren't
the hero in most stories.
You are the guide.
Accept your backstory, and you are the
only one who can be the hero of that.
You want people to leave a
meeting with you and think, I am
cheering for that guy or that gal.
So tell them the movie version.
Make them literally be reaching
for the popcorn, saying, I'm
here for this and I'm cheering.
That's the vibe you want
when you tell your backstory.
Okay.
Question four, does it work?
Does storytelling work?
No.
For real.
Does it work, ? Yes, it works for real.
Okay, next question.
No, I'm, I'm serious.
It works.
, and I know that investment people
speak numbers, so let me give you
some examples of stories at work that
I've personally been involved with.
Okay, ready?
I've helped a new fund go from $1 million
in a u m to 1 billion in a u m in three
years, raised 300 million for a new
boutique with bottom decile performance.
Raised over 500 million for
a boutique and closed their
flagship strategy in three years.
Doubled the size of a boutique
asset manager with one.
got a 10 million commitment after one
phone call secured 60 million in seed
capital for a new interval fund before
launch, secured 25 million in seed capital
for a new mutual fund before launch.
I could go on.
The point here is, yes, it works,
and I get why people doubt it.
I mean here we are in the investment
industry filled with just wicked smart
people with all these advanced degrees
and bonkers experience, and here comes
this chick, me saying, hold the phone.
Stories are the thing stories before
sales, and I'm taking everything that
people have been taught and flipping it
on its head like a total disruptive rebel.
I get it.
I get it.
I'm not saying story's the only thing.
There's still a whole bunch of due
diligence that needs to get done.
There's quant research,
operational due diligence.
There's a lot.
It's not that the, it's not
that the quantitative and
the numbers aren't important.
It's that they aren't the most important
and they aren't the only important thing.
words and people matter.
Stories matter, and I get why that
sounds crazy, and maybe I would be
a doubter too if I hadn't seen it
happen again and again and again.
So when I shared my backstory,
I mentioned, it took me a long
time to realize I was doing
something different, and it did.
It took me a long time.
to unpack what I was doing because I was
clearly doing the same things over and
over again as I was raising this money.
I just didn't know what it was.
Over time, I was able to codify
that I, I put it into a blueprint.
We call it our billion dollar blueprint.
It's built for boutiques and it's
repeatable and it's systematized, but.
If someone said to me, yep, Stacy,
I see all of that and I get it.
I see your blueprint, awesome sauce.
It's amazing.
But I only have time for one thing.
Like I'm gonna do one thing
out of this whole B blueprint.
What should I do?
I would say get your stories
straight and I mean, get 'em right.
And start with your backstory.
The whole blueprint that we use at
Haer is built around storytelling.
It's the greatest, most underappreciated
asset, and it's all inside you.
, you are looking for growth.
You're looking for asset growth.
If you're a boutique asset manager,
a wealth manager, you're looking
for career growth or a board seat
or a new job or whatever it is that
you're looking for, typically you
look externally, you look outside
yourself and say, yeah, I wanna grow.
So it's out there, the key
to it all, but it's not.
It's internal.
It's the growth starts inside you.
and stories shape outcomes.
They allow you to write your future.
So use your words . You'll
be amazed, I promise.
All right, question five.
Last question.
What is the biggest mistake you
see in story in storytelling?
That's a great.
I'm all about learning from mistakes.
So this one, this isn't a mistake
per se, but I wanna share it.
To go back to the first rule
of the Backstory Club, we
all start at the beginning.
We all start at the bottom.
Somebody cue Drake.
Okay?
There are a lot of challenges, but um,
typically for us, when we are working
with a portfolio manager or founder,
, we all know what the psychographics
of a portfolio manager are, right?
They are they happy to go
do sales and marketing?
Not really.
I mean, are they happy to even step
out from behind their Bloomberg?
Not really.
Stories and words.
This is not their comfort zone.
So when we say, Hey, we wanna talk
about stories and we're gonna use
storytelling to help you raise
money, this is a huge ask for.
And when we work with fund managers,
what's really interesting is when
we ask them to tell their story,
you know, we say you've made this
decision, decision to launch a
company, which is no small decision.
You know, if you launched your own
firm, what was your journey like?
What was your path to get here?
I mean, they literally look
like they're gonna pass.
I, I mean, they go white.
They don't know how to answer it.
They, they're like pale, okay.
They get very uncomfortable and.
. Really what they're looking for
when they start talking is, how do
I get back to my comfort zone, which
is back to the portfolio, back to
the markets, back to the numbers.
Portfolio managers are most
comfortable with numbers.
Their unique ability is investing
in markets, not storytelling.
. So what happens is the first time we
do storytelling with them, they are so
uncomfortable, visibly uncomfortable
because we're asking them to do something
they've never been asked before.
They've spent their entire career
being told no one cares about them.
And by the way, this is
obviously not their language.
And as I shared with you, whenever you
get nervous, you go to your comfort zone.
So if you're in the investment bi.
that they're gonna go to their portfolio.
How can I get back to that?
How can I get back to the markets
and the data and the stats?
And they really don't wanna
talk about themselves, their
values, their philosophies,
sort of the qualitative stuff.
So when we start working with
managers, I prefer to do those
calls with the portfolio manager
slash founder without anybody else.
because sometimes if there's an audience,
it's even harder for them to get in touch
with these stories with authenticity.
So they practice just telling it to me.
And if I really feel that we're
struggling, like we're not getting
anywhere, I can't find the story,
I can't find a thread to pull.
Um, there's a big unlock that
you can use, which is I ask
them to tell me about their.
Tell me a story about your mentor,
and it typically brings them
from their head to their heart.
And once you get them functioning in the
heart part, so to speak, then they're
able to talk a little bit more freely.
So this question was about
what's the biggest mistake?
So to speak, and I don't,
this isn't a mistake.
I think what I'm sharing with you here
is this is a natural block to getting
in touch with your story, and it's okay.
You're not gonna nail it on the first try.
I think the mistake is to
have this pressure on you of.
Like, go tell your story
and you're gonna nail it.
You're not, and you know what?
If there's people around, it's going
to be even more challenging for you.
So find one person or
practice by yourself, right?
Because, uh, you gotta get in touch
with the sort of heart elements.
And for most people in this
industry, you're gonna be stuck in
the intellectual, rational parts.
Now, what I don't hear from clients
of haven or is things like stories
aren't gonna work because if they
said that, I'd be like, well,
we are not the group for you.
I am sure there is somebody else who likes
to, you know, fling fact sheets around and
throw funds at a wall and see what sticks.
But that is not us.
So we are brave enough to attract people
to our roster who believe in the power of.
and our, our, on the opposite
side, our repel, if you will,
is if you don't believe in it.
We're not your people.
So by virtue of the fact that that
managers are coming to us, that, that
they're on our roster, they believe enough
in story and are open enough to try it.
But that doesn't mean it's easy.
. We'll talk more about attract
and Rappel another time.
I could totally riff on that
right now, but I'm not going to.
So big picture you have it.
You've got the five questions that
I'm most often asked about backstory
and storytelling in general.
You've started to peel back the
layers on what works in storytelling,
and specifically why backstory is.
You've got the confirmation that
yes, it indeed does work, right?
It's worth it to try this and lean into
it, and you're starting to understand what
makes a good story in the common mistakes.
You've also got at least one example of a
backstory now, because I shared mine with.
And I mean, just wait to see
what we've got in store for you.
On this podcast, you are going to hear
so many fabulous stories of people behind
the portfolios, ones who have made it and
raised billions of dollars and built some
of the most successful investment firms.
as well as the next gen, the emerging
managers, the ones who got next.
And we're gonna hear from experts in
sales and marketing their backstories
and how story has helped them shape
outcomes in business and in life.
So the question I have for you now
is, what would it look like for you
if you built upon this learning?
, what can you do today to
start leaning into story?
Maybe you put a block of time
on your calendar to start
working on your backstory.
Or maybe you ask clients or
peers or people you love to
tell you their backstory.
Just, you know, throw it out there it out.
Like, Hey, tell me your story.
How did you get here?
How did you build your business?
How did you become, insert
whatever their career.
These questions are the basis for
powerful business changing conversations,
but they're also the basis for
powerful life-changing conversations,
and it's hard work, but it's work
that matters because people matter.
You matter.
So high five till next time.