Founder Lore: The Story Only You Can Tell - And the Three Steps to Building Your Mythology. How Your Challenge, Turning Point, and Transformation Become the Narrative
Every obsession-worthy brand has a story people repeat when you’re not in the room.
Not your formal bio. Not your résumé.
The story.
That’s your founder lore.
And when you combine clear founder lore with magnetic presence on camera and a more playful way of showing up online (hello, anti-feed), you stop feeling like you’re chasing the algorithm and start feeling like you’re building a world people want to belong to.
This is what I want to break down for you:
what founder lore actually is,
how to build yours in a way that creates belonging,
and why magnetism + “second accounts” are shaping how we show up in 2025.
What Is Founder Lore?
Founder lore is the emotional logic behind your brand.
It answers:
Why does this thing exist in the first place?
Why you as the person to lead it?
What belief system sits underneath everything you create?
Why would someone want to choose your world instead of the millions of others available?
When you tell that story clearly and often, it moves through three layers:
This is me – your personal story.
This is my thing – the identity of your brand or work.
This is us – the community that forms around those values and wants in.
Over time, your founder lore becomes the story people tell about you.
A familiar example: Sarah Blakely and Spanx
Most of us who “grew up” with Spanx could tell some version of this:
Sarah was selling fax machines door-to-door in Atlanta.
She wore control-top pantyhose every day under her clothes.
She wanted that smoothing effect with open-toe shoes, so she cut the feet off.
No hosiery factory took her seriously until one did – after the owner’s daughter said, “this is a good idea.”
She used $5,000 of her own savings, started selling into stores herself, and built Spanx into a billion-dollar brand.
That story is lore. It explains:
The problem she saw.
The refusal to accept “this is just how it is.”
The creativity, persistence, and values baked into the brand from day one.
You can do the same thing, at your scale, in your industry.
Why Lore Works Better Than Facts
Our brains don’t actually care about bullet-point facts. They care about:
Context – how things connect.
Emotion – why it matters.
Sequence – what happened, and what happened next.
Stories light up the parts of the brain responsible for movement, sensation, and feeling. That’s why a good story feels like it’s happening to you, and why you remember a founder’s origin story long after you’ve forgotten their revenue numbers.
When you share your lore often, your people start to see themselves inside it.
They recognize their own frustrations, desires, and turning points.
That’s how identity and belonging form around a brand.
The 3-Part Founder Lore Framework
You don’t need a dramatic saga to have founder lore. You need clarity.
Here’s the simple structure I teach inside the Cult Brand Blueprint Accelerator:
The Challenge
The Turning Point
The Transformation
Let’s walk through each.
1. The Challenge
This is the tension, misconception, or limitation you noticed and could no longer ignore.
Questions to ask yourself:
What wasn’t working – in your industry, in your life, in the way things were being done?
What did you keep bumping up against, over and over again?
What frustrated or confused you so much that you decided to do something different?
Example – a hairstylist:
“Clients kept coming in asking for whatever was trending on TikTok. The cuts looked great on the app, but they didn’t work with their real lifestyle or bone structure.”
2. The Turning Point
This is the realization that shifted everything – and the new way you chose to operate.
Questions:
What did you decide to do differently?
What did you create or change in response to that challenge?
How did your work or process evolve from that moment?
Hairstylist turning point:
“I stopped cutting for trends and started cutting for bone structure, lifestyle, and identity. I changed my consultations, my questions, and the way I talked about hair online.”
Healer turning point:
“I designed seasonal rituals and slow-practice containers instead of promising overnight change. I rooted everything in rhythm and regulation, not intensity.”
3. The Transformation
This is the new reality that exists because of you.
Questions:
What’s now possible for your people that wasn’t possible before?
What belief system are you inviting them into?
How does their experience feel different in your world?
Hairstylist transformation:
“Your hair feels like you – not like whatever is going viral this month. You become the reference point instead of the replica.”
Healer transformation:
“Healing happens in the everyday ordinary, not only in extremes. Your life becomes the practice, not a separate performance.”
My Own Founder Lore (A Quick Snapshot)
Here’s how this framework looks for me and Oui, We Studio:
Challenge:
I saw a gap. If you needed support with branding and marketing, you went to an agency. Agencies could pick great fonts and colors, but they rarely touched the deeper energetics, psychology, and nervous system realities of the founder.Turning Point:
I decided to take my decade of experience in corporate beauty marketing and blend it with Human Design, storytelling, and mindset work. I created a new model that supports founders as whole humans while building cult-level brands.Transformation:
My clients build brands people are genuinely obsessed with: brands that feel like a reflection of who they are, not a costume they put on to “perform” online.
You can run the same structure on your story and refine it over time.
Where to Use Your Founder Lore
Once you have a working version of your lore, weave it into:
Your “About” page
Your podcast intro or media bio
Your Instagram/TikTok captions and carousels
Your launch content and sales pages
Your keynote talks and interviews
The goal is not to tell the whole story every time.
The goal is to let people feel like, “Oh, that’s why she built this. That’s why this space feels different.”
The Return of the Anti-Feed and Second Accounts
The other pattern I’m watching: the quiet comeback of the “anti-feed.”
Not the old-school “Finsta” that was truly private.
More like a second account that functions as:
a notebook
a playground
a softer, stranger, more personal side of your world
These feeds often include:
blurry film photos
unsaved drafts and screenshots
half-thoughts and references
things that don’t “have” to go viral
They feel cryptic in a good way. Less optimized, more human.
Why it works:
It takes the pressure off your main account, especially if that feed is now quite curated.
It lets your community see how you think, not only what you’ve polished.
It reactivates your creative energy because the stakes are lower.
You don’t need a second account. But if your main feed feels tight, stale, or over-managed, it might be worth experimenting with a small, no-pressure side feed that’s just for play.
Not to “grow.”
To remember you’re an artist, not only an operator.
How Lore + Magnetism + Anti-Feed Build Cult Brands
When you put all of this together, you get:
A clear story about why you’re here (founder lore)
A nervous system that can actually hold visibility without burning out (magnetism from regulation)
A space online where you can experiment and let people in, beyond the polished brand (anti-feed energy)
That’s the foundation of a cult brand:
A story people repeat.
A feeling people want more of.
A world people are proud to say they belong to.
✨ Takeaways
Your lore creates belonging.
Stories encode meaning — facts don't.
Presence > performance in content right now.
The anti-feed is back — creativity wants room to breathe.
Links & Mentions
Subscribe to The Unschool Newsletter (now matching the pod)
Intuitive Biz Academy (limited Black Friday return; updates included for current students)
Cult Brand Accelerator (January interest list)
Out of Office Club (join the challenge: Vibe • Viral • Value)
Oui, We Studio on Instagram (education hub)
