Most founders treat their origin story as a bio-page formality. Built correctly, it’s a positioning asset — proof of exactly why I see the pattern others miss.
For a long time I kept my origin story on the About page, where founder stories are supposed to live, and nowhere else. It felt like the polite thing to do — share it once, then get back to the actual expertise. I’ve since changed my mind entirely, and this essay is me explaining why, because I think most founders make the same mistake I did.
I was born in Cuba. I moved to Miami when I was seven. I learned English the way most immigrant kids do — by watching, translating, mirroring, then testing what landed. I became my family’s translator before I was old enough to understand what I was actually translating, which, looking back, is the most accurate description of my current job that I could possibly give you.
How should a founder use their personal story in brand positioning?
Not as decoration, and not as a separate chapter from the professional pitch. The mistake I made for years was treating my biography as backstory — a nice thing to share once so people felt they knew me, disconnected from why anyone should actually hire me. That's exactly backwards. The origin story isn't there to make a founder likable. It's there to make a specific professional claim more credible than it would be without it.
My claim is that I read behavioral patterns other communications people miss — the signal underneath the message, not just the message itself. That claim means nothing on its own. It's just something a lot of consultants say. But connect it to a seven-year-old carrying meaning between two languages and two cultures before she had the vocabulary to explain what she was doing, and the claim stops being a slogan. It becomes evidence.
Words are never just words. They're culture, context, hierarchy, and tone — the signal inside the signal. I learned that before I learned to drive.
What makes an origin story a positioning asset instead of a bio?
A bio lists facts in order: born here, moved there, worked at this company, founded that one. A positioning asset does something different — it draws a straight line from one specific lived experience to the exact professional skill being sold, so a reader understands not just what I do, but why I see it more clearly than someone without my specific background would.
Here's the test I now use on every piece of my own story before I decide whether it belongs in a pitch, a post, or a proposal: if I removed this detail, would my professional claim lose any credibility? If the answer is yes, it's positioning. If the answer is no, it's decoration, and decoration doesn't belong in a brand built to convert, no matter how good the story sounds at a dinner party.
Run my own story through that test and almost nothing survives as pure decoration. Being the family translator isn't a charming detail — it's the origin of the exact skill I now sell as a behavioral science lens. Working every shift nobody else wanted at nineteen isn't a scrappy-founder anecdote — it's where I got the reps that let me read a room accurately before I open my mouth. Building The PR Plug as an AI-native firm from day one isn't a tech preference — it's a direct extension of growing up translating meaning across two systems that didn't naturally speak to each other. The story and the service are the same claim, told twice.
I see the inverse version of this mistake constantly with clients, especially founders whose most interesting professional decisions grew directly out of something personal — a career pivot after a family emergency, a business built to solve a problem they lived through themselves, an unconventional path into their industry that they've quietly decided sounds unprofessional to mention. They separate the two on instinct, assuming the personal chapter would dilute the professional one. In almost every case I've audited, it's the opposite. The personal chapter is the only thing that makes the professional claim impossible to say about anyone else.
This is exactly the exercise I run inside a Fractional CMO Retainer for founders sitting on a strong personal story they've never connected to their positioning — not to manufacture a narrative, but to find the one that was already true and was just filed under the wrong page of the website.
Lia Sarduy is the founder of The PR Plug, a Miami-based AI-native communications consultancy built on the belief that the founder's story and the firm's positioning should be the same claim, not two separate documents. Read more on the About page, get the next essay by joining the list, or book a call if your own story has been sitting on a bio page doing nothing for your positioning.
Frequently asked questions
How should a founder use their personal story in brand positioning?
Not as a bio-page formality, and not separated from the actual expertise being sold. The origin story should be used as evidence — the specific lived experience that explains why this founder sees a pattern that competitors with a similar resume don’t. Told correctly, it stops being background information and becomes part of the case for why the founder is credible on the exact thing they’re selling.
What makes an origin story a positioning asset instead of a bio?
A bio lists facts in chronological order. A positioning asset connects one specific piece of lived experience directly to the professional skill being sold, so the reader understands not just what the founder does but why they see it more clearly than someone without that background. The test is simple: if you removed the personal story, would the professional claim lose any of its credibility? If yes, it was functioning as positioning. If no, it was decoration.