Earlier this week, I was at a reception hosted by the very wonderful School For Social Entrepreneurs in London for their most recent cohort of Fellows. This group of Fellows all had one thing in common – they were all ex-offenders who had been given funding for their own start-ups. Each Fellow was invited to present their project and to give a brief summary of their life thus far and where they were looking to go from there.
One Fellow’s story was most interesting. As a young man he had somehow got mixed up in the wrong crowd and ended up behind bars. He was given a lifeline by the programme specifically aimed at ex-offenders and his new project was breeding endangered frogs.
Listening to the young man talk about his life and his start-up, I could almost sense the audience in the room willing him to do well. Hoping that his troubled story would end well. And I realised yet again, how a great story, told well can win even the most sceptic of audiences.