A few weeks ago, I was trying to help a friend define the origin story of her business. She’s a coach, and she described how she guides women through periods of change. Career change, leaving a relationship, loss—basically any time in a woman’s life where she’s stepping through a door into something new.

Because members of her target audience are all going through very different life experiences, she’s had trouble writing sales copy that really spoke to the transformation she offered.

So I asked her to tell me her own story.

She’d left a 20-year executive career to start an apparel brand with her teenage daughter to help young women feel confident, and then transitioned into coaching women like herself: smart, ambitious, outwardly successful—but quietly stuck.

In passing, she mentioned that the struggles of starting the apparel brand had helped her gain her own confidence.

My story sense started tingling, so I asked her to describe what that journey was like for her.

She told me that starting the business had been a huge learning curve, filled with a lot of the financial and emotional setbacks that you’d expect. The pressure was made even more enormous, since her family’s livelihood was at stake.

My client described being dealt blow after blow, until she had a moment of literally falling to her knees in self-doubt, so hollowed out in surrender that she could no longer stand. That’s when she finally made the connection that changed the course of her life:

She said, “That’s when I realized confidence doesn’t come from ego. It comes from faith. It comes from knowing who you are.”

Bingo.

We’d found a powerful Door of No Return.

Story is about change

I almost wrote “good stories are about change,” but I caught myself at the last minute.

Because if there isn’t any change, we’re not really telling a story. We’re telling a series of events that may or may not be leading anywhere.

Story is about watching the protagonist struggle in a cage of their own mental making, watching them throw themselves against a wall, yelling that the door is just over there! Rooting for them to finally realize that they’ve been holding the key to escape this entire time.

In the Magnetic Story Framework, there are two Doors of No Return.

Here's a super fancy diagram:

The Door my coaching client described above was the final one of the story—her Transformation.

The transformation is that “Aha!” moment that signifies real change. It doesn’t have to be big and flashy. In fact, some of the most powerful transformations are extremely subtle.

Matthew Dicks, 50-time Moth StorySLAM champion, calls this a “5-second moment” in his book Storyworthy. “A 5-second moment,” he says, “is when something fundamentally changes inside you. That’s what your story is about.”

When my friend fell on her knees in surrender, she experienced a 5-second moment that changed everything for her.

Before our call, she’d never expressed her origin story that way. She’d been sitting on a gold mine of a transformation story, something she can now use in podcast interviews, on her sales page, in her about page—anywhere she needs to articulate the transformation she helps lead her own clients through.

We all have our own 5-second moments of transformation.

But to tell a truly powerful story, we need to also need to identify the beginning of that arc:

The First Door of No Return

In each of these stories, the character crosses a threshold they can’t uncross, and life will never go back to the way it was before.

In fiction, this is called the First Plot Point—or, the term I use in the Magnetic Story Framework, the First Door of No Return.

The hero’s world gets disrupted at the very beginning of the story. They generally spend the first act ignoring the call to adventure, and trying to return to how things were.

And then something happens that causes them to walk through that Door of No Return—after that, things will never be the same.

Sometimes the character walks through by choice. Sometimes (many times) they’re dragged through, kicking and screaming.

But once the character steps through it, they’re committed. Even if they’re terrified. Even if they have no idea what’s coming next. Even if they desperately want to go back to how things were.

In fiction, the First Door of No Return is absolutely critical. It’s what makes the rest of the story inevitable. It’s what drives the protagonist into the struggle that eventually leads to the transformation moment we talked about above.

In marketing, it’s just as important.

Because in order to guide your customer towards their own transformation (that Final Door of No Return), you need to understand how painful it was for them to walk through that first door—the moment that set them on the path of struggle.

Your customer’s First Door is the moment they realize something has to change. They’ve probably been struggling a bit before this, but, let’s face it. None of us take action to solve our problems until they become painful enough that we’re forced to.

For your customer, maybe it’s:

• The critical launch that flops and shakes their confidence
• The phone call from the doctor with life-changing news
• The opportunity they almost miss, which shook them to their core

This First Door is the moment that their old way of operating stops working, and they start actively looking for a solution—which leads them through struggle, and to the Final Door.

Here’s how to use this.

When you tell your own story:

• Identify the moment you stepped through that door.
• What happened that set you on the path to the work you do now?
• Why couldn’t you go back to the way things were before?

When you tell a customer story (case study or audience stand-in):

• Pinpoint their inciting incident.
• Describe the moment vividly so your audience can see themselves in it.

Zooming in on that moment gives you an opportunity to show before/after contrast, and lets you highlight the stakes. It reminds your customer why there’s no going back—only forward towards transformation and the Promised Land.

My own door

The friend I mentioned above is Heather MacLaren, and her practice, ReDefine, is all about helping people through moments of transition—which is exactly what I need right now as I’m in the early stages of figuring out Story Rebel.

So, after I coached her through finding her Transformation moment, we swapped roles and she did a coaching session for me. And… wow. Just wow!

I’ve been through a lot of Doors of No Return in my life, but talking with Heather helped me pinpoint the one that led me to Story Rebel.

For over a decade, I’ve thrived as a freelancer. I built other people’s dreams, wrote other people’s stories, and met everyone else’s deadlines. I told myself my own story wasn’t that interesting, and that my ideas weren’t creative or strong enough to be a thought leader. I kept my head down, and kept my ambitions to myself.

But secretly, I imagined teaching, speaking, creating courses—work that could live beyond the hours I put in. Work that could ripple out into the world and make a real impact.

That ambition was locked in a battle with fear, because I’d grown up in a small town where standing out wasn’t celebrated. I’d learned early to keep my big ideas quiet, and even as an adult, the thought of being the “face” of anything felt terrifying.

But the desire to share my story on a bigger stage was there, even if I never took action on it.

And then, two years ago, life handed me a questionable gift: entry into the One Eye Club. Suddenly I couldn’t blend in anymore. My eye patch and prosthetics attract attention wherever I go—and there’s literally no going back to how I used to look.

There’s also no going back to the Jessie I used to be before the injury.

I’ve spent the last two years in the identity struggle that followed that Door of No Return, and I won’t say that I’m exactly in the Promised Land yet. But I have gone through another Door—this time, of my own making.

The moment I started Story Rebel, I committed to stepping onto the stage both literally and figuratively. To stop worrying about what colleagues, friends, or even family might think. To own my expertise and become known as the woman who helps others find, share, and harness the power of their own stories.

Once I made that decision—once I had that Transformation—there was no going back (again!). Because once you’ve glimpsed the bigger life you’re meant to live, the smaller one no longer fits.

Do you see how the First Door of No Return mirrors the Final Door (the Transformation) in a story?

And why understanding yours is so valuable?

I’ve been working on a tool to help entrepreneurs, marketers, and other storytellers define their own origin stories—the Origin Story Workbook.

I’d love to hear what you think!

​You can download your copy here.

Talk soon,

Jessie