“I know I want to write a book. I just don’t know what kind.”

We hear some version of that from new financial advisor clients all the time. Almost every one of them is really asking if their book should be a business parable or a traditional nonfiction book.

Most people picture a traditional nonfiction book and for good reason. It’s the format most of us know, especially in business and finance. You introduce an idea, explain your framework, share examples from your own experience, and give readers practical steps they can apply in their own lives.

That’s not your only option.

If you’ve read The Go-Giver, The One Minute Manager, Who Moved My Cheese?, or The Goal, you’ve read a business parable. Instead of teaching lessons directly, the reader experiences them through the journey of a character.

So how do you know which is right for your message? The better question is:

How do you want your readers to experience your book?

If your goal is to teach a repeatable process, introduce a framework, or create a resource readers can return to again and again, a traditional nonfiction book is often the right choice. Readers can highlight pages, bookmark chapters, and come back to a specific concept whenever they need it.

A business parable creates a different experience. Instead of explaining why something matters, you show why it matters. Readers don’t just learn the lesson. They live it alongside someone else.

What Makes a Business Parable’s Main Character Work?

When we’re building a business parable, we spend most of our time on the main character. In literature, this character is often called the Everyman. They’re relatable, familiar, and believable. Your reader has to see pieces of themselves in that person’s life.

Conversely, the goal is also to create a character who feels authentic to the specific people you’re trying to reach.

For one financial advisor, we built the story around an HVAC technician because that’s exactly who his clients are. We wanted them to open the book and think, “I know this guy. He’s a lot like me.”

So we gave him the life those clients live. His whole identity was wrapped up in his work. Then his wife got sick with cancer, and suddenly he was torn between the business he’d built and the person he loved most. That’s not a manufactured conflict. It’s the same tension a lot of small business owners are already carrying, whether or not their spouse is sick.

We used that tension to walk through everything the advisor needed his clients to understand, including how to set up the business to run without him, what steps to take, and in what order. We showed it happening inside the story. It’s the difference between a checklist and watching someone live through the checklist and feel what it costs them.

We even had people who work in HVAC read the manuscript before we finished it, just to check our details. If a reader who knows the industry catches something inaccurate, they stop trusting the story, the same way you’d stop trusting a medical drama the moment a doctor does something no real doctor would do. We didn’t want a single detail to be the thing that pulled a reader back out of the book.

The More Specific the Story, the More Readers See Themselves In It

That sounds backwards, but it’s true.

Right now, Paul is working on a parable built around a husband and wife. The husband is close to retirement, and his wife is twenty years younger. They’re high income, they’ve saved well, and he has the confidence of someone who’s always been successful. We’ll be fine, he tells himself. Without meaning to, he leaves his wife out of the decisions that affect both of them.

Writing that story, Paul recognized the pattern in himself almost immediately. Paul is the one who says, “I’ll take care of it,” and moves on. It wasn’t until he hired a financial advisor that he and his wife started sitting down together, and both of their voices became part of the planning.

If someone had just told him to include his wife more in their financial decisions, he would have nodded and done nothing. Seeing it play out in a story is different. It’s like somebody held up a mirror. You don’t argue with a mirror. You think, “Oh. That’s me. I should probably take this advice.”

That’s the effect a parable is built to create, and it works because the story is specific enough to reflect the reader back to themselves.

Two Formats, Two Jobs

A business parable isn’t better than a traditional nonfiction book. It’s a different tool for a different job.

A framework works when your reader needs steps they can act on immediately, in order, without ambiguity. A story works when your reader needs to feel the cost of not acting before they’ll believe the steps matter at all.

Once a reader is invested in a character, they keep turning pages for reasons that have nothing to do with the lesson. Will the business survive? Will the couple work through it? Will he figure out how to bring her in before it’s too late? They’re not reading to get to the next teaching point. They’re reading because they care what happens to someone. The lesson arrives as a side effect of caring, not as the reason they picked up the book.

The right choice of format depends on what you’re trying to say, who you’re saying it to, and how you want them to feel by the last page.

Before you decide what your book is going to say, decide how you want your readers to experience it.

Frequently Asked Questions