Retellable was born in one moment, from one realization.

For fourteen years, Jay Golden had navigated the edge of the early internet.

The first global online learning site. Early music videos when broadband was a baby. Animations passed person to person to influence millions.

Ideas spreading in new ways, faster than anyone expected.

But standing in his garden that afternoon, his newborn daughter asleep against his chest, it wasn't the transformation on screens that bubbled up.

It was the night bus from Cusco, bouncing until his guts were sore. Sharing a gourd of yerba mate with a teacher while hitchhiking in Argentina. The café in Kathmandu sharing stories of harrowing treks. The vast and ancient square in Marrakesh, trying snails, just because.  

On every journey, the same ritual: strangers becoming friends. The traveler’s currency.

Stories of wrong turns that led somewhere right. Of maps to hidden waterfalls. Warnings about bus companies. Of the moment that everything changed.

He thought of the leaders he had been serving to create viral stories. And a realization stopped him cold:

We leave the most precious gems of our lives by the side of the road.

Because we just don’t know where they fit. What to do with them.

So we leave them there. Moments that could change everything.

Moments that were retellable.

Jay sent an email to his network: "I'm helping leaders transform the world through story."

A note arrived within hours. But strangely, it wasn’t a client. It was an introduction, to someone that would change his life.

The person he would meet was Joel ben Izzy—a storyteller with a glimmer in his eyes who lived in the hills and had spent decades learning what makes a story work. Joel taught Jay about the intricacies of story, the frameworks that existed, and how to gather a collection of stories that can transform a person’s life—and their leadership.

In time, word spread, person to person, story to story.

First in the Silicon Valley. Then to boardrooms in Amsterdam, conference stages in Adelaide, team offsites in the mountains. Leaders came to Retellable not to polish their pitch decks, but to rediscover the moments that made them who they are. To turn insight into story. Story into change.

Some of those stories led to funded startups. Others transformed visionaries into unforgettable storytellers. To new jobs. Some to entire departments restructured around a new way of seeing.

That journey led to a book, to keynote speeches around the world, and to storytelling experiences that would change lives. It also led to hundreds of world-changing visionaries adopting the Retellable approach themselves.

And it would lead to bringing that connection to scale, through School of Legend.

And right now, somewhere in the world, someone who learned this approach is speaking in front of a room, or a camera, or one person who needs to hear their story.

Sharing that gem that was once left by the side of the road.