About us
Story Of Me helps purpose‑led founders and teams see who they really are, so their marketing stops feeling chaotic and starts moving people and performance in the same direction, cutting through the noise with story, structure, and strategy so their brand can grow with honesty, alignment, and momentum that actually shows up in the numbers.
My journey to clarity
"Clarity isn’t a “nice to have” for the brand guidelines. It’s the discipline that keeps your creativity, and your growth, alive. Thelma Dhlovu
I’m Thelma Dhlovu, founder of Story Of Me. I’m a strategist and storyteller by job title, but really, I’m obsessed with why some brands feel alive and others feel like they’ve been written by committee. I came up through e‑commerce after a First-Class BA in Marketing Management, working with brands like Hugo Boss and Suitsupply. That’s where I learned that “being everywhere” isn’t a strategy. Being clear is. Every email, image, and line of copy either tells the truth about who you are or muddies it. The question “what makes a brand feel true?” has taken me across industries and continents. In New York, I led visual storytelling for Hugo Boss and saw how a single image could say more than a 40‑page deck. At The Cheeky Panda, I watched a bamboo idea grow into a sustainability movement. At Nuapay, I helped make open banking feel human, not just “fintech”. With Mandarin Blueprint, I worked on a mission to make learning a language feel less like homework and more like discovery. Different sectors. Different audiences. The same pattern every time: the moment a brand gets clear on who it really is, things start to move. People get it. Teams line up. Growth stops feeling like a fight. Story Of Me exists because too many good organisations are buried under vague words and clever-sounding fluff. The work I do is simple: strip things back to the truth, give that truth structure and language, and hand you a story your team can actually use.
Brands move faster when they are clear
Growth doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from seeing yourself clearly, telling the truth, and getting everyone pulling in the same direction.
Every brand starts with a clear truth, why it exists and the change it’s here to make. Over time, that truth gets buried under targets, tactics, and “we’ve always done it this way”.
Story Of Me helps bring that truth back into focus, so your purpose and performance stop fighting each other. Using The Brand Truth System, we uncover, articulate, and activate your story so every message, campaign, and decision lines up with what you actually stand for.
Our vision
To make clarity the new measure of growth for modern, purpose-led brands.
When brands grow from who they really are, success looks like connection, alignment, and impact, not just a bigger number on a slide.
Our mission
Story Of Me exists to make marketing feel human again by giving brands the clarity to grow on their own terms.
That means connecting what you believe with how you show up, in your story, your systems, and your everyday decisions.
We help teams:
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Focus their story and direction so everyone knows what they stand for.
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Build simple systems that make marketing repeatable and scalable.
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Communicate with confidence, empathy, and consistency across the brand.
Our values
Truth
We tell the story you can stand behind on your best day and your worst, not the one that just sounds good in a campaign.
Clarity
We strip out the noise and simplify complexity so teams can move with confidence.
Rigor
We don’t guess. We dig, question, and test until the story holds up in the real world, not just in workshops.
Alignment
We connect purpose, people, and performance into one clear story everyone can act on.
Impact
We measure growth by the change your story creates, not just the numbers it reports.