I’m perfectly content, honored even, with my title as editor of the Business Times. Although editor of a one-man news staff isn’t nearly as impressive as it sounds and necessarily requires a lot more than editing. Like reporting, writing and occasionally hauling out the trash.

But I’ll admit it. I’ve long aspired to something my beloved late wife, ever the astute attorney, would have dismissed as ostentatious. Your royal majesty, perhaps. Supreme allied commander has a nice ring to it. Then there’s my personal favorite: illustrious potentate. For that matter, I wouldn’t mind becoming what the Beatles called a paperback writer.

All kidding aside, the one title that actually matters most to me also describes a function, and that’s storyteller. I use that word not at all in the derogatory sense of those skilled at fabricating exaggerations. Rather, I offer reverential praise to those who make connections, convey truths and perpetuate culture in ways great and small.

I love to tell stories. Hopefully, I offer some compelling ones in the mysteries I’ve written about a small town newspaper editor and brilliant history professor.

At work, I love to tell stories about entrepreneurs and their ventures. I love most of all to tell success stories with happy endings because I believe they offer lessons from which other entrepreneurs can learn. Kind of like the morals of the fairy tales that were read to us as children.

Not at all surprisingly, storytelling has garnered growing recognition as an effective form of brand promotion.

Kindra Hall, president of the Steller Collective consulting firm, also possesses a title of which I’m especially envious — chief storytelling officer. She comes by the title by education and accomplishment in both earning a master’s degree in communication and winning a national championship in storytelling. Yes, that’s a thing.

In her forthcoming book “Stories That Stick: How Storytelling Can Captivate Customers, Influence Audiences and Transform Your Business,” Hall details the four kinds of stories businesses can tell. They include the value story to convince customers they need what a business provides, the founder story to persuade investors and customers the business is worth the investment, the purpose story to align employees and the customer story in which those who use products and services share their experiences.

Let’s add to the conversation my observation from working more than 20 years as editor of a business journal. Nearly every business has a compelling story to tell. Few businesses tell their stories well. Some don’t even try.

Fortunately, part of my job as editor of a business journal is telling those stories. You could call me a storyteller, in fact. Actually, make that chief storytelling officer.

I love stories about treasure hunts. How about you? What’s your favorite story about a treasure hunt?

The story that invariably first comes to mind was told by Robert Louis Stevenson in “Treasure Island.” What child — or adult, for that matter — can resist reading about Jim Hawkins, Long John Silver and the search for treasure buried by the infamous pirate Captain Flint?

Mark Twain told what I consider an even more compelling story in the “Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” Twain combines in his novel a murderous plot and treasure hunt, both of which are resolved in sometimes humorous and sometimes dramatic fashion.

Treasure hunts also feature prominently in works by everyone from Edgar Allan Poe in “The Gold Bug” to Ernest Cline in “Ready Player One.”

I knew I wanted to tell my own story about a treasure hunt the moment I aspired to write a novel.

“Small Town News” covers what happens when Tucker Preston, a big city newspaper reporter turned small town editor, uncovers a plot involving betrayal and murder. But a second story unfolds after Tucker meets Billie Brownwell. She’s a brilliant and beautiful history professor searching for — you guessed it — treasure.

As if looking for a cache of stolen loot hidden in northwest Colorado by the outlaw Butch Cassidy wasn’t enough, I wanted to raise the stakes even higher. I took advantage of an actual mystery in the fate of some of the rarest and most valuable coins in U.S. history. Of 24 dimes minted in San Francisco in 1894, only nine are known to exist. What happened to the other 15? What if two of the dimes were included in the mail stolen in a train robbery? By the way, an 1894 S dime sold at a recent auction in Chicago for more than $1.3 million. How’s that for treasure?

Of course, there are many kinds of treasure and just as many kinds of desperate searches for what’s truly valuable. What kind of treasure will Tucker and Billie find?