One thing you offer that AI can’t, ever
The incomparable first season of Ted Lasso starts with just the image above, antagonist Rebecca Welton’s face in steely close-up.
Ted Lasso is a riff on The Wizard of Oz. Ted comes from Kansas to the strange new world of British football, and Rebecca is his wicked witch.
The season even ends with him throwing water on her:
The gulf between these images – impervious, emotionless Rebecca at the start and reachable, receptive, selzer-soakable Rebecca at the close – is everything the show’s about.
Between the photos is Ted’s friendship with Rebecca.
And that friendship tells you everything you need to know about why you will always be worth more than any AI.
BUT FIRST: STORY STRUCTURE
I’m tying a lot together here, I know. But it will make sense.
First, let’s cover how to tell a story.
There are three parts:
At the story’s start, a person wants a thing.
In the story’s middle, they attempt to get it. But there’s opposition.
In the story’s end, the person gets the thing they want – but not despite the opposition. They get what they want because of it.
In well-told stories, friction – the antagonist, the fight – is HOW the hero gets the thing they want.
Because good stories are about growth.
And growth happens via struggle.
We want something, we fight for it – and that fighting forms us. This is what my toddler’s doing when she puts the wrong shoes on the wrong feet and won’t let me help her. It is also what my 80-year-old neighbor’s doing as she stands beside the road with a “No Kings” sign for two hours.
They’re both being formed through struggle.
If you’re trying to form an audience – clients maybe, or donors or employees – then inviting them to struggle alongside you is how you do it.
In other words: Tell them a story.
NO CHARISMA NECESSARY
Hollywood made the 3-act story formula; most of us have seen so many movies that we are drawn to it without even noticing.
Last June, my friend and client Mike Carpenter suggested we create something together about the entrepreneurial journey. We’re both business owners; could we use our similarities and differences to springboard conversations others would appreciate?
Neither of us had ever run a podcast. I thought we would benefit from a structure that we couldn’t screw up too badly.
Story was that structure.
We got in the weeds recording No Plan Survives; we shared details so specific to our own experience that they won’t apply to many listeners.
But the struggle will apply.
If our podcast is listenable – and I hope you’ll try – it’s not because we chose universal subject matter.
It’s because we chose a universal structure:
I tried this.
It went to hell.
Hell made me better.
That’s the stuff that’s kept us humans huddled around fires and glued to screens for generations. Humans love that stuff.
So it’s weird that, when we build businesses, we work so hard to leave out the best part.
TECH IS ANTI-FRICTION
No child ever asked to hear a bedtime resume.
The projects you completed, the wins you racked up – all dull, so dull. The best part of your story is the second act, when your plans went to hell.
You fought. You grew. The friction formed you.
Friction is what Ted gets from Rebecca – and it’s what your friends and clients get from you that LLMs won’t give. You have the chance to be their second act, the place they grow, their friction.
AI isn’t even trying.
The tech-biz approach to business, since tech business was a thing, has been to take the friction out. Amazon removed the friction from our shopping; Uber took it out of taxis. Google took it out of research.
You might think these plays were all about convenience – and that’s half-right, because inconvenience is a form of friction.
But it’s not the only one.
Was getting a taxi from the hotel’s front desk ever inconvenient? You just had to ask.
And asking was the friction.
Talking to another human can be hard; sometimes we’d rather not. Our neighbors come with their own needs and problems. Some of them are weird. You ask the guy at Ace Hardware for rivets and before you know what happened you are looking at grandkid photos.
Amazon search won’t do that to you. It’s not only faster; it’s less human.
Please don’t hear me saying I don’t like this. I’m so into it! I love one-click convenience.
But removing friction costs us something, too – and we’re just starting to sense how much.
I MISS THE FRICTION
AI feels like the “no human friction” idea turned up to max volume. Claude and ChatGPT and their cousins could act like machines; they don’t. Their builders made them use first-person pronouns and soothe egos and say “great idea!”
They act like people. Just not like real people.
Your LLM won’t make fun of you, won’t push back, won’t tell you when you’re behaving badly. It always reassures. It never runs out of patience.
I mean, not unless you ask. Ask Claude to criticize you and it will; it will take sterner tones or look for weak spots in your argument if you tell it to.
But that’s not friction. That’s still doing what you say.
Your AI friend’s a mirror, not a window. It can’t see the world differently from you – can’t see the world at all, in fact. It just reflects it.
That means you can’t be in conflict.
And if there’s no struggle, how will there be growth?
HOW TED GROWS
Here’s the 3-act structure of Ted Lasso Season 1:
1️⃣ Ted wants a family.
He is alienated from his wife, who finds his constant can-do attitude isolating.
Ted’s determined to prove the value of his optimism.
2️⃣ In English football, Ted the optimist is thrust into a world of misanthropes and cynics.
He fights back with kindness. Ted would like the team he coaches to win games – but mostly, Ted wants to win people.
Most of all he’d like to win the trust of the team’s owner, Rebecca.
So they struggle.
When Ted thinks he’s won her trust, a secret is revealed: Rebecca has been using him to sabotage the team.
She thought so little of him, she was sure he’d fail.
3️⃣ Ted forgives Rebecca.
In so doing, he both wins the family he has craved and proves the value of his optimism.
But – and this is key – Ted wins by going through Rebecca’s cynicism and addressing it, not by pretending it does not exist.
The world of cynics teaches Ted to be a better optimist.
Without Rebecca, he’s a fool who hides hard things behind cliches and cookies. But when his true self and her true self collide, he learns to face reality. Ted gets better.
If you want to offer something AI never will, then offer this.
Challenge your clients. Collide with friends.
Give them the gift of being different.
WITCHES WANTED
I’ve got Claude doing research for me and speeding up some tasks. It’s cool, I guess.
But I don’t want my young kids near it, and that tension troubles me.
I don’t buy Silicon Valley’s lines about how everyone will soon have perfect therapists and teachers. Give my kids imperfect, thank you. Give them weird lab partners, chatty cabbies and deskmates with insufficient hygiene.
Maybe the occasional mildly wicked witch.
I don’t want friction for my kids, but I’m aware they need it. I want them to grow.
I want to grow, too – and for that, we need the friction.
Our lives need to story.
Thanks for being in mine.
To hear more stories from me, subscribe to No Plan Survives. To share one of your own, find me here.
How to write a web page
Last week a prospective client asked me to explain how I would write their website.
I don’t really sell myself as a copywriter because, as any marketer will tell you, we’re supposed to sell the sizzle and not the steak.
And copywriting is the steak.
It’s basic. Yes, it’s full of protein (am I taking this analogy too far?) and calories (nah, we’re good). Your copy is your marketing’s actual meat, the substance, the part that tells people how to buy from you. Without it, you’ve got nothing.
But it isn’t sexy.
That’s why I tend to sell “strategy” or “branding” or “consulting,” or one of a lot of other terms that basically mean “I’m good at thinking about this stuff.”
But really, it’s all the same. Because good copywriting is good thinking.
And if you get better at copy, then the other things you do that require thinking – from selling and speaking to making plans and managing employees – will get better, too.
Here’s how I write.
FIRST, WRITING ISN’T WRITING
It’s curation.
Decide what your goal is.
Get all the ideas on the table.
Decide which ideas serve your goal.
Decide which order they belong in.
Put them in that order.
Decide what words best express them.
Did you see how many times the word “decide” showed up on that list?
This is why copywriting is the steak and not the sizzle. 90% of it is making choices – you choose what you want, what you think, how the things you think connect to what you want.
The writing process is the thinking-and-deciding process.
Below, I’ll walk you through that process as I shared with my client* on that call last week. If thinking and deciding are part of your work, maybe this will make you a bit sharper.
*hell yes, I got the job
THE STRATEGY HIDDEN IN YOUR WEBSITE
I love websites because they are the Trojan Horse of strategy discussions. Everybody thinks they’re talking about a bunch of html on a web server, so they lower their defenses.
But they’re actually talking about the way they understand their business.
The client who asked me to explain my process wants a website redesign. They don’t want new content or a new message; they want to be easier to find and buy from online.
So they asked me to write, not to strategize.
But it’s really the same thing.
A website rewrite is a purer way to get at strategy, in some ways – because all your questions have already been answered in the old site. The ideas have been gathered up into one place for you already.
When I work on strategy or rebrand a company, that’s not the case. I have interview leaders and salespeople to ask what the business means and how it needs to be positioned. We decide together.
In a website rewrite, they already made those choices. They’re saying, “don’t change our choices, just communicate them stronger.”
So I start by figuring out what choices they already made.
PERSON, ACTION, REASON
I look at the old website and ask the same 3 questions we ask every month on our Group Clarity calls:
➡️ What person is this page for?
➡️ What action do we want them to take?
➡️ What reason do they have to take that action?
These three things should be explicit.
When I say “explicit,” I mean you should literally be able to point to a set of words or sentences that answer the questions:
“This sentence says what they should do. This sentence says why.”
If I can’t answer these questions by looking at the old web page, then I decide for myself what action would be good or who is taking it or why. I make the choices my client didn’t make or didn’t communicate – then check those choices with them for approval.
This is strategy.
Once I am clear about the person, action and reason, I know what I’m being asked to build.
Now I can gather bricks to build it.
GET IDEAS IN PILES
Writers’ bricks are called ideas. I comb through the old web page, identify the ideas there and sort them into piles.
What piles? A framework helps here. For example, here’s Don Miller’s Storybrand framework:
Person (your client)
Problem
Plan
Guide (your company)
Action to take
Results they want
Results they don’t want
If you like Miller’s framework, you can sort the ideas on your client’s old website into those 7 piles. Maybe a section that lists your company’s qualifications is “guide” content, while a section that lists the benefits of your service goes under “plan.”
Usually, I do this and find holes.
Companies often talk about themselves and their product too much – so they’ll have lots of ideas in the “plan” and “guide” piles, but the person/problem/action piles are nearly empty.
Mostly, though, I’m not so worried about the size of the idea piles.
I’m worried about their sequence.
START WITH PAIN
Copy’s first challenge is getting anyone to read it. Companies blow this when they lead with “guide” or “plan” ideas, because they’re talking about themselves.
Readers don’t see how that relates to them, so they tune out.
Reverse it. Tell them why to care before you tell them what to care about.
Most of the time, an idea from the “problem” or “result” bucket justifies your page’s existence best. The trouble you solve, the pain it’s causing them or the pleasure they feel when that pain is gone – that’s usually your first sentence. Maybe even your headline.
From there, you weave a story – probably some benefits of the plan are next, then some guide info to prove you know what you’re talking about, then some more details of the plan.
Mention the action you want them to take up front. Remind them every scroll or two.
Go lighter than you think you need to on the guide stuff. Readers need to trust you, but your page is NOT about you.
It’s about your reader.
EASY ON THE SIZZLE
Think you’ve got your ideas in good sequence? Go ahead and choose the actual words to say them.
This part is the part my clients think of as “writing,” but I find it almost happens by itself if I’ve been focusing on the sequence of ideas.
In fact, my challenge isn’t choosing the most beautiful word – it’s avoiding the temptation to be beautiful or clever or write anything that gets in the way of the ideas.
The goal is not to write. It’s to be understood.
And you won’t actually know if you’ve achieved that without someone else’s help.
EVERYBODY NEEDS SOMEBODY
When you’ve got a draft, the best thing you can do is get some outside insight. Show a person who knows nothing about your business; can they name the person, action and reason behind what you’ve written?
You won’t know until you ask. The best marketers and the greatest writers don’t know. None of us knows what it’s like to be another person.
That’s what makes communicating hard – but why it matters, too. Your job’s not just expression. It’s connection.
Want to see how this unfolds in practice? We hold Group Clarity calls the first Friday of most months. Learn more here.
Your marketing needs a purpose, too
The most common marketing gripe I hear is not “this isn’t working.”
It’s a little worse than that.
Most CEOs and marketing leaders, when I ask them how they feel about their marketing, give me some paraphrase of “we do too much for too little result.”
➡️ They’re hustling too hard placing calls or making content, or
➡️ They’re spending too much for the leads they get, or
➡️ They feel like the important results are buried in glut of data their platforms (or their agencies!) bombard them with.
For many, marketing is a black box AND a black hole.
They’re not sure what’s going on inside that agency or on that ad platform. But it sure does keep sucking money.
YOU MADE ME FEEL SHINY AND NEW
It’s tough to solve this problem on your own – so lots of companies don’t. They know they have to market, so they pay and post and spin the hamster wheel and stay dissatisfied.
And then: The Next Idea.
Someone reads about another tactic: AI can do outreach! Tiktok has a store! My buddy’s company geotargets clients when they get within two blocks of his competitor!
That seems worth a try.
Our brains get high on new ideas, which may be part of why so many companies switch their agencies every two years and add another tactic every time their youngest intern tells them what the kids are into. A new possibility brings new dopamine. This time, it just might work!
It doesn’t work.
The black box grows; the black hole gets more vacuous. Marketing gets more pricey, more busy and more confusing. Results stay mostly “meh.”
If you’ve been there, this piece is for you. I want to argue that if marketing seems directionless, uncertain, underwhelming – yet another tactic isn’t going to fix that.
Because marketing tactics aren’t the problem.
You are.
I’LL STARE DIRECTLY AT THE SUN BUT NEVER IN A MIRROR
In the movie High Fidelity, flawed main character Rob Gordon has moved from relationship to failed relationship.
Rob owns a record store. He is a gifted critic – both of music and, alas, of people. But he can’t create. And he can’t see why every woman he dates winds up dumping him.
We might be worse. Novelist Nick Hornby created Rob in the mid-90s, before people scrolled from dopamine hit to dopamine hit on social media feeds much of the day.
In 2026, we’re more conditioned to seek out the new than even Rob was.
But “new” does not mean improved. Rob realizes this when he revisits past relationships to find out why they ended. He can only find one common factor.
Rob himself’s the problem.
Rob is awful. He resists commitment, dodges growth, avoids connection. He discusses art and music but refuses to discuss himself. He barely knows himself.
Your company’s probably not this bad. But if your marketing tactics multiply and fade like mayflies, it may be because your marketing doesn’t really know you.
You keep doing what you think you should. You follow others. You don’t market like yourself.
Your company has a purpose.
And your marketing needs to have one, too.
POP QUIZ, HOTSHOT
The point of marketing is to (pick one):
➡️ Build trust
➡️ Get noticed and remembered
➡️ Get leads to contact us
➡️ Get buyers to choose us
Pick your answer (I don’t care which!), then ask the next question.
Why do you deserve their trust?
Why would they notice and remember? Why should they reach out? What reason would they have for choosing you?
These questions are much harder because they’re about your business – as it is, or as it ought to be – and not some other business. Your team’s answers are your answers.
Once you have them, you may realize you’re not playing the same game as every other business in your industry.
And if you’re not playing the same game, you probably shouldn’t be running the same plays, either.
BUSINESS, KNOW THYSELF
My favorite High Fidelity line: “What really matters is what you like, not what you ARE like.”
It’s Rob Godon’s issues in a dozen words; he really thinks it’s better to know every album and artwork in history than to know himself.
It’s not. Your self is all you’ve actually got to offer.
If your marketing’s not a win, consider that your company may be running other people’s plays from other people’s games. Marketing with purpose doesn’t mean you post about your “why” or advertise your ethics – it just means you’re clear on what makes your company unique.
Stop following.
List what makes you special. Then tell yourself 3 or 4 stories about how these advantages could translate to success as you’ve defined it. What would have to happen? What would have to be true?
Choose the story that seems most likely to become true. That’s your strategy.
And it will drive marketing more effectively than swapping agencies or chasing dopamine hits ever will. eery 6 to 18 months.
And if you are the problem – then you’re going to be your best solution too.
I’m piloting a one-day strategy offer right now. Curious? Hit reply and write “strategy.” I’ll send details.
Moana is a heart-led CEO.
She’s consumed by the entrepreneurial urge – or the creative urge.
Same thing.
In the classic Disney film, Moana wants to go. She has a good life – systematized, secure, consistent. All her needs are met. Her Dad is in the island-chiefing business and wants her to follow.
“We need you,” he says. “Be smart. Bloom where you’re planted.”
Founders hear this all the time – from outside voices and from inside ones.
But we’re obsessed with the horizon.
To stay safe – as those who love Moana wish for her – would crush her. It denies her heart. The world can’t see her as she really is.
This wounds Moana.
Those she meets off of her island have the same wound: A demigod who tattoos over rejection with achievement. A giant crab who hides not just in armor but in sparkly social-media perfection. A fire monster, who, it turns out, is a nature goddess transfigured by rage.
The world has robbed them each of their true heart. It robs Moana, too.
She has no purpose statement – just a call, an urge for something different. But she heeds it. And in owning that identity, in leaving structures and security she knows, Moana finds her purpose: She’ll restore the island goddess’s heart. She’ll heal the world.
The world laughs, as it does at all with the audacity to try and change it.
At the low point of the film, Moana fails: The goddess’s hurt and her own doubt wash over her, and all is lost. The world is unmoved by her mission; she can’t make a dent. The problem is too great.
“I’m the wrong person,” she concludes.
Tell me I’m not the only founder who has felt this.
Those of us who trade the stable for the liminal have our reasons. Maybe you could name your company’s mission from the start, or maybe you’re like me and like Moana: You just felt a call and figured out the rest along your journey.
Either way, it wasn’t just your industry. It wasn’t opportunity. It wasn’t only that you saw a need in those your business serves.
It started with you.
You were insane enough to think that what was in you was worth letting out – and business was your boat. You sailed for your horizon.
And at some point, didn’t it all fall apart?
Did someone ask you to be sensible? Did the world fail to change? Were your grand dreams and visions met with shrugs?
How many times have you thought, “I’m the wrong person?”
In the movie’s climax, Moana doesn’t fix her tactics or rework her org chart or try harder. She doesn’t even find her “why.”
She finds herself.
“They have stolen the heart from inside you, but this does not define you,” Moana sings to the fire monster. She is singing to herself, too, and to all she’s met and fought and loved.
She heals them with five words:
“You know who you are.”
ABOUT THE IMAGE
Pictured above: The biggest Moana fan in my life (current age: 2.75).
She’s out the door most days and down the path before we can shout “shoes!” She sings Moana’s song as she goes, just the three words that she knows:
“It caaaalls meee!”
If it calls you too, I hope you heed it. May your work restore our hearts.
May you know who you are.
You can’t message your way out of a broken business.
Stories have archetypes.
In fantasy it’s the grumpy dwarf, the snooty elf, the hard-partying hobbit.
In romance: The bad boy, the dysfunctional parent, the hard-partying hobbit (again? weird).
Your business has them too: The risk-taking CEO, the operator who pokes holes in every idea, the hard-partying hobbit (kidding this time. Maybe.)
These archetypes are frequently in conflict; dwaves and elves and boys and parents and visionaries and finance wonks all see the world a little different. In a story this makes conflict, which keeps things exciting.
In a business? You could do without it.
Probably you want your people getting along, caring for each other and all rowing in the same direction. When a leader tells me, “my team needs a unified message,” typically that’s what they mean.
They want a more unified team.
And what I want to argue in the next few minutes is that while team unity is a worthy goal, a better message doesn’t get you there.
And I should know. I’ve tried.
ALIGNMENT CAN’T BE ARBITRARY
I’m being flip with the fiction references, but in a company this pain is real.
In businesses that aren’t aligned, marketing is always blaming sales for failing to close leads – while sales blames marketing for the leads being bad. Operations grumbles at them both, meanwhile, for making promises it can’t or doesn’t want to keep.
The CFO is sick of telling everybody no (or worse, she loves it). And the CEO can only get things done by pulling rank, overruling the objections and saying “look, we’re going to try this.”
Which leads to eye-rolls when that CEO leaves the room, a half-assed effort by the team to try what they already know won’t work, and finally – big surprise! – the ho-hum result they’d already decided was a foregone conclusion.
Was the plan wrong? Or was it that your people weren’t aligned on it?
You’ll never know.
A STATEMENT WON’T ALIGN YOUR ACTIONS
For 20 years, I tried to solve alignment problems like this with a marketing message.
Marketing is the hammer companies often reach for when they see the nail of internal disagreement. “We need a unified message,” someone says, and if I’m lucky they hire me to talk with leaders and with clients and uncover afresh what makes the company special. Then we try to can that lightning in a homepage or a video or a new division name.
It sometimes kind of works – but not for why you think.
A message, like a purpose statement, tries to name why you’re important so employees and clients can align around that.
But they don’t. Shared statements don’t align us humans.
Shared experiences do.
THAT CARPET GAVE ME JESUS
I grew up in churches; I’m still there. Us Protestants love to tell you that our faith is all about the Bible – that we read the words, believe them, and that unifies us.
Dozens of distinct traditions and tens of thousands of denominations kind of complicate that narrative, though, don’t they?
We’re not sitting here in perfect clear alignment on the Bible or on any creed. We are connecting on experiences: Sunday singing, service projects, meal trains, funerals, weddings.
This is how belonging forms. It’s why the blue-haired ladies at your childhood church were stirred to frothy fervor when someone dared to suggest a different carpet color. And it’s why my formative years were filled not just with Bible reading but with Bible study – a collective gathering in which our shared documents became shared experiences as we stumbled over them together.
Our pursuit of doctrine, even of God, is shared experience. Shared experience can align us.
When I lead a company’s leadership through a “unified message” exercise, it’s much the same. The process of defining and refining messaging is an experience: People share and listen in a way they haven’t for a while. They reconnect.
If anything about a messaging exercise can unify your team, it’s this.
It’s also not enough.
WE SAY SO WE CAN BE
When I revamp a company’s message, two or ten or 20 people speak into that process. But your company might have hundreds of employees.
If you want to be on the same page, you’re talking about a cultural change – not just a marketing change.
They need to hear you say what you’re about, yes. But they also need to experience it.
This is why my clients want a unified message: Not so they can say it, but so they can do it. So that clients and employees can experience the same thing, with consistency, year after year.
To build unity, you must experience what you’re about together.
Naming what you’re about lets you be more intentional about that. But it’s not necessarily your message.
It’s upstream from there.
THINK, THEN ACT, THEN THINK AGAIN
I’m shaping Hopeless Marketing to build strategic alignment within justice-seeking businesses – through dialog.
At smaller companies, that means dialog between me and a leader or two. At larger ones, it means my joy really is facilitating your dialogue with one other.
This isn’t cuddly or peripheral; it’s about building agreement on how you will be successful so you then can do it.
Two things: How you’ll be successful, and agreement on it.
You need both.
And neither is your message. Messaging comes after, as part of the working out. Communication is an action.
If that action isn’t feeling right to you, it’s not a sign to take a different action — but a sign to stop and think. Because communication’s not the only action people in your company take. It isn’t even the biggest one.
Seeking alignment means we think together, then we act together.
Then we learn - and think - and act again.
CONFLICT IS OPPORTUNITY
It matters that you put strategy first because a message is just what you’ll say – but strategy is both what you’ll say and what you’ll do. It’s your framework for turning purpose into actions.
And those action are what build your unity long-term.
Conflict is an opportunity to build that. Different views on your team can be an advantage; disagreement wants to teach you something. The hard-partying hobbit has perspective for you.
Want help finding it? You know where to find me.
Next week: “Moana.”
The CEO with nothing to sell – but hope
Last week we looked at how, when justice-oriented companies build marketing around their purpose, it’s an advantage for a few – and a trap for most.
Today I’m introducing you to a CEO with nothing to offer but her company’s purpose.
By unpacking what works for her, you may see something that would work for you too.
SOMEDAY, WE’LL BE EVERYWHERE
To clarify: Nathalya Mamane could make her audience a lot of money.
She’s the founder of Anywhere DX, a biotech startup here in Boston developing at-home diagnostics. First goal: A single-use strep test you can take from your medicine cabinet, saving parents and kids a trip to urgent care.
That’s not a small idea.
It’s massive, actually. It’s the next Band-Aid or Children’s Tylenol, a product every parent on the planet might buy like clockwork for a decade-plus. It’s a world-changing concept with a world-sized customer base.
But that’s the long-term opportunity.
Investors you’d expect to want a piece of that long-term return have been reluctant to jump on. And the investors who’ve been eager to get in aren’t focused on the long-term gain.
They’re writing checks with something other than profit in mind.
In the next few minutes, I want to show you what Nathalya’s learned about the people who most readily give her cash, how that has altered her approach – and what you might take from that if you also run a business that thinks of investor returns in a way that transcends money.
“EVERY INVESTOR IS A CONSUMER”
Nathalya hatched the Anywhere idea during the pandemic – which turned out to be precisely the wrong time.
At-home diagnostics boomed during COVID, leading to a glut of at-home testing companies. Inevitably, many failed to execute. As the pandemic receded, so did investor trust.
Institutional investors became risk averse just as Nathalya’s team was reaching out. They were skeptical of anything with “at-home diagnostic” in the pitch. And they didn’t see the urgency of something like an at-home strep test.
Ordinary parents got the pitch immediately, though. They weren’t seeing as investors, but as buyers. Anywhere DX was building tech they wanted.
They were willing to invest to get it.
IT’S NOT ABOUT WHAT I GET
The shift to a consumer-as-investor angle meant a presence on crowd platform WeFunder, where Nathalya’s company is nearing the end of a $300k investment round made up of ordinary people.
Naturally, she looked at Kickstarter – where pre-sales of non-existing products are the norm. She made a similar promise: Invest now and be the first to get our strep tests when they hit the market.
But as conversations multiplied and Nathalya grew to understand investors, she began to think she’d misattributed their motives.
She’s got nearly 100 of these angel investors – some in for thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, some for mere hundreds.
None of them, she’ll tell you now, is doing it for the money.
They’re on board for something else.
THEIR OWN SELVES-INTEREST
You can watch the condensed version of my chat with Nathalya above – it’s about 15 minutes, and honestly kind of an adventure.
I asked if offering the product early was what got ordinary people to invest.
She said, essentially, I doubt it.
So we explored what people’s motives might be. Who puts down money when a company has no product, when the payback is uncertain – and at small enough amounts that even if the payoff does come it won’t be life-changing?
I think Nathalya’s right – it’s not about me getting the product for myself; that benefit’s too small, too far away and too uncertain to open up my pocketbook.
But this isn’t simple charity either.
What I think motivates Anywhere DX’s angels is something between self-interest and pure altruism. It’s solidarity. It’s a sense that what I need is part of what we need.
The right person becomes motivated by collective need in a way that they aren’t by personal individual need.
And knowing how to recognize that person can help any of us aspiring to just business.
3 SIGNS OF A SUPPORTER
The small-but-passionate investors Nathalya told me about had a few things in common:
They’ve seen the effects of the problem she’s trying to solve at a community level.
They belong to – or feel responsible for – one of the communities affected by that problem.
They can put an individual face on the problem.
We spent a while talking about one school teacher who invested $200 in Nathalya’s business. Most educators aren’t flush with cash, and the eventual payday from investing $200 probably won’t change that. This person doesn’t even need an at-home strep test for herself.
So why invest?
Because she’s part of a community of kids and parents who feel the pain of urgent-care trips and missed work. She sees how inefficiencies in the medical system compound back to impact education and attendance. And she can see faces and name names who are affected by the problem.
She’s part of an “us” that needs Nathalya’s product – even if she isn’t the “me” who needs it.
A PROBLEM WITH A FACE
Nathalya’s own drive is similar: I asked why she personally cared about this and she talked about the social problem of missed work and overinflated diagnostic costs and how that problem has unfair, inequitable impact on those with low incomes.
But then she named a person, with a face, in a community she feels connected to.
That’s how it happens, I think: “Me” becomes “us,” and we find we’ll go to lengths to help our people that we’d never go to merely help ourselves.
The first step toward justice is connection.
To support Nathalya and Anywhere DX, visit anywhere.health or invest on WeFunder.
Running a purpose-driven business of your own? Get on my calendar – I’d love to know you.
Don’t expect clients to give you credit for doing the right thing
There’s one mistake most clients I work with make at some point: They think customers will care.
Your company’s trying to do things right. You’re going to heal the world or fix your industry or give employees a better life.
And that’s worth bragging about, right?
…right?
YOUR MISSION MAY NOT BE YOUR MESSAGE
The landscaper sharing video from the employee retreat and the solar-panel company preaching climate change both make the same error: They put one stakeholder in another’s seat.
Employees aren’t clients. Customers aren’t the climate.
For a company seeking justice, this is a particular challenge. You’re not only in this for your buyers or yourself; you’ve figured out that how you treat your team or use the earth’s resources or impact society matters.
Your org’s heart sets you apart. So doesn’t it make sense to market with it?
Sometimes yes.
But in a lot of cases, doing so confuses clients, makes the message weaker and makes selling harder than it could be.
In the next few minutes, I want to show you why your higher purpose may not be the winning advantage we all wish it was. And why sometimes it is. And how to know which camp you fall into.
And what to do about it.
First, we have to throw cold water on your favorite TED talk.
DON’T START WITH WHY
Even if you haven’t seen Simon Sinek’s 2010 talk, you’ve come across his “golden circle” with the word “why” scrawled across the center.
Or some nerd like me has quoted it to you.
“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it,” Sinek says in that talk. It’s a sound-bite so fantastic that us would-be sages have repeated it roughly once per second for the 16 years since Sinek said it.
It’s so elegant. So simple.
That’s the problem. Critics have a lot of questions about Sinek’s argument; most of them boil down to: Where’s the data?
Sinek doesn’t use any.
And of course, his talk’s about how to inspire – it’s NOT explicitly about your company’s marketing plan.
Guess what happens when you turn “start with why” into a campaign and track it?
THE HIGH ROAD’S NOT A CHEAT CODE
I won’t get too into the weeds here, but the actual research data into whether you should base your marketing on your company’s purpose is… complex.
Peter Field found marketing campaigns that did NOT focus on purpose outperformed the ones that did by almost 50%.
But – the same study found that the best purpose-focused campaigns did the best of all.
A report by Kantar showed the same complexity: Brands seen as having “high positive impact” grew 175% over 12 years, compared to only 70% growth for brands seen as “low impact.”
The trick: Only one in ten companies studied had a “meaningful activation plan” to go along with their purpose.
Still with me? Here’s the bottom line, I think:
➡️ A business chasing more than money does have an advantage. But to realize that advantage, you can’t just talk about your company’s purpose.
You actually have to live it.
If you say it but don’t live it – you’d be better off not saying it at all.
PRACTICE MAKES PURPOSE
Here’s how philosophers have thought about you since, at least, the days of Aristotle:
You have beliefs, the ideas you hold about how you ought to live.
You have practices, the things you routinely do and say.
You have character, the sort of person you are and are known to be.
Your neighbors trust your character. Not your beliefs.
In business it’s more complicated, but not different. Turn a purpose statement into marketing without letting it touch operations, sales or customer success — and you’re not purpose-driven. You just say you are.
But practice what you preach, and marketing won’t even need to preach it.
Should it, though?
SHOULD MISSION BE THE MESSAGE?
If you’ve seen the four-part strategy framework I use with clients, you’ll notice it lines up with the ideas above: Your company’s vision and position are beliefs. Its strengths and systems are its practices.
Those are the elements you control. You – as a group, together – choose your own strategic DNA. You name beliefs and create practices.
Your company’s character comes from that.
Want a more just world? Then that pursuit should be reflected in your company’s character. Buyers should both see it and experience it; it should win their trust and keep it, too.
If your company lives its purpose, that should give you an advantage in your market.
But it’s probably NOT your message.
I’ve seen purpose work as primary messaging perhaps one time in 10. If you sell to early adopters or to a small niche who have the same values and cultural insights you do — then yes, talking purpose might be what moves them to act.
That’s the bet I’ve made in this very newsletter, and if you’re still reading then it must be working.
Usually, though, it doesn’t. Clients need clarity most of all – they need to know what you do and how they should buy. They need a “why” that works for them, not you.
They need to know you’ll fix their yard or lower their electric bill.
Changing the world can wait.
Your own “why” might be part of what a buyer’s looking for. But for most people, most of the time, it’s not where the conversation starts.
WHAT WORKED FOR YOU?
In the coming weeks, I’ll share some stories about how just businesses have used or not used mission in their messaging.
Did an experience of your own come to mind while you read this?
Reach out – I’d love to hear it.
If you’d like some help aligning your own company’s beliefs and practice in a way that helps you win more clients, I’d love to tell you how I do that. Here’s my calendar.