I have thought about that difference often since, because I have watched it decide the fate of organizations. Concerts canceled. Conductors lost. Institutions closing their doors. Not because the work lacked value, but because the people responsible for it could not stay in the room together. The work had everything it needed except a way to keep being made.

Improvisation is how the theatre solves that problem. It looks like a performance technique, but it’s actually a practice of collaboration under pressure, with no script and no time to stall. Four rules do most of the work. Each one exists because of a specific way that groups fail.

“Theater Games are a process applicable to any field, discipline, or subject matter which creates a place where full participation, communication, and transformation can take place.”

— Viola Spolin

Agree. And say yes. The first failure is refusing the offer. On stage, an offer is anything your partner gives you: a premise, a gesture, a single word. You do not have to love it. You do have to receive it, because a scene cannot start until someone accepts what has been given. Working rooms refuse offers constantly — the idea that dies on arrival because of who proposed it, the premise dismissed before it is understood. Agreement is not surrender. You may end up arguing against the idea. But the argument only means something if you let the offer exist first.

Yes, and. The second failure is accepting the offer and contributing no next move. Nothing tanks a scene faster than a partner who agrees and then stands there. Think about the one-word answer, or the polite nod that leaves the other person carrying everything. Agreement without addition is a dead end. “Yes” keeps you courteous; “and” keeps you useful. In any room making consequential work, the question worth asking of yourself is simple: did I leave the idea heavier or lighter than I found it?

Make statements. The third failure is mistaking ambiguity for thoughtfulness. An actor who only asks questions forces everyone else to do the creating, and the audience can feel it. The scene has no one standing behind anything. Every team knows this person: the one who answers every proposal with another question, who sounds careful and is actually absent. Questions have their place. A steady diet of them is a way of never committing to anything. Say what you think is true. Both the scene and the work need something to respond to.

There are no mistakes, only opportunities. The fourth failure is treating mistakes as verdicts. Some of the best moments in improv begin with a miscommunication — two actors who heard different things and have to build their way back to the same page. What results is often better than anything either of them intended. Groups that treat a wrong move as proof of incompetence stop moving. Groups that treat it as material keep going, and the work gets the benefit of everything they find on the way back.

None of this makes hard decisions easy, and no theatre game settles a real budget fight. The claim is smaller and more useful than that. Meaningful work is fragile in a specific way: it depends on people who keep making offers and keep building on each other’s. Improv is a practice for staying that kind of person, in that kind of room.

That is how the work survives long enough to have a public life.

It’s what happens when engineers move fast. They ship something that works. They skip the documentation and the cleanup because “we’ll fix it later.” And for a while, everything looks fine. Until it doesn’t. Then every patch needs another patch. Until one day the whole app eats itself in a spectacular death that costs ten times more to fix than it should have.

Then “fix it” means untangling months or years of hacks, workarounds, and half-decisions that piled up quietly in the background.

Brands do the same thing.

They hire a designer before they know what they’re actually trying to say. They write a mission statement that sounds impressive but could belong to anyone. They launch a website, run some ads, see weak results, then try to patch the problem with new content.

Over time the story starts to crack.

Not in one dramatic moment. In a slow accumulation of little inconsistencies. Giving the hero the key with zero explanation. Forcing a ridiculous character choice just to get to the next scene. Bending the world’s rules because the script needs it.

That’s narrative debt .

And it’s why your brand messaging isn’t working.

Not because the words are wrong.

Because the story underneath is.

What Narrative Debt Actually Is

In screenwriting, a plot hole is when the story asks you to believe something it hasn’t earned.

The hero survives an explosion with no explanation. The villain knows information they couldn’t possibly know. Most viewers do not pause the movie to diagnose it, but they feel it. Something stops making sense. The story loses them.

Your brand can create the same feeling.

Narrative debt is the gap between what your brand claims and what it demonstrates. Your brand isn’t invisible. The story makes just enough sense to entertain, but it won’t hold the plot you’re aiming for.

Every gap is a plot hole. And every plot hole burns trust you did not know you were spending. The tricky part is that narrative debt builds quietly.

You add a service line without updating the core story. You pivot the audience but keep the old language. You hire a copywriter to fix the homepage without asking whether the homepage is sitting inside the right story to begin with.

The debt compounds. The message stops landing. The wrong clients keep showing up.

And you keep paying for content that cannot convert because it is built on a foundation that does not hold.

How You Know If You Have It

Most brands with narrative debt do not call it that. They call it a copy problem. Or a design problem. Or a “we need to get clearer” problem.

Here’s what it actually looks like day to day:

You keep explaining yourself.

Every sales call starts with fifteen minutes of context because the website did not do the work. That is a plot hole.

The wrong clients show up consistently.

Not once in a while. Consistently. Your messaging is attracting someone, just not the right someone. That mismatch is a story problem.

Your team cannot agree on what you do.

Ask five people in the company to describe the offer in one sentence. If you get five different answers, your narrative is not clear internally, which means it is not clear externally either.

You rebrand and nothing changes.

New visual identity, same results. The issue was never aesthetic. You just dressed up a story that still did not work.

You say “it depends” a lot.

When someone asks who you serve or what you do, and the honest answer is “well… it depends,” that is not nuance. That is an undefined protagonist.

If two or more of those are true, there’s a good chance you’re carrying narrative debt.

Why Better Copy Won’t Fix It

Here’s the part nobody wants to hear:

You can hire the best copywriter in the room. You can A/B test your headlines. You can rewrite the about page, redesign the homepage, workshop the tagline for six weeks.

If the story underneath is broken, none of it will hold.

You are basically repainting a building that is leaning.

Copy is the last layer. It is the paint on the wall. If the wall is cracked, more paint is not a renovation.

Copy is the last layer. It is the paint on the wall. If the wall is cracked, more paint is not a renovation.

What most brands call a “messaging problem” is usually a structural problem.

The protagonist is not defined, which means the business is not clearly pursuing a goal. The stakes are not real, so the story does not move. And the transformation is not visible, so nobody can picture what “winning” looks like.

Fix those three things and the copy gets easier fast.

Leave them broken and you will be back here in eighteen months, staring at a new tagline and wondering why it still is not working.

The Three Questions That Reveal the Debt

Before I touch a single word of a brand’s copy, I ask three questions.

They’re simple. Or, at least they sound simple. Until you try to answer them.

1) Who are you?

You’ve heard that the customer is the protagonist. But who are you? Because until you figure that out, your customer won’t either. Not as a mascot. As a character with a goal. If you cannot say what your business is, what it is here to do, and what it refuses to be, you do not have a protagonist. You have a logo.

Logos move eyes, not sales.

2) What do you do?

Not “help people.” Help people how? With what? When you think of it in story terms, it’s “what’s your goal?” The real outcome the business is trying to create in the market. If the goal is fuzzy, the messaging turns into vibes. If the goal is specific, the story has a spine.

3) Why does it matter?

What will it cost you, and your audience, if you stay the same? This is what gives the story pressure. Heroes know this as “stakes.” If the business keeps doing what it is doing now, what does it lose? Time? Margin? Talent? Trust? A shot at the category?

Stakes are what make a goal feel real. Without stakes, Frodo never makes it to Mordor, and a brand’s messaging becomes a set of claims that never cash out.

Answer those three questions clearly and you have started paying down the debt.

The Shift: From “About Us” to an Actual Plot

A lot of brand messaging fails because it is either a memoir or a brochure. It is all origin story and adjectives. Or it is all features and claims. Neither is a plot.

If you treat the business as the protagonist, the job of identity is to make three things obvious:

• What the business is trying to do. (The goal.)
• What it is up against. (The villain.)
• Why anyone should believe it can win. (Proof.)

That is the difference between “we help companies grow” and a story that can actually carry a brand. And it is why story structure matters more than wordsmithing. When you finally stop trying to “fix the messaging” and start working on story structure, everything changes.

We figure out who you’re actually for, what you were trying to accomplish, and what was genuinely blocking you. Then the copy comes quickly. Cleaner. And with far less debate. And the wrong clients stop showing up.

Not instantly. But fast enough to notice.

What You Do With This

Narrative debt does not clear itself.

Every piece of content you publish on top of a broken structure is another line of bad code. It works until it doesn’t. And by the time it doesn’t, you’re three rebrands in and wondering what’s wrong with your audience.

Nothing is wrong with your audience. They just cannot follow a story with plot holes.

Nothing is wrong with your audience. They just cannot follow a story with plot holes.

The fix starts at the structure level, not the copy level.

Define the protagonist. Clarify what they want. Make the stakes real. Do that, and the words will follow. Skip it, and you’ll keep patching.

If you want to know exactly where your story breaks, we do a Story Teardown , a diagnostic that maps where the narrative debt lives and what is creating it. It’s a starting point, not a sales pitch. You can find it at protagonist.ink/story-teardown .

And if none of this made any sense, we should talk.

I walked into the theater a Southern frat boy wondering why we were watching a Japanese cartoon about a little girl. By the time the credits rolled, I was so moved by Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, I walked out in tears.

Cut to today:

Ai is being used to recreate iconic Ghibli animation.

Brushstroke by brushstroke, model after model, prompt after prompt—AI is being trained to recreate the visual language of one of the most soulful, intentional and human animation studios of all time.

And people hate it.

Not because the outputs are ugly.

Because they’re empty.

An Artificial Attempt at Humanity

Trained animators are watching as masterpieces are reduced to formulas, created by anyone who can spin a few words together in a free prompt. They’re right to be angry.

As with so much AI-generated content, the robots get the style right, but not the spirit. The pacing’s off. The feeling’s muted. Like watching a cosplay of something that should be sacred. This isn’t the first time capitalists have used AI to replicate an evolved art form in hopes of going viral. And it’s far from the last.

In the rush to adopt AI, businesses are scaling faster than ever—more content, more automation, more voice clones. And yet, AI is being framed not just as a tool, but as a creator. AI can generate faster than you and I ever could. But AI doesn’t create. It recombines.

The Mimicry of AI

AI, for all its promise, has zero new ideas. It just has millions of combinations of what it’s already scraped.

In film school, I studied the classic masterpieces of Scorsese, Kurosawa, Coppola. I spent weeks on a single film trying to understand the rhythm, the structure, the emotional current. That’s what artists do. We study the form to discover meaning, to craft something new that captures emotions.

About 25 different AI-based logo makers swore they could jump start my branding in no time. But in the end, I have my handwriting to a human designer, and that's how Protagonist Ink got its identity. It's a piece of my handwriting. That’s what so many brands, startup, tech ventures and entertainment studios cannot replicate.

To Be or Not to Be

Having AI tell your story is like telling an engineer to recite Hamlet. No scenery, no inflection, no lighting. No context of the one of the cruelest tragedies ever written. Just lines, no life. Try to keep that audience awake—or even in the theater.

If you’re looking for connection through AI, you’re looking in the wrong place. There’s only one place you can find that:

Humanity.

Some people love AI. Some people swear it’s ruining society.

AI has zero opinion on the matter, just like your lawn mower has zero opinion on your grass. It doesn’t care that it cuts—it’s just doing what you tell it. No soul, all goal.

It needs the human to architect resonance. To shape meaning, emotion and connection to tell your human story, like only a human can. Because before long, your audience will feel the difference.

Because at this point, we all know when we're talking to heart, or talking to code.

Your audience does, too.

I know this to be untrue. The kid loves learning. So I made him tell me a better story. It took a few minutes, a lot of eye rolls, repeated asking, and stumbling over one thought fragment after another. Then finally: "I get to sit with a friend at lunch."

That was good enough.

There’s a weird thing about stories. They aren’t facts, exactly. But they tell everything. My son’s story about school wasn’t really about school. It was about safety, belonging, and whether the world outside our front door was worth the risk.

For the first two-plus years of his life, we told him exactly that: outside is dangerous, home is safe. In 2020, that story helped him survive. In 2025, it can make every place he goes feel like a threat.

The perfect story for one moment can become the wrong story for the next one.

The perfect story for one moment can become the wrong story for the next one.

I didn’t understand this about myself until recently.

Rare scotch at the top of the World Trade Center. Commercials on national television. The birth of my kids.

Someone else would have those moments and say, "my life is full." I’d have them and immediately start calculating what was still missing. The experience wasn’t the problem. The story was. And the story ran so quietly I didn’t even know it was playing.

I’ve never been one for manifestation. Thinking yourself into being rich or skinny or produced always seemed like self-help cosplay. What I didn’t understand was that I was already manifesting—I’d just been doing it in reverse. Running a scarcity narrative so long it had become invisible.

My son doesn’t remember COVID. He just lives in the story it left. So do I. The question isn’t whether you have a story. The question is whether you’re still living in the version that was true ten years ago.

Stories can be rewritten. Not by pretending. Not by faking optimism you don’t feel. By choosing the story that serves the future you want instead of the one that got you through the past.

The version of you that you’re becoming has to be able to recognize you. Right now, for a lot of us, it can’t.

And whether it’s time to tell a different one.

Our family saw it over Thanksgiving weekend. Afterwards, and after the usual back and forths of "Did you like it?," "What was your favorite part?," etc, my six-year-old piped up from the back and asked, "Who was it about?"

This seems like the most obvious answer. It's about the witches. But then the thought hit me, "there wouldn't be two protagonists in one story."

And as if on cue, what he said next shook me: "The first movie was about Elphaba. The second was about Glinda. She changed the most."

Story is transformation. The protagonist is the one who transforms the most.

Story is transformation. The protagonist is the one who transforms the most.

The word "protagonist" feels mythological. Slightly untouchable. It usually triggers up dramatic memories of high school English. In pop culture, the protagonist is Frodo in Lord of the Rings. Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. Luke Skywalker in the Empire Strikes Back.

The protagonist is the character who goes through the journey and ends up on the other side a changed person.

And you think, great. That's cool and all but I'm trying to finish my app. I'm trying to change my industry. I'm trying to get a busload of kids on stage for their choral performance.

Yes.

Which means, at that moment, you're Frodo. You're Dorothy. You're Luke Skywalker. Even if just for a moment.

A lot of people equate those names with heroes, and think, "I'm not trying to be a hero." But there's a difference. I'm not talking about Marvel characters. I don't think Glinda in Wicked: For Good is a hero. But she IS the one who decides to break the system, and it's her war we're watching.

If you're going through the pain of a launch, or a performance, or a yearly funding plan, you're the one struggling. You're the one waging war. You're the one who will be changed the most when you finish the journey.

And if you're like most leaders I've worked with, you've been playing the supporting character—and not even realizing it.

Every time you say, "We're like Evernote, but" or "We're the next Facebook," or "Our program is for the community", you're casting yourself as their wise-yet-supporting role. Their story, their framework, their category.

Understandable, yes. Noble, sure. But you're doing it on their terms.

Protagonists do the opposite. They own their journey. They define their terms. They know the change they're after. They're clear about who they are. They're decisive what they do. They own their journey.

There's a series of questions I pose to all my clients:

Who are you? What do you do? Why is it important?

How clear can you be with your answers? Knowing your journey is the first part of choosing it.

Chasing the algorithm. The latest trend. Chasing whatever TED talk promises to "clarify their message." Chasing keeps brands on a treadmill constantly in motion. The problem? There's no progress.

You know this feeling. You've made a hundred TikToks and Instagram posts. You've rewritten the tag six times. Redesigned the deck. Tweaked the About page. Founder story development again and again. Change up the narrative again. And still, it doesn't sound like you. Could ChatGPT help? You try it. But the problem there? AI was trained on every line of copy that came before it—meaning you’re stuck in someone else’s language.

And if you're what I call a "why-not-er?", a tech founder or an arts organization who's building something that doesn't fit neatly into the old marketing boxes, the problem only gets worse. Because the language you need doesn't exist yet. You have to build it.

That's the difference between being a character and being the Protagonist.

That's the difference between being a character and being the Protagonist.

Why So Many Startups Sound the Same

Think of an online video game. Everywhere you turn, people follow you, cross past you, bump into you. All the non-playable characters coded in for background.

All of them simply react. That's what characters do. They wait for something to happen. In a game, they're waiting for a story turn. When you're a brand, you're waiting on an investor, a trend, a viral post, a break.

And when it doesn't happen? They scroll, compare, tweak the tagline, rewrite the bio, start over. Again.

And most brands today—especially those built in the rush of AI—are stuck there. Their content's fine. Their design's clean. But everything sounds the same.

Polished. Predictable. No personality. No emotion. Nothing for audiences to connect to. Nothing for people to believe in.

That's what happens when your narrative gets caught up in following trends, templates, or the latest LLM technology. You lose the fingerprint that made you different in the first place.

Writing A Proactive, Authentic Narrative

But when you choose to be the Protagonist, you're no longer waiting for the story to happen. You're writing it. Your momentum starts with meaning. What you want. Why you want it. Why you even started this journey in the first place.

Those are the elements that make your story sound like the real you, not just another LLM. For founders, that means taking back the pen. For nonprofits, it means aligning your team, your board, and your donors around a single spine. A through-line that makes every pitch, every post, every annual report feels like the same voice.

Being a protagonist isn't about perfection. It's about direction. It's about deciding what story you're telling before the world writes it for you.

Crossing the Threshold in Your Narrative

It's not a massive rebrand that creates a Protagonist. It's a moment. The slightest shift can pull you out of the ordinary world and into a narrative with clarity, voice, and courage.

Know your why.

Why is what you do important? Know what's at stake. That story behind your brand is the one thing AI can't replicate. If you can't say it clearly, no one else will do it for you.

Build your spine.

One message. One through-line. That's what keeps your message consistent as you grow. It's foundation—not design. It's the difference between sounding like a brand and a copy exercise.

Write from voice, not prompt.

Narratives that sell are built on tone, experience, and belief. Machines can mimic, but they can't speak from the soul. Your voice is the through-line. Protect it.

Move with intention.

Every post, pitch, or release should move your story forward. If you can't explain how a line or an image or a piece of content moves your narrative, you don't need it.

Is Your Brand Story Reacting Or Acting?

Characters exist. Protagonists transform.

Characters exist. Protagonists transform.

One is existence. The other is power. One waits for the plot. The other writes it.

And whether you're a team of one or a hundred, that choice defines everything that comes next.

So here's the question:

Do you know what story you're writing?

Who are you? What do you do? Why is it important? Can you connect your origin story to your mission to the way you show up in a pitch deck or a donor meeting or an all-hands.

If you can't answer that clearly, you've got work to do. Because someone or something else can't do it for you.

Being a Protagonist means building it yourself.

I know this to be untrue. The kid loves learning.

Where did that story come from? From us.

From 2020, when he was six months old to almost three, we told him home was safe and the world outside was dangerous. Because it was—then.

“Home is safe” was the story that helped him survive.

In 2025, it’s the story that makes the world feel scary.

So I made him tell me a better story.

It took a few minutes. A lot of eye rolls, repeated asking, stumping over one thought fragment or another. Then, finally:

“I get to sit with a friend at lunch.”

That was good enough.

The Truth About Story

Story is weird.

In one sense, they aren’t facts.

On the other, they tell everything about us.

The human psyche works in story. Stories are what we live by. My son’s story about school wasn’t about school — it was about safety, friendship, and having a place to belong.

And to find myself living a life that’s based in story feels like destiny, and yet...

Made up.

The scarcity mindset would take that truth and say it’s all for show. We’re all living in a made-up dimension. But is it not also true that our life is not just truth, but our perception of the experience we’re living?

I used to roll my eyes at the idea of manifestation. The notion that you could think yourself into being rich or fit or fulfilled felt like something for influencers, not real people.

But lately, I’ve started to see it differently.

Because whether you call it manifestation, mindset, or story—what we repeat becomes what we live.

Whether you call it manifestation, mindset, or story — what we repeat becomes what we live.

For forty years, I’ve carried my own survival story: scarcity.

My ball wasn’t as big as my brother’s.

My car wasn’t as new as the neighbor’s.

My bank account wasn’t as full as the guy on TV’s.

Ridiculous, right? But that’s how the brain works.

It protects the story that’s kept you safe, even after that story stops serving you.

So no matter what I achieved—a rare scotch at the top of the World Trade Center, a national commercial, the birth of my children—it never felt like enough. Someone else could have lived the same story and called it abundance.

The only difference? The narrative they practiced.

The Power to Choose the Narrative we Practice

The good news: stories can change.

They can be rewritten, reshot, reframed.

And the hardest, most powerful act you’ll ever take is choosing to see your life from a new perspective—

not pretending, not faking, but choosing the story that serves the future you want, not the one that once kept you safe.

Because the future you want wants to hang out with the version of you who believes it’s possible.

Because the future you want wants to hang out with the version of you who believes it’s possible.

Every founder, artist, or leader I work with hits this same wall. They think their problem is marketing. It’s not.

It’s narrative. And what’s worse, it’s all in our heads. We can choose to practice the narrative where we make the deals. We win the awards. We grow our community.

When they hit the wall, they’re telling an old survival story in a world that’s moved on.

So I’ll ask you what I ask them:

What perspective are you looking from?

What story are you practicing?

And is it time to rewrite it?

I do wish it worked that way. But we can't control what people do in stores or on the other side of their screens. Or can we?

The Art of Brain-Gaming

I was the youngest child of five. I have lost count of how many times I've been tricked, fooled, lied to, and manipulated. Even today, my sister still tells the story at parties of when she convinced me that a hotel's ornate indoor stream was covered by glass. (My leather penny loafers and dress socks went home soaked. My parents were less than thrilled about that one.)

We don't want to admit it, but we've been manipulated by brands all our lives. Two products, similar makeups. One is cool, one is not. Pampers vs. Huggies. Honey Nut Cheerios vs. Frosty Toasted O's. Yale vs State. Nike vs. Payless.

We don't want to admit it, but we've been manipulated by brands all our lives.

It's called “Retail Manipulation.”

You've probably heard the science of mapping grocery stores. The veggies and non-branded stuff goes around the perimeter. The aisles are deep and long, encasing you with brand names, logos, and health promises. The idea here is that when you walk inside, it's easier to go straight down an aisle than case the perimeter. And when you do that, you get lost in choice. You drop more things into your cart—which means you buy more.

The truth is that retail stores have your shopping experience down to a science. They put the fancy expensive products at eye-level with great lighting. The generic flour gets the bottom shelf. Manufacturers can create value for products through simply not having enough. Did you, too, stand in line at grocery stores during the height of COVID looking for toilet paper? Did you, too, race to the TP aisle to take whatever was available? Did you care what it cost? Of course not. And yet, we had the same amount of toilet paper available then as we do now.

But during the crisis, the rumor mill was running wild. It took off through social media that the supply chain was running low. People were dying en masse; therefore, supply chains couldn't make as much toilet paper. But in reality, according to “ NC State ” researchers, we were just using more. Why? Because we were all wiping ourselves at home.

And what did retailers do? Raised the price of toilet paper by over 20% in 2020. What did we do?

Buy it.

Brands are no different. The original cost of Air Jordan’s in 1985 was $64.99. In 1986—one year later—they retailed at $100. In 1985, consumers spent $946 million dollars buying those sneakers. What about when they almost doubled the price a year later? Consumers spent $1.1 billion, giving Air Jordans almost %15 of the US shoe market.

What words were used on the Air Jordan II? The shoe carried a tag that said “Made in Italy.” They were constructed of “Premium” Italian leather. By 1987, the messaging was that “it’s a banned shoe,” after Jordan wore them on the basketball court and began to fly like an eagle. It even came with a tag pinned to the lace, “they can’t tell you not to wear them.” It didn’t matter that the shoe was entirely redesigned and ditched the original branding.

What did consumers do? We stuck.

UX Q&As & Eye-Tracking—aka Online Brain Games Online

Every UX team worth a damn has a member working behind the scenes, sometimes in a room, sometimes on a Zoom, tracking every single interaction on their site. Great UX strategists can tell where you arrived from, where you’re looking, scrolling, clicking. And by tracking your action, they can get a spot-on guess at what you’re doing next.

And when someone clicks off in too short a time span, they call a writer. “Adjust this line here.” “Write a stronger CTA there.” “Craft a shorter headline, a longer headline.” “Give us both and we’ll A/B test.”

Sure, sometimes it’s the design that’s off. An image throws someone, or the skim flow is too difficult. The button’s in the wrong place. But more times than not, the copy needs to be adjusted. Because that’s what grabs people. Connects them. And keeps them engaged.

Because the words matter. It’s not just copy. It’s the foundation of your narrative.

Make Your Words Matter

For every memory you have of Jordan dunking in those shows, you’ve got the tagline bookending it. “Just do it.”

Is it any wonder why Nike makes you drool? Three words, three syllables. And yet, an infinite amount of drive. It’s not just a line, it’s a challenge to your soul with infinite possibility. You, too, can dunk. Just do it. You, too, can run marathons. Just do it. You, too, can win Olympic Medals, climb Mount Everest, and inspire generations to come. And make billions of dollars doing it. Just do it.

Three words, three syllables. And yet, an infinite amount of drive.

Well, if they can do it, so can you. A billion-dollar brand doesn’t have better copywriters by their side, just more of them. With even a few minor touches, you can elevate the language of your brand to a level where audiences connect and engage. And then come back to you. Again, and again, and again.

Create focus.

Focus happens in two ways. One, your message. Two, grabbing your audience by the ears and yell “ LOOK AT ME.”

Say something that stops them in their tracks. Grabs their attention and pulls to on you. “Just do it,” tell me more. “America runs on Dunkin’,” I’m an American. I want some of that.

Make it compelling. Make it funny. Make it stunning. Study the masters work, then try a hundred variations until you can’t even pull yourself away. We can always craft a stronger headline or a smarter tagline. We can always make it punchier. And if that doesn’t work, make it longer and smoother. Let the language linger in their ears. The average consumer is inundated with messaging every moment of every day. You don’t need to compete with that. You need to rise above it.

Strategize your Narrative.

Clarity is key. You have to know who you are. You have to be clear about what you offer. Jordan and the team at Nike didn’t sit around the table dumbfounded. They took an insight. They architectured a story. They focused on a message. They built an empire.

What’s your story? What do you stand for? What makes you different? Your brand has a personality, its own voice, its own narrative. Your copy is what gets that across. The first thing we do when I work with clients is define them. Then, we work on communicating who they are through language that resonates. Whether you’re serious but relatable or quirky and lighthearted, every brand is unique. Your copy is your message, and your message is your voice. Every touch point should get across who you are and the insight you carry.

Build trust.

Micheal Jordan became a legend—Nike became legendary. The consumers who bought those sneakers—hell, even the people who didn’t buy them—trusted that Jordan and Nike would change their lives.

That kind of trust is the backbone of advertising. A problem is scouted, a desire is created, a product is developed, and that product will help you. Trust us.

We’ll make you jump higher.

Our app will make you learn any language.

Our therapy service will save your life.

Trust us.

Of course, for it to work, that trust has to be met with resolve. In other words, people have to believe that thing has to actually do what the thing promised it would do. Air Jordans DID make us jump higher. Duolingo DOES teach you any language. Online therapy app BetterHelp MIGHT save you—provided you do the actual work.

In a world flooded with choices, trust cuts through the noise. Building these messages isn’t just transactional, its building relationships. We don’t just want your money, we want you to believe us. We want you, the consumer, to know you’re being heard. It’s not just a sale; it’s a two-way connection that creates authenticity and honesty with which the reader connects. And when that happens, engagement happens. Whether its financial advice, shoes or deodorant, consumers trust you’ll hear them. You’ll believe them. You’ll help them. Again and again.

Give them real solutions.

Toilet paper is a real solution. Good, bad, in 2020, it didn’t matter. Consumers had a messy problem. The TP manufacturers and the stores had a solution. And we would pay whatever it cost for that solution.

“Strong enough for a man, PH-balanced for a woman.” Not stinking is a solution. “5G built right.” A fast, resilient network. That’s a solution. “Got Milk?” If you don’t, now you have a solution. Get milk.

Your readers don’t just want your product. They want your solution. They’re willing to pay you money to solve their problem. Give them the narrative that’s shows them you understand them. Those are the words that resonate.

When you can craft a story that says you’re listening, and you have a real solution to one of their genuine pain points, you become indispensable. You’re saying you understand them. You can help lessen their pain. You’re telling them that you can make a difference in their lives. Now that’s power.

Nike does it with celebrity endorsements, cool colors, great products, and an unbelievable tagline. We do it by crafting brand stories that founders, artists, and nonprofits can actually use. How will you do it in a way that’s true?

Now do it all again.

You do all that work, and you think you’re done. Sorry, not by a longshot. We’re not just after one-time transactions—we’re building relationships. Once you’ve crafted that message, found that solution and built that trust—well, you’re only at the beginning.

But you’ve gotten this far. Words have the power of a thousand swords, a million designs. Empires were launched off cocktail napkins. Aaron Sorkin began scripting “A Few Good Men” on bev naps behind the Broadway bar of La Cage aux Folles —and that script launched his career.

The right words, backed up by truth, keeps readers latched on and jonesing for more. They build that emotional bridge between your brand and your audience. And once you’ve got that, there’s no stopping you.

Almost a year ago today, I got a Slack message. "Tomorrow's your last day. Thanks so much!," it said.

It's the 21st Century. At this point, there's hardly anyone among us that hasn't been laid off by Slack or Zoom or simply a door badge that no longer swipes you in. You've been wonderful, thank you, now log out.

I've walked the walls at ad agencies in almost every major city in America, I wasn't concerned about finding something else. Another gig always calls.

Until now.

From Mad Men to Monthly Subscriptions

What I didn't realize—what no one realized—was that the creative industry was seismically imploding. In a quick roll of prompts, ChatGPT, Claude, Copy.ai, Jasper and Gemini have all taken on jobs that mid- to senior-level writers used to spend years perfecting. For $20/month, you can have a good-enough copywriter at your fingertips, ready to write anything in four seconds flat, without even arguing your idea sucks.

It's better than us. Give it a model to back up against, a "you sound like David Sedaris" or a Luke Sullivan, and you'll get copy that would have won a Pencil five years ago. And with Midjourney and ChatGPT 4.1 image renders, well, Art Directors and Photographers are getting ready to sit this one out, too.

Everything we've all worked for decades to learn has gone ZIP — simply with a website URL, a keyboard and a Return button.

"This is What AI was Meant to Be."

"Powered by AI."

"Buy one AI, get a second AI 50% off."

Every brand is pushing AI. And we love it.

We love it…?

Sure, everything sounds the same. Everything looks the same. Humanity is being overtaken by our smartphones, and we love it!

AI is doing nothing wrong.

What AI is pushing out is the best sounding story it can come up with, based off your prompts. Sometimes, that's you. Sometimes, that's them. (But mostly, it's you.)

I'm not anti-AI. I'm anti-humans using AI to act like the work of humans. Too many brands, too many people are letting AI do the work of being human—and it has no idea how to do that. And it will tell you as much.

Chat can flirt. It can assume. It can guesstimate your experience. It can go through the actions of emotion:

The Human in the Human

The problem isn't the machines, it's what we've stopped doing because of them.

When I was in college, the entire world pushed students to go into coding. But a web developer in the Caribbean said it best to me last week:

The people who will become great aren't coders. They're English majors.

When me, my friends, and half my network was let go, the creative industry broke. And we were forced to adapt to a world that no longer needed what we're pretty good at.

So now? We figure out what's still ours.

Before long, whether or not we use AI won't be a question. It will be, what did we do with it? And before that, how did we survive?

Sure, this era kind of sucks to live in. But what if it isn't the start of our downfall? What if it's the beginning of our autonomy?

How?

Simple. We do what AI can't.

We act human. We find our voice. We tell our stories.

And this is where we write them.