Narrative First. Always.

Every enduring business, whether it’s a one-person shop on a quiet street or a global enterprise operating across continents, begins with a story.

Not a tagline. Not a positioning statement. A story in the truest sense: a clear and coherent understanding of why it exists and what value it creates in the world.

This is the part of business strategy that most leaders underestimate. Not because they don’t value storytelling, but because they confuse narrative with marketing.

Narrative is not the thing you write to market the company.
Narrative is the thing that gives the company the right to be marketed.

Without a narrative, a company becomes a collection of activity rather than a coherent organism.

• It is the foundation beneath every decision a business makes.

• The organizing principle for how it behaves.

• The lens through which customers understand it.

• The compass that prevents drift.

Narrative is the root system of your business. Everything else (brand, product, marketing, sales, culture, customer experience) grows from it.

Narrative isn’t a creative exercise.
Narrative is a strategic one.

It requires conceptual clarity, operational truth, customer empathy, and a deep understanding of the forces shaping your market. It requires fluency in your category not the category you think you’re in, but the one customers mentally place you in. It requires the discipline to articulate not just what you sell, but what change you enable, what problem you relieve, what outcome you produce, and why that outcome matters today.

Small businesses understand this intuitively.

• A bakery doesn’t talk about flour and ovens. It talks about warmth, ritual, nourishment, connection.

• A bike shop doesn’t sell components. It sells movement, belonging, joy, identity.

A good local business knows its narrative because it lives close to the people who rely on it.

Unfortunately, as businesses grow, this clarity often fades. The distance to customers increases and the complexity of day-to-day operations multiplies.

Internal language drifts from customer engagement (customer language, if you will).

Teams accumulate different interpretations of what the company is “about.”

Unfortunately, when this happens (and it does happen), marketing efforts become hollow.

Sales improvises its way through deals. Product builds features without context. Leadership makes decisions without a shared north star.

The company becomes louder, but less legible.

Narrative first is not a philosophical suggestion.
It’s an operational mandate.

It is the work a company must complete before it can expect anything else to work.

Your narrative shapes everything:

• How you prioritize

• How you build

• How you hire

• How you price

• How you communicate

• How you earn trust

• How customers understand your value

• How your team understands their purpose

A well-defined narrative is not just a brand asset. It is a strategic accelerant.

It reduces friction, collapses confusion, and aligns the entire organization around a single shared meaning.

A company with a strong narrative becomes inevitable.

A company without one becomes forgettable.

If your team can’t explain what you do in a single breath, your customers won’t spend one on you.

The Importance of First Impressions

I still remember the first “serious” bike I ever bought. Not the one that showed up at birthdays, but the first bike that made me feel like I was choosing a direction, maybe even choosing a version of myself. It wasn’t the most expensive bike, it certainly wasn’t perfect. Of course, it was a mountain bike. I spent weeks researching it, test riding it, hanging out it in the shop, trying to make sense of what made this frame different from that one, and why this level of Shimano was so much more important than that one.

You probably remember your moment, too. The shop. The lighting. The smell of rubber. The simple, unmistakable sense that you were stepping into a larger world and (whether you knew it or not) putting in place the first stone of future decisions.

It’s easy to say that first bike doesn’t matter anymore. People upgrade quickly now. The industry appears to change dramatically every year. Riders are exposed to endless videos, endless reviews, and opinions. However, even in all of that noise, something quiet and deeply human still happens: your first serious bike becomes the reference point you don’t realize you’re using.

Whatever it was about that bike, it left an imprint. Not on the kind of rider you became, but on the kind of bikes you continue to choose.

We’re not as rational as we think. We carry preferences forward. We carry loyalties forward. We carry the geometry, the responsiveness, and the personality of that first real bike forward, even when we swear we’re starting from scratch and buying into a new category.

This, right here, is why the industry finds itself in a strange place. So much of the first-bike experience now happens online.

A bike is a physical experience first, and a digital decision second. We’ve inverted something essential.

We don’t feel the bike. We don’t pick it up. We don’t ride it around the shop. We don’t test its personality.

We scroll through specs. We watch someone else ride the bike we’re thinking about buying. We read reviews written by people we’ll never meet. We see pictures. We compare charts.

That’s why local bike shops matter, despite everything happening around them. Not because they’re romantic or nostalgic, but because they’re one of the few remaining places where a rider can walk in and be surprised by something. You can’t be surprised by a bike on a website. I mean, you can, but it's not the same thing.

You can be surprised by a bike sitting quietly on a shop floor, by a frame you never considered, by the way a bike feels the moment you sit in it, or the way shifts feel and sound.

Today, group rides, even more than shops, have become rolling ecosystems of discovery.

When someone new joins a ride and the only bikes they see are the same brand, the same style, the same tires, the same everything, their sense of what’s possible becomes limited before it ever has a chance to expand.

When a group ride is diverse, when someone rolls up on something unexpected - say a handmade steel frame, a gravel bike that looks like it’s carved from a single piece of metal, an old mountain bike with a modern rebuild - it quietly gives permission for curiosity.

...and I've come to believe this:

It’s curiosity that invites someone in, and it's community that convinces them to stay.

Together, they’re what grow cycling.

What Is A Narrative Operating System?

Most companies don’t fail because their product is weak. They fail because their story is.

A Narrative Operating System (Narrative OS) is the framework that ensures your story is not accidental, inconsistent, or fragmented … but intentional, coherent, and compounding.

It’s the system that turns “what we think we’re saying” into “what the market actually hears.”

At It’s Core, a Narrative OS Does 3 Things:

1. Creates Clarity

It defines the true value your business delivers, why it matters, and how it fits into the world your customers live in.

It aligns leadership, teams, product, and go-to-market around the same north star so the story stops shifting with every deck, campaign, or meeting.

2. Reduces Narrative Risk

In a world where AI writes too much, too fast, and too off-brand, your narrative becomes fragmented, fragile, and erodes trust.

A Narrative OS establishes guardrails, messaging frameworks, and chain-of-custody so your voice stays consistent no matter who writes, what tool they use, or how fast the company grows.

3. Accelerates Market Momentum

When your story is clear and protected, execution becomes easier. Marketing is sharper. Sales conversations convert faster.

Products ship with purpose. Partners know exactly how to talk about you.

Everything compounds because everything connects.

Why A Narrative OS Matters Now

AI has changed the speed of communication, but not the fundamentals of persuasion.

Teams are producing more content than ever … yet this is most often delivered with less alignment, less coherence, and more narrative drift … all of which further erode trust.

A Narrative Operating System brings order to that chaos. A Narrative Operating System is the foundation of trust.

It gives your company a durable story architecture that can flex across channels, teams, and use cases without losing its integrity.

TL;DR

A Narrative OS is how modern companies protect their voice, scale their story, and create compounding advantage in the market.

If you don’t build it deliberately, it builds itself, and that’s rarely the version that wins.

We Don’t Need Less Cycling Stuff. We Need More Cycling Community

Rick Sutton is right: we’re drowning in cycling gear.

There’s more choice, more brands, and more noise than anyone can reasonably navigate. But “less stuff” isn’t the real cure. The problem isn’t oversupply. It’s underconnection.

The gap isn’t in the showroom. It’s in the space between a bike purchase and a rider’s first real experience of belonging.

Sondre Norland, CEO of BikeFolder, captures this perfectly: people buy bikes because they want community, activity, connection, and experience. But the moment they roll out of the shop, they’re on their own. No map. No invitation. No pathway into organized cycling or community rides.

You bought a bike. Congratulations. Now what?

Most newcomers don’t fall out of love with cycling. They fall out of place.

We’ve built an industry great at selling equipment and terrible at welcoming people.

Roll up to any club ride.

If you’re new, under-geared, or still finding your fitness, the experience can be brutal. Not because cyclists are unfriendly, but because the system has no structured on-ramps. No “start here.” No gentle pace groups. No continuity from “I bought a bike” to “I belong here.”

Gyms figured this out decades ago. Indoor cycling did, too. Cycling, real-world on the road and on the trails, generally hasn’t.

The real crisis isn’t too much gear. It’s too few invitations.

There are too few community entry points, routes built for beginners, welcoming first experiences, and places where a rider can show up and feel seen, safe, and supported.

Sondre’s pilot in Norway — connecting someone’s newly registered bike to local clubs offering beginner-friendly introduction sessions — is the type of bridge the industry needs. It turns a product purchase into a pathway. It transforms “stuff” into “experience.”

It’s a small step with massive implications:

• More riders become real riders.

• More people ride consistently.

• More communities grow.

• More shops thrive.

• More casual participation events exist and flourish.

• More families, friends, and workplaces begin to ride together.

The industry keeps looking for a commercial fix. But the real fix is cultural.

If we want more people riding, buying, upgrading, joining, showing up, and sticking around, the answer is painfully simple:

• We need more community, not more inventory.

• More connection, not more carbon layups.

• More time on bikes with others, not more SKUs.

• More clubs with open doors.

• More local rides with real structure.

• More ways in.

Cycling doesn’t grow because products get better. Cycling grows because people feel like they belong.

When they do, everything else including sales, participation, loyalty, advocacy, follows naturally.

Rick is right to say our gratitude should be higher than our expectations.

But gratitude grows fastest when we’re outside together. Riding, laughing, learning, welcoming new riders, and remembering that the reason we all started wasn’t gear.

It was community.

Until the industry understands this, truly understands it, we’ll keep misdiagnosing the problem. Not too much stuff. Not too many brands. Not even the boom-and-bust cycles.

The real issue is connection. The real opportunity is belonging.

Cycling doesn’t need fewer brands. It needs more bridges.

... and more people waiting at the other side to say,

“Hey! We're glad you’re here. Come ride with us.”

The Post Marketing World

Businesses operate under a simple assumption: if you wanted growth, you increased your marketing.

More campaigns, more channels, more ads, more spend.

If something doesn’t work, you test another variation. If the story isn’t landing, you try a new headline. If demand slows, you scale budgets, expande audiences, and pushe harder.

Every part of the modern marketing system relies on one belief: That attention was something you could buy.

That belief is now collapsing.

People aren’t rejecting advertising. They’re simply no longer noticing it. The scroll has become reflexive. The filters, both mental and technological, are stronger than any creative optimization. Great ads drown in the same sea as mediocre ones.

For SMBs and growth-stage companies, it’s even harder. Markets are noisier. Categories are more crowded. The cost of being heard is rising faster than the budgets required to keep pace.

We’ve reached a saturation point. Marketing, as a discipline centered on broadcasting, has lost its leverage.

Growth-stage leaders feel this first. They follow the conventional playbook. Hire a demand-gen manager, spin up ads, launch content, buy software, run experiments … and yet the outcomes feel thin. Not is wrong, exactly. It just feels shallow. Perhaps even hollow.

A trickle of engagement here. A small deal there. Activity that looks like progress, but never compounds.

It’s not a failure of execution. It’s a failure of context.

We are living through the end of the “marketing solves everything” era.

Not because marketing is unimportant. Quite the contrary. Marketing remains essential, but the era is ending because the environment that made traditional marketing effective no longer exists.

Consumers have shifted from being reachable to being selectively permeable, and they carry this behavior (perhaps better phrased as preference) throughout ALL buying processes (home, work, etc.).

• Communities have replaced channels as the source of trust.

• Signals matter more than slogans.

• Proof matters more than positioning.

• Humans are actively choosing meaning over messaging.

Simultaneously, businesses, especially small and growth-stage ones, are carrying more weight than ever:

• Limited resources

• Compressed timelines

• Competitive pressure

• Investor expectations,

• A market that no longer responds to the tactics that once worked.

In this landscape, the post marketing era, companies aren’t simply fighting for attention.

They’re fighting for permission. Permission to be considered, to be believed, to be chosen, to be remembered.

And permission cannot be purchased. It must be earned.

This Is The Fundamental Shift:

Marketing no longer precedes trust. Trust precedes marketing.

This means marketing cannot begin with tactics, campaigns, content velocity, or funnels.

It must begin with clarity. It must begin with the truth of what a company is, why it exists, what it promises, and why that promise matters.

This is the world Sightline is built for.

• A world where marketing is not the megaphone, but the mirror.

• A world where narrative isn’t an accessory to strategy, it is the strategy.

• A world where companies grow not because they say more, but because they understand themselves more deeply.

And in this world, the companies that thrive are not the companies that market the best. They are the companies that explain themselves the best.

Consistently. Clearly. Confidently … and in a way that no competitor can copy, because it’s rooted in who they are, not what they sell.

You can no longer buy your way into attention or hack your way into trust. You must deserve both.

What if Your Strategy is Missing the Thing People Want Most?

Lately, the most meaningful conversations we’ve been having aren’t about marketing plans or GTM playbooks. They’re about community.

Not community as a campaign.

Not community as a retention tool.

But community as the core. Community as the reason someone sticks around, tells a friend, or feels something when they interact with your brand.

The companies winning right now aren’t just launching features.

They’re creating connection … and they’re doing it with intention.

If you’re not actively shaping your narrative, someone else will do it for you.

And if that narrative doesn’t foster belonging, trust, and participation?

You’ll lose the very people you’re trying to serve.

Now is the time to treat your narrative like your most valuable product.

Because in a world where everyone’s automating content, people crave meaning.

Your story, and how it invites people in, is the edge your competitors can’t copy.

So here’s your prompt: What story are you telling right now that makes someone feel like they belong?

If you’re not sure, it’s time to rethink your strategy.

Start with your narrative.

Build with intention.

Lead with community.

The Most Overlooked Stage of Your Brand Is the One That Decides if You’re Remembered

We talk a lot about brand awareness. About getting on the radar, getting into the conversation, getting on the shortlist.

We talk about conversion. About landing the deal, signing the contract, making it official.

…all while we’re really hoping to be talking about retention and advocacy.

But there’s a moment between decision and advocacy that gets glossed over, if not ignored entirely.

A moment that determines whether you deliver on the brand promises you spent months and millions building.

Onboarding.

Onboarding isn’t a support process.

It’s not a cost center.

It’s not a glorified checklist.

It’s your brand’s first real chance to prove it meant everything it said.

Most Onboarding Is Built Like a Manual, Not a Memory

Most companies treat onboarding like they’re writing a technical manual:

• Step 1: Confirm login

• Step 2: Watch training

• Step 3: Meet your CS rep

• Step 4: “Let us know if you need anything.”

It’s linear. Transactional. Soulless.

Which is strange, because this is the moment your customer is most open to you, the moment they’ve been waiting for.

They’re curious. Hopeful. Excited. Nervous.

They want to feel something.

Instead, they get a drip campaign and a support doc.

The Brand Doesn’t End at the Sale. It Begins.

Your brand is not your ads.

It’s not your pitch deck.

It’s not your font, your colors, or your elevator speech.

Your brand is the experience your customer has when they choose you.

Therefore:

• If your onboarding is forgettable, your brand becomes forgettable.

• If your onboarding is chaotic, your brand becomes untrustworthy.

And if your onboarding is cold and mechanical, your brand becomes… just another vendor.

What If You Treated Onboarding Like the Opening Scene of a Film?

What if onboarding wasn’t a step-by-step to-do list… but the opening scene of their transformation, where their real story begins?

What if you:

• Scripted it like your brand voice depended on it (because it does)?

• Resourced it like it was your greatest opportunity to differentiate (because it is)?

• Optimized it like your future advocacy, referrals, and upsells depended on it (because they do)?

Because here’s the thing:

You don’t win customers at the close. You win them in the first 90 days.

In the Next 18-36 Months, Onboarding Will Be a Key Differentiator

It’s already happening.

As product parity increases, marketing noise grows, and people seek out connections and community, experience is becoming the new moat.

Companies that understand onboarding as brand infrastructure will:

• Reduce churn without slashing price

• Create loyalty without gimmicks

• Activate advocacy without having to “ask for it”

They’ll win because of how it feels to become a customer. Not in spite of it.

So, Ask Yourself:

• Does our onboarding feel like us?

• Are we making new customers feel smarter, more confident, and genuinely excited?

• Or, are we just moving them through a system?

Because, in the story of your brand, onboarding isn’t a transition.

It’s the transformation.

A Quick Exercise

Want to evaluate your onboarding through a brand lens? Here’s a quick exercise.

Gather your leadership, CX, and marketing teams and ask:

1. What does our customer feel in their first 7 days with us?

2. What do they say to their team after their first onboarding session?

3. Where does the onboarding experience currently break the narrative we sold them?

Then go fix it.

Not because onboarding is broken, but because your brand story deserves to be complete.

What The First Twelve Narrative Assessments Taught Me About B2B Storytelling

From pre-funding teams to public companies, the patterns are the same.

After completing the first twelve narrative assessments, here are the five truths I keep seeing … and how to use them to build a narrative that actually moves revenue.

1) Your Origin Story Is Your Competitive Moat

The strongest differentiation isn’t a feature list. It’s the specific struggle that forced you to invent a better way. Competitors can clone products quickly; they can’t clone why you had to build yours.

What we find: teams bury the “oh-no” moments (near-failures, hard pivots, breakthrough realizations).

Do this: document three moments you’d tell a friend over coffee — the risk, the turn, the lesson — and make them the spine of your About page, sales deck, and founder videos.

2) Stop Being the Hero of Your Own Story

Most B2B content casts the company as Luke Skywalker. Your buyers don’t need Luke; they need Yoda.

What we find: pages filled with “we, we, we,” while customers are offstage.

Do this: rewrite one core asset using a guide frame:

• Hero: your customer

• Villain: the status quo risk they can’t ignore

• Gift: your method, not just your product

• Path: the smallest next step to progress

3) Raw Material Beats Polished Fiction

AI can accelerate; it can’t substitute for source material.

What we find: teams skip interviews and jump to manufactured copy that sounds like everyone else.

Do this: run 3–5 customer interviews before writing a word. Ask, “What changed after we started working together?” and “What almost made this fail?” Transcribe, highlight verbs, build your message map from the phrases customers actually use.

4) Measure More Than Vanity

Likes aren’t a strategy. Tie story to revenue through four levels:

• Awareness (remembered): aided/unaided recall, branded search, direct traffic lift

• Engagement (held attention): time on page, scroll depth, reply rate on outreach

• Conversion (moved revenue): demo requests per asset, pipeline sourced, win rate lift for deals exposed to narrative assets

• Advocacy (others tell it): testimonial volume, case-study reuse in sales, referrals

Do this: pick one metric per level, baseline it this month, and review it with sales every two weeks.

5) Small Teams Can Build Systems That Scale

You don’t need an army; you need an operating system.

What we find: “random acts of content” produced by 3–5 overstretched people.

Do this: install a light narrative OS:

• Pillars: 3 themes you’ll own for 12 months

• Story Arcs: repeatable outlines (Problem → Stakes → Shift → Proof → Path)

• Characters: founder, customer, practitioner—each with distinct POV

• Cadence: a simple waterfall (anchor post → sales enablement → social threads → email) that ships weekly without breaking the team

Start This Week (90 minutes)

1. Origin sprint (30 min): founders list the three “oh-no to aha” moments that founded the company.

2. Interview sprint (30 min): schedule 3 customer calls; lock in the questions; set a transcript template.

3. Measurement sprint (30 min): choose one metric per level; add to a shared dashboard with sales.

The Bottom Line

Most companies try to win with volume. More posts, more pages, more noise. The teams who grow faster install a narrative operating system: clear origin, customer-as-hero framing, real raw material, revenue-linked metrics, and a small-team cadence that compounds. It’s not about publishing more. It’s about knowing exactly what story you’re telling, why it matters to this audience, and how every asset advances that story toward measurable outcomes.

If you want a pragmatic, 12-month roadmap built for a 3–5 person team, Sightline’s Narrative Assessment maps your origin, reframes your story around your customer, and installs the operating system to scale it.

When You’re Ready: To replace “random acts of content” with a narrative that sells, let’s talk!

Is Attention To Detail Your Competitive Edge?

We are moving so fast we aren’t noticing the cracks forming under their feet.

Projects are launching half-baked. Content is flooding inboxes. On the surface, this all looks like momentum. Underneath, however, the cost of missed details starts compounding, having very real impacts via errors, rework, and reputational hits. What looks like “speed” today becomes tomorrow’s mess.

The problem isn’t that we’re not doing enough. It’s that we’re doing too much, too fast, with too little care.

The Psychology of “More, Faster”

Our brains aren’t wired for this volume.

• Cognitive load theory shows humans can only juggle a limited amount of new information before performance collapses (Sweller, 1988).

• Stanford research on multitasking found heavy multitaskers are actually worse at switching tasks and filtering distractions than people who focus (Stanford, 2009).

• University of California research on attention span shows the average person now pays attention to a single screen for only about 47 seconds, compared to ~2.5 minutes in earlier eras (University of California, 2024).

Pile on AI and automation, and the problem only accelerates. We start trusting machine outputs without scrutiny, diving further into a bias called automation bias (Parasuraman & Riley, 1997). That’s how small errors slip through and snowball into expensive failures and it dates all the way back before the turn of the century … what’s old is, sadly, new, again.

The New Scarcity: Quality

The irony of the AI era is this: as output explodes, quality collapses.

Which means the rarest thing in the market is no longer speed. It’s precision. It’s trust.

Consumers and businesses are already reflecting this shift:

• Edelman’s Trust Barometer reports people reward brands they believe are consistent and reliable over those that just move fast (Edelman Trust Barometer 2024).

• McKinsey’s 2024 survey found that while 75% of companies adopted AI since 2020, only 23% reported actual quality improvements, most cite inconsistency and rework (McKinsey, 2024)

• And while younger generations (Gen Z, Millennials) value flexibility and digital-first experiences, they are fierce judges of quality. A brand that feels careless or sloppy loses them instantly (Deloitte Global Gen Z & Millennial Survey 2024).

In other words: the market is drowning in “good enough.” What people will pay for, what they will return for, is what’s done exceptionally well.

Doing Less, Better

This isn’t a call to abandon progress. It’s a call to cut ruthlessly. Do fewer things, but with deeper attention.

Because in a world where AI can generate 10,000 words in a blink, the human edge won’t be speed—it will be the judgment to know what matters, and the craft to deliver it without compromise.

The companies, teams, and individuals who thrive won’t be the ones producing more. They’ll be the ones whose work people actually trust, remember, and return to.

So here’s the challenge: What could you strip away this week, so the work you do actually lasts?

My First Step

For me, it’s meetings. Specifically, meetings without a clear agenda and defined outcomes. They’re speed disguised as progress. By stripping them away, I’m freeing time and focus to do fewer things, but with the depth and quality that actually move the needle.

Why Your B2B Stories Need Rounded Edges

You know how rounded buttons just feel friendlier than sharp-cornered ones? How certain websites feel instantly trustworthy while others make you want to click away?

(Dive much deeper on rounded v. sharp design here: Journal of Consumer Research)

The same principle applies to B2B brand narratives. Stories have sharp edges are more likely to make buyers pull back. Stories that have rounded edges are more likely to make them lean in.

…and most of us are telling stories with way too many sharp edges.

Stories Have Edges Too

Think about the last sales deck you saw. Was it packed with "cutting-edge solutions" and "best-in-class platforms" and enough acronyms to fill a dictionary? Every one of those phrases is a sharp edge. They poke. They prod. They create distance.

It’s quite ironic. B2B loves to talk about "cutting-edge" when people instinctively prefer rounded edges.

Now, think about the time someone told you a story about Sarah who used to spend her Sundays catching up on work but doesn't anymore. Something different happened, right? You relaxed. You pictured Sarah, maybe you saw a bit of yourself in her story. No poking. No prodding. Just curiosity about what changed for Sarah.

That's the difference between sharp and rounded narratives. One makes your brain work. The other makes your brain care.

Sharp vs. Rounded: A Tale of Two Pitches

Here's what sharp looks like: "Our AI-powered solution delivers operational excellence through advanced automation capabilities."

Did you feel that? That's your brain working overtime to decode what this actually means for you. It's all edges and they are abstract, aggressive, and alienating.

Now here's rounded: "Remember when your team had to manually process every invoice? That's gone now."

You had a different feeling, right? It's a question, not an assault. It’s an invitation to see yourself in the story.

That’s the power of smooth edges. They draw you in rather than sharp ones, that push you away.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

You're not selling to spreadsheets. You're selling to humans who happen to use spreadsheets. And humans, whether they're CFOs or interns, are drawn to what feels safe, approachable, and familiar.

When you round your narrative edges, something measurable happens.

• People actually finish reading

• They move through your sales process faster

• They share your story with colleagues because stories travel while specifications are archived in your inbox

The companies winning complex B2B sales aren't the ones with the sharpest edges. They're the ones who figured out that "cutting-edge" is exactly the wrong metaphor when you want someone to come closer.

The Rounded Revolution

So how do you know if your narratives have too many sharp edges?

Here's a simple test: Would your customer say it that way? If not, you've found a sharp edge.

"We're leveraging synergies" is sharp. "We're working better together" is rounded.

"Best-in-class solution" is sharp. "The thing that actually works" is rounded.

"Digital transformation initiative" is sharp. "Finally fixing that annoying manual process" is rounded.

The beautiful thing about rounded narratives is they're actually easier to create.

You don't need a thesaurus or an MBA. You need to listen to how your happiest customers describe what you did for them.

They never say "operational excellence." They say "I get home on time now."

The Question That Changes Everything

Every piece of content you create, every deck you design, every email you send has edges. The question isn't whether you're telling your story. The question is whether you're telling it in a way that invites people in or keeps them at arm's length.

The reality is sharp narratives feel like work. They require decoding, translating, and processing … and no one has time for more work.

They exhaust buyers before you even get to the value.

Rounded narratives feel like conversation. They flow naturally from problem to solution to transformation. They create connection instead of distance.

So, What?

Take a look at your latest sales narrative. Count the sharp edges. Get a notepad and put a tally down for each piece of jargon, each abstractions, each aggressive claims. Then ask yourself: Would Sarah tell it this way?

In the end, nobody wants to grab onto something with sharp edges. Not buttons, not brands, and definitely not B2B solutions.

Companies that understand this aren't trying to be cutting-edge anymore.

They're too busy closing deals with their well defined rounded stories.