How people make sense of what you’re saying, how decisions get made, and what leads to a
‘yes please, with knobs on’.
The Science behind the Stories
Story problems are very good at disguising themselves as operational ones. The pipeline goes sluggish, three people in the business describe it three different ways, new hires take months to feel at home, and marketing works brilliantly one month and not at all the next. The effort is usually there in spades. What tends to be missing is a story clear enough for everyone to repeat and pointed at the brains that matter.
Why the science matters
Most of the deciding happens before anyone thinks they've decided.
Three findings shape everything we do.
Clear gets believed. When something is easy to process, people rate it as more trustworthy and even more likely to be true. Psychologists call this processing fluency (Reber and Schwarz). A muddled offer has lost the argument before it's made one.
Stories sync brains. Princeton neuroscientist Uri Hasson found that when a story lands, the listener's brain activity starts to mirror the speaker's, and in places runs slightly ahead of it. When the message fails, that coupling disappears entirely.
Stories stick where statistics slide off. In Chip Heath's classroom exercise at Stanford, 63% of students could recall the stories they'd heard afterwards. Just 5% could recall a single statistic.
So we treat your story as working infrastructure, and build it the way the research says brains prefer to receive it.
The Three Lenses That Drive Growth
Every business has three groups of people deciding whether to commit to it. You rarely need to fix all three at once, so we start with whichever one is currently holding you back.
Market
Your value and your positioning. The story that draws the right customers in and helps the wrong ones recognise that you are not for them.
Brains categorise before they evaluate, and anything they cannot place quickly gets filed under "not sure". When this lens is unclear, growth hesitates, because "not sure" never buys.
People
Your internal story, your culture and what it genuinely feels like to work with you. Belonging and meaning are the strongest loyalty drivers psychology has found, far ahead of salary, and this is the lens that carries them.
When it is weak, energy drops, good candidates pass you by and teams quietly stop pulling in the same direction.
Investor
Your raise narrative, your pitch clarity and how you articulate your future. Investors decide with the gut and justify with the head, in that order, so this lens has to convince both.
When it wobbles, confidence softens and decisions slow without anyone quite being able to say why.
You don’t need to fix all three lenses at once. You simply need to bring clarity to the one that is hurting your organisation the most right now.
Proud to work with…
How We Work
Narrative & Positioning, then implementation. Everyone starts here. We dig into your business, your audience and what they currently believe about you, build the story, and then put it to work in whatever form it needs to take: website, pitch deck, recruitment pack, sales conversations or all of the above.
Ongoing support. Once the story exists, we can stay on as your strategic partner while your team runs with it, or roll our sleeves up and do the doing for you.
Speaking and training. Talks and workshops on the behavioural science of why people buy, join and back, for conferences, leadership teams and in-house sales and marketing teams.
Who We Work With
Founders and owners who've outgrown explaining the business themselves every single time
Senior and fractional leaders in founder-led businesses who need everyone saying the same thing
Teams who want clarity without having their personalities sanded off
Growth-ready businesses where something is causing friction and nobody can quite put their finger on what
Why They Buy
Monthly LinkedIn articles on the psychology behind why people buy, join and back. Written for people who find brains more interesting than buzzwords, and usually featuring Disney.
Not sure where to start?
If your messaging isn’t resulting in strong sales, great hires or the investment you need, then we should talk.
