So where do you think the hang-up is with people that think they have to suppress all that, and they don't bring it into their business?

Yeah.

It's never been my way, so it's, like, a little hard to get into their heads of why they would wanna be either inauthentic or front, 'cause it's always just been me, like, splayed for people to witness, and it's been true always.

And I'm a little boundaryless and very authentic.

Like, you get exactly what you came for with me.

Like, it, I, I like to say I'm a flavor of ice cream you like or don't like.

I think, you know, ultimately that's fear-driven decision-making.

You live in a trust gap economy, and a real human face with real human eyeballs talking to you goes a long ways.

And why do so many founders misunderstand the role that stories play in business growth?

Yeah.

Your story is the foundation of the business.

It's the why you do what you do.

Sometimes you can call it your purpose, right? Basically telling your story of why you do what you do and why it matters is just an approach to articulating purpose and values.

And so your purpose and your values, the dent you want to make in the universe and how you're going to approach the work, which is the core of every business, is really rooted in your personal history and legacy.

I think most founders, and therefore you build on top of that the messages you send to customers, you know marketing and sales you build on top of that hiring and team building and culture you build on top of that um investing and partnerships and the community work you do and then you build on top of that also the story you tell yourself in the hardest moments and in the highest triumphs and so it's a foundation it's the core i call it the diamond the hard center of the work that you do um Now, why do founders not tell it? I think there's a couple reasons.

How does a founder know when their original story, their message, their positioning just no longer fits the business that they now are? It may have fit it maybe earlier, but the business has matured and grown, and they're still telling the old story.

Yeah.

Well, the way I put it is it's profit and purpose.

And if you do, if you're profitable, but have no purpose, no larger purpose, then the work you're doing is meaningless.

And if you're purposeful, if you have a mission and you're making the world a better place, but you're not profitable, you're not sustainable.

And so the tension that I live in and the work that I do is I teach companies how to be more purposeful, purpose driven, more intentional in their communications around their why, while still maintaining the financial discipline and the strategic focus that is required to be profitable.

And I like to tell people that like, look, you have a purpose driven company, but if you don't have your financials in order, I actually just turned away a client recently for this very reason.

I said, look, I'm not your first hire.

Is that something that's necessitated by where the market is, by where people are sort of perceiving it? Or is it because you find it to be a piece, like a hurdle that you have to get over quickly in order to unlock the real value?