Find Your One Word and Become Impossible to Ignore, With Brian Burkhart

Because the difference between a commodity and a movement is one core belief.

You’ve built something real, and your team believes in what you offer.

But if you can’t name what you stand for, you won’t stand out — you’ll just be another commodity in a race to the bottom you can’t win.

Today you’ll find your one word — your core belief — and make it art that activates feeling and makes you impossible to ignore.

Brian Burkhart has heard that pitch before. As founder of Square Planet, and author of Stand for Something: The Power of Building a Brand People Authentically Love.

He’s also, impressivley, a former Disney submariner turned Fortune 500 communication strategist; he has spent decades helping senior leaders and TEDx speakers find the galvanizing signal that transforms commodities into movements.

Brian has done it for brands with 120 years of history and for first-time speakers stepping onto a red circle stage. His weapon is deceptively simple: one word that captures what you believe — and the art to make people feel it.

What’s in it for You:

• How to distill your core belief into one powerful word that galvanizes your entire organization
• Brian’s 10-step ancient Stoic framework that works for any presentation, pitch, or keynote
• How to reverse-engineer your core beliefs directly from your daily actions
• Why your audience decides with feelings first — and how to make art that activates them
• The Mad Men “It’s Toasted” moment that proves one idea beats every feature list

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How One Simple Brand Theme Can Move Millions to Act

What the World’s Hardest Storytelling Challenge Teaches You About Your Own Brand

You have something important to say. You have the passion, the proof, and the purpose to back it up. And every time you step into a room that should care — a customer meeting, an investor pitch, a keynote — you lay everything on the table and wait for the room to move. It doesn’t.

That is not a message problem. It is a complexity problem. And no category in business demonstrates the damage of that problem more vividly than sustainability, where years of worthy but exhausting communication has produced the opposite of action. So when a serial entrepreneur from London found a way to compress the entire challenge of climate change into four words — almost nothing changes everything — and built a global movement around it without once leading with the cause, the lesson for every brand builder is impossible to ignore.

Ryan Kohn is the co-founder of PROPER Snacks, the UK’s leading premium snack brand and one of the first B Corps in the sector. From a kitchen-table idea to a global company selling over eight million snacks a month, he scaled PROPER into a household name and led its 85-person team before exiting to private equity in 2021.

Alongside PROPER, Ryan launched ventures spanning carbon-neutral property development and the UK’s largest student events business, earning recognition as EY Entrepreneur of the Year. Beyond business, he co-founded campaigns alongside Riz Ahmed and HRH Prince William, served as a board member of environmental charity Hubbub, co-authored a B Corp guide to achieving net zero, and mentored the next generation of entrepreneurs through Virgin Start-Up and Tesco Back It.

Most recently, Ryan founded Point One, a global initiative making it radically easy for businesses to support the clean energy transition. Point One asks companies to contribute just 0.1% of their revenue — one dollar per thousand — into a shared fund that unlocks and accelerates clean energy projects, particularly in developing markets.

Pooled across everyday economic activity, that rounding-error commitment has the potential to fully fund the global clean energy transition within 15 years.

What’s in it for You

Tune in to this episode and you will discover:

• How to find the single brand theme that compresses your biggest, most complex idea into the one line your audience cannot forget
• Why leading with your cause — or your industry’s equivalent jargon — is the surest way to lose the audience you most need to reach
• How Point One built a global brand movement by meeting audiences inside the cultural moments they already love, not the cause they need to care about
• Why simplicity is not a shortcut in brand storytelling — it is the destination, and what it actually takes to get there
• What the Story Cycle System revealed about Point One’s brand positioning when Park ran it live through the StoryCycle Genie during the conversation
• How scenes from your life — not a polished origin story — are the raw material for the brand narrative that will move the people you most want to serve

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Stop Pushing. Start Finding the Buyers Who Are Already Sold on You.

The One Shift That Separates Struggling Founders From Founders Who Scale

You’ve built something genuinely great. You’ve done the research, built the pitch, run the demos, and followed every best practice in the playbook.

But prospects keep disappearing. Sales cycles drag. You’re pouring energy into conversations that go nowhere — and you can’t figure out why.

Here’s the hard truth: the problem isn’t your product. It’s that you’re pushing it onto people who aren’t ready to pull.

The moment you stop trying to convince the wrong people and start finding the ones who are already sold — everything changes. Sales cycles shrink. Deals close without a fight. And the product practically sells itself.

That’s the transformative power of the PULL framework. And in episode 576 of the Business of Story podcast, the man who built it is here to show you exactly how it works.

Who Is Rob Snyder? The Harvard MBA and McKinsey Veteran Rewriting the Sales Playbook

Rob Snyder arrived at Harvard Business School with a McKinsey pedigree, a million dollars in startup funding, and a business that looked brilliant on paper. Two years later, he was deep in what he calls “the pain cave” — doing everything right and going nowhere.

Then one unexpected phone call changed everything.

A restaurant owner he’d once tried to sell to called out of the blue — not to buy Rob’s product, but to ask if Rob could help solve a completely different problem. That pivot led to a new company that went from zero to $4 million in annual recurring revenue in two years.

That experience sent Rob on a decade-long quest to figure out why some products take off while others stall — even when the founders are smart, well-funded, and working hard. The result is his book, The Power of Pull, a battle-tested framework for finding the customers who are already sold before you ever say a word.

What’s in It for You

Listen to this conversation with Rob and you will discover:

• What “the pain cave” is and why even the smartest, best-resourced founders get trapped there
• The four-part PULL framework — Project, Unavoidable, List of options, Limitations — and how to use it to identify buyers who are already in motion
• Why your product description is probably convincing people not to buy — and the simpler language that creates instant pull
• How to turn a single customer success story into a repeatable sales engine that closes deals without pitching
• Three concrete action steps you can take this week to find your pull customers and accelerate growth

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State of Storytelling 2026 Proves Brand Narrative Is Finally a Business Discipline

Why the Smartest Companies Are Hiring Chief Storytelling Officers to Operationalize Their Brand Story ACross the Enterprise

You’ve invested in marketing. You’ve hired talented people. You’ve built messaging frameworks, refreshed your brand guidelines, and probably paid an agency or two to capture what makes you different.

And you know story is the currency of connection. The thing that turns strangers into customers and customers into advocates.

But ask five of your most senior leaders to tell your brand story right now.

Odds are you’ll hear five different versions.

Research from Elliott Rayner’s State of Storytelling 2026 reveals that only 19% of employees inside most organizations can consistently articulate the three core questions about their company: what value do we create, who cares about that value most, and why are we the best at delivering it?

Nineteen percent.

That means 81% of your brand touchpoints — every sales call, every product demo, every investor pitch, every customer email — are being delivered without a shared, aligned story underneath them.

That’s Narrative Entropy. And it is quietly compounding in your organization right now.

Therefore, the most visionary companies aren’t just fixing their messaging. They’re building an entirely new operational function around the one discipline that governs every other function in the business.

They’re hiring Chief Storytelling Officers. And they’re paying up to half a million dollars a year to fill the role.

That’s the wake-up call at the center of this conversation.

Elliott Rayner is a fractional Head of Storytelling, product narrative strategist, and the author of The State of Storytelling 2026 — a landmark report built on analysis of twenty-five C-suite storytelling job descriptions from some of the world’s most sophisticated companies.

Based in the Netherlands and drawing on a career that began at the Adidas Global Headquarters and included product stewardship of the iconic New Zealand All Blacks kit, Elliott has spent the last decade helping companies discover and operationalize the story they can tell better than anyone else in the market. He teaches storytelling as a business function through his Maven cohort and publishes frameworks via his website ProductNarratives.com.

What’s in it for You:

• Why Narrative Entropy is measurable — and the three-question survey you can run inside your company this week to quantify it and build the business case for storytelling investment
• What a Chief Storytelling Officer actually does — and why it’s far less about creating stories and far more about creating alignment across the entire organization
• The Discover, Define, Deliver framework fractional heads of storytelling use to operationalize brand narrative in three to nine months
• Why AI makes this urgent — and how “execution has become cheap, but meaning has not” reframes every conversation about where human value now lives
• What the salary data reveals — and why the investment signals these organizations know exactly what they’re buying

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You Built It for Freedom. So Why Does It Feel Like a Prison?

What Every Agency Founder Gets Wrong About Growth — and the 5-Stage Evolution That Sets You Free

You started your agency because you wanted more control over your time, your work, and your life. You were good at something — maybe great at it — someone offered you money, and you were off to the races.

But somewhere between the thrill of landing your first big client and the exhaustion of your eighty-seventh consecutive 60-hour week, something went sideways. You have a team now. You have clients who trust you. You have revenue. And somehow, you have less freedom than the day you started.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s a trap. And it has a name.

Your business owns you.

Jason Swenk has been in that trap, fought his way out, sold his agency to prove it, and spent the last decade teaching other founders how to follow that same path — at every stage of the climb. He joins me on this episode of the Business of Story to share the exact framework that changed everything.

What You Will Learn from Jason Swenk on the Business of Story

Jason Swenk is the founder of Agency Mastery 360, host of the Smart Agency Masterclass podcast, and author of Operator to Owner — the no-fluff manual for agency founders who are ready to stop working for their businesses and start owning them.

He built a digital agency that grew to over 100 people, surpassed eight figures in revenue, and landed clients including AT&T, Hitachi, and LegalZoom — all before he sold it and realized his entire identity had been the business itself.

Now he coaches 7- and 8-figure agency founders at Agency Mastery to make the identity shifts that most growth advice completely ignores.

What’s in it for You

• The 5-Stage Founder Evolution Framework — Operator, Manager, Architect, CEO, Owner — and which stage your identity is actually at right now
• Why chasing revenue milestones without evolving your leadership identity keeps you trapped, even at $10 million in revenue
• The 1-3-1 system that teaches your team to make decisions without you — and how to stop being the bottleneck in your own business
• The fist-on-paper circle exercise for identifying who you need to hire and what you need to let go of forever
• Why hesitation — not artificial intelligence — is the actual existential threat to your agency’s survival

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The Most Urgent Upgrade of the AI Age Is Personal, Not Technological

What Happens When the Man Who Built Five Companies and Backed 12 Unicorns Tells You the Real Problem Isn’t AI — It’s Us?

You believe in the future of artificial intelligence. You’ve watched the tools evolve in real time, you understand the leverage they offer, and you’re leaning in — because that’s what serious leaders do.

But something underneath the optimism keeps nagging at you. If the technology is this powerful, and the people wielding it haven’t fundamentally changed how they think, how they lead, or what they’re building toward, then we’re just amplifying the same fears, the same scarcity thinking, and the same blind spots that got us here.

I’m your host, Park Howell, the world’s most industrious storyteller. Today’s guest built his career at the edge of that exact tension — and came back with a warning and a framework that every leader navigating the AI age needs to hear.

Meet Brett Alexander Hurt: Serial Entrepreneur, Investor in 151 Startups, and Author of Love Conquers Fear

Brett Alexander Hurt is one of the most accomplished technologists of his generation. He co-founded data.world, acquired by ServiceNow on July 7, 2025. He co-founded Bazaarvoice, which achieved a unicorn IPO.

He sold Coremetrics to IBM. He has invested in 151 startups, backed 12 unicorns, participated in 52 VC funds — including SpaceX — and was named Austin’s Best CEO with the Legacy Award. He is an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow and the host of the Love Conquers Fear podcast, 62+ episodes strong and publishing every Tuesday.

His new book is Love Conquers Fear: Humanity, AI, and the Age of Abundance for All, published June 23 by Do More Good.

Brett Hurt is not a philosopher guessing about AI from the outside. He is a builder who got everything capitalism promised — the Lamborghini, the exits, the recognition — and discovered it wasn’t enough. That discovery changed everything about how he thinks, leads, and writes.

What’s in It for You:

• How leading with love — not fear — is the only strategy that actually works in the age of AI
• Brett’s wild arc from chasing Lamborghinis to a psychedelic awakening that changed everything
• Why AI isn’t here to replace you — it’s here to make you more human

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What a Hit Song Has in Common With Every Great Business Pitch

The Expertise Trap: Why the Smartest People in the Room Often Lose It

You’ve spent years becoming an expert. You know your field in profound depth. And every time you walk into a room that matters — with investors, with executives, with a client who could change your trajectory — you lay out everything you know.

The meeting ends. Nothing happens.

This is not a knowledge problem. You probably have more knowledge than anyone in the room. It’s a communication structure problem. And it’s one that Rob D. Willis — British music producer turned strategic story producer, now based in Berlin — has built his career solving.

Rob’s North Star: all communication that isn’t actionable is just noise. That framing comes from former US Navy SEAL and crisis consultant Mike Hayes. And it’s the lens through which Rob now helps tech founders, corporate innovators, and business leaders transform expert knowledge into the kind of clear, compelling narrative that actually drives decisions.

Rob D. Willis is a strategic story producer based in Schöneberg, Berlin, who applies the discipline of music production — turning a messy song demo into a radio-ready hit — to the challenge of business communication. He works with tech founders and leadership teams to build story-driven communication strategies that align organizations and move stakeholders to act. Follow him on Instagram and LinkedIn at Rob D. Willis.

What’s in it for You

• Why identifying your audience type before communicating is the foundation of everything else
• How to map your audience by interest and power to direct your narrative energy strategically
• The Downing Street grid: how Tony Blair’s government communication framework applies to your business
• The three types of complexity — intrinsic, extraneous, and germane — and how to manage each
• Why the one-four-five chord progression and the ABT framework are structurally identical

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What a Rock Star Manager Turned Global Keynote Speaker Reveals About Creativity, AI, and the One Competitive Advantage No Algorithm Can Touch

You want to stay relevant, credible, and compelling in a world where AI is writing emails, building decks, and generating content at industrial scale — and if you’re willing to lean into it with the right mindset, you will unlock creative capabilities you never knew you had.

But most professionals are either paralyzed by AI anxiety or chasing shiny tools with no strategic story behind them, leaving their most powerful human advantage — creativity — completely untapped.

That’s the urgent, timely, and deeply practical argument at the heart of SuperCreativity: Augmenting Human Creativity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, the new book by James Taylor — and the conversation we dig into on this episode of the Business of Story.

James Taylor, M.B.A., F.R.S.A., started his career managing rock stars — Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck, and Deacon Blue, whose six million albums sold proved that brand discipline and creative instinct aren’t opposites.

He moved from the Royal Albert Hall to Silicon Valley, built an executive MBA on top of his music industry instincts, and has spent the last decade speaking 50 to 100 keynotes a year in 25-plus countries for Apple, Cisco, L’Oreal, PwC, Deloitte, EY, and over 500 Fortune Global companies.

James was recently the subject of a 30-minute BBC documentary. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts — alongside Benjamin Franklin, Bob Dylan, and Nelson Mandela. His new book is the capstone of everything he’s learned about what makes humans irreplaceable in the age of machines.

The short answer: your story.

What’s in it for You

• Why James calls the AI-powered 2020s the New Roaring Twenties — and what that means for entrepreneurs and creative business leaders right now
• How James uses psychometric AI analysis to profile every audience before he steps on a call or a stage
• The 250-story story bank system that powers his hyper-personalized keynotes for Fortune 500 audiences
• Why your emotional promise matters even to the most analytical, data-driven audiences — and the standing ovation story from a billionaires’ bank in the UAE that proves it
• What a live StoryCycle Genie® brand analysis revealed about James’s Visionary Magician archetype and his emotional promise of “possibility”
• The brand discipline lessons James learned managing rock stars — and why he built a brand guide before most speakers knew what one was

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The Science Behind Why Smart Leaders Lose the Room — and the Three Skills That Win It Back

What Cognitive Linguistics Reveals About the Gap Between Expertise and Influence

You’ve spent years building deep expertise in your field. You know your subject cold, you have the data, the credentials, and the track record to back it all up. And you genuinely want to help the people you’re talking to.

But the room doesn’t move. The decision stalls. The meeting ends and nothing changes.

That’s not a knowledge problem. That’s a communication problem. And it’s exactly what Dr. Laura Sicola has spent her career solving.

She’s coached Fortune 500 leaders, advised TED speakers, and helped top executives become the voice of the vision. Dr. Laura Sicola is a cognitive linguist and former professor turned executive coach and the author of Speaking to Influence: Mastering Your Leadership Voice. With nearly 7 million views on her TEDx talk and a client roster including Amazon and Kaiser Permanente, Laura helps leaders master presence, persuasion, and influence when the stakes are high.

In this episode of the Business of Story, Dr. Laura reveals why the movie playing in your head is never the movie your audience is watching — and what to do about it.

What’s in It for You

• The 3 Cs of executive presence — Command the Room, Connect with the Audience, and Close the Deal — and exactly what each one requires of you
• Why the gap between what you think you said and what they think they heard is the most expensive communication problem in business
• How to defuse triggered reactions using curiosity instead of defensiveness — and the one technique from Never Split the Difference that makes it work
• The neurochemical reason strategic humor is not optional in high-stakes communication — it’s a measurable trust accelerator
• Why both what you say and how you say it are equally non-negotiable — and the 60-second video habit that makes the gap between them visible
• What the StoryCycle Genie® revealed about Dr. Laura’s brand — including the nine words that stopped her cold

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Stop Scaling Too Early — or Too Late: The Framework That Changes Everything

The Moment I Knew This Episode Was Different

I’ve interviewed hundreds of growth experts on this show. Most of them tell you to go faster.

Mark Roberge told me to slow down.

Not because growth doesn’t matter. Because wrong-stage growth is the single most common way great companies die.

And he’s watched it happen from the inside — as the CRO who scaled HubSpot from $0 to $100M in revenue, and now as a Harvard Business School professor who studies why some companies repeat that feat and most don’t.

Marks says that half of the founders he works with are scaling too early, and the other half are scaling too late. Almost none of them know which half they’re in.

Meet Mark Roberge: The Scientist Who Scaled HubSpot

Mark Roberge is the former Chief Revenue Officer of HubSpot, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, managing director of Stage 2 Capital, and author of The Sales Acceleration Formula and The Science of Scaling.

He started as an engineer. He built HubSpot’s sales team using data, experimentation, and repeatable systems — the same discipline a scientist brings to a lab. The result was one of the most studied revenue growth stories in SaaS history.

Now he teaches founders and operators how to replicate it — not by copying HubSpot’s playbook, but by building their own.

What You’ll Master in This Episode

1. Why product-market fit is not binary — it exists on a spectrum, and where you are on that spectrum determines everything about how you should grow.

2. The PMF Threshold: the specific leading indicator Mark uses to tell founders whether they’ve earned the right to scale their go-to-market motion.

3. Why the best salespeople talk less than 50% of the time — and what that reveals about the difference between selling and discovering.

4. How to design a sales hiring profile based on what your best customers have in common, not on what a great salesperson looks like on paper.

5. Why most VC-backed companies scale their sales team before they’ve nailed their customer success motion — and why that sequencing destroys retention.

6. The one question Mark asks every founder in the first five minutes that tells him whether their growth is real or fragile.

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