For when the story stops working.
Buyers misread what you sell. Sales and marketing tell different stories. The product has outgrown the frame it launched with. These are positioning problems, and they get more expensive the longer they run.
Discovery calls went from 45 minutes of “so what do you actually do?” to 20, once buyers understood what CalmWave was. The fix wasn’t better copy. It was a new category, Operations Health, and one story sales could tell.
Read the CalmWave case study →Most teams call when something downstream breaks: a deck that won't come together, a website nobody likes, a sales cycle that drags. Those are symptoms. These are the situations behind them.
Prospects file you in the wrong category, compare you to the wrong competitors, or open every first call with “so what do you actually do?” Your team spends the meeting explaining instead of selling.
How CalmWave fixed it →The deck says one thing, the website another, and product uses its own vocabulary. Everyone is working hard. Nobody is working from the same story, so every launch starts from a blank page.
Why your messaging feels disconnected →The product deepened, the customer base expanded, and the brand still describes the company you were at launch. Sales keeps explaining what the website leaves out.
When your product outgrows your brand →There's a positioning doc. It's clear enough to agree with and broad enough to justify anything, so each team reads it the way that suits its own goals.
Why most positioning fails to drive decisions →Two markets, two buyers, or a user who isn't the one signing. One broad, inspirational message tries to reach all of them and lands with none.
How Ekso told two stories under one brand →A new round, a new market, or a legacy product getting a second life. The story that got you here won't carry the next stage, and investors and buyers can tell.
What changes between pre-seed and Series A →Most companies start with a Positioning Sprint. Companies creating a category, or rebuilding the story across every team, need the full system. Either way, you work directly with me, not a junior team.
Answers what you are, who it's for, and why you win. The fastest path from ambiguity to a position your team can make decisions with, and a story sales can use the following week.
For seed to Series B companies with a clear product and an unclear story, and teams heading into a raise, a launch, or a website rebuild.
Everything in the sprint, plus the narrative architecture that governs messaging, product storytelling, and sales enablement across the company, so the story holds without me in the room.
For companies creating or redefining a category, selling to several audiences, or realigning sales, product, and marketing after fast growth.
Need someone to own the story once it's built? Fractional brand leadership picks up where the engagement ends.
| Deliverable | Sprint | System |
|---|---|---|
| Positioning frameworkYour category, priority buyer, point of difference, and the claims you won't make. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Messaging by audienceThe story for each buyer, user, and investor, all built on one spine. | ✓ | ✓ |
| The story, appliedPitch narrative, homepage messaging, and a first-call talk track your team can use right away. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Team rollout sessionA working session with sales, marketing, and product so the story leaves the leadership team. | ✓ | ✓ |
| Category thesisWhat the problem is, what you replace, and why now. The argument investors, buyers, and partners all hear. | — | ✓ |
| Narrative architectureThe shared logic that governs messaging, product storytelling, and sales enablement across the company. | — | ✓ |
| Proof frameworkThe evidence behind every claim, mapped to the audience that needs to hear it. | — | ✓ |
| Strategic constraintsHouse rules for language and claims, so the story stays consistent across every deck, page, and launch. | — | ✓ |
Some of this work I did as an embedded executive, some as a consultant. The situations were the ones above.
Sold as alarm-reduction software, it was really much bigger. I named a new category, Operations Health, and built one story for product, sales, clinical teams, and investors.
Rehab hospitals and construction sites heard the same inspirational pitch. I rebuilt the brand architecture with a shared spine and a separate story for clinical and industrial buyers.
A valuable spec database with an offer nobody could follow. I repositioned it around who it's for and what they can do with it, then relaunched the brand, site, and subscription model.
A pocket ultrasound up against incumbents. I positioned it on clinical seriousness instead of novelty, and moved budget to medical education, where it converted about five times better.