Before Strategy Comes Meaning

When I was a young pup working for filmmaker Oliver Stone, very much in his heyday, we shared an office building with an advertising agency.

From my office, I could hear their creative meetings on the patio outside my window.  They talked endlessly about "the creative.”  Was it “great storytelling?”  Was it “emotional” enough?  That was a frequent one.

Eventually I learned they were working on an Acura commercial.

The debate wasn't over the meaning of the brand or what it represented in people's lives. It was whether the car should drive down a winding mountain road or a winding coastal road. Whether the commercial should be shot in broad daylight or at magic hour.  That, apparently, was the emotional breakthrough.

Then I'd walk back into Stone's office. He had already won four Academy Awards by then. Yet we never talked about "storytelling," nor did he ever feel the need to describe himself as "a creative."

One day I asked how development of one of his personal projects was going.

He said they were still researching with the lead actor because they hadn't yet found the character's soul. And the movie shouldn't be made until they did.

That sentence has stayed with me for decades.  Because I knew exactly what he meant.

The audience first has to care.

Not intellectually. Emotionally. There has to be something beneath the plot that people recognize inside themselves. A truth they don't merely understand—they identify with.  Without that, you can have a technically excellent screenplay and still leave the theater having felt very little.

Once you've found the soul, however, almost every other creative decision becomes clearer.

Replace audience with market, I have subsequently come to believe, and the same principle applies to business.

Storytelling has become one of the most fashionable words in business over the last decade. Every startup has a founder story. Every product has a mission. Every pitch deck has a narrative. A small industry is built around this.

Most of them miss the point. Storytelling isn't what creates connection. Finding the human truth does.

Today it's almost a cliché to hear about the founder who couldn't find the right skin cream, struggled to organize family photos, or wanted a better scheduling app.

Those stories explain how a product was created. But they rarely explain why anyone should care. That's a different question. One that requires digging much deeper.

When we built Sports Illustrated Play, we recognized a large market almost immediately.

Millions of youth sports families. Significant household spending. A fragmented technology landscape. Those were attractive business fundamentals. They weren't why we became excited.

The deeper question was why youth sports mattered so much in the first place. The answer wasn't software. It wasn't scheduling. It wasn't registration.

Parents don't enroll their children in youth sports because they need another Saturday activity. They do it because they hope sports will shape who their children become. They teach confidence. Friendship. Discipline. Resilience. Belonging.

It means for many parents, enrolling a child in sports is an expression of love.

That realization changed everything. We weren't simply digitizing administrative tasks. We were serving parents trying to give their children a better future. The funding became easier. The product decisions became clearer. The priorities became clearer. The business itself became clearer.

Because we had found the soul.

The Honest Company tapped into something similar. People often describe its success as great branding or great storytelling. I think that's only partially true.

At its core, Honest wasn't selling soap. It was speaking to one of the oldest instincts we possess. Protect your children. That's a human truth far deeper than any product category. The products simply became one expression of it.

This is one of the reasons I often think about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs when evaluating a new business.

Not because every company needs to satisfy every level. But because enduring businesses almost always connect to one of them honestly. Belonging. Safety. Love. Esteem. Purpose.

The further down you dig toward genuine human motivations, the more durable your business often becomes.

Social media provides an interesting counterexample.

Originally, it fulfilled one of humanity's oldest needs: connection. That's why it spread so quickly. It resonated with something deeply human.

Over time, however, many platforms optimized less for connection than for engagement. Behind closed doors, people proudly talked about "compulsion loops.” It was an extraordinary technical achievement. Whether it remained aligned with the original human need or was entirely about monetization is another question entirely.

Businesses can become incredibly successful serving our weaknesses. The harder challenge is building one that succeeds while serving our best selves.

Before the logo. Before the strategy deck. Before the product roadmap. Before the marketing campaign— all the things that get packaged and sold as storytelling— find the soul.

Find the reason a marketplace will genuinely care. Not because you've written a better story. Because you've uncovered a deeper truth.

Oliver Stone wasn't waiting for a better ending. He wasn't waiting for sharper dialogue. He was waiting until he understood why an audience should care deeply enough to spend two hours with another human being.

Business deserves that same discipline. And companies, products, or services built that way have a much better chance of creating something people genuinely care about.

So before you tell the story… find the soul.