The start of new year is as good a time as any for a confession [deep breath, clears knot in throat].

I am a hypocrite. 

For years, my rallying cry has been: “the trouble with small ambitions is not that they fail. It’s that they succeed…and leave nothing changed.” Yet, to my shame, I have consistently ignored my own deeply held belief. 

Thinking small. Taking on projects because “they pay the bills.” Operating from a place of need instead of abundance. Our ambition stayed small, and the impact…puny. 

So as we step into 2026, it’s time to repent, and start walking the walk. 

You see, Marketing Impact was never meant to be a clever one-man shop or a tidy consultancy. It was meant to be a company with a spine. 

In my vision, we would be a group of people fluent in narrative, working from their deepest strengths, sharing a common language, and shaping the future together. Not optimizing what already exists, but practicing, obsessing-over, and scaling Narrative-Led Strategy: the work of turning our client’s conviction into category dominance. 

“So what are you going to do about it, Christopher?” 

Glad you asked. 

• Acquire interesting challenges not clients.  

I’m looking to obsess over problems that can’t be solved with borrowed language or recycled frameworks. Work that deserves attention, patience, and a willingness to think, poke, and prod, until the thing finally tells the truth.

So, if this year you’re shopping for a vendor, I have great ones to recommend. If on the other hand you’re looking for someone to get obsessed with the right problem, I’m ready to “buy it”. 

• Who + What = How

As a long-time disciple of “why,” this one will come as a shock.

The truth is, I know my “why”. I know Marketing Impact’s “why”. I’ve helped my clients name/claim theirs with real results. That work matters.

But here’s the truth I can’t ignore anymore: clarity that isn’t practiced has a shelf life.

The next chapter isn’t about discovering another “why”. It’s about turning that clarity into advantage by focusing on who we build with and what we practice together.

That means shifting my energy toward gathering the right whos (people who share my convictions–and implementing the whats) the narrative frameworks that unlock momentum and create real impact. 

So, here’s my big ask. Invite me into your world. Introduce me to the people building something that needs its story to catch up to its ambition. That’s where this work belongs.

• Apply my own framework.

Here’s a novel idea; what if I did what I do for clients, for myself?! It only took me two decades of marketing experience to come up with that brilliance. 

What that looks like: 

1. 1.  Belief Architecture: I’m going to strip Marketing Impact down to its core convictions and make them explicit—what we believe about the story, what we refuse to do, and the future we’re organizing around—so there’s no ambiguity about what this company is or isn’t.
   2. Narrative Engineering: I’m going to re-engineer how Marketing Impact explains itself—one clear strategic story that replaces vague answers like “marketing” and gives people language they can actually repeat without distortion.
   3. Story Construction: I’m going to redesign how people encounter this work using five deliberate moves—entertain to earn attention, educate to create understanding, engage to invite participation, eliminate friction by making the story simple to grasp and act on, and evangelize by making it easy to pass along.

No more abstraction. No over-complicating. Just confidence in what I know to be true. 

To the Ones Who Are Already Here

I don’t think of the people reading this as an audience.
Audiences clap and leave.

I think of you as fellow builders. People who recognize when a company is trying to become something real.

If you know a business whose story has fallen behind its ambition, bring us into that conversation.
If you’re carrying a challenge that deserves to be named properly, let’s sit with it.
If nothing else, stay close.

The fire is lit.
The maps are unfinished.
And the kind of work that lasts is almost always built with friends nearby.

Here’s to a year of bigger questions and truer answers.