THE STORY THAT WON'T SIT STILL

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THE PATTERN

Want to know what I struggle with most? Positioning and narrative, I'm not even joking.

Ok, look at me for a second: a kid born in the projects who trained as a sommelier and a business lawyer in Provence, then became a screenwriter, then directed movies. Worked in studios in New York, then built my own production company in Los Angeles. As a producer, not an executive producer, and remove that "executive" and you're broke, you're a project manager with a film credit. That alone already lost people.

Then, great idea, I spot a hole in the market, decide my skills translate to business, and start a venture (Coquette Ventures, still the French in it) building narrative for companies. So on Monday I'm pitching an IP, and on Tuesday I'm rewriting a company's entire story.

And people look at me and go, who is this guy? An artist? A CEO? Both? Is both even allowed, because artists are a little scary, wright? Oh, he worked with Netflix and the New York Times, alright he might be worth it. But wait, he's French, based in London, spent years in the US, but no, his last name isn't French at all, honestly, he might just be a bot. Should I keep going? Check Wikipedia; someone put me on there, and even that's only half the story.

My own positioning is the thing I spend the most time on and dread the most. I've just told you maybe twenty percent of it, and you're already overwhelmed. So am I! Which is exactly why I want to talk about this, because it turns out my mess is the whole point.

ACT ONE: TOO MUCH TO SAY

Positioning done correctly is hardest for the people who have the most going on.

An empty founder positions easily, because there's nothing to cut. We just create a beautiful narrative around the product, and it's done. But what about the founder twenty years in the making who hired 150 people over time? Or the artist turned CEO, for that matter? Today, companies are evolving with technologies and changes in habits, so the company that pivoted three times and lived to tell it has nothing to hold onto anymore because every layer is true, and in their eyes every chapter feels essential, cutting any of it feels like lying by omission.

People do the natural thing and try to say the whole arc, all of it, and the person across the table melts, the same way you melted reading my opening. Too much true information is indistinguishable from noise. The signal drowns in the very evidence meant to prove it.

Positioning amputation, "kill your babies" is what filmmakers say, but since I'm a dad, I only say "kill your lovers", it feels more grown-up. The cruel part? You cannot amputate your own limb. It hurts too much, and you can't tell which one's actually dead, because they all feel alive to you. That's the structural reason this is the one job you genuinely cannot do alone, and I say that as the guy who does it for a living and still can't fully do it for himself.

ACT TWO: IT WORKS ANYWAY

When done properly, it works! That's what's crazy about it.

I took the writers' room and pointed it at business, one core narrative, then everything built out from it, and with one of the companies I did it for we just closed 3M. I'm probably the only person on earth who's sat in a Netflix writers' room and raised millions applying the exact same craft. So the mess in my opening is a story that's working, and still moving. Like yours, it's not a failure.

That's the distinction: finding your path is not the same as your story being finished. I found mine, a screenwriting technique aimed at the business world, and it's real, it raises money, it lands clients. And it is nowhere near set in stone, because I keep evolving, adding a chapter, and every chapter I add makes me re-look at the whole thing to check it still holds.

A working story and a finished story are two different animals. My works and it will never finished. Those two facts live together, and once you accept that, the drowning stops feeling like failure and starts feeling like the job.

ACT THREE: THE MOVING CORE

A lot of people out there find one story, once, and set it in stone. Nail it, frame it, move on. and they say thanks Theo, bye now.

Great, positioning done, back to building. But that's not how a living thing works. A story isn't a monument you carve once and walk away from. It's a spine that everything else has to be measured against, and the spine keeps growing as the company grows.

So the real discipline isn't just finding the story, even though it has to start there, but what's important to focus on i's the ongoing work. Every piece of communication, the deck, the email, the hire's first-day briefing, the blah blah blah in a team meeting, all of it checked against the core. Does this still match who we are? And the harder question underneath: has the core itself shifted, because we added a chapter and didn't notice? Companies that skip this end up with messaging from three years ago describing a company that no longer exists. The story didn't stay true.

Which brings me back to my own beautiful mess. I don't have a clean resolution for you, and I'm not going to fake one, but that's not the confession it sounds like, It's the actual answer. The reason I'm still working my story is the same reason it works at all, because I never let it set. Every chord I add to the arc, I re-tune the whole thing.

So no, I haven't finished positioning myself. And if you're doing this right, neither will you. The story that won't sit still is alive. The work is to keep tuning it, forever, against a core that's moving right along with you.

That's a job that doesn't end, and how you know it's real.

So what's my magic technique to find and fix your story, you'll ask. It's not the one you think. You know what I actually do when we start working together? I sit down and I listen deeply to what's underneath all the layers, the experiences, the failures, the things you tried that didn't work. Listening is a skill, and it's the first one in writing, the one everybody skips on their way to being clever.

I have an offer to you: Ramble the hell out of it. Exactly like I did up top, give me your story in the rawest, messiest form you've got, no polish, no positioning, just the whole tangled thing.

I'll answer this week.

— Théo

A note before I sign off.

If your story isn't doing your company justice yet, that's the Strategic Audit. We sit down, map the narrative that actually fills your pipeline, and I tell you straight if I can help. September is opening up now. Reply to this one, or book a screening call here, and we'll see if it's a fit.

P.S. And if we're not connected on LinkedIn yet, come fix that here. I've launched fictional stories there to kill the bots for good.

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