You’ll Never Word-Smith Your Way Out of a House Fire
Imagine your house is on fire. The smoke is thick, the roof is groaning, and the only way out is locked by a voice-activated password. The password is your company vision statement and you have exactly 5 seconds to escape.
Would you make it out alive?
Most founders would probably burn trying to recite their strategic vision…
“Wait, was it ‘empowering global synergy and leveraging the innovative solutions of the homogenous landscape’ or ‘homogenizing the global landscape to leverage synergistic empowerment and innovative solutions?’”
The roof collapses.
We’ve been trained to believe that the bigger the words a business uses the more legit it must be. So we create these guiding statements that read like a legal disclaimer.
And I think that should be illegal.
Because in the middle of the smoke, what you really need is a clear vision and an easy-to-follow plan.
Do It For the Plot
In storytelling, we’d call this the Plot and the Narrator. The Plot (The What) is the actual story you’re trying to tell. It moves toward a defined ending. The Narrator (The How) is the guide. It uses the plot to filter which details to spotlight and which to leave in the shadows, so the audience experiences the story as intended.
In business, this is usually called the Vision and Mission. But forget the jargon; think of them as your devices to stay on script.
- The Mission: This is your Narrator. It’s how you actually get to that final scene.
- The Vision: This is your Plot. It’s the final scene. If your business succeeds, what does the world look like? What is the one thing you want to be known for?
Together, they give you something to come back to when things start to get blurry.
Can you make do without them? Yup. But that’s also a good way to get lost. Especially when success starts rolling your way and, with it, a chorus of voices telling you what they think your story should be. Every metric, every trend, every “expert,” or every customer opinion can become a fire alarm designed to pull you off script.
A clear vision isn’t just a goal; it’s your filter. It tells you which opportunities are actually distractions. A clear mission isn’t just a process; it’s your integrity. It tells you how to stay authentic and true in a world that is begging you to “do it for the ‘gram.”
Your Voice-Activated Password
I work with an independent flight game developer. When he released his first beta, it got a lot of interest… and a lot of feedback. In a beta test, you want feedback, but not at the expense of the reason the game was created. Most flight simulators are complex, requiring hours of pre-flight setup. His game was different: he built if for the person with a life and a family who only has twenty minutes to spare but still wants to fly.
At first, the developer felt the pressure to please everyone. He worried if he didn’t build every requested feature, he would fail his audience. But he soon realized that by saying “yes” to everyone, the game would no longer serve its intended purpose.
It’s at this point that a business bro might tell him he needs a vision statement. So, we didn’t write that.
Not exactly.
Instead, we crafted a filter sentence: a simple, guiding mantra that captured why he sat in a dark room and built the game in the first place. It wasn’t meant to replace a formal vision or mission statement. It was meant to make them useful. This sentence didn’t just hold his unique Narrator Voice. It was his voice. It was a phrase he’d repeated to me many times over the branding process, rather than a puffed-up line he had to memorize and then try to recall when the roof was caving.
He simply told himself, “This game isn’t for everyone. I built it for busy people like me to enjoy a quick flight and then get back to their families.”
Now, when a user gives feedback, he doesn’t have to react immediately. His own words come back to him and give him both a filter for what belongs in the game and a plan for how to stay true to its purpose. They give him the permission to say “no” to good ideas that aren’t his ideas, and give him back his direction.
Creating the Filter
So what does this look like when you apply it to your own business? Let’s pretend, for a moment, that this blog is a business.
If I were building a brand around it, I’d start by asking: What do I want this blog to stand for? How do I want people to feel when they read it?
If you met me in real life, you’d come to know my voice is soft, but my words carry weight. I’m the person who will ask you to tell me what you really mean. I want to know the thing beneath the thing. The last 10 percent of the truth; no judgement.
Because doesn’t it feel good to finally say what you mean?
And that’s what I’d want this publication to feel like: a deep, clean breath in a room full of recycled air. A place where you say, “I’ve never thought about it that way” or “I didn’t know I needed to hear that.”
From there, I could start making decisions. Would I write the kind of polished, professional advice that sounds impressive but says nothing? Yeah, no.
Would I chase whatever topic happens to be trending because it might bring in more readers? If it makes sense strategically, sure— I’m not an idiot—but never without my own point of view.
Would I soften an opinion because I was worried someone might disagree? Also no.
So, if I were turning all of that into a filter sentence, it might sound like this:
If it sounds like a corporate handbook, tear it up. If it makes my pulse quicken, push publish.
Because in a fire, your heart rate is the first thing to spike. It’s the adrenaline of survival. And your purpose should feel as urgent as an exit door.
Every time I sit down to write, when I’m tempted to hide behind a professional term or safe sentence, I’d run my words through that filter. If the structure feels too stiff, I’d add more more truth, more voice, more heart.
Your Mission is Clear
I don’t know what the house-burning moments are for you. Maybe it’s a Tuesday afternoon when you’re overwhelmed, or when a client pushes a boundary, or when an employee disagrees, or when a customer leaves a nasty comment and you start to lose grip on your Why and cave to the pressure to please and perform.
But your mission is clear: you’ve got to escape the burning house. And in those moments, you don’t need a legal disclaimer to get out; you need to hear your own voice guiding you toward the ending you imagined.
The test of a good guiding principle is not in how big and important the words sound. It’s in how quickly you can recall them when everything feels like it’s burning to the ground.
If you can act fast, you don’t just save yourself; you have a better chance of saving the house, too.
A versions of this essay was originally published on Substack. I write there about branding, business, and the messy, human work of building something that actually feels like you. Follow along on Substack →
