There are moments in every business when you look up from the work you’ve been doing and realize something has changed. Not abruptly. Not dramatically. Just quietly and steadily, over time.
For me, that moment arrived sometime this past year. I didn’t circle a date on the calendar or make a formal announcement to myself. It was more like noticing the way a room feels when you move the furniture. Familiar, but unmistakably different.
When I started Leadout Communications, I built my practice around brand strategy. It made sense. Brands are stories, and stories are how I make sense of the world. Helping small businesses and nonprofits define their voice, refine their identity, and understand the narrative they were building felt like the right lane. And for a long time, it was.
But the work started pulling me somewhere deeper.
The questions clients brought to me shifted. The stories underneath their frustration became more complex. The challenges they faced weren’t really about logos or taglines or messaging pillars. They were about communication patterns that weren’t working, conversations that kept breaking down, teams that were misaligned, and leaders who were trying to say one thing while their people heard something entirely different.
I kept finding myself not just asking, “What should this brand say?” but
“Why isn’t the message landing?”
“Where is the meaning getting lost?”
“What story is being told inside the organization that no one is voicing out loud?”
And the work answered back.
It became clear that what I was actually being asked to do was communication strategy: the space where story meets behavior, where messaging meets interpretation, where clarity meets the human beings who need to carry it forward.
Brand strategy is still in the picture. It’s simply no longer the whole picture.
I’ve always believed that communication is the most underestimated skill inside any organization. It shapes trust. It shapes culture. It shapes how teams move, how leaders lead, and how communities understand who you are. Communication is where everything either comes together or quietly falls apart.
And that is the work that keeps calling to me.
Not the surface, but the underneath.
Not just what people say, but what they mean.
Not just the story an organization tells, but the story the organization lives.
So the shift isn’t really a departure.
It’s an arrival.
It’s an acknowledgment that the work I am meant to do now is the work that helps people communicate in ways that build shared meaning instead of confusion, connection instead of friction, trust instead of uncertainty.
And if I’m being honest, this shift feels less like a pivot and more like coming home. This is the work I’ve been circling for years. I just finally let myself name it.
If you’ve been feeling this shift in your own work – like something is evolving, refining, or taking shape in a new direction – I hope you give yourself permission to follow it. Sometimes the story grows before we’re ready to claim it.
If you’re navigating your own communication challenges or sensing a shift in how your organization needs to connect, reach out. I’d love to help you find the language that brings everything into focus.
