Most Marketing Storytelling Advice Is Wrong For Your Business. Here's Why [E66]

[00:00:00] Welcome back to Clear Signal. Today's episode was not planned, but let's go with it. It was inspired by a post that I did on Substack. As I mentioned, I am Sunita Kumar on Substack. That is my handle everywhere, and that is where I'm gonna be more active in May, posting thoughts, short form thoughts, long form thoughts, my writing, but also things I'm calling field notes, which are lessons from the field, things I'm learning as I'm building this

the entrepreneur line is the three line, the money line is the three line, and there is no substitute for building something and jutting up against reality and learning from that, and trying something new, something that we do not honor in entrepreneurship because we want everything to be packaged and perfect from the jump, these whole notion of optics.

And what I wanted to talk about is something that I said on Substack that [00:01:00] I thought might be useful for you guys, and that is...

Someone had talked about something related to storytelling. It was a response to somebody else's post.

I said, "I agree that storytelling is part of the process. I would argue in the age of AI, it's more important than ever. The difference is some of us are here to use stories to show our depth and power and gain authority, and some of us are here to speak from our journey, our past wounds, and speak to a past version of our audience.

The difference is that all marketing in the transformational space assumes everybody fits category two And somebody else responded who's a marketer, she said, "Help who you were two years ago only really works if you're looking to teach people to follow your journey or learn from your mistakes. There can be an element of that in your positioning, but it's not the whole thing.

It just sounds like an oversimplified hack at this point to avoid actually listening to people. [00:02:00] You just assume they're you.

I am so happy that we are now having this conversation. This is a thought I was having for a long time, and I wanna keep this space to be stuff that I have proven out, universalized, come up with the teachable nugget, and that is not just my own philosophy, it's stuff that other people are also echoing.

So to go backwards, in the coaching industry, a lot of people come from the healing journey. Maybe they quit drinking. Maybe they overcome a debt situation. Maybe they left an abusive marriage. Maybe they left a domestic violence. Maybe they had depression.

Maybe they were an addict. A lot of people's wounds become their wand. I said that to a client once. She didn't like that term, but that is the term. It's that you are now powerful because of what you've been through. That is the alchemist, and that is the underlying message of this podcast, but not in the healing journey.

The underlying message of this podcast, is the [00:03:00] journey of the alchemist, the journey of the entrepreneur. The trials and tribulations we go through to crawl through the trial of fire and get to the other side. A lot of my stories and what I've been through probably won't make it to this podcast.

Ironic, because it's my podcast. It'll probably be on other podcasts, ones that feature that. My stories are not relatable. I mentioned that I'm closing a product line. And what you should know is the story of the start of that is so dramatic, is so ridiculous, is so something nobody could ever relate to, that it's insane.

A lot of my stories are insane. They're not meant to be relatable. They're not meant to sell. They are based on my individual gates. We talked about circuitry in one of the prior episodes. Individual gates are empowerment. They are inspiring. They are [00:04:00] empowering of, wow, she could do that, I can do it. It's not conscious, it's subconscious. Human design is frequency.

One of the other things I said on Substack is if you have many individual circuit gates in Human Design or key individual gates that affect what I call your influence factors, influence factors are what I determine to be the move the needle aspects of your Human Design that relates to your positioning and your marketing, you are here to share your story, but it's not about your healing journey or the wounds you went through or how you are one step ahead of your client and what is different.

It's how what you did empowers others to take their own bold risks in life and business. It's part of your brand, but it's not part of a direct conversion strategy. If you play this wrong, you will attract the wrong crowd, think your life-altering moves don't matter, or under-leverage key storytelling elements of your alchemical wins.

So the alchemy we go through is part of the story. The alchemy we go through is part of the journey. The alchemy you go [00:05:00] through is part of the brand, but it's not direct in this piecemeal, lazy coaching, personal development, I made six figures, I'm gonna show you how to make six figures, affirmational fake online business optics crap.

And people can feel the difference. When I tell my story of what I've been through on my entrepreneurial journey here or elsewhere, no one's gonna relate to that. It's not about that. It's about a, oh, wow, she was willing to take risk in a bold way, even a dumb way. Okay, well, I don't have to do that, but maybe I can do something my own way.

When I act the fool on The Dark Matter Show, I don't expect you to take on a Southern character, share random stories from your life, act in many ways that other people would question your sanity in a public sphere.

That show is more genius than I make it [00:06:00] sound. It is predicting collective shifts at a macro level well before they happen. And doing it in a way that's humorous and fun and makes people feel something, but also makes them laugh and makes them cry and makes them think. That's actually harder than it looks, 

It's about inspiring others To step into their own creative expression as part of their business journey, as part of their human experience, as part of becoming, as Tim Ferriss, someone who doesn't care what other people think, right? So Tim Ferriss was really big in the online space

The four-hour work week, the bro marketing, this whole notion of we're in a global workforce, we can outsource to people across the world, that book came out, I don't know, 2012, 2011, don't quote me. That was when I started my online journey. So he would famously say, "You should just lie down in a Starbucks."

And he did it because he wanted entrepreneurs to become immune to what other people think. That is a skill and a muscle. [00:07:00] And that muscle is true whether or not you're creating art, whether or not you're starting a business, whether you're gonna put yourself out there on social media. That is a life muscle. And I say that because we're in a time of change. We're in a time where the Aries energy that I spoke about last year is now coming into full bloom. You don't need me to repeat it to you, but I predicted all of it, and I said all of it.

I've been talking about it on Substack, I've been talking about my other platform. I've talked about it here, and you get the gist. I have an episode called "The Rules of Life Are Made Up". It's about Aries. It's about the last time that Saturn was fully in Aries until February of this year. The professional rules are changing. The rules of business are changing. We get to mold what we want it to be. Aries is about being in the ring. I have a couple of individual gates. One of them is gate three. That is the, , gate of mutation, chaos to order. One of the gates I have is gate 51, is the gate of shock.

They are both Aries gates, and they are both individual gates, which means that it [00:08:00] is not about me selling to you based on my journey. It is about you feeling something through what I share of my journey. Maybe not even in this platform. Seasons and reasons, different audiences for different objectives.

The journey of the alchemist, the unscripted path, those were the two middle names of this podcast, and the first one was the Aligned CEO, and this is Clear Signal.

It is all of those podcasts. And I'm sure it'll change and evolve in the future, but I feel like the genesis for why I wanted to start a business podcast is in that foundational cube .

I wanted to share that because this notion of your client is one step behind you, not really. If you are a six line, yes. Because you probably went through hell and back before you were 30 years old. That is probably gonna be a big part of what you are here to share when you're older, whether or not you want to or not.

[00:09:00] Whether or not it's something that appeals to you. You're listening to this at your 40, you're like, "No, I'm not gonna talk about that." Talk to me when you're 60. You might change your mind. And it also depends on the industry you're in.

This is gonna be a conversation I wanted to open up now because I wanna return to this in the future as I have more things to say about it, and as I've been, in the collective field. But what we're doing is we're taking back business from the coaching industry, and I don't think there's anything wrong with coaching.

People need people to guide them. That's not what I'm saying. The word coaching itself has been absconded to mean something it's not, which is a whole future episode I did, whether or it drops on the feed or not. I did record it. And it's called Coach is Not a Mentor. And the point is that, , not all of us are doing professions or selling to people based on our healing journey, right?

There are certain industries and certain things where what you've gone through is gonna be directly related to what your client goes through. But this notion of your client is one step behind you, [00:10:00] that's where we've got amateur hour out here. We've got people who made their first 10K month or whatever the fuck the coaching industry wants to tell you, and now they're the expert online.

That's when you have problems. That's when they're like, "I know all the foundations of positioning and marketing and branding." You don't. You happen to be a health coach who sold to people one step behind you. You grew a big funnel. You did well. You're a great business person. Not taking anything away from you, but not everyone needs to position themselves for one step behind you, and it's actually gonna fuck up their brand.

Here's the thing. Depending on your human design, some of you guys are not meant to be storytellers, some of us are here to tell stories about our journey. Some of us are here to empower others with our journey. Some of us are not here to do that at all. Or maybe that's not the vehicle through which we sell.

We use it in another way. What we do on this podcast is have the conversations no one else are having, and we say things in a way that no one else is saying them. And [00:11:00] we say things that entrepreneurs really need to hear, and that is not popular That is definitely not gonna be viral, and that is not really what's gonna get the applause, but that's what my people need.

Because when you waste your time with surface level marketing advice, you waste your time. You go off in directions and then you're like, " people don't want what I have to say." No, it's that you're not packaging it in the way that you're designed. Or for what your audience needs to hear right now. I'm not a conversion specialist.

I don't focus on customer journey work. That comes after the work I do with people. I set everyone up to win and then whatever you do after you're done with me is, you're golden. Messaging, social media strategy, whatever else you do. Because if you're not rooted in what you are and what you're here to do and who you're here to serve, and your positioning is not based in the electromagnetic frequency of who you are, none of that matters.

Not a sexy statement, true. [00:12:00] And, that's what I do in my work, which will be coming back in when I come back. And the work that I do is so futuristic, it's really hard to describe, but we're coming into a time where I'll be able to describe it more and that's because Uranus has gone into Gemini, which is the real reason I'm coming back.

I could not not. Talked about it in the summer, mentioned it on the first episode of this year with somebody named Danielle Polgar. We did that episode on the Scorpio new moon of November of 2025. The Scorpio full moon is tomorrow or today, depending on when you hear this.

And actually at the time of the full moon I'm doing a summit. I will link the link below. It's free. My talk is 20 minutes and it is at the time of the full moon. The full moon is at 1:22 Eastern Standard Time. My talk is at 1:30. Probably worth a listen if you're free.

There are also the opportunity to buy the replays and all that. That doesn't go to [00:13:00] me, that goes to somebody else, but it's all good. , And that's a summit I felt called to go on because it's called She Shifts and it's about doing business differently.

And I'm not a huge summit person, this is an experiment. Life is about experimenting. By the way, when I went back to the, fuck around and find out episode, that is what business entrepreneurship is about, at least for me. You try the thing. Does it work? Does it not work? I've done a lot of different kinds of podcasts in the last three, four months.

I've done a lot of different types of live events, recorded events, . I've never actually done a summit. This will be new for me. That's part of the reason I'm doing it And so you have to go in with this notion of experimentation. You have to go in with this notion of let's try it out.

Gemini is about having a different way of looking at things, a different perspective, and Uranus is about experimentation. And Uranus is also about your tribe. You're not gonna find your tribe in the way you think you're gonna find your tribe. It's gonna be that random event. It's gonna be that random thing you signed up for that you're like, "Why am I going to this?"

And that's where you're gonna find your mentor, your ideal client, your whatever. I got a future [00:14:00] episode dropping at some point.

It is about my first client for this business. Business in quotes. I was just... I don't know what. I went to some random local event. It was free. I showed up in a shirt that I think had holes in it. I didn't have any makeup on. I had my hair in a bun. And I just stood up and I was like, "Yeah, I'm a human design informed business strategist," which is what I was calling myself at the time.

And of course everyone's like, "What the fuck are you talking about?" And guess what? One person was like, "You are exactly what I want." And that person paid me over $1,000 and knew nothing about me, and wrote a testimonial, and I didn't have a website, and I didn't have an offer.

All I did was I saw this event. I'm like, "I'm supposed to go to this." It was close to me. It was free. I showed up. That is the whole other thing about Aries, right? You focus so much about looking the fool, you don't put yourself out there for the people who are here for you.

There's two ideas merged into here. There's this idea of the [00:15:00] fool and Aries and putting yourself out there in this era of, not caring what other people think and experimentation and trying things out and fuck around and find out, and that's really what entrepreneurship is. And then there's this whole other topic embedded in here about customer avatar and how not everyone is your Chiron.

Chiron in astrology is this notion of the wounded healer, the alchemist, that you go through the fire, and then you guide people behind you. , So many people who combine esoteric tools with fake business strategy, ' not grounded in anything.

They use Chiron as the, your this is your story. And for a lot of you, it will be your story. For some of you, it's going to be your story, whether or not you want to or not, whether or not you wanna revisit the shit you've been through, whether or not you wanna make it part of your past and you're like, "Well, this hasn't, doesn't have to do with where I am now," that's a choice.

But also recognize that, let's face it, for some of you, if you had to get really honest with yourself, what you've been through is what your ideal client needs to hear.

To [00:16:00] trust you. To feel like she's got me, he's got me. If you've climbed out of bankruptcy, if you had an eating disorder, if you had an addiction, if you've su- survived a domestic violence situation, if you've whatever. None of these things are things I've done. I can make an assumption. I don't wanna hear from someone who's not gone through that.

I briefly went to therapy a long time ago. I'm not a huge person into that traditional m- lane. I know a lot of therapists. I'm not putting anything down on that. I went to someone who was Indian, and he had a lot of Indian clients. I didn't wanna go to a white therapist who had the classic model of what growing up in America is, and the standard challenges that people in Caucasian families have.

Because a first generation immigrant family's gonna have their own thing. And 20 years ago, there was no market for that. So that is my own version of the Chiron that I could relate to you, that, that makes sense to me. I don't really, in terms of the people I've hired up until now, I don't [00:17:00] really care about what they've been through, because what I'm hiring them for has nothing to do with that.

That might change in the future.

There's a difference between lived experience and wound. My clients are generally 40 plus. There is something about being a woman that's 40 plus, partly that's astrological, those are midlife transits, that we're, we think differently, we're in a different place, we get each other. We don't have to have anything in common, but we have something in common without even articulating it.

A fuck around and find outness of life, a level of life fatigue, a level of stepping into who we are now, a level of whatever. It's a je ne sais quoi, I can't really explain, that to be honest, anybody under that is not really gonna understand that. It's not that we've all been through the same thing. And I'm not targeting based on that.

And classic marketing would say I should put that in my stuff. That is a little bit of lazy [00:18:00] demographic targeting. I'm targeting a psychographic. I target people who are at a certain place. They're at inflection points.

They're on the next stage of their journey. They're at a certain place that I really couldn't craft. It had to show up for me. People wanna craft this niche, this position, this magical thing based on a framework, and the reality is you have to do the work, and you have to see who comes to you, and then you're gonna see the pattern.

And that is what market research is. It's a universal thread be- amongst all your clients. You're not crafting it based on someone's magical formula. AI can't create it for you, no matter what anybody wants to tell you. AI can help you f- craft it after the fact. AI is all about the inputs you give it. It's not gonna create anything from you.

Your wound is not necessarily your story. The journey that you went on may not be what your clients give a fuck about. Not everyone here is beard of a storyteller. The stories that you tell may be here to empower, not necessarily to convert or even magnetize. It might be just you're here to be that person that's like, "Wow, I'm gonna go do this myself.

Yay." Now, that's not gonna make you money, but [00:19:00] it might be part of your brand. , We've lost touch with foundational marketing pillars in this optics, i'm on Substack. I'll be doing stuff on Substack that isn't gonna be here.

The first one is Category of One. I'm on a summit on Friday. It's free. The work that I do is coming back , my one-to-one work. That is in a different investment tier now, and it requires a conversation.

And my calendar is open to have those now. Email me if you wanna have a conversation. You get a calendar link, we'll talk,. I only work with a select number of people at once,

Aries, the rules of life are made up. Aries only listen to people in the ring. Aries be the fool. Aries is the alchemist.

Anything else? Yes, Uranus and Gemini. We're on now. And all of the outer planet ingresses that are gonna set the new foundation for business have happened. Business is always businessing. Change is always changing.

There's no more triggers at this massive level. [00:20:00] They started in '22. We are now at the end of that journey, which is why I wrapped the Dark Matter show, this version of it, because I knew that was coming to an end to start something new.

And this is also gonna be something new, although not as dramatic. And it's new, but it's old because the Aligned Out CEO is the first name, then the Aligned Alchemist. These are the major names. Then the Unscripted Path, then Clear Signal. It's all four. The Clear Signal is just the front-facing arm. The no- the focus on frequency, the focus on influence, the focus on internal influence, otherwise known as conditioning.

This notion of returning to your own signal by, one, your human design, two, your own Modus and operandi for how you operate in the world, which is your human design, but also your body outside of human design. Number three, returning to your own signal of what's right for you, and then number [00:21:00] four, the signal of what is the signal you're sending out?

What is your marketing, your positioning, your branding within reason? . We're in a liminal window between the past and the future right now, so everything I'm talking about will become more in the business space.

I said it three years ago, probably won't really be in public conversation for another two years, which is the issue with being a futurist. Uranus lives in the future. ,

Danielle and I said, first episode of 2026, we talked about how, all language is gonna change, copy is gonna change, marketing is gonna change, and that was six months ago. That was at the Scorpio new moon. The Scorpio full moon is this week. Next couple of weeks we'll record the follow-up chat for that, and that'll be a powerful chat, I'm sure. But frequency is gonna become more a big part of what we do. Language is changing. Marketing is changing. Resonance is gonna become something people talk about more and more, right? Before it sounded woo, now it sounds real. I come from an engineering background, resonance is physics, speaking of resonance, I did a talk. It was a group of podcasters I [00:22:00] spoke to. It was not about podcasting. It was about you as your electromagnetic signature. It was about you as your UVP. That's on my YouTube channel. I am Sunita Kumar everywhere.

I had a special offer I created for that. The offer has changed. It's not for podcasters. It's just about you finding your signal. If you are not feeling confident with how you're designed to show up on the mic, which includes what I just said, like are you a storyteller? Are you not a storyteller?

What kind of stories do you tell? Why is your stuff not landing? How are you designed to communicate? Where is your magic sauce? Where are you leaving room on the table? You need to know that before you do any of this stuff. So one of the things that I cannot relate to, and I'm not trying to be relatable of, is I started this whole journey of being online knowing my human design.

I don't have a magical story for you. I don't have this vulnerable story for you of, "Oh, you know, I tried to be like everybody else, and I tried to fit in, and I tried to be nice, and then I realized I was a 5/1, and I'm a heretic, and I'm [00:23:00] here to make waves." I already fucking knew that.

I came out that way. I lived enough life before I even started this journey that I already knew that's what I was here to do.

I don't have this, "Oh, I followed this coach, and she had this seven-step framework, and I didn't... I tried to follow her framework, and I, I realized that, she didn't know what she was doing and that I was just following her formula." 'Cause I have an MBA, and I know that these people are full of shit.

I'm not saying they're not successful businesspeople. I also knew Human Design before I went, even went into this, so I'm already like, "Okay, there's no way we all sell the same." That being said, I've made some mistakes, and I've shared with you.

Bought coaching programs 'cause in the moment it seemed like a good idea. That was my emotional wave. Didn't listen to it. Didn't know that I have to wait to make decisions. I'm a one-line. I never think I know enough, so I always looked outside of myself. This coach has the answer.

This person has the answer. I need to get this certification. I need to get this second degree. No one's gonna take me seriously. I spent a lot of [00:24:00] money I shouldn't have looking for answers outside of myself, and it wasn't because I didn't think I knew.

It was just because I was like, "Well, let me be sure. Well, let me be sure. Well, let me be sure. Well, maybe there's this one nugget about positioning this person's gonna share that I don't know. Well, maybe there's one thing I don't know." And there is always one more thing. And the problem with the one-line is the one-line is research.

The three-line is let's put it up against reality and see what works. You think if I had waited to have this perfect, magical offer and business? No. The universe put me in a situation. This person wanted to hire me. I learned in that engagement what worked, what didn't work.

I still got a testimonial. She still loved it. It wasn't the, it wasn't that I didn't know my shit. It was that I over-delivered, the container was wrong. It was too much for me. I'm like, "I never wanna fucking do this again."

And I learned. If I was to ever, do foundational content, I would do, , a small, , 20-minute free tutorial , and then , you have the basics. Let's get down to business. Let's solve your business. Let's solve your problem, which is what I'm here for.

I'm a 5/1. I'm a problem solver. If you would like to have a conversation about my one-to-one work, my email's in the show [00:25:00] notes. The offer I gave about finding your unique value proposition, my entry-level offer, that will go away at the end of May

so that is a limited time offer. And I'm on a summit that's free. If you want that, check it out, link below. Three calls to action, horrible in marketing, you can also know what the rules are and throw it out the window

i'm on Substack. I am Sunita Kumar. If you don't know how to spell my name, it's in every show note. You can also click the link tree, it'll be there. Join me over there if you like deeper thoughts and you wanna hear some more lessons from the field. Not what I just said.

From the field is, okay, I'm building a category one. What the fuck does that look like in 2026? What are we going through as we are transitioning from the old paradigm to the new paradigm? Things I think will be useful for you.

It's gonna be a blend of five and three line energy. If you've fallen into this world that is mine and you're like, "What are you talking about with five lines?" I've got a foundational series on human design. It is so quick and dirty. Five-minute episodes, 10-minute episodes.

I promise you, at the end of those five or 10-minute episodes, you will know what you need to know to keep going with us. You don't [00:26:00] need to know everything about human design to be on this journey.

If you want to know more than that, then you should listen to a human design podcast or buy a report, although I would be cautious with the reports.

They're too generic. To me, precision matters, I think this generic stuff actually hurts people more than helps people, and that's why I won't do it. Business is giving people what they want, not what they need.

And authentic business is giving people what they need, and the truth is in the middle for all of us,