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I was talking to a marketer at a well-known CPG brand. Sharp. Ambitious. The kind of person who books a free consultation and shows up with real questions.

I asked her: looking back on this year, what are you most proud of?

She lit up. A collaboration with the MLB. Big campaign. Great coverage. The kind of work that reminds you why you got into this.

She was so proud of her work, she put it on her fridge!

Then I asked: how much revenue did it generate?

"I don't know."

Here's the thing. She gets paid a bonus tied to sales. The business metric is right there. But the campaign she's proudest of? She can't connect it.

And I've seen this pattern hundreds of times. The work that fulfills you most is almost always the work that's hardest to justify. Not because it didn't matter — but because it wasn't designed with the business outcome in mind from the start.

If she had started with the outcome — the sales number her bonus is tied to — she could have designed the exact same campaign and still put it on the fridge.

The difference? She'd also be able to say: "We partnered with the MLB to reach [audience]. Before the campaign, awareness with that group was at X. After, it moved to Y. And sales from that segment increased Z%."

Same campaign. Same fridge magnet. Completely different conversation with her boss.

That's the Input → Output → Outcome framework. It's not a reporting tool — it's a design tool. You use it before you build the campaign, not after.

When you tell the story in that order — outcome first — executives lean in. They hear that you understand their world before you start talking about yours.

When you start with inputs ("we sent 40 pitches and got 30 placements"), you're asking them to connect dots they don't know how to connect. And most of the time, they won't try.

During this week's Run Club, a communicator at a federal healthcare agency serving veterans raised her hand and asked the question I know a lot of you are thinking:

"We don't sell products. How does this apply to us?"

Fair. She's not driving revenue. She's serving veterans. Her mission is healthcare, not sales.

So I asked her: what would happen to the business if you absolutely crushed American Heart Month?

And something clicked. She started talking about planning ahead — coordinating with her cardiac surgeon, lining up veteran testimonials, building a press event around a new procedure.

She didn't need more data. She needed to start from the other end.

Here's the reframe: it's not about selling more products. It's about understanding your CEO's most important strategic priorities. Every organization has them — whether it's revenue, enrollment, funding, or veteran outcomes.

As Johna Burke, CEO of AMEC, told me on the podcast this week: "First understand how your organization makes and spends money." That applies to Fortune 500 companies. Nonprofits. Federal agencies. All of them.

Your North Star is always a metric on a spreadsheet somewhere. Not a marketing slogan. Not "we want to be the best." A number your CEO checks every month.

And once you have that number, everything changes — because now you know what to say yes to, and more importantly, what to say no to.

If you're thinking "okay, but how do I actually find my North Star?" — that's exactly what we covered in the first session of the Activation Series on January 15th.

35 communicators took the quiz after that session. They're now walking around armed with the most important ingredient — so they don't have to explain a new metric or convince their execs to care about comms. They're using comms to drive the outcome that already matters most.

See you Thursday.

Dino