A few years ago, I wrote a book about Instacart. It was called Instacart for CMOs — a guide to help brand leaders understand this fascinating four-sided marketplace that was shaking up grocery advertising. Me and my colleague Stefan interviewed equity analysts, talked to practitioners, did all the work.
I also registered the domain "instacartforcmos.com" in order to promote the book. And before launch day — while the site was still a holding page — I got a text from my assistant: "There's something you need to look at quite urgently."
It was a takedown notice from Instacart's legal team. They referred to me as a bad actor, someone impersonating their brand in bad faith. It went to arbitration with the domain host. I lost the domain. Instacart owns it now.
I wrote a whole book telling everyone how great Instacart is, and they sicced their lawyers on me. I guess no good deed goes unpunished 😅
I told that story recently on the Unlocked podcast with Austin Leonard and Elizabeth Donovan — a show I genuinely recommend, by the way, because it focuses on the career stories and personal perspectives of people in our industry rather than the usual nitty-gritty tactical stuff.
In this interview I shared this as an example of something I've become a bit obsessed with: using personal stories to open up industry content.
And people seem to respond to it. I've had people come up to me at events and say, "Oh my gosh, I love the Babyccino story" — which was an opener to some research about RMN leaders' views on growth obstacles. These readers don't quote my industry analysis back to me. They remember a story about a seven-year-old furtively drinking a cozy beverage.
That's the thing about stories. They're how a technical point actually lands. You can explain the mechanics of a four-sided marketplace all day, but a story about getting sued for writing a complimentary book — that, people remember.
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My story capture system
I have a system for this, and I stole it from a book called Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks. Dicks is a champion storyteller from the Moth — the live storytelling competition — and he has this concept called Homework for Life. The idea is simple: every day, write down one thing that happened. It doesn't need to be dramatic. Some of the best material comes from a conversation with your kid, or the dog escaping, or a weird interaction at the grocery store. Not the grand vacation. The small, specific moment.
I started doing this and storing everything in a Notion database. And when I'm working on a piece — sometimes with a topic planned out, sometimes at 3pm scrambling for tomorrow's newsletter — I'll use Claude or ChatGPT to scan my story bank and see what might work as an opener. The connection between story and topic can be a little tenuous sometimes, and that's fine. The point is to start with something human before you get into the analysis.
Stories are not just for writers
I know not everyone writes a newsletter. But most people in this industry are building some kind of professional presence — posting on LinkedIn, pitching internally, presenting at conferences, trying to get a point across in a meeting.
And in the podcast conversation, Austin made an observation if his own: people in sales and marketing careers who underinvest in storytelling skills, just because AI tools can spit out content for them, are making a mistake. The AI can produce the content. It can't produce the human connection.
A great story is how you land a highly technical point — because you can relate it back to something the other person has probably experienced in their own life. That's what makes it stick, or at least be memorable.
If you want to hear the full conversation — including more on my origin story in retail media and the tools I use — check out the Unlocked podcast with Austin Leonard and Elizabeth Donovan. It's a good one.
