The Host, Not the Hero

Jul 22, 2026 | 28, Blog

The fundraising sector has grown fluent in a single narrative shape. An organization identifies a problem, mobilizes against it, and asks the donor to fund the rescue.

The organization is the hero. The community is the wound. The donor becomes a distant benefactor whose money moves through the story without ever entering it.

The hero shape has become so common it feels obligatory. Case statements repeat it. Appeals repeat it. Galas repeat it.

The result, across thousands of pages of nonprofit prose, is a genre that flatters the institution and leaves the reader with nowhere to stand. A different structure is available, and it requires a different self-understanding on the part of the organization — one that produces a different kind of relationship with the people the organization hopes to move.

The Reframe

Consider what a host does. A host prepares a room. A host anticipates who will arrive and what they will need.

A host does not perform on behalf of guests. A host creates the conditions in which guests can encounter one another, encounter an idea, encounter some previously invisible aspect of themselves.

The nonprofit, at its best, functions as a host. The organization does not rescue the community. The organization convenes the conditions in which community members become the protagonists of their own transformation and in which donors become participants rather than spectators.

Spaciology names the arrangement directly. Within Space as Metaphor, the practice of hosting operates as a fundamental mode of leadership.

To host is to hold space wide enough that others can act inside it, and disciplined enough that action becomes possible rather than diffuse. The host is not absent from the room. The host is what makes a room a room.

Why Donor Psychology Rewards the Host

People do not give to needs. Needs are everywhere, and the sheer volume of need in the world has trained the human nervous system toward numbness rather than response.

People give to stories that let them see themselves as someone who matters to the outcome. Every effective appeal, examined carefully, reveals an underlying architecture.

The donor is offered a role. The role must feel meaningful, proportionate, and available.

When the organization casts itself as the hero, the donor is reduced to a funder, a name on a plaque, a line item in a report.

When the organization casts itself as the host, the donor is elevated into the story as one of the people whose presence makes the outcome possible.

The difference is not rhetorical. The difference is structural. The reframe changes what the appeal is actually asking for, and it changes what the donor is actually being given in return.

What Changes on the Page

A case for support written from the hero posture reads like a defense of the institution. The document catalogs achievements, cites metrics, and positions the organization as uniquely qualified to solve a problem the reader has been invited to fear.

A case for support written from the host posture reads differently. The document surfaces the conditions the organization has learned to create.

It introduces the people who have stepped into those conditions and what became possible for them there. It names the donor’s role in sustaining the room — not as a rescuer, but as one of the people who keep the room open.

The verbs shift. Language of provision gives way to language of convening. The organization no longer delivers services to beneficiaries — it holds the conditions in which community members do the work of their own becoming.

The donor no longer funds a solution. The donor sustains a space.

The language is not softer. The language is more precise, and it carries more weight because it refuses to flatter anyone in the room.

What the Host Posture Reveals About Community Need

The hero narrative requires a wound. The narrative cannot function without one, which means the organization must continuously produce and reproduce the community’s brokenness to justify its own existence in the story.

The host narrative operates on different terms. Community needs remain real, and the organization remains rigorous about naming them — but need becomes the condition that makes hosting necessary rather than the condition that makes the organization heroic.

Community members are not wounds waiting to be healed. Community members are the people whose lives will unfold, one way or another, and whose unfolding becomes more possible when a space has been prepared for them.

The reader can feel the difference. A community described as broken invites pity, and pity converts poorly into sustained giving.

A community described as capable, encountering conditions that let capacity emerge, invites recognition. Recognition converts.

The Work This Requires

Very few nonprofits arrive at the host posture by accident. The hero narrative is embedded in fundraising training, board culture, and the templates that circulate through the sector.

Reversing the embedded posture requires a deliberate examination of the organization’s own story, its language, and the psychological role it assigns to everyone who encounters the organization.

Such reversal is the work RPL takes on with client organizations. Narrative strategy, in the sense that carries weight here, is not the polishing of language after decisions have already been made.

Narrative strategy is the disciplined excavation of what an organization actually does, whom it serves, and what role it invites its supporters to occupy.

The output arrives as appeals, case statements, and campaigns, but the deeper shift happens in how the organization has come to understand its own place in the story it tells.

The Spaciology Field Guide operationalizes the shift through the daily practices that make hosting possible as a sustained posture rather than a rhetorical flourish.

Listening as Love, Boundaries as Compassion, Active Receptivity, Presence Over Prediction — these are just some of the practices through which an organization becomes capable of hosting rather than performing.

The organizations that undertake this work discover something the hero narrative had obscured. The donors were never looking for a hero to fund. The donors were looking for a space worth entering.

This post is grounded in the Space as Metaphor framework, which views space as "metaphor for method, moral orientation, and mode of transformation." The framework helps us understand that our actions are not merely transactional exchanges but choices within complex spaces requiring careful cultivation and ethical stewardship.

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what is important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

Membership is free and gives you access to community conversations, courses, introductory resources, and the complete Field Guide.

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Narrative as the Architecture of Community Trust

Jul 19, 2026 | 27, Blog

Community needs go unmet for many reasons. A shortfall of funds is the reason most often cited, and the reason most easily measured.

However, the sector’s own history reveals a more uncomfortable pattern. Organizations with substantial reserves still fail to meet the needs they were built to address, while organizations with modest resources sometimes accomplish extraordinary things.

The variable that separates them is rarely capital. The variable is coherence — whether the story connecting need to response to action holds together, or whether it has quietly come apart at the seams.

What Narrative Actually Does

Narrative, in the context of an organization, is not the marketing copy on the website or the language of the annual appeal. Those artifacts are downstream.

Narrative is the underlying structure of meaning that answers three questions simultaneously — what is the community need, why is this organization the right responder, and what does participation from a donor, volunteer, or partner make possible that would otherwise remain out of reach?

When those three answers cohere, the organization holds a case for support that behaves like architecture. It bears weight. Board members can articulate it under pressure. Development directors can adapt it to different audiences without losing its shape. Program staff recognize their own work inside it.

When those three answers fracture — when the internal story staff tell one another no longer matches the external story donors receive, or when the theory of change has drifted from the language used to describe it — the organization loses the thing that made sustained community response possible in the first place. Trust.

Trust Is a Structural Property

Donor trust is often discussed as a feeling, a matter of relationship and stewardship. Those elements matter. However, the deeper source of trust reveals itself as structural rather than emotional. Trust surfaces when a donor encounters the same organization across multiple touchpoints and finds a coherent story in each.

The gala remarks match the annual report. The website matches the executive director’s answer to a hard question at a coffee meeting. The program outcomes match the promises made in last year’s appeal.

Coherence at that level cannot be manufactured through communications alone. It requires that the underlying strategy, the theory of change, and the organizational identity all align well enough that any staff member, on any given day, can speak from the same architecture without needing to consult a script.

Such alignment is the work of strategic planning done properly — not the ritual production of a document filed on a shelf, but the sustained discipline of building an internal case for support that is genuinely lived.

Communications work becomes credible only when it rests on that foundation. When it does not, even the most polished materials betray their own hollowness within a few paragraphs.

What the Architecture Metaphor Reveals

Architecture is the right metaphor precisely because good structure disappears when it works. A donor does not consciously register that the story holds together. The donor simply feels that this organization knows what it is doing, that participation matters, and that the work will still be there next year.

When narrative infrastructure fails, the failure is initially invisible. Small incoherences accumulate. The annual appeal shifts its language from year to year without any strategic reason. Board members offer three different explanations of the mission when asked at community events. The program page describes one theory of change and the funding page implies another.

None of these problems announce themselves. However, community response — measured by retention, average gift size, unrestricted giving, and the willingness of major donors to make multi-year commitments — begins to erode.

By the time the erosion registers on the financial dashboard, the architectural failure has been underway for years.

The Work That Precedes the Money

The organizations that build durable community trust are the ones that treat narrative as infrastructure rather than as output. They invest in the strategic clarity that makes coherent communications possible, refusing to launch external campaigns before the internal story has been aligned across the board, the executive team, and the program staff.

Such work is slower than writing appeal letters. It also carries more weight. The case for support that emerges from this discipline holds three qualities at once.

The community need reveals itself as urgent without being sensationalized. The organization’s response reveals itself as necessary without being self-congratulatory.

The donor’s role reveals itself as consequential — the participation that makes the outcome possible, rather than the transaction that funds it. Community trust follows structure.

Structure follows narrative. Narrative follows the willingness to do the strategic work before the communications work. The organizations that understand this order tend to build something that lasts.

This post is grounded in the Space as Metaphor framework, which views space as "metaphor for method, moral orientation, and mode of transformation." The framework helps us understand that our actions are not merely transactional exchanges but choices within complex spaces requiring careful cultivation and ethical stewardship.

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what is important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

Membership is free and gives you access to community conversations, courses, introductory resources, and the complete Field Guide.

Explore The Commons

Are you ready for a NEW STORY?

Contact Us

The Wild Within: A Conversation with Environmental Scientist Dr. Kathleen McNary

Jun 17, 2026 | Dialogue5

In this dialogue, RPL’s Robert and Rowan sit down with environmental scientist Dr. Kathleen McNary, whose doctoral research at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) reimagined what it means to restore the natural world—and ourselves. From a suburban yard in Asheville, North Carolina to the estuaries of the Turks and Caicos Islands, Kathleen’s journey through “rewilding” challenges the deepest assumptions of Western culture about our place in nature.

Robert: Kathleen, welcome—we really appreciate your time today. I’d like to start by having you introduce yourself: tell us a little about what you do for a career, and then give us a snapshot of your academic research.

Kathleen: I work as an environmental scientist. My primary work involves terrestrial research for tropical and subtropical environments—mostly predicting the environmental impact of various activities that humans tend to engage in.

My academic research, which I recently completed at CIIS, focused on a way to rescript conservation practices, specifically ecological restoration. With hundreds of years of people studying the environment and trying to repair it or stop the trajectory of ecological loss, the methods we’ve used have basically proven to be pretty futile. So I tried to come up with a new way of working with the environment rather than studying on it—to treat the environment as a sentient entity, a co-researcher and co-participant in the restoration process.

Through that, I also worked on reclaiming a more authentic aspect of myself. And from a strictly conventional scientific perspective, the health of my ecological community and my own personal health increased vastly over the year I undertook this research—and it’s stayed that way. It wasn’t a one-off.

Robert: That really answered my question—this is just so exciting. So maybe describe a little about what rewilding is. We have an audience here that, ostensibly, has never heard the term at all. How would you describe it to someone who says, “Geez, this sounds interesting—what is rewilding?”

Kathleen: That’s a great question, because it’s a term used by a lot of different interest groups. It’s been passed around in conservation circles since the 1990s. Ecologically, it refers to facilitating the environment through introducing keystone species—the most famous example being the reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone, which produced these trophic cascades of beneficial effects.

So traditionally, it means working with land and, as the human participant, helping land get what it needs to restore itself. All ecological rewilding is premised on the idea that Earth has 4.5 billion years of evolutionary intelligence and knows better than we do how to heal itself.

But the term has also come to describe how people tear away the cultural constructions they’ve accumulated over a lifetime to get to their true self—their real reason for being here. A big part of our problem is that Western culture in particular sees itself as separate from the natural world, exceptional within it, and superior to it.

Part of rewilding the self is getting rid of all that nonsense, because none of it is true. We can’t rewild the planet until we rewild ourselves.

Beginning of Rewilding Project

Robert: That’s really helpful—I love how you painted that scene. So let’s explore your scene, starting with your land. Tell us what you saw happen during that year, and what you’re still seeing now. And to help timestamp this, let us know when your year-long project took place, so we can orient ourselves to how much time has elapsed.

Kathleen: I started the rewilding project in spring 2022 and ran it officially for a year for my dissertation. In the beginning, the land was a pretty typical suburban yard—about two and a half acres, mostly clear-cut, with a house over 100 years old. There were a couple of really old trees that, for whatever reason, hadn’t been cut when the rest of the land was ravaged—those sentient sentinels were still there. My initial ecological assessment found it was about 50% alien invasive species and 50% native species.

By the time the year wrapped up, I had gained roughly 33% more plants. The percentage of invasive species was down several percent, and the bird population had almost doubled. New creatures moved in—foxes, a least weasel, black snakes. All of this happened as soon as I stopped trying to control things like a human landowner. It took me a while to relinquish that control, even leaving the non-native species there just to see how the land would respond. And the land responded by trying to reset balance—the native plants started crowding out the non-native ones. There’s no finish line. Everything is always moving toward more complexity and abundance.

One of my kids lives there now, and they’re having what I’d call “rewilding discomforts.” They planted a big vegetable garden and didn’t protect it, and the deer came in and ravaged all the Brassicas. There are four groundhogs living there now, and they’re voracious. It was upsetting for a while, but now my kid is realizing, “I’ve got to share this space with them and figure out a way we can all live here together.”

Humans create what they perceive to be safe spaces they can control—but that’s a delusion. Once you let go of the notion that you control anything except your own body and self, you become more comfortable with things that aren’t ideal. The deer will eat your vegetables if you don’t protect them—but it means you get to live with deer, which is a lot nicer than living without them. For a little extra work or inconvenience, we forfeit so much richness in our lives.

Robert: That’s a nice segue into looking at yourself. You talked about changes in your own mental health and how that has continued. Highlight some examples of what you experienced during the project—and whether there have been any new developments in these last few years that surprised you.

Kathleen: Let’s start with the basics of me. When I started, I had slightly elevated blood pressure and blood sugar, and a long history of chronic depression and anxiety—I’d intermittently taken Prozac throughout my adult life. The stripping-away process was not pleasant. I had to confront a lot of things I’d hidden from myself, including in my 35-year marriage, which ended during the year of rewilding. But when I came through the other side, I’d reached an optimal BMI, no longer needed antidepressants, and haven’t had clinical depression since. I have so much more energy—I just came back from an hour-long swim I thought would only be 30 minutes.

All the lessons came from just sitting back, observing, and listening. When I stripped away the noise from Western culture, it was so much easier to hear what felt real. It got to the point where going inside the house felt like entering something artificial. Outside, I felt alive.

Robert: A friend who read your dissertation said he wouldn’t believe any of it if he didn’t know you—because of all the things that happened with the animals. The owls especially stand out. Can you share that?

Kathleen: I’d never seen an owl near the land where I lived. But that autumn, when my marriage and everything was falling apart, an owl followed me home from an evening walk and set up residence at my house. Everywhere I’d go, the owls would come out and talk to me. I was dreaming about owls. The owl is a big symbol of death and rebirth. At that point, I’d still been clinging to the idea that my marriage was rescuable—and the owl was basically saying, “No, this is done. You need to rebirth yourself.” That kind of synchronicity was happening all the time once I started paying attention.

Rewilding Project in Process

Robert: You just said something I find really interesting: paying attention. In our business development world, Rowan and I work in marketing and fundraising, and it’s go, go, go—on to the next thing. What would you say to someone in our world, or out in the world, who’s intrigued by this but won’t have the chance to do a year-long project? What pearls of wisdom can you offer for them to meaningfully pay attention and rewild themselves?

Kathleen: You hit the nail on the head when you talked about not having the time, energy, or space. The capitalist Western system survives because that’s the lifestyle—if people realized they didn’t need all the crap and didn’t have to work so hard to get it, that wouldn’t be good for capitalism. The most radical thing a person can do is carve out that time, even just five minutes a day, where you find some non-human being and just sit, be there with no expectations, and create a relationship.

But there also needs to be reciprocity. A lot of the rewilding psychology books are all about what nature can do for humans—not what humans must do for nature. So do something positive: plant seeds on your balcony that attract pollinators, even something that simple. Once you start, it snowballs and cascades, and you feel really alive for the first time in a long time. Then you realize you don’t need all the things culture has told you that you need to be happy.

Robert: I’m on social media myself, and I really am myself there—you’ll see me looking out at the mountains, exploring nature. Sometimes thousands of people discover that, and folks message me to say it sparked something in them. So maybe there’s a way for you to find that balance, too. My last question: now that you have some space, nearly four years—I can’t believe it’s already been that long—is there something that genuinely surprised you about the research, the experience, or yourself? Something you sit with now and think, “I really didn’t expect this?”

Kathleen: There’s so much I could respond with. But I’d say this: even though I intellectualized that we’re all one, that we’re part of a great cosmic consciousness, I didn’t expect that I would ever be able to be content in the world. At my core, I never thought that was possible for me. But it is, and I am. Everything I thought mattered does not matter. I really know what matters now, and it’s community in all its forms—human and more-than-human. Nothing else matters if you have that. If you have that, you have everything you need.

Robert: That is super powerful, and this has been extraordinary. I feel energized and inspired. Rowan, I’d love for you to share your thoughts, too—this is the first time you’ve really been introduced to Kathleen’s work. What are you thinking and feeling?

Rowan: Thank you, Kathleen—that was incredibly cool to hear. It’s really inspiring, because like Robert said, in our line of work, it’s just go, go, go, with not a lot of time to reflect or stop. That’s one of the things Robert and I have in common: we both question that approach to life, because I don’t think it’s how we really want to be living. And your last comment about finding a way to be content—and that being part of community—really struck me. I’m going to be thinking about that all day. It gives me hope. And it’s just cool to hear someone ask, “What does matter?”—because I think we spend a lot of life focusing on the wrong things.

Kathleen: And I have to pull myself back, too. It’s easy to get wrapped up—I still have to work and support myself, and I get stressed. Yesterday was a holiday here, the King’s birthday, and it was so hot. A friend invited me to spend time in their pool, and my knee-jerk reaction was, “No, I have to finish this work.” But I was so hot that my body basically drove me there—it said, “We’re not sitting in this sweat box any longer.” And we had such a good time, doing nothing but enjoying each other’s company. I thought, Why am I resisting this? You can’t just get rid of all that programming. It’s constant work, a work in progress with no end. But it’s good to just get on the path.

Rowan: That’s another example of the pull of community. That’s something I think about a lot, too.

View from Kathleen’s home on Turks and Caicos Islands

Robert: For the record, Kathleen, can you tell us where you are now? It sounds like you’re not in North Carolina anymore.

Kathleen: I’m in the Turks and Caicos Islands—I’m a dual citizen, and most of my work is here because of the tropical terrestrial ecology. I live on an estuary with a canal cut into it that’s a couple of miles long, so I can swim all the way up to the ocean and back. This morning I saw a hawksbill turtle just sitting on the bottom of the canal. He looked up at me as I passed but didn’t startle. It was so great. The land I rewilded is in Asheville, North Carolina—we only carved out a little spot here and left everything else exactly as it was. It’s wild, full of wildlife and plant life. It’s amazing.

Robert: Kathleen, thank you so much for your time and for sharing all of this so openly—it’s been a genuine gift. I really hope this is just the beginning and that we get the chance to pick up this conversation again down the road. There’s clearly so much more to explore together.

To learn more about Kathleen or her work, visit https://www.yearofrewilding.com.

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what is important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

Membership is free and gives you access to community conversations, courses, introductory resources, and the complete Field Guide.

Explore The Commons

Are you ready for a NEW STORY?

Contact Us

The Journey to Reborn Consultants

Jun 17, 2026 | Dialogue6

In this dialogue, RPL’s Rowan Wilson sits down with Kameron Conley, founder of Reborn Consultants, whose journey from an IHOP brainstorm at 18 to running a strategy-driven marketing agency reimagines what it means to build clarity, community, and creativity in business.

From making banana pancakes for his two-and-a-half-year-old son in Las Vegas to guiding clients through levels of their own growth, Kameron’s story challenges the assumption that marketing is about packages and templates—while offering a vision of business rooted in collaboration, presence, and persistent, purposeful action.

Rowan: Kameron, thanks so much for making the time this morning—I know you’re just coming off making banana pancakes for your little one. Before we dive in, I’d love to hear how you’re doing and what life looks like for you out in Vegas right now. 

Kameron: I’m great. I just finished making banana pancakes for my two-and-a-half-year-old boy. And yeah, work starts now since I’m on the West Coast.

Rowan: That sounds like a beautiful way to start the day. I know a lot of the west has been dealing with wildfire smoke lately—my parents are actually heading to a wedding in Idaho tomorrow, and the forecast is just smoke all week. How’s it been where you are?

Kameron: No smoke. It’s actually really beautiful—just hot. Like 110, 113. The desert. I know Chicago had some bad weather, and Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and California all got hit with smoke.

Rowan: So, Kameron, I’d love to start at the beginning. How did you get into web design and marketing? When did this start, and what drew you to it?

Kameron: There are two parts to that. The first is that I started a clothing brand when I was 18. I went to an IHOP with an old high school friend—he was in band, I was in orchestra, and we’re still friends to this day. We started a Christian clothing line, set up a website, made a bunch of money, and then had no idea what to do with it. We didn’t know about shipping, taxes, or anything on the back end. That led me to understand that the back end is a whole different business in itself.

Then I went through a ton of other things before landing at an agency. I worked in food and beverage here in Vegas, then moved away and ran a youth symphony in Utah. After that, I was a traveling salesperson, worked at a college, and eventually took an entry-level position at an agency. From there, a friend and I decided to start our own. So the journey to where I am today was completely opposite of what I anticipated—I thought I was just going to go to college and become a teacher. So when you ask how I got here, it’s completely random.

Rowan: Yeah, but it seems like even from 18, or maybe earlier, there was something creative driving you. Is that true? Was the clothing thing driven by creativity?

Kameron: A little bit. That’s so funny—I know now that I’m creative, but years ago I would have said I wasn’t. I played viola and cello since sixth grade, so I had creative aspects, but when it came to drawing or depicting things, that wasn’t my focus.

What drew me to websites and to what I do today—consulting, designing, and figuring out acquisition channels—is the strategy behind it. Creating a clear roadmap. Clarity means more to me than the design itself. But I know good design is what helps the people trying to reach out feel like they’re in the right place, feel familiar, and trust you.

Clarity, Storytelling, and the First Five Seconds

Rowan: That’s really interesting—this idea of clarity. It seems obvious when I think about it, but it’s not something I necessarily think about when I’m thinking about websites. Can you speak to that a little bit and what it means when you’re working with people?

Kameron: There are three elements. When I get to a website, in the first five seconds I need to know exactly what you do. Can I understand it like a fifth grader? Meaning, I don’t know a lot about the world, but I have words in my head and I can pick up on context clues. If people can’t do that, they’ll immediately leave and find somebody else.

You guys say you’re storytellers. I feel like we’re guiding the story more than telling it. We’re trying to move people from one section to the next in a way that feels chronological. So I ask: Does it make sense in five seconds? Is the design clean and user-friendly? Does everything work the way it should when you click? And is there information I can get to quickly—like a clear call to action?

When I look at websites, I look at them from a very basic standpoint. I think we overcomplicate things. The best thing you can do is ask the people coming to your website what they’re actually looking for. Clarity is what makes marketing, your website, and success easier. When you’re not clear—”oh, I do all these 20,000 things”—people are going to say, “okay, I’ll never remember that one person.”

Kameron Konley

Kameron Konley

Only Dead Fish Go With the Flow

Rowan: What’s it like working with clients? Do you enjoy that? I imagine you work from home most of the time.

Kameron: Yeah, I work from home most of the time, and I love working with clients. I love helping them out and guiding their journey—figuring out where they got stuck and how to get them unstuck.

In the beginning, I’d literally walk down the street and go into businesses: “I do marketing, do you want to join?” It was so untactful—just an excited business owner saying, “Come work with me.” And I’d help them out. But there was always a missing part.

This past year especially, I love figuring out why someone is in the position they’re in. Let’s address those things and get your mindset back on track. People often have a bad mindset rooted in a bad experience—something that happened and now they feel a certain way.

So, do I love working with clients? Absolutely. I love seeing their family grow. I love seeing them grow. I love seeing the business grow—new people, new products. The goal is not to stay stagnant. One of the first T-shirts I ever made for that clothing company said, “Only dead fish go with the flow.” I feel strongly about that. We’ve got to be swimming upriver or downriver, but we’ve got to keep going. You can’t just go with the flow, because you have to push against things to take risks and create opportunities.

Rowan: I love that—only dead fish go with the flow. Going back to what you said about guiding people’s stories—do you feel like you’re working with people, or do you sometimes have to push back? I’ve found that’s always difficult with clients, because sometimes they want something and you’re like, “I really don’t think this is going to work.”

Kameron: That’s a great question. In the beginning, people hired me to get something accomplished—point A to point B. Now, it’s not just A to B. It’s like, we got through A to Z, now we have to learn our numbers, then put sentences together, then start writing a book.

It’s definitely collaborative—but I need clients to understand that whoever they are, whether it’s the CEO or the business itself, that identity needs to be clear on the website. We don’t say things we think they’ll like; we say things that make sense to them.

When someone says, “oh, I love this website,” I’ll say, okay, I’m glad you like it. But will the people you’re actually attracting—the clientele, customers, patients, donors—like it? Because you could love it and they could hate it. You have to take you out of it. That’s difficult, because I’m asking them to be themselves through words that explain who they are and how they operate—that’s what makes them unique. But at the same time, the design can’t be 100% about what they love. It can’t be only for them.

If somebody says, “yo, I just want a website,” I’ll tell them they probably don’t need me. If you want something simple, I’ll give you five alternatives. But if you’re actually asking—how are we going to grow this? How do we get to the next step? How do we make more money? How do we get you out of the day-to-day as a CEO so you can be the strategist you need to be?—those are the conversations I want to have.

On Fulfillment and Unlocking Growth

Rowan: Do you find the work fulfilling?

Kameron: It’s fulfilling when all cylinders are clicking. When they do, it really does feel great, because you’re helping somebody unlock something they were stuck on.

For example—I had a client reach out and say, “Hey, I want to fundraise for my nonprofit. I want to make $10 million. I just need you to judge my landing page.” And I said, okay, your goal is $10 million, but you want me to look at your landing page? How much are you putting into this, and how much can you actually make? Truthfully, they could have made maybe a million at max—more realistically, $250,000 to $300,000. That person was so confined to thinking, “I need this one thing fixed before I can move forward.” That’s where a lot of business owners get stuck. Unlocking something that once made them feel like they had nowhere to go—that’s fulfilling.

It’s cool to see clients making sales on an e-commerce site or seeing more form submissions come in. It’s exciting to see growth, because once you see growth, you see so many other possibilities and gain confidence. And with more confidence, you can do more.

But it takes time. They have to trust me, I have to trust them, and we have to communicate and learn together. It’s like hiring a new employee—you hope you wrote perfect instructions, but you never do. Nothing is perfect.

I took a third-level communications class that framed it this way: collaboration takes your idea and my idea and makes them one, while compromise takes a little of your idea and a little of mine and makes them one. I really focus on how we can truly collaborate. When you do that, you can truly feel fulfilled. It doesn’t happen the moment you get a client. Getting a client is just the beginning—it’s not, “oh, we finally made it.” It’s, “we’ve got so much more work to do.” And that’s the fulfilling part.

Levels of a Business, Levels of a Life

Rowan: In our current age, if you’re a business owner, you basically have to have an online presence. Has that shifted since you started this work? Just the sheer amount of online everything is now? I don’t know exactly when you started your agency.

Kameron: I started in 2019—right before COVID. I had no idea that was going to happen. Things go in waves, just like clothing from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s that keeps coming back. Is digital presence important? Absolutely. But it has to be important for what you’re doing.

The first thing I tell everyone when I meet them: image and perception is what we give to the community; respect and commitment is what we give to each other. Your website, your social media—everything should look cohesive, like a real business. People judge you in five seconds now because we’re all scrolling through TikTok and Instagram. If they don’t feel something, they’re gone. As a business, if we’re putting something out there, it has to be our best effort. You don’t need 27 different social media accounts or endless outreach channels.

I’ve had companies where the website just needs to say a few key things. It’s either overly complex or overly simple—but sometimes that’s enough to get them to the next point.

That’s part of my belief that there are levels to your business, one through ten. I always use working out as the example. Level one of being healthy: stop eating dessert every day. Level two: eat a little healthier. Level three: stop eating past a certain time. Level four: start walking. Level five: go to the gym. Level six: get a personal trainer. Level ten: you know when your glucose spikes, you’re eating well, you’re sleeping right, you’re doing everything necessary for your body to be optimal.

Business is the same. We need to understand where you are in your journey so you can say, “I know I’m a four—how do I get higher?” A lot of people in digital marketing say, “I have a package, and I’m going to fit you into it.” If clients don’t fit, it’s because they’re not at that place yet.

Kameron & Family

Work, Home, and Taking Off the Hat

Rowan: The way you talk about clients—you’re just thoughtful about it. One package doesn’t fit all. How has that impacted your personal life? I know you have one kid. How has that affected you as a parent, and how do your work and life overlap? I imagine part of it is working from home—being able to make pancakes at 7 a.m.

Kameron: 7 a.m., yeah. It’s interesting. When you have something this good, you don’t want to let it go. It’s hard to imagine going back to a 45-minute commute each way and losing an hour and a half.

As I’ve gotten older, what I physically do is wear a Reborn hat, and I take it off to signify that I’m done for the day. When I first started the agency—before my son, and right after he was born—I was constantly thinking about my business. You do that as a business owner. You’re always in it. But I’ve learned to say, when I’m done, I’m done. When you drive away from a job, you get 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes before you get home—a natural break to detach. At home, I didn’t have that at first; work just rolled into everything. Now I can stop when I’m done, and if I need to do more, I do it at night after my son and wife are asleep.

Being able to make pancakes for my son or go on a morning walk with him—it makes me healthier and more driven, which makes me more focused when I’m at work.

I’ve purposely stopped letting it intertwine as much. That said, I’m still judgy when we go to a restaurant and I look at a menu, or when I look at a website. I was paying my mortgage online, and the box was tiny—I could barely scroll through it. The UX design is terrible. Little things like that. It doesn’t consume me anymore; I just see businesses and how they operate a little differently. But I don’t dwell on it like I did when I was younger.

Rowan: I love the hat—taking it off as a signal to yourself and your family. Do you think there are lessons you’ve learned from working with people that you hope to pass on to your son as he gets older?

Kameron: Yeah. I used to have a business partner who said, “there are 7 billion people and there are 7 billion worlds.” We really have to keep that in mind. Each person is going through something we’ll never understand.

You’re driving and someone cuts you off, and you get angry. As I’ve gotten older, I think—that person is going through something I have no idea about. They might be rushing to see someone who’s sick, or hurrying home because of an emergency, or racing to pick up their kid to avoid a late fee. There’s so much we don’t see.

Persistence and consistency are huge. I was following up with someone recently who kept saying, “yeah, I’ll get to it.” A persistent follow-up isn’t rude or disrespectful—it’s consistently showing up. That’s the only way you’re going to get somewhere. In marketing, it takes seven to ten touchpoints for someone to purchase from you. If they buy sooner, great. Later, also great. People are preoccupied with so many things. So we have to be unique, stand out, show people we’re our own individuals—whether that’s how we dress, talk, or present ourselves.

The biggest thing—and this applies to life, clients, and colleagues—is knowing quickly who’s a good fit and who isn’t, who to keep in and who to keep out. You hear CEOs say, “hire slow, fire quick.” It’s true. We don’t have a lot of time.

As a young Kameron, I wanted to help everyone. Not in a bad way—I just thought everyone deserved help. I truly wanted to help and guide. But I learned that some people just don’t want it, and I can’t force anyone. So when I get a great employee, I take care of them and treat them right. When someone isn’t a fit, it’s okay to say, we just don’t work together. I’ve given the tools. Then I keep learning how to be more clear, honest, and transparent for the next person.

The Future of Websites

Rowan: What do you see for the future of websites? Do you think in the next five or ten years websites will stay how they are, or will there be a shift in how we use them or how they look?

Kameron: I’ll tell you what I think, though it’s not 100% certain—there’s no factual thing that says this. If we continue down the AI route, people may eventually come to a blank screen, type in something, and go directly to the place they need rather than scrolling around. That could be the pivot.

The other thing is experiential marketing—when huge brands like Coca-Cola or Pepsi create immersive environments at events like the World Cup, giving out free stuff and creating experiences you can’t have anywhere else. I think websites might need to move in that direction too—offering an experience when you visit.

Beyond that, I don’t think websites are going away. Everything’s transforming. I’ve had people say, “I stopped selling websites, it’s going to end.” I haven’t felt that at all. Everyone still needs a website. You just have to meet people where they are and where they’re trying to go. In everything, there’s always a bigger, better, faster, stronger way to integrate systems and technology. We just have to figure out how to do that effectively so people have the leg up. That’s what I see changing—because marketing is still marketing. It’s been happening forever. We just don’t always look at it that way.

Rowan: That’s wild to think about—a website being just a blank screen, no scrolling. But cool to imagine.

Kameron: Yeah, I think it’ll just take you directly to the place you want, rather than an AI prompt asking, “what can I help you with?” That could be where it goes, if that’s the direction we’re heading.

Rowan: Kameron, thank you so much. This was really interesting—and thank you also for the conversation you had with me and Robert a few months back. That really helped both of us get a better sense of where we wanted to go as a company. It’s shifted the way we brand and talk about ourselves.

Kameron: That’s good. I’m glad I was able to help. I appreciate you taking the extra minute. I hope you have a fantastic rest of your day.

Examples of his work include https://sebpepsi.com and https://lowerantelope.com

To learn more about Kameron or his work, visit https://rebornconsultants.com/.

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what is important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

Membership is free and gives you access to community conversations, courses, introductory resources, and the complete Field Guide.

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Making Space: A Framework for Narrative Coherence

May 31, 2026 | 26, Blog

I have spent nearly twenty years working with mission-driven leaders who know their work matters but struggle to explain why it matters in ways that move people. They have the right values. They have compelling programs. They have data that proves impact. But somewhere between intention and expression, something gets lost.

The problem is not about finding better words. It is about something deeper that I have come to call spatial blindness.

The Problem: When Narrative Coherence Collapses

Leaders and organizations lose narrative coherence not because they lack communication skills. They lose it because something in the space has shifted and has not been named. The space I am talking about operates on three levels: the stories you carry about yourself, the stories you build with others, and the larger field of culture and systems you operate within.

When these spaces change without acknowledgment, your narrative starts to fracture. You say one thing in a board meeting and another thing in a grant proposal. Your team members describe the same program in fundamentally different ways. Your mission statement feels hollow even though every word is technically accurate.

Harvard research identifies these as narrative contradictions: statements that are individually accurate yet collectively conflicting, emerging from organizational complexity and fragmented accountability.

Surface-level story fixes do not work because the relational space has not been addressed. You can hire a consultant to polish your messaging. You can workshop your elevator pitch. You can redesign your website. But if the underlying spatial dynamics remain unexamined, the incoherence returns.

  • Notice where your narrative fractures across audiences.
  • Name the spatial shift before reaching for a messaging fix.
  • Treat returning incoherence as a signal, not a setback.

The Framework: Space as Metaphor

I developed a framework called Spaciology to address this problem. It treats space not as empty container but as active participant in how meaning emerges and how narratives hold together.

The framework operates across three dimensions:

Internal Space refers to the stories you carry about yourself. Your assumptions about leadership. Your relationship to authority. The narratives you inherited about what success looks like or what your role should be. This space shapes what you notice and what you ignore.

Shared Space refers to the relational field you create with others. How you listen. How you hold difference. How you navigate conflict. How internal spaces interact, intersect, or resist each other. This is where organizational culture actually lives, beneath the stated values.

Ecological Space refers to the larger systems and contexts you operate within. Funding structures. Political climates. Historical patterns. Cultural memory. The field that shapes what is possible and what is thinkable in any given moment.

Within each dimension, you make three moves: making space (creating conditions for something new to emerge), mapping space (understanding the terrain you are actually in), and maintaining space (sustaining the conditions over time).

This is not a step-by-step method. It is a way of seeing that changes how you approach narrative work entirely.

  • Identify which dimension is most active right now.
  • Choose whether the moment calls for making, mapping, or maintaining.
  • Resist collapsing all three dimensions into one quick fix.

The Process: EcoDialogues

I translate this framework into practice through a methodology called EcoDialogues. It works as both individual coaching and organizational facilitation, structured across three sessions that correspond to the three spatial dimensions.

Session One: Internal Space

We begin with guided questions designed to surface the stories you carry without forcing premature articulation. I ask you to notice what emerges when you sit with a question rather than rushing to answer it. We work with somatic awareness because your body often knows things before your conscious mind catches up.

The practice here is Active Receptivity. You learn to receive what arises without immediately categorizing it as good or bad, right or wrong. David Bohm argued that dialogue aims at changing the way thought occurs collectively, and that we have paid attention to content but not to process. This session focuses on process.

In coaching contexts, this looks like one-on-one inquiry into your leadership identity and the narratives shaping your decisions. In workshop contexts, this becomes individual reflection time before any group dialogue begins.

  • Sit with a question before answering it.
  • Track somatic signals alongside cognitive responses.
  • Suspend judgment long enough for honest material to surface.

Session Two: Shared Space

We move into relational dialogue. Not debate. Not consensus-building. Not problem-solving. Just witnessing how different internal spaces show up in relation to each other.

You learn to hold your perspective while genuinely encountering someone else’s. You notice where alignment exists and where resistance appears. You practice staying present when discomfort arises, rather than smoothing it over or forcing a resolution.

This is where organizational narrative work gets real. Teams discover they have been using the same words to mean fundamentally different things. Board members realize their strategic disagreements are actually rooted in unspoken assumptions about the organization’s purpose.

The practice here is learning to map the relational field without trying to fix it prematurely. Sometimes the most important work is simply naming what is actually happening.

  • Map the relational field before trying to change it.
  • Name shared vocabulary that hides divergent meaning.
  • Stay present through discomfort instead of resolving it prematurely.

Session Three: The Field

We zoom out to the ecological level. What systemic patterns are shaping this conversation? What cultural narratives are operating beneath the surface? What historical dynamics are influencing what feels possible right now?

This session involves mapping organizational culture, examining collective memory, and identifying the larger forces at play. Robin Wall Kimmerer teaches that restoration is relational, requiring us to restore relationships rather than just fix technical problems. This applies to organizations as much as ecosystems.

The practice here is Accountability Over Accuracy. You stop trying to get the story perfectly right and start asking what this narrative is accountable to. Who does it serve? What does it make possible? What does it foreclose?

In coaching, this becomes examining how your individual narrative fits within larger systems of power and culture. In workshops, this becomes strategic alignment work grounded in honest assessment of the field you operate within.

  • Identify the systemic forces shaping what feels possible.
  • Ask who the narrative is accountable to, not just whether it is correct.
  • Examine what your story makes possible and what it forecloses.

What Emerges

I hold four outcomes loosely, knowing coherence looks different for each person and organization:

Perspective Transformation. Jack Mezirow defined this as becoming aware that you are caught in your own history and reliving it, leading to structural change in how you see yourself and your relationships. This is not about getting new information. It is about fundamentally shifting the frame through which you interpret experience.

Relational and Collective Intelligence. You develop capacity to navigate complexity with others rather than trying to resolve it alone. You learn to work with difference instead of eliminating it. You build organizational cultures where coherence emerges from genuine dialogue rather than imposed messaging.

Space-Making Competencies. You get better at creating conditions for meaningful conversation. You learn to hold space for discomfort without rushing to resolution. You develop skill in mapping the terrain before trying to change it.

Ongoing Practice. This is not a one-time intervention. Each engagement feeds a growing framework. You become a practitioner of this approach rather than just a participant in a workshop. The work continues beyond our formal sessions.

  • Treat coherence as an emergent property, not a deliverable.
  • Build capacity to work with difference instead of eliminating it.
  • Continue the practice beyond the formal engagement.

Working with Me

I offer two tracks:

Coaching is for individuals navigating transitions, complexity, identity questions, or leadership reimagination. We use EcoDialogues as the container for personal narrative work grounded in spatial awareness. This is for you if you know something needs to shift but you cannot quite name what it is yet.

Workshops are for teams, boards, and organizations needing strategic alignment, narrative coherence, culture work, campaign readiness, or leadership clarity. We use EcoDialogues as facilitated organizational dialogue. This is for you if your organization keeps having the same conversation without resolution or if your team uses the same language to mean different things.

I am Robert Levey. I hold a PhD and MBA. I serve as senior faculty at UNH College of Professional Studies and as Executive Director of UYM Charities. I founded RPL to specialize in narrative strategy for mission-driven organizations. I have spent nearly twenty years learning how meaning moves through systems and how to help leaders work with that movement rather than against it.

If this resonates, reach me at robert@exponentialsquared.com or 603-369-1046.

Grounding

This framework draws from multiple traditions of inquiry:

David Bohm on dialogue as collective thought process and the importance of examining how we think, not just what we think.

Jack Mezirow on transformative learning through experience, reflection, and discourse, particularly the concept of disorienting dilemmas that catalyze perspective shifts.

J. Krishnamurti on self-inquiry and the examination of consciousness without predetermined frameworks.

Peter Senge on systems thinking and organizational learning, particularly how mental models shape what we perceive as possible.

Robin Wall Kimmerer on relational epistemologies and the integration of Indigenous and Western ways of knowing, emphasizing that knowledge emerges through relationship rather than extraction.

Tyson Yunkaporta on Indigenous thinking systems and the importance of pattern recognition across multiple scales and contexts.

This is not an exhaustive list. It signals the depth this work draws from without claiming to contain it all.

The work continues. Each engagement teaches me something new about how space operates and how narratives find coherence. I invite you into that ongoing inquiry.

This post is grounded in the Space as Metaphor framework, which views space as "metaphor for method, moral orientation, and mode of transformation." The framework helps us understand that our actions are not merely transactional exchanges but choices within complex spaces requiring careful cultivation and ethical stewardship.

About Spaciology

Spaciology is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice you can feel.

  • Inside: Pause, breathe, notice.
  • Outside: Design rooms, rituals, and agendas that slow the spin and invite care.
  • Between us: Make dialogue a place where different truths can live together long enough to teach something.

Ultimately, leadership is the art of making space for what is important (for everyone) and letting that clarity shape the next step. When we change the spaces from which we lead, our strategies change with them.

Spaciology Learning Commons

Want to go further? Join the Spaciology Learning Commons.

Membership is free and gives you access to community conversations, courses, introductory resources, and the complete Field Guide.

Explore The Commons

Are you ready for a NEW STORY?

Contact Us