Clarity & narrative consulting

You know what you do.
You just can't make anyone else feel it.

Signal & Story works with founders and scale-up leaders to close the gap between what you know and what your audience can actually feel.

Let's talk

No pitch decks. Just a conversation.


The problem

Your story is in there. It's just buried.

Most founders can explain their product. Very few can explain their company — the reason it exists, the specific problem it solves, why the people behind it are the right ones to solve it.

That gap is expensive. It costs you the investor who would have said yes. The partner who needed one more sentence. The team member who left because they couldn't articulate what they were building.

The work isn't invention. The story is already there. The job is to find it, sharpen it, and put it in language that moves people.

"We solve the problem of digital noise. We make sure business owners and high-value assets cut through — with a clear signal and an effective story so their audience deeply understands their value."

SIGNAL & STORY — FOUNDING PREMISE


Three things most engagements produce.

01

A sentence that lands.

One clear answer to "what do you do?" — specific enough to be believed, simple enough to be repeated. The kind people say back to you the next day.

02

A narrative that moves.

The throughline that connects what you do, who you do it for, and why it matters now. Structure that makes your story easy to follow and hard to ignore.

03

The confidence to own it.

Most founders know their story once it's found. The work is helping you see it clearly enough to walk into any room and lead with it — without over-explaining or underselling.

Ed Buchanan. Twenty years finding the story inside complexity.

I spent 16 years inside higher education — the place where complex ideas go to become inaccessible. My job was to make them human. I built frameworks, ran trainings, led an institution through a full LMS migration and a MSCHE reaccreditation. I've been in every kind of room where smart people couldn't explain what they were doing and needed someone to find the story.

I hold an MFA in Creative Writing. I'm a keynote speaker at higher education and L&D conferences. And I've spent the last two years applying that same clarity work — finding signal inside noise — to founders and scale-up leaders building something worth explaining.

Signal & Story is that work, formalized.

  • Founder, Signal & Story LLC (Ohio)
  • MFA in Creative Writing
  • 16 years in higher education strategy and instructional design
  • Speaker, OLC Innovate · OLC Accelerate · NACE
  • Based in Ohio. Working with founders anywhere.

What stands out most about Ed is his ability to make complex ideas accessible. He understands that it's not about slides — it's about transformation.

Dr. Marilyn Carroll, Ph.D. — AI Governance Architect & Researcher

The story is already there. Let's find it.

If you're building something real and the words aren't doing it justice, that's the conversation.

Let's talk

Or email Ed directly at contact@edbuchanan.com