Michael Urban

People buy stories. Your business is sitting on countless stories communicating how your product or service helps people. Uncover them. Share them. Get more customers.

Find it here: forbes.com/councils/forbe…

@Forbes last week: "The real moat that protects a business is great storytelling." Not product, pricing, team, or any number of other variables. Your story. This is an article founders should print and read often:

@travisfitzwater Congrats!

Dear Friends and Constituents, After almost 12 years in the Missouri House and Senate—starting when I got elected in 2014 and then winning the Senate seat in 2022—I'm sharing some big personal news with a lot of gratitude: I won't be seeking re-election to the Missouri State Senate. Serving you all has been the honor of my life. From pounding the pavement knocking on doors across eastern and mid-Missouri to pushing for better economic development, stronger schools, family values, and real innovation in Jefferson City, I've been blessed to work side-by-side with good people on both sides of the aisle to make our state a better place. Now, my family and I are heading in a new direction, and I'm excited to step into the role of Executive Director at the Missouri Technology Corporation (MTC). MTC is a key public-private partnership investing in high-growth startups, backing entrepreneurs, and fueling tech-driven growth all over Missouri—from the big cities like St. Louis and Kansas City to Columbia, Springfield, and across our rural communities. With our statewide innovation network and the moment we're in, it's the ideal time to push Missouri forward as a leader in innovation. I'll be leaning on everything I've learned in the legislature, my time on the MTC Board, and my background running businesses and serving in the community to build transparent partnerships, bring in more investment, and help Governor Kehoe build a dynamic economy: More jobs, more follow-on capital, and more opportunities for everyday Missourians. To everyone in District 10—Callaway, Lincoln, Montgomery, Pike, and our beloved slice of St. Charles County—and to all of you who've backed me along the way: Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Your encouragement, your prayers, your trust—they've meant the world to me and my family. I'll keep serving until the transition wraps up. Timing will be announced soon, worked out with legislative leadership and the MTC Board. Until then, my door's still open—always has been, always will be. Missouri's future looks bright, and I'm filled with optimism as we keep working together to open up more doors across this beautiful state. God bless you all, and God bless Missouri! 🇺🇸 With real gratitude, Travis Fitzwater

The Olympics and the Masters are the last two major sporting events that prioritize the aesthetic experience of watching sports instead of monetizing every square inch - no jersey ads or sports betting ad reads - and it looks so clean and pleasant and rewarding as a viewer.

@JJEnglert Guide

I've used Claude Code to build 20+ projects in the last 6 months. Thousands of new users across them. And I've never written a single line of code. I just dropped a 24-min video with my top 10 tips for non-developers — the exact playbook I use every day to run multiple AI agents that handle work that used to take me a full week. This is the best beginner guide to learning and building with Claude Code out right now. Every tutorial I found assumes you're a developer. This one doesn't. I cover everything from first install to running multi-agent workflows — with live demos and real examples for every single tip. How I set up new projects, how I got Claude to match my writing style, how I automate repeatable workflows with one command, and how I run multiple agents working on different tasks at the same time. I also built a full resource repo to go alongside the video — curated video tutorials, the best skill libraries, plugin directories, MCP server guides, written docs, community links, and a starter CLAUDE.md template you can copy-paste into your first project today. Comment "GUIDE" and I'll send you the full guide with everything you need to learn Claude Code! (make sure we're connected so I can DM you)

@BrentBeshore @TheNolanGore Amazing. Thanks for sharing.

@TheNolanGore Watch this video to get the creativity going x.com/AlexFinn/statu…

When Brent talks, I listen. Been playing with coworkers all morning. It has been meh for me. But I suspect it is my fault. How do you use it? What is it good for? Help! Concrete examples. Videos or links are even better.

A reminder that it takes time to build something that’s timeless, beautiful, and significant.

@gilbert Super list! Thank you for sharing. Since it's been just over a year since you posted this, would you change or update anything about the setup?

This setup will sound 95% as good as a professional radio studio on an extreme budget: - Samson Q2U USB-C mic for each of you (we send this to every ACQ2 guest we have on the show): amazon.com/dp/B001R747SG?… - Moukey tall stand (since you want the mic very close, ~2-4 inches from your face): amazon.com/dp/B07PLJ55Q5?… - Each recording in a separate small room with their own computer. Ideally carpeted with low ceilings to reduce echo. This is probably the most important part of the whole thing. Mic at an angle pointing toward your mouth. (Not straight on, this way you avoid plosives on b's, t's, d's, etc.) - Riverside.fm to record. It will record each of your tracks in local browser storage, uploading in the background. No risk of compression or hiccups you hear all too often on podcasts. Also records video in case you want it. - As a backup: also use Quicktime's "New Audio Recording" feature juuuust in case. Each participant should do this. - Wear any wired headphones (to avoid mic bleed from speakers) - Riverside does have an editor, but I recommend hiring an editor to save yourself many hours of painstaking work. The folks at castos.com/productions/ have always been great for ACQ2 for us. - Transistor.fm is an A+ podcast hosting service. Powerful but straightforward. And insanely reliable built by great engineers. It'll publish everywhere except YouTube (you need to publish there separately). - Descript: this is awesome for reading a quick transcript and making additional edits (just by deleting words!!) after you get it back from a pro editor. I also know some people do *all* their editing in Descript after you export from Transistor. I have never done this but theoretically you could just go straight from Transistor -> Descript -> Transistor! The tech to pull this off has advanced a lot in the last few years to make it way more doable / cheaper. Have fun!!

I know I'm about ten years behind the trend, but let's say I'm putting together a podcast with four awesome but very busy friends: what's the fastest way to get going? Concept and format are set, so I'm looking for the best tools, people to work with, etc. Doesn't have to be the most produced thing in the world, we're ready to launch this thing and see what happens.

@signulll Love this. Compressing chaos into something people can feel resulted in a doughnut shop I built from scratch 10 years ago: open.substack.com/pub/michaelurb…

storytelling is the only way to impose meaning on abundance, coherence on noise, & legitimacy on power. strategy, ops, & capital are all downstream. without narrative control, none it will ever stick. this has been the core premise of my account. in a world of infinite output, story is the scarce primitive. whoever can compress chaos into something ppl can feel, remember, forgive, & rally around actually runs the system. this skill is worth more than the entire c suite combined.

@shaiyanhkhan And most customers don't want to buy your B2B SaaS product. But they'll buy the transformative feeling they get when your B2B SaaS product solves their problem.

The best "storytellers" in the world probably do not want to write about your B2B SaaS product One angle: hire a creator-in-residence, abstract your product into a philosophy or worldview, let them create *new IP* for those stories, and then let them share in the upside: Wrote about this a few weeks ago: gopayattention.com/p/building-sil…

@Yuchenj_UW A founder's story is like a fingerprint. It's the thing that makes a company - in a sea of competitors - different than all the rest. You simply can't outsource or delegate this function.

The radical truth: You cannot hire a “Storyteller.” The founder must be the Chief Storyteller. If you hire a CMO to create your story, you've likely already failed. Founders often think, “I'm bad at marketing, I’ll hire a CMO to handle it.” But storytelling isn't marketing; it dictates your product, the talent you attract, your fundraising, and your culture. Steve Jobs once said, “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller.” You can't outsource the soul of your company.

@WillManidis “The consciousness of good intentions disdains ambiguity.” -Alexander Hamilton

its worth noticing how often commercial purveyors of sin invent highly ritualized euphemisms to prevent themselves from truly understanding what business they are in. honest businesses speak clearly. honest work is easy to describe in its own terms. it’s that simple.

@jackbutcher And paradoxically, it's likely lots & lots of people will love it.

Fortune Favors Action Over Information open.substack.com/pub/michaelurb…

A lack of knowledge shouldn’t get in the way of creating something you care about. But a lack of action and momentum will always lead to obsolescence. A brief story on being courageous & generating momentum:

@jackbutcher Intuition & passion drive effort. James Dyson created the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner after missing the mark on his first 5,126 attempts.

This idea is often interpreted as an instruction to keep doing whatever it is you are doing and it will eventually work. Obviously that is not true. One layer out from that is the even more obvious truth that nothing will happen if you don't do anything. And if you are reading this, you are on the internet - where almost all results are asymmetric, meaning nothing happens in a straight line. The phenomena of "slowly then suddenly" is just describing how networks work, once the scale tips in your favor.

“Just run marketing through our new AI content automation agent.”

James Dyson created the world's first bagless vacuum cleaner after missing the mark on his first 5,126 attempts. Keep going.