When trouble hits, storytelling gets more creative—and more dangerous. “When a company starts to lose its major battles, the truth often becomes the first casualty. CEOs and employees work tirelessly to develop creative narratives that help them avoid dealing with the obvious facts. Despite their intense creativity, many companies often end up with the same false explanations.” — Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things When the numbers slip, it’s tempting to reach for spin instead of solutions. I’ve seen it too many times—blame the market, blame the team, blame “seasonality.” But those stories don’t pay the bills, and they don’t fix the product. The real work starts with facing facts without flinching. Denial is easy. Discipline is rare. But only one of them leads to a turnaround. One of the clearest examples? WeWork. They weren’t a tech company. They were a sublease model dressed in software buzzwords. They didn’t own the buildings. They didn’t control their costs. And yet, for years, they sold the story—“We’re not in real estate, we’re in community.” Investors bought it. The market bought it. The media bought it. But when the economy slowed, the truth showed up—with an eviction notice. I remember watching from the sidelines, shaking my head. They had no margin buffer. No asset control. No operational leverage. Just a really good narrative… until reality caught up.