The Beacon is a deceptively simple tool. It answers one question: Who is this for, and what would they need to believe?
The template is straightforward:
That’s it. Fill in the blanks.
Why does this matter? Because most people start with themselves. They lead with their journey, their struggles, their triumph. But your audience doesn’t live in your story. They live in their own. The closer your story lives to theirs—the more proximity it has to what matters to them—the more likely it slips past their attention filter. The more likely it lands.
Audience first. Always. Everything else follows.
The second move—identifying what they need to believe—is where the thinking gets dense. Not what you want them to believe. Not what would be convenient. What they need to believe. About you, about the world, about what’s possible. Strip away the nice-to-haves. Get to what actually has to shift for them to take you seriously, to trust you, to care.
The clarity comes from simplicity. Most Beacons fit on a notecard. That constraint forces real thinking. No padding. No corporate fluff. Just the essential architecture.
And here’s the thing: your Beacon isn’t permanent. It’s designed for refinement. The first version is a hypothesis. Version three might be completely different. Version seven might split into two entirely separate Beacons aimed at different audiences. That iterative power—the willingness to keep asking the question more sharply—is where the real growth lives.
Get your Beacon clear, and The Resistance becomes visible. The story knows where to go. Everything else becomes a conversation between you and that specific audience about what it would take to shift their belief.
That’s the beacon. The thing you aim at, not just in a single story, but across every Origin Story you build.