I’m going to be honest.

Im back?

The last six months have been a ride, and from what I hear, it’s been a ride for many of us. One lesson this journey has taught me is to be unashamedly and brutally honest in business and in life, both with yourself and with others. It’s the only way to navigate through difficult moments. (If anyone knows another way, please, do share.)

It's painful, hard, and unclear at the best of times what path to take, and therein lies the clue as to why honesty with yourself and those around you is key. It’s your guiding compass through uncharted roads and unclear horizons. It allows you to face your fears head-on.

So, in the spirit of honesty, I’ll admit: PUR was on the brink of collapse. I was searching for answers everywhere, thinking we had more runway to innovate a product and bring it to market—the Kids Agency program aimed at tackling the rising eco-anxiety among youth. But I misread the economics of it all, and some of our promised work fell through. We were in a tight spot. I panicked at first, struggled, slogged, but I kept moving and tried many angles.

I even looked for another job, and that’s where the magic happened. I started meeting people, sharing where I was, what I had been doing, and what I wanted to do. Through this process, the world told me, in no uncertain terms, to keep fighting. The job market told me so, potential future employers told me so. On more than one occasion during job interviews, the feedback was clear: "I won’t hire you, but I will hire PUR. Your passion is there, and we want passionate people fighting for our team."

This revelation came about through the age-old interview question: "Tell us how you got to where you are today." By being honest, I explained my journey. When I was a kid at school, I struggled to read and write, yet I could recall any story told to me word for word.I loved and lived for narrative. I learned solely through storytelling. The school I attended, Steiner Education, used story as the vehicle to get the messages to land and resonate. The ABCs were taught through an elaborate series of dramatic stories to help remember the sounds and sequences.

From there, I went on to study history, fuelled by my love of narrative and the art of storytelling and the belief that whoever gets to tell the story of the past not only reveals a lot about the present but often owns the narrative. This passion led me to co-create an arts community newspaper, The Sum Times, where we made space for artistic expression to be viewed as newsworthy. In reflection, it was an act of rebellion from a group of young adults who didn't feel like they had much ownership in the narrative and in short how the world works, so we turned to what we knew: creativity. It was a blast, and it was what led me to found PUR.

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As a way to create a more sustainable business model, I pitched taking the newspaper digital and creating an audio version and an app. We got funding but quickly realized it wasn’t enough. By chance, I connected with different organizations that had a storytelling problem—no way of telling it or struggling to capture and create it in a compelling way that shaped a narrative to steer their organisation in the direction they wanted. This coupled with a chance meeting with a now good friend, Joe Rogers, landed me to formally found PUR. So my passion for how narrative and storytelling impacts world continues on.

We love to partner with aspiring Expertise Authorities to share their work and insights with an audience that stands to benefit from their knowledge and or product. There is a real need for organizations with deep domain expertise to step up and educate to remain competitive and capture a fair share of their respective markets. And a good start to that is to own your narrative and drive it forward in the direction you need to achieve the goals you have set out. Additionally, there is a real need for education providers to reimagine how they deliver education in a post-COVID and AI world.

So, I am writing to you to give some context to the radio silence and also to address the promise we made at the start of the year to create the Kids Agency program. I am still looking at ways to do this, yet it may not be ready by the end of the year.

I also want to acknowledge that I know it hasn't been easy for many of you. I hear you, I see you, and I wish you the best in the future. I hope that by sharing honestly about my struggles in the past, I can help you in some small way. If not, I hope it has entertained or sparked something inside you.

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As always, my best, Patrick Beggs