Why I started Untold

The beginning of a new year creates space for reflection and honesty. A moment to ask yourself what you actually believe, what you’ve learned the hard way, and what you want the next chapter to be about.

This year, I’m doing something different and starting something new. It’s called Untold. And it exists because I believe the future of marketing looks fundamentally different from the past.

The shift I couldn’t ignore

I’ve spent my career inside marketing teams of every shape and size. I’ve led small teams. I’ve built functions from scratch. I’ve operated inside fast-growing companies where the answer to every problem was “hire another person.” For a long time, that made sense.

Marketing scaled by adding people because execution was expensive. Campaigns took weeks. Research took months. Content required entire teams. Strategy often drowned under the weight of production.

But something changed.

Over the last few years, and especially recently, I noticed that smaller teams were moving faster than they ever had before. Not because expectations were lower, but because leverage was higher. AI didn’t just speed things up. It changed the equation entirely.

Execution is no longer the bottleneck it once was. You don’t need armies of people to ship good work. You don’t need bloated org charts to operate at scale. 

The marketing organization of the future won’t be built around headcount. It will be built around strategy. A small group of strategic operators will set direction, define the narrative, design the foundation, and then let AI scale the rest. The leverage shifts from execution to judgment. From volume to clarity. From doing more to choosing better. I believe that deeply.

So I’m building a company that helps teams make that transition.

That’s why Untold exists.

Why I stepped away from a full-time role

Starting Untold also meant walking away from something comfortable (like a full time gig). There’s freedom in working for yourself. That’s always been true. But what surprised me most wasn’t the autonomy, it was the clarity. As an outsider, you can see things more clearly. You can name what’s broken without navigating internal politics. You can say the uncomfortable thing. You can focus on what actually matters, not what’s easiest to agree on.

For the past few months, I have been working with a handful of founders and small marketing teams on positioning and ongoing marketing strategy. 

I found that incredibly freeing. Inside companies, even the best ones, there are constraints. Feelings. Incentives. History. Power dynamics. All of that shapes what gets said and what stays unsaid. Outside, your only obligation is to the truth and to the work.

I wanted that.

I wanted to help teams see themselves more clearly, faster. To cut through noise. To build narratives and foundations that actually hold as everything else accelerates. Untold is intentionally small for that reason. It’s not an agency built on volume. It’s not about output for output’s sake. It’s about helping companies articulate who they are, what they stand for, and how they scale in a world where execution is no longer scarce.

The personal reason

There’s also another reason I started Untold, and it’s a deeply personal one. In 2023, I had cancer. I went through chemotherapy, radiation, surgery, more surgery, and more chemo. I’m doing well now, and I’m incredibly grateful for that. But experiences like that change you in ways that are hard to fully explain. It makes one thing painfully clear: time is not guaranteed.

Your calendar. Your plans. Your assumptions about “later.” All of that can disappear in an instant. What I came away with wasn’t fear. It was clarity.

The freedom to structure my time the way I want to is empowering. The ability to choose how I work, who I work with, and what I give my energy to feels essential, not indulgent. Starting Untold is my way of honoring that clarity.

Looking ahead

Untold is not about building the biggest company possible. It’s about building the right one.

One that reflects how marketing actually works now. One that enables small, strategic teams to out-perform large ones. One that helps companies build narratives and foundations that AI can scale responsibly and intelligently. 

If this resonates with you, I’d love to hear more about your business and how I can help. Email me at alison@telluntoldtales.com. 

— Alison