Standpoint, then build.
Where you stand changes everything you see. I help you use that.
I’ve spent my career helping people and brands shift their standpoint — to see themselves the way others see them — and then build something from that clarity. A brand story. A next chapter. A method you can actually use. It’s turned into Storybuilding, two books, a lot of talks, and a habit of reinventing things (including myself).
John Elbing
Creator of the Storybuilding method
Author • Speaker • Brand Strategist.
THE THREAD
Most problems aren’t a lack of information. They’re a lack of vantage point.
A brand that can’t explain why it matters. A person staring down a big life change with no map. The facts are usually all there — what’s missing is the ability to step back, see the situation from a different standpoint, and then build a way forward instead of just worrying about it.
That’s the thread running through everything I do. Whether it’s a boardroom or a kitchen table, the job is the same: change where you’re standing, get clear, and build.
WHAT I DO – FLAGSHIP
Storybuilding — your brand from their standpoint.
It’s not storytelling. It’s brand realignment disguised as storytelling.
Storybuilding flips the focus from what you want to say to what your audience actually needs to hear. I developed it over years of working with brands that were good — but not good at expressing why they mattered. It’s now a method, a book, a set of interactive canvases, and a growing community.
THE REFRAME
“Don’t just tell your story. Build one your audience already sees themselves in.”
BOOKS
Two books, one verb: build.
One helps you build a brand story; the other helps you build your next life. Both start by shifting where you stand.
Storybuilding
“Build a story your audience already sees themselves in.”
For anyone in marketing, sales, product, or pitching who’s tired of being ignored. Connect faster, clarify your value, and create stories that feel like they belong to your audience.
Charting Your Retirement Journey
A roadmap to create meaning, joy, and purpose in your new chapter.
We live longer and longer — gardening won’t fill thirty years. This book turns the five steps of design thinking on your own next chapter, so you prototype and build the life you want after work instead of drifting into it.
SPEAKING & CONSULTING
I help teams stop being ignored.
Good strategy should be usable, not buried in a 200-slide deck. I’ve worked across industries, advised startups and legacy companies, and built methods that work as well in the boardroom as at the kitchen table.
BACKGROUND
A long, winding path (on purpose)
I started as a software engineer (Master, Computer Software Engineering, EPFL) writing real-time financial systems. Over the next three decades I ran e-business for private banks (UBP, Lombard Odier), picked up an Executive MBA in International Wealth Management (Carnegie Mellon – Tepper / University of Geneva), founded startups (YOUreUP, Green Monkeys), and fell hard for design thinking, storytelling and strategy.
Then I turned all of it into Storybuilding.
Engineer, project manager, founder, consultant, coach, lecturer, author. On paper it looks like someone who can’t hold a job. I prefer to think of it as someone who has spent a lifetime collecting standpoints — which is precisely what makes the method work.
Selected credentials & roles
- Master, Software Engineering — EPFL
- Executive MBA, Wealth Management — Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) / Univ. of Geneva
- Advisory Council Member — Harvard Business Review
- Startup coach — Innosuisse · Fongit · platinn
- Lecturer — Univ. of Geneva · HEG · CREA
- StoryBrand Guide · IDEO U · Design Thinkers Academy · Scrum Master
ABOUT
I help teams stop being ignored.
Good strategy should be usable, not buried in a 200-slide deck. I’ve worked across industries, advised startups and legacy companies, and built methods that work as well in the boardroom as at the kitchen table.
Who am I?
Swedish by blood, American by birth, Swiss by upbringing. I was born in the United States, moved to Switzerland at seven, went through French schools, and have been based in Geneva for decades. That in-between vantage point — never fully one thing — is probably where my obsession with standpoint comes from.
I believe clarity is a matter of perspective: give people a better vantage point and they build better things — a brand, a message, a life. My office is supervised by Blue, a ragdoll cat with strong opinions and no deadlines.
SINGA · teaching refugees to code
Project Integration · coding for integration
Univ. of Geneva · student mentor
BØWIE · queer & feminist creators
Let’s stay in touch
Change where you’re standing. Then build.
Standpoint.ch – LinkedIn – Storybuilding book – Contact
© 2026 John Elbing · Geneva, Switzerland · elbing.ch
