BrandScript · v2.0 · For Marcus & design team

The story, the villain, and the script for Staple Performance Nutrition.

A strategic messaging brief — applying Donald Miller's StoryBrand framework to extend Marcus Filly's "Look Good. Move Well." thesis into the nutrition category through a single unifying villain: stagnation.

For Marcus Filly · For brand designer · Source for homepage, packaging, email, content

01 — The story we're telling

Marcus already taught his audience to move well.

He taught them how to squat, hinge, carry, breathe, recover, sleep. A decade of work. Thousands of athletes. The verb move — in his world — means everything.

But there's a half of the body Marcus's training can't reach.

The half that moves food through the gut. The half that moves bile out of the liver. The half that moves microbes into balance. The half that moves glucose into cells instead of letting it idle in the blood. The half that moves cholesterol out of arteries instead of letting it accumulate. The half that moves the day's metabolic waste off the body before tomorrow's load arrives.

Functional Bodybuilding taught the body to move outside.

Staple Performance Nutrition teaches it to move inside.

The brand promise

Look good. Move well. Inside and out.

That's the brand. That's the story. The rest of this document is the architecture underneath.

01 — The story · continued

Meet the villain.

Every story needs an enemy. Ours is invisible, universal, and accumulating in your gut right now.

Stagnation is the slow buildup of what should have moved through. Stagnant bile. Sluggish motility. Glucose lingering in the blood. Cholesterol pooling in vessels. Microbial populations going monoculture. Lymph that doesn't drain. Hormones that drift instead of cycle.

It's the body's failure mode. And modern life is a stagnation factory:

  • We sit eight hours a day
  • We eat half the fiber humans evolved on
  • We over-process inputs and under-process outputs
  • We train one hour and undo it for the other twenty-three
Stagnation has no symptom until it does. The first signal is usually the bloating after a meal that wasn't even big. The fatigue at 3pm that didn't used to happen. The bloodwork that drifts a quarter-point a year for ten years before someone calls it pre-diabetic.

By then, it's not a fiber gap. It's a chronic condition.

Three intensities of the stagnation frame

How hard we lean — Marcus's call.

Recommended: Medium for owned media, Bold for long-form essays under Marcus's byline, Safe for paid social.

Bold

Every disease begins with stagnation. Every health begins with flow. Staple exists to keep things moving.

Where it works Long-form essays, manifesto pieces, brand video voiceover under Marcus's byline. Risk: overclaims for regulated supplement copy.
Medium Recommended

Movement is health. Stagnation is dysfunction. Training fights one kind. Fiber fights the rest.

Where it works Homepage, product pages, packaging, brand video. Echoes "Look Good. Move Well." directly. Defensible. Memorable. Not metaphysical.
Safe

Most athletes are short on fiber. We make the fiber stack that closes the gap.

Where it works Paid social, performance landing pages, retail-friendly copy. Conversion-tested. Loses depth but stays fully defensible.

What stagnation looks like in your customer

They already feel it.

The brand doesn't have to convince anyone these are real. The customer wakes up to them.

  • Bloating that doesn't match what they ate
  • Bowel rhythm that comes and goes
  • Energy that drops at 3pm even after 8 hours of sleep
  • Recovery that takes a day longer than it used to
  • Cholesterol that creeps up at every annual physical
  • Blood sugar that swings after carbs they used to handle
  • The mirror saying one thing, the labs saying another
  • The growing sense that they're doing everything right and something is still wrong

What fiber actually does — in stagnation terms

Every line is a flow being restored.

  • Soluble fiber slows gastric emptying — glucose stops spiking
  • Soluble fiber absorbs water — stool softens, transit normalizes
  • Fermentable fiber feeds microbes — they produce SCFAs that fuel colonocytes and improve absorption
  • Insoluble fiber adds bulk — transit speeds up, stagnant material moves through
  • Psyllium binds bile acids — liver has to make more, using circulating cholesterol
  • Adequate fiber correlates with lower all-cause mortality, lower CVD, lower colorectal cancer, better insulin sensitivity, better mood via the gut-brain axis

This is the physiological story. We don't have to make it sound spiritual. The mechanism is the magic.

02 — The BrandScript (SB7)

Seven elements. One story.

The classical hero's-journey structure, fit to the Staple customer.

01

The Character

Hero

Meet your customer.

He's 38. Wakes up at 5:15. Coffee. Drives to the gym Marcus's program tells him to. Trains hard for an hour. Showers. Sits at a desk for nine hours. Tries to walk after lunch. Doesn't always manage. Eats clean by most standards — chicken, rice, vegetables, the occasional steak — but couldn't tell you his fiber intake. Reads his bloodwork every March. His LDL has gone up four years in a row, nobody can tell him why.

She's 42. Two kids. Trains five days a week even when she'd rather not. Carries her body well. Sees herself in the mirror and feels mostly proud. Feels herself by 4pm and wonders why she's bloated again. Has tried three proteins this year. Read about psyllium once on Reddit but never bought any.

They are not beginners. They lift heavy. They know what creatine does. They've heard of zone 2. They probably listen to Marcus's podcast and one or two others. They read a label in the last 48 hours.

They want to become: the version of themselves that ages well. The 55-year-old who trains like they did at 40. The athlete whose insides match the work. The person whose annual labs come back saying whatever you're doing, keep doing it.

02

The Problem

Three layers

Donald Miller's framework: every customer feels a problem in three dimensions. Name all three.

You're getting half the fiber you need.

External — the tangible thing

Average American: 15 grams a day. Recommended: 25–38 grams. You're somewhere in there, probably lower than you think.

Result: digestion that runs heavy. Bowel rhythm that wanders. Bloodwork that drifts. The slow physical drag of a system running short on what evolution designed it for.

This is the only problem most supplement brands address. We name it. Then we go further.

"I do everything right. Why don't I feel right?"

Internal — how it feels

The training is dialed. The food is clean. The supplements are stacked. The sleep is tracked.

And still — the bloating, the 3pm fade, the recovery that takes a day longer than it used to. The optimization fatigue of trying every new ingredient that hits the discourse, fixing one thing at a time, never feeling the compound effect. The growing low-grade anxiety that the gap between effort and outcome is widening, not closing. The quiet worry that this is what aging looks like — and that they're already in it.

This is the problem nobody names. Naming it is the wedge.

It's wrong that effort doesn't translate to wellbeing.

Philosophical — why it matters

It's wrong that an athlete who does the work should not feel as good as they look.

It's wrong that the supplement industry trained a generation to obsess over inputs while ignoring the upstream systems that determine whether those inputs become outputs.

It's wrong that the most underrated performance variable — fiber — has been ceded to drug-aisle brands with seventy-year-old marketing.

The body is a flow system. Health is movement at every level. Training works one set of flows. Staple works the rest.

03

The Guide

Authority + Empathy

The guide is never the hero. We meet the customer with two things: proof we know what we're doing, and proof we know how they feel.

Authority — why trust us

We've done the work.

  • Built alongside Marcus Filly's Functional Bodybuilding — a decade of training thousands of athletes
  • Manufactured by Actis Nutrition — dairy-integrated facility, premium whey supply chains
  • Named, dosed, clinically-supported ingredients — Sunfiber, psyllium, Nexira acacia, Fibersol-2
  • No proprietary blends. Every gram on the label
  • FDA-claimable benefits where the math earns them
  • 6g of prebiotic fiber per scoop. 11g of broad-spectrum fiber per stick. 30g a day, two products
Empathy — why we get it

We've felt it too.

  • We know what it's like to train hard and still feel off
  • We know what it's like to do everything right and still feel the gap
  • We're not selling transformation. We're closing a fiber gap
  • We won't ask you to drink a kitchen-sink greens powder
  • Two products. One stack. One job
04

The Plan

Two formats

Two formats. Same destination. The process plan is the daily steps. The agreement plan is the deal between brand and customer.

1

Morning shake

One scoop of Functional Fiber Protein. 25g protein, 6g prebiotic fiber.

2

Midday stick pack

One Daily Fiber stick in water, yogurt, oats, or a smoothie. 11g of broad-spectrum fiber.

3

Real food the rest of the day

We're the supplement, not the substitute.

In two weeks, your digestion will tell you. In six weeks, your training will. In six months, your bloodwork will.

The agreement plan — what each side promises

What we promise you What we ask back
Honest doses. Named ingredients. No proprietary blends. Consistency. Daily, not occasional.
FDA-claimable benefits where the math earns them. Patience. Internal change takes longer than external.
Real food first. We're the supplement, not the substitute. Curiosity. Read the label. Ask anything.
Skip, swap, or cancel any month. One stack. One habit. Track it for ninety days.
05

Call to Action

Direct + Transitional

Two kinds of CTAs serve two kinds of readers. The ready ones go direct. The not-yet-ready ones go transitional.

Direct CTA

Both products. Skip or cancel anytime. Free shipping above $50.

Transitional CTAs — for the not-yet-ready

Fiber Quiz: six questions, estimate intake, recommend a product. Science: long-form essay. Guide: PDF, The 30g Day.

06

Failure

What's at stake

The stakes the brand names — clearly, without becoming a fear brand.

  • Short-term: the bloating stays. The 3pm fade stays. The slow drag stays. The mirror-vs-marker gap widens.
  • Medium-term: training plateaus that aren't training problems — they're absorption problems wearing training masks. Bloodwork drifts. Sleep stops restoring.
  • Long-term: the cumulative inflammatory load. The metabolic dysfunction that builds for a decade before it announces itself. The 60-year-old version of you who can't bounce back — and didn't see it coming.
You can outrun stagnation, but only if you stop producing it faster than you clear it.
07

Success

The after picture

What it looks like when the plan works.

  • Two weeks
    Digestion gets light. Bowel rhythm normalizes without thinking about it. Hunger tracks training, not blood sugar chaos.
  • Six weeks
    Recovery starts matching effort again. The afternoon energy crash gets quieter. The 3pm fade becomes a 5pm dip.
  • Six months
    Bloodwork rewards the work. LDL stops creeping. Fasting glucose tightens. HbA1c moves a tenth in the right direction.
  • Years
    You're the version of you that ages well. The 55-year-old who lifts like they did at 40. The athlete whose insides matched the work the whole time.
The full picture

Look good. Move well. Inside and out.

03 — Applied Copy

Homepage — ready for design.

Eight sections. Each one is a moment in the script. Conversion-tuned, voice-checked. Take this into design as the starting point.

Section 00 — Above the fold

Staple Performance Nutrition

Look good. Move well. Inside and out.

You've trained the body you can see. Now train the systems that keep it running. The fiber stack for athletes who care about the long arc.

Section 01 — Name the felt problem

01 — The Gap

You train hard. So why do you still feel sluggish?

Bloating after meals. Recovery that takes a day longer than it used to. Energy that crashes at 3pm even though you trained at 6am. The mirror says one thing. Your gut says another.

Most athletes get half the fiber they need. The result isn't dramatic. It's the slow drag you can't quite name. It's the gap between how hard you train and how good you feel.

Section 02 — Name the villain

02 — The Enemy

Stagnation.

Blood. Lymph. Bile. Microbes. Hormones. Food.

The body is a system of flows. When the flows slow, the system fails. Modern life — the sitting, the processed inputs, the chronic load — is a stagnation factory.

Movement is health. Stagnation is dysfunction. Training fights one kind. Fiber fights the rest.

Section 03 — Introduce the guide

03 — The Fuel

Two products. One thesis. Keep things moving.

Functional Fiber Protein gives you 25g of protein and 6g of prebiotic fiber per scoop — the same fiber that feeds the microbes that absorb everything else.

Daily Fiber Stick Pack adds 11g of broad-spectrum fiber to any meal — psyllium, acacia, resistant maltodextrin, apple pectin. Mixes into water, yogurt, oats, a smoothie.

Honest doses. Named ingredients. FDA-claimable benefits. No proprietary blends.

Section 04 — The plan, visualized

04 — The Stack

Thirty grams of fiber a day. Built into your training day.

AMFunctional Fiber Protein6g
MiddayDaily Fiber stick pack11g
DietReal food13g+
Daily fiber total30g

That's it. Two products. Three moments. The fiber math closes.

Section 05 — Proof the plan works

05 — The Timeline

Your body will tell you in this order.

  • Two weeks
    Digestion gets light. Bowel rhythm normalizes. You stop thinking about it.
  • Six weeks
    Recovery matches effort again. The 3pm fade gets quieter.
  • Six months
    Bloodwork rewards the work. The labs move the right way.
  • Years
    You're the athlete whose insides matched the work the whole time.
Section 06 — Trust and authority

06 — The Team

Built with the people who built your training.

Staple Performance Nutrition is the nutrition extension of Marcus Filly's Functional Bodybuilding — a decade of training thousands of athletes who care more about the long arc than the next eight weeks.

Manufactured at Actis Nutrition, the dairy-integrated facility behind premium whey supply chains in North America. Formulated with branded, dosed, clinically-supported ingredients. Tested for purity, potency, heavy metals.

No proprietary blends. Every gram on the label.

Section 07 — Common objections, handled

07 — Questions

Will the fiber make me bloated?

No. Sunfiber and the stick pack are formulated with low-FODMAP, athlete-tolerated fibers that resolve bloating, not cause it. Start with the protein for a week before adding the stick pack if you're cautious.

I already eat clean. Do I need this?

Probably. Clean eating doesn't necessarily mean enough fiber. Track your intake for a week. If you're under 25g a day, the math is the math.

Is this another greens powder?

No. Two products. Two doses. Two jobs. No kitchen-sink formulation.

Can I skip a month?

Yes. Skip, swap, or cancel anytime in your account.

Section 08 — Final CTA

Start the Stack.

$85/month. Both products. Free shipping. Skip or cancel anytime.

Performance starts in the gut.

03 — Applied Copy · Product pages

Product pages.

Shorter pages. Same architecture as the homepage but tighter — name the problem, name the fix, name the doses.

Functional Fiber Protein

The Hero

25g of protein. 6g of fiber. The other half of the workout.

Whey protein isolate plus milk protein isolate plus Sunfiber prebiotic fiber. One scoop. Twice the job most proteins do.


Why this protein and not the one you're already on?

Because your protein is solving half the equation.

Whey isolate digests fast. Milk protein isolate digests slow. Together they cover the full recovery window. Sunfiber — 6 grams of prebiotic fiber per scoop — feeds the microbes that absorb everything else. DigeZyme enzymes help break it all down.

Honest doses. Named ingredients. Clean label.


What's in every scoop

  • 25g protein (WPI + MPI blend)
  • 6g Sunfiber PHGG — 24% of your Daily Value, earns the "Excellent Source of Fiber" claim
  • Digestive enzyme complex
  • Natural flavors, monk fruit, Stevia Reb-M — no artificial sweeteners

Flavors: Chocolate · Vanilla  ·  Manufactured by: Actis Nutrition

Daily Fiber Stick Pack

The Stack Completer

11 grams of fiber. Anywhere you can pour it.

A 13g stick pack that mixes into water, yogurt, oats, or a smoothie. Four fibers. One stick. One job.


The fiber gap doesn't close on its own.

A scoop of Staple protein gets you 6g of fiber. A clean diet gets you another 10–15g. You're still short of the 30g target most days.

One stick pack closes the gap.

Psyllium husk for the proven cholesterol and regularity benefits. Acacia for prebiotic microbiome support. Resistant maltodextrin for tolerability. Apple pectin for viscosity and satiety. Four fibers, four jobs, one stick.


Per stick

  • 11g broad-spectrum fiber (39% DV — Excellent Source)
  • 3g psyllium husk
  • 4g acacia (Nexira Fibregum)
  • 3g resistant maltodextrin (Fibersol-2)
  • 1g apple pectin

Flavors: Mixed Berry · Citrus · Unflavored

03 — Applied Copy · Welcome emails

Five emails. Twenty-one days.

The script played out in inbox form. Each email carries one job — welcome, frame, instruct, validate, connect.

03 — Applied Copy · Marcus's launch arc

Three weeks. Three beats.

The BrandScript at content scale. Marcus walks his audience through the same arc the homepage walks a visitor — but at the pace of a season, not a scroll.

Week 1 — Name the gap

"I trained as hard as anyone for ten years. Here's what I was missing the whole time."

Marcus, in his voice. Personal. Bloodwork story, bloating story, the mirror-vs-marker gap. Lands the external problem at scale. Soft brand mention at the end.

Week 2 — Name the villain

"What I really mean when I say 'move well.'"

The philosophical piece. Movement as the body's operating principle. Stagnation as the failure mode. The gut as the second half of the workout. Brand fully revealed at the end as the answer he built.

Week 3 — Show the plan

"The stack I've been using for six months."

Product reveal. Real users in real kitchens. Real bloodwork before-and-afters from beta testers. The 30g math. The subscription. Conversion push.

Three weeks. Three beats. The audience buys because they believe the frame — not because they were sold to.

04 — Voice

The Staple Word Bank.

Words this brand owns. Repeat them. Other brands shouldn't. Color-coded by role.

The verbs — actions of flow
move flow clear process cycle close run feed
The nouns — territory we own
the long arc the gap the stack the system the flows stagnation the offramp the operating principle the failure mode the foundation the daily ritual
The phrases — signature lines
Inside and out The other half of the workout Built for the long arc Honest dose Real food first The fiber math closes We're the supplement, not the substitute Two products. One stack. One job. Training fights one kind. Fiber fights the rest.
Never say
detox cleanse purify flush unleash unlock superfood supercharge proprietary clinical-grade revolutionary elite gains jacked shred pump bioavailable explosive

04 — Voice · Before / After

How the voice shows up.

The same idea, in the wrong voice and the right voice. One reads like a supplement label. The other reads like a brand.

Headline
Before

Boost Your Gains With Our Premium Fiber-Enhanced Protein Blend™

After

Look good. Move well. Inside and out.

Hero subhead
Before

Our innovative formula combines clinical-grade prebiotic fibers with bioavailable protein isolates to optimize your nutritional outcomes and unlock peak performance.

After

You've trained the body you can see. Now train the systems that keep it running.

Product description — opener
Before

Staple Functional Fiber Protein is a synergistic blend of premium proteins designed for the elite athlete who refuses to compromise.

After

25 grams of protein. 6 grams of fiber. The other half of the workout.

Call to action
Before

Learn More

After

Start the Stack — $85/mo

Microcopy — error message
Before

Oops! Our sincere apologies. It appears something went wrong on our end. Please try again later or contact our support team.

After

That didn't work. Try again, or email us.

04 — Voice · The same story at four lengths

Pitch lengths.

The same story, scaled to fit any container — from a banner headline to a podcast intro to a long-form essay.

8s

Homepage banner / packaging

Look good. Move well. Inside and out.

30s

Podcast intro / brand video voiceover

Functional Bodybuilding taught your body to move outside. Staple teaches it to move inside. A protein with prebiotic fiber, and a daily fiber stick pack. Two products. Thirty grams of fiber a day. The fuel for the long arc.

60s

Paid social / brand introduction

Most athletes are short on fiber. Not the kind you read about on a kids' cereal box. The kind that decides whether the protein you paid for actually gets absorbed. The kind that decides whether your cholesterol creeps up year after year. The kind that decides whether your gut feels light or heavy after the meal you just ate.

Marcus Filly's Functional Bodybuilding taught a generation of athletes to move well. Staple Performance Nutrition is the nutrition arm of that thesis — built to make sure the body moves well inside, too.

Two products. One stack. Thirty grams of fiber a day. The math closes. The system flows. The training compounds.

Look good. Move well. Inside and out.

5m

Essay / deck narrative

The longer version is the document above. The story arc — gap → villain (stagnation) → guide (Staple) → plan (the stack) → CTA → failure → success — is the arc Marcus walks any new listener through over a hot drink. Forty paragraphs. Same script.

05 — Risks & tensions

What could go wrong, and what to do about it.

Surfaced honestly before Marcus sees the frame. Each one has a mitigation.

01"Stagnation" sits adjacent to detox / cleanse marketing.

Risk: the audience pattern-matches to Goop. Mitigation: never use "detox" or "cleanse." Talk in physiology — motility, bile acid binding, SCFA production. Skip the mysticism.

02The Bold framing overclaims.

Risk: FDA, lawyers, credibility. Mitigation: Bold lives only in editorial under Marcus's byline. Regulated copy stays in defined claims tied to specific ingredients.

03"Look good. Move well. Inside and out." borrows from Marcus.

Risk: he doesn't grant it, or grants it but it feels off in his ecosystem. Mitigation: explicit conversation. The brief lays it out — he can say no, modify, or own it.

04"30 grams a day" math depends on diet.

Risk: an athlete eating 10g of ambient fiber gets to 27g, calls it false advertising. Mitigation: the brand is explicit — the stack closes the gap, doesn't replace the diet. Real food first.

05"Stack" is bro-supplement language.

Risk: the rest of the doc tells you not to use words like this. Mitigation: we own "the Stack" as a proper noun for the two-product subscription. Lowercase generic "stack" stays off-limits.

06Audience fatigue with kitchen-sink wellness brands.

Risk: AG1 made a generation skeptical of "one solution." Mitigation: we're the opposite — two products, narrow job, no greens, no adaptogens, no kitchen sink. The discipline is the design.

05 — For Marcus

Eight decisions.

Where your read matters more than ours. None of these block forward progress — but your answers will lock the brand.

01The villain name

Stagnation. Physiologically real. Athletically coded. Solvable. Universal. Alternatives: Sluggishness · Stuckness · The Slow Decline · Drag.

Recommendation Stagnation.

Lock Explore alternatives Discuss in call

02The intensity of the philosophical frame

Bold ("every disease begins with stagnation") · Medium ("training fights one kind, fiber fights the rest") · Safe ("most athletes are short on fiber").

Recommendation Medium default. Bold for long-form under your byline. Safe for paid social.

Bold Medium Safe Mix by context

03The tagline extension

"Look good. Move well. Inside and out." — an explicit extension of your FBB thesis, owned by Staple. Comfortable with the borrowing, or want a different tagline that doesn't echo?

Recommendation Use it. The extension makes the brand more powerful, not less.

Use the extension Create a separate tagline No tagline yet

04Your content arc role

The Week 1 / Week 2 pieces in the launch arc work best under your byline. Staple as a brand can write product copy and packaging; you author the editorial.

Recommendation You sign the launch essays. Brand voice handles product surfaces.

I author the launch arc Brand authors everything Hybrid by piece

05Welcome Email 1 — who signs it

If you sign it, the email is warmer and reads as personal. If the brand signs it, the separation between FBB and Staple Nutrition is cleaner. Both work.

Recommendation Your call. We can A/B test it later.

From Marcus From the brand

06"The Stack" as a proper noun

"The Stack" (capitalized) refers to the two-product subscription. Generic "stack" stays off-limits. Comfortable with the proper-noun ownership?

Recommendation Yes — own it.

Lock Find a different word

07Distance from detox / cleanse language

Hard guardrail: never use "detox," "cleanse," "purify," "flush." Physiology only. Your audience already distrusts the cleanse category — we lean physiological to differentiate.

Recommendation Hard rule. No exceptions.

Confirm hard rule Discuss exceptions

08Direct CTA — "Start the Stack"

The primary subscription CTA across every surface. Alternative: "Subscribe" (less brand-specific). "Start the Stack" reinforces the proper noun.

Recommendation Start the Stack.

Start the Stack Subscribe Get the Stack

05 — Decision log

Current state.

Where every key decision stands as of this draft.

Decision Status
Villain: StagnationRecommended
Intensity: Medium defaultRecommended
Tagline extension: "Look good. Move well. Inside and out."Recommended — needs Marcus
Three-layer problem (external / internal / philosophical)Locked
Plan: AM protein + midday stick + real foodLocked
Direct CTA: "Start the Stack"Recommended
Transitional CTA: fiber quizOpen — build required
Marcus's 3-week content arcOpen — Marcus's calendar
"Stagnation" in regulated supplement copyNo — editorial only
"Detox" / "cleanse" languageNever — hard guardrail
Word bank as the brand vocabularyLocked