When you talk to technology companies, you’re often met with quick, rhythmic statements. We are building a better mousetrap. We are redefining cloud compression. We are launching a new way to wear shoes.

Big ideas. Competitive ideas. The kind that help you quickly get the gist while aligning a team of builders and problem solvers around a shared direction.

When you speak with most RIAs, you hear things packaged quite differently. “We help families enjoy their wealth.” “We guide clients toward financial independence.” “We provide holistic planning for retirees.”

Noble, true—and almost always past-tense in their posture. The mission is declared. The identity is established. The sentence is complete.

I’m sure you can spot the difference, and it matters more than you might think.

In Koine Greek—the language the New Testament of the Bible was written in—verbs carry something English often obscures: aspect. Specifically, the present active indicative tense communicates action that is continuous, ongoing, and in process. Not something that happened. Not something that will happen. Something that is happening right now, with the subject actively doing it.

The aorist tense, by contrast, is like a snapshot. It says something occurred. Full stop. No texture. No duration.

The present active is kind of like a video that puts you inside the action while it’s unfolding versus the aorist tense this more akin to a narrator telling you what occurred.

One Greek grammarian described it this way: the aorist views an action from the outside, as a completed whole. The present tense pulls you inside the action—up close, ongoing, in motion.

Of course, you didn’t come here to get a grammar lesson. Maybe you were hoping for something like a leadership framework. That’s where the application of our grammar knowledge comes into play.

Technology companies—the best ones, at least—instinctively operate in the present active state. They describe what they are in the process of building. The verb hasn’t resolved. The work is not done. And that’s the point. The unfinished nature of the statement is what creates energy. It’s what attracts builders, investors, and early adopters. It signals that there is still meaningful work to do and that the people doing it are actively in motion.

“We are building the data infrastructure that will power the next generation of wealth management.”

That sentence is alive. It’s happening. You can join it.

“We built a great data platform for advisors.”

That sentence is a plaque on the wall. It’s finished. There’s nothing left for you to do but admire it.

Most RIAs don’t have a building problem. They have a tense problem.

When everything about how you describe your firm lives in the completed state—we are a fiduciary, we serve high-net-worth families, we provide comprehensive planning—you’ve created an identity, but not a trajectory. Identity is obviously important. But identity without trajectory is a firm that might feel static, even when it isn’t.

The firms that are winning right now—the ones attracting next-gen talent, scaling past $1B without doubling headcount, commanding premium valuations at exit—they talk differently. Not because they hired a better marketing agency, but because they think differently about what they’re doing.

They are building something. Present tense. Active voice. In process.

Here’s what happens when you shift from the aorist to the present active in how you talk about your firm:

Your team leans in. People want to be part of something being built, not something that’s already been built. The present active state tells your team there is still meaningful contribution to be made; that their fingerprints will be on what comes next. This is especially true for the next generation of talent you’re trying to recruit—they are not looking for a seat on a finished train. They want to help lay the track.

Your clients feel it. When a client hears “we are building a planning experience that adapts to how your life actually works,” they hear something different than “we provide comprehensive financial planning.” One is alive and moving toward them. The other is a brochure.

Your competitors can’t copy it. A static identity can be replicated. A firm in active motion—building, iterating, improving—is a moving target. It’s the difference between a fortress and a fleet.

Acquirers pay more for it. Enterprise value is a bet on the future. If your language, your culture, and your operations all communicate the completed state, an acquirer sees a business that has peaked. If everything about your firm communicates the present active state—we are building, we are scaling, we are deploying—an acquirer sees a business with unrealized upside. That’s what commands a premium multiple.

I think about this a lot in how we talk about Milemarker. We are building data infrastructure for wealth management. Not “we built” it. Not “we have” it. We are building it. Every day. The present active indicative. Continuous. Ongoing. In motion.

That’s not spin—it’s how good companies actually work. The product is never done. The integrations are always expanding. The platform is always evolving. Describing it any other way would be dishonest.

The question for you is simple: when you talk about your firm, are you inviting the listener into the story or are you just narrating the past?

Are you describing who you are—or what you are in the process of becoming?

The present active state doesn’t just change your language. It changes your posture. It changes your hiring. It changes what your team believes is possible.

And the firms that figure this out? They aren’t the ones that built something great.

They’re the ones that are still building.