Rewind to September, a busy month filled with conferences and webinars. Two of those sessions brought me so much clarity that I took on a total rework of my brand, positioning and website.
The first was at ChiefX Chicago, where Dr. Jennifer Ashton presented the idea of being a flying squirrel versus a spider monkey. Do you take calculated, planned steps, one branch at a time? Or do you let go, leap and trust?
I knew my answer. Somewhere in the last 20 years, I realized the safety of the known branch wasn’t working for me anymore. I left corporate knowing I wanted a different work-life balance and the autonomy I desperately craved. So I leapt.
The leap is the fun part. The landing is where the work really begins.
The second was a Chief webinar on the fractional paradox, led by Deb Boulanger, founder of Life After Corporate, and it was all about the landing. She said that when buyers can’t understand what you’re trying to say, “they have to work so hard to weave through and translate” what you’re selling.
My question to myself that afternoon: “Can buyers understand what I’m trying to say?”
So, typical for me, I turned to data. I ran a light version of The Story Audit on my own brand.* When it came back 2.4, I wasn’t surprised. Admittedly, I knew something was off.
I’ve been on an iterative path since I started my consulting business. Taking on a variety of projects, getting excited about what lights me up, trying different ways to say what I do best and what I think—building and changing along the way. It’s been a very first year of business.
But that’s how it’s supposed to go, right? Brand and marketing are all about maturing over time. It’s possible (probable, even) for your business to grow ahead of the brand you started with. What matters is recognizing it, adding clarity and continuing to evolve your marketing alongside your business.
The founders and leadership teams of the B2B professional services companies I work with often say they get that same needling feeling. They know something’s off; they just can’t fully point to what.
They’ve asked me, “Are we behind? Did we do something wrong?” My honest answer: “No. And you’re not alone.” Sage advice I can give myself now.
What the Scorecard Said
The Story Audit measures how well your brand reaches people who don’t know you yet. It scores each channel on eight dimensions, from narrative clarity to proof, on two scales (how well it’s executed and how deep it goes), then blends them into one composite score. For my own business, I scored the website page by page and the other four areas from their performance data.
Overall, it placed me at level 2 of 5 on the maturity scale. In plain terms: my 2026 strategy was set, but my website didn’t reflect where I wanted my business to go.
That’s the pattern I find in clients. There’s usually a vision—but it lives in a few people’s heads. This time, after a year of learning, doing business and supporting clients, the head was mine.
Scorecard
| Website and brand | 2.6 |
| Collateral and content | 2.5 |
| 2.9 | |
| Sales and marketing activation | 2.0 |
| Competitive position | 1.8 |
| Overall | 2.4 |
The biggest takeaways: The website said what I do about 12 different ways (how embarrassing for a brand strategist, right?). And the strongest proof came from jobs I’d held during my corporate years, not the clients I target and serve today.
And because my first year of business was built on my personal network and referrals (hooray!), the dissonance was hard to identify. The brand didn’t have to pull its weight.
Why the Dissonance Happens
What happened with my business is far from uncommon. My positioning started forming last year in the early days of launching. I looked across more than 20 years in marketing and journalism and asked myself what I loved doing most, what brought me joy, what frustrated me and where I wanted to spend my energy and time.
Year one put that to work. Every new description was a way of testing what I do best and how I say it. And when you can’t put your finger on what’s not working, you add. The website became the scrapbook of that iteration.
I also said yes to things in order to learn and push myself. The biggest was a personal challenge: I taught myself Claude Code over the summer and ended up building five mobile apps. Although it didn’t teach me a big lesson, it confirmed what I already knew: I’m a builder who loves creating new things and working on interesting projects.
The client calls taught me everything else. The clearest example of the buyer-language finding came from a prospect looking for an audit of their marketing and their CRM. It was clear they had a messaging issue and a marketing infrastructure issue, yet they were trying to solve it with tactics instead of a strategy.
We often name the symptom rather than the cause. On calls with prospects, I translate the symptom into the real problem in real time. My website couldn’t do that for me, so strangers had to do the translating Deb warned about.
Buyers described money and recognition; I described narrative.
Then there’s proof. Deb put it bluntly: No one buys your resume. And in my experience, a resume only gets you so far into the room where a buyer will consider you. After that it’s relationships, being clear about the problem you solve and being in front of your audience when they have it.
My year one ran on relationships. Every new client came through a referral, which says the work is good. But the client work that would prove it to a stranger was still in progress, so my old site leaned on my corporate years.
What I’m Changing First
You’re looking at one of the first changes: a refocused website, positioned around the challenge so many of my clients face.
My services are clearer, too (at least I hope!), about how I help professional services companies tell their story and build a lasting structure to support their goals.
- The Story Audit is the outside read on what’s working, where the story has drifted and where to focus, in two to four weeks.
- The Story System turns the findings into positioning, messaging and a go-to-market plan your whole team can use.
- Fractional Advisory keeps the story straight as you grow.
The client work I’ve partnered on this year also takes center stage, so others can see what clear messaging and authentic storytelling do.
Of course, some things stayed the same. It’s still me, creating and building, with the same personality and the same brand colors. The brand got the uplift it needed as my business and services evolve.
Year one was the leap. This is the landing.
*This was an informal, lighter version of The Story Audit. It left out the client and team interviews (my own client and prospect calls stood in for them) and the Prioritization Session.
The Stranger Test: A five-minute marketing check
Would a stranger know what you're good at?
