I have been thinking a lot lately about “influencer” marketing. Partially because, well, it is my job to. From discussing it on the podcast, to question it myself, to engaging with self-proclaimed influencers; I’ve been thinking a lot about the effect that this type of marketing has had on my life & on global business.

I spend a lot of my time thinking about stories. I have been crafting them for as long as I can remember. I only realized this recently, when my mom began purging the contents of the attic in my childhood home and uncovered my childhood treasure trove: boxes and boxes full of notebooks. Words are how I've always made sense of the world. I have always seen myself as first and foremost as a storyteller.

In our work as brand excavators and strategists, we are not working to shoehorn your brand or business into a pre-set market position that we’ve deemed advantageous. That’s Old World branding. What we are ultimately working to do is to inspire you to overcome your fear. Fear is the main dynamic that keeps you from truly becoming a brand.

There is a critical question that every entrepreneur faces when they embark on building their business: What is my company’s brand and how will it stand out in the market? In our age of social media & increased connectivity, there has been a lot of emphasis recently put on the importance of personal branding and promoting yourself and your story online

Every great business begins with an idea. It starts a solution or service to solve for a problem or need, and a story behind what inspired it all. In the hustle and bustle of taking your idea and turning it into an actual business, and ideally the kind that generates meaningful income, you must take time to connect with that story. Because businesses that are remembered for something more than just the things they sell are the ones that take the time to craft that story into something that their customers truly connect with. They become more than just a business; having a story makes them a brand.

There is a topic that seems to keep popping up in the world of accounting. To niche or not to niche? That is, quite literally, the question that countless firms are asking themselves. It’s a quandary that feels somewhat unique to the profession, and it is amplified by the growing concern in the accounting industry that tax & bookkeeping work is going to be gobbled up by “bots” and bigger businesses. While I don’t necessarily believe these shifts are as eminent as the internet has made them seem, I do think there is a lot of compelling reason for firms to explore the idea of focusing their practice on a single industry vertical.

As you continue to create your own unique, client focused content, you begin to notice patterns relating to the content you create. There are key problems faced by your clients over, and over, and over again. And the advice you give them often returns to a few key points around which you base more detailed and specific suggestions.