Hey there,
It’s been a bit since I’ve written an update, so I thought I’d share what’s been going on professionally and personally this year.
The biggest project and distraction from work has been renovating our farmhouse, selling our home in the suburbs, and moving 90 miles north to live full-time on our farm.
It’s been a huge adjustment living out in the middle of nowhere (seriously, the closest grocery store is a Walmart 30 min away) but the trade-offs in lifestyle have been exactly what we needed.
The biggest trade-off in lifestyle is my husband quit his very secure, very stable, and predictable job. This was his career. He had been with the company for 15 years and would have retired there. But we wanted something different for our family. We didn’t want to wear velvet handcuffs for our entire lives just because it was secure. We were in a financial position to take a little bit of risk and rely on me and my business to support us.
So, now the husband is a full-time homeschool dad and farmer.
Which means every client I work with literally feeds my family. :)
Here’s a picture I took of the farm one evening. It’s such a magical place to be!
Recently, I’ve had big shifts in the consultancy.
We went through our own jobs-to-be-done discovery process and hired a coach for a quick consult call to help push through my own blockers- and found that 6 out of my last 10 clients hired me and mentioned a stall in their growth during the onboarding calls.
People were hiring me to help them through the growth stall. For the past year, my services have reflected this- we’ve done a few personas, but not in the traditional sense. And the other projects have been more about problem discovery.
The CEO or VP-level folks come to me with particular questions or problems- we interview and survey their internal teams to identify misalignment in either knowledge or personality.
We’ve been able to identify when sales needs more enablement and education.
We’ve found when people are in the wrong positions, and not doing the kind of work that they’re best at
We’ve identified unnecessary silos and clunky processes
Then we do customer discovery and learn:
customer segments, pain points, buying triggers, jobs to be done, and user journey
The insights allow the CEO and leadership to create a strategy that gets their teams, product, processes, and customers in alignment.
Learning this jtbd has been incredibly helpful and beneficial. I can focus on the problem and create custom solutions or engagements for each client. I can see so much growth and potential with this offering! I’m excited to take this and run with it!
Some Upcoming Things:
Josh Ho and I are launching a new podcast called “Marketing Retro”. It’s a casual conversation podcast where we share concepts and discuss ideas from our, sometimes very different, points of view. It launches tomorrow on substack!
I’ll be talking a lot more about growth stalls and ways to push through them.
And because things have shifted, I want to make sure everyone knows how we can work together.
Ways we can work together:
You’re experiencing a growth stall and want to create momentum.
We’ll create a custom roadmap to get you back to growth.
You aren’t clear on your customer’s buying triggers, pain points, or buyer journey.
We create strong segments based on jobs to be done and identify who your best buyers are, why they buy, and their biggest pain points.
You’d like continuous customer development but don’t have the internal resources.
Our Growth Insights offering becomes your internal customer development team. We perform interviews, run surveys, social listening, digital intelligence, and report on the most impactful highlights each month. You don’t have to read through a huge research document or try to figure out how to use the research. It’s quick and all done for you.
It’s a research subscription customized to answer your most pressing questions.
Thanks so much for your support!
Adrienne