8 Years of Change — Kelford Labs Daily

Today is the 8th anniversary of our marketing consulting business.

Eight years ago today, I assumed I’d be sliding into a calm May where I’d pick away at some business start-up tasks and mostly rest after a hectic and exhausting few years as a marketing agency executive.

But, instead, within three days of launching the business I had my first client. A little later, my wife Leah was looking for a career change, so she came on board as my business partner.

Working with this first client would take us to Spain, Argentina, and many U.S. states we’d never seen before. We planned international events and gave impromptu speeches on several continents.

Soon after we got that client, we started working with a popular, internationally-read wellness magazine.

Then, through a series of beautiful coincidences, we got the opportunity to “pitch” our services to the regional offices of one of Canada’s most recognized brands. But we didn’t pitch, we didn’t even realize a formal pitch was the expectation.

We just asked questions. We had a conversation.

And, a few days later, we got the contract.

By 2019 we were working with some of the biggest organizations in the country, and some up-and-comers that were growing from obscurity into multi-hundred-million dollar businesses, almost overnight.

I was also planning and writing content, and helping manage marketing teams, for an enormous advertising agency holding company. I would end up creating the marketing positions and website copy for agencies the world over, from Canada to Europe to South Africa.

Then, in March of 2020, we were on vacation in Florida. Yes, that March. The big one.

As we walked the beautiful beach, against the backdrop of increasingly desperate news, we realized that, while we loved our work, we were missing something.

We were missing working with entrepreneurs. Other small business owners. Real people, not just giant departments and billion-dollar businesses.

Be careful what you wish for, they say.

In April of 2020, virtually every project we were working on was abruptly stopped as every large organization around the world started pausing budgets and reassessing priorities.

Suddenly, that new marketing campaign, or website launch, or PR program was less necessary, less urgent, than it had been in a pre-pandemic world.

With the brief downtime we found ourselves with, we scrambled to help our restaurant-owning friends launch an online store and delivery service.

But then business picked up as we successfully pivoted from large marketing organizations to small businesses and entrepreneurs who didn’t have the luxury of pausing their marketing efforts. We started working with the owners of an independent insurance brokerage and even came on as fractional CMO for a time.

We began working with the owners of shipping companies, artisanal manufacturers, and even solo consultancies.

But, most importantly, by the end of 2020 something else had started:

This newsletter.

Now, for over four years, I’ve been writing about how to demonstrate your value at a distance.

And while there were many changes in the business before the newsletter, the most important ones happened after.

We went from mere marketers to specialists.

The newsletter and its necessary focus and frequency meant we were able to carve out a space of credibility based on unique intellectual property, fuelled by our consulting work and experience.

Today, our clients are typically the owners of B2B service businesses, like investment advisory firms, banking support services, digital marketing agencies, and independent consultants.

They come to us, not because we do many things for many clients, but because we do one thing best for one type of client:

We show experts the way to always knowing what to say.

Nothing more, nothing less. And the work we do today is, occasionally, almost unrecognizable when compared to what we did in our earliest days.

But, you know what? While what we do now is more limited, more precise, more focused than what we did before, we can do it because of everything we’ve already done.

We can riff on a client’s marketing position and help them see it more clearly in the moment because we’ve given industry speeches at international conferences with basically no notice.

We can quickly write the homepage copy for a consultant because we’ve written thousands and thousands of website words for global agencies and organizations.

And I can write this newsletter every single weekday because I’ve been writing it for almost half a decade now.

The expertise you accumulate is a product of your experience. The focus you can apply to your work comes from the variety of inputs you’ve been able to acquire over your years of work.

So don’t despair if your work currently feels unfocused.

Don’t worry if your clients are too varied.

Instead, use that experience, use those connections, to understand what you do best. Better than anyone else, for your very best clients.

Don’t discount everything you’ve done just because it doesn’t fit nicely into a package.

Rather, focus it. Understand what all your experience has in common, what it’s all led you to, and focus on that.

The common thread between every project we’ve ever had (that went well, that we liked) is that it was about helping our expert clients know what to say.

In the moment, and at a moment’s notice.

So this is a long (too long!) way of saying something simple:

It’s been eight years now of doing what we do, and I hope to be doing this for many, many more.

But here’s what I know: What we’ll be doing eight years from now will be different from what we do today. Almost unrecognizably so.

But each step, each iteration, will be small, manageable, and sustainable. The important thing is that we keep taking them.

And the important thing for you, if I can share any lesson at all, is this:

Keep making progress, keep taking steps in the right direction. One day, you’ll look back and be shocked at where you started, and amazed at how far you’ve come.

One step at a time, for as long as it takes.

Reply to this email to tell me what you think, or ask any questions!

Kelford Inc. shows experts the way to always knowing what to say.