Clarity through purpose

I’m going to type this one out.

I use AI to write so much of what I do these days. I dictate, because it’s fast and efficient. But between all the superfluous em dashes – and the excessive attempt at injecting personality and yet falling ever so far short, this is better written by hand.

I’ve worked with literally hundreds of small businesses over the past eight years. For the last five years, I’ve delivered perhaps 70 strategies. Brand or marketing, but in any case, it’s business strategy. Overall direction and clarity for people with ambition that just need a little rudder steer.

But if you’ve remotely followed along with what I do, or yet, appear to do for work, since I arrived here in the Clare Valley, it’d probably appear I have been rudderless. Oh, the irony!

Six months out from arriving I asked myself ‘what of my agency life that I left in Geelong before starting to travel did I want to say I was when I arrived at my new home region’.

I’m in marketing. Branding and identity. It wasn’t lost on me that unlike heading back to Geelong where everyone knew me – where I was already ‘branded’ – I had an opportunity to pick and choose.

I can program. Trained in Java, but I can read and use just about any language I need to. For websites it’s mostly PHP, JavaScript, and CSS.

I’ve run businesses, forever. In my twenties together with a very visionary owner, I helped build a national art and craft wholesaler into an internationally recognised brand in the industry and before leaving helped sow the seeds of expanding in retail in Australia – that business, was Kaisercraft.

In my final three years as general manager our fast growth was recognised on BRW’s fastest growing private companies in Australia. Somewhere in the 60s, in the top 100. Not bad, for a bunch of twenty-somethings.

By the time I started travelling – about fives years ago – I’d worked in agencies for a cumulative seven years or so. With great handle on marketing strategy and planning, and everything that comes with that.

I’d also shot tons of photography and video for those clients. I looked professional in this area too. And not just professional in a way that if you say you’re something you expect people to recognise you as such. Professional in a way that my work HAD been hung on a billboard, been on a magazine cover, and pushed out through highly influential social channels.

But here I was arriving in Clare confused about what I wanted and needed to be.

I was tremendously lucky. Early on, Nadinne (Nadinne Grace Photography), a local photographer and I formed a connection. Nads is a gun. As such, was overloaded with work for some time and was ready to be more available on the farm. I didn’t have any relationships here.

When you’re a professional anything, you want to refer people you can’t serve at the time, to people you trust. After all, your referral is like your word. Nad’s had seen my Insta profile and I guess could tell I was OK at it all.

We caught up over coffee and Nads started referring work to me from there. With no expectation of reciprocity and no fear of competition. That’s something, hey!

I’ve told her numerous times since how grateful I was for that. It really kicked things off for me and I often describe it to people as – quite a soft landing in the region.

After two years or so of mostly being recognised as a photographer slash videographer in the region, I got the itch to start doing more strategy and marketing work.

A couple of projects had allowed me to take clients through strategy, to inform content, and like everywhere else in the country (and business in general really) strategy was missing.

Further, the same problems with marketing are apparent in this region as every other I’ve worked with. People are doing too much marketing, with little idea why they’re doing what they’re doing, less idea if it’s working, and no rudder to guide them.

If you hit refresh on my website during the past year, you would have seen change after change, leading me to what I have today. You would have wondered if I had a rudder too.

It’s so true, that sometimes being in business you’re so close to what you do it’s like you’re inside the bottle and so you can’t read the label on the outside of YOUR bottle.

I’ve read many labels on the outside of the bottle, for many businesses. But for so long I struggled to take myself through the process.

What do I want?

Who do I want to serve? And for what outcomes?

What do I love?

Where can I carve a place out, that gives me the value I need, and my customers what they need in return?

And so on.

I’ve never stopped working in strategy, marketing, and websites though. I just wasn’t doing any of that work locally.

This all started to change mid last year when I started to change what I put out.

I picked up a couple of website jobs in Clare, which also brought in my content experience (photo and video). They were also rather technical jobs too. Some geolocation tracking among my favourite technical features.

It was SO cool to once again start doing what I do best but for the region I now live in.

I have a terribly unique set of skills. Without getting ahead of myself, I’d guess there’s less than two handfuls of people in Australia who could say they’ve fundamentally understood business like I do, have the marketing experience I do, can not just build websites but program custom functionality too, and can create professional production quality video too (and photos).

The curse is this, though – when you have those skills, what do you want to do with them? And how do you use them to derive the best value aligned with the lifestyle you want?

I recently answered this question for myself. Finally.

I ditched the value part. I do OK, and I’m content with my income. If things change, grow, shrink, whatever over time, I’m cool with that. I’m focusing on purpose. Of course, there’s economic realities. But I figure in time that’ll all work out if I do my best work.

What I worked out is I’m best for small businesses.

Now, that seems rather generic so let me add some meat to the bones.

I’ve ALWAYS loved small businesses and moreover the people behind them. Time and time again I’ve met the people behind them, who share the vision and aspirations, and I love the dreams. I love the change they’re trying to make and the impact they’re aiming for – whether for themselves and their families, or their community.

The thing is though, I grew up watching my parents try and for the most part fail, time and time again in small business. It was painful. And I’ve seen it so often since.

People fail entirely or struggle to get traction because of basic shit. Like marketing – presenting yourself in an appealing way – not making your customers trip over themselves to deal with you, not putting time and effort into dumb shit. It’s an epidemic really.

But more of you deserve to win. You’re the economic drivers. You give our kids a chance as they’re learning what it is to be employed. You drive visitation to our regions. And without money coming in, places go backwards. So for all those reasons, you MUST succeed. At least, enough of you MUST.

So that’s where it comes from for me. That’s why I’ve finally landed on ‘Helping ambitious regional people bring bold ideas to life.’

I always say to people, with strategies, every word should earn its place have purpose and contribute to the clarity of the strategy.

Well every word in that headline for me has earned its place too.

Since leaving Woolworths as a department manager trainee at 20 (because I knew I didn’t want to be a tiny cog in a massive wheel) that’s all I’ve ever done – helped ambitious regional people grow their bold ideas. And now you know why too.

I’ll be honest, the clarity it has brought me is welcome. I’m ready to settle and do the good work I know I’m capable of. To settle and stop chasing stuff I think I could do well, but am not passionate about.

I’m not passionate about working with big/ger businesses driven by commercial objectives only. I want to be in the trenches, face to face with the owners of the business, or the people that really care about the idea thiving in regional communities.

I want to understand the drivers, why it’s important, and what the gaps and opportunities are if I can help. Helping make a real difference to their life or cause.

I’ve always been aware of the privilege it is to work with someone even for a moment and the difference that can make for them, and their dream long term.

I can’t wait to work with more businesses in the region and help them break through that ceiling they’ve hit.

My goal is to help more regional businesses, regional ideas, thrive. If good ideas around here fail, I’ve failed. That’s what’s driving me now. That’s what you’re going to feel from my content from now.

I recently worked out: In life, I’ve always felt most successful when I’ve contributed in meaningful ways to other people’s success. I’m chasing that feeling.

So, what’s your purpose – besides making money?

~ Tim