Stonecatcher...What?
This summer I spent four hours every Thursday evening for 13 weeks with a cohort of entrepreneurs all working on creating or improving our business foundations through ILT Academy. It was an incredible opportunity I was only able to do because of Northspan's DAWN scholarship. (Don't worry, this isn't an ad or sponsorship post, though I will link a resource for business owners and nonprofit leaders on the Iron Range at the end of this post.)
As a lifelong learner and a person terminally afflicted with accidental teacher's pet disease, I had a great time working with other folks who are at various stages of their early entrepreneurial journeys. Folks were in the process of starting businesses and organizations that covered a wide range of work, including an organization building a community space for folks who were unhoused and in recovery, a business preparing homes and homeowners for fire season, and an organization gathering regional game geeks (like me). There are a lot of things I could share about the process, so feel free to reach out and ask if you're interested in my ILT Academy experience.
The blessing of this opportunity for me was more than just receiving a scholarship covering the cost. There were some interesting overlaps in things I already do and help others with. I was often asked to help facilitate in my small groups, which became a bit of a joke between me and those I was partnered with frequently. I was able to clarify and answer questions my group members had about what we learned "from the front" and every class I was reminded how much I love what I do. Even though ILT Academy and Stonecatcher are both working with similar audiences and doing similar things, I didn't feel competitive or inferior. (How I see Stonecatcher fitting into the ecosystem of services for small businesses and organizations is probably a future post.) A lot of what we did I was familiar with and even do in my work with clients, but there were several new tools and frameworks that I found to be incredibly helpful to me in the stage my business is in.
The funny part of business ownership is that I need the same things I help my clients do. But knowing what is needed and how to implement it only does me any good if I also do it. This program gave me the space to do that in a way that helped my ADHD focus on my business itself and not solely client work. Just another instance of "they only listen when someone else says it", but the "they" is me.
Here are some of the top things I got out of this experience:
I can communicate what I do in 30 seconds.
I am painfully wordy. Especially when talking with someone new. I hate talking about myself and I want to be clearly understood. This can lead me to then communicate in a way that's actually more confusing, filling my sentences with disclaimers and vocal parentheses, commas, semi-colons, and em-dashes in an effort to ward off whatever I'd consider to be a roadblock to understanding. Why use just a few words when all the words could work together in a sentence to do a thorough job? Sigh.
Now when folks ask me what Stonecatcher is, I can give them my elevator pitch and allow them to ask questions as they are interested.
I have some clear areas of focus for the next fiscal quarter.
When you constantly have ideas, you need to find a way to know what is a good idea and you should work on it now, what is a good idea and should be parked for later, and what isn't a good idea for your business or organization. Before the cohort, I had a ton of good ideas, but I parked them all. It made sense, because I had just launched and only had so much capacity. Now I need to start working on some of those items, but I won't make progress on any of them unless I give myself a timeline to execute them. I left ILT with clear action steps for 30, 60, and 90 days out. By December, I know exactly what I want to have accomplished and have already completed half of those things (including the next takeaway)!
I have rebranded to Stonecatcher Consulting!
I chose the doing business as name for Stonecatcher LLC before I started officially offering services. I have experience in marketing and thought that was where I would focus my business. Stonecatcher Marketing made sense at that time for the name.
As I began working with clients, I saw the non-marketing issues they had that I also had skills and experience working through. I realized that "Marketing" was a bit of a misnomer for folks to know what to expect from me and for the work I love doing. In one of the ILT Academy pitch nights, someone helpfully and rightfully pointed out that marketing really only shows up in the name of my business. Otherwise, marketing is simply a part of the strategy work I do. This feedback ultimately gave me the permission to do what I had been thinking about for months. I changed Stonecatcher Marketing to Stonecatcher Consulting. Same me, same work, just clearer messaging from jump.
So. Allow me to reintroduce myself.
I'm Derekah Kingery, Founder of Stonecatcher Consulting. I help small business owners and leaders of nonprofits and community organizations transform from scrappy to strategic through coaching and consulting. If you are tired of building the plane as it's flying or starting from square one constantly, schedule a call with me -- I'd love to see how I can help!
As promised, here is the resource for Iron Range folks from DAWN MN, powered by Northspan: https://dawnmn.org. I think the Matrix resource is particularly helpful to know what services to check out based on where you are in your entrepreneurial journey!
Imperfectly Yours, Derekah
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