In a soul-filling twist of fate, my path, our path, crossed with that of Rob Hyams.

In the middle of the whirlwind that is COVID, one of our senior team members had to take a leave of absence and we needed someone to help pick up some of the slack. A partner of ours referred me to Rob and we met over coffee.

Rob had worked at one of Ottawa’s largest creative agencies, so, needless to say, expectations were high. (Sorry Rob.) Immediately he conveyed a sense of ease and understanding and not an ounce of judgment. He simply got us, where we were and what we were going through.

In our initial and subsequent chats, we covered everything under the sun. Our raison d’être and aspirations, our business model, resource allocation, client roster, brand positioning, you name it.

In the end, I realized that we, KarmaDharma, clearly needed some help to put into place everything we help our clients with, i.e. strategy and marketing…I know….I know…we truly were/are the poorly shoed cobbler.

He went through our website and came back with one overarching message: our website demonstrates a lack of confidence… This, somewhat literally, winded me. I will say that it did take a few minutes to compose myself and even writing it down now for you still kicks me in the ass. Much like my shrink back in the day, but I digress.

We were trying to be all things to all people for fear of not scooping up every dollar that passed our way. Throwing everything in there just in case. Fear of missing out. Fear that I couldn’t focus my efforts and be a successful entrepreneur. A scarcity mindset to say the least. Painful.

As I described what we were trying to achieve with KarmaDharma, Rob brought up the difference between a marketing shop and a true agency. A marketing shop is a firm that helps clients with tactical elements of their marketing strategy. An agency sees the bigger, broader picture, working on the strategy and plans to take the entire organization to a whole new level.

Every fibre of my being, at every vibrational level, resonated with this.

Despite thinking big picture – let’s change the world, live for a reason, make an impact, and leave a legacy – we were showing up small. I was showing up small.  And it clearly wasn’t/isn’t serving us.

Rob, perhaps unknowingly, bestowed upon us the ability to dream big again. In a way, he gave us permission to be unapologetically ourselves and go for gold.

So we are cleaning house in how we are showing up and talking about ourselves. Stripping down the website content. Shifting our positioning into focus and owning it fully: