Why the Name "Stonecatcher"?

My logo is catching stones!

At the time I started stressing out about what to name my brand new business venture, I was reading Bryan Stevenson's incredible book, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. In it, he shares a story about a woman who came up to talk to him in while he was in court. She had heard him give a sermon that stuck with her:

“...I also reminded people that when the woman accused of adultery was brought to Jesus, he told the accusers who wanted to stone her to death, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” The woman’s accusers retreated, and Jesus forgave her and urged her to sin no more. But today, our self-righteousness, our fear, and our anger have caused even the Christians to hurl stones at the people who fall down, even when we know we should forgive or show compassion. I told the congregation that we can’t simply watch that happen. I told them we have to be stonecatchers.” (Stevenson, 2015)

My faith has always been really important to me, and I've always been a helper. If you don't count my first job (Pizza Hut at 16), I have worked for schools and nonprofits my whole working career, until I went back to school for my MBA and started doing marketing work for a friend's startup. I'm not going to lie, marketing is not my passion. What I love is figuring out how to solve problems, how to make processes smoother, and how to help people and communities thrive. In my marketing work I kept coming across the same problems. Clients, who were mostly indie creators and small business owners, wanted help with their marketing. This almost always meant "I'd like someone to post regularly on social media".

I can do that easily (For others, I mean. As you can see, I'm still less than perfect about my own accounts 😅), but to do so in a way that is actually moving the needle for clients, I need to know their marketing plan. If they don't have one, I need foundational information about their business and goals to create one myself to work off of. It was rare to work with someone who knew exactly who they were targeting with their social media, or what platforms they should be on and why.

Lots of information exists online about business basics and marketing, but the problem is that it's presented in a way that is intentionally generic, to cast a wide net of relevance. Someone can easily collect dozens of templates, bookmark tons of how-two articles, and save a bunch of "tips and tricks" photos and videos on Instagram, but not all of that information is immediately actionable for them.

When someone has moved past the point where generic business and marketing advice is helpful, who is going to help them contextualize it for their own businesses and organizations?

That's where I come in. Not all passionate experts are also business and marketing strategists, and many find that piece of business-ownership stressful, confusing, or just plain time-consuming. I want to stand in the gap, catching the "stones" thrown at small business owners, nonprofit workers, and community organizers - freeing them up do the work they do best. This means partnering with them to create a clear path forward, with capacity-aware strategies and plans. I do this through coaching and consulting.

It brings me a tremendous amount of joy see the look on a client's face when the business they have been working towards but couldn't articulate comes to life! Equally, I love stepping in when an organization doesn't have the resources to implement a needed change or execute a project. It is a privilege to get to be the one who provides the assistance they need, and to make it easier for them to do the work they set out to do in the first place. I'm a Stonecatcher. What stones are coming your way, and how can I help?