We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Carrie Horn. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Carrie below.
Carrie, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
When I was little, my parents got me involved in all kinds of extracurricular activities. I tried dancing, I played the violin, and I sang, but what I loved most was playing sports. I remember being in third grade and going to soccer practice for the first time: I immediately got a soccer ball to the face while playing goalie! I was a bit shocked, but I also found myself ready to get back on the field to play more. I played basketball in high school and ran track and field in college. More than the lessons learned on the field, court, and track, I was inspired by my teammates and mentors. Being an athlete taught me resilience, and also showed me the strategy behind selecting the right people and bringing out their best skills for the strongest team.
I saw that by finding teammates’ superpowers, we could combine our strengths to succeed. That skillset has translated into many parts of my life and led me down the path to owning a business where I can do that for a living. What I love most about what I do now is working with a client and showing them what differentiates them from the competition. I love finding what makes a brand or service unique and then shining a spotlight on it.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
At Bold Story Marketing, we work with clients to discover their brand superpowers, priority audiences, and standout content channels. We harness the power of storytelling, the strength behind strategic collaborations, and the influence of multi-platform messaging to create a targeted communication plan designed to deliver results.
When I started the company in 2020, I had just transitioned from a decade working as the marketing director for 5280 magazine. Working at a city and lifestyle publication afforded me the opportunity to work with many different types of clients across a myriad of industries. I cast my net wide in the beginning to identify as many new business partners and clients as possible. In the past year, however, we’ve really honed in on working with established local businesses and nonprofit organizations, for whom we provide strategy, public relations, content development, and events. I like to think of these service lines as a big toolkit we can draw from: our team has a variety of skills to bring to the table that can be carefully tailored to meet client needs.
As business grew, I was able to hire an incredibly gifted woman who is now my brand superpower manager, Emily Schryer. She brings to the team highly organized project management, beautiful design skill and experience running events. She also brings an ever-present drive to succeed stronger than most others. Having her on board means we can offer more to our clients and we’re both very proud of the work we produce in collaboration.
New this year, we’ve begun a marketing internship program that allows us to share knowledge and receive creativity and fresh ideas in return.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Three qualities that have served me well in nearly three years of owning this business are motivation, determination, and confidence.
When you create a business, you discover that what it looks like when you start is not what it will look like as it evolves. I think there is an intuition to strive until you get to a comfortable place, or what my business coach likes to call ‘the genius zone’, where client needs align perfectly with services. Until you reach that point, or at least the first level of it, you have to really be motivated to search out what skills you want to use and what clients are the best fit so you both can thrive. There has to be an intense motivation to succeed, because that period of figuring out what you have to offer and how to sell it doesn’t necessarily happen overnight.
I think about determination as never giving up. Inherently for any agency there will be reach clients, unpredictable clients, clients who are more work than others, and clients you love. For me, there was one really sexy client that I really wanted to work with to help plan a high-end event. I was so set on getting the work that I ignored a few red flags involving the contract, the number of hours it would take to plan and a lot of the back and forth and question marks about the purpose of the event. We didn’t end up getting the contract, and not shockingly, the event actually never happened. But all in all, it was a highly disappointing journey. If you’re not determined, a new owner could be dissuaded by the inevitable disappointments of running a business.
We’ve all experienced imposter syndrome. I’ve never felt it as strong as I did when I started my business. I caught myself questioning if I really had the right skill set to succeed in owning and running a business. I think part of fighting that feeling is having a healthy amount of confidence to counterbalance. I have wonderful people in my life who encouraged to remember my strengths and lean in.
If you’re thinking about starting a business or if you already have, one of my biggest pieces of advice is to surround yourself with good people. They don’t have to work for you; they can be in your circle. If you have a collection of supporters that you can collaborate with, bounce ideas off of and get feedback from, you’re in a strong position to succeed. Owning a boutique business like I do, I bring on collaborators all the time to level up.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
We absolutely love to collaborate! We know where our strengths lie and we’re always looking for creatives and people with specific skills to help us bring additional tactics to support our strategic plans. We work with a cadre of website builders, graphic designers, photographers, SEO/Google Ad experts, event designers, videographers, and copywriters. We absolutely love to work with local, talented folks to bring our clients’ brands to life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.boldstorymarketing.com
- Instagram: bold.story.marketing
- Facebook: facebook.com/bold.story.marketing
- Linkedin: linkedin.com/company/bold-story-marketing
Image Credits
Samantha Behrens
