About Nate Lindquist

For years, someone would ask me what I do at a networking event. I'd say "business advisor," and they'd say, "Oh, my cousin does that." I'd feel it in my chest: everything I'd built, flattened into a label in one sentence.

Then I started seeing the same thing in almost every business I worked with.

Cabot, the farmer-owned cheese co-op, was going head to head with Cracker Barrel on cheese. A fuel distributor was fighting every competitor on price per gallon. A bookkeeping firm was promising tax savings, payroll and low fees, like every other firm in town. An electrician was chasing the same builder projects as everyone else. A pottery studio was selling the same classes and after-school events as every other studio.

Every one of them was good at what they did. And every one of them was creating their own competition, and paying for it in price wars, lost bids and survival mode.

Then they stopped.

Cabot discovered its buyers cared about the farmers and their families. So we recorded the Farmers' Stories videos and put a little blue sticker on the cheese: "All proceeds go to the farmers." Sales took off, and Cabot reported about $2 million returned to its farm families that year.

The fuel company started running kids' safety workshops and nearly doubled its revenue in three years. The bookkeeper sold financial confidence instead of tax savings, more than tripled, and sold the business. The electrician created a category of his own and passed $1 million in sales in under nine months. The pottery studio started selling time together and grew to three locations.

And that's just a few of the examples.