The Grow on Purpose Success Path
Common Workshop Topics
The four tracks that follow offer flexible booking options (Standard Workshop Package or Deep Dive Series). Each session is interactive and focused on producing a tangible outcomes.
Track 1: Brand Strategy & Clarity
Grow on Purpose, Not by Accident
These foundational sessions are built for small business owners who are tired of guessing. You’ll walk away with a clear sense of who you are, who you serve, and how to position your offer so it resonates. Less fluff, more focus — with tools you’ll use immediately to clarify your message, align your values, and lead with confidence.
Track 2: Experience & Design
Make Your Brand Feel as Good as It Looks
It’s not enough to have a logo and some colors. This track shows you how to live your brand across customer touchpoints — from your storefront to your social feed. You’ll learn how to design experiences that reflect your values, eliminate friction, and build trust at every step. Because your brand is more than visuals — it’s how people feel when they interact with you.
Track 3: Technology & AI
Smarter Systems Without the Overwhelm
No coding. No gimmicks. Just practical, ethical ways to use AI and automation to save time, think clearer, and scale without losing your soul. This series helps you structure your work with tools like ChatGPT and Google Workspace — building systems that support (not replace) your voice, values, and goals.
Track 4: Creative Business Foundations
Sell with Integrity. Price with Confidence. Serve with Ease.
You didn’t start your business to become a salesperson — but sales, pricing, and client communication are what keep you in business. This track is designed to help creatives and service pros develop a healthier, more human approach to growth. You’ll learn how to set boundaries, charge your worth, and show up with calm confidence in every conversation.
Track 1: Brand Strategy & Clarity
Get to the root of your brand. These sessions help you build the foundation every successful business needs: purpose, positioning, and a message that actually sticks. We’ll cut through the noise and give you tools to define who you are, who you serve, and how to grow with intention.
Discover Brand Strategy: Aligning Values, Vision, and Mission
Session 01
The essential starting point for every brand. This foundational workshop helps participants uncover and articulate the core essence of their brand, clarifying Core Values, Mission, Vision, and Goals. Leave with a blueprint for defining mutual success and designing transformative offers that align with a purpose beyond profit.
Brand Gaps to Growth Maps: Strategic Self-Assessment
Session 02
Is your brand helping you grow, or holding you back? Participants complete a hands-on self-assessment to map their brand ecosystem. Identify weak links and clarity gaps across Content, Marketing, Sales, Operations, and Customer Support. Walk away with a prioritized action map to focus time and budget on the most critical areas for accelerated growth.
Story-Driven Marketing for Makers, Doers & Dreamers
Session 03
Learn a repeatable storytelling framework—including the 6-Part Story Arc—to connect your passion to your customers’ hearts. This session teaches you to position your customer as the hero and build trust and loyalty by articulating your Purpose Beyond Profit.
Track 2: Experience and Design
Branding isn’t just how things look — it’s how they feel, and how they work. These workshops guide you through translating your strategy into visuals, environments, and experiences that feel right, look great, and build real trust with the people you’re here to serve.
Show Up Smart: The Visual Identity Check-Up
Session 01
Bring your current logo, website, or marketing materials for a constructive audit. This session clarifies how visual design functions as problem-solving, not just decoration. Participants will leave with a clear “what to fix first” checklist to ensure their visual identity accurately reflects their brand’s quality and consistency.
The Minus Mindset: Simplifying the Customer Journey
Session 02
Today’s customers don’t just want more — they want easier. This session shows you how to remove friction from your brand experience by subtracting what gets in the way: confusing choices, clunky processes, and unclear promises.
Local Roots, Big Impact: Place-Based Branding for Small-Town Success
Session 03
Turn your location and regional culture into a strategic strength. Learn how to weave local pride and values into your brand story using frameworks like the Orchard/Tree model (Roots, Trunk, Branches, Fruit) and the Lean In / Break Out Grid. Ideal for tourism, craft, and community-minded enterprises.
Track 3: Technology & AI
This sequence is designed specifically for small business owners and nonprofit leaders who are curious about AI but overwhelmed by the hype.
They’re not looking to become prompt engineers. They just want to save time, stop doing everything manually, and get their message across more clearly — without losing the human touch that sets them apart.
This series meets them where they are. We’ll walk through how to make AI a strategic collaborator in their business, not just a toy for writing Instagram captions. It’s made for folks already dabbling in tools like Chat GPT and Google Drive — but ready for structure, clarity, and systems that actually scale.
Designing the Relationship: How to Talk to Machines
Session 01
Build a strategic AI collaboration system you can actually use.
We’ll open by addressing the #1 pain point: most small business users flail around with random prompts and get inconsistent results. This session teaches the mindset shift that changes everything — from flailing to flow.
Beyond the Prompt: Feedback Loops That Multiply Your Work
Session 02
If session one is about clarity, session two is about compounding.
Most people leave so much value on the table: past newsletters, reviews, proposals, ideas buried in Google Docs. This workshop teaches them how to feed that material back into tools like ChatGPT and Notebook LM in smarter ways.
Systems That Scale: Automate Beyond the Noise
Session 03
Many small business owners try to scale with chaotic tools or bloated automations they never use. This final session is all about creating just enough automation to free up energy — without losing your personal touch.
Crafting an Ethical AI Policy Plan
Session 04
Use AI wisely, transparently, and in alignment with your brand values.
Using practical templates and facilitated exercises, participants will draft their own Ethical AI Policy Plan to guide internal use, protect IP, and communicate trust to their clients.
Track 4: Business Foundation
Whether you’re navigating pricing, sales, or the service side of your business — these sessions give you the tools and mindset to lead with clarity and confidence. We’ll tackle the behind-the-scenes systems that make growth feel sustainable, not stressful.
Sales for Introverted Creatives 1
No Sleaze Required
Session 01
Lean into how NOT being a salesperson is your superpower in sales. In Part 1, we focus inward: helping participants name their internal resistance, understand their unique communication style, and map the stages of the sales cycle with clarity. We introduce tools from personality frameworks to build strengths based confidence and alignment.
Sales for Introverted Creatives 2
Handling Challenging Client Scenarios
Session 02
In Part 2, we turn outward: learning how to establish pricing with integrity, prevent objections before they arise, and recognize what clients are really asking beneath the surface. We explore the Hierarchy of Objections (Time, Money, Fear, Shame) and how to meet each with calm, grounded clarity.).
Simple Pricing Like a Pro for Service-Based Industries
Session 03
Develop profitable pricing strategies that truly reflect your value, aligning financial goals with your vision for work-life balance. Explore the contrast between commodity pricing and value-based pricing to confidently set rates that support your lifestyle and attract the right clients.
Some Past Sessions from the Archives
We Re-Imagined Business as Usual.
Back in June, during that brief window before Delta was all rage, John worked with AIGA AVL to moderate a hybrid event at The Foundry Hotel and also as a FREE live webinar on Zoom.
One year ago we had sat down with a group of marketing professionals and business owners to grapple with the challenges brought on by the pandemic, global shutdown, and the socio-political upheaval that ensued. Clearly, it was time for Business as Un-usual.
The shift to social distancing, remote working, and self-isolation of COVID-19 challenged business owners to creatively and empathetically adapt their marketing. Over the course of the past year, many businesses redefined themselves. Some have thrived and others have barely survived or shuttered their doors. Businesses and audiences are made of people whose lives have been changed by the loss, grief, and opportunity the last year has given us.
During this hybrid panel discussion, we brought back the same group that we talked with one year ago when we were three months into Covid. We addressed marketing tactics that worked and hard lessons learned over the past year, pandemic pivots, and we looked forward to tactics businesses can use as we emerge. Now that we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, let’s Re-imagine what Business as Usual means now.
If you are curious how other professionals are Marketing Beyond COVID, and you missed it, here is the recording.
Marketing During COVID 19 and Beyond
AIGA Asheville hosted this event. Moderated by John Hornsby and featuring panelists Aisha Adams of Aisha Adams Media, Nicole Hairfield of Moonlight Makers, Nathan Jordan of Market Connections, and Catherine Campbell of Bright Planning and Asheville Strong.
