By Lindsay Burton, Founder Kayo Conference Series

Early in 2018, I was on a call trying to talk someone into sponsoring one of our events. The person asked me a simple question: Why does Kayo exist? Such an important question. I had no clear answer. I fumbled a wordy response about conferences and communities of women. Finally I gave up.

I replied, “Fair question. Let me get back to you.”

Over the next months, I tackled some of the most intellectually challenging exercises of my career. I needed to distill down why my company exists into one simple sentence. We run conferences for women in male-dominated industries. We are not just another conference organizer. I knew that for sure. But then what are we?How do I explain that in plain language? I was told as a rule of thumb, an educated 13 year old should be able to go to your website and in under 5 seconds understand exactly what you do. That’s much harder than I ever imagined. Simple is not the same as easy.

My journey began towards brand clarity started as follows:

• Hired a dedicated marketing consultant to take an objective look at our company
• Discovered Storybrand and as a team took their online course to learn about storytelling and clarifying your brand message
• Crafted our story, defining the characters in our brand’s story and what they will achieve by working with us – in other words, their transformational journey
• Built a Brand Book to crystallize our message, look and tone
• Created a new wireframe for our website and relaunched

One of the hardest parts has been trying to conduct business as usual while also completely rethinking our communication style and brand. For months, my team rode along with me on a rollercoaster ride, where we reexamined every single word of copy, every process, every communication with clients. They’ve been ever so patient and provided valuable insights. It was a true team effort to burrow towards the core of our company.

By the end of all this, we finally articulated the problem we are trying to solve.

Networking is hard when you are the only woman in the room.

We chose the best way to explain what we do.

Kayo hosts industry summits uniting women professionals for networking and business development, so that they can advance further and faster, together.

We even came up with a tag line:

Trailblaze together

The journey for Kayo is far from over. We’ve just only passed the first mile marker of many to come. Thankfully, it’s great fun and an enormous honor to serve our clientele, who are both women and men who work incredibly hard to achieve their professional goals and want to feel connected to others along their journey.

No woman should walk alone on her path to success. I look forward to continuing this journey together my peers as well as the next generation of leaders. #trailblazetogether

Lindsay Burton is the Founder and President of the Kayo Conference Series.