How Sara Amplified Her Business by Embracing her Vision with Spark Sessions
Welcome to Thought Leader Stories
This series highlights the incredible stories of ambitious changemakers, experts, and thought leaders. Read on to explore how we helped them transform their business and amplify their impact—on their own terms.
As told to and written by copywriter, Nailah King of The Content Witches.
Meet Sara
Sara Lobkovich (she/her) is a Strategy and OKR Coach and Principal Consultant at Red Currant Collective LLC. She helps leaders and teams better understand their strengths and create and achieve their high-impact goals. After a successful corporate career, she wanted to make her next move.
She saw two options: joining the C-Suite or venturing out on her own. After a detour into what would be her final role as an employee, in 2021 she started her business. As her business grew, she became known for the Objectives and Key Results (OKR) niche.
A Niche of One’s Own
While her business officially launched in 2021, Sara’s entrepreneurial story started much earlier. As a teen, she co-founded her first company in the online space, which taught her lifelong important lessons, including how and how not to be a leader and run a company.
Sara was heading in a new direction following a successful career in the traditional workforce. After a challenging but ultimately rewarding season in her final role, the call to entrepreneurship rang loud and clear. It presented the opportunity to do all the challenging and impact-focused work she was doing in her senior executive roles but for herself.
But not everyone saw the vision.
While her business officially launched in 2021, Sara’s entrepreneurial story started much earlier. As a teen, she co-founded her first company in the online space, which taught her lifelong important lessons, including how and how not to be a leader and run a company.
Sara was heading in a new direction following a successful career in the traditional workforce. After a challenging but ultimately rewarding season in her final role, the call to entrepreneurship rang loud and clear. It presented the opportunity to do all the challenging and impact-focused work she was doing in her senior executive roles but for herself.
But not everyone saw the vision.
Sara was repeatedly told that being a strategist and strategy coach wasn’t a viable stream of business.
“I was told over and over that you can’t be a strategist for a living. Like, that’s not a thing. When I would say I want to try doing this on my own, people would say that no one pays for strategy. You’re not going to be successful as a solo strategist.”
Backed by her in-depth expertise in OKRs and the high demand for support with implementing OKRs within organizations worldwide, she had a consistent stream of qualified leads for the first few years of her business, including referrals.
As her business evolved, she was ready to explore moving beyond the solution-aware niche she was known for in OKRs. Still, she needed help to connect with potential clients whose problems she could solve through her evolving frameworks.
She also struggled to reach and invite new audiences as she focused mainly on her existing clients.
"My business was 100% referral-based, and whenever I tried to stretch beyond that, it was incredibly discouraging. People looking for help with OKRs were hungry for the help and solutions I offered, but when I tried to connect and network with people outside of the OKR space, I'd hear over and over: 'I just don't understand what you do.'"
— Sara Lobkovich, OKR Coach, Strategist, & Author
Exploring Beyond the Norm
Sara tried to get help with her marketing before, but she was continually frustrated by the support she received.
“I’ve done a lot of programs. I still recommend and refer people to them. They’re really good group programs. But, for those of us in atypical niches, the group programs can be frustrating. It’s discouraging because then it’s just more of the same: “I don’t understand what you do. I don’t get it.” And so even excellent group programs can struggle to meet the needs of folks who might have more edge scenarios or more edge case businesses.”
Sara tried to get help with her marketing before, but she was continually frustrated by the support she received.
Whether it was insisting that she dilute her message, generalize her offerings, or discouraging her from specializing further, the experience working with strategists in the past was a less than positive one.
Sara originally connected with Sarah years ago on Twitter. There, they became fast friends and peers and stayed in touch.
In the early stages of her business, Sara poured through Sarah’s free resources as she built it, and she credits these with being some of the fundamental tools that helped her during those early days.
After reflecting on her brand and taking notes, Sara contacted Sarah.
Creating a Shared Language to Achieve Goals
As they worked together within Spark Sessions to refine Sara’s marketing and message, unlike in her past experiences, Sarah supported her in niching down within the OKR space and creating a path for her to connect with people who’d never heard of OKRs.
“I needed someone who understood my business elements, who understood what I wanted to accomplish as a consultant, and how we can take my skill set and create something easy for someone to understand. Sarah went through the same things that I did. I knew that I could trust her to help me figure out this framework and get it out of my head.”
During her time in Spark Sessions, she also worked with Sarah to amplify the framework that was already an integral part of her business and is one of the ways she builds accessibility and breaks down barriers in her work with clients.
“My work relies very heavily on frameworks as they have become part of the mission of accessibility, increasing equity, and reducing bias because, with my work in workplaces, frameworks fill gaps in power and privilege. Creating and aligning frameworks that give us all a shared language and a shared starting place means we can better support folks around their starting place and provide clear expectations and scaffolding for people to succeed.”
— Sara Lobkovich, OKR Strategist, Coach, & Author
Connecting with audiences on her own terms
With Sarah’s support, she’s since coined a unique term for her audience, started blogging for her business now that she’s armed with a massive library of topic ideas, and continues to keep working on her business by accessing the comprehensive client resources, included in the aftercare.
Since working with Sarah, Sara has adapted her marketing to suit her personality and what works best from a visibility perspective.
Sara self-identifies as a reluctant entrepreneur and would much rather have the attention and focus on her work, which can make marketing difficult.
Equipped with a foundational framework, she works within what feels most comfortable for her while reaching the people who need her the most.
“I wish I didn’t have to market my business, I would be perfectly happy just doing what I do and never doing any marketing. But working with Sarah, and the outcomes of working with Sarah, is that I don’t feel like I’m marketing. Instead, I get to sit down and write a blog post about something cool.”
Sara self-identifies as a reluctant entrepreneur and would much rather have the attention and focus on her work, which can make marketing difficult.
“Doing the marketing that comes naturally to me and that fits me in long-form writing, in social media that actually feels authentic and good to me, not yucky. That’s been a huge outcome of my work with Sarah and a growing impact on my business and my confidence to take it where I want to.”
Equipped with a foundational framework, she works within what feels most comfortable for her while reaching the people who need her the most.
Marketing is now more accessible to Sara, and while being in marketing mode is not her preference, it feels more natural and, at times, hardly feels like marketing at all.
Sarah has helped Sara become more comfortable and confident in sharing her most authentic thoughts regardless of what any “reply guy” has to say.
“Finding Sarah and the people in my niche who want more was proof of concept. Sarah “getting” me and my brand was proof of concept. With the confidence it brings to be more authentically me in my marketing, I get more comfortable at it—and the more I attract people who are the people I want to work with. Being more “me” brings in people who benefit most from my work.”
Sara credits Sarah as her most supportive and shrewd collaborator, whose opinion, guidance, and voice have led her to make some of her most aligned business decisions.
Thank you, Sara, for sharing your story! We can’t wait to see what’s next for you.
Ready to spark your own next big idea?
Then Spark Sessions is just the ticket to doing so—on your terms, your way.