How a former dog trainer turned fractional COO discovered that her unconventional career was exactly what made her stand out.
When someone asks who you'd like to be introduced to, you should probably have an answer—especially when you've helped build one of the country's largest fractional integrator firms.
But Laura Granato, founder of Compass COOs, was struggling to explain who her ideal clients were and what made her different.
“I don't know what to say, because I don't know who I am [professionally] right now,” she told me.
Laura had years of experience helping business owners get their operations under control. She'd identified a promising new market and was already attracting clients.
But her LinkedIn profile was generic, her website was outdated, and her marketing didn't reflect the direction her business was going.
“I don't know how to position myself. My messaging needs to be completely recreated.”
She'd already tried outsourcing her marketing.
Laura had hired a LinkedIn outreach company that promised results through cold messages and scripted responses—she hated it.
The messages were aggressive, impersonal, and nothing like the way she wanted to do business.
“I would rather build up connection,” she explained. Laura believed in building genuine relationships and being helpful, not treating every new connection like a sales opportunity.
She ended the engagement and came to me looking for a way to communicate her expertise without compromising how she did business.
Wait. You used to train dogs? 🐕
One of my favorite things to explore with clients is how they got into the work they're doing today.
Because people often leave the most interesting parts of their careers out of their marketing.
In Laura's case, that was her background as a professional dog trainer.
She'd built a career training dogs, moved into franchising, and eventually transitioned into business operations and fractional leadership.
And I immediately saw a connection.
What if her dog-training experience was the perfect way to explain her approach to running a business?
Training a puppy and growing a business have a surprising amount in common: establishing routines, creating structure, correcting problems before they become habits, and knowing when to get help.
As we explored the parallels, Laura started connecting the stages of raising a dog to the stages of building a business.
Suddenly, her unconventional career wasn't something we needed to explain away.
It was what made her memorable.
Instead of sounding like every other fractional COO, Laura had a story that made people curious about her experience and approach.
Turning her story into a marketing strategy
We also dug into what Laura's clients actually wanted.
They weren't dreaming about better standard operating procedures. They wanted to take a vacation without checking their phones every ten minutes!
They wanted businesses that could run without them—and the freedom to enjoy what they'd worked so hard to build.
Laura understood that feeling personally. She knew how difficult it could be to step away from a business you cared about.
We connected that understanding with her expertise and career story to develop her messaging and content strategy.
But Laura was busy running her business, not trying to become a full-time content creator.
So we built a structured marketing system to get her message in front of the right people consistently, without making marketing another full-time job.
And then someone suggested she give a TEDx talk.
A recruiter came across Laura's LinkedIn content, recognized the connection between training dogs and leading business teams, and suggested she give a TEDx talk.
The very experience that might have seemed irrelevant to her work as a fractional COO had become the thing that made her stand out.
That's the power of a good brand story! Laura didn't need to reinvent herself or add more credentials. She needed messaging that reflected the full value of the experience she already had, and that’s exactly what we did.
good marketing reflects how good you are
You've spent years building your expertise. But when you're so close to your own work, it's easy to overlook the experiences and perspectives that make you different.
Through Language That Sells, I connect those dots and turn your expertise into messaging and marketing systems that help the right people understand your value.
You've already done the work to become exceptional. Your marketing should make that obvious.
