The big picture:

In 2022 Rob Myers’ 12-year old business, then known as Ohio Industrial Energy, had specialized in saving companies money on their energy spend, and business was booming. But then, a major shift in the global energy marketplace forced major changes to their business model: the beginning of the war in Ukraine. 

After expanding services beyond energy, serving clients outside of their traditional industrial industry, and expanding across state-lines, suddenly the “Ohio Industrial Energy” name and home-grown story no longer fit the company they had become.

But what began as a messaging project with Storyforge turned into something much deeper: a totally new (and more resilient!) story for the entire company. Over the course of a year, Ohio Industrial Energy evolved into TogetherSolve.

Rob Myers, owner of TogetherSolve, reflected on the relationship between marketing and story:

“Now that I’ve seen how the process worked, I would give advice to companies to invest in your story first, because then you know how to market and if your marketing is going to work. Once you have your story, you aren’t going to change it.”

The challenge:

The war in Ukraine turned the energy market upside down. Ohio Industrial Energy was very good at saving customers money through third party suppliers; they suddenly found themselves having to send customers back to the utility companies instead. Three rocky, uncertain quarters ticked by, and no one was sure what was next for the business.

“There was a panic moment that led to engaging in thinking about this,” said Rob Myers, owner of (what’s now called) TogetherSolve. “So I said to myself, I have other skills and practices where I could help businesses save money. Perhaps we should diversify our business and our messaging in case another black swan event such as this happens again.”

The company engaged Storyforge in oder to create  a story to drive new marketing and messaging and, hopefully, also drive the business into a more optimistic future.

After working with Storyforge:

Right from the start, the work with Storyforge went a lot deeper than we expected, and common themes emerged across the company’s many stakeholders.

“I was expecting this [story] to come out of Storyforge’s brain, instead they coached us, engaged stakeholders and guided the whole process. For example, I never really thought about trying to discover common themes of our story from a patchwork of our clients and vendors. That just never occurred to me to try to weave a thread that way.” – Rob Myers, Owner

Together, they did the kind of deep work that can be extremely challenging for small businesses like Ohio Industrial Energy to find the resources to accomplish on its own. They were able to get down to the foundational whys of the business, instead of, as Rob put it, “just trying to keep the lights on.”

As the insights emerged tying together their varied services, it became clear that the story of their growing business was larger than the one that could be told in its current container. Rob and his team realized they had a bigger vision and purpose than simply the “how” of saving clients money on energy bills. They were equipping their clients with the information and insights they need to make better decisions about their biggest costs (from energy to real estate and telecom). 

Rob explained: “In today’s world, no one can afford to waste precious resources. By helping our clients  save time, money and effort, we realized we were enabling them to invest in people, realize more potential and do more good. And more good is good for us all.”

The team decided to keep Storyforge on retainer to see the work through as the company rebranded, which made the whole transformative journey feel cohesive.

“We crafted our story, which led to keeping Storyforge on retainer as a part of our team to engage a marketing company that they recommended to actually come up with a whole new name for the company, new brand, new website, and actually launching the new brand. We are small by design to keep our overhead low. What I think was really brilliant about the process was to have the same people that created the story become key members of the team to help guide the marketing to make that story and brand come to life.” – Rob Myers, Owner 

The transformation went far beyond a surface-level rebrand. Unearthing the story of TogetherSolve meant a total broadening of their perspective. As Rob reflected, “I would have called us a pretty localized brand prior to this work. I now view this more as a national brand because we can do work nationally.”

Growing into TogetherSolve started as a focused messaging project, but it turned into something much larger, more strategic, and longer-lasting that would go on to drive strategic decisions far into the future.

“The rallying cry around the story will help execute a messaging strategy at the end of the day. I guess this sounds like a play on words, but if you’re not strategizing about story, then what is your strategy? Marketing strategies change, stories don’t. Whatever we’re gonna do for marketing with our new brand, we can adjust. But we’re not gonna adjust our core story.” – Rob Myers, Owner 

Go deeper: on Storyforge’s impact

• On setting up a small business for growth: “We’re really well positioned to level up, which is what we were looking for. For small businesses, you’re so involved in the day to day. Even if you’re thinking of the big picture, it’s hard to execute on the big picture.” – Rob Myers, Owner

• On marketing versus story: “If I had a bucket of money to spend, and I had to allocate it to marketing or allocate it to forging my story, it would go to my story. The marketing can come anytime after the story. I know we’re constantly evolving, but I don’t think the common truths of what you’re doing change.” – Rob Myers, Owner 

On working with Storyforge:

“Who’s the ideal Storyforge client? I mean, honestly, I think the better question is, Who would NOT be a Storyforge client? I think everybody could benefit from refining their story, and thinking about where they’ve come from and where they’re going. The Storyforge process kind of forces that to happen.” – Rob Myers, Owner 

“Storyforge is really going to help you discover who you are and where you’re going – and along the way really give you a good message to carry. “ – Rob Myers, Owner

To learn more about how Storyforge can help you forge your meaningful story and get everyone and everything in your business on the same page, click the button below to get in touch with our team.