Insights
Notes on visibility, reputation, and the new shape of B2B trust
Editorial notes and longer pieces from It’s a Shovel. Senior strategic perspective on AI search, reputation work, founder-led growth, and how buyers now find, shortlist, and hire.
Find your Purpose. Live your Truth.
Purpose isn't a mission statement - it's your reason for being. How to find an authentic business purpose and live it credibly.
Bullet Proof your Business with Purpose
The point about stuff you don’t know, is generally that you don’t know that you don’t know. Which in some cases is kind of…
How to get sh!t done with a sense of purpose
Apart from being full of infectious energy, Grant Field, CEO of FedGroup, has to be one of the most likeable CEOs I have ever met. No airs and graces…
Your business needs a clear Purpose to survive
Why a clear, authentic purpose is now essential to survival - driving sustainability, reputation and resilience for founder-led businesses.
About this publication
A few notes on what we publish, and what we do not
We do not write listicles. There is enough “five ways to improve your LinkedIn presence” content in the world already.
We do not write hot takes on industry news unless we have something genuinely useful to add.
We do write longer pieces on the structural shifts in how buyers find and shortlist B2B providers, and shorter pieces on what we are seeing in client work, in the research, and in our own AI visibility data.
We do write pieces that take a clear position, sometimes a slightly contrarian one. We try to be useful rather than safe.
The senior strategic communications discipline has, in our view, been under-served by online content in recent years. There is a great deal of tactical material on individual channels, and very little serious commentary on how reputation actually compounds across them. We aim to write the second category.
Most engagements start with the free AI Visibility Heatmap
If anything you have read here makes you want to know how your own business shows up in AI search, that is the simplest place to begin.