By: Leandra | September 07, 2018

In a recent blog post, we introduced you to Taryn Kutches and Parker Design. Even though her business is young, Kutches has already found success in her passion career. Like many of us these days, Kutches wears multiple hats. She is a dedicated mother, hard-working sales engineer, and, as you know, the co-founder of Parker Design. In this post, we will be highlighting Taryn’s take on failure and resilience. 


Often times, people are afraid to try new things - even mundane things - out of a fear of failure. Nobody ever wants to be knocked down, hear the the word ‘no’ or simply have something not work out. However, failure is part of human nature. Failure can be good thing. While overcoming failure can absolutely be a testament to the resi...

Community Spotlight: Creating a passion career from a personal need By: Matthew Cavender

By: Leandra | August 24, 2018

Leandra Nisbet and Taryn Kutches

Recently Stingray Advisory Group’s founder, Leandra Nisbet, had the pleasure of interviewing Taryn Kutches, a mother of two whose day job is being a sales engineer and has also found success as co-founder of the women’s fashion backpack company, Parker Design. As fellow entrepreneurs, the women were of no shortage of topics to discuss.

Kutches had always wanted to run a passion career of her own, but deciding on a path, at least initially, proved to be difficult for her. “I don’t have some hobby that I’m crazy good at; I wasn’t some super good chef that dreamed of opening their own restaurant someday or some insane painter that dreamed of being an artist, you know? I never really had that hobby that I wanted to turn into [a career].” Because...

By: Leandra | July 12, 2018

Instagram Tablet Screenshot

Tip #1: Run Photo Contests to Build Buzz and Create Engagement


If you want to elicit more engagement and create more pizzazz for your brand on Instagram, you might want to think about contests. The platform has become a go-to place for those looking to run impactful photo contests -- and for good reason. It’s easy to build a contest, share, and promote it. 

You can simply ask Instagram users to utilize a specific branded hashtag for the contest when tagging their photos. It’ll be quite easy to search through the images, making it easy for users to vote and pick a winning photo!

Tip #2: Incentivize Users with Discount and Promo Codes

There’s a good chance that you offer promo or discount codes on your website, so why not take it u...

By: Leandra | June 21, 2018

Instagram screenshot

Instagram has made huge milestones and leaps over the years to become one of the most popular social media platforms, outperforming Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Reddit combined when it comes to engagement. With more than 800 million active monthly users, Instagram has become a darling for businesses. What’s more -- the platform is built around the premise of creating buzz, something that can do wonders for any business digital marketing strategy.


No matter how you look at it, Instagram will keep pulling in more and more active users, and it’s high time you start using it to take your business to the next level. The bigger question, however, is: which types of businesses should or can stand to benefit from using Instagram? Turns out...

By: Leandra | May 29, 2018

Though 2017 has come to an end, it was certainly a busy year for the social media industry. We expect to see a slew of other best-for-business changes in the next few years. Live video, for instance, continued to perform very well last year, with more and more business leveraging its power to spruce up their marketing campaigns. Gone are the days when businesses only had to share content on social media; today, customer engagement and personalized experiences are the game-changers.

But, that isn’t all in the social media for business space.


Are you looking to keep up-to-date with tips for using social media for business? If yes, you’re in good company. In the post, we are going to take a quick look at two social media trends that every fo...

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