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Root + River

a beliefs-based branding strategic consulting team

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Why You Sound Like Everyone Else

January 8, 2021 By Emily + Justin

  As the people in charge of our brands, we want to stand out. We want our voices to rise above the lesser operators, the people who give our industry a bad name. We want someone to hear our message and reach out to us with a hearty: “I want to work with you!” But two issues thwart us in our intentions: We are scared to tell the truth.  We don’t know what to say.  There’s no ...

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Slow Down to Speed Up

November 30, 2020 By Emily + Justin

As a director of marketing, you’ve become friends with timelines and time management, buddies with bandwidth. Even if the leadership team loves your ideas and encourages you to execute, they then repeatedly and persistently ask one question: “When?” When will it be done? When will the website launch? When will the new brand language be live? When will we see results? And you are always ...

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The Unstoppable Power of an Aligned CEO and CMO

November 9, 2020 By Emily + Justin

In our work with mission-based leaders, there is one factor above all others that leads to successful brand differentiation. That factor doesn’t involve SEO or PPC. It’s not the best ad campaign. Nor even the best product.  It is spiritual and strategic alignment between the CEO and the CMO. Particularly when the CEO has been thinking for a while: “There’s something missing from how ...

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Planning for 2021 is foolish: Question instead

September 30, 2020 By Emily + Justin

  A plan is a method for achieving an end, so says Merriam-Webster. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that relying too heavily on the solidity of your plans is foolishness. Defining yourself by your adherence to a plan subject to the current volatility of our world can leave you feeling disappointed, jaded and cynical -- and cause you to operate from a defensive or a defeatist ...

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Bored of Marketing? Have More Fun! An Interview with Misty Megia

August 4, 2020 By Emily + Justin

Q: Who are you and what do you do? I am Misty Megia, I am a CEO/Creative Producer and Business Strategist. Q: Do you have any nicknames you care to share? The only nickname I've heard people call me is Sunshine, which I will gladly take ;) Q: What do you love about marketing? I love the creative world of marketing and figuring out the solutions to consumer problems. I love the art, ...

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Branding is Still a Performance

July 8, 2020 By Emily + Justin

Authenticity. Vulnerability. Transparency. Being more human. These are the standards of a modern brand.  Branding is still a performance, and a powerful one. But it’s not a performance built on pretense, on flimsy supposition or shallow projection. It’s a performance that rises from truth, integrity, and genuine emotion.  It’s a performance because you, as a brand, always have an audience. ...

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Why We Always ‘Love Them Where They’re At’

February 24, 2020 By Emily + Justin

  “I haven’t made any progress since we last met,” a former client said to us when she came to a recent Root + River event. Her shoulders lowered slightly as she spoke. She went on to share all of the milestones she hadn’t hit yet. Her website wasn’t yet live. She hadn’t used her carefully crafted Root Belief yet in conversations. She knew she was months away from sharing her thought ...

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Mission Statements Suck

February 10, 2020 By Emily + Justin

They don’t suck because they are a bad idea or because they don’t carry within them sound notions around why you are doing what you do.  They suck because they are often crafted as a matter of rote, because a book or a consultant told you to create one, so you jammed together a bunch of ideas and wrote one, then shoved it into a document, a folder, a file and put it away. Or, perhaps, you hung ...

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An Intrinsic Brander’s Guide to Honing Yearly Intentions

January 24, 2020 By Jennifer Lawhead

By Jennifer Lawhead When we set goals, we don’t create them in a boardroom. Or in a formal meeting. Or a Zoom call. Or in a fancy document with KPIs and milestones. No, this year, we created our intentions – we say “meh” to the word goals – on the top of a hiking trail in Austin, Texas. The blood was pumping, the view was beautiful and we were suddenly crystal clear on what we wanted to ...

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How Do I Do Big Marketing With A Small Team?

December 13, 2019 By Emily

As the director of marketing, you are one person. You are one person who acts as the chief mouthpiece, the brilliant broadcaster and the tenacious town crier for your big organization. With limited resources, it’s up to you to manage publicity, message, brand voice, campaigns, digital, visuals, and video, all while vetting new marketing advice and services, newfangled technology and CEOs who ...

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Co-Founder @emilyatlarge was recently asked about ...

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Co-Founder @emilyatlarge was recently asked about intentions.“No words came to me,” she writes. “Instead, my heart filled, my mind flooded with emotional visuals, forms and feelings blending seamlessly into one another. (This is how most important ideas begin within me.)”Read more about why she doesn’t do resolutions and her unique process for setting intentions. Link in bio

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In the years I spent as part of a fundamentalist ...

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In the years I spent as part of a fundamentalist church, “Grow where you’re planted” was a common trope. It was typically used as an admonishment to someone’s complaining about their circumstances, writes @fosterthinking.The phrase is an adapted relic of survival. While its roots are in hope, it’s usage in contemporary times encourages hopelessness, he continues.Visit the link in bio to read Justin’s three tips if you’re stuck in a survival situation or mindset.

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For those of you who are new here, welcome! We’d...

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For those of you who are new here, welcome! We’d love to share a little bit about who we are.We are a team of four (from left): Jen, Justin, Emily and Cat. Our mission is to inspire others to go inward. We are the founders of intrinsic branding, the practice of building your brand from the inside out. No cheesy gimmicks or taglines allowed in our work.A few more facts about us: We are defiers. Each of us have stories about going against the status quo, shaking up the stale and trying new things.  We are teachers. Our team loves guiding others, teaching new concepts and freely sharing what we know. Plus, Cat was an actual teacher earlier in her career! We are a silly bunch. Ask Justin about his library of Dad jokes.Drop us a line below to say hi and ask us a question.Photo credit: Jean Laninga
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We believe all great brands are spiritual experiences. Branding is an experience that will change you. It will shift the borders of your thinking and give you a practical framework for how to collectively carry the brand forward.

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  • 3 Mistakes You Could Be Making When Telling Stories
  • The Unstoppable Power of an Aligned CEO and CMO

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