“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 ...
Mission Statements Suck
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 ...
An Intrinsic Brander’s Guide to Honing Yearly Intentions
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 ...
How Do I Do Big Marketing With A Small Team?
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 ...
The Future of Your Brand Starts Now
By Emily Soccorsy and Justin Foster One of the downsides of being an engaged leader in a company is that you really want the company to succeed. You want the profitable business venture that leads to you and your team getting paid, furthering your cause, enjoying accomplishments to succeed. Badly, day-in and day-out. And as fast as possible. You want it to succeed so much it creates ...
What Fear Does to Your Brand
In our work as brand excavators and strategists, we are not working to shoehorn your brand or business into a pre-set market position that we’ve deemed advantageous. That’s Old World branding. What we are ultimately working to do is to inspire you to overcome your fear. Fear is the main dynamic that keeps you from truly becoming a brand. The fears you have may feel monstrous ...
The Off-The-Record Factor: Share Stories You’d Normally Hide
If you were being interviewed by The New York Times about the success of your brand, what would you say? (I’ll give you a moment). Would you explain how you made some smart investments? Would you describe your strong work ethic? Would you acknowledge all of the things you did correctly? Yes, I’m sure you would. As you should! Undoubtedly, if a national newspaper has recognized you as an ...
BrandLab Attendee, We’d Like You to Meet Someone. Yourself.
When is the last time you raced against your buddies to make and fly a paper airline? Or when have you last handwritten something sacred and private, folded it up carefully and discreetly passed to a friend? How about taking the time to sit back and let someone read aloud to you? Has it been awhile? I’d venture to guess it’s because you’re an adult and most of us haven’t done these things ...
Podcast Appearances
Throughout the various podcasts that we’ve been grateful to appear on, it has been such a joy to speak to other experienced leaders who share similar passions as we do. Having the opportunity to help guide visionary leaders convey their message to the world is extremely rewarding, especially when they are ready to let their true self reflect in the ...
Rethinking Branding in the Age of Reimagined Capitalism
By Emily Soccorsy + Justin Foster One of the greatest pains of modern thinking is our addiction to dualism. While we are used to seeing this us-versus-them, black-or-white approach in politics or religion, it’s also incredibly prevalent in businesses. This is where we encounter it the most. Too many Old World leaders still believe that for-profit companies should be run with lightning ...