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Root + River

a beliefs-based branding strategic consulting team

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An Open Letter

March 8, 2019 By Emily

We believe every great brand is a spiritual experience. A movement. A brand is the only place in business where your inner world is experienced by the outer world. For too long, we have accepted the belief that these worlds are supposed to be separate. We say no. When these worlds are kept separate, dissonance occurs. Identity crises emerge. Leaders drift from the mission. Employees feel ...

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Filed Under: 21st Century Branding Tagged With: awake leaders, beliefs-based branding, brand coaching, brand discovery, brand experience, brand identity, brand practice, branding, business, CEO, entrepreneur, intrinsic branding, spirituality in business

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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Filed Under: 21st Century Branding, Intrinsic Branding, Marketing

Connecting the Dots from Mission to Brand

December 14, 2020 By Jennifer Lawhead

An Entrepreneurial Journey of Monetizing Your Mission A rare yet not impossible sequence of events: Seeing a need in the world that sparks a personal mission That mission inspires a product The production of that product turns into a business That business becomes a vehicle for not only serving the injustice but also for inviting others into the mission And the cycle goes round ...

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Filed Under: Uncategorized

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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Filed Under: 21st Century Branding, Intrinsic Branding, Marketing

3 Mistakes You Could Be Making When Telling Stories

November 11, 2020 By Jennifer Lawhead

By Jennifer Lawhead Telling stories about your brand is easy. But practicing storytelling in a way that perks up the ears of those you want to reach, encourages dynamic dialogue and subtly reveals something important about your brand in the process? This skill, my friends, is difficult. “I’ve tried telling stories about my brand before, but they’re not having the impact on our audience ...

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Filed Under: Uncategorized

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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Filed Under: 21st Century Branding, Intrinsic Branding, Marketing

‘I Thought I Could Do It On My Own’

October 19, 2020 By Jennifer Lawhead

By Jennifer Lawhead Branding was always something I didn’t feel like I needed help with,” our client Sonya Stattmann recalled. “But I started to realize there was misalignment with who I am and how I ran my business.” This realization dawned on Sonya about a year ago: as she continued to grow her business, she knew it needed to more closely represent who she is today. Not who she was ...

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Filed Under: Story

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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Filed Under: 21st Century Branding, Intrinsic Branding, Marketing

Want to be a great marketing leader? Build a great team! An Interview with John Hardesty

September 25, 2020 By Justin Foster

On October 1 at 2p CT, we will be visiting with John Hardesty on our "Being Marketers" webcast. Here is a sneak preview of our discussion. Q: Who are you and what do you do? John Hardesty, Chief Brand Officer at VShred   Q: What do you love about marketing? The ah-ha moment when a user connects to the value of your product in their life -- the creative reveal of that ...

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Filed Under: Humanistic Marketing Tagged With: beingmarketers, CMO, webcast

The Evolution of a Growing Mission-Based Brand

September 21, 2020 By Jennifer Lawhead

By Jennifer Lawhead Jennifer Stevens built her company, JHL, around her own credibility and reputation. Jennifer was the brand.  Her public relations client list grew as she landed high-value media placements on behalf of her clientele over and over again. As she began planning more events, Jennifer quickly became Austin’s go-to event planner, overseeing some of the community’s biggest ...

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Filed Under: Story

How do I do biz dev now?

September 3, 2020 By Emily + Justin

  Even as we’ve settled into routines around working remotely, meeting virtually and supervising online learning, many of us still seem stuck when it comes to how to carry on doing business development.  More than once recently we’ve heard the exasperated frustration, “I used to go to lunches and happy hours and events! Now I can’t do any of that, so how do I still do biz ...

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Filed Under: Marketing

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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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Root + River

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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  • Why You Sound Like Everyone Else
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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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