When our team of four met in a charming Austin bungalow on our summer retreat of 2016, we decided it was time to reevaluate our values. Which ones still resonated deep within our core? Which ones now felt off or needed revisiting? It’s a practice we do often, and we recommend for any business: revisit your values often to make sure they continue to hit you in the heart. In that season of Root + ...
A Word, Please
This is not another post about COVID-19. This is about you. It’s to issue a clear and kind “hello” to your soul in the midst of chaos and uncertainty. We see you! We feel you. We love you. These are kooky times to be living in, aren’t they? You likely feel wobbly and concerned and fearful. And all of this unknowing! When will it end? What’s going to happen next? Am I safe? Are my loved ...
Your beliefs are NOT separate from the business
Beliefs, as a component of brands, are one of those good news/bad news stories. Good news: as business leaders, we’ve evolved. We recognize a business needs a deeper set of values to help it withstand the test of time. Beliefs help us grow as leaders, grow revenue and grow our teams in the ways that serve the business. As a result of this dawning awareness, it is now common practice for ...
Why We Always ‘Love Them Where They’re At’
“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 ...
Vision is a marriage, not a hookup
By Emily Soccorsy + Justin Foster You always have to know more about where your brand is going than the marketplace. This is the role of vision for your brand. Vision prevents reactiveness. And reactiveness is the enemy of great branding. Reactiveness as a brand dilutes your ability to be memorable, to have a sustained impact or result and it wastes your time and energy. Without vision, you ...
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 ...