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 ...
Why You Should Stop Saying, “I Don’t Have a Story”
By Jennifer Lawhead “I have nothing to say.” “I don’t have an exciting story to tell.” “I’m just a typical business owner.” When I work with clients to help them tell their stories, I’m usually met with one or more of these excuses. I get it. I’ve long been this person too, who didn’t feel I had anything extraordinary to say to the world. I haven’t survived a life-threatening ...
A Very Different Kind of New Year’s Resolution…
New Year's resolutions are lame. For the most part, anyway. They are generally some in-the-moment super important idea abandoned as quickly as a battery-less toy on Christmas morning. But setting resolutions is fun! At least for self-improvement nerds like us. In looking back over more than 25 Root Sessions, 15 presentations, four BrandLabs, three Synthesis episodes, buckets of ...
What does culture have to do with brand?
We are five years into the Human Age. In the 21st century, leaders must go beyond taking care of their people to embodying a new level of caring for people. Taking care of your people is a minimum requirement - compensation, benefits, work environment. And even in the Human Age economy, there are still plenty of places to work that are sweatshops and boiler rooms - just with healthy food, ...
Synthesis Episode 2: Being an Agent for Change, A Conversation with Rose Fass
EPISODE 2: Rose Fass, CEO of Fassforward, Agent for Transformation Synthesis is a Root + River hosted webcast featuring nonconformist leaders whose ideas make them -- and us -- see the world differently. Our second episode featured the incomparable Rose Fass, CEO of Fassforward Consulting Group -- who is also one of our mentors and dear friends. Our discussion was a rich dive into Rose's ...
How do I monetize my talents?
Hurray! You’ve realized we’re not just nutty spiritualists waiting for the clouds to part and money to fall like a tender rain. We are unabashed capitalists. Free marketeers. Supporters of entrepreneurism. With heart. Lots of heart. But at the end of the day, money is one of the spiritual forces of this universe -- constructed by the force, enormity and insistence of the will of human ...
We do retreats. Do you?
We never used to retreat this much. Ever. (In fact, Justin thought retreats were kind of lame.) But in building a virtual team and working from far-flung corners of the world, we were forced to make time and space to gather in person. Routinely. So once a quarter, we have a Root + River team retreat. It is sacrosanct time. Though we've had to get creative about the time and ...
Who the heck is my target audience?
Editor’s Note: As we move into the last two seasons of the year, we are answering questions people have repeatedly asked us about branding and marketing. Let’s start with this bit of heresy … there are no target audiences. One reason is practical: traditional demographics have broken audiences into chunks, which have been shattered into even smaller groups. So there’s no singular ...
Change: Why Not Love It?
Leaders who have yet to embrace change are at a distinct disadvantage. Those who fear change they do not understand very well may be opting out of modern business. Read: So getting your arms around change needs to be at the top of your priority list. We live in a constant state of change -- within our lives, our businesses, our times and our brands. Ignoring change or condemning it will not ...
There’s Only One Thing Missing From Your Brand
By Emily Soccorsy In a Root Session with one of our clients last week, the CEO began to complain about how difficult it is to hire good people. His complaints, though common, were frustratingly real. He wanted to hire individuals with high integrity, commitment, and work ethic but didn’t know what they truly stood for. I asked him if he clearly explained to his candidates what his company truly ...