What Your Heart Has To Say

Annual seasons like the holidays create pauses in my life, which I am grateful for. They also serve as benchmarks for where I have been and help inspire imagination about where I want to go – and what I want to say to the world.

For me, nine Christmases ago, I was thrilled, scared and exhilarated to be starting Root + River.?

At the time, I didn’t really know what it would become or how it would evolve, but I was headily passionate about creating it.?

I remember the hope, drive and enthusiasm that charged me with kinetic energy as I looked forward to serving our clients, co-creating the language of their beloved brands and developing our anti-thetical methodology with care.?

We had a brand message then:

All brands begin at the root.

It was what we wanted to say to the world.

This first brand message reflected bedrock truth for us (still does). It was poetic and alliterative (yay!). It compellingly amplified our brand name.?

For a time.

Several years/Christmases later, when we checked in on our message, we found it was still true, but not nearly evocative enough – and not reflective of where we were and where we wanted the brand to go.

We had grown and evolved.

We needed the brand message to reflect the lessons we’d learned. We wanted it to call out to who we wanted to attract (and distance who we wanted to repel). We wanted it to embody how we wanted to serve.

The message needed to be bolder, more brave, more powerful.?

We began to share a new truth as our message:

Branding is a spiritual experience.?

That root belief was challenging to some, offensive to others and resonant with our audience, it remained a sturdy guidepost for our work for years to come (and still is).

Today, our message is an evolution of that:

Brand is how others experience your soul.?

Brands evolve. They remain rooted, but they evolve. (I wrote about that more here.) Just like people.

When your message is right, you feel it in your body. In your heart. In your bones.

And while brand consistency is always important, so too is having a message that lights you up, makes you proud to do what you do and inspires you to do more.?

We teach that messages are Simple, Unexpected and Emotional.

It’s also crucial to realize your message will have a significant motivational effect on you.

It will inspire you to serve your audience. (We call ours the Defiers.) It will embolden you to speak truth. It will give you solace and anchor you to your work.

This time of year, I’m always, always overwhelmed with gratitude for the opportunities the Root + River team and I have had to help uncover, polish, wordsmith and co-create brand messages that inspire, feed souls and, as one of our clients recently described it, "it feels like me!”

To me and our entire team, this is sacred work.

In a world where language can be produced with the click of a few buttons, we honor the humanity and care involved in surfacing and crafting what one's heart wants to say to the world.

We always will.

As you begin to close out the year, I wonder if you’re reflecting on your brand message.

Are you asking yourself questions like:

• Am I telling my story well enough?
• Is my message clear enough?
• Do I feel clear and confident sharing my message?
• Does my team?
• Who do I really want as a client?

If you are mulling these over in some form... good! That’s a sign of a healthy, conscious brand.

I tell our Root + River clients that healthy brands have a rooted foundation, but that they also have branches that sway in the wind, and fruit that comes and goes in seasons.

Enduring brands require deep soil soaks that care for the root system, occasional branch trimming, and pruning, too.

The end and beginning of the year are good times to do that work.

And if you’d like some gardening buddies to guide you, the team and I are always here for you. And while it’s meditative to garden alone, it’s significantly more productive to have an accomplished gardener directing you as you care for your roots, fruit and branches.?(More on that here.)

The world needs to hear what your heart has to say.

Especially this time of year, our hearts are open – for more light, more compelling and grounding truth, more inspiration.

And, as ever, more love.?

Let nothing you dismay.

Emily Soccorsy is owner and lead brand strategist of Root + River, a brand strategy firm that believes brand is how others experience your soul. Root + River provides brand messaging, language, positioning and catapult content for brands, leaders and teams who want to change the world, their industry or their community with their brand. She's also a speaker, and an award-winning writer, who feels most alive when creating word alchemy or visual art. Emily is the co-author of Rooting Up: Essays in Modern Branding and is the author of the newsletter, Thought Cookie.?Emily has been a lifelong empath, and a daughter, mother, partner, sister, mentor, creator and sometime baker and runner.

She is a board member of Ellivate Alliance, The W Source?, Rosie's House and a contributor and guest of the EntreArchitect? community. She is a cohost of Reclaiming Ourselves podcast and a graduate of Love and Healing Work, and a member of ASU Leadership Institute, Class 6.