Justin Foster is driven by the belief that when you show someone their soul, you set them free. This belief has informed and shaped his journey from growing up on a large cattle ranch in eastern Oregon to becoming an entrepreneur, author, poet, speaker and mentor. Based in Austin, TX, Justin is the co-founder of the intrinsic branding firm, Root + River.
Connect with our guest, Justin on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram: Root + River, Instagram: Justin Foster!

Listen to other episodes of The M Word Podcast here.
Full transcript below:
Jennifer Mulchandani: [00:00:00] Hi, I’m Jennifer Mulchandani, 
Heather Myklegard: [00:00:02] and I’m Heather Myklegard. 
Jennifer Mulchandani: [00:00:04] Welcome to The M Word where we have uncensored conversations on all things marketing.
Heather Myklegard: [00:00:10] Due to COVID. We are not recording in the studio and apologize for any poor audio or technical. As soon as it is safe, we will have our guests with us in the studio until then stay healthy and wear a mask.
Jennifer Mulchandani: [00:00:27] Hello and welcome to The M Word. My name is Jennifer 
Heather Myklegard: [00:00:30] and I’m Heather 
Jennifer Mulchandani: [00:00:31] and today we are talking to Justin Foster with Root + River. Justin is driven by the belief that when you show someone their soul, you set them free. This belief has informed and shaped his journey from growing up on a large cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon to becoming an entrepreneur, author, poet, speaker, and mentor based in Austin, Texas. Justin is the co-founder of the intrinsic branding firm, Root + River. Justin, thank you for joining us today. 
Justin Foster: [00:01:01] Thanks Jennifer. Thank you, Heather. 
Jennifer Mulchandani: [00:01:02] Why don’t you just set the stage for us a little bit, introduce yourself and your business and how it relates to marketing?
Justin Foster: [00:01:09] Thank you. Yeah.  I’m Justin, we know that part. I have been an entrepreneur for about 20 years, primarily in brand strategy. I’ve done the gamut of being a co-founder of a tech startup that we took to exit and contract or fractional CMO and all those pieces, but all of it around branding and marketing. Seven and a half years ago, I met my now business partner, Emily Sikorsky, at a conference in Phoenix. She was the head of corporate communications for behavioral research and we just bonded over all kinds of things. A year later, we were business partners and we launched Root + River around a couple of different motivations.
One motivation is that branding is a contemplative practice. It requires leaders to go inward. You have to know who you are. Branding does not fix a identity crisis, it makes it worse. If you don’t know who you are. So that was one of the principles that we built written river on. The second principle is. For many years branding and marketing had frequently been used to do harm in the world either to get people to buy shit they didn’t need, or, propagandize countries, things like that.
And we thought: who’s out there saying let’s use branding for a tool of good, so that was our second motivation. Then the third one is there’s just so much bad advice that entrepreneurs and founders and CEOs get about marketing, that we wanted to bring some art and science and rational thought and original thinking to marketing, which has in many ways become quite stale and quite commoditized and formulaic. 
Heather Myklegard: [00:02:44] I love that, Justin.