The "Fabric" of our Lives

Let’s pick up the new year where we last left off. If you didn’t read the backstory, find it here!So I started to look into this mystical company a little bit more… and decided to reach out on befabric.com for information. What immediately had me hooked was their claim to help companies do exactly what we needed- describe who we are, what we do, and how we do it. So obviously, I had to figure out if these miracle workers were legit!After chatting with Rosalynn a couple days later, I instantly knew that she was the right fit. She was totally legit! She backed up every single claim from their website and made me feel like our company’s struggles were completely understood and normal. It was fairly easy to convince Matt & Shannon to get on board because I felt so strongly about her claims! Nevertheless, we jumped on another call with Rosalynn and further solidified the decision to move forward. So, within a week, we’d scheduled a road trip to the cities to begin the Guiding Principles workshop!

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

This workshop was slightly intimidating and filled with tons of conversation, to sum it up. We began to refer to Rosalynn as our “business therapist” during the session because we had fully open up to her. This is where Fabric's Core Value, Candor, really makes a lot of sense. She made us feel comfortable and urged us to speak frankly and put it all on the table. In doing this, we learned a ton about each other and also realized how much we already knew about each other’s lives. Rosalynn took pages of notes and promised us that by the next session she would have all of those words summed up into Core Values, Mission and Vision statements. It was hard not to be skeptical about her promise because we’d never been able to get there by ourselves and we truly didn’t understand how she’d be able to sum us all up in just a few words. But boy did she…At our next session, we reviewed the meaning of having Guiding Principles and touched on the importance of them for brands. This is something I encourage everyone to read up on if you can. Establishing Guiding Principles and dedicating time to living them can really do wonders for a business… we have now learned! So, without further delay, I present the PS Guiding Principles:

CORE VALUES

Purpose- being intentional, identifying and communicating the meaning, thoughtful design, attention to detailRelationships- draw the connection, take the time to understand, be a good people - the kind others want to be aroundInfluence- motivate others, promote ideas, encourage others to push the boundaries, inspire progress, communicate the goals and actions needed, work toward the desired outcome

MISSION

We help our clients tell stories, build relationships and achieve goals through creative marketing campaigns and thoughtful curation of branded merchandise.

VISION

To provide people with meaningful experiences that connect them to the brands they love. Not only did Rosalynn give us the words we've been lacking, she gave us so much more. We finally have meaning for those words and something to rally behind and live by! The best part about our values is that she crafted each of them with one of us in mind. This way, at least one of the values resonated with each of us personally right away. Plus, it gives us a way to hold each other accountable and work toward embodying more than just “ours”. We also loved that we got to fine tune the precise wording of our Mission and Vision through mixing & matching the words within her drafts. This way, we molded everything to feel like us, and she’d already taken the “difficult” work out of it.We can’t praise Rosalynn enough for her ability to draw out the core of our business and give us one true direction. This is something that we’ve struggled with for years but didn’t know how to overcome it! We truly needed an outsider to be our sounding board and to help us weed through the mess. Rosalynn did all of that and beyond!! Thanks to Fabric, we’re ready to conquer the world, one curated piece of branded merchandise at a time!

• Shelby Zach