Renia (pronounced R-EE-n-a) Carsillo hates business silos and marketing hacks. So, she spends her days working with mid-size and small companies to integrate their business strategy with their impact strategy, design sustainable marketing frameworks, and find a growth cadence that works for their team and their lives. Renia believes founders are uniquely positioned to create a kinder, more equitable world. She is passionate about bringing C-level strategic support to the small and mid-size companies shaping their communities every day. Renia says, "Sustainable marketing is built on a solid business strategy. A solid business strategy is built on values-driven habits. Values-driven habits are built on healed/healing leaders. We can’t do these things separately. They’re all interconnected. ”
The Human Art of Showing Up: Places AI Can’t Help Your Business, Part 1 [Two on Tuesdays]
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Happy Tuesday, Reader! We've spent the last several weeks exploring AI's impact on discoverability. I'm excited about helping clients and our own team navigate this new reality, but I feel a compelling need to remind us (both myself and everyone I work with daily) that there are crucial life and business skills AI simply cannot touch. Skills that are uniquely, powerfully human. Today, I want to talk about one skill that might transform how you think about building your business. Realign with the Human Skill of Placebinding™Last week, I made a bold statement: Most community-based businesses would be better served getting off the internet and into a real-life room. Some people call that networking, but despite having started my business as a trainer and director for what was then the world's largest networking organization, I'm uncomfortable with that word. It reminds me of old-school business thought leaders telling their followers that it's not "net sit" or "net eat"—it's "net work." The implication? You have a job to do whenever you're relationship building, and that job is creating a referral engine as predictable and inhuman as a manufacturing line. So instead of telling you to go networking, I'd like to recommend something both novel and as old as humans gathering to create hospitable communities: Placebinding™. What Placebinding™ Really MeansPlacebinding is the antithesis to the cold, calculating, and selfish strategy of “networking.” It is the intentional art of rooting into the place where you are and the people who have chosen to be there with you. This involves:
Placebinding requires intentionally being where you are, with whoever else is there, in relationship with a community that cannot be adequately replicated online. Placebinding™ demands both physicality and intention.Too many of us have allowed our placebinding skills to grow rusty from disuse. It's emotionally safer and easier to stay online and on our phones than to show up in person with new people, different people, in real bodies with all our beauties and inadequacies. But here's the truth: in our AI-saturated world, one of the most valuable skills we can develop is the ability to be with people IRL, both one-on-one and in groups. So get out there. It's almost fall, after all. At least where I am, the world's becoming a little cooler and a little easier to walk through again. Let’s keep the conversation going.What's the most challenging part of making new in-person connections for you? Reply to this email and tell me about it. Until next time,
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Renia Carsillo
Renia (pronounced R-EE-n-a) Carsillo hates business silos and marketing hacks. So, she spends her days working with mid-size and small companies to integrate their business strategy with their impact strategy, design sustainable marketing frameworks, and find a growth cadence that works for their team and their lives. Renia believes founders are uniquely positioned to create a kinder, more equitable world. She is passionate about bringing C-level strategic support to the small and mid-size companies shaping their communities every day. Renia says, "Sustainable marketing is built on a solid business strategy. A solid business strategy is built on values-driven habits. Values-driven habits are built on healed/healing leaders. We can’t do these things separately. They’re all interconnected. ”
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Happy Tuesday, Reader! If you're like most founders I work with, the word "networking" might make you cringe a little. It's earned a reputation that conjures images of forced conversations, uncomfortable self-promotion, and that nagging feeling that you're just using people for personal gain. And, coming across as “salesy” in the current market can make you seem out of touch, at best. But what if networking could feel different? What if it could help you build a community that sustains your...