Upload
justin-foster
View
87
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
about
Justin Foster is
his kindness. It isn’t meek or
people pleasing or subtle. His
goodness is bold, open, and a
bit wild, capped off by acute
opinions and raw belief in
the potential of people.
“It doesn't matter that you're the smartest person in the room anym
ore...
The first thing you notice
!
...It matters that you're the kindest person in the room,” he says, before sm
iling
as h
e sh
ru
gs.
If the first thing you notice is his
kindness, a close second is surely Foster’s brain. It’s fast and sharp,
seemingly never idle. In his speeches, he weaves provocative, often poetic,
observations about self-acceptance and compassion easily into conversations you
thought were about ineffective marketing moves and
social media.
!
“We are in the age of the human,” he says. “I believe in the power of brands both in people and in organizations to create beautiful, meaningful things. This is a terrible era to be boring and mean. It also means that if you’re the best kept secret, you probably just suck at marketing.”
You’re listening and laughing before you
realize you’re thinking––hard––in an
exciting new way.
“I reframe thinking,”
Foster says. “When I’m done, I want people to say, ‘I’ve never thought
about that before.’”
The 45-year-old husband and father of two sons has
thrived as a branding and social strategist, speaker, coach, consultant, and author, all under his
Foster Thinking practice. His two books, Oatmeal v. Bacon: How
to Differentiate in a Generic World and Human Bacon: A
Man’s Guide to Creating an Awesome Personal
Brand, introduced and unpacked his original
concept: the world’s most
interesting brands and people honestly embrace
their unique, inherent allure and become
irresistible––
like bacon. !
For more than
a d
ecad
e, F
ortu
ne 1
000 co
rporations and self-aware
ent
repr
eneu
rs h
ave turned to Foster for a new w
ay to think––and be.
Along with partner Emily Soccorsy, he has launched Root + River, a new hive of comprehensive branding expertise,
rooted in organizing brands around their belief systems.
Foster is in dizzying demand as both a
coach and a speaker.
And the rush can be traced back to his
willingness to dig deep, and then jump.
!
“I can't smell wet sage brush and leather, a horse, or diesel smoke on a cold morning and not think of the ranch,” he says. But just as his
kindness is a study in unorthodox chemistry, his past is a testament to how often harshness and beauty insist on
existing side by side.
“The ranch was great. It was my saving grace from my less-than-ideal home
life,” Foster says. Then, his darkened countenance returns to
its characteristic brightness as he begins to describe his
grandparents.
“I feel my grandparents in my blood,” he says.
“My g
randfather was the man John Wayne was preten ding to be.
Foster gre
w u
p o
n a
60,0
00-a
cre
catt
le r
anch
in B
aker
C
ity
, Oregon, a sm
all to
wn in the eastern half of the state.
My grandmother was kind but fierce, beautiful and an
g elic.
That really shaped me and made me wh o I am today.”
!
While working a day
job, he tried Toast Masters, and made a life-altering discovery: the shy country kid was actually a charismatic
public speaker destined for big stages. “It was like finding out you could sing,” he says.
“Maybe you’d sung in the shower and then, you walk into a recording studio, and this producer is like,
‘Wow, that was awesome!’”
In Portland, he met Lynna, and the two fell fast and married young. In 1995, the pair and their first son
moved to Boise, Idaho. “We had this faded Chevy Cavalier station wagon. All the paint
had worn off, so it was primer colored. We called it the primer
wagon.”
W
hen F
oster w
as 1
7, h
is fa
mily
p
acked up and m
oved
to Portland, Oregon.
He smiles as he offers the telling snapshot.
Foster held various jobs during those early years in Boise. He sold ink ribbons for cash registers and computer systems in the early heyday of the Internet. He vividly remembers the first commission check that allowed him to fill the primer wagon with groceries instead of “trying
to make spaghetti last for four days.”
He also began to develop his
gift for speaking.
His first “speaking gigs” were sales
presentations to feed his young family.
“I realized that I can do three things better than
anybody I know. Number one, I can read the room and adjust my content to it. Number two, I
never use notes and can speak completely off the cuff. Number
three, I can articulate ideas for people that they find both inspiring and
actionable at the same time.”
In 2003, Foster became self-employed, and his speaking career launched in earnest. “I said yes to everything. I
spoke at the most obscure associations and groups,” he remembers. “I spoke about what I speak about to this day:
preparing for tomorrow and trends. And how those trends relate to branding, leadership, and
self-improvement. I’ve never billed myself as a motivational speaker,” he adds. “Sometimes I say if
you’re motivated, then great––that was free. But I’m here to make you think
and behave differently.” Foster has given speeches in almost every
state and four countries. He has conducted a workshop on customer evangelism in
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia,
and taken the stage at
the Verizon Future of Marketing Conference––the latter on three hours of sleep, two Red Bulls, and a dose of
Advil, demanded after a whirlwind schedule.
“And I crushed it,” he says, grinning.
!
Communicating a
nd
con
necti
ng b
ecam
e Fo
ster
’s p
assi
on, a
nd he
began to uncover and embrace what set him
apart as a spe
aker.
Foster spent a total of 20 years in Idaho, building a strong reputation before moving to Austin, Texas, in 2014. “In the last couple of years, I’ve changed,” he says. “I was speaking to the
mind, hoping that it trickled into the heart. Now I speak to hearts, then minds, then hands.
I’m able to get people to
feel different,
think different,
and do different,
all in the same speech, not through
manipulation, but through the transfer
of an idea.”
The graduates
were mostly older, mostly blue
collar, and all working toward a better life. On the big day, the event’s organizer asked Foster for his alma mater so that he could wear its colors on stage. “I said, ‘I didn’t graduate,’” he says, eyes wide. “I was terrified. I asked, ‘Can I still speak?’ She said, ‘Yes! That’s even
better!’”
As he was sitting on stage, relieved and accepted, the air thick with cries of I love
you, Mom! shouted at the graduates, Foster noticed a trend. “Every one of them had new shoes on,” he says. He tears up, his voice cracking. “And it broke my heart. These were not 22-year-olds graduating from Harvard. These were working-class people. These were
my people.
“I had been ashamed of being those people. But here they were, and they’d bought new shoes for graduation. And it just
broke me. I totally changed my speech on the spot, to talk about hope––about what they represented. I talked about a yes/no
moment, and opting in versus opting out. And from that point forward, I decided that I was no longer going to
be ashamed.”
Why the change? A couple of years ago, Foster was asked to deliver a com mencement address for a university.
!
“Whether that’s in
business and through a brand, or through leadership,
culture, or social––whatever we’re
talking about, it’s all to get you to value who you are as a human
being,” he says. He never delivers the same talk twice. “I do come with a
warning label,” Foster says. “One, I’m going to tell the truth. Two, I’m going to agitate people. Three, I’m going to make whoever hired
me to speak look good.” He demystifies, connects, and empowers. And in the end, listeners feel accepted
and uncomfortable, at peace and utterly restless, all at once. “I clearly understand how to make the audience feel like my
message is very personal and very applicable to each person in the room, regardless of their status or stage of life,” he says.
Today, all of Foster’s speeches focus on helping people understand and
conn
ect t
o se
lf worth
.
A devout believer in sovereignty, Foster considers himself an independent artist. He does not belong to any speaking associations, hand picks all of his speaking engagements, and negotiates directly
with event organizers. He notes that many professional speakers tend to be detached from the realities of everyday business and life.
“I am not an actor. I am an
entrepreneur,” Foster says. “The
stories I have to tell and the ideas I have to share are from my life and the
thousands of people I’ve met around the
country.”
Foster’s mission
to speak in front of receptive audiences has never been
more urgent. He explains intrepidly, his soul
on fire: “To this day, despite all of the automation and digital
and everything else, a well-delivered speech
changes the world.”