We were lucky to catch up with Amanda Holdsworth recently and have shared our conversation below.

Amanda, thanks for joining us, excited to have cyou contributing your stories and insights. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

We rebranded to Cultivate & Engage in 2023 to better reflect the foundation of everything we do: cultivating relationships and engaging stakeholders. As strategic communicators, those are really the pillars of any project we’re working on, from PR to comms planning to social media to marketing. If we’re not cultivating those relationships with clients and those they serve and engaging stakeholders with two-way communication and feedback, we’re not doing our jobs.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Cultivate & Engage provides strategic communications and marketing services for organizations and brands in the education, non-profit, and social impact sectors. We craft authentic brand stories for purpose-driven organizations seeking to drive engagement, increase awareness, and inspire action. We have partnered with clients not only across the U.S., but around the world.

I think what makes us different is that we openly address the fact that we value candor, honesty, and purposeful work. We don’t want to be seen as taskmasters because we’re strategists and we don’t want to do work just for the sake of doing something. We’re very resourceful and efficient, but also empathetic – we care about our clients’ causes, their budgets, and, in the end, truly making an impact with what we’ve accomplished together.

Our clients embrace getting uncomfortable as part of the improvement process. They recognize they are changing and evolving, and they understand that the work we’re doing for them is purposeful in providing short-term clarity and long-term success.

We partner with motivated leaders ready to tackle challenges, learn from our recommendations, and implement the customized and intentional solutions our team has developed. They want to improve, and they respect the process.

The organizations we work with are transparent about their goals and challenges. They’ve committed to making space for our project and the effort and time that comes with it. And they see us as true partners in helping them achieve what they’ve set out to do because this is how we work best: as partners dedicated to the same outcome.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

We love our Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), which include everything from Monday touchpoints to Friday wrap-up reports to Client Satisfaction Surveys – our clients are never left in the dark about what we’re up to.

We’ve been fortunate not to constantly have to seek out new clients because almost every client we have had over the last six years has returned for additional contracts. Why? Well, I believe it’s because we put 110% effort into our projects, overdelivering ahead of schedule.

We are also very candid about the challenges or roadblocks we faced during the project while offering advice on how to solve those problems…but we don’t try to upsell them. We’re seen as a trusted partner, and many of our clients have become long-term friends. They know we’re only a call or email away if they have a quick question about something or need advice. It’s such an honor to know they think that highly of us to seek our guidance – we never hesitate to help out.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

When I was an in-house communications and marketing director, I moved quickly. The benefit of having been in multiple roles over a two-decade career (many of which were in solo or small departments) meant that I knew how to identify problems, address them, fix them, and move on.

As a consultant, I tried to keep up this pace, but I quickly realized that although clients hired you to help them, they weren’t necessarily experts in those areas. Or, if they were subject matter experts, they still had demanding jobs to do and their time was limited. So, I had to unlearn the processes I followed as an in-house director and shift gears as a consultant, becoming much more empathetic and patient.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.cultivateengage.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cultivateengage/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cultivateengage
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aholdsworth/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/HoldsworthComm

Image Credits
Shelby Dubin, Nikki Closser, Derek Cookson