We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Cait Fitzpatrick & Casey Carroll a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Cait & Casey thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the most important things we can do as business owners is ensure that our customers feel appreciated. What’s something you’ve done or seen a business owner do to help a customer feel valued?

BWB is reimagining leadership and business, and creating a revolutionary economy of care.

We’ve found that truly connecting on an emotional level is rare in our industry. The vulnerability that we model, and that our clients give us in turn, creates much more than a “client” relationship. We’re in the work with them in a way, which is also why they stay for a long time or come back often.

In client relationships and the creative industry, many of us have wounds from how “care” has been performed, been used as a tool to get something, or been more of a surface interaction. We show our clients that we love them wayyyyy beyond the paid relationship because we do really love who we work with, and remain in connection for years beyond the work itself.

We show them love in a number of ways from sending gifts twice a year (hello, stickers and incense!) to holding space through free workshops. BWB is not spending a lot of time hanging out on social media; we’re focused on real connection and community building.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

BWB is a holistic creative agency. We are a female founded business, focused on entrepreneurship and initiatives that support equity. We provide branding and brand building for small businesses and entrepreneurs through coaching, design, copywriting, and ongoing client support.

We support entrepreneurs and small businesses to help turn their ideas into realities. Rooted in Upstate NY, we are proud to serve a global network of remarkable clients re-imagining business as a force for good.

Being a feminist business does not mean we only work with women. Being a female–founded company also does not mean we only work with women. Being dedicated to advancing gender equity and female entrepreneurship also does not mean we only work with women. We get asked this question a lot, so let us be very clear: we serve allllll folks and businesses with a little revolution in their hearts.

We also host workshops, retreats, and events that focus on everything from trans inclusion to understanding how to grow business, centering our values and ditching the status quo.

Can you share one of your favorite marketing or sales stories – perhaps a time when you took a risk marketing wise or pulled off a sale where the odds were heavily stacked against you. Give us the backstory, paint the picture and help us feel what you felt back then.

BWB takes an alternative stance on “marketing.” Our entire approach and mindset could be viewed as a risk, as we do not take a cookie cutter approach to creating your company. There are no “shoulds” or “have to’s” in our practice. We don’t manufacture brands, we midwife them.

We’ve found that oftentimes (if not most of the time!) “social media” has in many ways become synonymous with “marketing.” We see this with clients big and small, and it is especially relevant and top of mind in our conversations with entrepreneurs and small businesses. We believe that you do not need to be on social media to be successful.

As such, we offer alternative ways to approach building brands through a variety of ways of storytelling. This is very different from what we’ve seen in the marketplace from other brand building/marketing agencies, and truly differentiates us.

We focus on community building over content creation and relationships over results. We uphold project goals and objectives, but not at the expense of the centering of the process.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Pretty much: everything. We built our company with the belief that formulas and best practices in branding and marketing have upheld the status quo which has been harmful and problematic.

BWB is not here to follow the leader. We are here to lead. We believe that business can be a force for exponential good, and has the potential for large scale, radical change. This is why we chose to become business owners.

It is time to take a critical look at the repercussions, and understand why the industry continues to replicate dominant ideologies. BWB was formed to do exactly that, unpacking the social and cultural impacts of branding and marketing, and liberating our ideas, and each other.

We knew that nothing like this existed, so we built it. We’ve intentionally chosen to build a partnership and a creative collective that combines critical thinking, creativity, strategy, and healing.      

Contact Info:

• Website: wearebwb.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wearebwb/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvhd9f1MajC0I1UbmtN3YeA

Image Credits
BWB photos by BWB’s Casey and Cait portraits by Misha Miller: https://www.mishamiller.com/about