Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Justin Foster. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Justin, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I think we each have a mission (or purpose or calling) and that it is a necessary and essential part of life to find out what it is, accept it and organize our life around it. I also believe that our missions evolve to our level of consciousness. Since first discovering my mission, it has changed. Not so much in intention but in application and language. If you are an entrepreneur, you have two missions: 1) yours and 2) your venture. Of course, these are interrelated but they are separate things.

My personal mission is to use language to create a new way of being. This is an ode to my love of language; how it shapes our lives, our thinking, our creativity, our impact. Those of us given the gift of articulating language are a conduit to explain the unexplainable, give voice to those who don’t have one, to provide words for what the soul yearns to say. For me, this is manifested in speaking, writing essays, poetry, podcasting and coaching.

My entrepreneurial mission is to place highly conscious people in positions of power. As a straight, white, American male, I have benefited greatly from current power structures. Unfortunately, many others have not. This is because many of the people that have perceived power are low-conscious humans. They are often exploitative, cruel, and dehumanizing. They harm themselves, their people, society, and the planet. Rather than focus on tearing down the old system, I feel called to coach high conscious leaders that subversively or obviously want to evolve our current systems.

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 background and context?

I call what I do “personal brand coaching”. I don’t like the term “personal brand” but that’s still probably the best way to describe the energetic footprint you put out into the world and how others experience you.

My work centers on uncovering intrinsic, extrinsic, and systemic elements of your personal brand. Intrinsic is your identity, calling, values, talents. Extrinsic is the language you use, your message, your image, your reputation. Systemic is how you tell your story, create influence, build thought-leadership, generate opportunities and sell your services.

I typically work with senior executives, solo entrepreneurs, and creatives. They each have their own specific motivations for hiring me, but these are the most common:

They are having some sort of existential/identity crisis about who they are and what they’re here to do. They feel called to do something more than what they’re doing now.

They are deeply frustrated with their lack of confidence and clarity in sharing their message and story. They are also overwhelmed by all of the factors and moving parts of modern branding and marketing.

They are a successful leader/founder, but wants to build a brand separate from their company – often as preparation for either an exit and/or a book launch.

Have you ever had to pivot?

There are survival pivots and there are opportunity pivots. With 20 years as an entrepreneur, I’ve had plenty of both! In the last 8 years, my pivots have mostly been about opportunities. They have coincided with my own inner healing and spiritual growth. I’ve learned that both survival and opportunity look very different when you have unprocessed trauma. Such is the case with a recent pivot. After spending the last 20 years helping anyone and everyone with brand strategy, I felt the call to focus my talents on a very specific audience: business leaders and entrepreneurs who feel a calling to take on systemic change. This pivot seems like it’s still about branding, but it really isn’t. Certainly, there are elements of branding: message, audience, findability, etc. But it is more about coaching these leaders on how to leverage their reputation, presence and influence to create the change they desire.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I built my reputation as a brand strategy expert through speaking, blog writing, writing books, webinars and more. All of this was specific to brand strategy. In recent years, I’ve become much more multi-dimensional. I share my poetry and essays. I talk about spirituality and consciousness in business. I rarely talk about branding anymore – yet I still attract plenty of interesting projects. I’m certain this is because I’m showing my creative side and being more open and vulnerable about who I am and what I believe.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://fosterthinking.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fosterthinking/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fosterjustin/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/fosterthinking
• Other: https://fosterthinking.substack.com/