Case Study: Live Your North

PointNorth founder Lisa Keohokalole Schauer had an unconventional vision for taking her organization to the next level: creating a values-led sister brand that provided merchandise, leadership training, and online content. The problem? Her team was not on board.

Where others saw incongruence, I saw the bigger picture. Lisa wasn’t making hoodies and reels as some kind of side gig. Live Your North was a move to stand out in a crowded, gridlocked market and show her potential clients what PointNorth was truly about, while simultaneously creating a cross-referring business ecosystem that opened up new revenue streams.

I came into this project knowing that I would need to help Lisa put some structure around her vision, create a clear plan for accomplishing it, and get the team I’d be managing to not only see the vision, but take ownership of it. I started by working with Lisa to develop specific goals, branding, and messaging. Once that was solid, I held a workshop for the team to help them experience PointNorth’s new direction, and helped Lisa review performance metrics to see who I would need to coach, and who might be better suited for other work. We streamlined the team and I began developing several team members so they could better contribute.

While all this was going on, I took our big-picture plan and broke it down into month-by-month goals and day-by-day tasks to get us to launch within six months. I managed the team as we worked together to create a site, shop, and designs for products, along with a robust marketing plan for building awareness and engagement pre-launch. As we got closer to launch, I helped them source local vendors to provide their products and managed a photoshoot where team members enthusiastically modeled the merchandise, while mapping out a 12-month curriculum for Lisa and her team to deliver and creating email and social media campaigns for the launch.

By the time we actually got to our launch month, the heaviest lifts had been done, and we were able to watch the pre-scheduled content go out and do its thing while being able to focus on engaging with customers, our email list, and social media followers. We did a number of campaigns, including engaging with local influencers to promote the brand and having the PointNorth staff do videos about what it means to Live Their North. The brand became locally beloved, and opened doors for sales conversations for PointNorth that would have been previously closed.

After launch, we scaled back content in preparation for another drop in six months, and I used my analysis of the launch performance to create an evergreen email funnel for new Live Your North sign-ups, along with an ongoing content plan. I also documented all of our marketing processes and launch plans so the team could follow them if I became unavailable.

The result: a successful launch that’s made PointNorth stand out from its peers, a beautiful new brand, and a new income stream that’s providing some much-needed stability.

This project was my favorite kind of work: unusual, dynamic, complex, and seemingly impossible. Bringing a beautiful, values-led idea into reality was a true privilege.

Seeing a vision for your future, but not quite sure how to get there? I'd love to help. Tell me what’s going on here.