OCTOBER 7–8, 2026 · THE BIRD HOUSE · COLUMBIA, MO
Two days to codify what your business stands for, so it stops living in your head.
The Brand Being Method™ Intensive is done-with-you brand strategy, led by Kristen Graham Brown. You arrive with a business. You leave with seven decisions documented, ready to hand to a hire, a designer, or an AI.
4 seats remaining
Registration closes Oct 3rd
Next Cohort:
December 8-9th, 2026
You can’t read the label from inside the jar.
You know your business better than anyone. That's the problem. The thing that actually sets you apart sounds obvious to you, so you don’t realize it’s compelling. It's not in your website copy. It's not in your onboarding. It isn't written down anywhere.
Which means you're the only copy of the strategy.
That's survivable at two people. At five, you're reviewing every proposal, rewriting every caption, and sitting on every sales call because you're the only one who can explain why someone should pick you over the cheaper option. You didn't hire wrong. You hired people who had nothing to work from.
Brand is the Being. Marketing is the Doing. These two days are spent entirely on the Being.
What you leave with
Seven decisions, made and documented. Not a workbook of prompts to finish later. Made in the room, written down before you go home.
01 · Purpose Why the company exists, in language you'd actually use on a call.
02 · Vision Where it's going, specific enough that someone else could tell if you're off course.
03 · Operationalized Values Not the framed-poster version. The version you make decisions with: who you hire, which clients you turn down, what you do when the year gets hard.
04 · Target Market One brand advocate. Named, not a demographic range.
05 · Point of Difference The thing that sounds obvious to you and is invisible to everyone else.
06 · Value Proposition The sentence that makes the right people lean in and the wrong people self-select out.
07 · Brand Tension Point Two words that hold your entire personality in tension. This is what keeps your voice consistent after you leave, whether the person executing is you, a new hire, or a machine.
All seven land in one document: your Brand Being Manual. It's the strategy layer of the same manual our $50,000 clients receive.
Day two, we run your brand through Claude. We’ll see this work in action.
Same prompts Kristen uses on Hoot's own content. Not a slide about AI. Your seven decisions, loaded in, generating work you can actually use, while you watch what it takes to get there.
Here's the part most people get backwards. Claude is in the room for every workshop we run. It captures the whiteboard so we can stay locked on your face instead of writing things down. But without the facilitation that happens first, without the pushback, without you getting uncomfortable enough to say the true thing, the output is trash.
AI can only be as clear as you are. That's the whole reason this workshop is two days and not a prompt library.
You don't need to know anything about AI going in.
Day One
Your story, your origin, your values, and what you're actually building. Then we workshop it before we break.
Day Two
Fresh eyes on your content. Your Brand Tension Point. The live Claude session. You leave with the manual.
9:00 to 4:00 the first day. 9:00 to 2:00 the second. Breakfast and lunch served both days.
Who’s in the room
Founders and owners who've outgrown the brand they started with. Marketing leads who own the brand at their company and are tired of being the only brand barometer, deciding what's on-brand by gut.
Ten seats. Small enough that Kristen works through your brand with you, not at you. Large enough that you'll hear another founder name the exact problem you couldn't.
Bring a second person for $7,500 total. A partner, co-founder, or marketing lead in the room means the brand gets built into two people instead of one head. We recommend it.
This is not for you if you want a logo, a website, or someone to do this for you. You get the strategy your designer needs before that work can be any good. And you do the work yourself, with Kristen refusing to accept the brochure answer. That's why it's $5,000 and not $50,000.
"The most profound professional experience I've ever had."
- Conner Herman, Percy
"I've worked through many branding exercises and I've never had anyone come close to what you've done today."
- Steve Schnarr, Missouri River Relief
Sixteen years of pulling this out of founders.
Featured in Inc., Forbes, Entrepreneur, and USA Today.
$5,000 per seat. $7,500 for two from the same business.
The full Brand Being engagement is $50,000 and includes visual identity. The Intensive is the strategy layer of that engagement, compressed into two days, with you doing the work instead of us.
Ten seats. October 7–8. Registration closes October 3.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
Seven documented pieces of strategy — purpose, vision, operationalized values, target market, point of difference, value proposition, and your Brand Tension Point — in one manual, ready to upload to AI or hand to your team.
-
No, deliberately. You do the work with Kristen guiding it. It's why this is $5,000.
-
No. You get the strategy your designer needs before they can do that work well.
-
No.
-
Yes. You'll hear about theirs too, and that's most of why the room works.
-
Nothing. Show up ready to answer hard questions about your own business.
-
All materials, breakfast and lunch both days, the live Claude session, and your completed Brand Being Manual.
-
Not at this time.
-
The Bird House, our retreat house located at Hoot HQ. 1206 Smith Street, Columbia, MO 65201
-
Day One: 9-4pm
Day Two: 9-2pm
-
December 8–9 is the next cohort. Same format, ten seats.
Ten seats.
October 7–8.
You've been meaning to write this down for three years.
Get this done so your team is moving in the same direction, it’s much more expensive to keep them guessing.
Questions first? hi@hootdesigncompany.com