Having already given up other bad habits, Jaci Russo tried all sorts of remedies to address a sudden pain and inflammation in her wrist almost three years ago.
Russo, the energetic CEO and co-founder of brandRUSSO in Lafayette and mother of four, said she gave up eating meat for months, then stopped eating certain vegetables. She then began injections, but the pain those brought was just as bad as the pain they were supposed to stop.
The pain began working its way to her elbow, but then all those attempts led to this: it was her sugar intake. She gave up sugar in October 2022.
And the pain stopped.
“Almost overnight,” she said. “And I thought, I love sugar. I love sugar so much. But I also like being happy and healthy and not hurting. I’ll occasionally have some fruit but no cookies, cakes, package things — the things that I love. It’s hard. It’s so hard.”
Now pain-free with one less vice — it’s been over 20 years since she had coffee and almost 10 years since she had a soda — Russo and her company are growing significantly at their downtown Lafayete location.
Last month BrandRUSSO was named a Louisiana Growth Leader by Louisiana Economic Development. The criteria for the award consists of growth, strategy, innovation, philanthropy and leadership.
The company was cited for founding Brand State U, an online branding community for small companies; donating $150,000 to the Ragin’ Cajun Athletic Foundation and finishing a 3,000-square-foot office expansion. It has also supported Healing House for the past 10 years.
In this week's Talking Business, Russo talked about the state of the 23-year-old agency, the latest projects with Brand State U and the transition inside and outside its downtown office.
Interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You had the big honor from LED. Tell me about the recent wins you’ve had. You were not on my radar for having significant growth like this.
Our client rosters are 90% out of state. Our work and our clients are all in New York, D.C and London, Dallas, Chicago and California. Through technology we are able to live here — because we love here — and work there. And we’re averaging about 20% growth a year. We’re up to 20 employees and we added 10 more offices because we keep growing. We went to four-day work week last April. We’ve always had a flexible schedule, and I think that’s been good for everyone’s mental health. They’re coming back to work with passion instead of being rundown.
You launched Brand State U a couple years ago to help smaller companies with online branding and have recently held the GrowthX workshop, which focused helping smaller businesses become a bigger brand. What’s the latest in that space?
I don’t like that we can’t help small local businesses anymore, but the agency has outgrown that. So Brand State U allows me to help small local businesses. It’s not nearly as profitable, but it feels good that I get to help these businesses become midsize and become clients. But it’s only marketing focused, so I have been able to work with some other amazing talent in our community — Melissa Bowen, Rob Kirkpatrick, Keesha Buteau and Mechelle Roberthon — who all have different lanes where they work with businesses, small to medium, for professional development. It was awesome. Melissa, Keesha and Mechelle and I are doing a Summit at Sea on Royal Caribbean. We are doing the second annual one this year.
These folks are sometimes venturing into the waters of entrepreneurship. You say that often times business owner don’t know what they don’t know. What are some things they don’t know?
The entrepreneurial mindset is, ‘I can figure it out.’ They’ve gone into business because they saw a way to make the widget better. They don’t necessarily know about operations or building a culture or retaining talent or leadership training. They just know the skill that they have, and that skill doesn’t make them a great CEO. From a marketing perspective, it’s about them understanding who their target is and how they’re different from the competition.
What does a strong leader of a business look like?
I don’t work with Caroline’s Cookies, but I’m just giving you an example: So you have someone who is a great baker. Super excited about making cookies. Maybe she doesn’t necessarily know about controlling her message and her brand. Maybe she needs some help with hiring. You know, I still struggle with how to properly hire, train, retain and motivate. It’s about training that leader to not just be a great baker but a great leader in the company. If you’re just the only baker all day, then no one is really running the company.
You started your company out of your house while raising a 1-year-old and a newborn and later bought your current building downtown in 2005. How has the neighborhood changed since then?
We remodeled (the building) and moved into it for Festival 2005. And I realized, oh, we put ourselves right in the middle of it. When we bought the building, Tsunami was (downtown) and very successful. There were a lot of bars, but it was still somewhat of a ghost town. The work that (former DDA head) Cathy Weber and (her assistant) Jody Nederveld did, we should all be grateful to them. Based on the appraised value of our building, we’re very happy. It’s worth five times what we paid for it.
If you’re not on sugar or coffee or anything, what keeps you going?
I feel incredibly blessed every day. You can’t come out of five days of Festival (International) and not feel pretty good about where you live. I had two colleagues, one from Maryland and one from northeastern Alabama, here for the weekend. They enjoyed Festival for their first visit to Louisiana. To watch us interact in our normal environment, they were like, ‘So everybody hugs?’ Yes. You don’t hug? They got to experience warm hospitality. They got to listen to some world bands. I think they’re lifelong devotees now. They’re coming back. One of them was talking about sending their kid to college here.