How Winter Outdoor Recreation Aids Economic Development
Aaron Hautala talks winter fat biking and economic growth on the Trail Eaffect podcast The January 5 episode of the Trail Eaffect, a podcast devoted to telling the stories of trails, trail communities, and the leaders who make it happen, featured Strateligent and Cuyuna Adventure Town USA CEO Aaron Hautala. In this bonus episode, Aaron talks about his role advocating for developing winter outdoor recreation as a way of boosting economic development in the Cuyuna region. Aaron knew that for businesses to invest in the region, economic opportunity couldn’t be seasonal, relying on a few months of summer mountain bicycling and mine lake paddling alone. For businesses...
Strateligent CEO appears on Active Towns podcast
Aaron shares how he helped transform the Cuyuna region through outdoor recreation BRAINERD –Strateligent CEO Aaron Hautala recently appeared as a guest on John Simmerman’s Active Towns YouTube podcast. The December 2, 2022, episode, “How to create community and economic vibrancy through bikes,” features an in-depth conversation about Aaron’s role in creating economic development through outdoor recreation in the Cuyuna region. John Simmerman is a health promotion professional who specializes on how the build environment influences human behavior, active living, and active mobility. With more than 4,000 subscribers at the time of this writing, the Active Towns podcast documents established and emerging Active Towns “to inspire the...
What’s “The One Thing” that makes a leader worth following?
Strateligent’s CEO and Creative Director Aaron Hautala recently presented during the local lunch segment of Leadercast, a nationally broadcast leadership seminar hosted locally by Sourcewell at Timbers Event Center in Staples, Minnesota. Approximately 70 local and regional leaders in education, non-profit, manufacturing, and healthcare, attended. This year’s Leadercast invited ten of the world’s most influential leaders to give a talk on “The One Thing” that makes a leader worth following. Each host site also invited a respected community leader in the community to share their perspectives to local attendees. For Hautala, that one thing is building relationships. “Good leadership starts with building relationships—and those relationships make the...
Collaboration is a three-legged stool.
In our work, collaboration is one of our Strateligent values and we collaborate daily within our team. However, before we ever begin a client project, there is an even more crucial collaboration—when Aaron Hautala, Strateligent’s president and creative director, meets with a client and their stakeholders in a project’s initial planning phase. Purpose. The first leg of the three-legged collaboration stool occurs when Aaron brings the various stakeholders together to determine the purpose of the project and to discern their goals. Whether it’s consulting with a new client or an existing client with a new project, the people involved come from different backgrounds and viewpoints or they...
Building A Brand To Build A Better Future
Working with RIPL to prevent school violence, together. Our mission is to improve the future for our clients, our communities, and ourselves—and what better way to make good on our mission than helping RIPL (Relational, Impactful, Preventive, Leadership) Training—a school violence prevention program—transform their image, positioning, and sales process. National School Safety Consulting, LLC’s RIPL Training focuses on a “Recognize and Prevent” approach that produces a safe, inclusive, and positive culture that prevents school violence and suicide. It’s different. It needed to look and feel different, too. RIPL came to us for help rebuilding their entire brand—updating everything from their website to their employee email signatures. We refreshed...
How we relate.
Communicating with a purpose hinges on listening, adapting, and achieving. But the secret to our success? We aim to build genuine, long-term relationships with each and every client we serve. We get to truly know them, their businesses, and their customers—and we work together every step of the way. Lake Mille Lacs—a renowned walleye fishing destination—started experiencing an economic downturn when changes in walleye fishing regulations reduced the number of visiting anglers. We were tasked to develop new positioning and showcase new tourism opportunities to complement the already strong fishing base—but first we needed to get to know Lake Mille Lacs. Our team was baptized in Lake...
How we listen.
Our vision: To improve the future for our clients, our communities, and ourselves. How do we do it? We communicate with the sole purpose of positively changing hearts and impacting minds. In this blog series, we’ll explain how listening, adapting to change, achieving results, and building relationships help make the impossible, possible. Our creative process starts with stakeholder input sessions. Traditionally, we’ve conducted in-person input sessions at our clients’ choice of location—but we’ve become masters in conducting them via Zoom (thanks, COVID). Stakeholders can be anyone and everyone—business owners, boards of directors, investors, marketing and sales teams, employees, or a combination of folks. We focus on organically...
Extend Reach, Build Awareness, and Achieve Goals with a Strategic Rebrand
Small businesses grow. Sometimes they outgrow their brand. A lot had changed since Michael Ryan and Wesley Hoppe founded Ryan & Hoppe Investment Management in 2010—they’d added a new partner, were opening a new location, and had plans for more growth. They wanted a new identity that embodied those changes, yet continued to represent their goals, vison, and mission. Strateligent was hired to create a communication plan for a complete rebrand—a new name, a new brand logo, an arsenal of communication tools (i.e., a billboard, direct mail letter, signage, digital assets for the web), and a coordinated plan to launch the new identity. Creating a name. The firm’s...
Strategic Graphic Design Leads to Stable Branding
Close Converse started providing commercial real estate services throughout Central and North-Central Minnesota in 1995—it was time to modernize their brand. With Strateligent’s help, they recently relaunched their brand with a new logo, fresh signage, and a revamped web design. More than a logo design. Our creative process involves our clients, their stakeholders, and the Strateligent creative team working together to create communication that serves a purpose. We don’t just brainstorm graphic design ideas; we create a blueprint for brand strategy that delivers results. Close Converse knew what they wanted—a logo that was recognizable and professionally modern. We knew they needed more than just that to effectively market...