About

 As we have recently rebranded, we have put a lot of information here about our story. As we grow this website experience, we hope to include more details in the blog about us, our journey, and our client's journeys.

 

Some people loathe a long story so for those of you who want the short one, here you go:

The short story

I burned out of corporate work and started a business in 2014, found clients, started a family, finished grad school and additional training, found more clients, finished some more training, and more clients, rebranded in 2022, and here we are today. We offer data, analytics, strategy, visualization, HR, mission, vision, values, impact, short to long-term project planning and management, design, and creative services.

 

The longer story

Many businesses have a typical founding story. Often like … a recent college graduate or a dewy-eyed young person developed an insight too good to keep to themselves, so they decided to start a side hustle, that quickly outgrew their garage, they found the perfect teammates and set forth with a business plan in hand.

The start of Renaissance Strategy Dynamics wasn’t like that.

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Starting this business in 2014 was a lifeline. I was burned out from my previous corporate job, I wanted to help the community be more than just resilient but to feel value, and purpose and to thrive. My friends were losing their jobs and we all were still recovering from the housing market crash of 08' and I kept seeing "trend" self-help business consulting agencies pop-up to offer quick-fix diet-type solutions that never really amounted to losing 100 lbs. in 10 days as was always guaranteed.  

When I started this business, I didn't want to waste time or energy chasing blog co-hosting and focused on understanding clients' needs to craft individual solutions. A popular acronym in business is SMART goals (google it), but I believe that there are equally if not more value-based goals that are overlooked, the immeasurable goals. These are the things that make you feel a certain way when you open up or talk about your business, or when you see your ad running, or when you connect with the data on a relational level, or the trust you have in your team and the ability to collaborate on tough projects. How you feel about your life, your place in your family, and the community all reflect how you feel and operate your business. After understanding this deeply through many losses and setbacks, my friends and clients started describing me as a “Business Therapist”. In a way, this is the most accurate statement that is still true today. I’ll touch on that more below.

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In 2014 I left my stable job, and set out to learn by doing more, and listening to leaders of all types of businesses and nonprofits. This started my journey to becoming a knowledge billionaire. At this time, I felt imposter syndrome because I didn’t yet have a full understanding of the dynamics people experience when owning a business and how personal and professional strengths and obstacles affect the business.

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Much of my work from 2014-2017 revolved around helping businesses with normal "business-y stuff" but also helping them find their voice, their purpose, and how they felt about their profitability and community impact. But I didn't yet know how to help clients achieve more with analytics and relational logic. I will post a blog soon about the time my calendar literally flew out the car window and I cried as my babies cried in the back of the car and I had to go digital after a pause to reflect on this learning lesson.

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 In 2018, I decided to continue my education while I was 7 months pregnant and started working on a Master lof Science in Analytics focusing on computer science, mathematics, and economics principles. I want to mention, I did spend a year or more thinking and researching schools and paths as I am a financially-stable-oriented person with time as my most valued currency so any endeavor that is wasteful of either of those values wouldn’t have worked well for me.​

From then on, I focused on working diligently within my time blocks, learning, and observing, and I went digital in my workflow. Skipping ahead to 2020, we all know it was a hot mess, but this time reinspired my perspective to share my knowledge and skills with the community around me and to grow in this journey with others. The rest as they say, is history, and I joined the Chamber of Commerce, met businesses to work with outside of my old bubble, and found even more joy in sharing the insights and skills I have collected. 

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When I started this company, which has now become RSD, I wanted to help businesses, nonprofits and individuals feel good and thrive from the collection of insights on my knowledge billionaire quest. Today the RSD team offers services and solutions in business and nonprofit consulting: data, analytics, strategy, visualization, HR, mission, vision, values, and impact, short to long-term project planning. management, design and creative services

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A glimpse at what we offer

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Back to the “Business Therapist” part that I mentioned above. Imagine yourself on a couch talking to a therapist with your head up to the clouds, and RSD is your sounding board for problems. This is a service that we offer but we thought people might find that too holistic, so we branded ourselves more professionally as a business consultant company. But we do not stop with the couch but help guide you back to the office and make real changes to reach your goals.

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• Therapy Sessions: we meet in a trusted space, develop a healthy relationship, and listen to the clients’ identified problems in our consultation process, often over tea/coffee. Often the client knows the solutions but is often hesitant to share such vulnerabilities off the bat so it may take a few sessions to uncover so I can help them move forward with tools, processes, people, etc. Often the problem is the person themselves and they need to have a framework shift to find the optimal solution they are seeking. I will help in any way, but I strive to give the client the most effective and time-value-based solution. Not everyone ends up liking the solutions offered and I hope you know we are not in this to make enemies, but meaningful work can be painful or often involve removing the people and projects with emotional ties to reach the set goals. What we have found is that deficits in personal and professional qualities can hide for a while but almost always become a problem if not identified and addressed.

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• Step-Work: After “therapy” comes the time to identify, organize, strategize, and plan a path of success. Often this is addressing MVV (Mission, Vision and Values statements).

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• Become: After step-work, we go as granular as needed to find the optimized solutions based on individual goals. This looks different for every client even if they are in similar industries to others, we take this from a very individual perspective. We can literally become a part of your strategy and solution.

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• Beyond: We work on maintenance and longevity solutions, support mentorship, and relationship management.

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• What about your name?​

  • Strategy: We specialize in understanding the problem and what you really want out of your time with us. We can revise current strategies, create from day 1, or can help you take your existing strategy to the level of success and value you determine. Everything we do is client-focused, and we always consider your personal and professional desires in business solutions.

  • Dynamics: we almost went with the word Crescendo, but it was hard for Susannah’s 7-year-old to spell, so we went with the umbrella term, Dynamics. The benefit is that more people can spell it, and it’s truer of businesses in that it isn’t always a crescendo experience and there are times we need to be at different volumes, speeds, and expressions at varying times. Also, Susannah plays the flute and reminded us that a crescendo for a piccolo/flute is experienced differently when measured in decibels than for other instruments which ties back to the Renaissance.

  • Renaissance: In Renaissance music, no dynamic markings were written, and each voice was independent in phrasing and composure. Similarly, we understand nonprofits, businesses and individuals don’t have dynamics written out for them to succeed and be resilient in turbulent times. We are here to refine and amplify each client as a harmonious symphony of business success, community impact, personal value, and family balance. 

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• Your website is renstrategy.com? Similar to not being able to spell crescendo perfectly, we thought we would give our clients and friends a solution with a shorter URL that we can spell most of the time correctly. I know strategy is confusing too sometimes but I believe in you (and google SEO should help guide you if it’s incorrect). Can you imagine people trying to type in renaissancestrategydynamics.com? seems excessive so we didn’t attempt to. For those of you who like acronyms feel free to call us RSD (we added it to our DBA too! 😊)