If you ask Lindsay Waugh, James Fisher and Julie Sheldon what it was that brought them together to launch a new consultancy, they would likely tell you that it’s a labour of love – Tough Love, that is.

Their new consultancy, which launched this week with a focus on strategy, has been created to address what the trio saw as a “gap” in expertise during their collective decade of experience as freelance consultants in the space. All three come from agency backgrounds, meeting at Mosaic in the early 2010s, with Fisher also having brand-side experience with Canada Goose. Because of that, they feel well-positioned to understand the complexities of the strategic craft – and also why it is often unsung or, at least, underappreciated.

“Strategy is a buzzword that’s used commonly, like storytelling or engagement or community, but it’s largely misunderstood and it’s often the first thing to go – the first ‘gap,'” explains Fisher. “That’s because there’s excitement around getting to the creative idea, or there’s just not enough time, budget or understanding of how to implement strategy and do it well.”

At agencies, part of the problem is the overhead.

“Having strategic thinkers such as us on payrolls is expensive, and strategy assignments at agencies can sometimes be few and far between, with big asks,” Waugh tells strategy. “So we found a need for people to go in, whether it be direct-to-client, in partnership with agencies, or direct to agencies themselves, and do some of that best-in-class strategy work for them, so they don’t have to have those resources on their roster and aren’t having to fill projects all the time. That was the impetus for starting Tough Love.”

Though the cost of good strategic thinking can at times be prohibitive, the value is often priceless, Fisher adds.

“To not have strategy is to be rudderless. These are unprecedented times to try to show up as a brand, participate in culture and earn trust and fame and love,” he elaborates. “The industry really fetishizes the creative idea, but it’s actually the thinking behind the idea that’s kept in the dark. That’s why we think of strategy as an unsung craft. It’s varied and misunderstood, but to have strategy is to have a direction to travel in, even though you still have to navigate choppy waters.”

It also helps for brands to have a “guiding star,” says Waugh, that their partners can rally around and work toward as a collective, rather than acting in siloes that produce disparate work that doesn’t “marry together.”

The trio are the only full-time employees of the consultancy, operating on a model that is becoming familiar in the industry – three leads, backed by their networks and the power of the gig economy. Fisher says it provides “the benefit of a consultancy and the power of a collective.”

Still, much of the strength in Tough Love’s proposition lies in the skillsets that Waugh, Fisher and Sheldon bring to the work themselves.

“We’ve all been in high-growth environments and ‘character-building’ roles where we were spread far and wide and learned to do what it takes,” Fisher says. “But we’ve experienced the passion that happens when work is meaningful, and as difficult as it is to achieve something meaningful, we know people are willing to work together and run through walls when they believe in it.”

“For us, there’s a juxtaposition of hard and soft. We’re all-in on the work, thinking and ideas, but bring a much-needed and more modern approach to how we work together as humans,” he adds. “It’s a combination of intensity, passion and relentlessness, but also empathy and humanity. And that’s needed not only for brands, but also in our experience, for doing work in this industry.”