Dear you, Running an organisation and building a brand is hard. Even when you’re doing what you care about, it’s still hard. And everyone seems to think they know how to do it better than you. Case in point—the articles I write every week asking you to consider this and do...
“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.” – Ernest Hemingway In the rush of a new year, it’s easy to get caught up in change mania. Headlines everywhere ask me to change, go exploring, be a new me....
Sometimes the deep work and everyday actions and decisions needed to build a brand can feel like a modern day equivalent of the Gordian Knot. The origins of the term come from the time of Alexander the Great in 333 B.C. and one of the earliest uses in modern language was by...
The focus is all to often at the edges. Why are we here? What are we going to do, deliver, say and be? The “how” in the middle gets scant attention by comparison. Of course it doesn’t get totally missed or “what” would never happen. The “how” that gets missed is...
What do an author, a highly decorated Navy Seal and building brands have in common? While listening to Four Hour Work Week author Tim Ferris’ long form podcast with retired Navy Seal Jocko Willink a point they were discussing jumped out at me – extreme ownership. (I won’t transcript the exchange here but if you go to...
A brand requires a steady balanced diet of thought and action, interaction and reaction, constantly feeding the result. What often happens instead, are hits of creative endeavor that get the organisation hooked on the idea that this is how the brand is built. Like the sugar or caffeine junkies who can’t...
“If you want to know what your brand stands for just ask someone what they think…” has to be one of the most useless pieces of advice I’ve ever heard given to an organisation (right up there with “if you’re not delighting your customers you’re wasting your time”). It is true...
Unexpectedly and delightfully I ran into my friend @AJKulatunga yesterday. We always have great conversations and this one quickly ranged into the uncomfortable necessity of discipline in successful businesses. Discipline is a fairly unsexy concept bringing to mind images of soldiers on the drill field and the early morning training grind...
When an entrepreneur is building a brand the focus is often on the ‘doing’ side of things. For too many that starts and stops at the veneer they want (deciding a name, getting a logo, applying it to everything that moves). But more fully it can extend across and align...
“Actions speak louder than words,” so the saying goes, and with apologies to all my writer friends, I’ll have to agree with that sentiment. As I’ve explored in this blog over the last couple of weeks – words do matter. Quite a bit. The right words get things off and running....