
Long Game Of Your Branded Business
A CEO brought me in after they “got agencied,” according to his description. He recounted that the agency tried to fit its definition of “brand” into its process to “create a brand.” The CEO confided that they didn’t want to create a brand; they wanted to identify and activate the essence of them at their best.
This situation and CEO’s wish made perfect sense to me because a brand is everything your company does. So, unless you’re a start-up trying to understand what and who your company is, you already have a brand; it just may not have been cultivated, refined, fully expressed, or activated yet.
Because the brand is everything your company does, including how it expresses itself, it’s too important to be separate from your culture. No company with integrity — in all ways it’s defined — can’t effectively operate or succeed in the long run in silos.
A company’s long-term success depends upon how reliably it can earn a steady stream of predictable customers, attract and engage the right team members, and how well a company walks its talk.
In part, business trust and integrity are built by delivering on promises to customers. Without trust, you won’t keep your hard-earned customers or retain the right team to serve those customers. Trust is the social currency all businesses deal in.
Here’s an infographic to illustrate Brand-Culture Integrity.

The degree to which employees convey and live up to their organization’s promise directly influences customer experiences (CX). The employee experience (EX) is built upon the core beliefs and behaviors lived inside the organization, ideally aligned with company goals.
Company culture is the operating system of the organization. Because of this, it drives how it attracts prospects, serves customers, and walks its talk. When the company culture aligns with the brand, it operates as an integrated system.
Your business will not succeed simply by building an attractive brand or clarifying your purpose — but by doing the day-in and day-out work with united and caring hands to stride toward your vision of success.
Your brand and your future are lived into being. This is why having an actionable purpose and a clear vision that your driven team unifies around matters.
We celebrate people who make principled decisions when the stakes are high. We admire them for their character and convictions. I suspect you do this, too.
Of course, it depends on how you define “success.” If success looks like someone else’s image, say a celebrity, a unicorn business, or an “influencer,” you might be aiming too low or in the wrong direction. But, if an integrity-ridden, world-changing goal defines “success” — something that moves the world forward or improves the lives of your people — it’s likely worth striving for.
The long game, where all the best business strategies reside, consists of day-in and day-out accomplishments multiplied over time. To me, this is worth striving for when you’re clear about your direction and why you’re headed there.
I’m striving for you and with you, the business leader who’s standing by your convictions and striving day-by-day to make the world of your people — team, and customers — a better place as you define it.
If you want a more trusting team, a culture of belonging or a magnetic brand that attracts more of the right customers, I can help. If you'd like to explore if working together makes sense, drop me a line.