4. 1. Establish Your Brand with Core Values &
Clock Building
“A detailed pair-by-pair analysis showed that the visionary companies have
generally been more ideologically driven and less purely profit-driven than the
comparison companies in seventeen out of eighteen pairs. This is one of the
clearest differences we found between the visionary and comparison companies. In
short we did not find any specific ideological content essential to being a visionary
company. Our research indicates that the authenticity of the ideology and the
extent to which a company attains consistent alignment with the ideology counts
more than the content of the ideology.” -Jim Collins (Built to Last)
5. ● American Express: “Heroic customer service”
● Marriott: “Work hard, but keep it fun”
● Walmart: “Our People will find a way”
● Ford: “People as the source of our strength”
● Walt Disney: “Fanatical attention to consistency and detail”
● Nordstrom: “Being part of something special”
Examples of Great Core Values
6. Clock Building
“Imagine you met a remarkable person who could look
at the sun or stars at any time of day or night and state
the exact time and date: This person would be an
amazing time teller, and we’d probably revere that
person. But wouldn’t that person be even more amazing
if he or she built a clock that could tell the time forever?
Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary
leader is “time telling”; building a company that can
prosper through multiple product life cycles is “clock
building.” The builders of visionary companies tend to
be clock builders, not time tellers. Their greatest
creation is the company itself and what it stands for.”
-Jim Collins (Built to Last)
7. First Homework Assignments
1. Define your brand with core values
2. Establish your brand with clocks
3. Make time every week to build more & better clocks
8. 2. Simplify your messaging
“Business has a fierce insidious enemy called noise. What we
often call marketing is really just clutter and confusion. The
narrative coming out of a company (and for that matter inside a
company) must be clear. Why do so many brands create noise
rather than music? It’s because they actually think people are
interested in the random information they’re doling out. The
essence of branding is to create simple, relevant messages we
can repeat over and over so that we ”brand” ourselves into the
public consciousness.” -Donald Miller (Building a Story Brand)
9. Steve Jobs Example
● Last product Steve Jobs released
before being fired by Apple was the
Lisa
● Jobs ran a 9-page ad in the New York
Times focused on technical specs
● After his experience building and
selling Pixar, Jobs returned to Apple
and his first ad campaign was “Think
Different” without any product pictures
10. Guidelines
● Less is more (Squarespace: “We help you make beautiful
websites”)
● Tell a story: Customer, Problem, Guide, Plan, Call to
Action, Ends in Success
● The customer is the focus and hero of the story, not the
company
● Tell the customer where you are taking them
● Bite-sized break down of your story, very few words
● Has to be cohesive
12. 3. Focus on Customer Journey to
Strengthen Your Brand
"Your brand is a story unfolding across all
customer touch points." – Jonah Sachs
“A brand is no longer what we tell the
consumer it is — it is what consumers tell
each other it is.” – Scott Cook
13. Eighty percent of companies
say they deliver “superior”
customer service, yet only
8% of people think these
same companies deliver
“superior” customer service.
14. Map out a Customer Journey, Living Doc
Could include some of the following:
1. Ask at point of sale if you do a good job, if you can you reach back out for
referrals
2. 2-3 red carpet calls after first 2-3 services; ask for referrals on the last call
3. Welcome Video (whiteboard video) & Letter
4. Annual swag w/ annual calls; ask for referrals (hats, mugs, kitchen
trinkets) w/ notes
5. How you handle re-services…
6. An annual message from CEO, show your personality, make it funny
7. CEO who spent 3 hours a week calling customers, focused on detractors,
Hand written notes to detractors
15. “It's our job every day to make every
important aspect of the customer
experience a little bit better. If you're
competitor-focused, you have to wait
until there is a competitor doing
something. Being customer-focused
allows you to be more pioneering.” -
Jeff Bezos
16. In Conclusion
1. Establish your brand with core values & clock-
building
2. Simplify your messaging
3. Focus on the Customer Journey to strengthen
your brand
