Gratuitous sorcery and incantations from actual Wizards.

Coming up with a brilliant plan for your business? That’s the easy part.

Not easy easy—but way easier than getting your team to actually be it, love it, and live it every day.

You’ve done the grunt work. You’ve got the research, creativity, and strategy. Now, the real hard part begins: How do you get your entire company to buy in, believe in it, and deliver it for your customers?

Step 1: Start With the Truth (Down to the Uncomfortable Kind)

Let’s say you own Twist & Flout, a gift wrap ribbon company. Sales have been fine, but for the past 10 years, they’ve been… meh. You know something needs to change, so you dig in and start asking the tough questions.

You gather your leadership and creative team for a meeting and ask:

• Who do we think we are?
• What do we think we do?

Ask those 2 questions 5 different ways. You know you’re onto something when the quiet ones chime in. You get everyone present to where you are. Here and now.

Step 2: Big Dreaming

• Who do we wish we were?

At first, the answers are vague — “We should make the world a better place,” “We bring people joy.” Nice, but not specific enough. So you keep pressing. Keep refining and watch the excitement build. You write it all on a big whiteboard and soon the same themes keep coming up. You all can land on “Twist & Flout is a rebellious ribbon company committed to making gifting fun and joyful.”

Boom. That’s the identity. That’s the answer to every question in your business.

Step 3: Teach Your Team to Think Like this New Person

Now that you know who you are, it’s time to make sure every decision — from marketing to customer service to product design — aligns with that identity.

You don’t need to micromanage every email or oversee every factory shift. Instead, you give your team one simple formula they can use in any situation:

IF (this is where we’re going) AND (this is who we are), WHAT WOULD WE DO?

• IF we’re increasing sales AND we’re rebellious and committed to fun and joyful gifting,
• How would we answer a customer’s email?
• What should our social media sound like?
• What kind of snacks should be in the waiting room?

If your identity is rebellious and fun, would you stock the waiting room with Pirate’s Booty or Goldfish crackers? Would you serve Dasani bottled water? Or would you go for Liquid Death? Or Topo Chico? Which one screams rebellious and fun and joy?

It’s not about snacks — it’s about alignment.

Every choice, big or small, is an opportunity to reinforce your brand’s identity.

And the best part? You don’t have to force your team to follow the strategy. Once they get used to the formula, it becomes like a second skin.

This isn’t about getting your team to “comply” with a new strategy. It’s about empowering them to live it. They’ll make the right choices—not because they’re following orders, but because they’re excited about who they’re being. It won’t be perfect from the get-go. Everyone will need to be reminding each other and having conversations about what this rebellious and fun identity would do. But the tide will turn. Eyes will sparkle.

Because when your entire company understands who you are and where you’re going, they won’t just follow the strategy. They’ll be excited about it. And so will your customers.

‍

We are made to grasp after our best life. It is what we want for our kids, our parents, our siblings, our staff and clients. You started your business to create those possibilities. That is why you are still in business.

If not, move on.

It is always the building and the hero’s journey of their business that the truly successful recount and cherish.

Do with, not for.

Any family-owned or local business lives this.

And, ideally, the getting-there never stops.

Al Anderson had a sister. He loved sports, even though he never played pro and he loved his sister, disability and all. I did just check to make sure I was right about the “no pro sports” and found his obituary from a couple of days ago. I didn’t know. Without Al, without his sister, there would be no Elmwood. My brother worked in his Saskatoon Sports Store for years. He mopped. He smiled. He greeted people and loved it.

My special needs brother Kevin lives his best life ever in one of Elmwood’s care homes.

That painting encapsulates what Best Business Owner’s do. Or try to do.

The first time I was in that foyer was about 15 years ago. Lunch was a happy sunny picnic with my three Beautiful Bumphrey Boys at the school. I was headed back to the office and anxiety was in my passenger seat, so heavy the airbag showed “On”. On impulse (I now believe my Guardian Angel’s whisper), I made a U-turn and parked in front of Elmwood. Scared to go in. Like a rookie salesperson on her first cold call.

Kevin had just missed a bed in a perfect private care home a few blocks from our house. When my husband texted “fiat voluntas tua” after the news, it was hard to be gracious in my reply. Kevin needed somewhere to live. His overworked social worker mentioned Elmwood as an option while also telling me I would hate it.

Turns out, I loved it. I loved the lady who took me for an immediate tour. I loved seeing staff smiling and laughing with residents, some in wheelchairs, some painting, others dancing and singing.

Do with, not for.

Immediately, I sent a gushing email to Kevin’s team, cc’d Elmwood and my sister who shares Kevin’s team jersey with me. He was on their waiting list.

I felt hopeful. Kevin – and I- needed someone to help us build a better life for him.

Fast forward, again in that foyer, waiting for a radio station promotion team and a favorite local business. About 100 residents – including Kevin – plus Elmwood staff waited with me. It was winter. Beyond the North Pole cold outside, but warm inside. What do you do with a packed room (think not warm, but hot) full of disabled people and staff eagerly, impatiently waiting for their Christmas Wishes to arrive? Precision Autobody was giving a vehicle, stuffed full of treats and toys, with Santa Claus driving – and they were late.

There was snow, ice, wind, and total crazy on the rutted streets and the key people bringing Santa kept telling us they were coming, but not yet…

I did what my mom would’ve done. I started singing loudly and with a smile (Leah does not have talent) and soon everyone was singing.

It wasn’t me singing for them. It was all of us, with us.

Do with, not for.

With, not for. Okay – so special needs people need encouragement, a helping hand, not an impatient and simpler just-do-what-needs-to-be-done reaction.

But what about your business?

Do you still strategize, create, plan, and daydream about what is possible? Are you training your staff to be your business, to exemplify your culture so that you don’t simply own a job? Working on your business, not just in your business, requires the ability to critique, offer, and wait for the opportunity to make a difference.

That is what your customers are looking for. That is what will keep them coming back.

Your business may be the passion of your heart, the joy of your retired parent’s life, and now your second-generation anchor or a franchise waiting for your special mark. Maybe you’re a salesperson operating a business of your own within another person’s business.

You know your industry.
But who do you trust to help you get to the next level?
To do it with you, not for you.

Your advertising, creative production, overall media buy, marketing strategy, and culture can be stronger and more fun with a team working with you that is not inside the bottle of your industry. You are there, which means it is tough to read the label on the bottle. If you want to stay there, you might want to leave the keys on the desk. Except, full disclosure, I don’t want them.

Do with, not for.

Every Wizard Partner wants that for their clients – to work with, and help build beyond the quiet vision every business owner should be nurturing, but doesn’t have the time to work on.

Roy H Williams, I have on good authority, doesn’t take a bet he knows he can’t win. That is exactly how he recruits his Wizard Partners. Doing with not for is what he expects of us. A very awesome responsibility.

No one can do it for you.

Branding is not a logo. It’s not your tagline. It’s not even your color palette. Your brand is a representation of all of your intentional actions and behaviors. The ideals that inspire the hearts of your buyers and hires. The sacrifices you’re willing to make for their care and your attention to fulfilling their needs. Your brand shows them who you are, what you believe, and why they matter to you. Only then will you have a brand that will matter to them. 

But in the cacophony of modern-day stimulation, how do you ensure your brand voice is heard above the noise? The answer lies in crafting a holistic brand strategy—one built for 2025 and beyond.

Let’s dig into the delicious marrow of what makes a brand thrive. Not survive—thrive. The tactics have changed, and so must your strategy.

The Foundation: Start With Why

Simon Sinek’s golden circle is more than a clever framework; it’s the roots of your brand. Your “why” isn’t just a mission statement you slap on a wall. It’s the beacon that guides your decisions, attracts your tribe, and inspires loyalty.

People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. Apple didn’t win the hearts of millions because of superior technology—they won because they stood for challenging the status quo. Start with why, and everything else—your products, services, and campaigns—will fall into place like celestial dominoes.

The Hero’s Journey: Make Your Customer the Star

Every great brand tells a story, but the secret sauce is that it’s not about you. You are not the hero—your customer is. Your role is to be their wizard, the Yoda to their Luke, the Gandalf to their Frodo.

Frame your messaging around your customer’s challenges, desires, and transformation. They’re navigating a journey—your job is to equip them with the tools and insights they need to succeed. Brands that master this become indispensable.

Take Nike, for example. Their message isn’t “Look at our amazing shoes.” It’s “You are capable of greatness.” They speak to the athlete within every person, and in doing so, they build an emotional bridge that no competitor can tear down.

Simplicity Is Sophistication

In 2025, complexity is the enemy of clarity. If your brand strategy is a tangled mess of buzzwords, jargon, and diluted messages, you’re lost. The brands that win are the ones that can distill their essence into a single, unmistakable truth.

• Volvo: safety. 
• Starbucks: community. 
• Disney: magic. 

Each of these brands owns a singular idea in the minds of their customers. This isn’t by accident. It’s the result of disciplined focus and ruthless prioritization. Define your one thing and commit to it with unwavering resolve.

Embrace Disruption

Disruption isn’t just a Silicon Valley buzzword; it’s a branding necessity. The old ways of doing things are like yesterday’s newspapers—irrelevant and discarded. In a world that’s constantly changing, brands must either adapt or fade into obscurity.

But here’s the twist: Disruption doesn’t mean being recklessly innovative. It means being bold, calculated, and willing to challenge traditional conventions. Think of Patagonia’s bold stance on sustainability or Tesla’s audacious mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. These brands didn’t disrupt for the sake of disruption; they did so with purpose. 

What do you stand for? What injustice do you stand against?

The Digital Renaissance: Master the Mediums

2025 is a landscape dominated by digital interactions. Social media, SEO, email marketing, and AI-driven customer insights are no longer optional—they reinforce mainstream branding. But here’s the catch: You can’t master them all. Instead, you must master the ones where your audience hangs out most.

Figure out where your customers hang out. Are they scrolling through Instagram, diving deep into Reddit threads, or binging YouTube? Meet them there with shareable content that doesn’t inform but entertains and delights.

Consistency Is King

A fractured brand is a forgettable brand. Your message, tone, visuals, and values must sing in harmony across every touchpoint. If your website speaks one language and your social media another, you’ve created a discord that alienates your audience.

Consistency builds trust. Trust builds loyalty. And loyalty? That’s the holy grail of branding.

But consistency means something else, too. Repetition. There’s no promise that consistently posting will get in front of your desired audience consistently. You need to invest in high impression strategies, online and offline, if you ever hope to get past the short-term memory and take up residence in the long-term chemical memory. 

The alternative is spending outrageous amounts of money chasing the today customer who has no positive impression of you over your competition. 

Data Is Your Compass, Not Your Captain

We live in a world awash with data. Clicks, conversions, bounce rates, and heat maps can illuminate the path forward. But beware—data should guide your decisions, not dictate them.

The heart of your brand is not found in spreadsheets. It’s found in the empathy you show for your customers, the risks you’re willing to take, and the stories you tell. Use data as a tool, but never let it overshadow the human element of your brand.

To run your business by spreadsheet is to have a business with no soul. Count your pennies because you’ll never achieve the wealth that comes with a beloved brand. 

Invest in Culture

Your brand isn’t just what you project outwardly; it’s what you cultivate internally. A strong company culture is the backbone of every successful brand strategy. Your employees are your primary brand ambassadors—if they don’t believe in your mission, no one else will.

Southwest Airlines didn’t build its reputation on cheap flights alone. They built it on a culture of fun, respect, and love. That culture shines through in every customer interaction, turning flyers into lifelong fans.

The Long Game: Endurance Is a Virtue

Branding isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon. Building a winning strategy takes time, commitment, and resilience. There will be uncontrollable setbacks, frustrations, and moments of doubt. But the brands that endure are the ones that stay the course.

Amazon didn’t become a juggernaut overnight. They started with books, then built an empire one calculated step at a time. Their secret? Relentless focus on their customers and an unyielding belief in their vision.

The Last Word

A winning brand strategy isn’t about chasing trends or outspending your competitors. It’s about clarity of purpose, emotional resonance, and unwavering consistency. It’s about crafting a narrative that invites your customers into a story they can’t resist being a part of.

In 2025, the brands that will thrive are the ones that understand this fundamental truth: You don’t build a brand for yourself—you build it for them. Make it meaningful. Make it unforgettable. And most importantly, make it matter.

‍

If you're looking for a brand refresh, jumpstart of out of this world launch into 2025, you still have time, contact us to see your possibilities.

‍

It’s 4:23 in the morning and I’m sweating up a frenzy on the stairstepper. It’s all about the serotonin. I’ve got a thing for it.

Overloaded from sensory input from the eight different plasma televisions in my field of vision here at Planet Fitness, I’m feeling a bit like Ozymandias.

Ozymandias, you say?  As in the character depicted in the 290-year old poem of the same name from Percy Bysshe Shelley (he of “look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair”)?

While that would be apt and applicable, I’m not in the mood to piss and moan about all that’s wrong in the world. Not today anyway. We’ll get back to solving all the world’s woes tomorrow.

The Ozymandias I’m referring to today is the retired superhero from The Watchmen graphic novel (and eventual motion picture), the brainiac who must retreat to his Mission Control-like lair stocked with a wall of TVs he uses to process the rhythm of the world intuitively in order to attempt to save it.

It’s not that I have a superhero complex, although I do have The Watchmen on the brain. And in re-reading it this weekend for the umpteenth time, I was struck by the powerful metaphor the character has to offer anyone in business, the creative arts, or anyone looking for a neat parlor trick.

Side note: my alternate title for this post was “Something To Think About When You Watch The Watchmen)”.

In The Watchmen, the Ozymandias character feels the pulse of the universe and then lets intuition take over to parse out the answer to the day’s most difficult problems. It’s a powerful technique that one can use to “riff” on difficult problems, and it may just make you better at “The Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon.”

See, if you want to think outside the box, really, the easiest way is to just relax and allow your right brain to tap into a well-spring of idea flow.  Six televisions tuned to different channels will nurture this mindset. I’m a big fan of coupling this with sustaining a heart rate of 150+ bpm. Some people use drugs and alcohol for a similar effect, which may explain why so many writers are alcoholics.

The goal here is to abandon linear thought and just let your right brain take over. If you resist the urge to regress to the logical left brain and tendencies of linear thought, your brain can achieve this Zen-like stasis. At some point you’ll have that “Aha!” moment…what some would call a moment of clarity…and it’s all the result of the right brain’s penchant for pattern recognition.

The really neat thing is that it will feel entirely accidental, but there’s nothing accidental about this technique. We have those lightbulb moments when we tap into the power of metaphor, what neuroscientists would call symbolic thought, which is the most powerful type of thought.

What I call “scatterbrain synesthesia” is a powerful tool to use in the quest for creativity.  You’re more likely to gravitate toward this technique if you lean more toward the intuitive spectrum of thinking. But even the more logical and methodical among us can use this.  In fact, I believe they are especially good candidates to grow through this technique, because they are less inclined to go there inside of their natural preferences.

Wikipedia defines synesthesia as “a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway.”

The guardians of the world rarely engage in this style of “riffing.”  However, employing this strategy can yield powerful results in myriad ways. In the world of entrepreneurship, it works very well if you are looking to forge an innovation model in your industry, or what we call “business topology” in the Wizard Of Ads vernacular.

And speaking of Wizard Of Ads, this is exactly what my business partner Roy H. Williams uses for such dramatic effect in the rabbit hole of his weekly Monday Morning Memo.

Bouncing from one idea to the next like a renegade pinball… letting the right brain go on a fishing expedition… eventually, you’ll come to the intersection of the hoodoo and the mojo. That’s the plan anyway.

Sometimes it feels like a convoluted mess. A fool’s errand, seemingly. Diarrhea of the mind.  Not unlike this chapter, perhaps, which I am hopefully using to demonstrate the idea of which I speak.

And that’s the whole point. If you don’t make and take the time to give your right brain a serious, sweaty workout, then you’re really only using half of your brain. Or more accurately, you’re only using one of your two brains.

People trust numbers. They trust them even when those numbers might not tell them the whole story. If something looks better numerically — higher ratings, bigger discounts, or more followers — people assume it’s the better choice, even if that’s not always true.

You can influence choices by showing numbers to make your products and services seem better. Here are three ways:

1. People Pick What Looks Better in Numbers

• Restaurants – A burger joint with a 4.8-star rating attracts more customers than one with 4.5 stars, even if the lower-rated place has better food.
• Colleges – A university ranked #15 in the country seems better than one ranked #20, even if the lower-ranked school has better programs for specific majors.
• Fitness Apps – A workout app with “10,000 downloads” looks more trustworthy than one that says “loved by thousands,” even if both are equally good.

2. People Pick What “Feels” Cheap or Expensive

• Subscription Service – “Only $1.99 per day” sounds cheaper than “$59 per month,” even though they cost the same.
• Car Lease – “$99 per week” feels more affordable than “$5,148 per year,” even though it’s the same price.
• Furniture Sales: “Save $400 today!” sounds like a better deal than “Get 10% off,” even though both discounts are identical.

3. People Use Numbers To Compare Themselves to Others

• Job Hunting – A LinkedIn post that says “500 people applied for this job” might discourage people from applying.
• Social Media – A TikTok with 2 million likes feels more important than one with 100,000 likes, even if the smaller one has better content.
• Gaming – A leaderboard showing “Top 1% of players” makes people more competitive than if it just said “Elite Player.”

You should show numbers highlighting its strengths whenever you want to sell something. If something is causing harm (like social media comparison), removing numbers might help.

Numbers change how we make decisions, and we help people make decisions.

‍

Let’s get this out of the way upfront:

Short-term advertising absolutely produces better short-term results.

If you’re only measuring results based on how many leads you create today, next week, or even next month, short-term sales activation is the way to go.

But you will reach a point where you can no longer grow based on short-term advertising alone.

The factors that short-term ads require for success work against healthy profit margins and sustainable campaigns.

What factors?

1. An attention-grabbing deal, and
2. Urgency

Now, if you’re selling a must-have service — like, say, heating & cooling or plumbing, etc.

Then the urgency is baked in.

But you still have to offer people a deal.

Because it’s almost impossible to win a last-minute sale based on preference.

If the customer had a preference, they’d have already picked you, rather than googling a generic keyword or receiving a direct mail offering from you.

So the key to long-term growth and healthy profit margins lies in creating that preference BEFORE the sale.

And that requires long-term branding, which is exactly what decades of the best data on the planet show, as you can see in the chart below:

This chart was created based off of over 30 years of data and thousands of case studies.

Now here’s the kicker — if you want to talk to an audience about a product or service that they don’t need yet, you have to gain their attention first.

And if your product or service is not inherently interesting — i.e., if it’s an unsexy or ugly-duckling business — then you’ll probably need to “push” your advertising in front of them.

That basically means using mass media combined with entertaining or interesting ads.

It also requires staying on the air long enough, and with enough frequency, for your branding to gain traction and bring in increased high-quality leads.

Can you bootstrap a business using guerrilla advertising and short-term offers?

Absolutely.

Can you grow that business big and profitable without, at some point, switching to proper branding?

Maybe, but maybe not.

If no one in your market is branding themselves over the air, and if you are branding your company but not yet running a branding campaign, then you can get pretty big.

‘Cause in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man becomes king.

But it’ll be a lot harder and growth will be a lot slower and a lot less ensured than if you were running a proper branding campaign.

So if your company is currently suffering from “feed-the-beast-itus” — if you’re struggling to get enough leads to sustain growth or even stay busy — then the answer is certain:

You need to invest in a proper, long-term branding campaign featuring high-impact messaging.

And here’s the kicker to that — the better your long-term branding works, the more that will lift your short-term sales activation efforts as well.

So the previous chart should actually look a bit more like this:

‍