Few companies are successful at developing solid brands. Branding is difficult and few executives appreciate branding as a discipline.

Effective branding requires clarity, focus, and sacrifice. Effective brands have a deep understanding of what business they’re really in. They know what they promise their customers and continuously focus on delivering that promise. If an existing operation or a proposed idea doesn’t speak to their customers’ needs, they eliminate it.

Effective brands show unfaltering courage. It takes strength to stand for something meaningful and tenacity to do it each and every day. (Courage is one of the Seven Golden Rules of Cult Branding.)

Effective branding takes patience and maturity. It takes a willingness to learn from your customers. It takes resolve not to radically alter course to chase the latest fads, but also courage to innovate in new directions.

Effective branding requires open, honest communication across all business divisions and even with key partners and vendors. Effective brands go through the painstaking effort to cultivate a culture that reflects the brand, rallying their employees and their customers around their brand.

Branding is a discipline. It’s not “airy-fairy” and it’s not about logos or taglines. Branding is at the heart of your business. If you don’t understand what your brand represents, you’ll likely see your market share continually shrink. Business owners who understand the importance of branding and adopt it as a discipline cultivate customer loyalty and will rule the future of commerce and industry.

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If you oftentimes feel like you should listen to classical music more than you do, definitely watch this.

Enjoy!

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When used correctly, email increases your ability to communicate effectively to a large number of people across multiple departments. Emails can reduce the number of necessary meetings and phone calls—both of which devour an executive’s day.

When email is not used effectively, however, it drains your time and reduces your productivity.

Here are a few guidelines on how to write an effective email:

1. Write a descriptive subject line. The more descriptive the subject line, the better. “Lunch Meeting” is okay; “Lunch Meeting Today at Charlie’s” is better.
2. Use proper English. Email is not text messaging. The rules of grammar and syntax still apply. You are being disrespectful to the recipient if you’re not using proper grammar and punctuation since you make the email harder to read.
3. Be personal. Use the recipient’s name when crafting an email to an individual. Again, email is not text messaging. Sign your name at the bottom.
4. Be clear and concise. Clarity, simplicity and brevity are critical for effective writing. A lack of clarity in your writing leads to more email exchanges. If you clarify your ideas up front, you’ll have less email.
5. Revise your emails. You’re making a big mistake if you’re not revising your emails. In his Harvard Business Blog, David Silverman suggests that the number of revisions depends on the number of recipients.
   1. 1 to 5 recipients = 2 to 4 revisions
   2. 5 to 10 recipients = 8 to 12 revisions
   3. Company-wide or to Executive Committee = 30 to 50 revisions
6. Create sufficient white space. Skip a line between each paragraph (including your initial greeting) to make it easier for the recipient to read your message.
7. Spell check. This might seem obvious, but double check your spelling before you click “Send.”
8. Respect the recipient’s time. Whenever possible avoid using attachments. Try to put all necessary information in the text’s body.
9. Use bullets and numbers to organize your thoughts. Bullets and numbers make it easy for the recipient to see your main points and comment back point for point.
10. Anticipate the response. Think through the obvious questions the recipient might have and address them in advance. If you’re trying to schedule a meeting, offer at least two times that work for you and ask the recipient to suggest two additional times if those don’t work.

If you calculate the amount of time you spend on email each week, you’ll appreciate the need to use the medium effectively. Following the above advice can increase your level of productivity and free up more time.

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Effective advertisers are masterful at manipulating our subconscious to create connections between their products and specific emotional states. Corona, for example, did an excellent job associating their beer with life on a beach.

Some conditioned beliefs are helpful (like “don’t harm others”), while other programs present roadblocks and limitations to our creativity.

Here are three ways you can move beyond limiting thoughts and beliefs:

1. Change your language: The language you use greatly affects your thought process and creative capacity. When you use words like, “but it’s always been done that way,” you shut down access to new ideas. Certain words inspire you to action, others don’t.
2. Change your questions: Ask questions that fly in the face of your current boundaries. Let’s say you believe there are only two options to a given problem. What if you asked yourself, “What’s option C?” Your brain replies, “There is no option C. I just told you to choose between option A or B. No C.” You say, “I know there’s no option C, but if there were an option C, what would it be?” This question will inadvertently lead your brain to think of a third option. Consciously ask questions that allow you to suspend disbelief and perceived limitations.
3. Change your physiology. Your physiology influences how you feel in any instance. In the physiology of depression, your shoulders and head are down, your face frowns, and your breath is shallow. In the physiology of excitement, your head and shoulders are up, your entire body is elongated, and your breathing is more rapid. When you feel stuck, move your body around, stretch, take a deep breath, or do anything that will change your emotional state. You may be only a deep breath or a jumping jack away from having a breakthrough!

Dismantle your disempowering beliefs and be ready to break the rules.

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This seduction to complexity is found especially in written communication: emails, memos, reports and slides.

Author of On Writing Well, William Zinsser explains, “Managers at every level are prisoners of the notion that a simple style reflects a simple mind. Actually a simple style is the result of hard work and hard thinking; a muddled style reflects a muddled thinker or a person too arrogant, or too dumb, or too lazy to organize his thoughts.”

Zinsser explains that the four tenets of writing are clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity.

Clarity: Clear writing doesn’t happen by accident. It takes effort, focus and discipline. Clear writing reflects a clear mind; a clear mind requires a thorough understanding about the ideas you’re communicating. As a general rule, avoid euphemisms, jargon, fad words and clichés. Gobbledygook kills clear writing.

Simplicity: Simplicity also takes great effort. Paul Higham, the former chief marketing officer of Wal-Mart had a sign in his office: It takes more effort to keep things simple than it does to allow them to become complicated. Simplicity rarely emerges in your first draft. Fight for simplicity. Don’t settle for less.

Brevity: With our information-swamped culture, brevity and conciseness are required if you want your words to be read. Brevity requires focus and sacrifice. Don’t use three words when one word will do. First drafts of any writing tend to be verbose. To achieve brevity in written communication, review your writing multiple times.

Humanity: Organizations are made of people. Real people are going to read your writing. Yet organizations often write in cold, sterile ways, with a hint of pomposity. As Zinsser reminds us, “You only have to remember that readers identify with people, not with abstractions like ‘profitability,’ or with Latinate nouns like ‘utilization’ and ‘implementation,’ or with inert constructions in which nobody can be visualized doing something: ‘pre-feasibility studies are in the paperwork stage.’”

Writing with clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity takes courage, patience and dedication. The results of writing well speak for themselves.

Note: Zinsser’s On Writing Well should be required reading for every executive. Take special note of Chapter 16 on business writing.

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Businesses with greater clarity and direction always have a better chance of thriving in any economy. Here are five decisions you can make to give you greater clarity and direction:

1. Decide to focus on your best customers. Make all internal decisions with your best customers in mind. Your best customers hold the key to brand loyalty. Uncover who they are. This can take great effort—and a whole lot of listening, but this special group represents the key to your long-term profitability.
2. Decide to focus on building a highly functional team. Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team will help you identify the roadblocks inherent in team building and show you how to break through them.
3. Decide to grow from within. A company with a strong culture has a significant competitive advantage (just ask Google, Apple, Zappos or Netflix). Cultivate an inspiring work environment that breeds a unique culture aligned with core values. Remember: Your business’s culture reflects the overall image your brand represents to your customers.
4. Decide to be the best at something. This decision requires sacrifice and focus. Jim Collin’s Hedge Hog concept is a good one. Find the intersection of the answers to these three questions:  (1) What are you passionate about? (2) What can you be the best at? And (3) What drives your economic engine?
5. Decide on a more compelling future for your organization to rally around. Obsessive focus on your competitors will consistently deteriorate your business. And simply achieving your revenue goals isn’t going to inspire anyone. Zappos is striving to deliver happiness to its customers. What is your organization committed to creating or becoming?

Any one of these powerful decisions can transform your business, but they are not mutually exclusive. Want to ensure success and catapult your business into a new stratosphere of long-term profitability? Commit to all five of these powerful decisions.

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It seems contradictory to current business philosophy that touts open communication and the continuous sharing of ideas. In truth, there’s a time and place for both philosophies.

Why shouldn’t you always talk about your ideas and dreams with others? When you talk about your ideas, you put yourself in a position to defend them. This brings your ego into the conversation; this natural defense mechanism can deplete your energy and enthusiasm for the idea.

Even your well intended, loving friends and family, in an attempt to protect you, can stifle your greatest ideas and life-altering plans.

In business, it is usually important to have open communication of ideas and strategies, however, be cautious here too. Unless you surround yourself with a highly empowering team, great ideas will be shot out of the water.

Colleagues are generally more likely to give you Black Hat critical perspectives than Yellow Hat positive outlooks on your ideas. Humans are wired for survival, so caution is an innate human quality. Most humans are not optimistic, so be careful with whom you share your ideas.

Naturally, there is a point when the idea needs to be shared in business, like prior to the execution phase that requires financial resources. Discern when to unleash your ideas on others.

One caveat: If you can find a person or group of people who can be a positive “sounding board” for your ideas and will only provide empowering feedback at early brainstorming stages, this can greatly help the creative process.

Incubate your ideas first. Mull them over. Twist them. Turn them upside down. Shake them around. Free your mind, entering a boundless universe where your ideas can run and play.

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Most businesses figure out a certain way to address this problem and tend to stick to this method. We call this Operant Marketing: Doing things the way they’ve been done in the past.

But what if there’s a better solution to your problem? What if there’s a more effective way of attracting customers? Better yet: What if there’s a more effective product or service you can offer them?

Stay with the problem. Don’t accept your current answer as “the” answer. Be willing to challenge yourself and your team to stay with the problem of how to grow your business. Set up meetings exclusively focused on this problem.

Don’t look at this problem as a bad thing. A bounty of opportunity lies within every challenge. You may just need to sit with the problem.

Einstein noted later in life, “It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

What if you stayed with your problems a bit longer? What if you committed to finding new and better solutions no matter what? How might your future change?

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Success cannot be measured by material wealth. Fortunes come and go.

Success cannot be measured by status. You need only watch TV to see how sad and pathetic many celebrity lives have become.

True success is everlasting; it’s not conditional on market circumstance or other external factors. “Things” don’t define a truly successful person. It’s who you are—who you have become—that matters.

Someone with true success can get financially wiped out overnight and still know he can build it all again. No problem. It wasn’t luck. It was an alignment of principles. It was maintaining a high standard. It was focusing and respecting the needs of others. It was always operating with integrity—showing respect, admiration and reverence to all life.

Ultimately, then, building wealth becomes a choice.

The qualities of a successful person are with him always.

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Integrity isn’t found in appearances. Projected glamour runs Hollywood as well as the majority of commerce and industry.

Integrity is found in what you are—your very presence is a reflection of what you are. We can often intuit if a person is of high integrity (but we’re not always correct).

We can also sense the overall Presence of a business. We can tell when a business just wants our money.

Conversely, we can tell when a business cares about building a relationship with us.

Matthew 7:16 provides the clearest answer for discerning integrity: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Businesses with high integrity attract loyal customers; businesses without integrity do not. It’s that simple.

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