Brand Architecture

 

Brand is important to a corporation. It normally start with knowing your market, which mean written marketing plan. When you’d have it, you uncover parts of it. It can be challenging to blend sales and marketing plan with business plan because they focus on different things separating them from one another. But they complete each other by bringing all the pieces of your business together.

Business plan discuss overall objectives, resources required to achieve them, and strategies for it. Sales and marketing plan take your business to the next level. It focuses on channels, tactics and strategies for marketing and making sales. These show things – characters, strength, and weaknesses – that matter to the corporation. It simplifies progress for brand architecture’s process because you have identified characters.

Use these to picture your business. It is an objective perspectives – using data from market research – that help visualize the company operating for delivering value for customers. Focus on created value surrounding a business model before its plan and execution. Try to see your business’ added-value perceived by your customers.

Then choose characters that matters to them. Three to ten characters are useful for describing your company. For example, a restaurant that identifies added-value that provide a customer friendly environment for people can list these characters: friendly, flexible, social, organized, service-oriented, respectful etc. These signify the added-value.

But so would other things – what colors, symbols or objects say all these? What characters, colors and symbols signify those things? Acknowledge what the service/product allow people to do, or what they do while using it. Using the example with restaurant, it can be socializing and watching television or movie. Acknowledging the difference between those who want to talk and those who want to watch television.

The restaurant owner might choose to have a television that somehow tell a story. It can be a football game, news or other occurring societal events. They do this because the television is in lowest volume, so it doesn’t interrupt those whom are socializing at the restaurant. People do other things with the products. Some brands are meant to inspire people others make them relax.

The golden question is, with your business structure, what do your product/service let people do apart from using it? It is the added value. Focus on something that product – in additional to its standard function – is doing for customers/clients.

In conclusion, the best way to find a brand is to look at other things (apart from intended function) your products does for your customers. You can list all of them and decide the most valuable one to your audience/customers.

Reinforce Yourself

Research indicates you cannot reinforce yourself. But you can improve parts of you that advance your capabilities. You can do this by focusing on things that need reinforcement. For example when going for an interview, you start practicing your charismatic skills in front of a mirror. It is not because you don’t know what to say. But you want to make sure you sound professional during the interview.

You reinforce yourself by learning how to sound more professional before the interview. The most challenging part is sounding natural – your own voice – so the interviewer know you’ve not been practicing those words. That is why you try to focus more on how you sound than what you’d say. Reinforcement of yourself is done when advancing your level.

For example, you are familiar with finance. You know that your income have to be more than expenses. But when taking a new position in management, you have to go beyond standard knowledge about it. You have to learn about cash flow, asset pricing, understand equity, stocks and so on. You don’t need to be expert at it, but have enough knowledge to simplify accountant’s job.

You should reinforce yourself before starting a new position at the company. No company owner wants a new employee to learn something the person should already know before working in the company. Everyone only has 1440 minutes (24 hours) a day to do their daily activities. No company will spend a minute on something the employer should already know. The owner train you about company’s system. They can give you some weeks to master it. But your knowledge before starting makes you qualify for the job.

Reinforcing yourself requires a know-how attitude and strive after knowledge that make it easier to do what you want to do. In “Elevate Yourself and Conquer your Greatest Fear”, I said it is important to learn new things that corresponds with your improved position. We can advance to any level. How we do it begin with identifying what we need to know to elevate and how we use that knowledge to uplift ourselves before elevating.

Reinforce yourself for the same reason you strive after a new position. Sometimes what you plan to accomplish is a driving power, and other times why you are doing it is more motivational. They are keys to reinforcement. You know what and why you are doing it. It is your driving power.

In conclusion, you can’t be reinforced, but you can reinforce parts of you that simplifies progress in your life and business. You are not the only one who need reinforcement, your business can also need it. It improve or expand your business. You should always try to improve what you do.

Elevate yourself and conquer the Greatest Fear

People are comfortable doing what they do best. They make it their comfort zone. This impact their way of life. It is their strength, and they capitalize on it. An identity define characters that reinforce strengths, and indicates weaknesses. We all know who and how we are.

Most people are result-driven and aware of using their identities in what they do, how they are, and even their social lifestyles. So they use their identity to position themselves. We place ourselves where we are mostly comfortable. A person who is social and focus driven can be positioned as a social worker, because he/she put their social skills to practice. Their focus is getting other people to open up to them, making their job easier.

This position normally involve assessing critical information, because they deal with bad home environment. They get the abilities to enhance their risk managerial capabilities when facing unforeseen circumstances like someone in the house harassing them or having violence approach. These experiences – good and bad – makes them experts.

You dedicated your life to makes it your masterpiece, and becoming an expert at it. When problems lead to such person being layoff, one door is closed. Bob Marley once said “When one door closed, don’t you know that another one is open?” This quote is forgotten when experiencing it, because we don’t look beyond it. A worker who gets layoff won’t think about any open door, but see emerging problems.

You worry about keeping financial statements intact, problems, and focus on getting a new job. Critical things make everything look bad, and the longer the problem remains, the more frustrated you feel. This motivates planning a solution to the problem. This leads to multiple effects. One problem – being layoff – leads to other problems.

You start looking for work, and lives on savings. When focusing on lost job, you are looking at a closed door, while opportunity is emerging. They are hard to notice, because of bad timing. Opportunities can come from experience. Spending years working for a company mean discovering opportunity to explore. These can be adding value to clients, or finding a flaw that creates a business idea, but you don’t see it.

In best case, you are already thinking about it. In the best case scenario, you see opportunities, but question it. This analyze it, which is a positive thing. In worst case, you doubt the idea itself. The one that question opportunity ask how things will work, which allow improvement, and those that doubt question the idea itself. This is an opportunity because you are taking your experience to a new level.

But doubting the idea means you are doubting something else relating to it. Doubt is the junior sister to fear. Suzy Kassem said “Doubts kills more dreams than hope ever will”. Dreams doesn’t have to be what you’ve always wanted, it can also be an emerging opportunity. Another thing causing problem is ambiguous future. Nobody knows tomorrow. People have tried to predict tomorrow outcome, which is based on probability.

The best companies are based on tactics and strategic decisions collaborating to best position the business. Ambiguity is the source of excitement and adventure. Ambiguity and doubts turn opportunities to problem, and how things will work doesn’t cause fear.  The main problem is facing the greatest fear – uncertainty.  Misunderstanding is problematic, because when you don’t understand things, fear emerge.

It is not the work itself, but a new thing to master – strategic, tactical, management and leadership. If you don’t know about it, you might fear it. Because it takes you from your comfort zone to a new one that enlarge your area of expertise. You need to learn new things, how to leave comfort zone, and add managerial and leadership, and business management skills that elevate your position.

In conclusion, this walks you from comfort zone to a new one. You add a new experience that turns yours skills into a business. In the process of starting and running a business, you learn what you don’t understand. Start embracing additional skills and enhance capabilities that comes with new opportunities. Face your greatest fear – yourself – and start embracing opportunities.

SMART-Method

You might have heard or use SMART-method before. But I still find it fascinating because of it’s significant in business and private lives. People have also use it for different reasons, and understand it differently. In our daily lives, we use it. For example, saying “I have a doctor’s appointment five o’clock” is a way of using the method.

When it comes to business it is much more complex than that. An entrepreneur has to be specific, but the stress lies in achievable (we must plan and execute to prove this capabilities). That is why I want to discuss the helpful method.

Specific is the place to state our objectives. They are necessarily incorporated for the business to know the way forward. It specifically know what you planned to do, including your goals within short and long period of time. This has to be specific, because it determine your chances of success. For example, aiming to run a business within two months does not fit in.

But aiming to have a company that manufactures processors for computers and other technological devices within a year is a specific goal. This might seems big and others have already established themselves in the branch. The fact is, you are in business for the excitement.

Measurable is designed for knowing measurement of the specific goal we’ve stated. One way to have a measurable specific goal is to divide the objectives into pieces that will respectively be achieved over time. Using the business of process manufacturers, the pieces would be things like legal, marketing, partnership, manufacturing, distribution and sales.

The legal will be accomplished within a month, manufacturing within 3 months, and so on. We can measure how we are doing with the process, and accomplish respective piece before the deadline. This allows us to actually measure what we are doing. If it is going according to plans, then you can measure how it goes.

Achievable is suitable. I love to call it analysis because it is where we see if the goal is achievable. For example saying we will have already started the business within a week does not sound achievable. It will requires significant amount of preparation to know what we are getting ourselves into. The achievability of a specific goal depends on the time, and capabilities.

Aiming to sell one million products within 6 months without a product is not achievable. We have to know that we can achieve it, which depends on how we wants it. For your specified goals to be achievable, ask yourself how you will do it.

Realistic has been the most challenging part. People mostly have issues with a new idea. They will try to argue the unrealistic of your plan. Using the same example as running a processor manufacturing company, challenges emerge when you present it to the first group. They will be pessimistic about it. They would argue that the business will not be profitable or leads to success.

This is where you really need to “trust yourself”. It is challenging, because people argues that biggest idea sounds crazy – or insane – to people. For it to be realistic, you have to see it. Seeing it means knowing how it will be realistic to do what you want. Sometimes, we have to be very problematic in order to define realistic of the goals. Other people do what we do, but things differentiates us from one another. The main point of realistic goals are for you to have realistic vision to it. Send positive feeling, and you’d have positive result.

Time-bound verifies realistic accomplishment of the goals. It drives the consistency, because they know that time determines it. Following the example of manufacturing processors, we need to choose appropriate time. It can’t be accomplished within 6 months, unless we have already done most of the work. It includes creating a prototype, and a lot of things can happen in the process.

I’ve heard stories of things going wrong in the mass production process. It is where we know that time matters to everything we do. Timing the process must corresponds with measurability, achievability, realistic and what we plan to achieve. You have to give yourself time to process everything. In conclusion, a SMART-method is used most of the time.

It is the perfect method to signify the importance of knowing the destination within a specific timeframe. We have to be specific to know what we want. Then we have to measure how we are doing it, know how to achieve it, ensure it’s realistic with trusting yourself and give it the time it needs to succeed.Because your business is like an infant.

Servant of Ambition

A huge dream is a wish. It is similar to wanting something without acting on it. Filter it by turning them into a clear vision. A vision sets appropriate tactical and strategic decisions for bringing the vision to life. They scare you, if they are big enough. The huge goal has to be specific. Like everything else in life, a specific goal improves your chances of accomplishing it. It is a driver of self-actualization that makes you achieve them.

A specific goal sets the standard. It gives you intimate knowledge about the goals’ requirements. It enlightens you about anything irrelevant. For example, walking around is irrelevant to writing. It is arguably a brainstorming session in the process. Launch the perfectionist part of you that sets the standard of things you need to do in order to achieve specified objectives.

Jessica Stillman wrote about good and bad perfectionists in her article “Are You The Good or The Bad Kind of Perfectionist” A perfectionist sets a standard for what they want to accomplish. It is not a matter of what the goal is, but how to accomplish it. It separates you from competitors and others in the same niche. Be a perfectionist, but beware of your kind.

Two kinds are relevant – the good and bad. A bad one sets a standard so high that it is almost impossible to achieve the goal. He/she worries about making mistakes and letting people down. Work in such unhealthy way that weakens the goal’s productivity. This is not helpful in any way. Things will go wrong, people will make mistakes and let you down – accept that.

The good perfectionist effectively works on what they plan to accomplish. Nothing is perfect, but they know when something is good enough. They know their goals. They are constantly giving it their best. The ambition is driven by setting high standard and proactively work towards them. The main goal is ambitiously dividend into as many as possible, and accomplished one after the other. This kind of perfectionist maintain the goodness of goal achievements, while postponing any debilitated effects of burnout. Soul search about the kind of standards you set – know when goals are impossible to accomplish – and find how to accomplish them.

Use the standard to know path to achievement. A tactical and strategic way to accomplishing objectives will normally emerge when walking through the overall path to it. It helps determine best tactics and strategies for accomplishing the most challenging part. Knowing how we want something tells us the tactics and strategies for getting it. This is based on facts – not assumption – about what is happening in the market, prior to taking action.

As the goal progresses, you enhance your strategic skills that develops as you improve. The goal is stable, but the sub-goals upgrades as you progress. You make little changes to smoothen process. It can be a new idea that facilitate productivity increments. The best parts are know what you want, how you want it, and path to getting it is taking action.

You start acting. You serves your goal. If the ambitious goal is to run a great company, then define greatness. This definition is based on your understanding of it. It tells you where you are going. That is what you serves. Serving this can helps improve your decision process. It motivates and reminds you of where you are going and why you are doing what you do. A servant only serves the ambitious objectives, which was explained in “Only Serve Your Ambition”.

In conclusion, set a goal that is so big that it scares you. Know the necessary standard you need to set to accomplish it. Know the sub tactical and strategic goals you need to accomplish to meet the overall goal. Accomplish and serve them. These progressive goal accomplishments makes you a servant of ambition.

5 Steps to Trust Yourself

Arnold Schwarzenegger said “trust yourself”. It can be challenging. Especially after making mistakes. Another source of problem is the odds against you. Everyone has a history. Some darker than others. The stories are either true or made up. It is hard to tell which is which. Don’t try to tell. Analyze it and form your own perspective. Everyone forms an opinion about yours – why shouldn’t you?

True stories teach us something. If it does not, then consider acknowledging the reason behind that story. Case studies about failure can shatters your confidence to move forward. They are conflicted with what you want to do, because they “proof” you wrong. Their stories were confounded and compelling. Everything they told you about their failures might be true. Nobody have intimate knowledge about it, expect for those around the person who wrote it. But researchers know that one way to critically analyze a story is researching why the person wrote it the way he or she did.

Statistics is a problem. Evidence against you makes it harder to progress. This opposing evidence is not necessarily wrong. Other people’s results won’t necessarily be yours. For example, we’ve heard stories of marketing strategies that yield nothing. When someone else tried the same strategies, they earns six figures. Every story about failure won’t necessarily means yours will be the same.

People have an idea about almost everything. We all know what is best for you. We tell our stories. We can even go the extra mile to make it looks like yours will be the same. Other people’s stories won’t damage you as much as your own perspectives. What I say about you is not as valuable as what you believe about yourself. Being called a failure does not necessarily makes you one. Believing it is wrong. That is why trusting yourself is challenging. These five steps makes trusting yourself easier.

 

1.      Know what they did wrong

Read the stories about failure. Don’t believe your situation will be the same. Ask objective questions. What did they do? Where did it went wrong? What did you learn by going through their stories? How will you do it?

 

2.      Face Yourself

You are your greatest obstacles. Jordan Belfort says “The only thing standing between you and your goal is the stories you keep telling yourself”. Look at every mistakes you made. Ask yourself what you’ve learned from them and your improvement. The best thing we know about life history is how it has shaped us. If not for yesterday, we won’t be in our current position.

 

3.      Reshape Yourself

Use your knowledge to reshape things into something you can learn from. Condemning yourself doesn’t help. You should only use what you learned to do things better. Because all mistakes that prevented success only means to start over – smarter.

 

4.      Plan

Set an achievable goal within a short period. Huge one consumes time. Plan that goal. Doing nothing means you don’t trust yourself. Plan means using everything you know to proof to yourself that you are better. Strategies turn our knowledge into a plan.

5.      Act with Trust

Actions with trust means you have a direct goal. Acting with trust for what you planned makes you success-driven. Don’t get distracted or compromise the goals. There is no short cut or perfect path to the goal. Remember you will learn on the way. Everything you learned taking actions is the driving power that in collaboration improve results. For example, something new might emerge, which boost the action’s productivity. The action enhance productivity, when it is direct-driven.

In conclusion, these five steps work best with persistent. Everything is in action, which makes determination necessary. Proof to yourself that you can do it. When you proof you can do little things, bigger things becomes attractive and trusting yourself boost your confidence, self-esteem and self-actualization.

Business is a Work of Art

A work of art is challenging for its specific requirements. It is harder to draw without knowing what to draw. It can generates from creativity or reality. What we see can be harder to draw, especially when there are so many complexities in the process. Imagination accommodates flexibilities, which are less challenging to some artists.

It makes it easier to express your artistic mindset. Drawing a simple object is possible without mistakes. It depends on specifications for it. A ruler is used to ensure the part that is 8 cm. It might not requires any corrections. It has a wonderful end-result. This is a simple architect proficiency without any need for corrections.

Drawing a complex object and/or subject is harder without mistakes. It does not question your art skills, except the odds of doing it without mistakes is lowest. The most proficient artists have a pen and eraser close to them when working. They are confident in their skills, but they know mistakes are inevitable. The eraser is there to help smoothen the drawing process.

They says “one picture says a thousand words”. Others have found more than that in a single picture. This is similar to having a message behind the picture. For example a picture of someone in suit will indicates a professional. For a work of art to send any kind of message, it is important to find the pieces that sends that message. An architect gathers the pieces together, and connects them in drawing.

The work of art in business is like a brand. If the business’ brand says “Just Do It” as Nike, then the work of art is providing necessary materials and pieces that facilitate the customers to do it. The company does that very well. They gathers everything to structure the infrastructure that manufactures, market and promote anything in their area of expertise. A business normally works together with different components.

In some small, all medium and large companies, there is a department for human resources, sales and marketing, Research and Development, Managements that form the business. It is a work of art, because they are structured in a way that sends the brand to its customer segment. It is normal to find challenges for being extremely specific about what works for the business.

Most business improve on the process. They have been – still are – consistent update in policies. A new complexity leads to a new policy. Nobody knows it all, but everyone knows enough to move ahead. Updates are in the processes when improving. Businessmen/women normally notice mistakes, and make corrections. It is the same as erasing an error when drawing a complex subject and object.

Erasing something to correct an art still make it look beautiful. It is the same with business. Some parts of the business are obvious, and others are harder to notice until we dig deeper. These things improve what message a corporation sends. It is normal to correct errors, and know when to cancel a project.

The difference between an art and business is that you are consistently erasing and making corrections to the business, because it keeps improving and corrected. An entrepreneur is an artist with massive skills that consistently deals with complexity, ambiguity, risks and last but not least, people. Although, they don’t makes you an artist. What you structured to deal with them makes you an artist.

Conclusively, business needs an infrastructure that deals with its marketing, human resources, research and development and customer service. These are what you use with your architect skills to prepare an organized business. Because organizing a business makes you an artist. Erik Sherman’s article on Inc.com and titled “5 ways to Make Your Business, and Life, a Work of Art” provides in-depth knowledge on how to make your business a work of art.

Make Business Your Nature

When you have an idea, you have business in your nature. It is already your nature when you are the kind of person who keeps tactical and strategic in his vein. You’d have consistency in planning to reach a wider goal. The only complementary component is ambition, as I clarified in “Only Serve your Ambition”. This is the ultimate place, where your only driving power is your goal. When we are driven by a specific power, it is simpler to overcome most challenges that enhance motivation.

Sometimes, it get tough to keep progressing. Have you ever made an error before? Running an enterprise is more complicated. But when you make an error, you’d rather see it as a challenge than failure. Each approach will be different from the earlier ones. Then you keep tackling it until you resolved it. In “Treat Negativities as Opportunity”, I explored how current position includes corporate identity

Our main identity helps to ensure business works with us. We are consistently dealing with problems, making challenges inevitable. When we rather see it as a challenge than failure, we can make progress. I reformed the definition of failure in “Failure Never Stops Me”, where I discussed Thomas Edison’s experience. I argued that if Edison tells you about his failure, you will analyze it. When you analyze it, you will condemn the idea, and just motivates him to quit.

Every challenge fuels his engine to achieve the goals. In “Embrace Your Current Position”, I discuss human nature, with the famous story of a frog and scorpion. It clarified that despite current position, our nature always prevail. A business’/person’s nature is crucial. Most people believes that business is instant success or failure. However, reality says we probably start with some failures, before being successful. The results have varieties of circumstances leading to it.

As I said in, “Business Starters: 6 Steps for Creating a Vision, personal motivation is crucial. Don’t worry about how, just focus on why. When facing challenges, remember why you started. Motivation might get us started, but habit keeps us going. If you don’t know the personal reason you are in business, it’s difficult to keep up with business.

The reason we do what we do, in collaboration with ambitious goals, and exclude everything that suggests failure or misappropriate vocabularies that might stand in our way. These make us the great performer in business. On your way to serving your ambition, you need to exclude these phrases from your mind: “7 Phrases to Ban from your Vocabulary if you Want Success”.

It include phrase like, “that is impossible” and “I don’t have time”. Time and possibilities are always there for you to embrace. How you do it is what makes your goals most productive. Business is in your nature. Some people are managers, others are entrepreneurs that know how to improve existing things. Daily objectives are collaborative with the overall goal we strives after. In conclusion, these and other things collaborate in making business your nature. What we want is a goal, every challenge is not a failure, and our ambition is fuel to reaching the goals. Why we are doing it is the most powerful part of your nature.

Treat Negativities as Opportunities

If you run a company without negative experience, we will love to know how you do it. Wouldn’t you? The negativities that cause issues are boundless. Your company cannot exclude the negativities, just like life needs negative experience. And the corporation has a life of its own. A general path to improvement is still problems, control and resolution.

Our negative experience never condemns us. On the contrary, it improves us. A threat is a huge problem. We can’t sugar coat it in any way to make it any less of a threat. Some people avoid anything risky. Others will tackles the problem, and gain from the experience. Sophists believe that everything have a downside. They would argue that the aptitudes depends on what people do.

Philosophy tries to understand peoples’ experience. They rationalize and analyze it for a deeper understanding. They can argue that no matter your capabilities or intelligent level, it is impossible to go beyond your capabilities. For clarification, you cannot exceed your proficiencies. It does not underestimate your capabilities, nor does it depict your abilities to know what’s best. But it does inform you of something that the universe agrees upon.

Business might not be about philosophy. But great managers are also philosophers. They can understand a deeper meaning beyond what is visible to the naked eyes. Some experts have argued that managers use philosophic terms when making strategic decisions and socializes with other people for business purposes.  The company has already gone through some negative impact. At time, this problem will become something that gradually becomes a potential new business.

How you tackle a threat can makes it either a problem or opportunity. Resolving a problem do not go anywhere beyond resolution. Going further than that makes it an opportunity. It is where we extend our resolution to something to act upon. For instance, a negative event that we’ve solved becomes an opportunity to reach a new market. It is a new enterprise.

If you don’t know the problems, you don’t know its possibilities or opportunities that comes with it. For you to treat a negative experience as opportunity, you need to stop looking at it as your own problem. And consider how many other companies/people haves the same problem. Isn’t that the main reason most companies were established? We have seen companies establishing a competitor against themselves, because they sees the need in market.

Some big companies have subsidiary company that supplies different components/services to the company. For example, a company has a goal of producing a technological device. After some time, they establish another company, with goals to supply themselves and others with a specific component that contribute to producing the device. This in combine will result in building the device. Later, they establish another one to supply a complementary service/component for the company.

In some cases, they could have a manufacturing company for mass-production, when it is more productive than outsourcing it. Some will have a company that market their products and services, while marketing others’ products in the process. These subsidiary companies contributes to the company. They have different things that collaborate to make the company productive. Each one of them was due to a negative experience.

Opportunity is within your grasps. But the most important thing is to find and embrace it, in order to explore it. This is why ambition is the key component in expanding our businesses. This is where it becomes an opportunity. If we don’t see a problem as an opportunity, we can’t see it as a potential expansion for the company. But as something to solve and move on. After this experience passed, we’d know where to improve.

In conclusion, our business face negative experiences that causes problems. But even though it is a problem, it is easier to decide how productive that problem might makes the business. Our corporate problems can expand it. It is where our abilities are being tested, and enhance our capabilities.