I’m following up from my previous post on the damage that comes from inconsistency.   You can read that here.

Confession time. Often when I write something, I’ll get it 90% complete, walk away, let it sit a while and come back to finish it later. But then something goes off in my brain that makes me either completely rewrite it or scrap it altogether.

The same situation happened with today’s writing. I drafted what I thought was the right message, but just before I was ready to publish it, my internal “coach” shouted, “WAIT! That’s not right! Cancel! You forgot something!”

I was all prepared to tell you where you need to start in building your brand, then I was reminded of the most important step. Unfortunately, many business leaders leave this step out until much later than they should. And most people rarely, if ever, include this step when building their personal brand.

It’s your brand purpose.

To make it simpler, we can lose the jargon and call it your WHY. 

Your  WHY answers one simple, yet powerful, question: Why? Why am I in existence? Why am I here? Why do I do what I do? 

And you can take it a bit further with: What role do I play in others lives? What impact do I want to have? How would the world be different without me? 

Your WHY is fundamental when you’re building (or refining) your brand. It’s the foundation that will support everything else you do.

And before you think you’ve already got it, your WHY is not to make more money. It’s, for sure, not to provide “shareholder value.” 

I love this quote from William Barclays:

    “There are two great days in a person’s life – the day we are born and the day we discover why.”

It’s just the same with your brand.

A great place to start with understanding and defining your brand’s WHY is with Simon Sinek’s book: Find Your Why: A Practical Guide For Discovering Purpose For You and Your Team. It’s the follow-up to his book: Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action.

Sinek shares that knowing the deeper ‘why’ your organization or brand exists provides the foundation on which to build everything else — your ‘how’ (organizational culture, brand experience) and your ‘what’ (what products or services you offer).

Keep in mind that, when defining your WHY, It must be clear. It must be succinct. It must be well articulated. And it must be uniquely you.

Here are some of my favorites:

     FedEx: “Connecting people and possibilities around the world.”

     St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital: “Finding cures. Saving children.”

     Chick-fil-A: “To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us, and to have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A.”

     Under Armour: “Empower athletes everywhere.”

     Walmart: “Saving people money so they can live better.”

I’ve defined my WHY too: “Helping leaders more effectively follow God’s calling for their professional and personal lives.”

When you define a WHY for your organization it gives your team much more clarity in their roles. It’s that North Star, that guiding point, that everyone can get behind. It helps everyone understand how their role helps achieve that WHY. And it shifts your decisions from whether you can to whether you should.

If your team suffers from a lack of shared purpose, it’s because you, as the leader, haven’t made that purpose clear. It’s your job to ensure your team knows the WHY. It’s your job to ensure your team understands how the WHY influences decisions and behaviors. It’s your job to ensure your team knows exactly how their role fits into the WHY. It’s your job to ensure your entire team is on board with the WHY.

When your entire team is on board, they take that sense of purpose and bring it into their work every day. Then, your WHY will come across in your communications, your design, your customer experience, your marketing, your relationships…when every team member is aligned with your purpose, it’ll be embedded into everything you do.

Your WHY will help your team in the good times, but especially in the bad times. When we face internal or external challenges, that’s when it’s easy to make the wrong decisions. But when you, and your team, understand your WHY, the right decisions become obvious. Like Gail Hyatt says, “People lose their way when they lose their why.”

Remember how I said your WHY isn’t to make more money? A Harvard Business Review survey found that companies with a purpose that extended beyond making money, ended up with shareholder returns that were six-times higher than profit-driven competitors. Focusing first on a strong, impactful WHY will still bring the money.

So is your WHY the be-all-end-all for building your brand? No. But it will be the basis for everything else.