Brand Star

An engineer’s pattern for creating culture

note: Mark, my co-founder, and I discussed whether or not this star was on brand for this article for over 10 minutes. If you’d like to receive a dissertation on why this star made to the article, please let us know.

As a founder, there’s nothing more important than building a rock solid culture — one that embodies and extends your values as you scale a company. But there’s one big problem.

How the hell do you do that?

Culture is one of those fuzzy things that’s hard to wrap your mind around. How do I create it? How do I instill my values in it? How do I even talk about it with my employees without it looking like I’m trying to sell them on some meaningless rah-rah platitude.

Culture is not an HR policy. It’s a belief that must come straight from the heart.

Over the years I’ve really struggled to figure out how to create real culture. In fact, no time did I struggle more than in the beginning of my current company. And it wasn’t until I pivoted that I decided to take the time to sit down and really try to crack the culture code.

The key is to be really honest.

When I created my brand star, I did it in a moment of intense vulnerability. It was right after I let go of all but four of my team. I knew I had years of rebuilding ahead of me. I knew every decision I would make would be questioned. I found my self sitting alone in our office meant for a team of 60 people and it was time to take a deep breath a begin climbing. To re-build the original company of my dreams.

I decided to do it by starting with culture.

There’s something about being alone in your own failure that can make you rise up and realize just exactly who you are. In my case, I decided that whether I failed or not as a company wasn’t what I cared about the most — rather I cared about “how” I was going to build my company, who I was going to be remembered as, and what I stood for. As I struggled through the process of trying to figure out how to communicate a cultural “north” I stumbled across an idea became an unlock for me. This idea, combined with being in intensity of my own failures led me to the most authentic determination of North I could have ever hoped for.

The technique is called a Brand Star.

You start by writing down the one word above all else that you want people say when describing your company. Then you write down the positive sentiments and the negative sentiments associated with that word.

Then you offset the negatives of that first word with a second word. Then you rinse and repeat until you get your five brand start points. If you do it right all of the points counter balance each other creating a perfect foundation.

This my Brand Star

1. Beautiful — Every bit of every experience with Famous should feel beautiful. When you walk in our office you should say “Wow! what a beautiful office”. When you use our products you should say “Wow! what a beautiful product”. When you look at our code, our designs, our thinking, or even our pencils one word above all should shine through. Beauty. However, the downside of this brand star is that if we take this too far we could be perceived as being insular, high and mighty, too good — so we offset with our second brand star point.
2. Empathetic — We listen. We listen to each other, we listen to our advisors and we listen to our customers. With everyone we touch, we offer a patient ear to understand the root of their needs. We offer more than just a product, we offer a partnership, a relationship. When we interact with our customers, our employees, or our investors we do so in order to serve them well. However, we are not just list-takers. The downside of this brand star is that if we take it too far we could be perceived as being a follower, a company with no vision — so we offset with our third brand star point.
3. Leadership — After listening, after contemplating, and after hard work, it is our duty to come up with a solution that nobody saw. A solution that creates an “unlock” for those we serve. Whether is the office manager coming up with an innovative way to order lunch, an engineer who solves a bug with a new innovation, or a product person that solves a billion problem, we see that all needs come with a responsibility for us to lead at all levels. No matter a person’s title, or role, every person in my company should be able to write a book about the innovations they brought to their job. We are inventors, thought leaders, and hold ourselves out not only as the leader in our space, but the creator of it. However, we must not be assholes. The downside of taking this brand star too far, is that we could become an island unto ourselves, we could become silo’d from society and eventually become out of touch. We could become a leader that polarizes the very community we seek to serve.
4. Approachable — We are the one to share a beer, or a shoulder; the one that you’d choose every time you had to put your butt on the line. We are there for everyone we touch. We are approachable, affable, and the type of people that make our customers feel smarter. We share, we talk, and we commune with our customers because the reward we seek is the joy of helping others. Our measure of success is not how high we rise, but how how we help those rise around us. However, the downside of taking this brand star too far is that a company can be seen as un-special, pushovers, muggles or the worst sort.
5. Magical — We must defend magic at all costs. A virtuoso and a piano can lift an audience to new heights. But A magical team with a magical product can change the world. The magic of people and product can inspire, it can engage, and it can make everyone that touches it feel like they are part of something greater. I want my company to create product that makes people say “Wow! how’d they do that?”. A product that makes people grab their friends and say “you gotta see this!” But with magic comes responsibility. We must never bend to the dark side, to use the power of magic to hold power over the people we serve. Dark magic must be countered at all costs by the one thing that ties it all back together.

Beauty.

This is our brand start at Famous. From the first time we touch an employee candidate we share our brand star and its creation with them. And from their first encounter with our front door person, our office, and our employees they see that we truly and authentically embody its value the best we can. From the first moment when they realize that I am their first interview and that they get to interview me instead of me interviewing them they know something is special about this company.

I use our brand start to review our code, our designs, and even our sales calls. I even used it to choose my pencil. It pervades everything we do and it now has a life of its own. It has begun to grow, to scale, and to expand into every aspect of our work. It makes me smile with a deep sense of satisfaction every time we buy colored stickies and even critique them for whether or not they are on brand for us. There is nothing too small to be beautiful, no problem to big to hear, no solution we can’t solve, no weight we cannot bear, and no wonder we cannot bring.