Take Carrie Kelsch, for example. When she started A Plus Garage Doors in 2005, she didn’t know how to fix a garage door—and she never tried to learn. Instead of seeing her lack of technical expertise as a weakness, she turned it into her greatest strength. Carrie focused on leadership, team building, and scaling her company, leaving the technical work to her trusted team.

“I didn’t, and I still don’t, know how to fix a garage door,” Carrie admits. That decision was deliberate. It allowed her to spend her time on the things that mattered most: marketing, growth, and building a brand. Her approach echoes the advice from Michael Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited: successful entrepreneurs work on their businesses, not in them.

How to Avoid Being Taken Advantage Of

One concern many founders have about stepping back is losing control. If you’re not involved in every technical detail, how can you ensure employees or vendors aren’t inflating costs or wasting time?

The answer lies in alignment. By tying key employees’ compensation to your company’s long-term success, you create a shared vision. One effective strategy is phantom equity—a tool that gives employees a stake in the financial success of the business without transferring ownership.

Carrie implemented phantom equity with her team, ensuring they felt a sense of accountability and ownership. This approach not only motivated her employees to perform at their best but also helped her retain top talent. With her team aligned and empowered, Carrie could trust them to deliver on the company’s promise while she focused on driving growth.

Building to Sell

In 2024, Carrie sold a majority stake in A Plus Garage Doors to Guild Garage Group, a private equity-backed roll-up in the home services space. Guild valued the company at approximately $70 million—a testament to the brand, systems, and team Carrie had built.

By focusing on what she did best—leading and growing the business—Carrie was able to create a company that private equity buyers couldn’t ignore. The sale gave her significant financial freedom while allowing her to retain a stake in the company’s future success.

Carrie’s story is proof that you don’t have to be a technical expert to build a business worth millions. When you focus on growth, empower your team, and align incentives with performance, you create a valuable asset that attracts buyers or investors.

The Big Picture

Your business is more than the product or service you offer. It’s a system, a brand, and an asset. Sometimes, knowing less about the day-to-day technical work can be a blessing. It forces you to think like a leader, a strategist, and ultimately, an owner.

Working on your business—not in it—frees you to focus on the big picture, where the real opportunities lie. And as Carrie’s journey shows, that shift in focus can turn what feels like a disadvantage into your ultimate competitive edge.

Step one is thinking like an owner and not a manager. And for that we have a free eBook – The Owner’s Metric.

The most important concept that many business owners and marketers fail to grasp is that a brand is not a thing. Thus our disdain for the use of the word “branding” as it suggests that someone is creating something or putting a mark on something as one does with livestock. “Brand” is not a thing. Brand is the experience – anticipated, lived, and remembered – of engaging with your company, product, and/or service. It does not exist outside of the mind. Logos, websites, jingles, etc. help communicate what you hope that experience (brand) will be but they are not “the brand.”

Brand is built by business owners and the people they surround themselves with from the inside-out. We call it BrandDNA. Brand is not built by an ad agency from the outside-in.

So what are the 4-E’s?: Expectation, Engagement, Evaluation, Embedding. Let’s use a restaurant as an example. Let’s say a friend is raving about a new place that just opened up. Maybe you heard an ad for it or read a review. You decide to check it out. This is not a blind date. You have formed an expectation of a positive dining experience based on what you have read and heard. You arrive at the restaurant. Your mind is now processing every sensory input and emotion against that expectation. It’s like a meter that goes back and forth between exceeding expectations and not meeting expectations. So while you are experiencing the food, service, decor, lighting, temperature, sounds, smells, comfort or lack thereof, your mind is keeping score and evaluating. When the experience is over, it forms an opinion and files it away. The restaurant and you create a brand in your mind that will impact any future decision to engage with the restaurant again. Or post an online review. And if a future visit happens the brand evolves based on those subsequent encounters.

So while 4-E’s exist in the consumer’s mind, the new 4-P’s exist in the company’s collective mind and are what promise and deliver the brand/experience. The new 4-P’s are Purpose, People, Process, and Position in that order.

We start with Purpose (aka skopós). Why does your business exist? What do you do that provides a superior benefit and improves the lives of your target group? Next comes People. Jim Collins in Good to Great said, “First who, then what.” Get the right people in the right seats. These are people who share your passion for the purpose. When this is accomplished, it’s like an Olympic rowing team. Everyone is rowing in the same direction toward a common goal and knows his or her role. Next is Process. The secret sauce. The combination of product, service, and delivery that is the expression of your purpose and people. This is your BrandDNA and if done well, is special. Finally comes Position. This is simply telling the story of the first three. How will engaging with your Purpose, People, and Process make my life better? And if you’ve done a good job with the first three P’s, the last P is much easier and requires less effort, expense, and few if any gimmicks or discounts.

Business in 2024 is much different than the mid-1960s. In some respects, it more resembles 1924 when innovation and reputation were the hallmarks of great brands. Those who fail to understand what real brand is and is not, do so at their own peril.

Does your business have a defined purpose? Is it the same as when it was founded? Do your people know what it is and are they aligned with it? Can they explain your “secret sauce” and tell your story? This is your BrandDNA and is where your brand starts. If you’re not there yet, we can help.

When your customers embrace and can tell your story as well as you can, they likely will and you have built a great brand. Until then, you are an expendable commodity.

A couple of decades ago when my sons were playing soccer in grade school, we would often stop at a drive-thru on our way home. To make point, I started a guessing game, yes or no, whether we would hear a “thank you” at any time during the transaction. After a couple of weeks we stopped the game because whoever was the first to guess “no” always won. (There was not a Chick-fil-A in KC at the time.)

Several years later, my younger son called me at work from his job at a local burger place. He had been called into the owner’s office to be shown a letter from a regular customer. His panic became a smile as he read the note and its compliments regarding “the nice young man who always says ‘thank you.'” He got a 25-cent an hour raise, but called not to tell me about that as much as to cite the game we used to play and how “not hard” it is to say please and thank you.

QSR Magazine does an annual Drive-Thru Study on “quick serve restaurants.” Among many things measured are Service Attributes. Among these are “please” and “thank you.” Here is the most recent study from October 2018.

If one totals the Chick-fil-A scores, no one else is even close. And to quote my then teenage son who is now a priest, it’s “not hard.” So why does it seem to be for so many organizations? It starts at the top.

Here is Chick-fil-A’s published corporate purpose:

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 into contact with Chick-fil-A.

I don’t see anything about chicken or making better chicken sandwiches or exceeding profit objectives or even providing jobs that pay more than most “quick-serv” jobs. But yet they do all of those, too.

When you have a why that is bigger than the what, you attract the right people. The what doesn’t necessarily take care of itself, but with everyone rowing in the same direction and the right direction, you can spend more time perfecting the what instead of working on basic blocking and tackling. Or as we like to quote Coach Vince Lombardi, chasing perfection and catching excellence.

It’s another example of what we call “the new 4Ps of Marketing.” Purpose, People, Process, and Position. They have replaced, or at least demoted, the old 4Ps of Price, Product, Place, and Promotion.

Finally, if you’ve not seen this Chick-fil-A training video, please invest a couple of minutes right now.

When everyone sees your customers through eyes like these, saying please and thank you is “not hard.”

—

The recent “Christmas Miracle” by Canadian airline WestJet is a wonderfully executed event on several levels. The obvious ones are the seemingly perfectly performed choreography of collecting Christmas gift wishes from passengers at the gate and then having their wishes delivered at their destination via the baggage carousel. The production quality of the video from concept to direction to final product is also first rate. And of course, it is exceeding their wildest hopes with millions of views already and likely international news coverage to follow.

But the real brand story here is not a promotional stunt. It’s another demonstration that brand is not something that is created by promotional events or from the outside-in. Brand starts with purpose and people that then create a culture that builds a brand from the inside-out. This “Christmas Miracle” could never have happened without the right culture at WestJet.

WestJet was started in the mid 90’s on the maverick Southwest Airlines model. Watch the video and you can absolutely see Southwest doing the same thing. Can anyone picture American or United doing this? No way. They are not wired that way. Southwest’s (and WestJet’s) competitive advantage comes from recognizing that they are not in the “airline” business but are in the “family memory facilitation” business (purpose). They then screen and hire the right people who want to facilitate family memories, manage to those goals and voila – A Christmas Miracle.

Brand is built from the inside-out. It starts with a focused sense of purpose, hiring the right people in the right places who are hard-wired to deliver on that purpose and then executing strategy and tactics to do so. It’s not rocket science but it IS brand science that most companies (and marketing firms) don’t get.

I was recently at a conference in Las Vegas. Few places in the world showcase both sets of P’s better than Las Vegas. (The traditional set of 4 of course, is Price, Product, Place, Promotion.) The conference was great but it was the experience outside of the conference that was noteworthy from a brand perspective.

The conference was at Caesars Palace, one of the most famous, premier resorts in Las Vegas. With 4,000 rooms and a recent billion dollar expansion (yes, billion with a B) they spend millions annually to attract high-rollers and conferences. As this was my first stay on “the strip” I was looking forward to an incredible experience.

Upon arrival I was pointed to a check-in kiosk. There was no friendly “Welcome to Caesars Palace” presented by a smiling bell hop. Just some overworked and likely underpaid guy pointing to people like me lugging luggage and looking lost. Once I pressed a bunch of buttons and swiped credit cards and ID, the kiosk printed keys and directions to my room, approximately 20 miles away on the other side of the casino.

I eventually navigated my way to my “Forum Suite.” It looked like a pretty typical hotel room. Looking around, I noticed that the drapes were partially off the hooks and just hanging loosely like someone had started removing them and stopped. I then saw buttons on the wall for opening and closing the drapes electronically. They did not work. I looked for a clock. Finding one on the nightstand I learned that apparently Caesars has its own time zone that is 45 minutes behind the rest of Las Vegas. Unpacking toiletries in the bathroom I noticed a lighted mirror. It did not work. There was a cool tv screen insert in the main mirror. It did not work. And the stopper in the sink was stuck. I was excited to see a Keurig machine. Upon finding what appeared to be one or two K-Cups in a beautifully “branded” Caesars package I noticed the price list next to them. “Keurig Service – $16.” There was also a $25 one-time service charge for using anything from the in-room snack bar. And just like that, Starbucks became a low-price coffee alternative.

When I checked in, I noticed that my room rate on the night after the conference had shot up to 2.5 times the conference rate. So I confirmed with the front desk that as long as I checked out by check out time on the last day, I would not be charged. So I rebooked an earlier flight on Southwest (no change fees but a higher fare albeit not as high as the room rate) and left immediately after the conference. The next day I noticed a pending charge on my credit card nearly 3x what my receipt said.

So while Caesars and their ad agencies spend millions and millions to create a brand image, in my mind (aka my reality) the Caesars brand is my experience above.

Super Shuttle is primarily an airport shuttle service with which I have had success in the past. They’re those blue vans with yellow lettering that you see around town. They’re a convenient, inexpensive alternative if you are not on a tight timeframe and don’t mind sharing a van with a few other people who might be going to a couple of different nearby locations.

I booked a round trip online and took the shuttle without incident to Caesars. The return trip was a little more adventurous. The conference was scheduled to end around 4pm. My shuttle was scheduled to arrive between 4:15 and 4:30. The last session was running a little long but I received an alert from Super Shuttle saying ETA was 4:28 so all good. I then received an alert at 4:05 saying it would be there at 4:15. I grabbed my stuff and slipped out the back door and hurried across the conference center, through the casino and out the front door. I was at the pick-up spot gasping for air at 4:11. I looked at my app and the time had been updated to 4:31. It would later update to 4:40. One of the features of the app is the ability to watch your shuttle via GPS on a map getting closer. It appeared to be only a block away. I then watched it cruise by Caesars on the map. I spun around and watched it go by on Las Vegas Blvd. As I was standing at the pick-up spot becoming rather miffed about missing the closing moments of the conference for no apparent reason and wondering why the van didn’t stop, I receive an alert at 4:32 saying that my driver (Jill) and van 623 were outside waiting for me. The map showed her two hotels away. I refreshed the app and my reservation was gone. I texted the driver and received no response.

Super Shuttle also spends millions on “branding.” None of that was helping me get to the airport on time. Nor will it in the future. Enter Uber.

I opened my Uber app at 4:40. I was in the back of a Toyota Camry at 4:43. My driver Yoku, passed Super Shuttle #623 as we were pulling into the airport. She passed the Southwest bag check as I had only a carry-on and dropped me off at the door to the Southwest security screening. She then wished me a pleasant flight and gave me a piece of candy.

I like the Uber logo. It’s subtle and recognizable. But in my mind, the Uber brand is an app that is fast and easy and a cheery driver named Yoku whose Toyota Camry got me to the airport in time when I really needed help.

All of these brand experiences involved anticipation, delivery and memory. No matter how much you spend to build up anticipation, it can be rendered worthless by failure in delivery. And with social media and online reviews, such a failure can become a brand disaster. Just ask United Airlines.

The old adage that first impressions are lasting ones does not apply here. It’s the last impression, the memory set, that determines whether or not that customer for whom you paid so much, decides to return. And a new logo or rebrand is not going to make any difference.

One of the greatest compliments I ever received was from a client who said he could not imagine being in business without us. Every business should want to be indispensable to its customers. This can come from a product or service or a combination since as we’ve discussed, your brand is really the total experience of doing business with you. Were Apple or Starbucks to disappear tomorrow, the reaction from their customers would likely be something other than, “Oh well.” This is because in those minds, no one else is capable of providing that brand experience. We call that Monopoly Control. It helps you be more profitable now AND collect a bigger payday if you sell your business.

Likewise, how would your employees react? Is this just another job to them or are they a part of something special? Do you have a purpose, vision and mission that they connect with? Are you providing a job experience that they likely won’t find anywhere else? The best performing employees tend to come to work for reasons other than money.

And what about the community as a whole? How do we all benefit from your business being a part of it? Job creation? Charitable support? Model Corporate Citizen? Educational opportunities? Tax revenues? You get the idea.

The central plot of It’s A Wonderful Life is George Bailey learning how much better off the world was for him having been in it. So, how much better off is the world for your business being in business? Take some real time this week to gauge how your business is impacting the world around you. How indispensable is it to your customers, your employees and your community – and how can you make it even more so?

The “big idea” in ad circles is a term coined by the late David Ogilvy, considered by many to be the father of modern advertising and perhaps the original “ad man.” In this school of thought, the innovation and creativity are in the ad message, not the product. As I’ve noted before, we no longer have to build a better mousetrap (or invent the cat) when it’s easier and cheaper in the short-term to simply convince people ours is a better mousetrap through a big advertising idea.

I recently had a prospective client tell me they were looking for a marketing idea that would “wow” them. An ad approach they had not seen before. Sadly, this is how the ad business has trained business people over the years. Look for a short-term ad hit, independent of brand relevancy or market position, and deal with next month, next month.

While this can work in the short term, eventually the big ad ideas lose their steam and companies “re-brand” and eventually resort to free samples, discounts and a price war to the bottom. And the community suffers because wages drop, companies close or are bought out with layoffs – while no one invents the cat.

Alternatively, when the big idea comes from product or service innovation, everyone wins. Consider which is better: A price war on flip phones or inventing the iPhone?

We’re very proud of a local client who was competing in a cut-throat manufacturing parts industry with huge national competitors who could sell parts for less than he could buy them. He now targets clients who need multiple parts for the same equipment and he pre-assembles the parts. He can charge retail for the parts plus assembly fees and the client still saves money and time and can actually deliver more product faster and make more money himself. A profitable win-win with no competition from his former national competitors. No “ad campaign” could accomplish this. But this is marketing as WE define it. This is creating real differentiation that is hard to duplicate. Another word for it is: Monopoly.

There is a fundamental problem with how most of America’s small businesses are going to market. The good news is we know what the problem is and we can solve it. Perhaps that in itself is a Big Idea.

So what does this have to do with your brand and marketing? Everything. Of course, if you work with an ad agency or creative firm, then likely nothing. That’s why you see companies “rebranding” all the time. And as we know, the “rebrand” will be rebranded again in a few years because all they did was put a new wrapper on the existing business. They did nothing to improve the business itself because frankly, they don’t know how. That’s why we say that “branding” should not exist outside of raising livestock.

A better solution begins with a better understanding of the situation. Think of your business journey as just that – a journey. Would you pile your family into the car and head out on vacation without at least discussing where you wanted to go? Of course not. Otherwise you end up on a beach dressed for skiing. It’s the same for your business. If you can visualize your business on your last day and know how much you want in the bank when you hand over the keys, a game plan can be executed to get there with infinitely less waste and effort. Moreover, the process of doing so results in a stronger, easier to manage, easier to maneuver business that generates more profit with less effort required from the owner. In other words, a stronger brand. This is the core of what we call NEXiT® Strategy.

When starting at the end, with exit planning incorporated into brand strategy, the brand becomes less centered on the owner and more centered on how a group of people can better improve the lives of their customers. Besides building a real brand and a legacy, the owner now works on the business instead of in it, has more freedom to do other things, and has protected his or her family and employees from disaster owing to an “unexpected exit.”

What is your NEXiT® Strategy? How prepared are you and your company for your “last day?” How much of your company’s “brand” is you? If you would like data-driven answers to those questions rather than guessing, click HERE.

As noted throughout this site, a brand is not something created by ad agencies from the outside-in. A brand is the experience, both anticipated and lived, created by the organization from the inside-out. It starts at the top with purpose (skopós) and vision and is carried forth by the team who understand, embrace and execute the vision. In United’s case, from the CEO to the gate and flight crew to the social media response team, the brand is 100% consistent. Normally, this is a good thing. But United told the world through its actions and words that United passengers are there to serve the airline rather than vice versa. In other words, just because your brand claims to be “the friendly skies” doesn’t make it your brand.

If you own or manage a business there are two things you need to do to avoid a United moment. The first is to imagine how and where a similar incident could take place in your organization. While you can’t imagine ever having that sort of meltdown with a customer, it happened at United and it can happen in your business. Is your purpose and vision defined for your organization so that your “gate agents” and “flight attendants” can embrace and live it as their own? And do they? Do you have the right people on board in the first place? Remember Jim Collins in Good to Great: “First who, then what.” And is everyone keeping their eye on the same ball? Finally, how well have you anticipated and prepared for all of the “what if” scenarios. Like having mistakenly allowed passengers to board before you have your bumps taken care of.

The second task is to have a plan in place just in case it’s not as well defined and shared as you think or in case someone takes his or her eye off the ball. Imagine the sirens at American Airlines when videos of a crying customer holding babies and a flight attendant challenging a passenger to take a swing at him hit the web on the heels of the United mess. Their reaction was as if there was a PR memo entitled, “This is what United should have said and done” that someone quickly pulled from their inbox and ran with.

When defining your purpose and vision, it’s critical to visualize the primary beneficiaries. When it’s shareholders, you might make more money in the short-term but you will likely have a United (or American) moment at some point. And while creating compelling value for consumers is almost always a winning play, it’s not the only one.

Case Dorman, Owner and CEO of Kansas City’s famous Jack Stack Barbecue, recently surprised a group of business leaders by saying that his vision does not put the customer first. “I put my employees first and they know it,” he said. “I figure if they know I’m taking good care of them, they’ll take good care of our customers.”

It seems to be working. Jack Stack’s growth has exceeded all expectations. And they now ship barbecue to all 50 states and have even been rated #1 in the U.S. by Zagat. Perhaps they should ship some burnt ends and advice to United.

Meet Jake Weidmann, master penman.

To achieve at this level, one must be committed to chasing perfection to catch excellence. To being the best at one’s craft. It takes passion, commitment, fortitude and most of all; it takes skopós.

We require nothing less of both our partners and our clients.