All Posts By

BJ Bueno

Get Your C-Suite Telling One Story

The customer doesn’t care about your org chart. They don’t separate the “marketing experience” from the “operations experience.” It’s all the brand experience.

The most effective CEOs I know break down turf wars and get the C-suite aligned around a single narrative.

Here’s how:

  1. Create a Brand Council. Bring every major function into one regular meeting focused on the customer experience.
  2. Speak their language. Show finance how loyalty impacts CAC, HR how it boosts retention, ops how it drives efficiency.
  3. Share credit. Make wins collective, so every leader has a stake in brand health.

When the C-suite is united, the marketplace feels the confidence — and customers respond.

August 26, 2025 by

Make AI About Humans, Not Just Data

AI is everywhere in the CEO conversation. The mistake I see? Treating AI like a cost-cutting tool rather than a connection-deepening tool.

The cult brands don’t bolt technology onto an old culture; they integrate it to make the customer feel known and valued. Top brands used data to understand riding habits, not just inventory needs. That’s how you create loyalty at scale.

Three moves I recommend:

  1. Break down silos. Put marketing, ops, and IT in the same room to design customer experiences together.
  2. Use AI for personalization. Make interactions feel like you’ve been listening all along.
  3. Build digital rituals. Create predictable, shareable moments that customers look forward to, like holidays.

AI is only as valuable as the emotional connection it amplifies.

August 22, 2025 by

Stop Letting the Quarter Dictate Your Brand’s Future

If you’re a CEO, you already know the quarterly game can trap you. I’ve watched too many leaders mortgage their brand’s long-term equity to please the market in the short term. That’s a slow path to irrelevance.

Brands that last, such as Apple and Patagonia, resist that pull. They know the real power is in earning customers for life, not just for this quarter.

Here’s my advice:

  1. Audit the emotional side of your brand. Know exactly what you mean to your most profitable customers.
  2. Identify your Brand Lovers. The top 20% who generate most of your profit and advocacy.
  3. Redesign your KPIs. Track loyalty metrics, including Net Promoter Score and engagement rates, alongside your financials.

If you keep sacrificing loyalty for quick wins, you’re training the market to treat you as a commodity. Shift the focus, and you’ll find your short-term numbers actually get stronger.

August 19, 2025 by

3 Strategies for When You Feel Life Has Lost Meaning

Reclaim the Inner Child
Play. Create. Touch the parts of you untouched by judgment. Life becomes dull when you abandon the one who still dreams. Pick up a brush, a journal, a guitar, anything that brings wonder back to your fingertips.

Confront the Shadow
Don’t look away. Turn inward. Face the parts of you you’d rather ignore. The sadness, the boredom, the anger. Invite them in. Let them speak. In the dark lies the key to meaning. You are not whole without your shadow.

Choose Becoming
You are not a fixed self. You are a process. Movement. Potential. Viktor Frankl said meaning is something we make, not something we find. So make it. Choose the next right thing. Help someone. Build something. Love fiercely.

Meaning isn’t given.

It’s forged.

In play. In shadow.

In becoming.

August 15, 2025 by

Discovering Your Brand Lover: The Shortcut to Loyalty, Clarity, and Growth

Many brands chase growth by casting the widest possible net. More impressions. More clicks. More eyeballs. But in the race for reach, they often miss the people who matter most—their Brand Lovers.

From The Cult Branding Workbook:

“The sole purpose of business is to create a customer.”


 But not just any customer—a customer who loves you.

Who Is a Brand Lover?

Your Brand Lover is your most passionate customer.
They buy more often.
They stay longer.
They forgive your mistakes.
And most importantly, they tell others.

They don’t need to be convinced—they’re already convinced. Their enthusiasm turns them into unpaid marketers, internal motivators, and walking billboards. They’re not just customers. They’re your community.

And yet, most businesses overlook them in favor of “target markets” and generic personas. They trade resonance for reach.

Why Brand Lovers Matter More Than Market Share

When you discover your Brand Lover, everything gets easier:

  • Marketing becomes sharper because you know who you’re talking to.
  • Innovation becomes focused because you stop guessing what matters.
  • Brand culture becomes clearer because your team rallies around a shared purpose.

You stop trying to be everything to everyone—and start becoming essential to someone.

Ulta Knows Their Brand Lover

Take Ulta Beauty. They don’t chase every beauty trend. They know their Brand Lover is diverse, exploratory, and values both play and practicality. Ulta has built a business that welcomes beauty lovers at every stage—teen experimenters, working moms, skincare obsessives.

Instead of trying to be Sephora, Ulta leans into community, accessibility, and joy. The result? One of the most loyal customer bases in the industry.

That’s the power of knowing who you’re really building for.

How to Discover Yours

Start by asking:

  • Who is already obsessed with us?
  • What do they say when they recommend us to a friend?
  • What emotional need are we actually fulfilling?
  • What do they love—not just like—about us?

You’re not looking for broad averages. You’re looking for patterns of passion.

Don’t Build for the Crowd. Build for the Lover.

Most brands are terrified of alienating anyone.
Cult Brands focus on being irreplaceable to someone.

When you discover and commit to your Brand Lover, you don’t just get loyalty—you get clarity. The kind of clarity that shapes decisions, fuels innovation, and creates lasting impact.You don’t need to be loved by everyone.

You just need to be loved deeply by the right ones.

August 12, 2025 by

Fast Growth or Lasting Brand? Why CEOs Must Refuse to Choose

“How do we grow fast and build a brand that lasts?”

This is one of the most important questions modern CEOs face.

Every quarter brings new revenue targets, performance dashboards, and boardroom pressures to deliver now. Yet, every brand that truly matters—Nike, Apple, Patagonia, Trader Joe’s—was built on a foundation of long-term thinking.

So how do you balance the urgent with the enduring? The answer isn’t either/or.

It’s learning how to win short-term battles without losing the long-term war

The Pitfall: Performance Marketing Without a Soul

In the age of ROAS, CAC, LTV, and A/B testing, it’s easy to lose sight of something critical:

Your brand is not your campaign. It’s your reputation in motion.

Many companies fall into the trap of tactical marketing:

  • Every message is optimized for clicks, not connection.
  • Every channel is optimized for transactions, not transformation.
  • Brand strategy is put on hold because it “doesn’t move the needle fast enough.”

This short-termism creates brands that may convert today—but disappear tomorrow.

Cult Brands think differently.

They understand that emotional loyalty compounds. Each meaningful moment builds equity that no competitor can copy and no price cut can steal.

Brand is the Only Moat That Gets Stronger Over Time

When you invest in brand, you’re investing in:

  • Relevance: staying emotionally attuned to your Brand Lover’s needs
  • Trust: the single most important driver of long-term profitability
  • Community: customers who promote you without being paid
  • Pricing power: because brands that are loved don’t get commoditized

In short, brand is your business’s gravity. It pulls people in and keeps them close.

But like gravity, it’s invisible—until you don’t have it.

Quantifying What “Can’t Be Measured”

One of the greatest challenges CEOs face is defending brand investments in rooms obsessed with quarterly metrics.

The Cult Branding Workbook offers a powerful reframe:

“Just because your customers love you doesn’t mean you’re loving them back.”

Performance metrics measure clicks. Brand metrics measure care.

  • Care in how you show up.
  • Care in how you communicate.
  • Care in how you solve real human needs.

Yes, you should track performance. But don’t mistake the map for the terrain. A 3% lift in CTR means nothing if your brand becomes forgettable.

Fast and Forever: Building Brand into the Business Model

Here’s the good news: You don’t have to choose between growth and equity.

The best brands build growth into their identity:

  • Trader Joe’s doesn’t run ads—they build stores that feel like treasure hunts.
  • Liquid Death doesn’t rely on discounting—they use irreverent storytelling that fuels word of mouth.
  • Apple doesn’t shout “buy now”—they make products people line up for.

Each of these companies plays the long game in how they generate revenue.

You can too. But it takes discipline.

The Cult Brand Approach to Sustainable Growth

Want to grow fast and build a brand that lasts? Start here:

✅ Define your Brand Lover. Build your strategy around serving them—not the algorithm.

✅ Align all customer touchpoints with your emotional promise. Don’t let sales and service feel like different companies.

✅ Invest in human needs, not just product features. As the Workbook says: “People love companies that love them.”

✅ Measure what matters: loyalty, advocacy, repeat rate—not just conversions.

✅ Make internal alignment a growth lever. Your culture is your delivery system.

Brand Is a Strategy, Not a Slogan

Fast growth and lasting impact aren’t opposites. In fact, they require each other.

Growth without a brand creates churn. A brand without growth becomes nostalgia.

But when you blend the two—you build a business people love, remember, and return to.

Before you approve the next campaign or quarterly push, ask:

“Does this move us closer to becoming the only brand our customers would choose—even if we disappeared from the shelf?”

That’s not just brand equity. That’s future-proofing.

August 5, 2025 by

Brand–Culture Alignment: Delivering on the Promise from the Inside Out

“Are we delivering on our brand promise at every customer touchpoint—from the inside out?”

This is the question smart CEOs are asking.

Because no matter how inspiring your brand story is, how slick your campaigns are, or how bold your customer promise may sound—it all breaks down if your internal culture doesn’t live it.

Let’s be blunt:

Customers don’t experience your mission statement. They experience your people.

And if those people aren’t aligned, inspired, and empowered, the brand promise will always ring hollow.

So what does it take to build real alignment between brand and culture?

Understand That Culture Is the Brand Delivery System

The Cult Branding Workbook makes this clear: A brand is not just a message—it’s a co-authored experience. You set the intention. The customer defines the meaning.

But that intention? It lives or dies inside your organization.

  • Your culture drives behavior.
  • Behavior drives experiences.
  • And experiences define your brand in the customer’s mind.

Brand ≠ Marketing.
Brand = Culture in Action.

If your front-line team doesn’t know your Brand Lover—or worse, doesn’t care—you don’t have a cult brand. You have a broken promise.

Identify the Internal Misalignments Early

Many CEOs sense the drift:

  • The customer service that used to feel warm now feels robotic.
  • Remote teams don’t embody the same energy.
  • New hires onboarded in a rush miss the deeper “why.”
  • Teams post-merger feel like they wear different jerseys.

This is what we call internal brand leakage.

To fix it, the Cult Branding Workbook recommends a “Sell-In” process:
Before you launch the brand out there, make sure it’s fully lived in here.

Ask yourself:

  • Do our teams understand who our Brand Lover is?
  • Can they describe the emotional need we fulfill?
  • Do they see how their role impacts that promise?

If not, you’ve got a values vacuum—and no campaign will fix that.

Scale Culture Without Losing Soul

As you grow, alignment becomes exponentially harder.

Whether you’re hiring quickly, integrating new teams post-acquisition, or shifting to remote work—your culture is either scaling by design or eroding by default.

Cult Brands do this differently.

They don’t rely on a mission poster in the breakroom. They:

  • Codify the Brand-Lover Statement so every employee knows who they serve.
  • Create internal rituals that reinforce core values.
  • Make customer feedback visible and actionable, showing the impact of great (or failed) brand moments.
  • Invest in training, storytelling, and emotional intelligence—not just systems and scripts.

They design their operating culture around delivering emotional value, not just functional performance.

Culture is the Hidden Differentiator

In saturated markets, where products are equal and prices are transparent, your culture becomes your secret weapon.

Think of Southwest Airlines: the “freedom to move about the country” isn’t a tagline—it’s a cultural truth supported by every team member, from pilots to baggage handlers.

Or Zappos: they don’t just deliver shoes—they deliver delight, because their culture empowers people to go above and beyond, without a script.

If your employees feel respected, inspired, and clear on the “why,” they will naturally become the best carriers of your brand.

You don’t get aligned once. 

You stay aligned continuously.

That means:

✅ Constant communication
✅ Regular storytelling around customer wins
✅ Rituals that reinforce values
✅ Hiring and recognition tied to the brand promise

When the brand and culture move in unison, magic happens:

  • Customers feel the difference.
  • Employees become evangelists.
  • Loyalty grows. Revenue follows.

Ask yourself today:

“If I called five random employees, could they tell me what we stand for—and how they live it?”

If the answer isn’t a resounding yes, it’s time to align from the inside out.

Need help bridging the gap between brand and culture?

We’ve helped build unbreakable alignment for organizations navigating growth, transformation, and change.

Let’s talk:

✉️ [email protected]

August 3, 2025 by

Differentiation in a Saturated Market: How Cult Brands Win Where Others Fade

In today’s noisy, choice-rich economy, CEOs are losing sleep over one pressing concern:

“Why should anyone choose us over the competition—and stay with us?”

With price wars, mature categories, and advertising overload, simply having a “better product” isn’t enough. Consumers aren’t just buying features anymore. They’re buying meaning, connection, and identity.

So how do some brands not only stand out but rise above the noise to become irreplaceable?

They don’t just differentiate—they transform into Cult Brands.

Let’s explore how.

From Demographics to Devotion: Discover Your Brand Lover

Most brands define their audience by segments and personas.

Cult Brands go deeper. They seek out their Brand Lover—that irrationally loyal customer who would never dream of switching.

In the Cult Branding Workbook, we ask:

  • Who loves you the most?
  • What are they truly buying from you (beyond the product)?
  • What emotional or symbolic role do you play in their lives?

Brands like Harley-Davidson or Apple don’t win because they appeal to everyone. They win because they obsess over serving their most passionate customers better than anyone else ever could.

This is your first step in building meaningful differentiation:

🎯 Don’t target—serve with intensity.

Fulfill Higher Human Needs, Not Just Market Demand

Differentiation doesn’t live in product specs. It lives in the hearts of customers.

Using Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (a central idea in the workbook), we see that most brands address lower-level needs: convenience, price, speed.

But Cult Brands live higher in the pyramid:

  • Belonging → “I feel like I’m part of something.”
  • Esteem → “This brand makes me feel confident and proud.”
  • Self-Actualization → “This brand helps me become who I want to be.”

Think Patagonia. Their jackets aren’t just warm—they represent a lifestyle of activism and conscious living.

If you want to build loyalty instead of just awareness, your brand must become a tool for identity and transformation.

Own Your “Look, Say, Feel”

Most marketing tries to push attention.

Cult Brands attract by delivering a consistent sensory and emotional experience across all touchpoints:

  • Look → What visuals represent your promise?
  • Say → What words carry your brand’s belief system?
  • Feel → What emotional tone do customers pick up on instantly?

This “Look, Say, Feel” framework from the workbook ensures your brand isn’t just seen—it’s felt.

A Cult Brand doesn’t just have a logo. It has a vibe.

Here’s where most brands fall short.

They think of customers as individuals.

Cult Brands think of them as tribes.

They invest in creating rituals, shared experiences, events, forums, and feedback loops. They create spaces where customers connect with each other, not just with the brand.

From Jimmy Buffett’s Parrotheads to Apple product launches to Harley-Davidson bike rallies—these are more than marketing. They’re movements.

Community isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the ultimate loyalty engine.

Sell-In Before You Sell Out

Before you communicate your brand promise to the world, make sure your team believes it.

One of the most overlooked aspects of brand building is internal alignment.

From the front desk to product development, every team member must understand:

  • Who the Brand Lover is
  • What emotional needs you’re fulfilling
  • How their daily role impacts that experience

Cult Brands turn every employee into a brand ambassador. Culture is the delivery mechanism of differentiation.

If you want to escape commoditization, the answer isn’t louder ads or clever taglines. It’s building a relationship that only you can offer—because it’s based on who you serve, how you serve, and why it matters emotionally.

To recap, here’s the Cult Branding formula for differentiation:

✅ Know your Brand Lover
✅ Fulfill higher human needs
✅ Deliver a consistent look, say, and feel
✅ Create community
✅ Align your internal culture to serve the Brand Lover

When you build around these ideas, you stop being one of many—and start being the only one that matters.

August 1, 2025 by

The Schwab Strategy: How to Build a Brand People Actually Trust

In a world full of noise, hype, and marketing gimmicks, there’s something undeniably refreshing about a brand that just keeps showing up, doing what it says, and earning people’s trust year after year. 

Charles Schwab is one of those rare brands.

In 2025, Schwab took home the title of #1 Overall Broker from StockBrokers.com. It’s not their first time in the spotlight—far from it. They’ve been recognized by Investor’s Business Daily as a Best Online Broker for twelve consecutive years, and were recently ranked #1 Most Trusted Bank as well. These aren’t just trophies to hang on the wall—they’re signals that Schwab is doing something right, not just as a brokerage, but as a brand.

And that’s where the real lesson lies.

If you’re leading a business today, Schwab offers a clear example of how to build a brand that doesn’t just perform—it endures. It starts with something we often talk about but rarely execute well: trust. Trust, it turns out, is the real differentiator in modern business. When Schwab is called the most trusted bank, that’s not just a compliment. That’s a moat. It protects their business and gives customers a reason to stay—even when competitors try to undercut or outspend them.

Schwab also reminds us that loyalty today isn’t earned through clever advertising or short-term perks. It’s built on clarity, simplicity, and a deep understanding of what real people actually need. Their top rankings across categories like mobile trading, research, and ease of use tell us something important: Schwab is paying attention to how customers think—and more importantly, how they decide.

This goes beyond customer service. This is behavioral design. It’s about removing friction, creating flow, and showing up at exactly the right time in the decision-making journey. Most companies talk about being “customer-first,” but Schwab proves it by making every part of the customer experience feel intuitive and reassuring.

And let’s not forget consistency. In an age where brands try to reinvent themselves every 18 months, Schwab’s success is a reminder that steady wins the race. They’ve shown up for twelve years and counting—not because they’re trendy, but because they’re dependable. It’s easy to overlook how rare that is in today’s marketplace, where so many brands are chasing whatever’s hot on social media.

Even the way Schwab handles their marketing tells a story. Rather than shouting from the rooftops, they quietly license and share their accolades—letting third parties do the talking. It’s smart. People trust endorsements more than they trust ads, and Schwab knows that.

All of this adds up to something we don’t talk about enough: brand character. Schwab has built a business around being calm in the storm. They’re not trying to be flashy. They’re trying to be useful. And in today’s high-stakes, low-trust marketplace, that’s not just admirable—it’s strategic.

So what can we learn from Schwab? 

That trust is earned, not claimed. 

That a simple, seamless experience speaks louder than clever messaging. That consistency is more powerful than charisma. And that if you truly serve your customers, they’ll keep choosing you—even when they have countless other options.

In a sense, Charles Schwab is showing us the blueprint for brand building in 2025. It’s not about doing everything. It’s about doing the right things well, again and again, until your customers start telling the world, “This is the brand I trust.”

That’s the kind of marketing that never goes out of style.

July 25, 2025 by

Putting Customers First (No, Really)

Over the years, I’ve written a lot about customer loyalty, brand love, and building communities. But if I had to sum up the heart of it all in two words, it would be this:

👉 Customers First

That’s why I wrote my third book with exactly that title.

Because while a lot of companies say they put customers first, very few actually do it in a meaningful, consistent, soul-level kind of way.

This book is about what it really takes to lead with customers at the center of everything—and the extraordinary results that follow when you do.

What Customers First Is Really About

Let’s be honest: “customers first” sounds like a slogan. It’s been printed on walls, websites, and team t-shirts.

But the truth is—putting customers first isn’t a phrase. It’s a philosophy.
It’s a culture. A mindset. A daily discipline.

This book helps leaders break through the lip service and build organizations that truly prioritize people—their needs, their emotions, their experiences, their dreams.

It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being real.
And it’s about building trust at every touchpoint.

What You’ll Learn in Customers First

✅ How to identify your Brand Lovers and what they really want
✅ Why customer-centric thinking needs to start at the top (yes, you, CEO!)
✅ The difference between service and serving
✅ How internal alignment = external excellence
✅ The key emotional drivers behind long-term loyalty
✅ How to create company-wide rituals that reflect your love for your customer
✅ What happens when your team becomes your first customer

My Favorite Truth From the Book:

“People love companies that love them.”

It really is that simple.

Customers want to feel seen.
They want to be appreciated.
They want to believe that the brands they support would go the extra mile for them—and not just when it’s convenient.

When your team genuinely puts the customer first, the customer puts your brand first. It’s not magic—it’s just human.

Why This Book Still Feels Urgent

Today’s consumers are smarter, faster, and more empowered than ever.

They can sniff out fake empathy in a second. And they’re not afraid to walk away from brands that don’t walk their talk.

Customers First isn’t about checking boxes—it’s about building deep emotional trust that makes people want to stick around, spend more, and tell their friends.

If you want to future-proof your brand, start here.

If you’re serious about building a customer-first culture—let’s talk about how I can help. Whether it’s a workshop, keynote, or consulting partnership, I’d love to support your journey.

Your customers are waiting. Let’s show them they come first.

Onward,
– BJ

July 22, 2025 by