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Inspiration

Discovering Your Big Idea

Big ideas, when they stick, can guide an organization to an extraordinary future. It helps you determine when to move and where. It provides a shared vision that creates cohesion within your organization, which can lead to superior execution over time.

To discover or refine your big idea, consider the following questions:

End Picture: What will your business look like when it’s done?

Passion: What does your organization love doing? What are your collective strengths (based on employee passion, past performance, and available resources)?

Leadership: What will your organization be a leader in? What are you committed to being the best in the world at?

Impact: Where can your enterprise have the most significant impact? Who are you committed to best serving?

As with any discovery process, be sure to start with a Beginner’s Mind. Pretend that you don’t know the answers.

Be open-minded.

Be receptive to any idea, even the most outrageous ones.

Stay curious my friends.

March 9, 2018 by

How Mindfulness Improves the Workplace

“The best way to capture moments is to pay attention. This is how we cultivate mindfulness. Mindfulness means being awake. It means knowing what you are doing.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn

The truth is that many of us spend most of our time in the office. Think about how you can transform the lives of those around you by becoming more aware.

This shift toward more humanistic management practices doesn’t merely improve productivity, creativity, collaboration, loyalty, and profitability; it can also help the people around you become better spouses, better parents, and better citizens.

You can invite your employees to grow by finding ways to make the workplace more engaging (less static), more inspiring (less mundane), and more open (less fixed). As Abraham Maslow put it, “We must try to make a particular kind of people, of personality, of character, of soul one might say, rather than try to create directly particular kinds of behavior.”

When we practice mindfulness, we are training our brains to examine internal and external cues rather than react to them, so we can better manage emotions and develop into our full humanity.

February 16, 2018 by

Trust is built in unscripted moments

Building a culture of trust is mostly one-to-one in nature.

Over time, simple interactions accumulate and help create rapport and friendship, which are critical ingredients for a high-performing workplace.

Try to be present in the small moments; this will lay the foundation for a more significant purpose—to create a culture built on trusting your colleagues.

Are you paying attention to those small moments where you can affirm your interest in those you work with?

January 12, 2018 by

Dare To Dream

You have to live life to the limit, not according to each day but according to its depth. One does not have to do what comes next if one feels a greater affinity with that which happens later, at a remove, even in a remote distance. One may dream while others are saviors if these dreams are more real to oneself than reality and more necessary than bread. In a word: one ought to turn the most extreme possibility inside oneself into the measure for one’s life, for our life is vast and can accommodate as much future as we are able to carry.
Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters on Life

January 1: It’s time to set those goals and resolutions again.

The goals we set for ourselves and our businesses at the beginning of the year usually don’t look any further than the end of the year. These types of goals are good, but they’re not great: they don’t provide us any long-term guidance. They don’t necessarily help us achieve our life’s goals.

This year, when thinking about your goals and resolutions, dare to dream. Dream what you want your life and your business to look like in the future. Ultimately, think about what will make you, your customers, and your employees happy.

Once you know what you want the future to look like, build your yearly goals and resolutions around it.

What do you want the future to look like? What concrete goals can you achieve this year that will push towards your ultimate goals and vision?

January 5, 2018 by

Here’s the best of 2017

As the end of the year quickly approaches, we want to say thank you for being our reader. You represent the best in your industry and we look forward to bringing you insights on building brands that both employees and customers love in the coming year.

Below we curated the most popular, shared, and discussed articles from the Cult Branding blog in 2017. Please enjoy these three fantastic blog posts as a way to reflect as we enter 2018.

We wish you and your family a happy, healthy, and fantastic New Year.

Happy Holidays!

The Cult Branding Team

Bringing Your Brand Image To Life

Why do images have so much power?

Our logos and marks are symbols. Symbols are triggers of archetypal images—energy patterns that rest in the unconscious. These primordial images are not personal to each but are aspects of the “collective” of all of us. Read more about bringing your brand image to life.

Cultivate Workplace Passion

In today’s rapidly changing business environment, you need passionate people because such people can drive extreme and sustained performance improvement.

What does a passionate person look like? Find out more about creating a passion-driven workplace.

The Downfall of Sears: Why You Need To Compete In The Future, Not The Present

Anyone that’s done any retail research in the last decade will have noticed the growing importance consumers place on convenience. The rising importance of convenience isn’t a new trend—marketing scholar Eugene J. Kelley wrote about it in 1958. But, what is new—and what will continue to be new—is the ways retailers can satisfy it. Learn more about the importance of convenience and how to compete in the future.

December 29, 2017 by

52 Marketing Strategies To Inspire Strategic Thinkers

You know it, it takes a lot of time and effort to develop and maintain marketing that resonates with your audience. As a strategic thinker, however, the development of cult brand takes even more consideration.

After all, we’re always searching for ways to gain the oh-so-important competitive edge. If you find yourself in that situation, then you may want to check out these fifty-two marketing strategies that will ignite your strategic thinking, and with over 1 million views for our SlideShare, we know that these marketing tactics will spark your creative energy.

Onwards!

November 24, 2017 by

Cultivate Workplace Passion

“At Zappos Adaptive our passion is to make our customer’s life easier, we completely focused on a market that has been underserved, all because of one amazing customer interaction.”
– Saul Dave, Senior Director of Enterprise Systems, Zappos.com

Continue Reading

October 20, 2017 by

Retail Executive Forum 2017


You know the big names. You read the news. You stay up-to-date on what’s happening in retail.

But hearing insights from top retail CEOs and industry thought leaders in person is a totally different experience – and we’re betting that you’ve probably never had the chance to hear from 11 of the most successful retail leaders, all in one place

Until now, that is.

We’re so excited to share this line-up of C-level SAP Retail Executive Forum presenters – because they’re the type of leaders who don’t color inside the lines. They build their brands and run their organizations with confidence. And they know how to deliver exactly what their customers want.

Today’s retail landscape has changed (drastically!), but these 11 visionaries have embraced the new normal, and their businesses aren’t just surviving; they’re thriving.

Intrigued? Register today to join us in New York City on October 17–18, and hear from:

  • Dick Johnson – Chairman, President, and CEO of Foot Locker
  • BJ Bueno – CEO of The Cult Branding Company
  • Jim Sinegal – Co-founder and Director of Costco
  • Doug Wood – CEO of Tommy Bahama
  • Betsy Atkins – Three-time CEO and serial entrepreneur
  • Paul Fipps – CIO & EVP Global Operations of Under Armour
  • Scott Galloway – CEO of L2 and professor at NYU Stern
  • Andrea Weiss – CEO of The O Alliance
  • Leslie Sarasin – CEO of Food Marketing Institute
  • Matt Shay – CEO of National Retail Federation
  • Scott McKain – CEO of The Distinction Institute
  • Robin Lewis – CEO of The Robin Report

Plus, check out our updated agenda to see what we have planned for you. Don’t miss out!

* Note: The messaging and content for this year’s Retail Executive Forum will be targeted towards an executive audience. Because of the focus on executive leadership development, invitations are limited to business leaders at the director level or higher.

See you in New York!

Best regards,

BJ Bueno + SAP Retail

October 6, 2017 by