Brand Mix

One of the best things about Christopher Rosica's book: The Authentic Brand is that he was able to line up such an impressive list of entrepreneurs to participate. His conversations with 12 entrepreneurs cover not just their thoughts about branding but also their ideas about leadership, recruiting, cause marketing, the value of meetings and mission statements, exit strategies and marriage. Here's a sample of quotes from the book:

Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farm: "Superior quality is a prerequisite to entering the game. By definition, an entrepreneur is undercapitalized relative to the status quo. Therefore, if you enter a product that is either at parity with the leaders, or not as good, you won't even get to the starting line."

Jerry Baldwin, Starbucks/Peet's Coffee: "Show (don't tell) your customers that you have good quality by actually delivering fresh coffee and tea. Intelligent people are active recipients of information, and prefer to reach conclusions by themselves."

Ben Cohen, Ben & Jerry's Homemade: "The key to growing a business is that you need to be meeting some segment of the consumer's needs. If you've got a small business and a product or service that is not popular, you simply have to change your product or service to be more popular."

Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farm: "My counsel to entrepreneurs is to 'own' a region, 'own' a market, 'own' a segment. Create something you can defend. Don't get hung up on the idea that you have to go national."

Andy Spade, Kate Spade: "We started out more as a product-based business, which was the simple handbag and our retail store, and we've evolved into a lifestyle business that has a whole world around it."

David Oreck, Oreck Corporation: "There was a young guy who was the head of a magazine and who asked me, 'What does it take for me to be successful here?' I told him, 'Well, first you've got to get divorced.'"

Wally Amos, Famous Amos: "Making mistakes doesn't mean that what you did was a failure, or the wrong take. It was just a 'mis-take.' You need to go back and do another take. In each take there is a lesson."

Jerry Greenfield, Ben & Jerry Homemade: "It really helps if you are doing something you love instead of something you are just spending a bunch of money on. You can become very discouraged if you're not involved in something genuine, something that you believe in, and are committed to."

The book is similar to David Vinjamuri's Accidental Branding which I mentioned in an earlier post. (One entrepreneur (Roxanne Quimby of Burt's Bees) is featured in both.) David's book is more focused on the question of how entrepreneurs succeed against great odds. Christopher's book spends more time on leadership qualities and beliefs reflecting his cause marketing PR background.

But both books reach the same conclusion--If you're an entrepreneur and intend to build a business that's going to survive and then thrive in a tough competitive environment, you need passion and determination and the ability to find a place in the market where your product stands out from everything else.