Building a Brand That Lasts

25:48I take a first principles approach to building companies. And I think that behind sort of what does that mean? Well, it means that if you boil things down, it's a building blocks based way of thinking about problems that if you lifted up the hood on every single e-commerce business ever, you basically should see the same thing. Right. But nobody really which is what? which is that you have certain, you know, you have product, right? Or you have some kind of product pyramid, you have product happening, and then you have buying and inventory decisions being made. You have creative being generated.

26:18You have, you know, they're just building blocks of how a company metabolizes and operates on a daily basis, all these autonomic things. And I think teams find a way of confusing that, you know, and it really is formulaic and there are facts of building businesses. And I think if you can look past the subjectivity and the sort of visible layer of existence of businesses, you find these same things underneath these same pieces, right? And if you can sort of have the discipline of stepping back and looking at the building blocks of what's happening, we've just basically, I've spent, you know, decades building frameworks for how to build companies, right?

26:52And just look at it with an objective eye and come in and put kind of a protractor and a compass on top of the business to say, this is where the growth is, and this is what we're going to do. So that's what we do. And I've just spent a long time I'm developing training and frameworks at Chief Detective. And we come in with the same point of view to basically every single company. And it works, you know, with a really high hit rate. When does it not work? It doesn't work when the product sucks. Like, if nobody wants it, you know, we're not. You can't put lipstick on a pig. You really can't. Yeah.

27:20If nobody wants the product. And like, sometimes you can't quite tell that. Like, you can't, something's stuck. You can't quite tell why. And that's the problem that you never want to realize is underneath it. But I think like often also the creative is really bad or, you know, they just don't know how to sell. They don't know how to advertise. You know, they don't understand people. They're not oriented to their customer. They're oriented to themselves as what they think is a prototypical customer, but they're not. You know, I think like being oriented to the customer is another thing that comes out of the brand work.

27:51It's so powerful. And like they do those studies all the time. Like what are the most valuable companies in the world? They're the ones that are oriented to the customer and to their employee. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember I told you this once about a founder who built a big brand and who said to me, I hate my customer. Did I? Yeah, you did. It's so bad. And was still able to build like a pretty sizable business. And that's always stayed with me because I thought like, how can this person, like how, how do they achieve success when they hate their customer and like openly say they hate their customer?

28:26They think their customer's tacky or whatever disparaging things this person was saying about their customer like i don't how in your mind i'm just curious like why do you think that business still could work because he understood her he didn't like her but he understood her right you know right he knew what she wanted right and he gave it to her and charged a lot for i mean it's disgusting i find things completely repugnant yeah yeah he understood her wow yeah oof my blood just sort of ran cold this is gross But I mean, but that's not you. And, you know, the thing about Goop is that, you know, this is about life and you are about life, you know, and I think if you get to the river running underneath something and you build up from there, there's just a lot of power.

29:08So that's the. So just to zoom out and explain the process, you're trying to figure out the why, like what's the river running underneath this thing? What is the soul of this company? Get your hands around that. And then there's the what? What do we deliver to our customer? Yeah, there's the customer benefits. How do they receive that from you as a benefit? How does it make their life better? Personality traits, right? Which is critical. That's the ratchet up the species thing. And then your key objections. And you go through methodically through a research process to try to understand what to fill in those storylines, right?

29:38And then you're building, you know, storytelling around the like, then you know what you want your marketplace to perceive. And then you're trying to figure out all your brand programming to push that comment through and make that a reality. And so you guys, what is the why? You know, well, I don't know. I'm probably better at saying all this stuff when like, it's just you and me and there's no, but I think like there's this incredible, like almost, you know, it's, it's, it's the essence of femininity, right? It's like this capacity that we all have in this desire to, to fully blossom into ourselves and like the beautiful, almost fragile energy it takes to blossom.

30:22Right. And that it it's different than like forcing something like it's, it's not this kind of like it's, it's, it's the opposite of an energy that like has will, you know, it's like it in and of itself has this capacity to open and to blossom. And I think like so much of what I think about doing kind of comes from this place of like women having the right to listen to themselves and give themselves like that space to blossom which requires a vulnerability right like to come out of that tight bud like you have to soften you have to loosen and then like the energy comes up out through it and into utter beauty yep i'm obsessed with that but like how do you like for practical purposes like like how does one do that right like how do you, how do you, for any brand, but we'll use the example of this for Goop, like how does one take this sort of esoteric truth that's at the heart of a brand and put it into product or tactics or like make a consumer feel it?

31:28Yep. So, well, that's, that's the first why, right? So let's just put a cap on that, right? And state that I think with other brands, that's really hard. So the purpose of this brand is to support women in the pursuit of themselves, right? It's a completion path brand. It's such a beautiful thing is that we're all – that the sort of central obligation of life is to complete ourselves, you know, and that we're born with these instincts. And it's in our psyches. It's in – you know, there's something instinctual about what we think we can do with our lives. And I don't mean from a career perspective.

32:01I mean, from wholeness, you know, just becoming the wholest version, the most like what you say, the blossoming, the most fulfilled version of yourself. Yeah. And that that's our job to do that. But as defined by you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No. And actually, I love like what you would always say about being nonjudgmental. Like if you want to do whatever you're going to do, you know, do it. Yes. So the next part of the exercise is, OK, what do we do as a company? So if that's our why, if our job is to support women in pursuing their fullest versions of themselves, that blossoming, right? Then like what are the archetypal demands, you know, drives emotional needs of women?

32:39Let's understand those and articulate them so that again, the business can deliver on it. Like the ship that you could see underwater, how are we going to bring that up? love it um but like there are certain ways that women are just instinctively driven to pursue themselves right and so that's very tactical we've had so many interesting conversations about your vision for modern women womanhood we're both working women and um mothers mothers and that while maybe when we were in our 20s that was about struggle because maybe ever certainly i as a business person in my 20s, every room I was walking into was all men, you know, and you're, you had all everything that you were dealing with in your 20s and your industry.

33:22But now it's for the most part, I wouldn't characterize, I'm sure all of my friends are so successful. You know, every woman I know, I feel like it has her own definition of success and has achieved that to a large degree. So is it about the struggle anymore? Like, what do you think if one of the big jobs of this brand is to role model of a vision of womanhood to, to women? Like, what is that? Like, what do you, how would you define that? I think fundamentally it's about like this indefinable thing for each one of us, like what there's, I mean, look, I think there are definitely common denominators, right?

34:03But it's about that unified spirit of wanting to show up for yourself in your life and defining what, how that feels to you, right? Like that engagement, the dedication, the curiosity, the wildness, the freedom of spirit, like, and there's, you know, really it can, again, like there's no template for, she doesn't have to look like this or dress like this or whatever. Yep.

34:39You know, something we talked a lot about was just like almost the new wave version, like the most modern version of feminism. Yeah, totally. Is more balanced. Well, I think it's, you know, again, like there it's like about for me, it's about this latitude about like, like, for example, my version of feminism is like the power and freedom. to be like who I am also domestically, right? Like, like I'm not, I'm not necessarily like a trad wife, which I also think is very cool by the way. I'm like, totally. I'm into this trad wife trend that I just learned about, but that, you know, my version of like my version of feminism embodies like a homemaking part of myself and a maternal part and, you know, a sexual part and like a business woman and all the things and like to, to create traditions.

35:44And, you know, so there's some like, I suppose, traditional values around that. So like, want to go back to that and like make your husband breakfast every day, but you don't have to like, that's just, you know, my version of it. So I do love this idea of everybody getting to define their own version of feminine power and how they're asserting that. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, that really resonates with me because another, like, you know, and just the thought that we sort of disembody ourselves as women, like it's been about the struggle and pushing our way through for so long that we sort of amputate psychically some of the softer sides of ourself.

36:25It isn't just all about the struggle and about a career, you know, that just in general, we, I think all get sucked into this rationalist way of thinking. And we were pushing back against something for so long that maybe has also hopefully shifted, like for our daughters that, you know, we won't have to be the first woman in the boardroom who did X, Y, and Z, you know, it's like, hopefully culture is progressing to the point where there's not so we're not approaching our trailblazing with like this againstness you know it's like we have wind in our sails we have like women on our teams at our sides like we're able to do it in in concert with like this powerful feminine energy and our daughters will be able to to do that too and but you know if i think about like what did female power look like in the 80s you know it was like a very masculine yeah version of like a successful woman right like shoulder pads and you know sort of that hard charging like cut off from the saw it was like the softer parts were perceived as weak yeah right yeah and like you weren't allowed to show emotion in business and you know but the the truth is like the the archetypal female qualities of you know emotion and collaboration and and sensitivity and creativity like these are beautiful archetypal qualities of the feminine and they do have a place in business like they do have a place in in building a business and it but it looks very different and i think our generation has been the generation to try to shift that paradigm out of this like you know i'm gonna sort of pretend to be a masculine, you know, like to embody the masculine in order to be taken seriously.

38:20Like what would it look like if we were able to be in our feminines and lead from that place? Like what, what, what would happen then? Yep. Yeah. Which is so cool actually. Like I think there's so much richness in that female inner life and like i don't know our priorities have gotten very skewed culturally right it's like i think you know for many of us we are much happier residing in the richness of the fabric of our inner lives and you know music and literature and food and our female friendships and laughter and travel and discovery like those things bring this it's it's an answer right it's like so yeah right it's like yeah so many of us I think we're conditioned to be like I have to get somewhere I have to cross some finish line I have to you know I gotta like be as smart as the boys and I have to and it's like it's so validating to just sort of recede into that into your inner life and be enough you know yeah and And I think that's sort of what I'm trying to get to in my own experience right now.

39:34Right. So it's not about prescribing some, you know, system or idea or way of life. It's like, no, what, where is the richness of your inner life pointing you? Yeah. I think the thing goes back to what you were originally saying, which is like this discovery around like how the world can reflect something back to you about yourself. Right. Yeah. or however you set it around like brand, you know, like, which, which, which is why I love brands so much is because you can be transported to a different version of yourself while you're like on net a port a or whatever, you've saw, la Ron.com. And like, you know, deciding you're this kind of want to try to be this kind of woman, you know, in this next meeting that you have coming up or whatever.

40:21And nothing does that for me the way travel does. Totally. So there, the two sides of the brand work. One is this architecture, which is just this sort of very linear spelling out of different storylines, the what's like the shortcuts and cheats, the other one being events in community. Yeah. I think that's why it's so, I think that's why it's so cool that like brand events have become a thing. Like, and I do think it's important to build community in that way and then have the, the people who identify your, with your brand come together and find each other. Yep. Yeah. No, it's awesome. And then, you know, the third part of the architecture is personality and that's where i think is like the most fun because that is what you the you give the customer all this stuff but there's this extra thing that she gets right that isn't necessarily it's it's like the exhaust tail of all the effort of a company is what does she get you're giving your customers a personality and so and myself like yeah you know totally it's also so rewarding to make stuff for yourself you know to your own standards of excellence and like Like, I don't know, I find that kind of thrilling.

41:27Yeah, I bet. But the personality one, you know, it was something that you do want to be able to articulate really specifically because then that starts to drive things like the copywriting that you do as a brand and the visuals, right, the photography. Then this adjective brainstorm, like how do you, when you think about yourself in your most actualized way, what are the adjectives that come out? But, you know, when you when you come up with those adjectives, then you start to crunch them into, OK, what are the personality traits of this brand? Right. So every brand should go through this exercise, right?

42:02Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And because when you nail that down, that, again, is the gift that you're giving your customer as an apparel company or as like a lifestyle company, like what you guys are doing. I mean, you're giving her a personality, right? It's something for her to shoot an arrow at, you know, in terms of this pursuit of self. It's who she's able to become by using the brand, right? What would the Apple adjectives be, do you think? Creative, passionate. You know, I mean, it was Einstein and John Lennon and Gandhi. And, you know, those are the people they chose to personify what they were trying to show, you know.

42:41and their crazy geniuses ad. I mean, it was brilliant. It was like almost instantly got them on the path of being the most valuable company in the world, but also being who they were describing. And that's the other really important thing about brand is that it activates you, right? When you crystallize, like when you crystallize something as clearly as they did a belief, a soul of a company of, we think that, you know, passionate people can change the world. We believe that they became passionate people who changed the world. That's right. Like right after they did that campaign and saw themselves that way it started with like the i the iMac is that what it's called with the colors on the back and like the iPod and the nano and then the iPhone and you know like that is they became that right they became the crazy geniuses who changed the world and that's not what they were you know so I think when you get brand right you activate yourselves you know so interesting it is interesting it's powerful when you get brand right you activate yourself you activate yourself and you activate your team to be what i mean that you you come alive as a team and that's when it really starts to happen you know so cool what do people like do do they put into practice something like that for their team like are there you know what i mean yeah yeah i mean when you get the brand exercise done that's the next stop is you're pulling the team in and presenting it and getting them i mean that was like the famous video steve jobs is him presenting this ad campaign to the team.

44:08You know, I mean, it was literally that moment, you know, and they were just drinking the Kool-Aid and they just sat up straighter and they became that, you know, that's, you want to activate the hearts of your team, you know, that's how greatness happens with companies. And so activating the team to be so customer oriented that our mission is to help women become themselves, you know, and to pursue themselves and in all these different ways, that's very different than like, oh, this is my job today. You know what I mean? That's how imagination happens. And I think, you know, being unguarded is important to unlocking the brand.

44:44You know, there are qualitative parts of brands that let people in, you know, it's a really interesting insight, you know? Yeah. But again, it's the poetry side of business. I just believe in that. Yeah. Yeah. I really do. And so if you're a founder are listening to this? Like, what is the directive for that exercise? Yep. So basically, I think if you are running a business and it is stuck, you're going back to this exercise. I think anybody right now probably could find a lot of growth in doing a brand exercise because the central challenge of building companies right now is the saturation level of the categories.

45:22There are too many companies. Too many. Yeah, there really are. Like, it's the challenge. And I think consumers just look at that, you know, they're, they're, they're kind of arms crossed on things. They're not as trusting as they used to be. They don't want to deal with trying something new. Like, they've been burned too many times with crappy dupe brands. And like, they so I think it's true. Yeah.

45:50What is it about these big brands that work and that keep like a customer's heart? Right. And what when does it not? It's actually a really, really good question that gets debated a lot because what they do is brand advertising. That is actually a really good question. Like when you figure out your brand architecture, then what do you do to bring this to life? Right. Right. Right. And I think that the first stop needs to be just doing brand ads. You know, you're not selling a feature. Right. Or a product or a product. Right. You're selling a feeling. You're selling Nike does, for example. Exactly.

46:25Like the just do it. Yes. Yeah. Selling athleticism or selling. Yeah. I mean, like you're selling here a concept of womanhood. You're selling a personality. Right. A vision for womanhood. Like that, I think, is the first stop once you do these architecture programs is that like you just want to do a brand ad and nobody wants to spend money on that anymore because it doesn't make instant money. But if you think about the biggest companies, right, you can't track. CFOs hate it. There's no attribution. Yeah, exactly. And they really do, by the way. Yeah. So interesting. It is. I mean, you have to just believe in it.

46:59But if you look at the biggest companies in the world, what do they do? Brand advertising. And where do they put like, besides like a Super Bowl commercial, where do these things make impact now? Everywhere. Online, TV, streaming, billboard, print. I mean, like anywhere you turn. Right. Brand advertising. Yeah, brand ads. And they're not tracking revenue. You know, they're tracking, they have their ways of tracking things. Right. But yeah, I mean, there's no way that doesn't work. There's just no way that doesn't work. Right. The biggest companies in the world, that's all they do. And so it's so interesting.

47:35I know. I know. And it's just I mean, I was I was actually talking to someone like high up at Meta the other day about this, how much trouble they are having convincing brands like so many brands are stuck right now. That's an observation they have at Meta globally. Right. Is how do you get out of just targeting the same 20 million people or whatever? You know, like they see that like they don't see net new ad impressions happening. And like, so how do you do that? They think that there has to be an emotional layer on the advertising to get you out to another to a bigger ring of customers, you know, brand ads.

48:08So, yeah, there's just no way it doesn't work, but you can't convince anybody to do it. But yeah. And then the final storyline bucket is objections. You always need to understand the key objections. This is such an interesting point, right? Because I think our instinct, not only us at Goop, but, you know, like just in general, it's like, oh, it doesn't matter what the objections are to me or my brand. Like, I just want to keep going, moving forward in a pure way. And like, I'm not going to listen to the haters. But it's very interesting to hear you talk about the importance of owning key objections.

48:44So will you tell me in what one of your examples, if you can, on like what on somebody owning a key objection and turning it in their favor? Yep. So it's like when you have kind of a big daddy key objection, it's the greatest gift from a marketing perspective. It's the easiest marketing in the whole entire world is own your objection. And nobody wants to do it because they think by acknowledging it that they're agreeing with or that it's somehow not going to exist if they don't say it. Right. Which is very wrongheaded, I think, because everybody's thinking it. And so the example I always give is Jake Paul, the YouTuber.

49:24He's a very controversial guy, but I think the guy's like natural born marketer. There's some people who just born marketers. That guy's a born marketer. And I was watching with my son like the 30-minute like ESPN special or whatever on him becoming a boxer, you know? And like he does these pay-per-view events and makes like$40,$60 million. And I mean it's like he – and he markets them, right? And so when he – He's the guy who fought Mike Tyson? Yes. Yes. Yeah, exactly. I think I've met his brother or him. Okay. Yeah, his brother does the same. I mean, they're like, these guys are brilliant. Yeah.

49:58You know, they really are. And so Jake was talking about how everyone was like, he would only fight like, he wouldn't fight real boxers. He would fight like the, what's it called? The extreme, like. Yeah, the cage fighting. Yeah. Anyway. What's that called? He would only fight those guys. He wouldn't fight a real boxer. And so the word on the street, the objection was Jake Paul sucks. Like he's not a real boxer. He won't fight a boxer. And so when they realized that that's what everybody was talking about, that objection, oh, he's not a real boxer. He won't fight a boxer. He was like, that's the object.

50:29That's the storyline, you know? And so they owned that objection and they filmed all these little like iPhone clips of like a guy doing like sit ups at the gym and being like, Jake Paul sucks, you know, or someone riding by him on his bike. Jake Paul sucks. He won't fight a boxer. So they filmed all these people saying the objection. And then it cuts to the boxer he's going to fight. and it was like the guy before Mike Tyson. I can't remember who it was. It was like some famous boxer. And so he does this whole pay-per-view event hitting that objection on the head of like, okay, I'm going to fight a boxer.

50:57So he owned it as the storyline. What happened? I mean, he made like, I think, I can't remember if he won or the boxer won, but they both won because it was like a$40 million pay-per-view event. You know, I mean, like it was brilliant. It was brilliant marketing. And it was just an example of owning the objection. Like there's a real power to that. If people are talking about, like we worked with this brand one time that everybody thought it was snake oil and they refused to own that. It would have been the easiest thing is like start it by saying, is this snake oil? That could be the opener on your ad.

51:29Right, right. Snake oil, question mark. Like all you have to do is own it. You know, like it's so easy. And then you've got, you've brought people in, you know, and gotten them on your side. I mean, like, so if those objections are out there, that just can be really powerful to like to own that. That's very interesting though, yeah. So step one was figuring out kind of the why, the what, the customer benefits, personality traits, objections. And our observation of late is that, you know, when there is brand storytelling in the ads, they're just doing a lot better. So even though we've traditionally been sort of performance of like we sit in a chair and make money for brands, lately we've really had to focus on the brand itself and brand storytelling.

52:07And that's how, you know, we've started to do this type of work. It's a super interesting evolution, right? Because like at the birth of direct to consumer, it was all about just like hacking growth on all these platforms. And now it's become much more of a brand story and these companies really having to infuse their performance assets with brand, right? Yep. That's right. Like we're seeing even when you put a logo on something, it's working better, like multi-touch marketing, storytelling. Like I just think there's a big trust issue with consumers. Things are so saturated. It's really the central challenge right now is there are too many companies in every category.

52:42And so brand storytelling is starting to really become the front burner topic for pretty much every company in our ecosystem. How do you think this shakes out, by the way? Like for, you know, it's like, I joke that, you know, anybody who has like an idea and a little bit of money can like make a product, put ads on Instagram and start a business, which on the one hand is kind of this beautiful American dream, like everybody can be an entrepreneur. But to your other point, the market is so incredibly saturated with product in every single category. So how does this, how does this end? Because obviously we've seen the rise of the directing consumer and sort of softening of direct to consumer.

53:22Where are we in that landscape right now? And how do you, what, what happens to these brands? Yep. I think a lot of them go out of business. I think there's going to be a big thinning of the herd over the course of the next 24 months because the funding has slowed down so significantly. Like investors are getting, I think it used to just be, you know, plowing money into beauty brands. I think that's really slowed down very significantly. And now they're like, okay, we have to get the brands we already have working. And that's very hard. And they're not, they don't want to, you know, they don't want to like refinance and put more money into these companies.

53:52I think there's gonna be a big thinning of the herd. Are you seeing that a lot? Yes, we are seeing that investors are really drastically slowing down their investments into skincare and to beauty companies. Yeah. I mean, I can understand. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's like hand to hand combat building those companies at this point. How do you differentiate? How do you convince somebody to use this skincare versus that skincare? I just, how do you, cause that's your remit. Yep. I mean, so basically, look, I think you have to really understand your customer. You have to do this brand architecture work to understand exactly what needs to be said repetitively.

54:28And then I think it's a game of aggression. I think the best marketer is going to win.

54:36Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the Goop podcast. I walk away from my conversations with Emily feeling more clear and always creatively energized. I hope this one sparked something for you, whether it's how you show up in your work, how you connect with your customer, or how you root back into the why behind it all. So as always, thank you so much for joining us and we'll see you next time. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.