2 sessions inside Boa
Josh Sparks
Brand advisor and consultant
Josh Sparks is a brand strategist who runs multi-day brand workshops with founders and operating businesses, and has been part of company exits at 5 to 7 times EBITDA as well as one at 10 times revenue. He has worked with brands including MJ Bale in its early handmade shirt days and advises clients on brand pyramids, archetypes and positioning. He started using Apple products in the 1980s and cites Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces as his go-to text.
The sessions
What Josh teaches
Build the brand pyramid from the bottom, not from the tagline
Start at points of parity (tangible ones like 'safe to use', 'delivered on time', 'servers up 99.9%', and intangible ones like 'I feel smart making this choice'). Then purpose or central organising idea, then rational benefits, then emotional benefits, then values, then persona, and only then promise. Josh's point is that promise is impossible to write in a sentence until you have answered everything under it. Promise is a North Star, not a tagline like 'Just Do It'.
From Josh Sparks: the brand pyramid, archetypes and the WHAC exercise →Swap points of difference for reasons to believe
Josh argues most products and services have very few genuine points of difference once you strip out price and speed. Instead of hunting for a POD, ask what reason you give someone to believe your promise. Rational RTBs are price, service, delivery speed, returns policy, warranty, organic versus conventional cotton. Emotional RTBs are the ones that pay: will they feel smarter, freer, more creative, more beautiful, higher status.
From Josh Sparks: the brand pyramid, archetypes and the WHAC exercise →Aim for the unfair advantage as your top emotional benefit
The highest emotional benefit, per Josh, is that buying from you confers what the customer perceives as an unfair advantage. Something others do not have. It can be internal confidence and certainty, or an outward symbol of status, or both, in the same way that working with Goldman Sachs on an IPO or McKinsey on growth makes an executive show up with more certainty. If you can distil your emotional RTB down to an unfair advantage, you are in a very strong position.
From Josh Sparks: the brand pyramid, archetypes and the WHAC exercise →Push past the 15th word before you trust your own answers
When Josh runs word exercises with clients, they typically get to the 15th, 20th or 25th word before anything real emerges. Everything before that sounds like a marketing department or a Procter and Gamble ad. If he is not in the room, appoint an annoying counterparty whose only job is to ask 'are you sure', 'what lies underneath that', 'how would you feel if you got that' until you hit what you actually stand for.
From Josh Sparks: the brand pyramid, archetypes and the WHAC exercise →Plan backwards from 3 years, then 12 months, then 90 days
Start by describing what great looks like 3 years out across business metrics, brand positioning, market share, consumer perception, assortment and channels. Pull that back to 12 months with specific milestones you must hit to have conviction the 3-year picture is on track. Then pull back to 90 days and name the projects, the outcomes, the owner for each, how success is measured, and how it flows into team KPIs and incentives. Josh's point: the 3-year layer is your job, the 90-day layer is what you delegate.
From From operator to CEO: strategy, teams and tactical autonomy →Aim for three conditions: strategic clarity, team alignment, tactical autonomy
Strategic clarity means everyone knows what you are moving towards. Team alignment includes investors and board, not just staff. Tactical autonomy means the team runs the business day to day. Josh's line for the shift: you lead, coach and hold accountable the leadership team, and the team manages the business.
From From operator to CEO: strategy, teams and tactical autonomy →Destroy your old idea of leadership before you can grow into the new one
Josh uses the Buddhist cycle of growth, maintenance and destruction. When you are maintaining and want growth again, something must be destroyed first. For most founder CEOs the thing to destroy is a love of micromanagement and the fear that the team is not ready. The usual excuses (the team's not ready, I'm the only one who knows the detail, the systems aren't mature) are all solvable problems expressing the same underlying fear.
From From operator to CEO: strategy, teams and tactical autonomy →Separate the growth people from the maintenance people
Maintenance work suits a steady, detail-oriented, calm personality with strong managerial skills. Growth work suits the more entrepreneurial, high-energy type who spins up ideas fast but does not stay on one task indefinitely. Map which parts of your business are in growth and which are in maintenance, then put the right personality against each rather than expecting one person to do both.
From From operator to CEO: strategy, teams and tactical autonomy →
Watch the full sessioninside Boa.
Session notes are free. The recordings, the live advisories and the founders in the room are for members.