5 Steps to Build Your Transcendent Brand

Transcendent is more than a superlative word. It is an evolving approach in business. By its definition, “transcendent” goes beyond normal human experience and the material world. Transcendent brands are spiritual in nature. Yes. Spiritual business.

Transcendent brands are designed to fulfill a purpose; develop fulfilling, emotional bonds with customers; and provide meaningful service to their communities and the world. Profit is their result, not their reason. These brands that focus on their values (a spiritual concept,) and their purpose (another spiritual concept,) as well as their service to their customers (yet another spiritual concept,) have proven to have higher profits and more sustainable growth.

While the idea that business might be a spiritual activity is not entirely a new one, it certainly has not entered mainstream thinking. Business is still generally considered a discipline of algorithms, quantifiable research, and reason at all costs. In other words, business is still seen as a worldly activity, and not spiritual at all. Not only is the idea that business must be reason-based pervasive, there is also confusion between the concepts of spirituality and religiosity. It is no wonder, then, that even businesses that are intentionally spiritual are shy about admitting their approach publicly for fear of being ostracized.

However, mainstream business has been so manically obsessed with keeping up its digital footprint and customer journey that it has not kept pace with the new quantum science. Science is discovering the strong connection that exists between material and transcendent realms. In this mind-boggling new understanding we now know that the one doing the measuring affects the thing being measured. There is no separation at all.

Additionally, neuroscience has demonstrated our decision process is overwhelmingly unconscious and emotional. 95% of our decisions happen outside of conscious, reasoning thought. Whether we are the customer or the CEO – we are not making our decisions rationally. We are making our decisions at the level of feeling and belief, and then creating a train of logic to support them. What’s more, as we learn to tap into this process, decisions are faster, and more effective.

Becoming a transcendent brand is about elevating the consciousness of the brand. Happily, the shift is not a difficult one to make – and the payoff of profit and growth is far more attainable than traditional business believed for so long.

Here are the 5 Steps to Creating A Transcendent Brand:

1. Create Value (NOTE: Not the Way You Think!)

Different people have different values. Ask yourself – what do you value? For leadership in a brand this will shape your approach and your brand’s promise. For employees and customers this will drive which brands you want to be a part of.

Every brand has operating values – whether they are articulated or not. But values get undermined by one of three things:

1. The values are not articulated, and so no one is really operating on them consciously. The result is confusing and messy.

2. There are too many values. It is too hard to align with more than 3 core values. Although the exercise of refining your brand’s values down to 3 can be a difficult one, the payoff is worth the effort.

3. The values are ignored and forgotten. If you take the time to create a list of values, then take action on them. Otherwise, you don’t really value them. Every day, several times a day, in every decision and every interaction, you and your team should be living in your values – with full awareness that is what you are doing.

Here’s a list of commonly used values (it’s only a beginning) to get you started. [CLICK TO DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE LIST]

1. Operate On Purpose.

Culturally, we rarely talk about our individual purpose, much less our organizational purpose. No wonder that when a business owner is asked to define their organization’s “why,” they go blank. It feels so enormous, so foreign, that they just throw something out and hope for a positive response.

Purpose starts with values. We are naturally drawn to things we value and feel have great importance to us. It is far easier to identify things we value than go straight to our purpose. Once we find our top 3 values, we can begin to use them to frame our purpose.

It is crucial – and can generate a huge sigh of relief – to understand that purpose can evolve with us. It is not a one and done – whether we are speaking of the individual or the business.

The vital importance of purpose is that it is the thing that creates brand affinity – or emotional “stickiness” between the brand and its employees and customers. Without purpose, brands drift and become a struggling commodity.

1. Love Your Brand.

The brand is an expression of the leadership that created it. The closer to its inception, and the smaller the brand, the more obvious this is. But even mega brands shift their personalities as new leadership steps in. The easiest way to understand how this can be true, is to consider how much of our own personal self-worth is derived from our work. We spend the majority of our time doing our work, and we infuse it with our own beliefs about the world and ourselves. So, it is no wonder it becomes a reflection of us.

Therefore, if we want our brand to be loved, we must love it. Although it is a reflection of us, it is not us. To love a brand is not to lose yourself in endless hours of work, to the point of exhaustion. To love a brand is to give it leadership, structure, a path for growth, and a reason to exist. Loving your brand creates a space for it to grow without you hovering over the minutia.

1. Get Uncomfortable

Standing in your values, leading on purpose, and being a loving guide for your business is not easy. You are going to have to get your hands dirty.

We live in a quick-fix world, where we want instant gratification, and simple cures for our symptoms, not healing of the underlying causes. Nowhere is this more obvious than all the ads, emails and LinkedIn spam aimed at budding entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and start-ups. Each one promises that their solution will somehow catapult the business into 6 and 7-figure stratospheric success, by leapfrogging over everyone else struggling in the trenches.

For larger, less vulnerable organizations, it becomes about what the brand is, or is not, willing to do when confronted with ways to get fast profits at the expense of their core values, or stand in their values when they discover they have drifted unintentionally.

Becoming a transcendent brand is not about instant success, and it is not about operating on autopilot. It is about being so passionate about what matters to you, that you will commit to doing the hard work of daily practice. This is about building something. Building something takes time, and a joy in the process, not just the result.

1. Get Curious

No one has all the answers. Transcendent brands know this. They typically question everything – all the time. That childlike curiosity that is endlessly asking, “Why?” is the source of creativity and true innovation (not just the latest model of Product X, but the kind of innovation that alters how an industry operates.)

Transcendent brands lean into change and see it as their operating model. They question status quo, and also subtle assumptions, looking for anything that isn’t operating ideally, and tinkering with it for greater performance and “stickiness”.

Curiosity is a cultural component of transcendent brands, since spirituality is a journey. Many young brands, and individuals contemplating a professional redirect, want to skip this critical piece of the transcendence puzzle. Instead we begin looking for a guru or sage to just lay the winning formula out for us, so we can get busy reaching our goal. As with all spirituality, the best guru is within. No one can be us better than us.

With each of the 5 Steps to Creating a Transcendent Brand, there are numerous exercises and techniques to ingrain them into a daily practice for shifting from a struggling, stuck organization (or start-up) into a transcendent one. If you are a woman in leadership and are interested in finding out more, I invite you to consider the Fire Starter Retreat for Women Leaders.