[Issue 22] Crafting Your Family Brand
How to use the Acropolis Model to cultivate your family’s legacy
[Photo by Jessica Rockowitz on Unsplash]
The Odysseus Files, Issue 22
Architecting Your Ithaca, Part 5
Start With You
[Note: this is Part 5 of a miniseries within the broader Odysseus Files called “Architecting Your Ithaca.” These miniseries will group broad topics thematically, helping you connect the dots between them more easily.]
TL;DR - This is a longer one, so feel free to skip to the end for takeaways.
We’ve now spent nine issues breaking down the acropolis model as it applies to your brand. As we bring that miniseries to a close, I want to step back and tie this in with our series on “Architecting Your Ithaca.” This series addresses the topic of lifestyle design, with the understanding that the lines between life and business are often much more blurry than a lot of business/entrepreneurship content talks about.
In order to build a business that is uniquely you, and not a copy of someone else’s, it starts with knowing how that business fits into the broader picture of what you want from your life.
So, this week we’re going to apply the acropolis model to the concept of a “family brand.”
Intentionality: Family On Purpose
We’re all familiar with the concept of a personal brand. A family brand simply steps that up a level, to the family unit. But what’s the point of this? A personal brand is connected to your professional life; family is purely personal, right?
The dictionary definition of an organization is “an organized body of people with a particular purpose.” (Arguably, if you remove the words “organized” or “purpose,” you end up with a mob.)
Family relationships can certainly be considered a form of organizing a group of people. Meaning the primary variable is whether or not a given family acts around a unified purpose. (We could define survival as a sort of unifying purpose, although whether it’s actually unifying or not may be debatable for a modern, western family not worried about literal physical survival.)
In prior discussions of “intellectual entrepreneurship” as a distinctive approach to business building and lifestyle design, we’ve highlighted that the defining characteristic of an intellectual entrepreneur is intentionality.
This is about slowing down, taking the time to think through what we want out of our lives and businesses, and allowing that vision to dictate the choices we make, in both business and life.
Put all of this together, and you start to get a clearer picture for why the idea of a family brand makes sense. Intentional lifestyle design, stepped up to the family level, requires some form of a shared purpose. Without it, you accept the status quo: a lifestyle of hustle, everyone doing their own thing, no leverage or impact, etcetera. With a unifying purpose, however, your family meets the definition of an organization.
If your family is an organization, it stands to reason that the more intentional you are about structuring, guiding, and nurturing that organization, the more you can benefit from applying the same foundational elements of a traditional organization. Principles like leadership, culture, and vision can transform your family from a reactive existence based on just getting by to a thriving ecosystem, one that can propagate itself forward, creating impact and legacy across generations.
In thinking of your family as an organization, the logic of approaching this process like we’ve talked about in terms of building your castle brand makes more sense. This application part is what we’ll spend the rest of this issue on.
But first, this idea for a family brand was inspired by the book Living Your Legacy: How to Change Your Story, Impact Your World, and Become a Visionary Leader by Sharon Olson. This book has been transformational for my family over the past year. It forced me to step back and consider who we are and what we want as a family. And, ultimately, played a key role in our decision that we would go without the perceived security of a well paid corporate job (the settling, “comfort-driven” option for us) in order to pursue a different value system and culture for our family.
(My Amazon history says I purchased this almost exactly one month before getting laid off. Fortuitous timing, indeed.)
I highly recommend you pick up a copy (Amazon link). Just remember to read it with a pen in hand!
All quotations and exercises below are from Living Your Legacy.
Our #1 Job
“As leaders, it's our mission to call out the greatness and potential in those we impact.”
This quote sits at the heart of what we’re trying to accomplish by building family brands. Because, ultimately, the output of this effort is literally the future of humanity.
In the midst of dirty diapers, temper tantrums, innumerable extracurricular activities, teen angst, and all the joys and sorrows embedded in every one of those moments, it’s too easy to forget our #1 job.
In our businesses, we assume the responsibility of leading our customers, through service, to the transformation they need. We lead our employees, not by giving them a job to do (delegation), but by creating the space for them to unlock their full potential. The same thing applies in our homes.
Embedded in this quote is the idea that leadership equals service. We lead our children by collaborating with them in the process of uncovering who they are and how they add value to the world. We lead our partners by taking more of the load when they need a pause, or by pushing them towards better alignment between their strengths and their output.
Whether we like it or not, we are leaders. The question is, are we opting to live as the visionary leaders we want to see in the world? Are we modeling this for our kids, to create a cascading effect of leaders making leaders?
As the co-founders of this organization called family, being intentional about the brand we build is more than just an opportunity: it’s a moral obligation, a sacred act.
With all that weight on our shoulders, where do we begin?
Applying the Acropolis Model
Sharon comments that lifestyle design “means challenging the status quo and writing a storyboard authentic to the purpose for which you are created.”
Instead of spending so much time looking to others for what makes a successful business, marriage, or family, then trying to impose those ideas onto our own, we need to begin with understanding and accepting who we are - then build from there.
Fortunately, our acropolis model presents an ideal framework for building a brand that is truly you - even at the family level. Let’s break it down.
Location
Just like we seek to intentionally craft the positioning in our businesses, the same logic can be applied to our families.
Questions to ask:
What do we want our family to be known for? (Live into this!)
What’s our common purpose?
What sets us apart from other families?
Try out this positioning formula to consolidate your answers: “[Name] is the only [what you do] that [how you do it, differently] for [who you do it for].”
Sharon shares her family’s as an example: “The Olson’s are the only family that leverages leadership principles and entrepreneurial mindsets to strategically develop leaders for world class teams.”
Moat
This is your competitive advantage. Ask:
How do we operate as a team in such a way where we compliment each others’ strengths and compensate for each others’ weaknesses? Instead of being a “1+1=2” unit, how do we come together to create leverage, where 1+1 now equals an infinite possibility?
Walls
In our castle brand series, we described the walls as the unique point of view or mechanism you have - the ingredient that makes your positioning and competitive advantage possible. By transcribing this idea into a focused, powerful brand message, you can capture attention and build your authority and leadership status.
To apply this to your family brand, ask:
What do we communicate through our lives to those we interact with?
Are we being intentional about making sure our actions and lifestyle are aligned with the message we want to get across?
Gatehouse
This is how people enter our world. In our business brands, it’s the straightforward path we offer to direct people from outside our walls to inside. In our family brands, it’s more of a broader reference, to how we’re navigating the relationships around us that influence and are influenced by our brand.
Consider: Are we allowing ourselves to get caught up in the busyness of life, or are we being intentional about nurturing and expanding the relationships we have?
Royal Residence
Our brand identity. The big one. You need to sit with these questions. Talk about them, reflect on them, and ensure they are an honest representation of what everyone in the family can agree on (just like in a business with multiple founders or leaders: if you can’t agree on who your company is, you might be in a spot of trouble).
We’ll break these down across a few areas.
Vision:
What do we want our family legacy to be?
What’s our family theme? (A descriptor that anchors your identity. Example: for us, we chose two - empathy and joy. Aspects of these are rooted in who we are and what we want out of our family.)
What’s our vision for our family? (If you’re successful living out your theme, what does that look like? To get clear on this, we created a mission statement and highlighted our “enemies” - those things most diametrically opposed to our themes.)
Quick pause for another comment from Sharon: “Having a vision for who we are becoming is crucial because it will lead to what we stand for.” Which leads us to…
Values:
What are our family values? These will emerge from getting clear on what you want as a family and what each individual brings to the table. (Example: a few of ours include imagination, conviction, adventure, and honoring each other’s uniqueness.)
Story:
Every organization has a unique personality and culture; what’s ours?
What will we do differently in the culture of this family to align our story - the legacy - with our principles?
What story is our family choosing to tell? (Per Sharon: Attitudes are formed by beliefs, which emerge from our experiences, but we can tell ourselves untrue stories about those experiences, thereby misconstruing everything else down the line and limiting our potential.)
Do we need to make any edits to our story? (Our words hold the power of life and death: what we say to each other, but also what we say to ourselves. We can choose to rewire the narratives so that our story aligns with our vision.)
Temples
These represent the rituals and rules we establish to build community, experience, and a sense of belonging. Ask:
What rituals are we forming, in our marriages and with our children, to unite our organization around the values, vision, and purpose we’ve established for ourselves?
Residents
The individuals who make up your team. Your people are the individual components that, summed up, creates the competitive advantage described above. Ask:
How does each member of our team uniquely add value to the world? (Example: for my daughter, I wrote “Isabelle delivers value by leading with imagination and a nurturing spirit.”)
Takeaways
This was another long one, so here are some quick takeaways, if you’re skipping to the end:
Intellectual entrepreneurship is about intentionally designing our businesses and lifestyles.
If we apply that standard across our lives, it means recognizing that our families are also brands, that we can shape and nurture for long term impact.
A “brand” approach to our families allows us to get crystal clear on what we want our legacy to be - it provides a set of standards that we can refer back to to ensure alignment between how we’re living and what we say we want from our lives.
We have to recognize our roles as leaders in our families - and, as such, the responsibility we have to nurture this family brand.
The Acropolis Model provides a framework for defining your own family brand - use the steps and exercises above to get clear on this (and maybe even go so far as to create a sort of family charter - a single reference point you can return to again and again).
Next week, we’ll be back to business, with my marginally controversial theory about market research. (And how to do it in a way that aligns with the Acropolis approach to brand building.)
In the meantime, hit “reply” if anything here inspires you to take a closer look at your family (or if you pick up Living Your Legacy!).