Ep. 83: TL;DL - Investors Buy Stories, Not Spreadsheets with Lysle Wickersham

Summary:

This episode features a "Too Long, Didn't Listen" (TL;DL) summary of my conversation with Lysle Wickersham, founder and principal strategist at Brand Think, who discovered through 30 years spanning ad agencies and investment banking that investors don't fund spreadsheets, they fund stories they believe in. In this summary, we highlight three game-changing insights: first, that investors make decisions emotionally just like everyone else, with goodwill encompassing the intangibles around well-positioned, emotionally charged brands that demonstrate true brand capital as a going concern. Second, Lysle's revolutionary framework positioning brand not as marketing fluff but as strategic philosophy woven into business operations, teaching that brand equity is a frequency-over-time equation where consistent actions compound value while missteps degrade it, with companies like Warby Parker built through this compounding effect rather than appearing overnight. Finally, his urgent warning from Briggs Capital experience that founders must build brand equity from day one rather than when preparing to exit, recognizing that your first constituent is always your employees delivering on brand promise, and understanding that everyone must align with core values and purpose because relationships are first and business follows. 

Show Notes:

01:40 Emotional Decisions

02:35 Brand as Philosophy

03:37 Build From Day One

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:32 Guest Introduction
• 1:40 Emotional Decisions
• 2:35 Brand as Philosophy
• 3:37 Build From Day One
• 5:29 Final Thoughts
• 5:58 Outro

Transcript

Intro

Scott Raven: Welcome to The Corvus Effect, where we explore what it takes to succeed professionally and truly enhance all parts of your life. I'm Scott Raven, Fractional COO and your host. Each episode we go behind the scenes with leaders who've mastered the delicate harmony of growing their professional endeavors while protecting what matters most. Ready to transform from Chief Everything Officer to achieving integration in all facets of your life? Let's soar!

Guest Introduction

Scott Raven: Hey everybody, it's Scott. Welcome to this TL;DL, Too Long, Didn't Listen, summary for my conversation with Lysle Wickersham, founder and principal strategist at Brand Think and self-described creative capitalist who fuses right-brain creativity with left-brain business strategy.

Through my conversation with Lysle, we talked at length about something that Lysle discovered along his journey through ad agencies, private equity, and venture capital. Investors don't just fund spreadsheets. They fund stories that they believe in. Now through Brand Think, he helps startups and growth-focused SMBs build the brand capital that increases intangible equity and drives market performance.

I certainly encourage you all to go back and listen to the full episode. It was a wonderful chat. Let's dive into some of the key takeaways from my conversation with Lysle.

Emotional Decisions

Scott Raven: First, Lysle's game-changing revelation that investors make decisions emotionally just like everyone else, and understanding this changes everything about fundraising and exits. He explains that neuroscience has shown us that most people end up making most decisions emotionally, and that becomes a critical component in terms of the valuation that goes into M&A transactions.

He explains that goodwill encompasses the intangibles around the brand that you create. And that brand has to be well-positioned, emotionally charged, and ultimately have what he calls brand capital. What is it that is going to make that brand a going concern long into the future, not just the historical numbers that you have shown along the way?

Brand as Philosophy

Scott Raven: Second, his revolutionary framework about positioning brand not as marketing window dressing, but as a strategic philosophy woven into how you run your business. He explained that many founders think that brand is just all about the idea. I'm going to build it and everybody's going to give me a boatload of money. And that is not necessarily the case.

He teaches people how to build brand equity that is a frequency-over-time equation, doing the things that are consistently going to compound the value of your brand over time, and also limiting the things which are going to degrade the value of your brand over time. He gave a number of wonderful examples of this. Bullish, Warby Parker, just to name a few. But ultimately, these brands just didn't pop out of nowhere. They were built over time through a compounding effect, and that is the principle that Lysle teaches through his Brand Think practice.

Build From Day One

Scott Raven: Finally, his urgent warning that founders must build brand equity from day one, not when they're ready to raise capital or exit. Through his Briggs Capital investment banking experience, he saw firsthand that companies interested in being acquired thought about this stuff way too late. You don't realize as founders or leaders that building equity takes time and is a long game. You have to do it from the beginning, and when you do it right, everybody's aligned and that translates in the marketplace. But if you do it wrong or you mess it up, it takes a tremendous amount of time to rebuild.

He said that most founders miss that your first constituent is always your employees, the people responsible for delivering on your brand promise. Every company wants to be aligned with something where their values connect to where their purpose is. But that ultimately lines up with where the people also align with those values and purpose. That's obviously a big part of what we talk about here in terms of the Corvus integrated leadership philosophy. Everybody has to be aligned with the core tenets of what you are trying to do, even if people come from different backgrounds, different philosophies. Everybody has to be singing from the same song of music.

That's ultimately why Lysle believes that relationships are first and the business follows. And that is the approach that he's built in terms of all of his various businesses, including what he does for Brand Think today to help those startups and those small businesses achieve the market results and the impact that they were intending to create.

Final Thoughts

Scott Raven: So again, I encourage you to listen to the full episode with me and Lysle. It was a great episode. Check him out at Brand Think and also make sure that you subscribe and share this episode with people that you know. If you like it, give us feedback in the comments. We're always trying to make these podcasts as impactful as possible. Until next time, I'm Scott. We'll see you on The Corvus Effect. Take care.

Outro

Scott Raven: Thank you for joining me on The Corvus Effect. If today's conversation sparked ideas about how to free yourself from overwhelm, visit TheCorvusEffect.com for show notes, resources, and our free Sixth Dimensions Assessment, showing you exactly where you're trapped and how to architect your freedom. While you're there, check out the Corvus Learning Platform, where we turn insights into implementation. If this episode helped you see a new path forward, please subscribe and share it with others who are ready to pursue their definition of professional freedom. Join me next time as we continue exploring how to enhance your life through what you do professionally. It's time to make that your reality!