Bill Ross: Today I have with us Dave Clare, who is an award-winning business coach, keynote speaker, and founder of Circle Leadership Global, with 25 years' experience guiding leaders and organizations on three continents. He is also the author of Simplified. Leadership is simple, you lead people.

Dave is passionate about helping leaders evolve cultures, drive purpose-driven impact, and future-proof their businesses with his unique frameworks and global vision.

Dave, welcome to our expert interview series.

Dave Clare: Bill, it's an absolute pleasure to be here, mate. Thank you very much for allowing me to jump on your show.

Bill Ross: Yeah, love it, love it, appreciate it. Since we only have 10 minutes, give a great strategy to the listeners, I'm gonna jump right in and ask you the question. Sound good?

Dave Clare: Sounds perfect.

Bill Ross: Alright, so what is the most effective strategy you recommend for business owners to increase sales while also strengthening their company's reputation?

Dave Clare: Yeah, firstly, I love this question. My answer might be a little bit unorthodox, but here's the interesting thing. If you want to, sell more or, like, you know, obviously get more clients or more customers, what attracts customers to your business?

Which is your brand, right? So you wanna… your brand. But where does your brand come from?

And this is where I find it interesting, is because a lot of organizations will create their brand for their… or branding for their organization, and market this message out there to attract customers. But it could be causing them reputational damage.

Purely because brand is how the market and consumer thinks and feels about our business. But culture is how we think and feel as human beings about our business. And when we speak that with love to the market, that's actually what builds our brand. Because the market can't help but respond in kind to an organization that just loves why it does what it does in the world.

And so that brand is then what attracts your customers. So the thing is that when we talk about, you know. sales strategies to build your reputation. Well, your reputation is built off your brand, but if your people don't believe what they're selling, or they're hired to sell something.

But they don't necessarily have the depth of belief that they need, and the love for the work that they're doing with who they do it with, and who they do it for, and speak that to the market, you're not actually going to create the results that you're looking for.

Right? So, it's actually… brand is an inside-out proposition, so culture builds brand, brand attracts customers, customers pay you.

And so I think a lot of organizations are so bogged down in sales tactics that they kind of, you know, chase sales with tactics, and they're looking, you know, more funnels, more ads, and all this sort of stuff, when their actual teams don't have the depth of belief in what they're selling in the first place.

Steve Jobs was brilliant at this. We were all in love with Apple, right, once we heard all about it, but the people who were in love with Apple first were the people at Apple. That's why he used to run those big events inside Apple, and he would get everyone into love, so by the time you or I walked into that very first Apple store and met our first geek.

That geek already loved. Apple.

Bill Ross: Right?

Dave Clare: Or the genius, whatever they're called, I can't remember if they're geeks or geniuses, but I think it was geniuses, but those geniuses were already in love with Apple, right? So they built the brand. Apple had brilliant technology and everything like that, but they built the brand, and that's what attracted the customers.

Bill Ross: It's a great…

Dave Clare: Like, for me, that's where… what I look at is organizations is getting that team belief to build the customer belief. Like, Bill, have you ever been served by somebody who just loves what they're doing?

Bill Ross: Absolutely.

Dave Clare: Yeah, what's that like?

Bill Ross: It's very different, isn't it? Right.

Dave Clare: And you've been served by somebody who doesn't love what they're doing? They've been saying all the right things, but you just don't believe that they believe it.

Bill Ross: Right, right. Interesting. So, let me take a step back and ask you a question, because I think that analogy of, Or, you know, or I should say that illustration of Steve Jobs was amazing, because you can picture that, you know that, you've seen it when he introduced the iPhone and all those things, and it resonates with me, and I'm sure with, you know, everybody who's listening, but… It seems like, to me, for a very long time now, if you look at historically, you've had these really big organizations that have built bread. Take, you know, like automobiles, right? Ford and Mercedes, and all these guys, and they're running commercials.

And all us small little guys are looking at that and thinking, oh my gosh, you know, that's fantastic, except for the fact that, you know, you're just talking about how great you are, essentially, and that's not driving you sales, and I'm with this little guy, I can never do that anyway, so I'm just gonna do more or less direct response marketing and try to basically sell, right? As opposed to worry about building that brand. But what you're saying is really, the brand is the culture. So if you build the culture where the experience that people have from you, whether that is putting something on social media, or your direct interactions with people, and the people that work with you.

That actually allows you to build that brand without having that gigantic overhead that none of us have. Is that correct?

Dave Clare: 100%. It's the most cost-effective way to do it, is just get your people to be… make sure that they love why they do what they do, where they do it, and who they do it with. And then speak that love every day to the market. And that's how you build your brand.

Bill Ross: And then that's the messaging they get out, because.

Dave Clare: Here's the thing that's fascinating. So, like, purpose is the seed of culture, and…

And the beginning of all the soul and DNA of your business. So, purpose requires your organization to be honest about why it exists, right? Why it's really here, which is the problem we're passionate about solving. Not to make money and all this sort of stuff, right? Because you make money through solving problems for people. So, if you're the small entrepreneur, small business person, and you're very clear about what the problem you're passionate about solving in the world is.

And you can be honest and brutally truthful about that. You speak that truth to the market.

That is what builds trust.

Trust is then what builds relationships, and then if you keep doing that, that relationship creates loyalty.

Right? Because loyalty is beyond trust, and this is how we create loyalty. People become loyal to a brand, right? You know, people can make a mistake, Apple will bring out another product, may not be their best product, I know we're just using them as a simple example, but any organization, but they'll be loyal to that brand.

Bill Ross: Right. The people are loyal to Harley, they're loyal to… but you can do that as a small business person.

Dave Clare: Without having to spend the massive budgets to market it. If you just got everyone to speak that love to the market, what I call business love, so that everybody falls in love with why you do what you do.

Bill Ross: That makes sense. So, we talked about frameworks a little bit, that, you know, you do that. Do you have a simple, specific framework that goes along with this, or is that it? I mean, did you just explain it.

Dave Clare: Yeah, no, no, like I said, there's a cultural framework that you get your culture right. There's 3 things that people want in terms of what we call an invincible culture bill. And so there's 3 things people want. They want something to believe in. So if you can give your team something to believe in and give them some sense of meaningful work.

Right? That they can feel, like, beyond a paycheck. And then, they also know that you, as a business owner or leader, believe in them. They want someone to believe in them, right? They go, okay, hey, you believe in me, you're giving me responsibility, you're trusting me to get out there and do these things. And then the last thing that they want is someone to believe in, and I believe in you.

I believe in what we're trying to do here together, so I believe in the work we're doing, I know you believe in me, and I can believe in you, and we have those three things in place, which is your purpose and your values and your vision, that's why those things are so important, and we can all just be speaking those same things to the market.

And that is what builds your brand. And brand is what attracts customers, and customers pay you.

Bill Ross: Fantastic. Alright, well, I think that's…

Dave Clare: Not a complicated process, right?

Bill Ross: No, no, not. But certainly, if somebody doesn't implement it, it doesn't do any good. So I think that's a great segment right there, is to say, I think the information you've given is extremely valuable. I really have never approached it, too, because frankly, I come out of a direct response marketplace that I'm used to dealing with that, and not focus so much on the brand building, and I think, you know, by reframing that for me to look at it as culture first.

I think you've really sort of opened my eyes to something, and probably a lot of listeners as well. So I would suggest everybody go back, listen to that brief little framework, work on that culture, use that to build your brand, and grow from there. And, I want to say thank you very much, Dave, for your time. I also have one more quick question. If people want to know more, they want to know more about your frameworks, how you might be able to help them, how do they reach you?

Dave Clare: Yeah, absolutely. So first, I just want to reiterate this one point. Brand is an inside-out proposition.

Okay, so if you want to get hold of me or talk to me, you can easily just go to www.daveclair, D-A-V-E-C-L-A-R-E dot com. There's a contact form there, there's all the information about myself and our organization, Circle Leadership, and that's the easiest way just to get hold of me. I mean, I'm on all socials, LinkedIn. Facebook, Insta, and all that, but all of that's on that simple site, so that's the easiest way to get there.

Bill Ross: Great, thank you for your time, I really appreciate you doing this. It's been a pleasure to have you.

Dave Clare: Yeah, absolute. Thank you, Bill.

Bill Ross: Alright, take care.