“Employer Brand” is a pretty buzzy word these days. It seems like it's on the lips of every recruiter, HR pro, and CEO as they try and figure out how to differentiate their workplace from the rest. 

But is it just a buzzword, or something more meaningful? Better yet, should you even care about employer brand?

Well if hiring, culture, retention, or company performance are important to you, then the answer is a resounding yes.

In this episode, we break down the concept of the employer brand, and discuss how it can supercharge your culture and retention while providing some old fashioned brand marketing too. You will learn:

• What “employer brand” really means and why it's important for CEOs and HR pros.
• Who in the org is most responsible for employer brand - HR, CEO, or Marketing department.
• How your employer brand can be your best form of brand marketing.
• Whether employer brands are created or discovered.
• How to ensure your employer brand stays consistent over time, even as your company changes.
• The roles that hiring and onboarding play in employer brand.
• The things that can threaten an employer brand, and how to safeguard against them.

Recommended Reading

• Harvard Business Review: CEOs Need to Pay Attention to Employer Branding
• Wade Burgess: Research Shows Exactly How Much Having a Bad Employer Brand Will Cost You

Think about the one thing you love to do.

It could be a task you perform in your job, in school, or in your everyday life. This is the thing that energizes you when you think about it, and motivates you to get up every day. When you're doing it, time seems to fly by, and you walk away with more energy than when you started.

Now imagine doing that thing every day. 

This is your unique ability, and designing your life (and work) to spend more time doing it is the secret to greater happiness and productivity.

In this episode, we break down the concept of unique ability in the context of our working lives. You will learn:

• What we mean by unique ability.
• How to discover your own unique ability.
• How to align our work with our unique ability.
• How to bring out unique ability in the people you work with.

BONUS EXERCISE: Love It / Loathe It

Here's Marcus Buckingham's quick and easy strategy for discovering your unique ability:

• Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On one side write “Loved It,” and the other write “Loathed It.”
• As you go through your week, reflect daily on the things that you looked forward to, that made time speed up, that energize, or that may have made you a little tired, but that you want to do again. Those all go in the “Loved It” category.
• Now think about everything you do that you put off, that makes time drag on, or that leave you completely drained and exhausted. Those go in the “Loathed It” category.
• Before long, you’ll have a clear picture of your strengths. The beauty of this method is that it’s not abstract – these are actual tasks, functions, or activities that you actually perform during your week.
• Now summarize your findings using specific action verbs (again, nothing abstract).
• For Marcus, these words were “interview” and “mingle” – he found that he loved interviewing people, but absolutely loathed mingling.

Links

• Dan Sullivan, Strategic Coach
• Marcus Buckingham on the Awesome Office show

You could say that FabFitFun is one of the more successful subscription box companies out there - and you wouldn’t be wrong - but I’m guessing that co-founder and co-CEO Daniel Broukhim might not totally agree.

That’s because he and his team see FabFitFun as less of a “box company” and more of an “un-boxing” company.

What’s the difference? Well not only is FabFitFun all about the joy of discovery that comes with unboxing their monthly (or quarterly) boxes filled with full size lifestyle products, but the FFF experience goes well beyond the box. The company provides exclusive content and products, community features, and even a proprietary augmented reality app.

And they’ve clearly struck a nerve with this “unbox” experience. Last year the company grew by 300%, while their headcount grew to 168.

Daniel sat with Awesome Office host Sean Kelly to discuss everything from the company’s origins as a content side project, to how Daniel’s leadership style has changed as he’s seen the company balloon from just a few employees to more than 160, and how his father’s entrepreneurial example (and tough love) have impacted the company that he co-founded with his brother.

Links

• FabFitFun
• FabFitFun's Augmented Reality App
• UC Berkeley’s DeCal program
• Daniel on LinkedIn

If you like this episode, subscribe to Brand Builder in the Apple podcast app, or where ever you get your podcasts.

This week we’ve got an in-depth look at one of the most inspiring and authentic company cultures that we've ever come across - Deep River Snacks.

If you want to understand Deep River Snacks, look no further than their infamous tagline -

“Because we give a chip.”

The company makes small-batch, non GMO kettle chips, popcorn, and tortilla chips, but their mission is so much bigger than that. It's about using their amazingly successful, irresistible product as a platform for good.

It’s why they feature a different charity on every single variety of Deep River snacks. And not just any cause will do. They feature causes that they have a personal connection to. Whether it's breast cancer, Crohn's disease, or liver disease, these are issues that the people behind Deep River and those closest to them face every single day.

It's also why they've turned down some major distribution opportunities. If it doesn't feel right and isn't consistent with their mission and values, Jim and the Deep River crew just can't put their name on it (and vice versa).

That being said, the brand is about to embark on something entirely new (and a little scary for Jim) - opening up the conversation to their consumers by letting them decide which charity will appear on Deep River's new Black Truffle flavored kettle chips.

We got the scoop on what “Giving a Chip” is all about from founder and CEO Jim Goldberg. In its essence, it means caring about the people in your life, and doing something to make an impact. 

Jim says it best:

“That’s what give a chip means - we do what we do because it’s the right thing to do. Period.”

This episode is a co-production of the Brand Builder podcast, our sister show that focuses on the people and stories behind some of the most successful brands out there.

In this conversation, you'll learn the following takeaways:

• Be a fierce brand protector. Jim explains why authenticity is everything in CPG, and how to keep your brand identity true to you.
• Never Lose the Bootstrap. Highly leveraged brands that shouldn’t fail often do - and it’s because they forget what it feels like to be bootstrapped. Jim tells us how he’s kept the bootstrap mindset at Deep River, even as they’ve taken on investors.  
• Culture = Brand. Culture is never really internal. Who you hire and how treat your employees has a direct effect on the brand you put out in the world.

Links

• Deep River
• Deep River’s Put a Cause on it Campaign
• Deep River’s Honchos
• Jim Goldberg on LinkedIn
• @deepriversnacks on Twitter
• @deepriversnacks on Instagram
• Deep River Snacks on Facebook

If you like this epsiode, subscribe to Brand Builder in the Apple podcast app, or where ever you get your podcasts.