‍Chris Ronzio:‍
Hey, everyone, welcome back to Organized Chaos. I'm your host, Chris Ronzio, and today we're talking with Diane Primo. Diane, welcome.

Diane Primo:

Welcome. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, Chris.

Chris Ronzio:

Yeah, me too. I'm excited to dig into this. As I was doing my homework getting ready for this, I saw that you are a fan of Allyson Felix, is that true?

Diane Primo:

I guess so, yeah. You saw that?

Chris Ronzio:

I saw you put a post out about her. Ironically, she spoke at our event two days ago, so I was just talking to her and interviewing her. She's super cool.

Diane Primo:

Oh wow, that's amazing. Super cool, actually. Thanks so much, yes.

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Finding Balance In Life & Work

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Chris Ronzio:

She seems very purpose driven in what she's doing, so maybe that thread will come back in to what we're talking about today. But we're talk a lot about a purpose-driven business. And so, one thing we talk about before we get into that, we spend a lot of time on the podcast talking about balancing your personal life and your passions and your interests with your business commitments to maintain some sense of balance. In your background, I saw that you have worked at so many different service-oriented companies, you do public service, boards that you're on, you've got this incredible agency for the last 15 years. How do you balance it all? How do you have time for all of that?

Diane Primo:

Oh my gosh, you know something, when you work on what you love, you don't think about it from a time perspective. I know that sounds bizarre, but it doesn't feel like work. So everything I do, I try to ensure that that balance is around things that I love. Even when I worked years ago in corporate and I didn't feel that they were feeding my soul because that wasn't the thing that they did at that point, I would always go find something else that fed my soul. That's how I formed an interest in homelessness very early on. That is something that goes back in terms of myself, my family 30 years now, because at the time, I was looking for more in the work environment than I was getting, and I had to find something that did that. So I think it's finding things that you love, and then it doesn't feel like it's about time management, it feels like, "Hey, I'm working on things that I love," and you find you make time for it because you find yourself not sleeping because you're doing stuff.

Chris Ronzio:

So no sleep, is that the recommendation for-

Diane Primo:

I don't know. It's like everybody goes through different stages in their life. I had three children, so I learned how to balance that. And how I balanced that was I did things with them after work prime time, but then I had always opened up my computer afterwards. You just figure out how to do it. I mean, then you just navigate. But yes, I probably didn't have as much sleep as I should have.

Chris Ronzio:

Well, it's true though, when you are deep into something that you're passionate about, that you're excited about, it's fun. You feel like you're making progress.

Diane Primo:

Absolutely.

Chris Ronzio:

And then it doesn't feel like work.

Diane Primo:

It doesn't. A funny story is that I have a book out now called Adapt: Scaling Purpose in a Divisive World. I remember when it came out, it literally just came out the last month because they had a problem getting paper, I photographed it and sent it to my husband. He said, "How did you find time to do that?" I said, "Why? I've been up during COVID, right?" I had been up to three o'clock. I said, "Remember I was up three o'clock, four o'clock in the morning," I said, "that's what I was doing."

Chris Ronzio:

That's funny. Well, we'll circle back to the book because I definitely want to talk a lot about that. But first, where did this whole idea of a purpose-driven business and branding become a real focus for you?

Diane Primo:

I think early on, because I've always thought about what value does product have for consumers at large. I particularly struggled with that when I was at a package goods company like, "Oh, oatmeal, Captain Crutch. Okay, Gatorade has a little bit more value, but where's the value? What value does this stuff really have?" I found that to be a mental struggle. Now since then, those brands have really leaned heavily into purpose. A great example of that is Unilever. You can almost look at any of their brands like Dove. You look at Dove, and Dove is about making everyone feel beautiful. I passed the Victoria Secrets window, and it was a Halloween window, and I've never seen so many big bottoms in my life. I actually took a photo of it and I said to my girlfriend, "Look," and she was like, "Yay." It's more the authentic representation, we make people feel beautiful. They're not afraid to be who they are, and they're proud of it. I think that there's something to be said for that, and businesses lean and find that connection becomes very emotional with consumers, and they'll benefit from it.

Chris Ronzio:

You mentioned Victoria's Secret. I don't know if you're on TikTok at all or if you've seen this song, but there's some song that's like, "I know Victoria's Secret, it was started by a guy in Ohio," or something like that. I thought this song was so funny.

Diane Primo:

Yeah, totally.

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The Purpose Brand Agency Origin Story.

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Chris Ronzio:

Can you tell us the origin story then for your agency, which is an award-winning agency? It's 15 years that it's been around?

Diane Primo:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We started off as a two-person shop, and that was really important to us. We worked for probably one large multinational, and when that multinational went away, that's when we officially started the firm. I think the official birth of the firm is probably 2016. We have 25 FTs and we've been growing at a compound rate of 500%. We have 30 awards in the last three years. We're very good at what we do. But for me, it was about having a company that aligned my own personal values. And that's it. I really encourage people to find what their own North Star is and to think about how they take that North Star and transfer it to something that they are super good at.

And so, what we tell clients about purpose is, "Find your superpower and connect it to how you can improve the world in some way." For us, our superpower is marketing. And so, what we want to do is we want to help our clients put their purpose into practice. So what is your superpower? Let's make sure we connect that in a way so others can see the good that you do to make you more relevant. Relevancy is a funny thing. If you're in tech, and let's say I'm Apple, I've got my Apple phone here, I'm on this thing 24 by 7. You're going to hear the alerts, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, because everything's integrated into their ecosystem. So relevancy is easier when you're on something by the second, the microsecond. It becomes a little tougher when you're not.

And so, you've got a lot of brands out there that are playing out the purpose story, what we found is that they actually are not very good at telling their own story because only 12% of them are remembered for what they do on purpose, which means that they don't have the storytelling right, they don't have the narrative, right? It's really important to get that right. It's important to get that right because there's cohesion around it, and there's clarification, and there's brand identity, and there's communications as long as you're authentic, I want to make that really clear. It has to be real. And if you're real on those things, it's to your advantage to communicate them to both internally your employees, because they need to understand that this is something you really believe in and it's not just words. You need to translate that into action for your employees, but you also need to do it for the external market.

And so, when you asked me what the origin of this was for us, it was about aligning my own personal values with my company's values and then helping others. And so, my way to help others is to take what our superpower is, which is branding, public relations, digital content marketing, and help them communicate their stories and build their reputations, et cetera, around stuff that matters. And so, that is the connect. I hope that's clear.

Chris Ronzio:

Yeah. Do you find that when you intersect with a business that hasn't thought about this much, are they purposeless, or do they have a purpose and they just need to communicate it better?

Diane Primo:

Usually, it's the latter. We work for the number one aviation service company in the US. We design their whole brand strategy platform, that would be purpose, mission, values, voice and tone, brand promise, content pillars, themes, topics, and then what's the brand architecture around that? And then even you take that and you say, "What's the expression of that?" And then how do you translate that into active programs that you're going to do internally and externally? But the key is you start internal, because none of it can happen without internal people buying into it and operating with that. That really was the key. The key was, okay, now we have this, we understand what it is, but our people really have to get it because that's their job, I'm going to say day to day, second to second. That's what needs to be in their head around what they're doing and how they do it.

So they build a culture around that and that becomes the most important thing. So what are the things that will be in place when they're not dictated? What are those unspoken rules when people aren't watching? Because cultures have a tendency to do what they do without you, so you really have to embed things thick within that. Hope that makes sense.

Chris Ronzio:

Yeah. When you were first kicking this off, I mean going from that team of two to really pivoting into an agency in 2016, what I love about agencies is that you can be really intentional and decide on who you want to service and how you want to help people. And so, did you have a specific type of customer that you were going after? What was your initial go-to market? Just anyone?

Diane Primo:

What's really interesting is we started with our why, what's our why, what's our mission, what are going to be our values, et cetera, what should be our voice and tone? Just like we started for them, that's what we started with. And we spent a lot of time on that. And then once we had that, we started to build around that, talk to employees as they started with us to make sure they got what culture we wanted to create. And I got to tell you, culture's something that's always involving, it's never done. You can't just say, "Oh, this is what we're going to do," and then let up on it. You need to have others hold you accountable.

And so, part of what we do is we [inaudible 00:13:57] people are like, "We want to be held accountable. Are we doing this?" If it's no, like, "Oh, shit, we better be doing this." And so, that's the kind of stuff that it, it is it very unending. It is not something that is a one and done, it's something that you need to work at continually. Like a marriage or relationship, you got to continually work at that thing, or somebody's going to be walking out the door. And so, the same here. What we first started to do is we started to think about our own why, who do we want to be, and then how limiting was that. We didn't think it was because we thought every company in America should have a purpose. It's a matter of communicating that and making sure that their superpower is communicated. It's not just for social entrepreneurs or for not-for-profits, it's not.

Blackstone, which is one of the largest asset management companies in the US, has trillions of dollars of assets in the management. Their purpose is to improve the financial wellbeing of others. Microsoft has this wonderful purpose for every man improving the world's productivity. You've got people like Patagonia who want to save the planet. Look at their founder. Someone said, "Well, wait a minute, isn't that contradictory, the money he just saved and made off that?" I said, "No, it's not. What it is because there's no contradiction between you making money and you delivering purpose, because that's what this is all about. It really is about what are the financial measures in conjunction with the non-financial measures that lead to your long time term financial success. You can get that in your head that that is what it's about because you need money. To continue the purpose stuff that you're doing, you need the money. You need the money to actualize it. So not only is it going to happen from a brand standpoint, but how do you invest in some things in the marketplace to make that even more of a reality maybe when it's even out of your direct line of product. Makes sense?

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Mission, Purpose, Vision

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Chris Ronzio:

Some people use these terms interchangeably, and I'm curious your take on this, but you say purpose and then there's vision, there's mission. How would you define each of those things?

Diane Primo:

Vision is usually very aspirational. It's very aspirational, out there. Purpose is really about what's my why, and it's probably one of the most operational measures you have. Because if you're doing purpose, you're answering that question of why do I exist? But you're forced to answer the question about, and how do I bring that to life? And so, you look at it and say, "Oh, one's ambition, the other one is my why." Mission is to me about the specific of the what, "What am I doing here?" Values speak to the values that I'm going to create, the values that I'm going to hold, the unspoken things that I'm going to do to make all this stuff happen. And so, if you got to move to the voice and tone area, that's about, "What's my voice in the marketplace? What kind power do I want to have? What kind of agency do I want to have? And how do I make that explicit as I communicate and I brand?"

We talked about content pillars. Content pillars are really about, "What are my anchors in the marketplace? And if I look at all this and I look at competitive environments, I look at my purpose, I look at everything that's going on, from a marcom standpoint, how do I take this and break it up so I can approach it in the marketplace cohesively around the things I went on? What are the themes within that? What are the topics I want to talk about? So it really does work as this wonderful ecosystem with purpose really being the core, because it's all about the how. And so, what are we talking when we're talking about the purpose of the why, and how do I operationalize it? The why is what we just talked about, but the how is like, "Okay, I'm going to need a very clear idea of what kind of impacts do I want to create. I'm going to need a very clear idea about how am I going to make a difference? I need a very clear idea around what is the strategy here and how does it affect all of my functional areas?"

And then at the end of the day, I really want to say, "I need a cheat sheet for measurement. What's that going to be?" Now, we would say that your cheat sheet is your financial documentation that you're already doing, but it's probably your ESG report. Because everything can be incorporated, which is environmental, social governance into that report. What are you going to do environmentally? What's going to happen socially? And so, that has to do with labor, that has to do with diversity, it has to do with a lot of different measures. The governance piece has to do with, okay, that's really how I'm holding myself accountable. How am I going to govern this to make sure it's going to happen? And what are my policies I'm going to stand up to make sure this is going to happen? What are going to be my checks and balances? That's all about the governance.

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What It Looks Like To Lead With Purpose

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Chris Ronzio:

Is that what it looks like then for a business to actually lead with purpose, is that they have those clear ideas written down, they've got tactics, they've got governance, they've got the reports? Is that what it looks like to lead with purpose, or how do you measure when someone's doing this well?

Diane Primo:

I look at it and say it's about transcendence. It's about the actual results, and that's what we move to, like what are you doing? It's not just words on a piece of paper. One part is the strategic piece of that. The other part is the executional plan around that. Every strategy has a plan. What you want to do is you want to optimize that plan even over the strategy. You always want to stay aligned and stay true to that purpose. That actual plan around how you do it is really, really important. We go through that in Adapt a bit, Chris. We walk them through, "Hey, what's the model? How do you want to think about it, and how do you really want to operationalize that?"

In the book, we get to the last part of it, which we call transcendence. Because if you do the operational model right, because it's a loop model, it loops, no one part do you do and stop. But if you are starting with it, you might look at it and say, "Okay, this looks linear." It's not, because you're never done it's looped, loop, loop, loop, right? On the transcendence side, it's when it is institutionalized within your organization, with becomes part of your culture. The second part of it that is that you acting continually around that new vector. And the third part of that has to do with you staying true to it.

It really doesn't matter, I hate to say it, what that purpose is, what matters more is what you stand for and you staying on point. Great example of this, and you can be a successful business, I love to look at Ben and Jerry's on one hand or Patagonia, and then look at Chick-fil-A on the other. It's like, "Oh, they have a very successful business, and they stay on point to their purpose." They're extremely right wing organization.

My book, "Oh, she'll left wing." I wasn't left wing, I'm just telling you what the results say. They're like, "Oh, you left wing." Said, "No, no, we're just telling you what the results. This is what people are interested in. We did the cuts, look at the political cuts, it's all there. You just need to know how to read because we are telling you what this looks like." We got a little review. You might here say, "Oh no, you're leftist point of view." It's like, "No, it has nothing to do with leftist point of view. This is the real world research from consumers. You can challenge us on it, but we'll tell you this is statistically reliable, 95% confidence rate. So yours to, that's how we did the research. Yours to challenge and argue, but here we go."

Chris Ronzio:

Can I get a little vulnerable with you? Is that okay?

Diane Primo:

Sure.

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What Is Trainual's Purpose?

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Chris Ronzio:

At Trainual, my company, we have a strategic planning meeting, quarterly planning meeting in two weeks. One of the things that we're going through is revising, reviewing, putting our own mission and purpose and vision up for debate. One of the things that we've talked about is do we have a purpose really that's strong enough in how we communicate it? And so, maybe I could just share a little bit about how we talk about it now and you could tell me what's broken.

Diane Primo:

Yes. Sure.

Chris Ronzio:

I think that'd be a practical example for people. We have this vision where we say... Actually, it was borrowed from an old Microsoft thing when they said, "A computer on every desk," we thought, "Well, a playbook in every business." If every business had instructions and it was well organized, that'd be a aspirational thing. So that was a vision. And then in the mission we've got a target of a what, of what we're aiming for. And so, the purpose is more like we've said, "Helping small businesses be better organized, organize their chaos, like the podcast." We've said, "Help you design the perfect business, whatever that means for you, your own policies, processes, culture." Are those strong purpose statements, or what would you challenge me to really push on?

Diane Primo:

Well, the first thing that you should ask yourself is, "What do we do best?" And it should be better than anybody else. What do you do best better than that... The first question you should ask, and you guys all need to be aligned about that. Usually one thing bubbles to the top. Don't just ask yourself, ask your clients, okay?

Chris Ronzio:

Okay.

Diane Primo:

Oftentimes you'll get great insight by asking them. Your primary question is, what do you do best better than anything else? That's likely your superpower.

Chris Ronzio:

Okay.

Diane Primo:

And you got to get really, really, really crystal clear on that. Once you understand that, you then have to say, "Well, how do I use the superpower to improve something in the world with my clients, et cetera." I love E&Y because E&Y's is to build a better working world. That is their purpose. They're a consulting firm. You see that in everything they do. You see it in their advertising, you see it on their website, you see it in the consulting type of consulting work they pick, you see it in terms of the foundations and et cetera that they invest in. Okay?

But you've got to figure out what is your superpower or what you do best, and then how are you going to make the world a better place. Now, here are the other things you used to ask yourself. Probably it should be no more than, I would say, six words, seven words maximum. Some people are longer, it's 10 or 11, but no more than that, okay? You want to ask yourself, "Is this compelling? Will this inspire my employees?" That's a fundamental question because they got to operationalize it. If what you have on a paper means nothing to them and they can't get motivated behind it, you just rip up that sheet of paper. Because at the end of the day, it's not you that has to do things, it's going to have to be all of your employees. That's what I would say to you bottom line. So is it inspirational? Is it motivational?

And then the last question you have to ask yourself in my mind, "Is it commercial? Can I make money off of this?" Because if you can't make money off of it, it's unlikely as you're going to be able to actually fulfill that purpose. Because unless you have unlimited dollars, and some people do, and for some people that's just fine because they're bankrolling it, most businesses do not have the ability to bankroll it. And so, for me, that's how you're going to organize the chaos of that thinking to bring it down, right?

Chris Ronzio:

Yeah. Yeah.

Diane Primo:

Now the mission should be, what are you doing? What markets are you targeting? What services are you offering? And maybe even where you play there. Brand promises, what promise are you going to make to your clients? All of this has to integrate and it should relate. You probably can get there through a few workshops, but I'm going to tell you, start asking the question. The very first question is, what value do you add? You want to ask that to your employees. What value do they think you add? Not value what you add, but what value do they think you add? But more importantly, tell me what you really think we do best better than anything anybody else. Then force them to pick one thing. They don't get three. They'll say, "Oh, we do this." Say, "No, no, you don't get three. No, no you get one." And so that's what I would tell you.

Chris Ronzio:

I love it. So practical. I'm going to run through this really quick just as a summary for everyone, but first starting with, what do we do best? Ask your employees, ask your customers. Really what you're trying to get is what is your superpower.

Diane Primo:

Partners, stakeholders, ask everybody, "What do you think I do best?" Go and talk to them about it.

Chris Ronzio:

And then you take that superpower and you say, "How do we use this to improve the real world?" And you craft a statement that's no more than seven words. Is this compelling? Will this inspire my employees? Is this motivational? Can I make money on this? And just pick one. Pick one. I think that's super practical, thank you.

Diane Primo:

You might generate three concepts from that, and then you might want to bring those three concepts to life to make sure it's where you want to live. And so, that iterative place, it's like, "Okay, if I forgot this one, where might it go? What does it look like from a value standpoint? I've got this other one, where might it go? What does it look like from a value standpoint?" Because in the end, you've got to adopt all the values. I actually like to think about, "Let's look at it from a value standpoint, where can this go? Does my brand promise change under each of these, or does it stay." You will get more and more comfortable with where you are by doing that. And mission's right in there. You'll start to see disconnects really quickly, and you'll also start to see things that you need to clean up.

People don't think about, and I think they need to, is we talked about brand expression a little bit, brand expression is visually what does this look like? But there's also employee expression, there's sales expression when you go out. You've got a big company, you've got a large sales force, how are they expressing that? All of those things are really, really important because in the end, this is an operational model and you've got to really think about it's an operational model. I hope that makes sense.

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How To Avoid Vague Purpose Statement

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Chris Ronzio:

So how do you keep your purpose from seeming overarching or generic or too vague like, "We're going to save the world," that sort of thing?

Diane Primo:

Saving my home planet is Patagonia's. Nothing wrong with that. But the way they operationalize it is amazing, right?

Chris Ronzio:

Yeah.

Diane Primo:

There's nothing wrong with that because it's all about how you operationalize that. So give you some examples of what they did, which I think is wonderful. One Black Friday, they ran an ad that said, "Don't buy this Patagonia jacket." Why? Because it's about sustainability, and mass consumption is really bad for the environment. Now, that was very true to their purpose. By the way, it also went viral from a communication standpoint too. Who does this, like, "Don't buy my stuff. Don't buy my stuff."? No, no, no, that's not a part, that's a good thing. It went viral, meaning that people felt that they really, really embraced their purpose that they would run an ad like that. The other thing they do, which is-

Chris Ronzio:

Did the buy the stuff as a result though?

Diane Primo:

Oh yeah, of course they kept more sales, I'm sure. Because it's about long term value. It said to the people who care about them, "These people really do stand behind what they believe. Therefore, it is probably better for me to buy a product from them than it is from anybody else because they do care about the environment and I do too." You got to think about that.

The other thing they did, which was really incredible, they said, "Hey, for every product you buy, I'm going to give a percent of my sales back to a group that's actually helping the environment." I can't remember which group it was, but they did that, gave a percentage of sales right back to a group who's really focused on that improvement in some way.

Now, let's talk about culturally the things that they did. They're activists at their heart around environment. They sued Trump's administration for environmental stuff. They sued them, okay? Suing you. They did, and it wasn't a public relations stunt, they were serious. The other thing they do in their culture, et cetera, they say, "Any employee who feels that they want to be heard from a voice standpoint and you wind up in a protest and you get in jail, call me, I will pay your bail out." This is about a company who really gets purpose and understands. They have a doctor of philosophy, and the doctor philosophy says that, "Is it possible for you to differentiate your business unless you understand purpose." That's what we call it, purpose positioning. We think the world's moving from brand positioning to purpose positioning.

There's a great book out called Net Positive that was written by Paul Polman, who I love to say is a friend. He was chairman of Unilever, and it's called Net Positive. Doing all of this is all Net Positive. And for a packaged goods company, he goes through, "Here's the positioning model. Here it is at the core. There's emotional benefits. He shows all the pieces because that is absolutely true." It's like what I said to you as an overall corporation, but from a brand standpoint, very true. So they have something called a mega-brand, which is the Unilever brand, which actually began to have real meaning, help recruit people, real meaning. And then they have their house brands like 50, 60 of them, or how many of they have. And each of those had to be tied to their positioning. So you just want to think about that and what the mix is, et cetera.

Chris Ronzio:

Yeah, you can tell when a company really stands behind their purpose, when their actions stand behind the purpose, when the things that they do in the real world like paying for someone's bail or suing or doing these. Actually, when we started this call, we were talking about Allyson Felix over at Saysh, their purpose to eliminate the gender injustices and protect maternity. They have a policy where they'll take back your shoes if your feet change size during your pregnancy. That's an example of an incredible action that stands behind their purpose.

Diane Primo:

That is so correct. The other thing you can do is if you go to purposebrand.com and you go look at our blog site, there is a blog that has examples of Fortune 500 companies. We took all the Fortune 500 companies out there, and we actually put in one place all of their purpose statements, for people who wanted to learn a little bit about this, they can see what other companies out there are doing.

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ADAPT: Scaling Purpose in a Divisive World

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Chris Ronzio:

Very cool. That's an awesome resource. We'll definitely share that in the show notes. I know we've only got a handful of minutes with you left, so I would love you to touch on your newest book. The Adapt framework is in that book. The book is called Adapt: Scaling Purpose in a Divisive World. This framework is an acronym, right? Can you walk us through it?

Diane Primo:

Yes, absolutely. It is an acronym, but it's not a hokey one, it's a legitimate one. Actually, it's funny, when we got book reviews, people said, "Most acronyms are hokey, but this is real." The A is for the assessment phase of adapt. A is for assessment. As a business, when you do purpose, you have to go through an assessment. It's really about your own self-reflection, how you are perceived by the world around you, both internal stakeholders and external stakeholders. That's really, really important. What we just talked about, ask them what you do best. And they're going to be a lot of other questions, right, because you're going to find tons of insight from them.

The other thing you're going to find is that stage doesn't end because culture's constantly changing. Things that people value are constantly changing because, ultimately, purpose is about what people care deeply about and establish an emotional bond about that. That's the A. The definition stage is really important. It deals with some of the things that you just talked to me about, Chris. For one, it is really about standing up something that goes beyond the purpose statement. Many people will say to you, "Oh, I had my purpose statement, now I'm done." You are not done. You were at the very beginning.

I had a lovely executive and I said, "My God, this is a fabulous purpose statement." He said, "I don't want to use it." I was like, "Huh?" I was like, "Right." There is an example of someone who had a great connect but really chose not to operationalize it. I thought he lost a lot of value as a result of that, by the way. So that's that too. So that definition phase is really important, and part of that definition phase, we stand up and we give you a framework for where the pieces you need to put in from an operational model standpoint. And that's really important.

So you move on with the A, that's the D, the definition stage. The A for ADA in Adapt is amplification. And that's really about where you need to amplify that message, who you need to amplify it with, and how. Stakeholder alignment is really, really important. You need to make sure that your purpose is aligned with your stakeholders, they get it, they buy into it. All those things that we talked about are really important. You got investors, investors are a stakeholder. They got to get that what you're doing is like, "Okay, we get this, this makes sense."

It's also about the storytelling around it. This is where the power of communication comes in. It's about the narrative. What's your manifesto around it? How are you communicating it out to the marketplace? And it's not one place, it's everywhere, everywhere. Not one place, one and done, because why? When we look at consumers, we say, "How do you tell if a company is purpose-driven?" Almost the last thing on the list is that statement. They're looking at your website, they're looking at your act. They're looking a whole bunch of things, but they are not just looking at that statement. So it's very important that you amplify that message and it gets out there in a cohesive way, unified with the actions as well. That's really, really important, that narrative, the manifesto that comes before, the narrative, the storytelling around it. And that gets into content marketing. That's what we think it's so very important here. That is your blocking, tackling, marketing.

And that can be performance based as well. And that's important for you to understand. So it's ADA, the P is for performance. Never forget that. You're in the business to perform. This is about creating long-term financial value. It's not a short-term world, long term financial value. And those things that are measured in that non-financial world, environmental, social, governance are the things that will reduce your financial risk and your business disruption. Never forget that. That's why your financial measures go hand in hand with your non-financial measures, which we think should be ESG, and they're together.

Now, ADAP, those work as an ecosystem around and around and around and around because you keep assessing, you keep improving the operationalize when in the definition stage, that statement stays, that you keep upping your game and making it real, upping your game and making it tactical, upping your game and making it a strategic plan. Each year you get better, and each year you accomplish more. That's really important. So that doesn't end. The amplification is about you can never communicate once to stakeholders, doesn't work that way. They don't remember, okay? So you have to keep that storytelling going over and over and over and over again. The P for performance. You got to perform. You have to every-

Chris Ronzio:

Over and over you keep performing.

Diane Primo:

Yes, you got to perform. It's about winning, putting scores on the board. And that's why that's a circular. You keep doing those things over and over and over again. Then you get the last part of the book, which is T for transcendence, and that's about how do you move it to the next level as this loop's going on. In the transcendence stage, it really has become part of your culture. It really has become the way you act. It really has become the North Star that guides you from a planning standpoint and helps you make this decisions you need to make.

Chris Ronzio:

Thank you for pulling the all-nighters or staying up late working on this book through COVID, or whatever it took you, because I think it's very valuable for everyone that's listening. I'm going to get a copy because it's very timely for me in what we're working on. So ADAPT, adapt, have a purpose-driven business. There's been so much gold in this interview. Thank you, Diane, for everything. Where can people find you if they want to connect more?

Diane Primo:

Purposebrand.com, and it's probably info@purposebrand.com if you want to get a hold of me. So please feel free. You can also reach out for me on Twitter, or you can reach out for me on LinkedIn. Follow me on LinkedIn. I think that would be fabulous. But go to Amazon. For my network, I'll leave this up for a short time period of time, you can do a digital download of 2,99. The book itself is $45, but 2,99 is a digital download for my network. I'm keeping it up there for a while because I want people to use it. This is our gift to them because we've worked very deeply with 15 of the biggest companies in the world who are doing this, and a lot of their insights are in that book for you. It gives you examples, tangible examples, "Here's what we're doing." tangible examples. It's really fabulous in that sense. So you get to learn from the big guys.

Chris Ronzio:

Well, head over to Amazon and grab a copy of Diane's book. 2,99 for the digital copy short term. And then also go to purposebrand.com. Check out the resources that she mentioned for the Fortune 500 companies that they analyzed and the ones that they've worked with. Tons of content here, so much to learn. Thank you, Diane, for everything.

Diane Primo:

Thank you, Chris.