Almost every CEO will tell you they want growth. More revenue, more market share, fatter margins, a bigger footprint, more awareness –  something. Good. You have a goal. But here’s the disconnect between what they say they want and what they actually do: the goal gets set as something flat, like “we want to double revenue,” and the very next thought is tactics. They’ll say “to grow that much, we need these tools, this technology, this hire.” And just like that, they’ve bunny-hopped clean over the thinking part.

That gap between the aspiration people announce and the strategy they never actually build around it is where I spend my time. I’ve got two methodologies for talking about it. One is what it looks like when you do the thinking. The other is what it looks like when you skip it.

Optimization of Aspirations™

So what the hell is Optimization of Aspirations™? Start with the aspiration itself and go bigger than you were going to. Somebody says they want to double revenue from twenty to forty million. Okay. Why not quadruple it? Why not double revenue and increase margins and efficiency so the money’s worth more? Working with a thirty-million-dollar brand, I like that space –  let’s go to a hundred. Nice round nine digits. Pin it high.

Now you’ve got an aspirational state. I use the analogy of hiking a mountain, because I like hiking and I like mountains. Use your mind’s eye: you’re setting a vision for a future state you’re working toward. A common goal. We want to win the Super Bowl. We want to hoist the Cup. Those are big aspirations, so how do you get there? You act and be the part.

And let me be clear, because this gets misheard: I am not talking about fake it till you make it. I wrote a whole chapter in my first book on how egregious that advice is. Faking it till you make it means lying and deceiving people. This is the opposite. Optimizing for your aspirational state is actionable, and there’s no deception in it. It’s holding yourself to a higher standard.

If we’re going to get to a hundred million from forty, then this is what we have to look like. This is how we have to show up. This is how we have to talk. This is how our customers have to feel about us. This is the volume of reviews we need, the amount we need to spend on ads and people, the systems we have to build, the risks and obstacles in the way.

Say all that out loud and you realize what you’re actually doing: brand strategy. Business strategy. The same thing. Except now it’s visualized, made tangible, and tied to accountability. To one another and to ourselves. If we want to be a hundred-million-dollar brand, then this is no longer acceptable, and that is the bar we have to hit to look the part.

You optimize every day

Here’s the part people miss. You don’t turn into that hundred-million-dollar brand overnight – looking like it, acting like it, talking like it, treating people like it. When I bought my house seventeen years ago, there was so much that needed doing, and my mom told me: you don’t have to do it all at once. Same with your brand. That’s why you’re optimizing every day.

So you ask: what’s the priority? You get your finger on the pulse of the business. Get your shoes off and stand barefoot in it, so you’re touching everything and you feel everything. Then you know what’s holding you back, and you triage it. How? By immediate impact, by budget, by resources. Every one of those is a business decision, a choice, and that’s all strategy is. Those are the choices that make the progress you need to make to earn the reputation, the market position, and the status you’re after. It’s all earning. It’s all stepping up to it.

And one more thing, because it matters: the joy is in the journey. People mistakenly think once they hit a hundred million it’s going to be great. That’s where they’re wrong. The fulfillment comes from the work of getting there. That only happens when your team –  internal, outsourced, or hybrid –  knows their roles and responsibilities and understands how their work directly impacts the success of the business. 

With the right team and the right culture, you get a reciprocating give-and-take of energy: you put energy into the work, and you get it back as compensation, sure, but also as the fulfillment of building something. Think about a team winning the Cup or the Super Bowl. Everyone from the players to the coaches to the trainers to the lawyers knows their role and how it contributes. They’re each optimizing what they own and what they can control to achieve something as a unit. That’s why you never see a hundred-million-dollar brand that looks like garbage, shows up scattered, and has no clear distinction or vibe.

The flip side: running on WEEO

If Optimization of Aspirations is what it looks like to do the thinking, WEEO is what it looks like to skip it entirely. WEEO stands for Whim, Ego, Emotion, and Opinion. And I want to be precise here, because it’s a symptom, not a root cause. WEEO is the result  of a lack of clarity, a lack of focus, and a lack of real strategy.

Whim, ego, emotion, and opinion are easy levers to pull. They’re easy to use to influence and convince people, to get them to do things. People use them for good, people use them for evil, people use them to get what they want. And when it’s to get what they want, that’s just manipulation. What I’m after is the opposite of all that: clarity. And the confidence for anyone to ask the only question that counts: is this what’s best for the brand and the future customer? And removing WEEO provides the clarity to answer it.

Where this came from

Years ago I was creative director at an e-commerce agency, redesigning an enterprise site that sold fancy espresso machines. Standard process –  intake, architecture, UX/UI, leading into a digital marketing retainer. We’re presenting wireframes and early design direction, and there’s a new person on the call who was never identified. I always want to know who’s on the client side, who the decision-makers are, who’s involved. This person took our designs very personally and was clearly offended. It was bizarre and uncomfortable. Back then there was no screen-share. Just one of those hockey-puck speakers everyone gathered around like a campfire.

The call ends, the agency owner comes in furious, and the upshot is they fired us. Turns out that person had designed the old website –  and she was the CEO’s wife. He rolled over. There was nothing to salvage. But what I actually saw wasn’t an angry spouse. What I saw was that we never had shared clarity between us and them on the path forward. So I started experimenting: how do I extract the information my team and I need to do our best work? I ran that experiment for about a year and a half, and when I left to start my own company, that extraction process became the cornerstone of the whole thing.

It was brand strategy before brand strategy had a name. What I told my team was blunt: I want to use their words against them. Meaning I want to be the most prepared person in the room, able to answer their questions and concerns before they raise them. If they challenge me, I want to quantify our choices against things we already agreed on: the personality, the vibe, the core messaging, the core values. I experimented with questionnaires, interviews, hybrids, and I realized I had a knack for it. Today it’s basically all I do – implement it, then keep revisiting it.

What it looks like inside a company on WEEO™

Decisions get made around a business and a brand constantly. I don’t care how micromanaged a place is, people are making choices all day. The question is whether those choices are what’s best for the brand and the future customer. Run on WEEO and you don’t know, because the choices are rooted in someone’s whim, ego, emotion, or opinion instead of anything you’ve agreed on.

I learned this through critique, as a designer and a writer. Constructive criticism has rules: it has to be objective. You can’t say “I don’t like that” –  how am I supposed to do anything with that? You can ask, “Have you explored this other solution?” or “Why red here?” You’re questioning the choice to understand it, which means the choice has to be quantified. “I picked red because I like red” is the wrong answer. “I picked red because it stands out against the rest of the site, it’s our primary call to action, and red renders fine now that we’re past the old monitor days”. That’s a choice rooted in what’s best for the brand. And this isn’t just about color. It’s whether you open an office here, sell on Amazon or in Target, hire this person, promote that one. Same discipline.

Watch a marketing agency operate inside a WEEO culture and you’ll see them blow smoke up the decision-maker to manufacture an emotional yes. That’s the whole game when there’s no agreed-upon standard to test against.

Why even smart, successful CEOs fall into it

Because WEEO is the path of least resistance, and the levers work. A successful CEO is successful partly because their instincts have paid off so leaning on instinct, ego, and gut feeling feels earned. And to be clear, I don’t want to strip the humanity out of the brand. I want the instinct. I want the emotion. I want the opinion. I just want to root it in and test it against things we’ve agreed on. When you extract WEEO from collective decision-making, you’re not removing the people. You’re giving everyone, top to bottom, the ability to make objectively good, consistent decisions. Instead of “I think this is best based on my gut,” it becomes “this is what I know we care about, what’s most important to us and to our customers, therefore I’m making this choice.”

That also bridges the leadership gap. Every organization has voids. The places where leadership isn’t directly present and people are still making decisions. Your outsourced agency, your IT, your manufacturing, your suppliers. If they don’t understand what’s important to you, what’s best for your brand and your future customer, how can you hold them to a standard? You can’t. They’ll do what they think is best, based on their WEEO.

And here’s the payoff. When you remove WEEO and everyone’s making decisions against the same agreed-upon truth, the performance is something to see. I’ve watched it accelerate a brand’s growth exponentially, because all the rubber hits the road at the same time. Everybody’s moving in the right direction, at the same speed, at the same time. You just can’t help but grow.