Page 122 - Midas Touch

work. You may be just setting the foundation, or maybe it is already set.
Once it’s up and running, you’ll see. It will save you a lot of time.
Introductions and explanations won’t be necessary. With a brand, you
won’t have to hunt down opportunities either. They will come to you.

What’s in a name? A lot! And that’s the Midas Touch.

Distilling It Down: Brand
Many entrepreneurs work hard building a business, but only a few build a
brand. Building your business into a brand is essential to developing your
Midas Touch. Whether you realize it or not, your brand can be many times

more valuable than your business. For example, the Coca-Cola brand is
worth much more than all the bottling plants, equipment, and capital
goods making up the business. Coca-Cola used to be the most valuable
brand, but today it is Google. Will Facebook surpass Google in the future?
Who knows?

If your business is not a brand, it is a commodity. There are many
hamburger businesses, but there is only one McDonald’s. There are lots of

coffee shops, but there is only one Starbucks. And regardless of whether
you love these brands or not, you can’t argue with their success. A brand is
power. It precedes you and works on your behalf. That’s leverage, and in
business, leverage is a big advantage. A business that isn’t a brand is just
“busy-ness.” It’s a job for you, and a job for your employees. It keeps you
busy, but at the end of the day, week, month or year, all you have to show

for your efforts is work and, if you played your cards right, profits.
Nothing wrong with that, but Midas Touch entrepreneurs want more.

And that leads to a truth in branding: Inside every great brand is the DNA
of the entrepreneur who started it all. That DNA is a precious and valuable
asset that few companies even recognize they have, until it is lost. If the
DNA is not protected, the brand soon dies. This is why so many brands die
when the entrepreneur sells their business to a big corporation. AOL and

Myspace are recent examples of the death of the entrepreneur’s DNA.

What Do You Stand For?
Many entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs simply to make money. A few
entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs to make a difference. Which type of