By Genevieve Custer Weeks, Tutu School

At this point, the team at Tutu School knows that when the topic of brand culture comes up, I’m likely to get downright giddy, and maybe a little geeky, discussing it.

I can’t help it. When assigning credit for the success of Tutu School, there’s not much I would place higher value on than the culture we’ve crafted, cultivated, and fiercely protected.

So, as a member of the task force helping to plan this year’s IFA Emerging Franchisor Conference in Nashville, I practically jumped up and down to suggest culture building as a session topic.

More specifically, there is one message I feel passionately about sharing with franchisors whose brands are in the early stages of scaling: Build culture before it builds itself.

With so many important and competing priorities tugging at franchisors, it’s no wonder culture can slip lower on the never-ending to-do list, taking a back seat to sales, compliance, franchise development, operations, and brand engagement.

The only problem? Every single one of those things is directly impacted, influenced, and, I would argue, exponentially improved by taking excellent care of your brand’s culture.

What do we even mean when we talk about a brand’s culture?

Personally, I believe a brand’s culture exists in the magic space between the promise it makes to the customers and communities it serves and the work it does internally to deliver on that promise.

At Tutu School, we know, and say right in our mission statement, that “we exist to make space in the lives of children for creativity and joy.” Our culture is deeply defined and informed by that purpose.

As a business whose purpose is to bring joy and creativity to children, it would be strange if we accomplished that without welcoming the ideas and innovations of our franchisees, providing a caring and inspiring place to work at our corporate office (Tutu HQ!), or demonstrating loyalty to the Tutu School owners who first took a risk on our brand and helped dream it into existence alongside us.

Culture can’t simply be what you say about your company. It has to be reflected in how you operate it. And when it is, it has an extraordinary impact on growth.

I think of branding as the way a company communicates its promise to the people it serves. Becoming fanatical about the details of that branding ensures that even the smallest touchpoints communicate to franchisees and customers alike how deeply you value the quality of their experience.

When you approach brand consistency this way, your branding doesn’t just live in rules and guidelines, lookbooks and specs. It becomes the water your team and franchisees swim in and the air they breathe.

This is how brand evangelism is born: from the inside out.

At Tutu School, we’re sticklers for the right typeface and Pantone, the tiniest details of our trade dress, and the quality and consistency of our curriculum and training. But here’s the really amazing part: When culture is created through real faith and trust in your brand, compliance becomes that much easier.

Owners who care deeply about a brand want to do right by it. They want to be good ambassadors for it. They’ve bought into the whole package, the entire tapestry you’ve woven together, and they understand that even the tiniest threads contribute to the bigger picture. You’re much less likely to find yourself quibbling over every thread when your franchisees don’t want one out of place either.

That strength of brand, and branding, ultimately translates to the customer experience. It helps cultivate the kind of customers who fall in love with your franchisees’ businesses and, in turn, with your brand as a whole.

And then everyone wins.

Another cultural component that makes brand consistency easier? Encouraging innovation.

So many of Tutu School’s best ideas have come from our franchisees. When we got good at saying, “That’s an interesting idea. Why don’t we pilot that at your location?” we opened up a world of new possibilities. But we also communicated something important to our franchisees: There’s no reason to go off script.

Why run a rogue operation when you can bring an idea to HQ, collaborate on it, and gain the support and resources of the entire brand? Creating a culture where franchisees know their ideas are genuinely welcomed doesn’t weaken the franchisor’s ability to protect the brand. In our experience, it strengthens it.

Then there’s growth.

Because we’ve prioritized a culture of trust and loyalty with our Tutu School owners, one that is deeply franchisee-forward and respects individual development rights and timelines, we’ve grown to more than 150 signed locations with just under 60 ownership teams.

Our first four franchisees are still Tutu School owners more than a decade into our franchise journey, and today they each own between six and 13 locations.

That matters to me for reasons far beyond the numbers. It demonstrates something I wish more emerging franchisors understood from the beginning: Taking care of culture doesn’t distract from growth. It fuels it.

The work it takes to lay a strong foundation for your franchise system’s culture from the very beginning, and to continually tend to it as your company grows, is nothing compared with the benefits that intentional culture will layer into your brand over time.

Culture is going to develop whether you tend to it or not. The question is whether you will intentionally shape it while your system is still young enough for those choices to become deeply embedded in your brand, or discover later that a culture has formed without you.

At the end of the day, we’re all looking for more than franchisees who have simply bought into our brands. We want franchisees who truly believe in them, who will protect them, champion them, challenge them to become better, and grow alongside them.

Build that culture early. Then take very, very good care of it.

Genevieve Custer Weeks is the founder and CEO of Tutu School. For more information about IFA franchisor member Tutu School, please visit franchise.org/franchise-opportunities/tutu-school/.