Antiques Roadshow has been running for over 40 years.

Thousands of episodes. Tens of thousands of appraisals.

And every so often, someone walks in with something that changes everything.

This is one of those stories.

It's 2012. A college-bound student is packing for school. She's inherited a framed picture from her grandmother, which has been hanging over her grandma's bed for years.

Sentimental. Not valuable. But there's a problem.

A mosquito. Trapped under the glass. She takes the picture outside. Opens the frame. Gets rid of the mosquito.

And then she pauses.

Wait. Is this actually a painting? Or just a print?

She's not sure. So she gets it appraised. First appraiser: $200.

Okay. Not bad. She gets a second opinion.

Second appraiser: $250. Close enough. At least it's worth something.

She almost doesn't bring it to Antiques Roadshow. Two appraisals. Both around $200. That's probably right.

But her mom nudges her. "We're already here. Might as well."

So she does.

The appraiser, Meredith Hilferty, takes one look.

Studies the brushwork. The detail. The signature.

The painting, circa 1892, was done by Henry Francois Farny, a French-born American painter known for his portraits of Native Americans.

Meredith looks up.

"Auction value: $200,000 to $300,000."

Most lines at amusement parks are lousy. Boring. Hot. Tired.

You shuffle forward. Check your phone. Shuffle again. Maybe there's a TV mounted on the wall playing trivia questions from 2015. Someone's eating nachos that smell like regret.

You're not waiting for the experience. You're waiting to get through the experience of waiting.

The Imagineers designing Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance wanted to do things differently.

You enter the queue at Disney's Hollywood Studios. Galaxy's Edge.

Within seconds, you're not in Florida anymore.

You're inside a hidden Resistance base on the planet Batuu. Stone walls. Starfighters overhead. The hum of machinery.

A hologram flickers to life. Rey. BB-8. They're briefing you. You've been recruited. This is happening.

You board a transport ship. The doors close. The floor vibrates. You're lifting off.

And then everything goes wrong.

The First Order intercepts you. Alarms blare. The transport shakes. The doors open...and you're standing inside a massive Star Destroyer.

Floor-to-ceiling windows. TIE fighters flying past. Stormtroopers marching in formation. Officers barking orders.

Kylo Ren's voice echoes through the corridors: "I know you're here."

You haven't even gotten on the "ride" yet.

You've been in line for 20 minutes. But you're not thinking about wait times.

You're thinking: "How do we escape?"

Close your eyes.

Picture Oprah Winfrey. Dennis Rodman. Elon Musk. Gordon Ramsay. Mr. Rogers.

You can see them instantly, can't you?

Not just their faces, their energy. The way they move. The way they talk. What they stand for.

• Oprah: The caregiver. She makes you feel seen.
• Rodman: The outlaw. Rules don't apply.
• Elon: The magician. He bends reality.
• Ramsay: The ruler. Excellence or nothing.
• Mr. Rogers: The innocent. Goodness in a cardigan.

Five people. Five completely different archetypes. All unforgettable.

Now picture B2B brands that dominate their space.

• Salesforce? The hero. "We bring companies and customers together." Conquering impossible growth.
• Gong? The magician. "Reality is negotiable." They see what you can't, the hidden patterns in every call.
• HubSpot? The sage. "There's a better way to grow." Teaching, educating, enlightening.
• Monday.com? The jester. Playful. Colorful. Work doesn't have to suck.
• Stripe? The creator. "Increase the GDP of the internet." Building the financial infrastructure of tomorrow.

You don't just buy from these brands. You identify with them.

That's the power of a brand archetype.

Now ask yourself: What's YOUR brand's archetype?

Not your tagline. Not your mission statement. Not the 47-slide deck your sales reps. deliver. Your archetype. The energy. The personality. The thing people feel when they interact with you.

Far too many B2B brands don't have one. They're a Franken-brand...trying to be everything to everyone, and ending up forgettable to all.

Here's the truth: You may have been taught there are only 12 brand archetypes.

Actually, that's a lie. There are 60.

The Advocate. The Adventurer. The Alchemist. The Ambassador. The Artist. The Athlete. The Caregiver. The Catalyst. The Challenger. The Champion. The Child. The Citizen. The Clown. The Companion. The Creator. The Diplomat.

Each one with its own energy. Its own voice. Its own way of showing up in the world.

The companies that dominate their categories through brand development don't pick an archetype because it sounds good. They pick the one that's already them, and then they execute it so consistently that you feel it in every touchpoint.

October 6, 1993. The Chicago Bulls hold a press conference at the Berto Center in Deerfield, Illinois.

Michael Jordan, 30 years old, three-time NBA champion, three-time Finals MVP, announces his retirement from basketball.

His father, James Jordan, had been murdered three months earlier. Michael said he was burned out. Done. Ready for something different. Walking away at the peak of his powers.

The sports world went into mourning. The Bulls dynasty was over. Everyone knew it.

August 13, 2024.

Starbucks announces Brian Niccol as their new CEO.

The stock jumps 24.5% in one day. $21.4 billion in market value. Added in six hours.

Niccol hadn't started yet. He hadn't made a single decision. No workforce decisions had been made. Hadn't changed the menu. Hadn't even walked into the building.

Wall Street bet $21 billion on a name...and a proven process.

At Chipotle, Niccol had done something remarkable. He'd walked into a company in crisis. Reeling from an E. coli outbreak, plummeting sales, and a broken brand, he turned it around.

Revenue doubled. Profits up 800%. Stock up 773%.

And he did it by diagnosing first.

When Niccol finally started at Starbucks last September, he followed through on his first promise to the board when he accepted the role...

He spent the next two weeks behind the bar. With an apron. As a barista.

Taking orders. Making drinks. Watching the chaos in real time.

He saw the problem immediately: Mobile orders were destroying the in-store experience. Baristas were drowning. Customers who walked in felt invisible.

Three months later, he announced the "Back to Starbucks" plan anchored by a few key leveraged pillars: Simpler menu. Better staffing. Redesigned mobile ordering.

NFT Draft. 1998.

The scouts were split.

The media? The majority of voices were loud and certain.

Ryan Leaf was the guy. Bigger arm. Flashier tape. More "upside."

But in the quiet of the Colts draft room in 1998, Bill Polian saw something the numbers didn't show.

Peyton Manning walked into his interview with a legal pad full of questions, not about him or his future, but about how the Colts were designing their offense. He'd already memorized their playbook. He knew the protection calls. He asked about their backup center's tendencies.

On paper, the two quarterbacks looked identical. A coin flip.

But to Polian, "It wasn't even close. The difference was above the shoulders."

In the locker room, in the film room, on bad days, and under pressure plays? They couldn't be further apart.

Polian chose Manning.

The headlines called him cautious. Too safe.

But 15 years later, Peyton had 5 MVPs, 2 Super Bowls, and one of the sharpest minds football's ever seen.

Leaf? Four seasons. Unfortunate outcome.

Captions are auto generated

In 2009, Tim Ferriss set out to do something absurd.

He wanted to see if he could gain muscle faster than anyone thought possible. Without spending hours in the gym.

Most people train six days a week.

Ferriss trained twice.

Each workout was 30 minutes. He only did a few exercises. And he didn't change the plan once.

But here's the thing: He tracked everything. Sleep, glucose, insulin response, time under tension, rest periods, and muscle failure.

By day 28, he had gained 34 pounds of muscle. No steroids. No gimmicks. Just ruthless precision.

And while some still scoff at the title (The 4-Hour Body), the results were legit.

He'd proved something: You don't need to do more. You need to do what matters most, better than anyone else.

Captions are auto generated

In the early 1950s, on a cramped shop floor in Japan, a young engineer named Taiichi Ohno walked past a supermarket and found his revelation.

Instead of shelves stacked weeks ahead, items were restocked only when a customer took one.

He thought: Why should cars be built any differently?

Back at Toyota, the team began stripping back inventory, limiting pieces to what the next step needed. No more, no less. They introduced the kanban signal, and the principle of just-in-time (JIT) production was born.

Instead of machines running flat-out, they'd wait (silently) for the signal, start only what the customer needed now.

And when a defect appeared, they didn't bury it under workarounds. They stopped the line. They fixed the root cause right there. That became the other pillar: jidoka. Automation with a human touch.

What seemed counterintuitive (producing less to sell more) became Toyota's advantage. Fewer parts. Less waste. Faster flow.

The lean engine revved stronger than the mass-production giants.

Today, Lean Manufacturing is the gold standard. Nearly 70% of all factories have adopted lean methods. 70% to 90% of Fortune 500 companies use some form of lean principles. It moved beyond the factory floor into healthcare, software (Lean Startup), and service industries. When done right, lean initiatives yield an average 200% ROI within 12 to 18 months.

And now, the same logic is pulsing through GTM teams: it's no longer about adding more tools, more segments, more sequences. It's about removing what slows you down so you can move faster, clearer, with purpose.

Captions are auto generated