Marc Ecko’s story is one of the lesser known (or at least discussed) amidst the business community. That’s a shame. It’s a great one.

I read his book, Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out, over the holiday break and was pleasantly impressed. It’s full of real life insight from the bruising experience of creating Ecko Unltd. I recommend it for business owners of all ages.

Here are my favorite excerpts:

My “vision” didn’t start with billions, my vision started with a can of spray paint and what I could do with it in the next thirty minutes. Entrepreneurs lose sight of that. When Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built their first motherboard, they didn’t envision the iPhone. Visions can start small. Visions should start small. They’re incremental, like building Legos.

This is dead on. While you might have ambitions of being an industry juggernaut, you must stay focused on short-term goals.

If you can’t express your idea convincingly in black and white and slap it together on a Xerox machine—I mean low-budget—then your idea is not believable. … It’s ideas, not dollars. Artfulness, not computer graphics. Not models. Not celebrities. Believable, defendable ideas.

Another gem. Keep the message of your brand simple and believable.

A brand does more than tweet, a brand does more than talk, a brand does more than just cultivate perception. Think about what your brand is without the crutch of social media and words, and make sure that it can stand on its own actions. Talk is cheap without action. … The great equalizer for WHAT YOU SAY is how you will EXECUTE.

Too many people focus on talking about what they do rather than doing it well and letting the story tell itself. He goes on to say this:

What else is branding other than a promise that needs to be delivered? … Great brands are nothing more than streams of connected promises that always deliver. It’s critical that these “promises” be truthful. Talk can be romantic, but talk alone is cheap. It’s easy to get wound up in the art of creating the slick veneer of “brandspeak,” but great brands aren’t built on snappy copy or slick graphic design. They’re established through the relentless repetition of promising something and then delivering on what they promised, often beyond expectations.

and later:

Ralph Lauren is one of the most authentic brands in America. Ralph Lauren–itis, however, is when other designers or creators, instead of creating their own authentic brands, are distracted by the pomp, trappings, and style of someone or something else. This causes emulation, inauthenticity, and can result in personal—and professional—failure.

Perhaps my favorite quote touches on something many people tend to overlook; exactly how hard it is to create something meaningful, something of value.

And in the full-contact sport of entrepreneurship, you will get dirty, bloody, angry, and depressed. It’s silly to pretend that’s not the case.

There are many more great passages, lots of plain-talk anecdotal stories, and other gems in these pages. Do yourself a favor. Give it a read.