Stay True To Your Brand | Building A Consistent Brand For Your Business
In this episode of Commerce and Chill, Jessica and Waleed discuss the process of building a business and personal brand and how to stay true to your brand as a business owner.
At the beginning of the episode, Waleed and Jessica highlight and express gratitude for some of the positive events they experienced in 2020, despite the difficulties and negativity that also occurred. As they begin to talk about branding, Jessica is reminded of a long-time friend who served as an informal mentor and guide to her over the years and points out how being told that this person was proud of her made Jessica more aware of the personal brand she’s built over the years, and how others may perceive her, even from a distance.
In the past 20 years, Waleed and Jessica have both developed their own personal brands and also built successful business brands with The Soap Box and Johnson Security Bureau, among others. Aside from the technical elements of brand building like logo design and slogan development, Waleed describes the concept of brand as (1) what the company actually does and (2) how the company and its products or services make people feel. For The Soap Box, a premium laundry delivery service founded by Waleed, part of the brand of the business is the feeling of freshness and reliability people experience when doing business with The Soap Box and utilizing their services. In order to build a brand in people’s minds, Waleed believes the key components are consistency over time (and regardless of location) as well as great client service in the face of both positive and negative customer experiences and feedback. Jessica adds that, no matter what business you’re in, you must strive to be memorable and to be the best version of yourself.
In her personal brand, being different from her peers early on helped Jessica stand out, and whether her personality was considered good or bad by others, she always left a memorable impression, which has helped her stay connected with people over time.
In addition to being memorable, Waleed highlights that you must also be unique, which is not necessarily the same thing. While you can copy others and still be memorable, being unique means being true to yourself and different from your competition and peers in a way that makes you stand out just by the very nature of who and what you are. As an added bonus, when you are unique, you are often memorable by default because you stand out from the crowd and from others.
This leads to the acknowledgement that you must start working on your brand right away. Even if you are still defining what you want or believe your brand to be, it is important to be conscious of the fact that you are always building a brand with your experiences, actions and service. Whether you make the conscious decision to develop your brand or not, people around you begin to associate their experiences with you and/or your business as your brand, so the earlier you become aware of this and choose how and what you want those experiences and associations to be, the better. The more you consciously develop what kind of memories you want people to have of you, the more memorable you will be.
In addition, people may have preconceived notions about you based on your past experiences with them or their past experience with your brand, and as you develop personally, professionally, and in business, you gain the opportunity to demonstrate your new and improved personal or business brand to them. In order to do so, you and your team must be on the same page and you must create standards for how you interact with people and conduct business. It is important to remember that every element of your business can contribute to your brand, from your products to your operations to your customer service interactions to your advertising and everything in between. Each of these elements contribute to the brand of your business, and success in many areas can unfortunately be derailed by failure in other areas or even by failure in just one area. You must take the actions, develop the processes, and recruit the right people to deliver a consistent level of quality and brand experience across the board (while acknowledging that you will always have certain strengths and weaknesses). In order to do so, you must be able to put ego and fear aside and to trust that you’ll be able to find good people who will be both trustworthy and able to execute for your business. You must remember that the people make the brand and not the other way around, and therefore put a premium on good people.
As a summation, you must know that everything you do as a business owner and everything your business does for, to, and with your customers contributes to the development of your brand. Remember that while it may take years to develop a great brand, it can take mere minutes to destroy it. Take heed of this advice, be intentional about the personal and business activities you engage in, and be mindful of the affect that everything you do may have on your brand in the eyes of consumers.
For more on this topic, check out the Commerce and Chill podcast and follow Jessica Johnson-Cope and Waleed Cope at the links below.
► Listen to the Commerce and Chill podcast on Anchor:
https://anchor.fm/commerce-and-chill
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