Small To Medium Business Branding

It was a coincidence that an article I wrote just before taking over this blog was titled – Small Business Branding – It’s Not “We”, It’s “Me” – which was quite a popular article. It summed up nicely my opinion of what small business branding is today and many people agreed –

Small business branding is not a good logo, a rhyming name, or special font. Small business branding is the owner. It’s what the owner does, says and how the owner’s traits come through in every aspect of the business. It’s the way relationships are built and maintained, the way a person does business and treats other people. It’s how rapport is established at an individual level, where trust and comfort exist as human characteristics, not from theme music, models or slogans.

You can read the full article at Entrepreneur’s Journey.

Writing the article I had no idea that 24 hours later I would in fact be running the Small Business Branding Blog, it was a nice bit of synchronicity. The ideas I presented in the article resonated with independent professionals and certainly anyone running a one person operation would understand where I am coming from. I’d like to elaborate a little further, focusing particularly on growing from a small into a medium sized business where no doubt you won’t be the only person representing and working for your "brand".

I’m A Small Business

One day I hope to be to hire an administration assistant for my business BetterEdit.com and in fact that one day could well be sometime in 2006 if growth continues as it has. This person would become the main contact point for all of my customers and much of the personal branding I currently do would become their responsibility. I would have to be careful that my customer service ideals were clearly understood and implemented by this person so they represented BetterEdit appropriately. Yes perhaps I’m blurring the lines between branding and customer service, but bear with me…

While I don’t presently brand BetterEdit as "Yaro Starak’s BetterEdit.com", many of my customers have an email relationship with me and I have no doubt part of what keeps them using the service is the reliability I provide to them. Every time they email me they get a response in 24 hours or less. This also holds true for the fantastic editing staff I have. I’ve worked carefully to select editors that are good people and share the service ideals that I do, so whenever a client has an issue we all work quickly to meet their needs. It doesn’t run perfectly every time but on the whole the system works well.

I suspect as BetterEdit and my other websites grow my time is going to become more and more valuable and I won’t be able to be as flexible and responsive as I currently am. An assistant role may actually go beyond just BetterEdit administration to representing me personally, responding to emails, providing customer support through forums and managing website maintenance (wow, this is going to be one talented assistant!). I will still be helping with a lot of those roles, but the repetitive tasks will be given to other people as I work on value adding activities to grow my businesses.

From Small To Medium

My case is a typical example of a business growing from small to medium, or really small to slightly larger but still small. I think people generally class a medium sized business as one with over 50 employees but it’s subjective. My point is still relevant. As a solopreneur your small business branding equates to how you do business, how you personally establish relationships with customers, contractors and constituents (the three C’s!) and what image of you as a person you establish in the minds of the marketplace.

When you start bringing in variables such as employees or contractors that represent you and your business you have to be careful that they don’t inadvertently destroy your branding efforts. Ideally your brand (business ideals) are entrenched within your systems, so your new staff simply have to follow your procedures manual and they will be acting exactly as you want them too.

Bzzzz…let’s not fool ourselves. As much as I like Michael E Gerber’s book, the E-Myth, and as much as I believe 100% in the importance and value of systems, there is only so much a system can do to ensure your employees enforce your personality brand. The fact is they aren’t you, you can’t expect them to be you and shouldn’t struggle to force them to become your own "mini-me" employee.

Change and growth may be challenging, but it should always be embraced as a way to improve your business and enhance your brand. Your small business personality brand should not be set in stone. It should be capable of evolving, of having new bits attached, dissembled and reassembled in new and better ways. Fresh employees bring new perspectives, new ways of doing things and new personalities.

If you hire well the people you bring into your business will improve your small business brand and in fact forcing them to comply to your way of doing things without a second thought is a mistake. Encouraging them to learn and replicate what you do is good, but also encourage them to improve and adapt what you do to enhance your business. Encourage employees to challenge your assumptions and your brand will no longer be the sum of one individual, it will become something more.

Branding Big Business

All big businesses started as small business. I’ve never been a part of a big business but I expect the evolution of a business brand may work like this:

1. The small business owner is a one person show, possibly using contractors to do some tasks but largely doing most jobs him or herself. At this point the owner is the brand.
2. Small business hires employees and the system evolves to include multiple inputs. No longer is only one person in charge of the brand. The owner still dictates business direction and his or her personality and way of doing business permeates the public perception of the business brand, but it’s no longer directly tied into one personality although it is still dominated by one.
3. A medium business is born. At this stage the owner loses site of the little pictures as managers and executives come in and take over specific roles. The owner now sits at the top of the hierarchy steering the ship but she doesn’t know exactly how the engine works, or where the food for the crew comes from, etc. The business has become too big for one person to be aware of all the little "ins and outs".

   The brand has now morphed into something more corporate. It’s still very important that every individual within the company represents the brand and delivers output in a human-personal manner, but it’s no longer the business owner that passes on the business ideals to each employee. At this point systems control the ship and the brand has become something more corporate, with a logo, image marketing, and other public perception initiatives.

4. As the business becomes big, perhaps floating on the stock marketing with revenues of hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, offices around the world and staff numbering in thousands, the brand has become completely independent of the founder (ownership may now belong to shareholders). The founder can leave and the business will still convey the same branding image. The personality traits and business principles of the person that started the business may still be evident within the brand but it’s become so much more. It stands alone as an individual social construct that is perceived by the public in a unique way, that is limited by corporate structure and subscribes to corporate ideals of profit maximization above all else.

Enjoying Small Business

While most small business owners probably dream of their little baby becoming something big I think it’s nice to enjoy the "smallness" of running a solo enterprise, where your brand is only determined by how you handle yourself. If growth is your goal then it’s unrealistic for today to be the situation in the future. It’s just not physically possible for one person to manage a business once it grows beyond a certain point, nor should you attempt to or you risk the very life of what you care so much for, despite the fact that your business and brand will no longer be completely in your hands alone to control.

Letting go can be tough, but it’s an important growth step for both a business and an owner. For a hopefully brief period early on in your business’s life it’s enjoyable to craft a small business brand and imbue your business ethics into your "baby". However it’s the lessons you learn growing a small business brand that will keep you grounded as your business expands and becomes no longer under only your sphere of influence.

Yaro Starak
Small Business Owner