Do you ever think about how your business shows up as... slight cringe... a brand?
As someone who's been in that world (branding) for a couple decades, I had a very fun conversation with an old colleague about it today, mostly poking fun at how overused the term is, how many wild variations and interpretations there are of it, how unlikely it is to be useful for one-person businesses vs larger ones, and how many new things it encompasses now, beyond the typical stuff you might think of like colours and logos and such.
Still, it was interesting enough that I thought it might help here, so take with a pinch of salt.
Old days: Branding was a hot iron on a cow's butt to "brand" it with whatever they branded it with - the farmers name, a number, I dunno. As far as marketing and business go, it's no longer just that, but the term has stuck.
Fast forward a few decades: Now a brand is logos, colours, fonts, patterns, sounds, a celebrity's face - all the observable things bout a particular... brand, that are objectively true. The things that the company can control and choose for itself - we choose to be yellow and black; we choose to have this shaped icon; we choose to play this little chime at the end of all of our ads.
(And things are already getting confusing because the word "brand" now means the company itself, as well as it's identifying features - it's all "brand").
Fast forward a bit more: Now "brand" is also how it makes people feel, what people say about you when you're not in the room, and so on. In other words, it's now something that exists in someone else's mind, an opinion they form based purely on their own thoughts and feelings. More subjective, but no less true to this particular person.
So there are a number of factors here now:
Lumped into that second point, is the fact that people form their own opinions based on a megatonne of factors - life experiences, their world view, likes and dislikes...
But there's a factor that I believe stands on it's own when it comes to subjective observation, and it probably has more weight than any of the factors listed above: Relatability.
...and I think this IS VERY relevant to a one-person business.
For sure, relatability exists in the buyer's mind along with all the other subjective stuff, but the power that relatability (someone's ability to relate to you and your "brand") has to influence people feels far more powerful.
I've got examples of this for tomorrow, but I'm keen to know where you're at after getting just half the story so far... has this has gone waaaay too far over to the woowoo side for you, or is it opening something up?
For self-employed creatives, normal business traps are easy to fall into and overcomplicate things - but they’re totally avoidable when operating as a company of one.
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