Brand building equals strategy + implementing.
Brand building is hard work.
Maybe we don’t talk about it enough. Because it is hard. It’s consistency over time. And the small brands who succeed are those that are willing to do the tedious, un-sexy work. For years. No wonder so many people quit in the first two years. As it turns out, Thomas Edison was right.
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
But if it’s so hard, why do so many of us feel so compelled to do it? You’ve seen the statistics about starting a restaurant. And yet, every year people still chase the dream. They invest their own money and take the leap.
Out of curiosity, I just looked up some numbers. There are 749,000 restaurants in the US as of year-end 2023. There is a lot of sameness in our cities so a bulk of these are chains or franchises. But there are still 138,560 single location full-service restaurants.
That’s one hundred and thirty eight thousand small brand dreams.
Nothing can make brand building easy. But you can make it easier.
So you’re compelled to start something of your own. I’m not here to talk you out of it. No one could talk me out of it either. And while I’ve learned that nothing can make brand building easy, a strategy can make it easier.
Brand building is a fundamentally expensive and time intensive. Building loyalty and creating a positive track record, these are vital. And interestingly, there isn’t really a good shortcut for either of these. Sure you can buy leads, but you can’t buy loyalty. You put in the work, doing the little things over time.
A big part of avoiding burnout is avoiding headaches and pitfalls. You can’t spend your days run ragged, always guessing, always hoping something lands.
And here is the point I’m trying to make. You can’t avoid putting in the work. But you can avoid repeating work and you can avoid overwhelm. That’s strategy. Having a comprehensive brand strategy means that you have a plan.
You know that your actions are leading to progress.
You hire better and keep employees longer. You know your brand inside and out — from your brand promise and values to who you serve and how you fill a need in their lives.
Now that you have a plan, it’s time for putting that plan into action. That’s implementation. Following your strategy, everything you create now builds on itself. It goes toward building loyalty. It’s consistent across platforms.
This is everything from how your website looks to photos and videos and illustrations. How you look on social media and how your packaging looks. It’s telling a unified story. It’s not confusing. You’re not wasting effort. You’re brand building.
Want to build a cool, memorable brand without a huge team?
Start with a comprehensive brand strategy. Have a brand map. Hang it on the wall, look at it daily. Create a brand guide and update it often. You need a compass otherwise you’ll go in circles.
Then get to work implementing. Create photos and videos that tell your story. Creative content that helps your audience know you on a deeper level. Then keep bringing it to life. Over time.
And that’t the recipe: strategy + implementation.
If you can avoid pitfalls, avoid going in circles, then you give yourself a chance to build a brand. It’s something of a race against time. You have to be able to build to a certain point before you burnout.
So do your future self a favor and start now. Get yourself a plan, a compass. Use our free YouTube classes to build it or take a live paid workshop with us.
Either way, we’re privileged to be on this journey with you. And while it’s going to be a lot of work, it doesn’t have to be a lot of frustration.