When you engage on your journey to start a brand, you have to be both a realist as well as an optimist. If you need some help to build your brand, don’t worry. I’ll outline some of my curated 5 rules. 

Entrepreneurship and brand have been glamorized and romanticized through social media, making people believe there is almost no work to it and a whole bunch of shortcuts or VC funding.

As someone who has been on both sides of building a brand and starting companies as a bootstrapped entrepreneur, I can tell you there is no better feeling in the world (for me), BUT! It is a F*ck load of work and disappointment as well.

Here are 5 curated rules based on my personal experience building brands for people and myself. Maybe they can help you build your brand. 

Rule 1: If it was easy… Everyone would be doing it.  (find comfort in that)

There have been some clients who wanted to start a brand and when we went through the grunt work they said I thought this was gonna be “fun” or “why is this important, I just want a logo”. Some stop right there and some have what it takes to push through. You need to do the foundational strategy work one way or the other else this sh*t won’t last and I’m not in the business of blindly taking other entrepreneurs’ money if I see we’re heading in the wrong direction. 

Rule 2:You have to be both corporate as well as creative

You have a nice product and all the good intentions in the world to do what’s good and all will only get you so far. Don’t get me wrong it’s essential to building an ethical brand, but it’s not enough to build an ethical business. And I get it, I’m creative at heart and that’s maybe why I do what I do and I enjoy it, but I am also a business major by trade and a realist to understand that this side is what’s necessary for your creative part to survive and make a living off. You had the idea, I can help you build a business blueprint around it and together we add the war paint for others to rally around and make an actual impact. 

Rule 3: It is a business we’re building, that has to look good.

The best ideas are simply placeholders or costs if they are not packaged into an entity that can generate revenues. You have to be able to distance your emotional feelings of why people would care about your product from your own personal bias to some extent.  You have to design it so they stay and this you can only do by building it as an instrument with clear strategy and direction. The logo, color palette, and typography are just your war paint. They should be impressive, but they are not what’s going to make them stay long-term. 

Rule 4: Branding is not marketing and marketing is not branding

However much HR and management want to fuse roles because they have some overlap and can save on headcount, they are not the same beast. To simply put it, a brand builder builds the house a marketer is the Realtor. Both are absolutely crucial to a business, but not the same. I’m not saying you should hire 3 experts for both disciplines for every company at every stage, no. But you should be aware of what you expect from them, else they will just be throwing sh*t to the wall hoping something will stick. Branding builds the identity and strategy of our business and marketing takes this and creates ways to get it to the masses. Some people are skilled and understand both, but this is fairly rare in my experience.  

Rule 5: Don’t be afraid to pivot

What works today might not work tomorrow and that’s fine. This is is also why I recommend the “blueprint work process” as you will at all times have a good overview of which segments are lagging or where there might be hidden opportunities outside of your current scope of operations. The sin is not in pivoting, it’s in not knowing when to do so.