Branding 101 With A Business Coach

How To Effectively Brand Your Business + Business Coach

• Airbnb – This business coach gem of a company was started in October of 2007 in San Francisco by Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia. They focused on offering short-term living quarters for people who would rather stay at someone’s residence or home instead of a hotel. By 2010, there were 15 people working from Chesky and Gebbia’s loft apartment (their home office). The company continued gaining traction and then in November 2010, they raised $7.2 million from Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital, having booked 80% of their total 700,000 bookings in just the past six months.

• Starbucks – Howard Schultz joined the existing company called Starbucks with a vision to create a “third place” for people who appreciate coffee and want to gather with others to connect and enjoy coffee. He focused on making sure that Starbucks customers came there as much for the experience as they did for the coffee itself. To create this experience, he insisted on incorporating beautiful decor, smells, and ambiance into every Starbucks location. He made sure that the people who made the coffee were referred to as baristas and that even the sizes of the coffee and lattes being offered were referred to with value-adding nomenclature. Starbucks doesn’t offer small, medium, and large coffees like everyone else. They offer tall, grande, and venti.

My friend, in order to win in the game of business, you must “be the first or second best in something.” You must find a niche that you can absolutely dominate and then you can start finding more ways to solve the problems of the ideal and likely buyers in that niche. If you are stumped and you don’t know what niche you can fill, I recommend finding 15 ideal and likely buyers and asking them all the same question:

“As it relates to industry, what company first comes to mind when you think of _______ (your unique niche)?”

If every human you talk to keeps immediately mentioning Zappos or Starbucks, you may need to rethink your unique niche and value proposition. You must find a way to generate a product by offering business coach products and services that your ideal and likely buyers want in a way that is currently not being served by your competition.

“Make sure that everybody in your [company] comes to work every day trying to find a better way. You have to absolutely look outside, inside, [and] know that somebody is doing it better than you and you’ve got to drive that into every person in your organization. ‘There is a better way of doing this, damn it, find it!’ You may be number one, but you’re only number one for as long as the snapshot [in time] and somebody is always shooting at you. So this is a drive that people have to come with.” -Jack Welch (The legendary former CEO of General Electric)

5.13 – Branding 101

The billionaire and business coach guru Elon Musk described branding best when he said, “Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead, other times it will be behind. But brand is simply a collective impression some have about a product.”

Your business coach brand is simply what people think about when they think about your company and the only way to brand (sear) that idea into the brains of your ideal and likely buyers is to focus on the results you provide your customers and the emotional connection you want your ideal and likely buyers to have with your products. Once you know what your brand is and who your ideal and likely buyers are, it is very important that you brand your company properly by consistently doing the following two things right:

• Always have your ideal and likely buyers in mind when you do any marketing. Ask yourself what business coach message will resonate most with them.
• Never do any branding or marketing that will cause your ideal and likely buyers to lose trust in you and your brand.

Mentally marinate on the following four examples of great branding at work. When most people think of the following brands, what do they think about?

• Apple

1. It works.
2. It’s designed with function and style in mind.
3. It is innovative and different.

• Whole Foods Market

1. They are focused on quality.
2. They are focused on healthy and organic products.
3. They provide great customer service.

• Southwest Airlines

1. They are fun.
2. They have consistently low fares.
3. They won’t hit you with any hidden fees.

• Disney

1. It’s a magical and happy place for families.
2. It offers good clean fun.
3. It is epic and everything about it is always done on a grand scale.

Alright, now we need to take a moment to think about your company. What do people think about when they think of your brand? This is typically where it gets hard for many business owners who are focused on trying to do everything from consensus. The Walt Disney Company has decided over and over to focus on providing a good clean environment where families can enjoy their experience. Undoubtedly at some point, someone associated with the company probably found a niche they could dominate if they moved slightly away from that focus. Southwest Airlines is focused on providing low fares but without a doubt, at some point somebody within the company probably suggested they could make a quick profit if they would hit the customer up with a few extra fees. Apple was the love of Steve Jobs’ life, but he was actually fired from the company in part for deepening the brand. Once he was fired, the company shifted to offer a ton of products loaded with features customers did not want. They had to bring Jobs back to fix the brand before it went under. After Howard Schultz left Starbucks, they began to experience an avalanche of problems and their legendary customer service began to slide into mediocrity. The company struggled and Schultz eventually chose to come out of retirement to business coach and get the company’s customer service back where it needed to be.

“The products suck! There’s no sex in them anymore!” -Steve Jobs (Co-founder of Apple commenting on Apple’s products before his return to Apple in 1997)

“The damage was slow and quiet, incremental, like a single loose thread that unravels a sweater inch by inch.” -Howard Schultz (CEO of Starbucks)