Beyond the Hype: Why Early Branding Doesn't Matter (As Much as You Think)

Hello and welcome to the show. Today I'm a little bit pressed for time, so those of you who prefer the shorter episodes might be really happy about this one. So today we're going to continue on the conversation that we started yesterday, talking to people who have limited business experience and who want practical guidance on or what to look out for as first time entrepreneurs. And I had come up with a bunch of stuff that I think those of you who are new to the game need to know.

And yesterday we went into some detail about 30 minutes worth about why your business name is not as important as you think. So you shouldn't spend too much time on it if this your first time of listening to the show. After you're done listening to this, skip back one episode and then you will get caught up to speed on some of my ideas around why the business name is not that important. But even if you insist that you must have your business name and all of that ironed out before you begin your business journey,

I have some really helpful tips and tricks about what you can do to make sure that you start off with a fairly competent name. But bear in mind that things change. The name might change, all kinds of things might change in the future. It's just a normal part of business because a lot of the brands that we know and love today didn't start off with the same name or with the same brand or colour or all sorts of things. Now today, the second thing that we're going to go into is we're going to look at why your branding is not as important as you think.

And so you shouldn't be spending too much time on that. This is a nuance point of view. So for those of you who are public relations and brand specialist, people, don't stop listening to the podcast right now. Just wait and hear some detail about, or some nuance rather about what I mean by that. And then in future episodes, we're going to look at why you shouldn't worry too much about protecting your business idea. Don't worry, lawyers, we will get to that.

That is also a nuanced conversation. Then I also tried to buzz that myth. That is no such thing as a business as a service, as a product that sells itself. We'll get into that in more detail in the future. And then I also tried to open up the eyes of the newbie to the fact that business is a team sport. Even if you are a lifestyle business owner, even if you want to do a cottage industry as people say it, you know, so like today I went to go and buy a car for breakfast.

And that's the cottage industry because of the woman who does it. But I mean, she fries, her oldest daughter is there, her son is chopping the firewood. So I hope you guys have been in to get the picture that I'm trying to paint that even for lifestyle businesses, cottage businesses, small business, whatever it is you want to call it, business will always be a team sport. So it's best for us to realize that and start trying to anticipate and plan for what the business is going to look like in the future.

So this whole thing of self-made this, self-made that solo, this solo that, please, it's a myth. Get that out of your mind. So today we'll just go straight into why your branding is not as important as you think and why you shouldn't spend too much time on that. Now, for you public relations and brand people, what I am not saying is, OK, no, sorry. How do I put it anyway? I'm not saying that brand is not important because branding is important.

But The thing is, in the early days, you don't know enough about your target audience or about your marketplace or about all the defining decisions and things that you need to decode. You don't know enough about all these things to determine what your brand should be. When we're looking at brand these days, a lot of times we're all looking at our favorite brands. We forget that we are looking at a finished product. We're looking at something that has had time to evolve and for all kinds of creative and business decisions to go into the process.

So we're looking at the finished product and it got it gets lots of people thinking that it's possible to start off the business with the finished product and that's not how it works. So there's a couple of things that we need to figure out in the early days before we get to the whole thing of coming up with our definitive, you know, classic forever, all time brand. So for those of you who are new to the game and you're thinking of getting into business, stop spending all this time trying to guess about brand positioning.

Brand positioning is not something you guess. Brand positioning is something that you figure out. You go into the market, you try to sell, you figure out who your ideal customers are. You get a sense of who the the competition is. That is what determines how you position yourself in the market. So you don't just figure out brand positioning because you have an MBA and your brother has an MBA and maybe your sister has an MBA.

And then three of you sit down and then come up with the best, whatever you can do that strategizing exercise. But still it has to be battle tested. People have to go out into the field and then that's how you figure out ultimately what the best brand positioning is going to be. So stop guessing about your colours, your logos, your fonts, your brand voice and all what not because you don't know all these variables yet.

That's also the reason why I say don't hire a brand specialist early is for the same reason. So what you should do is take the time out to validate your business idea. Be sure that this thing is profitable, that people want to buy whatever it is that you're selling. Get a sense of who your ideal customers are. Get a feel of the market, get a feel of the competition, who has larger market share? What are the kind of things that are out there?

Who are the other players in the market? Then in interacting with your customers, you're going to be able to now figure out what tone of voice works or what communication channels work best with which kind of customers or with other kind of stakeholders. Now it's all this data that is going to inform what your future, your ideal, your optimum branding should be. When you have figured all this out, then you can now bring in a brand specialist, a designer, a brand whisperer, a brand whatever, a public relations guru or everything or whatever.

When you figured out all these things, you're going to get the best out of these kinds of specialists after you figured out all these early things, because now you have all the answers to the questions that they need about tone of voice and colour palettes and brand associations and then all of that. And if you're not convinced, go on Google, do a little search about your favorite brands and you will see that your favorite brands have changed over time.

The logo has changed, the colour has changed, the fonts have changed. For some people, the name has changed. So your branding, what you're trying to do in the beginning is not the make or break foundational element that you think it is. It just is not so. But please use common sense with all these things. I'm saying if you decide to go into business, let's say you're a wedding florist and you call your business name crappy poo Poo and then you make your brand colours brown, then you know that is poor decision making.

So I'm not saying if you're a wedding florist, call your business name crappy poo poo and use brown, brown colors. That's not what I'm saying. So please use some common sense. What I'm advocating is this, make the best decision, the quickest decision that you can for now. And then figure out who your ideal customers are at the price point where they hang out, how they'd like to be spoken to while the other players, you know, all these sorts of things.

You figure that out and then later on, you're going to be able to come up with the best brand positioning and colours and palettes and everything that is going to work for you. So stop agonising, take action now, get robust data from the market, use that to inform your business decisions and then you'll be fine. So that's all for today. Connect with me on WhatsApp. The phone number is 08064662140 and the country code is +234.

For those of you who are not Nigerian, excuse me and then also connect with me on LinkedIn, the name is Tavish Shima Aydi. You can confirm the spelling of my name and the e-mail address from the link. We're currently listening to this episode. Thank you very much for your time and attention. I hope I have been able. Yes, I have 7 minutes. That's good. So I'll catch you guys at the next episode.