As a solopreneur or small business owner, you probably dream of making it big. Truly, who wouldn’t want to be up there with the big names such as Apple, Starbucks, Amazon, and so on? But of course, Rome wasn’t built in a day, so it’s okay to start small and work your way up to a bigger, better brand.
Most brands start out with one idea by a single person. Basically, you start your own brand by learning how to sell yourself and the products or services you offer. You conceptualize your idea, create a plan of action, and then put everything into place.
Butcher, baker and candlestick maker
As a start up, you’re both boss and employee – everything is done by you. You communicate with clients, manage social media accounts, do all the promotional campaigns, answer calls and emails, provide customer service, and so on. It’s fun, but it can be exhausting, especially as your small business grows. So you start to consider working with other people to help lighten your load as well as take your business to the next level.
It can be challenging to transition your personal brand to a business brand. The trickiest part is working with other people – you need to begin letting go of some of your responsibilities in order for you to focus more on the things you do best. You need to learn how to delegate, to assign people to the work they can contribute the most to, and let go of some of the control you have over your business.
You need to transition your brand from “me” to “we.” It takes a lot of risk, knowing that you’re handing off some of the reigns over to other people, when you used to be the one holding all the cards.
Preparing for transition
Also, when you start working with other people, these people also start affecting your brand. You’re not the only one who defines your business brand anymore. These people become part of your brand, so what they do also reflects upon you.
They become part of your social marketing campaign. Since they work with or for you, they also represent your brand. What they do can positively or negatively reflect upon your business brand. Even the pictures they post can affect your brand, which is why it’s essential that you evaluate the people you want to work with.
It’s a free country, yes, but what you say or post online is stored by the search engines, and the search engines have a long memory. So you need to ensure that the people you hire reflect well on your brand. And once they start working for you, you should also advise them to always monitor their social media accounts to ensure that nothing negative smears their reputation.
A conglomeration of personal brands
The Pendaflex Tag Tamer is one such tool that can help you and the people you work with ensure that your Facebook Timeline shows nothing untoward or unwanted. It’s a Facebook app that’s designed to help you find and remove all the photos that you don’t like or reflect poorly on you. It beats having to scroll manually through all your posts just to find pictures that others may find offensive or reprehensible.
You and the people you work with can use this app in order to ensure that your Facebook profiles don’t put a bad light on your brand. As a business owner, you can’t just think of yourself anymore. You also need to consider the people you work with and ensure that what they do reflects well on you, and that their personality and culture fits well with your brand.
The transition from a personal brand to small business brand can be challenging, but as long as you hire and work with people who care about your brand and who agree with your vision, then you can become quite successful in your transition. Remember that what they do and say can reflect on you. Invest the time needed to communicate with them, share the big picture and their importance in attaining that big picture and create a culture that will be reflected offline and online.