Dear Danette,

I have been in practice for about nine months now and I have a few people telling me I need to brand my business. I said it’s too early to be thinking about expensive branding especially since I don’t have a budget for it. Am I right? – Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

I get this question quite a bit.

And I have found that business owners think about branding as hiring a company that will come up with some great gimmick that will make you and your business stand out, then create a series of promotions around that.

Or building some expensive whiz-bang website with spinning globes and music playing in the background.

If this is what you have in mind then yes, you are right, this is very expensive and unfortunately ineffective in the long run. If you take this route, you would have paid a consultant and a web designer to take your money.

I heard Shaquille O’Neil on Bloomberg TV a while back talking about branding and he summed it up completely in three words.

He said, “Brand is reality”.

He told how he was approached to have a brand created for him. The best consultants would give him the “full shebang.”

He turned it down. He went on to explain how other players who had perfectly constructed brands created for them were unsuccessful because they were inauthentic.

I’m with you Shaq. It gets hard to pretend for very long.

Brand is reality

It is the art of capturing who you are as the expert service professional and highlighting the experience of having you on the businesses team. The esthetics, your professional photos, your style, website, logo, biz cards, advertising, marketing come much later toward the end of this process.

For a new coaching, consulting service-based practice, you are the face and the personality of your practice. So a personal brand is the most effective way to become visible.

But before you start spending any money, there are about 12 pieces to personal branding you’ll need to have in place.

I’ll share the most strategic ones here that won’t cost you any money, just some thinking time. You may find you already have some of them in place and others you’ll need to complete.

Your mission and values:

Your vision – where you see your practice in 20 years, the mission – how you will get there, and the values – the principles everyone operates by a day to day basis are step 1. Here is a very important point. These need to be your true desires for your business and not the things you think people will want to hear. They to be real as this is where you will get the buy-in of the most talented to your team. This is the foundation, the commitment to what you’re doing, and how you’ll do it.

Positioning

Positioning is having a complete understanding of your ideal client, the crippling problem they face, having your unique solution that solves that problem, being able to verbalize the results they will experience after going through your process and the proof that you actually get results you talk about.

Your brand story

Don’t skip this crucial positioning piece, because it’s your compelling story of how you got to be doing what you’re doing in your business. It is why this work is important to you.

It tells how you were faced with challenges that had you pinned against the wall or down for the count, but you had a breakthrough moment and fought your way out and now you’re here help others do the same.

Or, how you saw a consistent set of challenges most of your clients were having that kept them from their goals, so you created a step by step system to help them avoid these pitfalls so they hit their goals in record time.

The facts only tell, your story will be the piece that actually sells.

A branded service experience

What is it like when clients work with you? Do they get the results you promised? As they work with you how does their interaction with you make them feel?

Yes, I said feel, because people remember how you made them feel first. What is going to make them call you again and recommend you to their closest friends and colleagues?

You can orchestrate the entire experience from the first phone conversation to the end of the engagement and beyond by creating a branded service experience process.

Your results

The proof you have of your effectiveness includes white papers and case studies, testimonials from clients recommending your work. It says “I get results, you can trust me, here are some happy clients and what they have to say about what its like working with me”

Now comes the final piece, how you visually capture all of this and become visible in the market. I recommend you start with a logo and professional photo shoot.

I understand you have no budget, but perhaps you can squeeze in an investment of $300 for photos. A good photographer can help you design your shoot, clothes and makeup to capture who you authentically are. Hire a graphic artist to design a logo you can use on your marketing material. It may cost you an additional $100 but is worth every penny.

Use these photos and logo on your business card, brochure, social media and marketing. This is enough to get you branded for now. You can add a website and a stylist when you have grown a bit more.

To your success!

• Danette Alexandra Malcolm, MSc., is the founder of www.KickTheCubicleHabit.com, where she helps women entrepreneurs and solopreneurs to launch and grow their coaching, consulting and service based businesses before leaving their corporate jobs. To get answers to your start-up questions, simply go to www.alexandraimage.com/ask-away-wednesday and submit your questions there. The question that will help the most people will be selected and the answer provided for everyone to benefit.