HOW TO FIND YOUR BRAND?

Brand or company values. What comes first? And what comes before the design of your brand? For any Founder, the starting point is to crystallize the Company values. Work out what they are and stick to them. Your fist employee could be your mum, but that doesn’t matter!

?From the moment you start talking about your startup, launch a website or have someone respond to a customer query, there’s a brand there. Protect it and manage it like you would any asset. Today the bigger challenge is building attention for a business, not finding new business ideas.

?So, how to create a brand? You can ask yourself two fundamental questions:

·????? What do you believe?

·????? How do you behave?

?The first question is internal. It is about authenticity: what’s the world seeking that only you can provide? The second question seeks to understand how relevant you are for your customers.

At the intersection of your belief and behavior sits your brand. A good brand seamlessly connects what it says with what it does. People no longer buy only what you make -- they buy who, what, where, when, why and how you make it.

Founders tend to get so busy running day-to-day operations of their companies that these kinds of conversations can be hard to conduct but they are critical. These are nine questions a Founders should ask herself:

1.?? Why did you start this?

2.?? What motivates you to get out of bed?

3.?? What problem do you solve?

4.?? Why is he problem important?

5.?? What are your product’s functional benefits?

6.?? What are your product’s emotional benefits?

7.?? Why should someone trust any of this?

8.?? Who is the most respected adversary?

9.?? Why will you not give up?

?A good brand will keep a Founder focused and motivated. Best of all, it will help the Founder question at the heart of every Founder’s story: “what happens next?”