3 Things Every Business Owner Needs To Know – Personal and Business Brand – Commercial Interior Design News

3 Things Every Business Owner Needs To Know To Develop & Maintain an Effective Personal and Business Brand

By guest writer and public speaker Katayoun Goshtasbi

As a business owner, it seems there are so many items to consider when running your business.  Depending on the type of business you have and run, it can be extremely hectic to make sense of it all and find enough hours in the day to do “it all” well and prosper.  This seems to be especially true of brick and mortar product-based businesses of consumable goods.

Above: Branding board for Sol De Frio cafe by Mindful Design Consulting.

The first thing most business owners consider is the “look” and feel of the interior of their store.  After all, customers will be coming in to your store so your store needs to have a particular visual look that invites more and more business.  This makes sense.

However, what does that look really represent about the business? What are you trying to convey in your visual message?  We often find business owners have not figured out their own personal brands so they are met with some difficulty in conveying the right message via their store-front and décor.  Remember, personal brand management is about the subconscious processing of information your end-user goes through in deciding whether they will be your customer once or a hundred times.

Above: Brand colors for Apricato Store by Mindful Design Consulting.

So consider these three things before you design your actual store space:

1.  What Makes You Unique & Different?  What specifically sets you, THE PERSON, apart from your competitors?  Everyone automatically thinks about the uniqueness of the product or service (i.e., business brand). However, my work with clients first focuses on the OWNER’S personal brand uniqueness.  A word of caution here- do not assume the ordinary “uniqueness” items that everyone uses should work for you, too. For example, just because you love your product or service or deliver timely service is NOT unique enough.
2. What’s Your Story?  In the marketing world, everything has a story.  Good stories move us to action and sell products and services.  Bad stories make you notorious and turn us off, at best.  I spend countless hours guiding clients to construct and de-construct their genuine stories.  The word “story” is over-used these days.  However, here’s how I want you to think about it.  What is your LIFE story that got you to run your operation today?  I’m not really looking for anything pertaining to your actual business. I connect and relate to the background story of you as a PERSON- your youth, your family, etc.  When our clients draft their stories, I then pull the common threads out and we can then create the business brand around the personal brand and story.
3. What Makes You Happy?  I’m not looking for the cute-sy usual answers that capitalism has gifted us with, such as money.  Since 75{7f6b511118f3db1a05f160455b7bc2b69710387d1f828e7e1b6a763a6e34bbc4} of everything we buy is based on how I feel about the purchase, then emotionally I need to be moved by YOU, the person.  So first you need to know what makes you happy, and then we can translate that into your business brand.  Word of caution: don’t screw this up by pretending.  While my gift and talent is in recognizing and developing the emotional value of your personal and business brand, don’t be fooled for a minute. Your consumer base will sense the fake happiness and business brand/persona immediately, too. They may not be able to put their finger on it, but you and your business will make their skin crawl.

Email us and let us know what your biggest branding issue is and how you overcome it.

Here’s to your personal brand!

Katy Goshtasbi is Founder and CEO of Puris Personal Brand Solutions, where she works with professionals on developing their personal brands and staying sane.  Katy is an international speaker on the topic of personal branding.  She has published two books on the topic.  She was a practicing securities lawyer for fifteen years before seeing the “light”.  She can be reached at [email protected].

 © 2014 Katayoun Goshtasbi

To ask us questions about your commercial interior design project or to get a free consultation from Mindful Design Consulting, click HERE.

Also, take a look at “Branding By Interior” e-book, the only book written on this subject at this time.  It brings insight on how you can turn your business into a market-dominating competitor by using human cognitive responses.