Brand Track Wrap-Up and Checklist

You get the type of clients your image portrays, which means you can control who does business with you based on your image. That is how you get more of the clients you want.

I wrote that line years ago and it is still the best summary I have of why this track exists. Branding is the control panel for who calls you and what they expect to pay. If you have worked through the earlier lessons in this track, you have touched every dial on that panel. This lesson puts them in order so you can see what you have built and what is still missing.

The order of things

The order matters, and it is the order most owners get backwards. They start with the logo. The process starts with the inside.

First, the internal brand: vision, mission, values and beliefs, on one page, checked for contradictions. This is what the business is and how it behaves, and it is the filter for every decision that follows.

Second, the avatar: one specific person, in exact detail, built from your ideal client and your nightmare client, with their pain points written in their words and your solutions written in the same language. Then the review, side by side with the internal brand, to make sure the coupon clipper is not being sold the high-end product.

Third, the external brand: the name, the look, the logo and colors, and the one idea you want to own the way a car brand owns one. Every piece consistent, every piece a reflection of the inside, every piece chosen for the avatar rather than for you.

Fourth, the experience: everything the customer touches from the first search to the follow-up, walked through your own front door as a stranger, so the brand includes what people live through as well as what they see.

Fifth, the offer: your positioning turned into something a customer can buy, with packages written so they can see what they get and what it costs, and expectations set before the sale so nobody is surprised after it.

Sixth, the communication: human language instead of business language, a call to action in every written piece, scripts designed for different people, promises your operation can keep, and a message tested with real customers before you print anything.

The triangle from a few lessons back holds the whole thing together. Business, brand, consumer. You control the first, you shape the second, you choose the third. Perception is formed on the edges between them, and your job is to keep all three edges honest.

The checklist

Work through this slowly. A yes has to be a yes you could prove to a stranger.

• My vision is written as a specific paragraph I would recognize if it came true, not a slogan.
• My mission is a handful of behavior statements my newest employee could act on without asking me.
• My values are written as “we do X, even when Y,” and I can name the last time one of them cost me something.
• I have written down my beliefs about customers, prices and my trade, and tested at least one I suspected was wrong.
• All four sit on one page and I have checked them for contradictions.
• I have one complete avatar, with an exact answer to every basic question and a written biography.
• I have written my avatar’s top problems in their words and my solutions in the same language.
• I have reviewed the avatar against the brand and decided, for each mismatch, which one changes.
• My name makes the right promise to the right audience, and I have checked trademark, registry, domain and search results.
• My logo passes the two-second test with strangers, and I have my exact colors written down.
• Every visible piece, truck, sign, card, website, invoice, uniform, would be recognized as one company side by side.
• I know the one idea I want to own in my customer’s head, and my touchpoints prove it rather than contradict it.
• I have walked the customer’s whole experience myself and fixed the last step, the follow-up.
• My offer and packages are written so a customer can see what they get and what it costs.
• I have asked at least five customers why they choose us and written down their exact words.
• My ads and my website are in human language, and every written piece has a plain call to action.
• I tested my message with at least five real customers before printing it.
• The message I put out is made of promises my operation can keep, and the business delivers on it when the customer shows up.

Count the honest yeses. Whatever number you get is a to-do list in priority order, and the priority is the order above: inside before outside, person before logo.

What to expect

Building a brand is cumulative. You start building it the day you open the doors whether you mean to or not, and the more control you use, the more control you get over time. None of the well-known names got there in a season, and none of them got there by changing the idea every year. Consistency is the whole trick, and it is also the hardest part, because it asks you to keep doing the same thing when you are bored of it and the customer is only just starting to notice.

And remember the ego line from the start of this track. Getting the business to match your vision means putting your ego aside. Somewhere in your checklist there is a piece you made yourself and love that does not belong. If it does not fit, change it. Your customer will not miss it.

Go through the checklist this week and mark each line yes or no, honestly. Take the first no in the list, not the easiest one, and make it the only branding task you work on until it is a yes. Then move to the next. Put a date six months from now on your calendar to run the checklist again.

The review takes two or three hours and it is free. Finishing the list is a matter of months, and the cost ranges from nothing for the thinking and the conversations to a few thousand dollars for a proper logo system and vehicle wrap. Almost everything on the list that matters most, the inside, the avatar, the language, the follow-up, costs only your attention.