Your Brand is Your Most Valuable Employee

Consider your employees or the employees around you. Each one has a unique role within the company and a unique value it brings to the product or service you offer.

Ideally, each one is contributing something distinct to the overall mission of the business and reinforcing the culture along the way.

Your brand, represented first and foremost by your brand identity and the way in which it’s expressed, is your most fundamental business advantage. It’s an asset that no one else can have that provides perpetual value, compels your mission forward and represents your ethos in the marketplace.

And yet, how little time, energy and resources does it get in many businesses?

Perhaps you pay someone a $30k salary to answer phones and greet people. Perhaps you pay double that for a mid-level service provider who’s half-heartedly in on your company mission. Or, perhaps you pay triple that to a senior-level decision-maker who might leave your company within the next year.

You might see a return on those expenses presently. But are they investments that will last and grow with you over the next 5-10 years?

Sometimes. Not usually.

Yet, how many business owners or marketing directors would consider an investment of that size into their brand identity as a smart, necessary business function?

You see, it’s a matter of perspective. And for the long-term health of your business, we’re hoping to shift it.

Because it feels normal to spend that much money on employees. This isn’t to minimize the necessity and value of paying your employees well and creating a healthy environment for them to excel at their craft. That’s essential to a healthy business and will ultimately influence the strength of your brand.

They are a necessary business expense. But so is your brand identity if you want to do it right and maximize its impact.

That might not be normal, but that’s all the more reason to go all-in. Tremendous opportunity to be unique and resonate with your tribe awaits.

Invest in your brand. When you invest in crafting and expressing your brand identity in smart, unique and memorable ways it’s a process that pays dividends for years to come. Sometimes decades.

It’s not just an expense. It’s an investment whose value and ROI grows with your business and increases over time.

Your brand has the potential to be your most valuable employee because it will never leave you, it will articulate what makes you special and represent your most important traits to the world. It’s an asset none of your competitors can claim, that you control and that gains recognition and strength year over year.

Growing a product or business always requires investing in the right things. People are an important one. Equally so is your brand identity. It’s about maximizing return and increasing impact for the long haul.