A few weeks ago I was out to dinner with a fabulous group of people.  I happened to sit down next to a dynamic fun woman, who with her husband, recently bought an established thriving business.  Over the evening, you could tell that she and her husband are passionate about what they do and having fun.  We were talking about their branding and marketing and where they wanted to bring the company. Part way through the discussion, she turned to me and said “The branding that’s in place is working – it’s bringing clients in.  The only thing is, it’s not us.”

With this statement, a million different questions popped in to my head; who is their best client, who do they want to serve etc… Basic marketing questions. With each question she didn’t have a clear answer but she could tell me what she wasn’t – what she didn’t like about the current branding. As dinner conversations go, we moved on to a different topic and didn’t get to delve in as deep as I would have liked.

If you read my previous post – Your Story is Your Brand – you would know that I work off the basis that every company has a story, a vision to help lead them. In a recent blog post Bernadette Doyle stated it beautifully.

Vision is a powerful thing.

It’s one of the most important tools you have to move you from where your business currently is, to where you want it to be. If you have a picture in your mind of what you want your business to look like, you’ll find that it’s much easier to bring this vision into being.

If you don’t know where you want to go, how will you know what to do? You don’t jump into your car and start driving, with no destination in mind. Before you start the engine, you have in your mind where you want to go so you know whether to turn left or right at the bottom of the driveway. The same principle applies to your business.

I believe, whenever someone goes into business, they have a vision whether they are conscious of it or not.  It’s actually very common for people to not know how to put their vision into words, but I can bet you they know exactly what they’re not.  I would love to sit down with the above couple and have them list everything they know they’re not.  Doing this doing this exercise will help them narrow down and focus on who they and their company are, giving them a more direct route to where they want to go.  Sometimes listing what your not brings a clearer more focused vision of what you are.