Is Branding Your Company Worth Your Time and Money?

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] What is going on, guys? Welcome to today's episode of the collecting keys of Friday focus. So I am back today. My name is Mike DeHaan. And if this is your first time here, we kind of alternate this show between me doing these little monologue episodes and then my cohost Dan. And then every now and then, we'll mix in something else too. We'll doing some deal case studies. We have some other kinds of interviews, some sort of short form ones or maybe even with people that are gonna be coming up for these Friday spots, and I'm super excited about it. But basically, what we do on these Friday episodes is I take a question from a listener or a regular question that I get from people on social media or other areas, and I kinda do a little bit of a deep dive on the topic. So today's episode, we are going to be focused on business branding, and how exactly important is it, and should it something that you should be focusing on? So this is a question that I get a ton from people that come into our instant investor program, and also from other entrepreneurs that are getting started with their investing journey, and or just starting their other own businesses, whatever they are. And they're sort of trying to figure out the first steps. So first off, I will say that branding is kind of a potentially controversial topic. And when I say controversial, I don't mean like in general. I mean, it's mostly controversial because my beliefs on branding are probably different than what most people think.

Mike DeHaan: [1:23] And so, you know, here's the thing. Right? Branding can make or break your business for sure. But the thing is, I think that most people get in trouble is that they focus on branding far too early in their entrepreneurial process. Okay? So it's always something that, you know, so many people, they decide they're gonna start a business. They've come up with their idea. They probably came up with their idea, like, while they were hanging out with their friends on, like, a golf course, or a few drinks, or on a long drive, or something like that. And the first thing that they do, they have this new business idea as they go and they sit down, and they either design their own shitty logo, or they go and they find someone in Fiverr to go and make a super shitty logo for, like, $10 because that's all they wanna pay on this business that they're not fully committed to, but they're pretending like they are. And, you know, if you're in real estate, you know I'm talking about, you've seen so many people, especially over the past couple years where you had everyone and their mom was becoming a realtor. So many people who had the exact same crappy logo with, like, these dumb roofs that were right next to each other with this little window. And then they take that logo, and they boldly announce it on social media that they are now going to be a business owner, and they're going to do this thing. Right? That's you should everyone's seen this. You all know what I'm talking about.

Mike DeHaan: [2:32] And then what happens next? Most of the time, it basically like, I would say in the absolutely worst situation is they do nothing. They go and they make the logo, and then they just basically don't do anything else with it. Or best case, what they'll do is they will move on to the next major time wasting activity, which is going and building a website. Right? So now they have their fancy logo, they need to make it official online. What they do is they go and they find someone to build the website. They usually start out, they go and they log on to Fiverr, they go and they see that people want 200 to $300 to build a website on Fiverr. Gasp, that's definitely too expensive for this business that I'm not fully serious about. So they decide that's way too much. And to be fair, that's actually really cheap, by the way. Like legit websites built by actual, like, good people will cost you thousands of dollars, and that's perfectly okay. So they'll see that. And then instead of paying that person, they will instead go and spend the next month trying all the different website builders. They're trying WordPress. They're trying Wix. They're trying Squarespace. They're doing whatever else. And then ultimately, at that point, they either quit, they end up with a super generic website that looks like everyone else's and doesn't really add any value because they don't know how to design, don't know how to do copy, don't know how to do anything, not take good pictures. Right?

Mike DeHaan: [3:44] Or they end up making something just like super horrific. And then they proceed to go on and do nothing with their business. Right? We all know those people as well. It's very, very common. You know, it's it's nothing to be ashamed of. I think, you know, the point I'm trying to make here, guys, is that the quote unquote branding for most new entrepreneurs is kind of like their productive procrastination that the people do when they want to avoid doing the actual hard stuff, which is like, you know, building their product or making sales calls or, you know, the things that actually make you money and not just the things that make you look like you're doing something big on social media. Right? So if you're kinda new, that's sort of a pitfall to avoid. So what I always tell people is to do the business first, unbranded, learn to make some money, make sure you actually enjoy that business process, and then you can move on from there. Right? Like if you're doing real estate, work under your name as a realtor or a wholesaler or a flipper or whatever you're gonna do for your first couple deals. To worry about liability, go and create an LLC. You can do that separately from your brand, you can create an LLC for anything that you want, it takes fifteen minutes. And then you can build your brand with a different name and just do like a doing business as afterwards.

Mike DeHaan: [4:56] That's real estate's very easy to do if you're in any other business. Make sure you go and create your product first and try to sell a few of it. You know, sell it to your friends and your family, people that are in your notebook, in your connections that, you know, might be interested in it. That way, you at least have proof of concept before go and you waste a bunch of time building this huge brand. K? And, you know, make sure that you actually enjoy the process of whatever you are committing to before you go and you spend a bunch of time just kind of like laying, you know, pretend house pretty much honestly, when you're going and building a logo and a website without like an actual business behind it. You're literally just playing kids make believe with that. Okay? So that's for like new people. If you're an established business, I would say branding is probably one of the most important things that you can focus on. Okay? It is truly essential and will help you majorly stand out amongst your competition. The key thing here though, is that bad branding, I would argue, is probably worse than no branding at all. Like, if you're gonna do this, you're gonna go down this path, you need to look professional for your industry, and you need to stand out. Okay?

Mike DeHaan: [6:01] You to stand out in terms of like the name, in terms of that design of your logo, of your merch, of your website, of everything. Because if it looks really bad, or it's just super forgettable, then you're going to be pretty much not even existent. Right? Or sometimes it'll even be detrimental when people pick things that are just really, really poor choices. Right? You know, one of the first mistakes that I made when I started wholesaling, I started my real estate business where they chose a super generic name. Our business was INW Properties, which stands for Inland Northwest Properties. And I thought that it was something that just showed that I was regional. Really, what ended up happening is that people never remembered our business name. They didn't really care. And in fact, I learned that most people who live in the Inland Northwest have never heard the term I n w before. And so they didn't even know what the heck it's for. They thought that it was like some random initials. You know, they're thinking, don't know, it's Ian, Nigel and Wayne. Whatever names start with a I w. And it would just always lead to these really stupid conversations that was not beneficial to us at all. And the thing that sucked about that was we had a cool logo, we had a great website, we had everything else that was good, but our name was terrible. And so it didn't really help us out. The best names that I have seen in the real estate space, they usually have some sort of like visual representation that is easy for people to understand and remember, and they have some sort of alliteration. Those are kind of just marketing one zero one.

Mike DeHaan: [7:21] Some of the best names I've seen out there are like, you know, the property penguin, bumblebee homes, baby back rehabs. There's a buddy of mine out of Saint Louis, which I think is an awesome name. Right? Those are all things that you read them, you remember them, and that someone can like know what you're talking about instantly. It's also easy to create a logo and things like that. So once you have the name figured out, you want the logo and the merch, your online presence, your social media, all of that professionally designed, it can have an incredible ROI. K? And understand this does take time and money. Depending on what you're trying to do and the scale of it, you know, this can cost like $500 on like the super low end if you're just trying to get a decent logo and some merch design, there's something like that. 2 thousands of dollars if you're trying to build a full website presence and media package. You know, understand that, like, the super big guys out there, the Alex Tremozi's, Ryan Pineda's, the people that are professional brands, they spend hundreds of thousand dollars a year maintaining their brand on top of the thousands and thousands of dollars they built building their brand. Right? You don't have to be nearly that scale, but, you know, if you wanna be a one hundredth of what they are, you probably gotta spend about one hundredth of the money. Right? So it's a very, very important thing to make sure you're taking seriously.

Mike DeHaan: [8:34] And, you know, view that as an investment. A lot of people tend to view it as a sunk cost because they don't get an immediate ROI on it. But understand that over time, the more people become familiar with your brand, the more people recognize it, they see it, they understand what it is. It's going to lead to exponential returns on the money that you invested over that period of time. Like literally, there is going to be people as you're growing your business that see you, they see your competitors, they like your brand and your name better, and they choose to go with you. Okay? That is just how human psychology works. So make sure that you're spending the money with this. Ultimately, guys, what I'm trying to say with all this is, you know, people love the branding part because it's fun. It makes things feel real if you're new. Right? But don't waste your time on it until you know that you actually want to do the business that you're planning to get into. And if you're a serious business and you're looking to focus on your branding, don't skimp on it. Make the investment, pay the money, and I promise you that it will pay dividends over the long term. So anyways, that's my view on all this.

Mike DeHaan: [9:38] And funnily enough too, my wife is a graphic designer. And she may or may not listen to this episode. But if she does, I'll be interested to see her opinions because, you know, she's a branding specialist. And we don't always see eye to eye on some of these things. But she might agree with me on this. We'll see. Anyways, guys, hopefully, you found that helpful. If you have any questions that you would like me to address on these Friday Focus episodes, I'd love to hear from you. So you should hit me up on Instagram at mike underscore invest. That's just m I k e underscore I n v e s t s. And shoot me a DM. Let me know if you think I'm wrong on this. If you think I'm right on this, a different topic that you would love me to dive into. And I really appreciate it. Besides that, guys, leave us a five star review on iTunes or you'll listen to your podcast. We really appreciate it. And we'll talk to you next time. Thanks so much.