Building Unbreakable Brands

[00:00]

"Brand strategy isn't relevant in our industry. We just let our work speak for itself."

If you've ever heard that in your own business, or maybe even said it yourself, you are not alone. It usually comes from pride in your craft, or maybe from following patterns that worked for generations, or sometimes from not wanting to dilute substance with flash.

But the truth is, every business already has a brand. The question is whether it's intentional or accidental. In this episode, I'll share why letting your work speak for itself just isn't enough anymore, and why ignoring brand strategy can cost generational businesses growth opportunities, talent, and even survival. My hope is that you walk away both challenged and inspired to think a little bit differently about the reputation that you are passing on.

[01:00]

Welcome to Building Unbreakable Brands, the podcast for business leaders with a generational mindset. I'm Meghan Lynch. I'm an advisor to family businesses and CEO of Six Point, a brand strategy agency that helps generational brands honor their past while evolving for the future.

Today, we have a different kind of episode, one without a guest. Henry is headed back to school, so I want to take a moment to share some insights and stories based on my work with family businesses.

[01:30]

When I hear family business leaders say brand is just not relevant in our industry, I actually hear three things just under the surface.

The first is familiar patterns. This is how we've always done it. This is what worked for their parents, their grandparents. So why change?

The second is pride in their craft. These leaders don't want flash over substance. They truly care about quality. They care about doing the right thing for their customers. And they are committed to keeping things authentic, both in their culture and values, and their external perception of the company.

The third thing is a misunderstanding of branding itself. A lot of business leaders still equate brand with marketing fluff—logos, ads, taglines. But really, a brand is about reputation and trust. It's not about what you say about yourself. It's what others say about you when you are not in the room.

[03:00]

So when someone says brand strategy isn't relevant, in a way, they're right. It hasn't been particularly relevant to them. But it's also a blind spot.

The reframe I most often share with clients when they're falling victim to this blind spot is this: Brand is your reputation. You already have one. The only question is whether you're shaping it intentionally, or you're letting it be shaped for you.

If your brand is unintentional, your customers fill in the blanks. They decide what you stand for. And sometimes, that version of your business just doesn't match the truth of who you are, or who you're becoming.

When you're intentional, you're shaping the narrative that reflects your values, your vision, and your unique role in the market. That clarity actually helps customers. And it also helps employees, partners, and sometimes even future owners know what to expect, why they can trust you, and how they can contribute to your overall vision.

[04:30]

One example that comes to mind is Hyde Tools. This is a 150-year-old manufacturer. We've been working with them for almost two decades. When we first met, Hyde had grown primarily by saying yes—saying yes to customer requests, being open to opportunities. They were founded by an orphan, Isaac P. Hyde, who had grown the company from nothing just by saying yes.

It's something that serves a lot of family businesses very well for a long time. But Hyde had gotten large enough and complex enough that saying yes to everything was actually causing the reputation to be diluted and confusing. They had products that they had created for maybe a single long-time customer, or a bunch of different brand names that they were operating under, none of which were very supported. They also had a reputation of being a brand that was once a proud innovator but had become more of a "me too" manufacturer that had to bow to pricing pressure.

[06:00]

When they started to take control of their reputation and move from accidental to intentional branding, what they were really doing was taking back a leadership position.

One of the first things that we did was go back to their history and find some visual artifacts that we could protect to create a visual brand identity, a color palette, things that they could legally protect as intellectual property so that they couldn't be knocked off.

The second thing we did was work on a strategy that enabled them to document the places where they were the brand of choice already for professionals in some key categories. This helped them tell a more confident and compelling story with data to back it up.

They also started to build a process to integrate feedback and insights from customers into their product development cycle, which helped them really regain a reputation for innovation. It also helped them cut some underperforming products and prioritize the customers who valued the quality and craftsmanship that they had been known for in the past, and wanted to continue to be known for in the future.

[07:30]

Now Hyde has a new generation of the family involved who see opportunities for the brand in digital channels, including online retail, and they've got a bunch of branded content on YouTube, all of which has helped them capture new DIY and pro customers. It's truly the difference between a company that was basically just waiting to become obsolete versus a company that's energized, focused, and in control of its future.

[08:00]

Now, why does branding matter, especially for family and generational businesses? For me, there are three big reasons.

The first one is vision and talent. Brand strategy helps you articulate not just the past, the history of where you've been, but it also helps paint a picture of where you're going. That is absolutely crucial for attracting next-level talent. It's something that energizes the next generation of leaders for family businesses—it might help get that next generation excited and engaged in the business. But it also engages employees, whether long-time or new, who want to be part of a meaningful journey and want to connect their journey to your future.

[09:00]

Reason number two is transferability of reputation. Too often, especially in family businesses, the reputation and trust, especially with major relationships, all live with one person. It might be the charismatic founder, it might be a patriarch, a matriarch. But all of the trust, the key relationships are sitting with one person and are very difficult to pass on to anybody else.

But if you want a business that outlasts one leader, your reputation has to be transferable. A strong brand lets you extend trust to a next generation, or to other leaders on your team, or even sometimes to a future buyer. This has a huge increase on enterprise value.

[10:00]

Reason number three is that customers can see themselves as partners in your growth. When you build a brand strategy that incorporates the voice of the customer, like Hyde did, you're not just selling to them, you're really inviting them into the story. They're co-creating it along with you. They feel like stakeholders in your success. That makes them more loyal, it makes them more vocal advocates who can refer other customers to you. And it also makes the business more resilient. They're more forgiving when things don't go perfectly.

[11:00]

So what happens if you don't invest in brand strategy? This is something that can sometimes be a little bit harder to recognize, because the costs are often quiet and they creep up on you slowly.

One of the first signals that we see is a plateau. We see companies that have grown organically for years, and then they just kind of get stuck at a certain point. They might gain a customer and lose a customer, or they may just hang out at a certain revenue level for a number of years and have a hard time going beyond it. Sometimes they may even start slipping slightly, have a couple years of down-growth, and then maybe creep back to where they were. But they hit this plateau where growth does not come as easily, and definitely does not come organically.

[12:30]

The second is this return on luck that Jim Collins talks about. Basically, the brand starts missing opportunities. Oftentimes, for family businesses, one of the things that drives them and is one of their secret superpowers, is getting a return on luck. They are in the right place at the right time. You hear them tell stories about the one phone call that doubled their business overnight, or the partnership that they created and brokered that ended up transforming their industry.

There are these magical moments that they're able to capitalize on, because they are at the right place and the right time. It feels like luck. But really, they've done all of these things to put themselves in the position to get those opportunities.

What you start seeing is that these opportunities aren't coming as often as they used to, or when they do, maybe you're not in the right position to make the most of them. You kind of feel like, "This was the right opportunity, but not the right time." You're not getting that return on luck that you used to. And it's something that can really exacerbate that plateau, because you don't get any of those magical moments that you used to be getting.

[14:00]

The third is that you might struggle to either recruit or retain top talent. It becomes harder to get next-generation talent, next-level talent, that's going to be what takes you to that next level, whether it's recruiting a key person that you need in a skill set that's new to the company, or whether it's getting the next generation interested and engaged in seeing a future for themselves and their family within the business.

Finally, you could also see the valuation of the company take a hit when it comes time to sell or transition the business. Again, if all of the relationships, all of the value is living with one person, when you are selling ownership of the company, that starts to come off the price of the business, and so it hurts that enterprise value.

[15:00]

But overall, these brand traps are really like sand traps in golf, right? You hit that shot, you didn't see the danger, you didn't see the trap along the side. But when you do fall into it, it just kind of sucks you in, pulls you off course, and then it costs you a lot of time and energy to recover.

So here is my challenge to you. Stop thinking about whether or not you have a brand. You already do. The question is: Is it working for you, or is it working against you? Do you have what you need to really secure those next-level opportunities, break through those plateaus, capture those next opportunities? Or is growth coming harder than it used to?

Generational businesses already have all of the raw materials that they need. They've got trust, they've got reputation, they've got legacy. Brand strategy is really about just protecting and multiplying those assets so that they actually become drivers of growth for decades and generations to come.

[16:30]

Thanks so much for joining me on this solo episode of Building Unbreakable Brands. If there's one thing I hope you take away, it's this: Your brand is your reputation, and it's one of the most valuable assets you can pass on to the next generation.

If you're curious about how to make your brand a stronger driver of growth and enterprise value, I'd love to hear from you. You can always connect with me on LinkedIn or at sixpointstrategy.com.

And since Henry can't be with me today because he's back at school, he asked me to leave you with this: What did one pencil say to the other on the first day of school? "Hey, you're looking sharp!" Good one, Henry!

Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next time on Building Unbreakable Brands.