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When you’re wearing every hat—from sales and marketing to operations and HR—you aren't just the founder; you're the bottleneck. If you are struggling to scale your business without losing your sanity, this podcast is for you.
Hosted by Catherine Brown, Chief of Everything is designed to help founders trade the "all-the-hats" hustle for high-impact growth.
In each episode, we interview subject matter experts who have been exactly where you are. We skip the fluff and distill years of expensive mistakes into essential principles you can use to make your business more efficient and your leadership more effective.
Ep01
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Introduction and Guest Welcome
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[00:00:00]
Catherine Brown: Welcome to Chief of Everything, and I'm so excited for you to hear this conversation that I had with my friend Sarah Sears. She is the founder and principal. Of S Design, which is a branding agency based in Oklahoma City. She has served clients internationally. We were just discussing before we did this interview about all of her travel last year with different certifications and [00:01:00] conferences, and I have actually known Sarah for over 20 years, and so it's such a joy to have her be the person that's going to talk with our audience about the concepts and branding.
The Importance of Branding for Small Businesses
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Catherine Brown: What do small business owners and micro businesses need to understand? Earlier about branding and what are the stakes when we don't get it right. Sarah, welcome to Chief of Everything. Thank you so much for coming on today.
Sarah Sears: Thank you so much for having me, Catherine. It's always a joy to hang out with you.
Catherine: Since I've known you for 20 years, I'm gonna put on my readers to read my next question. But we are starting out this series with people who are subject matter experts in all of the areas that founders have to manage on their own. Until they grow to a point at which they can hire an a firm like yourself or an internal employee.
And we want all of our subject matter experts to start with this same question because I think that there's so many things about running [00:02:00] businesses that are counterintuitive or a paradigm shift from what we might think. And so when it comes to branding, what principle feels wrong? But you know, is actually the secret to their growth.
Understanding Brand Strategy
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Sarah Sears: For small businesses, a lot of what you're doing when you get started is just figuring out how your business is gonna be. You may think that you know exactly what business you're starting and what you're gonna do, but usually when you're a founder. You might even, I guess, do a business plan online or something like that.
But really that's I think people need to spend time doing. Really learning about your business, learning about the competitive nature of your business, who's in there? I mean, what we know is, you know, when you start a business that everybody else is doing. Like you gotta figure out what's different about who you are.
And that takes a while. And you also have to be doing something that [00:03:00] people actually need and want, which sometimes we think that people are gonna need and want what we have to sell and they don't. So you gotta figure out who those people are, what their actual needs are, what their behaviors are. And when I see a lot is people thinking, oh, I'm gonna start this business and I'm gonna make it like me.
Catherine: Hmm.
Sarah Sears: gonna choose all the things that I like. And what we know is that you really need to be designing for your customer, right?
Catherine: Hmm.
Sarah Sears: And you need to be designing for you need to document what the purpose is of your business besides making money, what it's gonna do, what your mission is. You need to figure out what your values are, How you're gonna do it different than someone else and why somebody would even care about that and that's where you need to spend your time. But a
people just kind of think, oh, I just need to get started. I need to make money or I need to do this. But really spending time, even if you're just spending a specific amount of [00:04:00] time every day working on that stuff, by the time you hire someone to help you with your brand and your brand strategy, that's all the information they're gonna ask you about. what they need to know to do it well. 'cause otherwise you're just creating something that's, that's a generalist thing that's gonna look like everybody else. It's not gonna be differentiated. Right.
Catherine: So I heard you say a couple things that jump out to me. With my experience as a professional sales trainer, I completely agree that we get started. We do the best we can, but we don't actually know. Really why our buyer thinks we're different than other people until we practice some. And so that, I think that iterative learning is part of what.
Founders are impatient about and they don't understand. It's totally normal. I've started several companies and because I've started several companies, every time I think I can shortchange this process and that somehow I'm gonna figure this out faster, and it's always a [00:05:00] couple years, it's at least a couple years, sometimes longer, and making that normal and having people understand that that's normal, I think is really useful.
So I really love that first point. My question about the brand strategy is given the fact that this is evolving, I'm doing my best. I'm trying to figure out my value proposition. I'm trying to solidify my values and differentiate them from competitors. What do I do about a brand strategy? I mean, what does a brand strategy mean when you're in that evolving time?
Differentiation and Customer Alignment
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Sarah Sears: Well, your brand strategy is really differentiation. even have a place for my business? Because if I don't, then why am I even doing this? Right? It can be differentiation in terms of am I solving the problem different.
Catherine: Hmm.
Sarah Sears: it, is it multiple things that no one's ever put together before? Like what makes it different? And then you've got to align that with what your customer is looking for. And are they gonna quit doing what they're doing with someone else in order to hire [00:06:00] you to do it? Will they buy that from you? What is the value of that for them? The
Catherine: Okay.
Sarah Sears: pricing strategy. I mean, it's holistic. It's part of sales, right?
It's not separate from sales. It's not just marketing. It's how in the future you're gonna attract employees, right?
Catherine: So brand strategy is part of selling. It ties into marketing. We're talking about something bigger, more holistic.
Sarah Sears: Mm-hmm.
Catherine: it can be considered earlier. My experience working with early stage businesses and small businesses is that they, many people still think of branding as their visual assets only
Sarah Sears: Okay, so here's a distinction.
Catherine: I.
Brand Identity and Consistency
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Sarah Sears: Is the perception that your customer or stakeholders have about you. Okay, [00:07:00] so you're going to put out branding materials and things like that to say, here's who we are. But then the experiences that they have with you is gonna form who they think you are, and you can't totally control that. And they're gonna bring a lot of themselves to that mix. But that's why brands attract. A certain type of person. If you think about a brand like Apple, they're attracting a certain type of person, so they have chosen values and behaviors and things like that that are very specific to the customer that they wanna attract. I am a huge fan, and that's what I'm gonna spend my money on. Because I think about who does that make me when I support that brand?
Catherine: When I use Apple products, it is a definition of who I'm
Sarah Sears: of
Catherine: [00:08:00] mm-hmm.
Sarah Sears: Yes. that is why it's so important to know who you are as a business, because everything that you're expressing and every system you set up, and every experience that people are gonna have, whether it's hr, right? Because when you hire people.
Catherine: Hmm.
Sarah Sears: think that they're working for a company that's a certain way. So all of their experiences as an employee need to reflect that because what do they turn around and do? They go home and they get online and they talk about the company, And if I hear that someone hates working in a company because of X, Y, and Z, and I thought, oh, I thought I liked that brand because. Of my experience, but I don't wanna support a brand that doesn't treat their employees well. Right? So
Catherine: Right.
Sarah Sears: disconnected. It's all, it's kind of a core, it should be like, if you think of two parts of a DNA strand, one part is your [00:09:00] business strategy and one part is your brand strategy. They need to be lining up all along DNA strand, and then when you express yourself. And I'm, this is kind of a fun thing, but like sometimes I tell people, if you think about a brand like your mom, right? There's lots of different moms. Every mom has a way of acting and a way of doing things. She's gonna have certain ways that she talks and ways that she dresses and mannerisms, right? So want to create something like that for your company, which is always showing up consistently. You know, like you just know how your mom is gonna show up. And how she's gonna do things. So you want that same type of identity, and that's why we call it brand identity, right? What is the voice and tone? You need all those rules about expression and so that people can embody, this is how we do it here. And it can be like a visual identity. And of course you've gotta get all your [00:10:00] trademarks and things like that done. But it's really about here's how we do things here.
Common Branding Mistakes and Solutions
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Catherine: So, where do you see that founders waste money? Where do some of the accidentally foolish decisions lie early on that you could steer them a different direction?
Sarah Sears: Well, I think about the work that I started out doing very early on in my career was all for nonprofits, and I knew that when they hired me to do something, I only had a very limited amount of funds and that that had to last 'em for a really long time. so the way that we started thinking about that was how can we make this a system for them? How can we create a holistic system for them so that they don't have to come back to us? Because we knew that they would just break into tears if they had to ask for another $50, right? They just didn't have it. So
Catherine: Right.
Sarah Sears: I think. So where I [00:11:00] see that mistake is that people spend so much time and energy not getting the system in place, not getting the, that kind of early work done.
Even if it's, let's say that you don't have money to invest in a brand strategy, pick the colors, don't make them the same colors as your, you know, now we can use Chad GBT. So you could probably do a little research and figure out what colors you know you should choose from. You just, you want to get something in place that's consistent so that every time that you're putting out something or doing something, you're not wasting and energy.
I think we forget how much time and energy is wasted every day, especially when you start adding people to your team. Thinking about like, we have to send out an email. What does it say? What tone does it say, what do our customers care about? Like if you have all of that work done upfront. Then it's, [00:12:00] you don't have to think about what it's gonna look like.
You have a template, you know, it needs to be written in this tone. So now you just have to figure out like, what are the three things we're trying to say? And then just let it go. But that compounding amount of wasteful time, kind of rethinking how to show up every day. I think people don't realize how much time is wasted doing that.
And when once they have all that in place, they just oh my goodness, I wasted. So much time and money not having this easy to get to. I mean, we all know how it is. Someone says, send over your jpeg of your logo. Right?
Catherine: Right.
Sarah Sears: You're building something
Catherine: can't find it.
Sarah Sears: that specific thing. Yeah. Or, or changing it to fit a space that it wasn't designed for.
When you know, then you end up with 500 different versions of that instead of four, you know, that you just always use so. It just creates a lot of unnecessary chaos and,
Catherine: I think Sarah too, depending on someone's entrepreneur [00:13:00] journey and what they did before they started their own business. There's some backgrounds that people can have coming out of corporate that. Maybe feel like branding is more or less intimidating. Like for some, it's
Sarah Sears: Hmm,
Catherine: not even a ping on their radar because they just don't have the language for it, and others might have had some experience in corporate and they're gonna be better at some of these early decisions than others because of that background.
One of the things that you and I have talked about in other settings is this idea. Trusting yourself and the fact that people do have some intuition about branding and about how they should come across. Would you speak about that a little bit more?
Sarah Sears: Sure.
Catherine: I.
Sarah Sears: I think the work that you do to write things down about how you wanna show up and your value system and things like that is very [00:14:00] important because I think what we notice when we're working and we're going through experiences, whether you're. Attending a conference and talking about your business, you can tell when things don't go right.
Right? I mean, just like every day there's like a nagging feeling like, that didn't feel right, that didn't feel aligned. Sometimes I use the phrase that felt out of integrity, like it didn't feel like the way that I was supposed to show up. Those things are all, that's a brand misalignment.
That's a disconnect. Right? And. It's, it's kind of like if you think about hiring a, employee for your company, if you have all of that written down, you're hiring for the traits that you want them to have already. Like there's some things you cannot train for, like you don't wanna hire someone that has a completely different value system.
Catherine: Not a lie or whatever. Yeah.
Sarah Sears: they're not gonna show up. And then every time they do it, you're gonna say, [00:15:00] well, that didn't feel right. But maybe if they don't have, that in them to show up that way, that's gonna be very forced and they're never gonna really be able to do it in that way. And again, it depends on what role they're playing in your business, whether they're behind the scenes or in front of the scenes. But again, most businesses have a culture, and a culture is just Behavior that's associated with brand. an expression of the brand. So,
Catherine: Hmm.
Sarah Sears: yeah,
Evolving Your Brand and Continuous Improvement
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Catherine: Sarah, I'm listening to these suggestions that we've covered, which I think have been awesome and I remember the early years overwhelm, right?
We're calling this podcast Chief of Everything because you have so many things that still fall to you, and so where I'd like to bring us toward the end here is. What are those things that we want our founders to take away and remember and be encouraged by? I'm gonna get us started on the list and then I'm [00:16:00] gonna hand it over to you.
Okay. And I'm gleaning from what you've said.
Sarah Sears: Okay.
Catherine: Number one, the evolution is completely normal. You cannot bypass it. You cannot shortchange it. If you do, you'll be sorry. The experiences of standing and talking to someone at a trade show and feeling like it didn't land right. And your gut is telling you that didn't go well, that's normal.
That's actually excellent to have that happen. You want to invite those opportunities as early as possible because your message will evolve as you figure out exactly who you're going to serve, and you might change over time. Who you're going to serve, but your values aren't gonna change. And so know that that's normal.
That experience is normal. That's one thing that's coming to me as we're talking. What would you like to add to that?
Sarah Sears: Yes, I would say your purpose is gonna last forever. Okay. And then your values are gonna be [00:17:00] anchored to your purpose, and then your mission and your goals are gonna evolve over time.
Catherine: Hmm.
Sarah Sears: it's always changing and it's not just you that's changing. It's the world that's changing, right? With technology's changing. People's behavior is changing. So you have to evolve. And I do think that if you think about it, you know, there's something called design thinking, and it's very iterative, right? And so this is how you think about it, but you're constantly gathering research, okay? So it's totally normal. It's totally normal, and it's best practice to gather that research, reflect on it, and then incorporate it, right?
It's that. Continuous improvement. and just, you know, it's a process and it's, you can enjoy it. It doesn't have to be stressful. It's just like, oh, this is information for me. And I would say what I do is I keep a little, 'cause I'm still evolving, right. And the world is still changing.
And I started out being a visual designer. And [00:18:00] then, you know, as my company grew and I deepened and I understood my customers, I understood that the research that we do to do a visual design would be useful for clients, you know, in all other aspects of their business and tying it to their strategy.
So,
Catherine: Hmm.
Sarah Sears: that has evolved as a practice in the 30 years that I've been working as well. So you just continue to do better and learn from that. And I would say just be aware. You have a little place where you take notes, book some time, either monthly or weekly on your calendar to go and reflect on those notes, and just to ask yourself, do I have what I need to make this better now and prioritize it, and which one of these things will impact my business the most and prioritize them accordingly just continue to improve.
So.
Catherine: I love that so much, Sarah, because it ties back to a strategy that I was taught even last month. I attended a planning session that had people, the [00:19:00] facilitator had all of the entrepreneurs on the call schedule once a month where they gave themself an entire afternoon to. Think to reflect on what they learned and to decide what they wanted to modify about the goals they previously set because of the information that they'd received.
And I just had my first session that came up last week and I, when it popped up, I thought, literally, what is this? 'cause it was my first one that came up and then I thought, ah. That's working on your business and not just in your business. And I was so delighted that that had come to me as a suggestion.
So that's a little bonus takeaway for our listeners is that if you do what Sarah's saying and you actually reflect and schedule time for this reflection, you'll be so glad.
Sarah Sears: Yes, and that'll just continue to get better, and that'll impact areas of your business that you didn't expect at all.
Catherine: Thanks Sarah so much.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Catherine: So where can people go when they want to learn more about you?
Sarah Sears: Oh, well, you can [00:20:00] find me on LinkedIn. You can also go to my website, which is s design inc.com.
Catherine: S Design inc. IN c.com. Thanks Sarah.
Sarah Sears: Thanks so much, Catherine.
Catherine Brown: Didn't you love Sarah? I always learn something when I spend time with her. I was reminded of the definition of brand. That your brand is the perception that your customers and really everyone else that works with you has about you. So brand strategy touches everything. That was really helpful to me.
Thanks Sarah so much. Thank you for joining Chief of Everything podcast. Be sure to subscribe and give me some feedback, and if you enjoyed this, share it with a friend. We are here to help founders stop being chief of everything. Eventually [00:21:00]