Authenticity - Keeping it Real
Recently, a small business owner posted about people requesting she offer different colors in her brand merchandise. She also commented how people were telling her to be more formal and less casual in her posts. Really?
We will never understand why people believe social media gives them the power to be experts on everything, particularly small business branding. We are constantly inundated with emails from marketers or spammers telling us how our website needs to be improved and they can do it for a reasonable fee. Well, we love our website and love our graphic designer. Such emails are not only annoying but disrespectful to our brand and our chosen designer. We would never choose to work with those firms sending out such affronting emails.
One of the first blogs we wrote in year one was about being true to the person in the mirror. Be yourself, be authentic. The passion that led you to running your own firm or to be. Leader in general is unique to you. Changing up colors or writing style for faceless followers is not being true to yourself. And those people requesting you change are likely not real customers, clients, patrons, or patients. In fact, some might be worth deleting and blocking.
We appreciated the owner’s response to the example above. She told the followers her brand colors were chosen for a reason and she is not diverging from those and her writing style is how she speaks and wishes people to know and understand her. That she even gave them the courtesy of a response shows the respect she has that her followers may not!
The three dogs that make up the Making A Point mascot team are all related and of the same breed and have similar coloring. They share basic breed characteristics but that is where it ends. Two are prey motivated and one just wants to love you. One is a leader, one is a fierce companion, and one is a follower. They live and love in their own authentic ways. This can be applied to our own lives and being passionate about what makes us unique is what makes life interesting. Be like the owner above and be passionate about your authenticity, always.
Be well.
