Your Most Important Asset
Businesses and non-profits both share a common understanding: money matters. Having a vision for the work that you want your organization to do doesn’t matter if you don’t have cash flowing through it — propelling it forward. If “mo’ money is mo’ problems” — I have yet to meet a leader who doesn’t want to be dealing with those problems instead of dealing with a cash flow shortage.
I’d like you to consider something else. Cash isn’t the most important asset for your business. You can always find new ways to drive revenue as long as your most important asset is doing well. Like cash, you have to take care of it. You have to put it to work for you. You have to be mindful of it, cultivate it, and protect it. So what is it?
Your brand.
It’s more than a set of words, logos, and colors. It’s the feeling your business evokes through its products and services. It’s how your constituents experience you. It’s the promise you make and keep. It’s what makes you different than your competitors.
I’ll put it this way: if your brand isn’t in a good place, you are going to have a hard time making money and doing the work that you want to do in the world.
Cash may be king, but brands make empires rise and fall.
Take a look around. Look at yourself. How are you dressed today? What shape is your office in? Go out from there.
What does the building look like? Are the bathrooms clean? Is there any deferred maintenance that is making your business look run down? Do you need to paint some walls and mow the lawn?
Let’s look at your digital landscape.
What does your website look like? How about your social media channels? Your staff photos and the first video people see when they visit one of your channels? These are your front door in 2021.
You wouldn’t show up to the office in your pajamas. You wouldn’t avoid showering for 6 months because “you didn’t have time or bandwidth to worry about that right now” and still expect to be employed or in business.
Leaders understand that owning a building/land are important assets. No one thinks that it would be OK for someone to show up and paint the building whatever color they want whenever they want. In the same way, there is a basic look, tone, and color palette that are tools in your organizational toolkit for conveying your brand — and it matters that all communication coming out of your business is on brand.
You just have to be mindful of it.
Take care of your brand, and your brand will take care of you. It isn’t easy, but it is simple.