Me & My Brand: Lively Entrepreneurs Ring Up Sales
Back in the 1980s, when I was a business writer at The Miami Herald, part of my job was to interview colorful South Florida entrepreneurs and help readers learn from their mistakes and successes.
One of my most memorable interviews was with Chuck Curcio, the self-proclaimed Tire King, a shameless self-promoter who built his business on rock-bottom prices and late night TV commercials featuring himself prancing around in a pharaoh costume, spoofing the Beatles and belting out country, reggae and doo wop tunes. While the King’s musical performances didn’t always get rave reviews in the local press, they rang up sales — and that’s what helped the King expand his realm and sell his company to Michelin for a tidy sum in 1989. (You can check out some of Curcio’s greatest hits here.)
About the Author
Rosalind Resnick is the founder and CEO and Axxess Business Consulting Inc., a New York consulting firm that develops business plans and financial projections for start-ups and early-stage companies. She is also the author of “The Vest Pocket Consultant’s Secrets of Small Business Success.”
Now that I’m a small-business consultant, I work with aspiring entrepreneurs who are attempting to market everything from bottled water and snack foods to toys, clothes, jewelry and iPod apps. No matter what they’re selling, my clients all face the same challenge: How to get the marketplace to sit up and pay attention.
My advice: Be the brand.
Now, I’m not advising you to put on a cape and crown and belt it out on cable. What I am suggesting is that you figure out what your company stands for and start leveraging your personal brand. Once you get past your fear of making a fool of yourself, the rest is pretty simple.
Here are five entrepreneurs I admire who’ve managed to take their unique personalities and turn them into money-making brands:
1. Barbara Corcoran, real estate broker. A straight-D student in high school, Ms. Corcoran borrowed $1,000 from her boyfriend and quit her job as a waitress to start a tiny real-estate brokerage in New York City. Over the next 25 years, Ms. Corcoran built it into a $5 billion business in part by splashing her photo across billboards, newspaper spreads and city buses. After selling the company for $66 million in 2001, Ms. Corcoran wrote a memoir called “If You Don’t Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails” that became a national best-seller and turned her into a sought-after media personality. Ms. Corcoran now owns Barbara Corcoran Inc. and appears as a real estate expert on NBC’s Today Show and CNBC. She’s also a featured columnist for The Daily News, More Magazine and Redbook. Ms. Corcoran’s personal branding statement can best be summed up in the opening pages of her book: “The answer is being real – personally and through your company – and creating a culture that fits you and your dreams.”
2. Richard Branson, king of start-ups. Since selling his music label, The Virgin Records Group, to Thorn EMI for $1 billion in 1992, the flamboyant British entrepreneur has gone on to plaster his Virgin label on everything from planes, trains and credit cards to fitness clubs and music megastores on every continent except Antarctica. When he’s not starting businesses, Mr. Branson is attempting to break speed and distance records in boats and hot-air balloons. Like Mr. Branson, the Virgin brand is about being passionate, taking on challenges and living life to the fullest. Mr. Branson prominently displays the Virgin logo every time he makes a record-breaking attempt, intertwining his personality with his company. His personal branding statement can be captured in one of his recent blog posts on the Virgin website: “Disruption is all about risk-taking, trusting your intuition and rejecting the way things are supposed to be. There is a huge amount we can do to unlock entrepreneurial potential; to help people take that first step towards doing something new.”
3. Donald Trump, real estate mogul. A flamboyant real-estate developer with an ego as big as the city that spawned him, Mr. Trump has had his ups and downs but always comes out swinging. After graduating from Wharton Business School, Mr. Trump joined his father’s New York real-estate business and then struck out on his own. Since then, he’s slapped the Trump name and logo on hotels, casinos, resorts and luxury apartment complexes in New York, Atlantic City, Las Vegas and beyond. Long a best-selling business book author, Mr. Trump catapulted his celebrity brand to a whole new level with “The Apprentice,” a reality TV show he launched in 2004 in which contestants compete for a job as his assistant. Each week, a contestant is dismissed with Mr. Trump’s no-nonsense line, “You’re fired.” Today, Mr. Trump has a new show, “Celebrity Apprentice,” in which stars like Joan Rivers and Cyndi Lauper compete to raise money for charity. Mr. Trump’s personal branding statement is conveyed in one of his most widely quoted motivational slogans: “I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.”
4. Mario Batali, top chef. A culinary school dropout who became America’s king of Italian cuisine, Mr. Batali spent three years in the Northern Italian town of Borgo Capanne (population 200) before returning to his native U.S. to blaze his own trail to culinary and media stardom. Using the Food Network (“Molto Mario,” “Iron Chef America”) as his platform, Mr. Batali has teamed up with business partner Joe Bastianich to build a restaurant and culinary empire that spans New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Singapore. Mr. Batali’s flagship restaurant, Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca, an award-winning Greenwich Village eatery, has been honored by The James Beard Foundation and hailed by food critics world-wide. Mr. Batali’s newest venture: Eataly, a 50,000-square-foot marketplace and food court for New York City foodies to shop, taste and savor the seasonal and authentic foods of Italy. Mr. Batali’s personal branding statement can be summed up in the way he once described his gusto for fresh ingredients: “When you get your first asparagus, or your first acorn squash, or your first really good tomato of the season, those are the moments that define the cook’s year. I get more excited by that than anything else.”
5. Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer. The self-taught, Mexican-born dog trainer has parlayed his talent for calming even the most vicious of dogs into a hit TV show, a series of best-selling books, and a mass market line of collars, leashes, beds and pet food. After working with dogs as a boy on his grandfather’s farm, Mr. Millan illegally crossed the border into the U.S. at age 21 and landed a job at a dog-grooming store. He later launched the Pacific Point Canine Academy where one of his clients paid for a tutor to teach him English. In 2004, Mr. Millan’s series, Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan, premiered on the National Geographic Channel, becoming the network’s top-rated show in its first season. The series, which follows Mr. Millan as he works at rehabilitating aggressive dogs, showcases his philosophy that healthy, balanced dogs require strong “pack leadership” from their owners in the form of exercise, discipline and affection. Mr. Millan’s personal branding statement can be described in the way he once explained his unique ability to bridge the gap between the species: “No dog is too much for me to handle. I rehabilitate dogs, I train people. I am the dog whisperer.”
What’s the secret to leveraging your personal brand? Think about it this way: If your company was a T-shirt, what would it say? “Service With a Smile,” “Expensive But Worth It,” “Rock-Bottom Ricky” or “Last-Minute Louie?” Or would it be a plain white shirt that lets your customers write all over it? As an old editor of mine at The Herald used to say, “If you don’t know the headline, you don’t know the story.” The same is true of personal brands.
Categories: Fortune Cookie Wisdom