Brand building begins at startup phase

No business journey is linear. Building a brand whilst staying true to purpose, and remaining customer focussed is the role of any start up entrepreneur. Yet investing in systems and people to allow for scale can be challenging. Also as founders at some point in the journey at can be exhausting. Having time to reflect, regenerate and reignite can be difficult.

Brand building happens through relationships and critical to that is how your team speaks about the business they work for. Uniting the team to the purpose and having shared values is critical.

In this episode of Handpicked podcast Saxon Phipps Co-Founder Year 13 reflects on its growth but asks “How to maintain the energy and excitement of a start up as a business begins to scale?” This is not an easy answer but people and culture are the centre of all great brand growth stories.

“How do you weed out the ‘sharks’ and find advisors and investors who will help you build the brand?” Saxon asks when people have different opinions it can be difficult to stay true to the purpose whilst making sure that the business is agile enough to incorporate outside ideas.

“How do you keep the brand building central to the business culture?” This remains one of the key growth questions how to inspire people to have a growth mindset.

“As a business owner who is working relentlessly How do you know when you need to take a break?” Getting the chance to do deep work can be really challenging when the operational activity of the day can swamp any business owner.

Saxon is happy to share some of the challenges he and his co-founders and team are experiencings. With more that 20 employees joining since this last team photo was taken – keeping the business focussed on why, where and how they deliver value and make the world a better place is critical.

“Year13 is a purpose driven digital enterprise which is dedicated to inspire and support current and future young Australians to reach their potential and succeed in life after school. Year13’s primary focus is on 3 key markets being employment, education and travel with the ultimate goal to become the trusted portal for all young Australians to fulfil a wide range of needs encountered when becoming an independent adult. www.year13.com.au”

Join me for this wonderful edition of Handpicked… you’ll be proud of this Australian start up success story.

Also published on Medium.