Business Identity: From Chaos to Clarity

Why Can't Business Owners Explain What They Do?

[Robin Pasley]: We've been talking for weeks about design and different elements of design and things that we at Pasley Commercial Interiors can help business owners with. We've decided to do a little giveback and invite some other business owners in to address other parts of business and how to help your business grow in other directions.

[HB Pasley]: Why not invite your husband?

[Robin Pasley]: Why not? He's sitting right here. Yes, HB, you're my number one first fan of all business owners.

[HB Pasley]: I'm also your man for 30 years. We just celebrated — when did we get married? On election day, November 5th, 1994. You remember that period of time when you kept thinking we got married in '93? It went on for like a decade. The boys were small and your brain had melted. You kept creating passwords — the really bad ones with your birthday or your kids' names — and you'd always put 1993 in. I would say, why'd you do that? And you'd say we got married that year.

[Robin Pasley]: No, '94.

[HB Pasley]: We did fall in love in '93.

[Robin Pasley]: That's true. That's what I remember most importantly.

[HB Pasley]: Business growth is what I spend my career working on. It has been a privilege, at your invitation, to serve your clients.

[Robin Pasley]: You didn't wake up over your Wheaties one day and demand to help me with my business.

[HB Pasley]: No. A healthy part of our marriage is giving each other the space to become the best version of ourselves. This is your commercial interior design firm. But it's been fun this year to come in and spend time with Zane — who is also our son, your design assistant — and Randi Lynn Johnson, sitting right here.

[Randi Lynn Johnson]: I can hear you. Hi, everybody. I'm happy to be an observer today.

[HB Pasley]: How do you think we should go about our conversation so that I can really help your clients with a few of the things I do in business? Your clients are business owners.

[Robin Pasley]: I thought I'd give a little review of why I invited you in. I'd had my business for about seven or eight years when I first started complaining to you about how I felt like, as it had grown, I'd describe it as a huge block of jello I just couldn't get my hands on. I couldn't get a grip on what was happening. There was growth, I was making good money — all those things were right. I just could not get a handle on it. I felt like it was in control of me.

I remember you coming into my office and sitting down with so much compassion, and you just started talking about things you were already working on with other clients. Over time, I began hiring you to do those exact things. At the end of last year, I asked you to come in as more of a fractional COO — a fractional C-suite role — to help execute those things: identifying what we did differently from someone else, building processes (because our industry deals in details that can make or break a project), and most importantly, shaping client experience as our shining differentiator.

[HB Pasley]: Why don't we break our conversation into those three sections? I've loved working as a business coach for several years, and I enjoy fractional work. If you've heard this term and aren't sure how to place it, it simply means that instead of a consultant working for one day or you seeing them once a month, they join your team as a temporary special member to accomplish particular work. For me it feels like part-time work — but of course I love you full-time.

We worked on those three primary areas, and I find that with all of my clients, these three are essential for growth. If you're a business owner and, like Robin, your business has grown to a place where it feels more like chaos than a clear plan — if you've plateaued, everyone's skills are tapping out, or you have a smart team but can't get everyone working on the same thing at the same time — all of those challenges are covered by what Robin just described.

What Is Business Identity and Why Does It Matter?

[HB Pasley]: The first topic is what I call business identity. It's that conversation I had with Robin many years ago, when she — like many other experts — realized she could do more than one thing. She was good at residencies, offices, restaurants, renovations, new builds. Her skills could get her anywhere. Then she ran into the problem everybody runs into. Randi Lynn is putting an event together, hands Robin a microphone, and says, "Give us five minutes on what you do." What happens?

[Robin Pasley]: I do everything.

[HB Pasley]: You start going through a list. Almost all the experts do this. If you're a business owner, I bet you're guilty of it. Somebody asks what you do and you start listing your capacities, your skills. It's like reading a menu. Usually when you do that, people's eyes roll back in their heads — nobody wants a list.

[Robin Pasley]: They don't know where to place you. Where would I put you on a map?

[HB Pasley]: Exactly. So how do you start to firm up your business identity so that when somebody hands you the microphone, you can pull off a compelling five minutes and drop the mic at the end?

The first part is to realize that people actually want to know you, not what you do. Now, Robin, if I say: what do you do? How do you begin that story?

[Robin Pasley]: Before I tell you what I do, let me tell you why I do it.

[HB Pasley]: Exactly. I coach all of my clients to do this. Start telling a story from your childhood or your early years — high school, maybe college at the latest — where you discovered something about yourself through a success or a failure, something that happened with you or to you, your family, or a mentor's influence. Usually there's a human in the story, and it was the moment where you realized you had a strength in an area. Sometimes we realize we love something because it causes us pain when we fail at it. Sometimes we learn we have strength because we're just amazing at it — we start getting recognition when we're really young.

I was talking to a guy yesterday who literally started getting math trophies in the second or third grade. He's over 50. I asked him over a beer when he first knew he had these great math skills — he's a financial analytics professional, a real expert. He sat there for a second and said, "I was in about the second grade, I started getting math trophies." And he said, "Nobody's ever asked me that before."

We all have these inception stories. If you begin your microphone time with a personal story that says a little about where you came from, that's the first step in developing your business identity — because you don't have a business without you.

[Robin Pasley]: What I like about that is that in business gatherings — a mixer, a networking event, a meeting, a retreat — we're all doing the same thing: "What do you do? What do you do?" To hear somebody start with a story is almost like a reset for conversation, because no one else has been doing that in the room. We're all drawn to story as human beings, and it's way more engaging.

[HB Pasley]: In the same way, if you opened a technical magazine right now and there was a person's face on one side and a list of technical drawings on the other, you would unconsciously study the face first. We're designed to look at human faces and want to see humanity. Telling a story is how we bring our face into every business identity conversation.

How Do You Define Your Singular Value Proposition?

[HB Pasley]: The second part of business identity is a simple concept, and I like word pictures. The picture that helped me understand how to develop a story with a point is what I call the archer: bow, arrow, target. My friend Eddie recently told me, "HB, stop calling it a list." Isn't it ironic that the guy who doesn't want people to give him lists was calling it a list?

[Robin Pasley]: I think it's ironic.

[HB Pasley]: Let's just call it the archer. I envision an archer — that's the person's heart, who they are, the story. The bow represents their skills, giftings, and abilities — all their technical powers. The arrow is the value proposition. Across the field is a target: the ideal clients, the people you're trying to deliver your unique value to. All four elements are integrated and important. But here we are at the arrow. Have you ever seen an arrow with more than one tip?

[Robin Pasley]: No.

[HB Pasley]: There's no such thing. So you would never shoot a value proposition with three points on it. The only reason people do that is they think it's generous — they don't want to withhold all the things they can do. But it would be more fair to tell somebody what you love to do the most and let them find out the other things later. When you first get to know someone, you don't list four topics you want to cover in the first 15 minutes. That's strange.

So, how do you find your singular value proposition? If I interviewed 10 of your best clients — the people you love working with the most — and asked, "What magic thing did this company actually do for you?", then put their answers into a data pool and turned that into a sentence, that would be very close to the point on your arrow.

This is an unexpected quiz, Robin. In the last six months, if I asked 10 of your best clients that question, what words do you think you'd hear from them?

[Robin Pasley]: I help them see what they can't see — visualize a space that isn't there yet, or visualize what could be done with a space that exists.

[HB Pasley]: Now you're pointing at something really important. In commercial interior design, people have opinions and ideas, but they're frightened that if they don't make the right decisions, they'll end up paying for something that cost money but didn't produce profit. Your unique ability is to come into a space and see on behalf of a business owner — not just to make it pretty, but to make it function and generate more revenue. Your brain works that way. You can visualize not only the end result that serves them, but the steps to get there. That's the person someone wants to hire. Take me through this — I need a guide.

For businesses listening to this podcast, I bet there's something similar in yours. Your clients might not name your product the way you'd expect, or say the phrases on your sign. They'll describe something more emotional: a fear you solved, a feeling you resolved. For Robin, you solve the fear of spending a lot of money without getting the outcome — needing a space to look great and function well, but not knowing what to do and needing an expert.

That's very close to her singular value proposition: interior design that helps businesses grow. And that's specific. A lot of people do commercial interior design, but Robin's is specifically focused on business outcomes for business owners. That came not because she didn't already know it, but because we worked together over time — pressing, distilling, boiling it down until we got to as few words as possible. Look at the back wall of her office: "Designed to help your business grow." Now she's comfortable leading with that singular value proposition.

How Does a Focused Business Identity Keep Your Whole Team Aligned?

[Robin Pasley]: It has helped me stay focused and not get distracted. I am an entrepreneur at heart, which means I'm always thinking about another business. This keeps me on track. But the other piece is that it naturally links back to who I am, because it draws on what's natural to me. Since I was a little girl who played business instead of house, I've been thinking about how to make businesses grow, how to make them profitable, how to cut waste and expand. Because I'm wired that way, I'm wired to think about my clients' businesses and projects the same way. I don't go in thinking about how to pull the newest trend into a space. I'm always thinking about how we can make their business grow and how our work will meet that end goal.

[HB Pasley]: I love hearing you talk that way, because it means that focusing your singular business identity around the archer concept is not only for sales or acquiring new clients — it's to keep your team focused. That's exactly what you just described.

Recorded in our studio at 616 N. Tejon St., Colorado Springs, Colorado, 80903

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