Advice I'd Give My Best Friend If She Was Launching a Business
If my best friend told me tomorrow that she was starting a business, this is exactly what I'd tell her and no, picking a logo wouldn't be the first thing on the list.
I've spent years working with business owners, from ambitious start-ups with big ideas to established businesses and if there's one thing I've learnt, it's that a brilliant business idea doesn't automatically become a brilliant business.
There are businesses out there doing incredible things that nobody knows about. Businesses with fantastic products, years of experience and genuinely talented people behind them, but you'd never know it from looking at how they show up.
Which, as a brand and website designer, absolutely breaks my heart. So, if we were sitting down over coffee and you told me you were finally going for it, here's the advice I'd give you.
And yes, OF COURSE - I'd probably be a little bossy about it.
1. Before you even THINK about a logo, let's talk about your positioning.
I know. You've got a Pinterest board full of beautiful branding, you've already picked your favourite colours and you've probably got a rough idea of what you want your logo to look like.
Love the enthusiasm. But we're not there yet.
Before you spend a penny on design, I want you to understand exactly where your business sits in the market. Who are your competitors? What are they doing well? Where are they falling short? Most importantly, why would someone choose you over them?
"Great customer service" and "passionate about what I do" aren't going to cut it. I'd hope both of those things were a given, if they're not ... time to revisit that drawing board! I'm talking about what genuinely makes you different.
Maybe it's your approach, your experience, your personality, the way you deliver your services or the particular problem you've decided to solve. Whatever it is, we need to find it, understand it and make sure your potential customers can see it too anddd that's where branding comes in.
Your brand isn't just your logo, colours and fonts. It's how you communicate what you do, who you do it for and why it matters. It's the words on your website, the personality in your marketing and the visual identity that ties everything together.
If you're positioning yourself as the premium option in your industry but your messaging sounds like everyone else's and your visuals look like they were thrown together in an afternoon, it simply doesn't tie up together does it? See the gap here?
Your messaging and your visuals need to be telling the same story.
When someone comes across your business, I want them to understand what makes you different without having to work for it. That's what good branding does.
2. It's 2026. You need a bloody website.
Before you tell me you've got an Instagram account, I know. That's lovely. But it's not the same thing. Think about the last time someone recommended a business to you. What did you do?
You Googled them.
You had a little nosey at their website, checked whether they looked legitimate, had a look at their services and probably made a decision about whether you wanted to work with them before you'd even spoken to them.
Your potential customers are doing exactly the same thing, it's not just something that you do personally - everyone in the whole bloody world uses the same systems, so you need to utilise them. Except now, they're not just Googling you...
They're asking the robots.
ChatGPT, Google's AI search experiences and other AI tools are becoming another way people discover businesses, research services and ask for recommendations. Those tools need information to work with.
If your business barely exists online, your services aren't clearly explained and there's very little credible information about what you do, you're making it much harder for search engines and AI tools to understand you, let alone recommend you. Now, having a website doesn't guarantee you'll appear in AI recommendations. But giving these systems clear, accessible, useful information about your business is a pretty sensible place to start.
Your website is your opportunity to tell the whole story.
What you do.
Who you help.
What makes you different.
What it's like to work with you.
And, crucially, what someone needs to do next.
It should be working for your business when you're busy doing the actual work, not sitting there looking pretty and achieving absolutely nothing. And please pleaseee, make sure it works on mobile. We're not in 2008.
A good website isn't an expensive business card. It's one of the hardest-working tools your business can have.
3. Get your Google Business Profile sorted. Seriously.
If your business has a physical location that customers can visit, or you work directly with customers in a local service area, this needs to be on your list as one of the first things you do not six months after you've launched.
I'm talking about your Google Business Profile.
You know when you search for a local business and Google shows you the map, opening hours, photos, reviews and contact details? That's what we're talking about. I know, it can feel MASSIVE can't it - like it's only something that big big established businesses have - but that is not the case. It is Google's way of allowing every business to showcase itself.
It's free, it's incredibly useful and it helps eligible businesses show up in local search results.
But here's the bit I really want you to pay attention to. Reviews. Real people, sharing real experiences of working with your business, you can tell everyone how brilliant you are until you're blue in the face, but when someone else says it? That's a whole different level of trust.
Google reviews give potential customers another reason to feel confident choosing you, and they're one of the signals Google considers when ranking local businesses. So don't just create your profile and forget about it.
Keep your details up to date, add genuine photographs, make sure your services are clear. Ask happy customers to leave reviews and actually take the time to respond to them and don't panic if you work from home or don't have a shopfront. Some service-area businesses are eligible too, provided they meet Google's guidelines. You're building a reputation so make sure people can actually find it, what is all this work for if you are hidden away?
4. Stop hiding behind your shiny new logo.
Right. This one comes with love.
You've invested in your business, you've got the branding sorted, your website looks fabulous and you're finally ready to tell the world what you've been working on.
So where are you?
I don't mean where's your business Instagram account.
I mean YOU.
Where's your face? Your personality? Your expertise? Your opinions?
Why have you suddenly decided that becoming a business owner means you need to disappear behind a perfectly curated grid of graphics?
People buy from people.
Especially when you're a small business and your experience, knowledge and personality are a huge part of what someone is investing in. Now, I'm absolutely not saying you need to become an influencer, film every waking moment of your life or dance around pointing at text on Instagram.
Absolutely not.
But you do need to show up and you need to show up where your ideal customers actually spend their time.
If they're on LinkedIn, why are you putting all your energy into Instagram?
If they're searching Google for answers, why aren't you creating useful content on your website? Where is your blog?
If they're attending industry events, why aren't you getting yourself into those rooms?
Visibility isn't always about being everywhere. It's simply being in the right places, consistently enough that people begin to recognise you, understand what you do and trust you. When someone needs your service, or a friend asks them for a recommendation, you want your business to be the one that comes to mind.
And that doesn't happen because you posted your new logo once and waited for the enquiries to roll in.
You have to give people a reason to remember you.
5. And for the love of God, please don't build your entire brand using AI.
Right. Hereeee we go. (I feel like you already knew I would get to this point - have you been waiting for it? 😏)
I can already hear the arguments.
"It's quicker."
"It's cheaper."
"It gave me loads of ideas."
And I get it. I really do. I also know that you are excited to get your business launched... but why does that mean knocking up a logo in 15 seconds and posting it on Facebook with an AI caption 5 minutes later?? Make that make sense - it is worth taking a step back and doing this whole thing well. Afterall - the years and money you have put into your expertise? Now represented by AI? WHAT?????
AI has its uses. It's a fantastic tool for certain tasks, and I'm not going to sit here pretending it doesn't have a place in modern business. But using it as a tool and handing over your entire brand identity to it are two very different things.
Here's what worries me...
Everything is starting to look and sound the bloody same. The same generic logos. The same polished-but-personality-free imagery. The same website copy telling everyone you're "passionate about delivering exceptional solutions".
You could swap the business names around and nobody would notice. And why? Because people are feeding similar prompts into similar tools and getting similar answers back. AI doesn't know what makes you tick. It doesn't know the years you've spent learning your craft, the conversations you've had with customers or the little details that make your approach completely different from the business down the road.
It only knows what you tell it, and it generates an answer based on patterns in the information it's been trained on.
Anddd...(jumping righttt back to my fisrt point..)
If you haven't worked out your positioning, your audience or what makes you different, how on earth are you expecting a robot to do that for you? You're essentially asking it to make decisions about a business you haven't properly defined yet.
That's not brand strategy its bloody guesswork with a fancy interface.
Yes, you might save money at the beginning. But what happens when your business grows? When you realise your branding doesn't reflect the quality of what you're delivering? When you need proper marketing materials, a website that communicates your value or a visual identity that works across more than one Instagram post? When you pitch yourself to be a speaker and they want you're logo and a bio to write up in their magazine?
You could find yourself going right back to the beginning.
Only this time, you've got an established business to rebrand and potentially a much bigger investment ahead of you. I'm not saying every business needs to spend thousands on branding before making its first sale. That's not realistic.
What I am saying is don't confuse a cheap shortcut with a strong foundation. AI isn't going anywhere, but the trends, aesthetics and shortcuts built around it will keep changing.
Your business needs something more substantial than that. It needs your thinking, your experience, your perspective and your personality.
The one thing your competitors cannot replicate is you.
They can copy a colour palette. They can use the same AI tools. They can even offer similar services. But they cannot be you. You are one of your business's biggest unique selling points. Please don't outsource that to a robot.
And finally? Build a business you're bloody proud to put your name to.
If you were my best friend, I wouldn't be telling you all of this to overwhelm you. I'd be telling you because I want your business to work. I want you to feel confident sending someone your website link without immediately following it up with "just ignore that bit, I'm changing it soon".
I want you to walk into a networking event knowing exactly how to explain what you do.
I want someone to recommend your business and for the person receiving that recommendation to look you up and immediately understand why.
I want you to build something that can grow with you, rather than something you're going to spend the next two years apologising for.
Because starting a business is a big deal. You're putting your ideas, your time, your money and a whole lot of yourself into something you believe in.
Give it the foundations it deserves.
If you need someone in your corner who'll ask the difficult questions, connect the dots and make sure your business looks as good as the work behind it?
Well, that's exactly what I do.
I'm Rachael, the business brain behind Rachael Does Design. I help business owners get clear on their positioning and turn it into branding and websites that make them easier to understand, remember and recommend.
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