Emotional Branding

How much of your life story should you use to market your company?

The walls of Rodney Evans's cluttered New York City office give you a sense of who he is. There is the Knicks home schedule scribbled on a whiteboard. There is a certificate of merit that his daughter received at nursery school. There are framed photos of Muhammed Ali with Malcolm X that Evans bought for five bucks from a street vendor, and also a huge poster of Aretha Franklin. And by the door is a photo of the U.S. Capitol taken on October 16, 1995, the day of the Million Man March.

Evans snapped that shot himself, standing on the fender of a truck for a better vantage point. The event lives in his memory as a turning point. "It was good to see so many African American brothers from places like Alaska and New Mexico," he recalls. "We talked about really helping ourselves, so when I came back, I gave two weeks' notice, quit my job, and started a company."

Seven years later, Skyline Connections Inc. [#3] has grown to revenues of $14 million. The company started out as a hardware reseller but has evolved into a business that sells network and information-technology services to clients like Lockheed Martin and Bank of America. Evans says his ambition is to take his business to $100 million. With a five-year compound annual growth rate of 124%, his claim cannot be dismissed.

STRAIGHT-UP COMPETITION: "It's not my style to sell anything other than my services and products."

Skyline happens to be the highest-ranked minority-owned company on Inc's fourth annual Inner City 100 list. Many entrepreneurs would consider that credential a major achievement, but Evans has historically approached the "minority" label with some reluctance. "Obviously, when I walk in the door and hand you a business card that says I'm president and CEO, you know that Skyline is a black-owned business," Evans says. "But it's not my style to sell anything other than my services and products. I like to compete straight up." The CEO, 49, asserts the standard Skyline pitch is to "sharpen a pencil and come up with some good numbers."

His way is not the only way, however. Among the entrepreneurs on this year's Inner City 100, quite a few offer a provocative contrast to Evans's "numbers first, identity second" approach. They seem much more comfortable crafting and then selling a story around their own identity, ranging from their background to their skin color. Davin Wedel, who runs Global Protection [#94], a condom manufacturer, wraps his company in slacker slickness by telling people how he started it from his college dorm. Veronica Rose, CEO of Aurora Electric [#5], says 80% of her potential clients want "all the details" about what her life as a female electrician is like. Divorcée-cum-CEO Carol Latham, who employs many former welfare mothers at her polymer manufacturer Thermagon [#16], was cited in Thomas Petzinger Jr.'s The New Pioneers, a noted business book. And Lanre Olotu, who emigrated from Nigeria in 1980, says he details his background on almost every sales call he makes for his company, Printing Methods [#61].

STARTING FROM SCRATCH: "I don't have connections. I haven't lived in this town for 40 years. I was born in Brazil, and my parents are both immigrants. I think I lose a lot because I don't have that network that goes back a generation. That's a very big deal."

Using your life story to sell your company is one form of what experts call emotional marketing -- getting customers to take an interest in your business not just because you offer a snazzy value proposition but because they feel something about your company. If CEOs are comfortable talking about themselves -- and can connect their story to their customers' needs -- emotional branding can be a freebie competitive advantage for a small business. "I never wanted it to be about me, but people got such a kick out of me," says Rose. "That's what I needed to do to get my foot in the door." But as Rose and other CEOs on the Inner City 100 can attest, tying a company's identity to its leader can be a tricky proposition, both for the emotional toll it can take on the CEOs themselves and for their companies' long-term growth.

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