Your business is your baby—but what if your attachment is suffocating its growth? In this episode of The Brand ON! Show, Brandon Coleman Jr takes a hard look at the “Owner’s Forest,” where entrepreneurs get so deep in the woods they lose sight of their brand’s bigger picture. From overconfidence and emotional blind spots to ignoring market signals, he breaks down why being too close can be a brand’s biggest liability. If you think you’ve got branding handled, this episode might just prove you wrong.
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Transcript (with chapter marks)
00:01:59 Introducing The Owner’s Forest
Brandon Coleman Jr: After decades of working with these owners. The pattern is clear. Their closeness to their baby, their company is their biggest pothole. When you’ve poured everything into a vision, years of late nights, endless debates, personal sacrifices, it is damn near impossible to step back and see it objectively.
00:03:06 Entrepreneurial Tunnel Vision
Brandon Coleman Jr: Number one is entrepreneurial tunnel vision. I call it the dreamers blindfold. Entrepreneurial tunnel vision is like crawling into a cave of your own making. You birth an idea, you nurture it and obsess over it, very detail. How it’ll play out consumes you.
00:04:18 Stepping Back
Brandon Coleman Jr: Stepping back isn’t just hard, it’s unnatural. We don’t blame you for it, but you got to change it, because without that shift, your brand’s misalignment can be even worse as it hits the market.
00:04:37 Emotional Anchor
Brandon Coleman Jr: When your business is your baby, detachment is a pipe dream. You’ve named it, you fed it, you watched it grow. Every scratch and scar is personal. That intimacy clouds your judgment. You can’t see the brand as your customers do, because you’re living inside of it.
00:05:52 Overconfidence
Brandon Coleman Jr: Entrepreneurs always know what to do. They just don’t do it. You built a ten million empire. You invented a widget that’s changing lives, that success convinces you that you’re a branding genius too. Why wouldn’t it? You’ve cracked harder codes than a logo or a tagline, right? Wrong. Branding is a different beast.
00:07:29 Resistance to Feedback
Brandon Coleman Jr: Tunnel Vision builds a fortress. Feedback bounces off like arrows. You know your market, you know your product. You know your vibe better than anyone. So when an outsider says this isn’t working, it’s personal. You dig in not because they’re wrong, but because admitting it means you’re questioning your entire journey.
00:09:09 The Growth Ceiling
Brandon Coleman Jr: Extrapolating a solo triumph into a scalable model takes new eyes, market shifts, customer vibes, competitive threats, but you’re still staring at the trees you planted in the forest.