Starting up a business is hard work, really hard work. Every day, the founders have to juggle mundane tasks: pitching new clients or investors, making sure there’s toner in the printer, sweet-talking clients, and managing contractors—all while having cash-flow-related panic attacks.

With all these daily commitments constantly eating up your precious time, it leaves little room for the important stuff, the reason you started the business to begin with: to do things your own way, by pursuing your own unique vision and building an organization around it. However, if a company is to grow healthily, it needs a defined identity. That’s easier said than done. The branding process is not complex in itself, but it does bring up difficult and complex discussions about who you are and what you want to achieve and how to express that through language, interactions, and design. First, you need to figure out who you are.