How do you turn a family name into a brand?

If you´re any­thing like me, par­ent­hood (or grand­par­ent­hood) prob­a­bly has you reliv­ing many scenes from your own youth. Maybe you´re play­ing Can­dy­land and Uno again, or hid­ing and seek­ing until you´ve used every spot twice. Or you´re watch­ing the same Dis­ney movies until you could repeat them by memory!  Recent­ly, while putting in a Dis­ney movie for my kids , I took a sec­ond look at their very famil­iar brand: sim­ple, yet effec­tive. It must be one of the most wide­ly rec­og­nized sym­bols on earth, and yet 80 years ago, it was a sim­ple busi­ness start­ed by a sin­gle man. Walt Dis­ney built his empire around a vision: imag­i­na­tion, mag­ic, adven­ture, dar­ing heroes and des­per­ate vil­lains! The name has become a brand, and is one of the most wide­ly rec­og­nized names in the his­to­ry of enter­tain­ment. Yes, Dis­ney faces intense com­pe­ti­tion, but when a fam­i­ly sits down to watch a movie and see the Cas­tle logo, they all know what to expect: fam­i­ly friend­ly, dream­like, enter­tain­ing mag­ic! Many ser­vice busi­ness­es also start with a sin­gle per­son, and like Walt´s, the busi­ness name con­tains some part of the owner´s name: Nolan Pain­ing, Stohlman´s Cus­tom Cab­i­nets, Tony and Son Plumb­ing. A busi­ness own­er with a name like this should not con­sid­er chang­ing to a more gener­ic name, like ABC Paint­ing or Qual­i­ty Cab­i­nets. Instead, you should keep the name and focus on the brand and posi­tion­ing state­ment of the com­pa­ny. What is it that sets you apart from the com­pe­ti­tion? What makes you dif­fer­ent? Walt Dis­ney — and every oth­er suc­cess­ful sales or ser­vice com­pa­ny — has answered that one ques­tion: ​“How are we dif­fer­ent?” Can you explain in one sen­tence how your com­pa­ny is unique?