For years, my small bookstore’s brand was built on a single, serious word: curated. I curated the shelves. I curated the events. My Instagram captions were little essays on literary merit. It felt professional, and to me, professional meant successful. But it also meant stiff. Quiet. A place people respected but didn’t necessarily feel excited to walk into on a random Tuesday. The turning point wasn’t a business seminar or a marketing book. It was a t-shirt.
My nephew showed up for a visit wearing a shirt that simply said got too silly goose. He wore it completely unironically, just beaming. Every time I read it, it made me smile. More than that, it made me think. That phrase had zero pretense. It was pure, joyful, unapologetic personality. It didn’t try to sell anything; it just was. And people loved it. They asked him about it. It started conversations. My carefully ‘curated’ store branding never did that. It was a quiet wake-up call. My business had all the substance, but it was missing a pulse. It needed a bit of that silly goose energy.
The heavy cost of taking yourself too seriously
I started to look at my own industry with new eyes. I saw other small business owners making the same mistake. The coffee shop that was so minimalist it felt like a lab. The boutique where the staff seemed afraid to laugh. We were all so worried about being taken seriously that we forgot to be relatable. Customers can smell that tension. They walk in, feel the formal atmosphere, and walk out without a real connection. Your brand becomes a museum exhibit, not a living room. The transaction is purely functional. You sell a book, they buy it, and the relationship ends at the door. I realized my serious brand wasn’t a shield of credibility; it was a wall keeping people at a distance.
The data backed this feeling. My customer emails were formal. Social media engagement was polite but minimal. My most loyal customers were lovely, but they were a small circle. There was no sense of a wider community, no inside joke, no shared identity. I was providing a service, but I wasn’t building a tribe. The goal stopped being about looking like a ‘proper’ bookstore and started being about becoming *their* bookstore.
Injecting personality without losing professionalism
This was the scary part. I wasn’t going to rebrand the shop with cartoon characters. I still loved literature. The trick was to layer personality onto the existing professionalism, not replace it. It started with small, human touches. I wrote the new book arrival signs by hand, adding a one-line personal thought instead of just the publisher’s blurb. “This mystery made me miss my subway stop,” or “Perfect for a rainy afternoon with too much tea.” I started a shelf called “Staff Confessions” with books we loved but were maybe a little embarrassed about.
Most importantly, I let my own voice into the communication. In newsletters, I stopped writing “We are pleased to announce…” and started writing “I got my hands on a few advance copies this week and one is SO good.” It was a subtle shift from a corporate ‘we’ to a personal ‘I’. The professional backbone—knowledgeable selections, clean store, good service—remained solid. But now it had a heartbeat. People began to respond to that voice. They’d come in and ask, “Which one was the subway stop book?” The conversation started.
- Handwritten, opinionated shelf tags replaced generic printed ones.
- Social media posts asked for weekend reading plans instead of just featuring book covers.
- We shared small, real moments, like the store cat napping on a poetry anthology.
The tangible results of a lighter touch
Loosening up the brand didn’t cheapen it; it activated it. The change was measurable. Within a few months, our email open rates increased because people recognized my conversational tone in the subject line. In-store, people lingered longer. They talked to each other. They asked for recommendations based on those silly shelf tags. A book club asked if they could meet in the back corner every week. They didn’t just buy books; they bought into the space.
The biggest surprise was how it affected my team. My part-time staff, who once just rang up sales, started offering their own book suggestions freely. They felt permission to be themselves at work. That authenticity is something customers feel immediately. You cannot fake a genuine laugh between a staff member and a regular. That atmosphere became our best marketing. People told their friends to come not just for the books, but for the vibe. Our professional competence was assumed; our personality became the reason to return.
- Email engagement grew as the voice became more personal and direct.
- Customer interactions lengthened, building stronger relational ties.
- Staff morale and initiative improved, creating a more authentic environment.
Looking back, the lesson was simple. A brand is a promise, and my original promise was “We know books.” That’s fine, but it’s a commodity. The new, unspoken promise is “We know books, and we’re people you’d like to talk to about them.” That silly goose shirt was a reminder that people connect with joy and humanity first. They trust expertise, but they love personality. For any business owner hiding behind a wall of professionalism, consider what happens if you let a little of your own goose out. The results might just be seriously good.
