Cleartag, a branding consultancy firm started by Maya Karanouh and her partner, Tarek Dajani, in 1999, started out as a web design firm and soon evolved into a full-service brand, image, and product development company. The partners started off both working in one company, but soon had to spin off into two companies: Tarek now handles the software development company and Maya handles Cleartag. “A lot of companies do not provide the full service, but we do,” says Maya. “We build a branding system and help the clients each step of the way—from advertising and web design to public relations, marketing, consulting and product development. We act as their in-house team.”

Cleartag sets itself apart from the competition by providing branding services that work for companies of all types and sizes. “We appeal to small companies as well as large companies,” says Maya.  “We work with the tiniest little travel agency as well as the biggest bank in Lebanon. I give the same personal touch to both, with the same high quality, so that that even the smallest travel agency can look like the biggest because of the graphics and branding we provide, and the biggest bank can have an appealing, small-community image. In six years we’ve grown from two employees to twenty-five, which in Lebanon, because it is a small country, is considered a medium-sized business. And now we have clients all over the world, including the United States, the Middle East, and Europe.”

Cleartag prides itself in being on top of the emerging trends in visual media. “As you know, the visual media has a huge impact on us as a society,” says Maya. “Cleartag creates images for products and for companies that resonate with the world we live in. We build their images by presenting actual designs that go with the image they want to project to the world. If they are professional, or corporate, or artsy—we create the right image for them so that they can sell their products and services. It’s a return on their investment, because we ultimately help them sell who they are as well as their products or services. It’s not that I just create pretty graphics. I am responsible for dressing them up so that the image they project to the world is properly targeted, properly executed.”

So how did she get where she is today? While Maya was in school studying architecture, the market in Lebanon was slowing down. Just before she graduated, there was an economic boom, but after graduation, the economy slowed down again. She went to work for a few years for an architectural firm, but soon discovered that being an architect was not the career she envisioned. “I was 25 years old. I was going to take a break, maybe write a book, maybe do something else. I wanted my time to be my own, rather than being directed by someone else all the time. So I started writing the book and a friend of mine, Tarek, suggested that we start our own business, doing something really small—such as computer animation. It was just a spark of an idea. We both knew we wanted to do something new, and the web was booming at the time in Lebanon, so we thought the web would provide a good way for us to infiltrate the market. At the time, the web was still relatively new and lots of companies wanted to get their websites done but had no idea how to go about it. So we actually started off as a web design firm and over the years have changed our course, as many businesses do.”

Maya was always self-motivated and independent. When she was twenty-three-years old she organized a poetry-writing competition, in which she asked entrants to write a poem about Beirut. Three years later, she organized a national postcard-drawing competition, asking entrants to draw a postcard representing Lebanon. “I’m quite independent and have always been considered a leader. I am also very self-motivated. If I put my mind to something I will dig, dig, dig until I get there. I think you have to have a lot of passion and believe in yourself, not to mention a lot of confidence. If things go bad, you’re going to have a lot of black days when you’re going to want to shut down the company and it’s going to be really hard—a lot of negativity. But if you really believe in yourself and in what you’re doing, you can do it. It involves a lot of self-focus and a lot of sacrifice.”

Speaking of sacrifice, like many other small businesses before it, Cleartag started off with very little capital. Maya and her partner borrowed office space from a friend, and within seven months they had some clients and had to rent a permanent space. But there was no income in the first years because everything they made they put back into the company. As Maya says, “The major risk was being able to sustain ourselves and not having a lot of money to spend on going out or even extras of any kind. You also sacrifice a lot of your personal life when you are starting up a company because you work all the time and you’re not necessarily getting paid. In those first few years, each project that comes in is a blessing. It’s not easy for a 25-year-old kid to convince these companies to trust her with their branding, trying to infiltrate a market you really know nothing about. We really learned web development and design on the fly.”

Then, not long after starting the company, the dot-com bust eliminated a portion of their business almost overnight. Says Maya, “I think that was one of the saddest moments in our business history. We had to close down that division of the company. We lost some money and we had put a lot of effort into it, but it simply did not work out. I don’t think it failed because of us, but because the market experienced a huge downturn. Nevertheless, we learned a lot from that time. I used to be filled with regret about it, but now, looking back, I see that I learned a lot from those mistakes and that the experience helped my company grow in different ways. Having my partner there really helped. We held each other up and motivated each other to keep going.”

Speaking of growth, Maya sees strategizing for the future as the most important key to the long-term success of the company. “Sometimes we focus so much on the day-to-day operations of the company, that we forget that we need to think about the long-term vision. Where will we be next year or five years from now? Where will we open up other branches? I think it’s also the issue of being scared to give up a bit of control, scared to take the next steps, especially if we have to rely on anyone but ourselves. Not letting go is one of the key impediments to our growth, but we’ll certainly have to deal with it eventually because you can only grow so large when you are in full control of the entire enterprise.”

But how does a branding company like Cleartag get those new customers to keep the company growing? “We don’t have any advertising. Everything is basically word of mouth and one-to-one. We don’t even have any salespeople in Cleartag, which is kind of weird for a company of this size that focuses on service—you’d expect a huge sales staff, but that’s simply not the case. We rely on going to events, speaking engagements, socializing, and approaching people that we know in the market for referrals.”

When asked why people like to work at Cleartag, Maya points to the fact that everyone who comes to work there learns so much. “We introduce our employees to such a wide range of experiences that they feel they are here to learn as well as to give. They learn the full-service treatment for clients, from web design to how to approach clients , how to talk to clients and then how to accomplish their branding goals. We are really laid back here. While we ask for loyalty and responsibility, we also have no strict hierarchy or bureaucracy—no one is either above you or beneath you. It’s a very horizontal organization rather than vertical.”

When an employee chooses to leave, Maya always asks what they liked the most about working for Cleartag. “Most people leave for personal reasons or because they want to work outside of the country. They always cry when they give their notice. I am always on the side of the employees. I really like the concept of creating a family-based atmosphere. Since we are all here most of the time, so many days out of the week, we see each other more than we see almost anyone else. I really try to create the concept of family within the office space.”

Retaining employees is important to Maya. While she has not yet implemented a system of profit sharing, she always makes sure that salaries are commensurate with the workload, that employee salaries are increased annually, and that bonuses are doled out whenever the company can afford it. She adds, “We always try to reward employees in whatever way we can. Many times we give them a day off when they have worked overtime to meet a deadline. Because of the amount of work we do and the deadlines we have to meet, this can be a pressure cooker. But we don’t encourage that type of atmosphere. And no matter what kind of pressure I am under, I never yell at my staff. I simply do not believe in it.” Maya feels that anyone can dole out money, but that not everyone can create an atmosphere that people like to work in every day.

To attract people to the firm, Cleartag uses employee recruitment services but also keeps track of what the competition is doing—and then seeks out the people behind the best work. “If we see work that we like, we ask who did it and try to find them. That is pretty easy to do in Lebanon because it’s a very small market and everyone knows everyone else. We do advertise for positions, reviewing portfolios and conducting interviews. But one of the most important aspects of a potential employee is their attitude and their personality—whether they will fit into the mood of the company. You have to be very laid back and calm and be able to be a member of the team we have already established here.”

The company’s development was not always smooth. At the start, Maya was not really aware of the obstacles she would face. “We were so young, so inexperienced, that we did not know how to handle cash-flow issues or how to find clients and make them feel confident that we could handle the work. Although both my partner and I had design backgrounds, we did not have an understanding of financial factors. You think at the beginning that these financial issues will just work themselves out, and they never do. I cannot stress how important it is at every level to get a handle on finances. But we were young and passionate and so excited about getting started that we did not see the negatives. I had to learn to study the market and how to handle our accounting and payroll and tax issues. Gradually, we learned that our entrepreneurial passion would carry us through the tough times, but that our experience and knowledge was necessary to grow.”

In terms of financing mechanisms or approaches that Cleartag used to fuel the development of the company, Maya had this to say: “It was fortunate that in the first few years of the business we automatically reinvested the profit back into the company. If we ever decided to approach any institution for financing, I know that now we could get it because we have a credit history and we have been successful. We have been approached by investors to open offices elsewhere in the Middle East, so I know our model of doing business works. I know we are a viable enterprise. I know there’s value to my business, and I know what we offer to investors that other companies may not. But again, it’s hard for me and Tarek to bring someone else into the business since we have done it on our own for so long.”

Maya says that when they first started out, they tried to apply for loans, but were unsuccessful. “The market can be very bad here and Lebanon at the time did not promote entrepreneurship. There were no such things as money being given out to help startups, or angel investors, or venture capital firms. Nobody would give us money because, well, who were we? We didn’t have any credit history. We didn’t have anything yet for them to invest in, and it was really hard. Now we can pick and choose, which is good for us. Had we started today, it would not have been as difficult.”

Maya’s hopes for the future are undimmed—the company is healthy and continues to grow. During the next year, Cleartag plans to open two new offices, one in Dubai and one in Doha, the capital of Qatar. Says Maya, “This has been a really good year for us because of all the new projects we are involved in and also because entrepreneurship has taken off in Lebanon. I am hoping that this generation and future generations will really take this spirit and run with it. People in Lebanon often have very high levels of education, and young people display a lot of energy. So I am hoping that the government will be able to help direct their energies somewhat. Our government did not until very recently have a system to support entrepreneurs. But now we are getting a lot of funding from the European Union and the United States, which is good. It has been a breakthrough year for Lebanon.”