I STOPPED TWEAKING MY BRANDING AND MARKET POSITIONING
As an ex-brand strategist, this one was tough for me.
Somewhere along my journey, I’d bought into the popular idea that “I was my brand” and that everything I was presenting on the outside, somehow had to encompass everything I was on the inside.
I’d gone against everything I knew about strategic branding and proceeded to overthink everything about the brand I was presenting to the world.
Every single time I had a personal evolution, or my interests changed, my branding would follow.
I mean it had to right? If I was my brand, surely my brand had to constantly change to keep up with the changes I was experiencing in my life.
I began to spend huge amounts of time thinking about things like:
Was this colour really ‘me’ enough?
Do I consider myself a coach or a mentor?
Was I a business coach or a business alchemist?
Now that I’ve discovered insert new hobby or interest should I include that as part of my branding? How will it all fit into a cohesive image?
Queue the endless evolution of my brand – and the endless frustration that came with that.
My colours and fonts changed 5x a month.
And my social media bio changed more than I changed underwear. (Okay not quite that much).
The biggest issue with the movement behind ‘being’ your brand – is that it’s virtually impossible – since human beings are constantly evolving – and it also creates massive confusion for your audience.
When you are constantly changing and evolving at lightspeed (as humans tend to do) and then reflecting these changes in your opinions, designs and colours and voice, you create this feeling of instability when your clients peek into your brand.
Things began to explode for me when I finally stopped trying to use my brand, as a way to personally express every aspect of who I was and instead focused on answering the question:
“Who do I need to show up as, authentically, so that my clients can connect with me, and trust me as someone who could lead them to their next level in business?”
So I finally stopped tweaking my brand and my logo designs. I stopped revisiting my social media templates in Canva for the 5th time in a week and I realized that underneath the obsession with my brand being ‘a perfect reflection of who I was’ was the fear of actually showing up and putting myself out into the world. (and the inevitable rejection that comes with the territory)
You see, as it turns out, I was using tweaking my branding as a way to avoid the boring unsexy stuff (which also scared the hell out of me at the time) that was required to grow my business, like having conversations, building relationships and making offers.