Getting thrown off track and recovering from minor ripoffs

Recently I found out someone ripped off my work. It was a cheap knock off, by an expensive brand designer, of some beautiful work I did with a beloved client over the course of several years.

It happens, eventually and often, to everyone who does good work. And this situation was minor in terms of damage to me and my client. But it did create some insight for me, after I recovered from my immediate, knee-jerk feelings about it, which (like always) were clear signals of where I still falter in my focus and confidence.

I wanted to get personal and share it with you, because I know you struggle too, in your own ways, with confidence in your own work and/or business - and we are learning together.

So here's what happened. I found out about the ripoff. Then, I checked out the brand designer's site, and saw who she has worked with (big people), and continues to position herself to work with (big people). She does creative, polished work. I like some of it. She seems to be doing well, and is good at her craft (I think; unless it's all copied, but who can know?). I started doubting myself. Maybe this is a coincidence? Maybe she doesn't even know about my work? Maybe....

In a flash, I felt that I should have taken her route. Instead of training and coaching and educating, I should have become a high-end brand designer exclusively. Instead of making my services available to many, I should focus on a few, and leverage that visibility to get more "big names." I felt less-than. I felt "unprofessional."

And then I caught myself: in the grips of both doubting my own reality, and comparing my thoughtful life choices to someone I have never met - and someone who had clearly just ripped off my ideas for profit.

And this is what I remembered (let the manifesto begin!):

Yes, it's important that we deal with our "negative beliefs" about money and work on our "money mindsets," to use the parlance of the coaching industry - which can be very, very useful. I do these things on the regular.

And, it's good to understand that there is something called a class system, and its actively manipulating our feelings at all times to keep us distracted from creating the society and the economy and the culture and the work lives we want, so that it can keep reproducing itself.

It was how classism got internalized in me that made me forget for a minute that my choices in my business have actually all been heading me more in the direction of the life, world, economy, society and culture I want. That my choices have been good and worthy of respect. That this other designer’s model of doing business is neither better, nor worse, than mine. (That's a signal to look for classism - "better than" and "worse than" language in your own mind. MORE/LESS professional, MORE/LESS successful, MORE/LESS respectable, etc).

It's more than just an internal thing. The system is designed to make us feel wrong when we defy the class identities set out for us, even a little.

So what am I really about?

The life, the world, the economy, society and culture I want, are a place where the tools of visual thinking, culture making and visual storytelling - the tools of tactical imagination - are available abundantly to all of us, as is our birthright.

I want all small business owners to be powerful creative directors of our work. So many of us are building businesses with heart, with soul, with vision. We come to business because we need to make money, we want freedom and control over how we do it, and we want to make a contribution to the world while feeding our families and communities.

It can be hard, because you can't easily escape the unworkable economic system of advanced capitalism. That's why we are all out here trying to find the right formula, trying to sort out the get rich quick schemes from the honestly good strategies, trying to work the system while resisting the system. Trying to get our minds and hearts clear so we can do it with integrity. Exploiting our own bodies and energy because something has to give somewhere. Picking back up and figuring out "self care." It's a challenge.

But it all matters. We are each in our own way a part of the bigger changes that are here, and that are coming. As small business owners we are a huge economic force. A huge cultural force.

And part of how culture changes is through brands.

There are many ways to define and understand brands and branding. As a tool of capitalism in the hands of unethical business, branding has been used for evil, no doubt about it. Case in point: the tremendous violence that rallies around the brand story Make America Great Again.

It has also been used as a vehicle for positive change: think of Black Lives Matter. The power of that phrase, in service of a movement, is undeniable.

Whether you love or hate the word "brand", if you have a small business, you have one.

So you might as well love it: and recognize it as the culture of your work.

It's YOUR small piece of the larger culture, that one we are all creating together.

It's your communication method, your change agent, your voice and your vehicle. As one small being in a great ecosystem of culture, your brand changes everything it touches, and ripples infinitely out into the shared culture of the worlds you inhabit - just like all good art.

A good, imaginative, regenerative, visionary piece of culture feeds everyone. It brings reciprocity to you - bringing you people, attention, funds. It becomes a vehicle for communicating and delivering the good work you do to the world, so your good work can make its magic, and change culture.

So back to my moment today, of feeling "stolen from", and the fever of comparisonitis. Because of my own internalized classism, which tells me that until I have a big, shiny, slick, designer life with a long list of big, shiny, slick clients, I am Nothing.

In that moment I forgot that I do have a pretty nice list of big clients and jobs in my past, and I walked away from that life. Hehe. But I also forgot this:

While I occasionally take on a big branding project with a specific client, It's not my business model any more to work with a small handful of people, one design at a time. (No shade to those doing that - if you pick the right people, you can make change that way too, and its a fine strategy. It's just not what I'm doing).

I'm here to share and collaborate with the tools of visual thinking, visual storytelling, and cultural work that I have been privileged to learn in the worlds of art, academia, design and activism, with other small business owners like me - so we can be more and more effective, powerful, successful, well resourced entrepreneurs and cultural changers.

I'm here to create situations in which we can find our full expression in the work we do, learning the tools of artists and cultural producers, and becoming great creative directors of all we do - THAT'S my mission, and how I make change in the world. It redefines what "professional" and "successful" means - in contrast to what I was taught by a system that doesn't serve people and movements the way I want to serve people and movements.

So, what about you?

Have you fully claimed that you not only have a business, but that you have a brand?

Is your brand a full expression of the power of your work and the beauty of your vision and values?

Do you know that the choices you make get to be based on that vision and those values, whether or not they align with the popular culture of the market/industry you are in?

And if they don't align, and you don't fit into the dominant standard of what APPEARS "successful" as a business or a brand, do you know that you are no better OR WORSE than people who do?

Let's keep redefining "professional," and "successful" - not on the terms of the class system or capitalist culture, but according to the terms of the more beautiful world we are bringing into being with our good work.

Love,

Amy