Embrace change, in your work and your brand
What happens to your creative confidence in the midst of big changes in your world, and in THE world?
Are you having any trouble facing how brilliant you are, how significant your work is at this moment in time - even with all the unknowns?
That showing up with who you are and what you have is more important than ever?
The ways we show up are evident in our branding. Branding is the WAY we show up, if we have a business.
People think a brand is something you do when you have certainty.
"This is what I do. This is who I do it for. This is the result it creates. This is how it feels. This is how it sounds. This is how it looks." Brand it, set it, forget it.
We feel like if any of those pieces are unclear, we can't invest our time, our hopes, and our money into bringing our brand to its next level with gusto.
There's something about the branding process, and the rebranding process, that strikes imposter syndrome and "not good enough" and "not ready enough" and "gotta get it more perfect" into our hearts. That's nothing but a bunch of white-supremacist perfectionism values talking. Let's take the car keys away from those demons and let our present-moment-co-creator selves take the wheel.
It can be hard to face how brilliant you are in all of your unfinished, in-process glory. That the unfinished work-in-progress space IS the place of your best work.
Because: It's your changing-ness that your biggest gifts come from. It's your learning that makes you a leader.
The places where you let the changing world change you, disrupt you, challenge your identity and what you think you know -
Those can be places of visionary creativity for your work.
BRANDING from inside those shifting places gives you the opportunity to share the VALUES that are becoming ever clarified through change.
Branding from these questions lets you share your VISION, which is always evolving along with the movements and communities and conversations that grow you.
Branding from this uncertainty allows your VOICE to be one of connection and presence - not performativity (in the harmful sense. You know I love performativity when it's about theatrical play.)
So don't hold back. Put energy and attention towards clarifying your vision, your voice - because your brand is a prototype of the world you want to make more possible. And in that world, you get to be visible, central, useful, connected and present, as the ever changing being that you already are. No more waiting to be "better prepared" to invest your time, energy, hopes, and money into building the next stages of your visionary brand.
This was originally published (June 26, 2020) for the Bureau of Tactical Imagination's email subscribers. To receive our weekly free education and inspiration for your business and brand building efforts, sign up here.