You might be pondering, does it really matter, I just need branding because it’s something I “have to have,” you learned that while you were working in corporate, so you know it’s got to be right, right?!
And you’ve probably done what everyone does when they first start, created a brand that made you look “professional” or at least what you thought professional should be. But actually it made you look like a corporate clone. You accepted it, and said to yourself, “well I have a brand now I can start talking about my business.” It was like your permission slip to get started.
What actually happened is you sanded off your whole personality - ouch! that sounds uncomfortable!
You were scared to add that dash of bright green, or purple, or orange, or… wait I’m just listing colours now. I love all the colours! Sorry back on topic. You didn’t add the you into your brand because you thought it was “unprofessional”.
And I get why, when you’ve started a business, suddenly you have all these other hats that you have to wear. Hats that you didn’t know you’d have to wear, and not only that, all the decisions sit firmly on your shoulders. No one to ask, no one to bounce ideas around with, just you and all this pressure. So if you can get something off that long to do list, so you can go off and do the “thing” you actually know how to do, you want to be doing that.
Meanwhile you’re still shaking off the corporate box you were smushed into, and that doesn’t happen overnight. It’s slow steps, figuring out what you want to offer, realising actually this is what I have always done, turns out I’m really passionate about “this” instead. Figuring out “who” you actually are. I know that sounds stupid, you’re going to say “I know who I am” but trust me, six months in and you will have learned a whole lot about you that you didn’t know. You will have met people who support you and inspire you. Suddenly you’ll start to feel like you, maybe for the first time.
The brand you started off with felt safe and “professional”, but it was based on your corporate roots and it didn’t make you happy, it ticked a box on the to do list. Your brain did a little happy dance and said “yes, that’s one thing done.”
Unfortunately we don’t always see the difference between corporate and professional. The two aren’t linked they are different. Think about it professional brings different things to mind. A solicitor, person in a suit, knows their stuff. A tattoo artist, with tattoos, who knows their stuff. How someone dresses isn’t an indicator of professionalism. It comes from how they work with clients, what they know, what their skills are, how they handle times when things go wrong. So being professional isn’t about having a corporate brand, it’s about how you talk about what you do, what people say about working with you. And I know you know your stuff so you’re all good there.
And that brand you started with? Every time you use it, it’s uncomfortable. Like that top you shrunk in the wash that just doesn’t sit comfortably anymore. You add the words, you put out the post, you build a website or a lead magnet and it’s ok but you just aren’t happy with it.
Why does that even matter?
It’s holding you back. When something doesn’t feel right you don’t want to use it. You spend an afternoon looking at your brand trying to fix it. Down a rabbit hole of searching, looking, overthinking, frustration and inevitably giving up.
All this takes space up in your brain, the last thing you need is more stuff in your brain. I’m pretty sure there’s a lot going on in there, ideas, new services, something you want to change, something you want to set up, and at some point have something to eat and get some sleep!
You might be thinking, but isn’t this how branding is supposed to be, a thing that causes you to overthink every decision?
No, absolutely not.
When you are happy with your brand, it feels like you, it has a beautiful flow. That’s when everything falls into place. Instead of thinking about your brand as another thing on the to do list. It becomes effortless, you know how to apply your brand, what fonts to use, which colours to use where. Suddenly you are worrying more about what words to put on the page not how the design looks.
And the really, really important bit, getting your personality into your brand. When you see you in your brand that’s when you are happy with your brand.
Wondering how you get you in your brand so that you can be really happy with it?
Book a call below and we can have an informal chat about how that can happen.
