How Brand Evolution Happens {& To Me}

A year ago this week, I was up to big stuff. And here I am again, up to big stuff.

This very week last March, I started Abby Kerr Ink. My retail boutique wasn’t even closed three weeks before I was in my accountant’s office, filing papers for a new business entity. This is the way my entrepreneurial spirit moves me: one done and on to the next. In June of 2010, I took Abby Kerr Ink online and found a much bigger market of creative businesses for my copywriting, consulting, and coaching services.

It’s been quite a year, from last March to this one. Personally, it’s been a year of considerable unrest — leaving a four-year relationship, sojourning through troubled times with family members, and more personal turning-over-the-soil than I’ve experienced since . . . undergrad? At times this past year, I felt as if I was a thirteen year old trapped in a thirty-something’s body. Maybe you can relate.

All of the discomfort was trying to tell me something.

The folded corners of my life weren’t quite meeting up neatly. Everything wanted to unfold. Things needed a new shape.

Photo courtesy of LindsayMcMichael.com. Used with permission.

I wrote here about business renovation and why it’s not only an expected part of being a creative person but an essential part. Brand evolution is necessary to keep your ideas relevant and your point of view piqued.

Today begins a new phase of the brand evolution of Abby Kerr Ink.

My e-newsletter subscribers have had an inkling that a change was coming within my business for some time now. Today’s the day I start unfolding that new phase for the world — and for you — because I know you’ve been waiting for it.

I want to unfold, /
I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, /
Because where I am folded, /
There I am a lie . . .

— Rainer Maria Rilke

You haven’t just been waiting for my gift to unfold. We’re all holding our breath in anticipation of each other’s unfolding. Until the moment we step into our rightful realms, we’re secret-keepers toiling in busy-ness {even beautiful, impressive busy-ness}, counting breaths until it’s time to utter the teaching we’re ordained for.

Brand evolution happens at the collision of our innate gifts and talents with our right people’s accidental realization of them.

“Oh my God, you’re good at that.”

“You know you’re a genius in this area.”

“You’re the only person I’d trust to give input on this project.”

We all see each other so much more clearly than we see ourselves. We have extra sensory perception when it comes to other’s brand evolution.

My evolution is coming from an intensely deep place — but it was obvious to my inner circle before it was obvious to me.

Over the past year of writing copy for websites, preaching nichification, consulting on niche-y marketing, and coaching creatives deeper into their entreprenerurial vision, my clients and close friends told me a hundred times what my strangely powerful talent was.

“Of course that’s what you do!” one exclaimed.

“You’re the only person I’d hire to do that,” another told me.

“I trust you implicity when it comes to that stuff. You’re my tastemaker,” said a third.

It was when I started listening to and leading with that strangely powerful talent that I realized, “Holy crap. I don’t want to do anything but this.”

You, too, have a strangely powerful talent. It’s the thing that’s so ingrained in your thought patterns, you don’t even notice it. It’s the thing that friends light up at when you do it in front of them. It’s the thing people really hire you for, regardless of what your Services page says you do. It’s that skill you bring to the table more powerfully than anyone else, regardless of training, certification, or years of experiences. It’s that knack of yours that you feel your way into.

Tomorrow’s my birthday, and it’s also the exact one-year anniversary of Abby Kerr Ink. Feels like an auspicious day to declare my new realm and lead this new conversation that I see you’re ready to have.

Hope you’ll meet me here tomorrow as I download the newest and truest from my foundation into yours.

Would love to hear your take on brand evolution in the comments. Do you suspect you’re overlooking a strangely powerful talent of your own?