I groove on driving metaphors. Glittering roads, propulsion, shifting gears, forward momentum.
In real life, I drive a 2003 Honda. Go figure.
You can drive, in your business, however you want to. You can take the backroads and get to your destination more slowly. Or you can take the freeway and really zoom ahead. The choice, quite honestly and actually, is yours.
But if you’re gonna drive — and babe, I know you are — we need to talk about brand fuel.
Because too many of you are still thinking of your brand as an outward layer you apply to the ‘real work’ that’s going on inside your business.
When ideally, your suite of branding signals is as much the ‘real work’ as the work you do with your clients, the goods you sell to your customers, and the content you create to market it all. Branding is the same art — and comes from the same heart — as creating, connecting, and selling.
And I’m not just talking about hiring an expensive web designer who gets your vibe and can translate it effectively.
I’m talking about your presence in your business and how that fuels every choice you make, from your logo font to your pricing structure to whether you, like me, would ever call your readers ‘babe.’
It’s all signaling and all signaling is branding.
We need a serious perspective check. You need to know where your brand fuel comes from so you can keep your business’s motor running.
A long time ago {in internet years}, I started Abby Kerr Ink as a copywriter. I picked a road whose sidewalk I’d been walking down for a while {web marketing copy for creative businesses, which I learned, then studied deeply, via writing for my own boutique} and began to drive. Got clients, got busy, turned out some great copy for some neat businesses.
But I knew that it wasn’t The All for me.
Writing copy was one medium to use my writing gift, but I quickly had to own that it wasn’t my preferred medium. I found it hard. Not just challenging {as your great work should be}, but hard.
It wasn’t just the work that was off for me. It was also my relationship to most of my audience and clients. Oh, the relationships were going somewhere alright. I just didn’t feel totally lit up and powerful in the context of where they were going.
When I joined the cast of Action Studio 1.0 back in the Fall of 2010, I knew that Sinclair was on to something with her brand archetype work. {Not just Sinclair, but enterprising Fortune 500s and with-it creative solopreneurs everywhere.} I did big work inside the Studio. I made amazing friends. I revolutionized my business from the foundation up. {Oh, and in case you haven’t noticed, I no longer offer copywriting.}
I found my brand fuel. And now I can’t get enough.
Your brand fuel is who you are when you’re at your best in your business. Your best. Not some put-on image of who you think you should be because of your credentials or absence of credentials or your talent or your family story or what you did before you started your digital business.
Discovering your brand archetype, which points you to the strongest and most natural expression of you in your business, is only the beginning.
The Action Studio doors are opening again soon. Very soon.
Today, I hope you get your name on the Studio door. And then jump on my list to find out what I’m offering people who buy Action Studio through my affiliate link {plus a free gift from me when you opt-in, and then a much bigger bonus gift from me when you buy Action Studio}.
I want you to have what I’m having.
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Hello, you.