3 Days to Your Destination

Dreams Are The Capstone of Brand Success

This is the beginning, the origin story of your brand. It is the culmination of late nights, early mornings, tears, sorrow, joy, and hysteria. To differentiate, you need to be able to tell this story clearly, with meaning and intent.

In today’s edition, I want to take a close look at what many in the branding world will call your “mission statement”. Consider this element of your positioning—the origin story will review your true mission. However, to capture that story, we need to rewind to the start of the week.

It started on Sunday night

What Changed?

In storytelling, the worst thing you can do is start your character off on an average Monday. Why? Because it is average. I like Sunday, but today, this represents the day when you saw something that needed to be changed. Something had you thinking, “if I woke up on Monday morning and things were still the same…”

I have had multiple Sundays during my career as an entrepreneur. My first Sunday was when one of my clients couldn’t describe, with confidence, what his brand was. “What is (brand)?”… client shrugs—if you feel confused about your brand, so will your audience and anyone you pitch it to.

My Second Sunday was when I realized I am in an industry that seems to be creating more financial losses and confusion for brands that help. It was during a call with a sales expert that I was told, “You're one of the most difficult things to pitch and power to ya!” He then told me something along the lines of “there’s a four-letter word people use to describe branding.”—because let’s be honest, most guidelines are complete crap.

That hit hard, not because it was false, but because it was true. So many companies invest heavily in branding projects, yet all they have to show for it is a guidelines document that never gets used. It’s merely descriptive and prescriptive.

We can go to bed on Sunday, wake up after the snot was knocked out of us, and fail to get up, but that isn't what I did, and it isn’t what you did either. You're an overcomer. You took the negative feedback. Heck! You didn't take lemons and make lemonade; you made lemon meringue pie because that was what your audience asked for!

The bottom line is that something happened on Sunday, resulting in a change on Monday.

You had an aha moment on Wednesday

What motivated you to make changes?

Okay. Wednesday. It’s mid-week, you set out to climb the mountain, and you get hit with an avalanche. It’s 4 pm, and you have a deadline to meet by 5 pm. What are you going to do? Well, you are still on that “idea high” from Sunday, but you lost the plot.

Anger, rage, and pride can move mountains, but they also can lead to burnout and isolation, and what once set fire underneath your rump has now burnt you and set everyone who surrounds you running for the hills. And you are now alone.

Here is where we take your “fed up” and turn it into your “why.” Why did you change things? What made Monday scary? Heck, you might still be in the same place you were, waking up after euphoria, and the Monday you dreamt of never came. It’s okay to be fed up with things, but if we don’t look at our why, it won’t matter.

Sometimes, a motivation is reality kicking in. I needed to make money out of necessity when I went full-time. Though there was a “why” that caused me to distance myself from the stable traditional route of working for someone else. There are many reasons you might have been fed up. And I would pick the one you think your audience would identify with best.

You said “things will be different” on Friday

What did you change?

You made it to the end of the week. What changed? Now, before you go on and on about your wins and accolades, I want you to shift your mindset: what changed about your clients? What is one thing, because of the change you made on Sunday, and the realization you came to on Wednesday, that made someone else’s life change?

For me, it was hearing one of my clients say in a call, “Hey… hold the horses, where is that document Kyle created to keep us on brand?” or that moment when I was able to coach another client into saying, “I finally understand my audience.”

Okay, now that we got that out of the way, I want to know: what did you change?

Wrapping Up

Now it’s Saturday, and I give you permission, if you need it, to rest. But remember what you learned this week:

• What changed in your story?

• What made you change?

• What did YOU change—in the lives of others?