Brand Challenge: Evaluate and Iterate
Not everyone is visionary or can think in a big way or vision the future of their business. Sometimes you will hear this called the 10,000-foot view or I like to call it the “big picture”. Then the challenge becomes can you evaluate and iterate often?
Imagine yourself standing on top of a mountain looking down onto the widest view of all the moving parts of your brand - taking in the whole entire view. Don't look for the details look for the sum of the whole - the broad landscape.
When you get out the binoculars you can start to focus in on detail areas. Today I want to talk about how you should plan, dream, take notes about what you know now and what you THINK you know.
Let go of how and what if...
It’s like creative journaling, but right now you are in brain dump mode. You are planning, taking notes, and later you will use this info to plan strategy. Don't forget to include feelings and experiences into your vision. If your vision is only about money or things, keep digging deeper.
Visualization is powerful. Think about a winning basketball team, running a marathon or an Olympic athlete. Visualization coaches help train people to use picture images as a tool to sink into what it looks and feels like to win.
Sink into the broad view of your business.
You are sinking into what it looks and feels like in the future. What are the activities you want to try, what will your customers say to you after experiencing your product or service? Write that down too. Focus less on the fears, risk and how it will happen but what is it exactly are you creating to share with the world.
If you find yourself stuck and drawing a blank stop and allow your mind to see what it can see and that is enough. Knowing how you will get there isn’t the point it's about what you see when you feel like you have arrived at the level that you are ready to embrace.
Need more inspiration to grow your brand?
If you are in the "dream up" phase of your business, give yourself permission and allow yourself to imagine and make up what you want the business to become. Start where you are and let go of the fact that you don't know everything. No one knows EVERYTHING. Trust in yourself.
But wait! Maybe you are in the “scale up” years of your business. The lesson still applies to you. You may have an advantage because you have gathered more data and information to process. You may know more about what you don't want than what you do at this point and that is okay.
Take a look at the info on your list and mine the gold.
A core principle of branding is taking place in this exercise. Branding requires you to regularly and consciously evaluate and make selective choices. All while continuously checking in with your core values, company vision, mission, value and clarity of the messages you are attempting to get your customers to understand (brand influence). Checking in helps keep you on track.
