We have a 104-pound Golden Retriever.
We used to tell ourselves he was big-boned, but we’ve come to face the facts. He’s just fat. He has more junk in his trunk than a traveling encyclopedia salesman. (If you’re under 45 you might not get that… So suffice it to say, Diego’s ass is enormous.)
As marketers, we brand our businesses and brand ourselves through stories. We tell the world how we got to where we are today…
What private hells we endured in the honing of our crafts,
What it took for us to finally create the solutions to the nagging problems we now can solve for the rest of the world,
Or of the pivotal days that pushed us – unceremoniously — off the ledge, and qualified us to talk other potential jumpers down from that very same ledge.
These brand stories represent our ascent into the world of entrepreneurship. And they create bonds with our customers that lead to sales… that foster success.
But what about the stories we don’t tell everyone else?
What about the stories that we tell ourselves, instead?
The ones that hold us back? Hold us down? Hold us hostage to our own self-sabotage and destructive habits?
I haven’t been my consistent wordy self on the blog for the past few weeks, because I’ve been trying.
I’ve had my head down, trying to make something work.
Pushing. Pressing. Testing. Tweaking. Wiggling. Testing.
Sighing. Crying. Laughing. Singing. Then sighing and crying again…
I did my very first yoga video just after I turned 40, almost ten years ago. It was Baron Baptiste’s “Journey into Power.” Everything about yoga was new and weird and amazing for me, and for long moments I just sat and stared at Baron.
But when he said, “Don’t try hard; try easy, “ I had to stop and rewind.
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Lately, I’ve been doing a ton of things for the first time. And after a 28-year career of successfully doing the same things, a LOT of times, being a stone-cold beginner is a mind-boggling, humbling, ego-shattering experience.
Last night I was summarily schooled in the art of beginning… by my teenage son.
If you’ve been around my blog or my online trainings, then you’ve undoubtedly heard my favorite saying:
A great brand is not about logos, colors and fonts. A great brand is about the way you make people FEEL.
This weekend, I watched a fresh and enlightening TED talk by Joe Gebbia, one of the co-founders of Airbnb, and I wanted to share it with you here. Gebbia, who is a designer, discusses how he and his co-founders “designed for trust” when they created Airbnb.
From a branding standpoint, I love everything about this talk. I love that Gebbia started his business because he had a realization – through a personal experience – that shifted one of his fundamental beliefs:
“Maybe the people my childhood taught me to label as strangers were actually friends, waiting to be discovered.”
Friends… waiting to be discovered.
What a beautiful concept to share with the world.
