After watching the movie “Loving Vincent”, my partner asked me: are artists narcissists because they want others to appreciate their art? I thought others may wonder about that as well, so I'm sharing our dialogue and the explanation I gave him on this matter. Read more...
When you’re a creative person, you’re naturally pulled towards new things, experimenting, and reinventing yourself. Doing things consistently and predictably sounds like a total chore. Is this resistance to “being stuck in a box” preventing you from being consistent in your branding? If so, this post it for you. Read more...
A rare person can say “Look at all these things I’ve accomplished, now it’s time I take a well deserved break.” There’s always more to achieve. There’s always a way to become better, and to make a bigger impact. It’s my belief now that pure discipline in the service of success doesn’t lead to a life well lived. Read more...
Dream clients are actual human beings who have bought your services, and you freakin’ love working with them. Graduating from so-so clients to dream clients takes time, but once you get there, you experience a level of ease and joy in your business that nothing else can replace. Read more...
Whether you’re a writer, lawyer, illustrator, designer, developer, dentist, psychotherapist, coach, marketing consultant, hair stylist, jewelry designer, painter, creative agency owner, musician, bookkeeper… the methods described in this book will help you express yourself naturally in your business and grow authentic relationships with your clients. Read more...
The greatest time-saving trick of all time that I’ve discovered is having everything written down and accessible wherever I go. There are so many things you could (and in my opinion, should) have written down, and this includes the brand style guide: a document containing your brand elements and assets, so you can review and share them with your team. Read more...
In this article, I share a practical technique I teach in my workshop for freelancers and agencies, called the client journey mapping. This method is useful not only for your branding efforts, but has all sorts of other benefits as well. It enables you to see your business with fresh eyes, patch holes in your client process, and create a delightful client experience. Read more...
Most books on branding are focused on corporations and startups, and require you to implement a bunch of different elements and tools. Then there are books that talk about personal branding. These seem better for the average consultant, but what if you have employees? Is there something else out there for a business like yours? I asked myself the same question, and when I didn’t find it, I decided to create it. Read more...
In case you still haven't seen one of my dozen announcements, I wrote and self-published a book called The Human Centered Brand, which is coming out on July 30th 2018. I've been working on this book for 18 months (just the book—I've been creating this body of work for much longer than that), so you can imagine it's a pretty big deal for me. Like, possibly the biggest deal since starting my own business. If you want to help me spread the word about this book, read this post. Read more...
Working on long-term goals is hard. Our brains are not exactly wired for it—we carry biases that undermine our efforts to become successful at whatever we’ve chosen to do. If we want to achieve something bigger than we’ve ever accomplished before, we need to support ourselves better because willpower alone is not enough. Here are the methods I’ve used to overcome my own unproductive patterns and self-publish my book. Read more...