Persistence doesn’t need to be rigid.
I know this, because I’ve made all those mistakes myself. For a long time in my last business, I resisted signs that things weren’t working. My determination to succeed and desire to ‘make it work’ blindsided me. My vision of an entrepreneur was of someone who kept hustling, kept fighting no matter what. It wasn’t until everything fell apart at the seams that it became obvious that perhaps, my drive & my never-quit mentality wasn’t serving me well.
The last 3 weeks, since I got home, have been a little crazy, to say the least. So much so, that about 10 days ago I had that sinking feeling that I was about to get super sick. I felt like I was dangerously close to burning out. My brain was telling me to push on through but my body was done & dusted. I spent 2 days working from bed (with multiple nap breaks haha) and realised I needed to make some serious changes.
So why am I so sure that brand clarity is such a vital piece of the puzzle? Because I’ve made the biggest mistakes of my career when I was lacking in it. Because I’ve worked with a whole bunch of startups who weren’t getting the traction they deserved because of it.
Instead, way too many businesses get fixated on zipping ahead thinking that branding is something a graphic designer does when creating a logo.
But to me, branding starts way way before then. Or at least, it should do.
I'm sitting here dreaming about the hot shower I'm going to have the moment I walk in the door. The laundry I can do. The dinner that I'll cook tonight and the beautiful realisation that I've got zero travel plans for the next 2 months.
Truth be told? I'm pretty damn exhausted. It's been a crazy year (in a good way) and I'm ready to slow things down a bit. The hustle is real and it's definitely not sustainable 24/7 (no matter how hard I try haha).
After the movie screening, Chris & I sat up late talking about it all. And I realised that because he’s dealing with legitimate fear on a regular basis, he just doesn’t have much energy for the fake stuff. That’s not to say he doesn’t have it (although I did have to double check haha), but more than fake fear seems so much less significant and so doesn’t have as much control over him.
Here’s what I realised this morning: If you want an extraordinary life, then you should expect it to look extraordinary sometimes. I tried to explain this to a bestie the other day …. It’s like we chose to ride the crazy big, kick-ass rollercoaster. We opted for that one. We chose it above all the other rides. Because we wanted to go big. We wanted to go high. Go fast.
Yikes. I hate cold calling at the best of times. But I sucked it up, said I’d do it, and hung up the phone. Over the next few days, I worked my way down the list of numbers. Again and again, I encountered people who were kinda pissed at me for calling. I’d interrupted their day and was trying to sell them something they clearly didn’t want.
