The first, and most important part of the organic branding process is discovery.  Discovery doesn’t start with what we see tomorrow.  It starts with an awareness and acceptance of the decisions we’ve made throughout our lives.  Decisions we’ve made in response to the pivotal challenges, victories, and losses.  They have not only shaped who we are as people, but as professionals too.
It is this baggage we carry that presents the first and most difficult branding hurdle to overcome in organic branding.
Organic branding requires not only an awareness and acceptance of our “baggage”, but it also necessitates a willingness to change the counterproductive habits and attitudes that inhibit the future we want and need for ourselves.
If you take the above statement out of the context of business, then it reveals itself as a truth for life in general. This is the beauty of organic branding.  It does not necessitate the separation of life and work.  In fact, organic branding is the synergy of who we are yesterday and today with who we want to be tomorrow.
What we find though, is that knowing who we truly are in the organic sense is, for many of us, a foggy and frustrating road of uncertainty. And as someone who has struggled with “keeping it real,” what I’ve found is that “exploring” through a medium doing the things we enjoy makes exploration more focused on creating more of what we love, rather than what we lack.
In my organic branding practice, I get to know my clients sometimes sooner than they get to know themselves. Â Not because I’m psychic, but because I know what questions to ask, when to listen, when to just observe, and what to make of it.
My clients don’t always like what I have to sat, and to be honest they don’t usually like what I have to say initially.  The truth hurts.  But you’d be amazed how quickly that pain dissipates once you start making money and living the life you love.
It all starts with awareness, so what I’d like you to do right now is take a 5 count breadth inhale and a 5 count exhale. Â Go on…
Forget about the grocery list, the appointment, the dentist, the barking dogs…I’d like for you to take a moment and with a clear mind make a quick assessment your current career.
What I’d like for you to do is rank the following according to what has most influenced your current career choice:
- Job History
- Hobbies
- Guilty Pleasures
- Conflicts/Challenges
- Relationships
- “Organic” Needs (you be the judge of what this means to you)
- Talents & Special Gifts
There is no wrong answer…but I’d like for you to ask yourself: Â What do you want to have the greatest influence on your decisions TOMORROW.
