Becoming a Brand Yogi: Techniques To Guide Your Brand Evolution
Embracing Brand Love
Your brand is personal, comes from your heart (hopefully) and just like love, probably has flaws that need to be looked at from a different perspective. Yes, it is understandable that you are in love with all of the hard work and struggle it took to take your idea to where it is today. Most likely, you need to balance out your connection to that concept and seek out other viewpoints so that you can truly analyze where you are at this very moment. How can you begin?
Breaking Down Your Own Barriers
Firstly, think about where you are in the process of bringing your brand to market. Are you still in the concepting phase? Have you been able to work out all of the kinks inherent in the process of ideation and innovation? Do you feel ready to employ market strategies? No matter where you are in development, there is always room for improvement. Just as you might attend a yoga class and find that it has given you a new perspective on flexibility (or lack thereof), bringing a brand to market brings new challenges to what is considerably personal, intimate, and often even a little alienating. That said, a new practice or exercise can help refine your perspective immensely.
In order to grow, one must break things down. The practice of doing so and analyzing that which is close to you is one of the hardest barriers you can hope to overcome. Inevitably, your product or brand will need some tough love. It is never easy, but sometimes a reevaluation of one’s motion can bring to bear all sorts of insights. Bringing your product to market is an act of faith that requires a master class in Brand Yoga.
Practicing Brand Yoga
The process of creating is one of self-discovery, but the best place to start is getting perspective outside of the self. This is where working with others can be a powerful tool. When you are considering the viability of an idea or the impact of a product or brand, you need to seek out constructive criticism and honest feedback. While the act of coming up with a new product can be a highly personal experience, branding that product and sending it out into the world is a social act. And just as in yoga, your practice is a personal one, but it helps to have an expert to guide you.
Finding a dynamic approach that can bend with the crazy synergies of creating products and brands is difficult unless you can learn to stand outside of your own perspective. The yogic term “asana” refers to a body posture or position. Imagine your journey as an entrepreneur is laid out in such a way as to resemble different asanas. What would your journey look like? This might be hard to envision, although you might be laughing to yourself considering the amount of physical and mental positioning that it takes to be an entrepreneur. Sometimes a practice such as yoga is the last thing one might relate to as a roadmap for the journey that you have undertaken thus far, but there is nothing that says you cannot start to use this kind of technique to begin to compartmentalize, practice, and master the benefits of Brand Yoga.
As in yoga, building a brand takes patience, and growth will happen one step at a time. You could start with Lotus Pose, considered the ultimate meditation posture. Lotus Pose has the power to quiet your mind, unwind your nerves, and awaken your energy. This is one of the key poses that can help to center you. With centering, one can achieve pause and ponder intention. Why are you doing this? What problem are you solving? What is your ultimate goal? What is the purpose of your brand? What do you stand for? This is a perfect example of why a discipline such as yoga lends itself well to the often stressful and sometimes manic occupation of being an entrepreneur. One of the hardest things to do is slow down and think. In today’s new work environments, be it open format or simply the convenience of a laptop, working has never been so personal and private, yet public at the same time. Contemplating these basic yet difficult fundamentals will uncover a personal side to your brand and help you to stay on track when things get complicated. Having a solid foundation and knowledge of your brand essence is vital. This will always be your benchmark, the rock that keeps you steady.
Finding Your (Vinyasa) Flow
From here you move onto the next asana and the next one after that. These are “poses” that can be thought of as mental challenges, and let’s not forget that at times they will be physical as well. The ultimate goal is to find a few key techniques that you can rely on when everything seems to get in the way. When the capacity to connect is multiplied by our technology and our working culture, it is not unlikely to find yourself in a pattern. A pattern is something that can summon habits, not all of them good. The cultivation of good patterns and good habits is what we are talking about here.
Having a technique-driven approach is ultimately the best way to broaden your perspective and ensure the best way forward. It is clear that because the process is so very personal, education regarding this approach is super valuable. There are many different asanas to work with; the challenge is finding a way to make them flow together.
Ask yourself one question: how do you address a challenge by breaking it up into steps you can manage and perfect? If you don’t know the answer, may we suggest some Brand Yoga?
THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON WEWORKS LABS INSIDER
