Purpose. Passion. Vision. They are the stuff of inspiration. They are the difference between “that was a nice talk” and “let us march.”

I have been telling my design clients for years that what I want for them is to draw them out, to see them for who they really are, and communicate what I see beautifully in symbolic form. I want the world to see what I see. I want their customers to see what I see. Mostly, I want my clients to see what I see. I know that when a business owner sees himself or herself clearly, something powerful happens. They are on fire. They are unstoppable. They will attract everything and everyone they need to move heaven and earth and bring their dream to light.

I have always said that I work from the inside out. I start from your Vision, Purpose, Core Essence. I have always focused on the WHY inside my clients. Just this morning I watched a TED Talk by Simon Sinek that reignited what I have always believed. He validated my own WHY. Simon explains the science of the brain and how it relates to leadership. Why do some people and some companies change the world, while others become a footnote? The difference is that the game changers START from their WHY. They start with their dreams, their beliefs, their passion, their purpose. They inspire people to join them in a cause that is greater than a product or a business opportunity. They invite allies and conspirators vs. recruiting minions.

I needed this reminder. I forgot my WHY for a bit. I let myself get discouraged by a floppy economy, and $99 online logo design contests, and the current attitude of doing anything to get by. Simon reminded me that the WHY is my WHY.

My WHY is simple. I see the core essence of people, businesses, and even the emerging consciousness of humanity and I translate what I see into symbols. I do this to ignite clarity, focus, and (dare I say it) JOY in the lives of those I touch. The Light in me sees the Light in you and sketches a one-of-a-kind portrait. I want to change the world by changing how we see ourselves and each other. I want to create beauty. I want to celebrate the beauty and magnificence I see all around me. I want to make the hidden world of soul visible. That is my vision. That is my purpose. That is my WHY.

Watch Simon Sinek’s talk. Then tell me—what is your WHY?

The Ravens started showing up on the day of the new moon in March. I went to visit two friends and as the three of us stepped out onto the patio of the backyard, three very large ravens took flight and circled before us into the sky.

photo by Sky DeLight

“Ravens,” noted one.
“And three of them— one for each of us,” noted I.
“Magic.”, concluded the other.

We looked at each other and smiled—wondering what it might mean.

Two weeks later, I took my family to Yosemite National Park, and as we pulled into a parking space at Sentinel Bridge there were three Ravens sitting on the railing near the entrance. I commented to my husband, “The ravens are here. I wonder what’s up.” He looked at me with that “uh-huh, there she goes…” look.

We went on our way, enjoyed some beautiful views, took some pictures, and when I got back to the car and climbed in to the driver’s seat, one raven flew off the railing and landed in the empty parking space just a few feet to my left. The raven looked right at me and started to “caw”—loudly. It puffed up the blue-black feathers around its neck and started doing a little dance around the parking spot. Meanwhile, my family was wondering why I wasn’t backing out of the space and heading off to the next destination.

“Wait. I need to check this out.” I said, holding my right hand up for emphasis like pressing some invisible pause button on our day. Watching the bird caw and dance around the asphalt, finally I said to Raven, “Thank you. I understand.”

So, when did this “animal magnetism” start, exactly? Why do I feel like some cosmic Dr. Doolittle who not only talks to the animals but believes that they are messengers from another dimension to help me better understand my own? The animal kingdom and the natural world are constantly communicating with us if we just have the awareness and the desire to listen. They are part of a greater symbolic language. Unlike the symbols we create ourselves to represent our speech and concepts, the animal realm of symbols has it’s own language and we have the opportunity to intuitively learn it if we choose.

Indigenous people in all cultures and in all times have understood this principle. In fact, it is because of several friends who have Native-American heritage that I was first exposed to the sacred language of the animal spirits. I have learned to note when certain animals show up frequently or behave in unusual ways. By being open to these messengers, I find that they are a surprising source of timely and transformational information.

photo by Sky DeLight

The ravens continued to appear for months after Yosemite. My friend Sky (whose photos are featured with the article) posted a whole series of Raven photographs on his Facebook page right after I got back. The photo of the raven perched on top of a pine tree with Mt. Shasta in the background caught my attention (since I had just visited Sky and his wife in Shasta in February). I was thinking about Sky’s photo in the shower and then looked out my own bathroom window to see — sitting on top of our neighbor’s redwood tree — a huge raven!

When the ravens first started showing up, I looked it up in my animal totem/animal medicine resources.
What does Raven symbolize?

Raven is about magic, deep inner healing, and a change in consciousness. Raven is considered the messenger from The Void, and a bringer of answers to the “deep questions”. It turns out, Raven has been the perfect companion for the last several months. I have been diving deep into my own personal shadows and mining for gold. There has been enormous healing taking place that has resulted in a very different experience of life, the people I love, and my purpose. My consciousness has indeed shifted and the transformation can only be categorized as “magical”.

The appearance of Raven the last few months helped me to frame my experiences in a more positive light. Able to look at all I was going through with a lens of “healing, transforming consciousness, and magic” it comforted and encouraged me.

Early on, when I mentioned the Raven sightings to my husband he said, “Oh, that can’t be a good sign.”

“Why?” I asked. “What do you think Raven means?”

“Well, you know… Edgar Allan Poe… The Raven… ‘Nevermore!’ ”

photo by Sky DeLight

And then it hit me. The Raven in Poe’s tale generated fear because those of European ancestry are taught to fear the darkness, The Void. To many in western culture darkness represents death. Game over. In fact, the emphasis in Poe’s poem is the loss of a beloved and the author’s sense of grief in losing her to the dark shadow of death. To the western mind, the transition of death is a one-way street —one that literally “dead-ends”.

To many native peoples and many cultures of the East, however, transitions are cyclical.  Nothing really dies and ends, it transforms into what it needs to become next. The color black and the symbol of Raven represent that which is nurturing. The Void is not emptiness and death. The Void is actually like the womb. It is the source and birthplace of life and new beginnings. It is like a seed planted in the dark fertile earth, preparing to emerge and grow to new heights. The Void is The Great Mystery and the source of every good thing. To be visited by the Messenger of The Void is like having an angel appear and say, “Take heart. Things are about to get interesting! It’s all good!”

In fact, it is intriguing to think that the message delivered by Poe’s Raven could actually be seen as good news. “Nevermore.”

In a sense, my Raven also repeats the cryptic phrase, but I hear, “Nevermore will you wallow in the limitations of your past. Nevermore will you need to suffer from your afflictions. Nevermore will the old reality serve you.”

The Raven announces a changing of the guard, a shedding of the skin, the dawn of a new day.

I guess that’s the cool thing about magic — things are rarely what they seem.

For a number of years I was a member of eWomen Network and they had a slogan they liked to use, “It takes teamwork to make the dream work.” Even though the phrase used to hit my ear like bakery frosting hits my back teeth, I couldn’t help but think of it as I reflected on last Saturday’s Evolving Your Business workshop I put on with three other amazing professional women.

Our Team: Tania, Susan, Barbara, and Marlys

Creating this workshop out of thin air in just a few months, we were quite a study in teamwork.

I quickly realized that there was so much to do, so many moving parts, so many details, and so many things totally out of my area of expertise, that I never would have taken on such a project on my own. Each person contributed her time, some money, and her expertise to pull this off.

Susan kept us on track and helped monitor every crucial detail, Barbara set up our EventBrite and handled registrations, I created the event branding and marketing materials, and Marlys handled much of the publicity to get the word out to various organizations. We all chipped in ideas, creativity, and did the non-glamorous work of schlepping in our stuff, setting up, preparing food trays, cleaning up, and breaking down stuff after the event. Everyone promoted to their lists and everyone helped each other improve her presentation. We learned from each other and we helped each other “raise the bar” in so many big and small ways.

We accomplished something together that none of us probably would have accomplished alone. It is a theme I am encountering a lot in other areas of my life. I am finding new ways to collaborate, to partner, to co-create with everyone from my husband (we are scheming up a new concept for using symbols with a well-known psychological profile), my son (co-creating a garden for summer), my friends (creating art and symbol workshops), and others who bring me in on projects or create a service we can offer together.

What’s interesting is that all the people I am starting to collaborate with, to create teams with, are themselves “solo-preneurs”. We have been the proverbial “lone-wolves” of business. What could explain this shift? Some believe the economy has forced us to work together or perish. Others believe that this is the result of us stepping in to a higher level of consciousness — a realization of our connectedness. What would the world look like with less competition and more cooperation and collaboration?

These are very same questions addressed in the new documentary “I AM” that I slipped away to see last Friday with a bunch of women friends and my son. Director Tom Shadyac (who gave us such heavy-weight cinematic experiences as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Bruce Almighty) weighs in uncharacteristically with probably the greatest and most meaningful contribution of his life. He asks the deep questions—the hard questions. I liked what he discovered. Competition is not what we are wired for—rather connectedness, collaboration, and teamwork are what make us great.

So, how did the event go? Was our experiment in collaboration a success? YES! We got wonderful feedback, some new clients, learned a lot, created new products and services, and decided to do what any kid would want to do after riding the biggest roller-coaster in the park—we said, “Let’s do it again!”

In October, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Go team.

Some call it “Symbolic Sight” or “The Language of Light“. It is the ability to see the world and communicate through that which transcends words. Often it takes the form of pictographs, symbols, images, icons, dreams, animals, archetypes or sacred geometry. Sometimes words themselves become a conveyor of more than they are—they become story, legend, myth, allegory, and metaphor.

My son had a saying he would use when he was three and trying to explain things he didn’t yet have the vocabulary to describe. He would say, “It’s LIKE, but not IS.” — a really excellent definition of “symbol”, I thought.

Living in a symbolic world...

I live in the symbolic world more readily than what many would call the “real” world. In fact, the biggest area of growth for me is pure observation—letting something just “be” and not labeling and dismissing it, projecting all over it, seeking another meaning for it, or making everything a microcosm for some macrocosm. The symbolism lens is a habit I formed thanks to my 7th grade English teacher.

It was Mrs. Fender who cracked open the magical, mysterious world of symbol for me. I remember her answering the classroom phone, “Inner Sanctum!” with a wry smile that dared us to ask what she meant by that. I knew it was a reference to an old TV show, but those were the days before YouTube or Hulu could have rescued me from generational ignorance. Anyway, in between the sentence diagrams and insisting we memorize a list of over a hundred prepositions (“aboard, about, above, across…”) she had us reading stories and watching films that were so much more than what they appeared to be about. They were allegories and metaphors—a secret code—a story within a story. To the observant reader, every story alluded not only to itself but was simultaneously a portal into a parallel universe.

It was an introduction to multi-dimensional living and I found it delicious.

Some years later, I would discover the world of graphic design and spend decades perfecting the craft of communicating the core essence of a person, company, or concept in a simple “nuggetized” symbol. With type, color, layout, perspective, movement, and ultimately intuitive feeling, I found I could take a “picture” of someone in their simplest form and that symbol could effectively represent their core vibration to others. It took several intuitive friends to educate me on what I was actually doing. It took many years for me to trust it, value it, and articulate it.

Now more than ever, Symbolic Sight matters.

One of my favorite songs, New Beginning, by singer/songwriter Tracy Chapman states,

We need to make new symbols
Make new signs
Make a new language
With these we’ll define the world

And start all over
Start all over
Start all over
Start all over …

New Symbols for a New Consciousness
While there are many practical reasons for creating new symbols, such as globalization and communicating iconically across cultures and languages, I believe the most compelling idea is that we need to keep pace with our own evolving consciousness.

Just as “we cannot solve problems with the same level of consciousness used to create them” (Einstein), I do not believe we can represent higher level values and ideals with old symbols. I personally believe that the concepts of universal consciousness may not be adequately represented by the symbols of our past. The vibration of many of the time-honored symbols we know and love carry both the seed of universal truth as well as many years of rust and debris accumulated from centuries of conflict, misunderstanding, and repetitive association. This may be another good example of not being able to put “new wine in old wine skins” as the parable suggests.

Some "Classics" of the Spiritual Symbols

Some of these beloved symbols were “seed packets” for the highest consciousness of their time. Let’s look at some well known sacred religious symbols. Objectively, I can look at the symbol we know as The Star of David associated with Judaism and see that it contains the very powerful Hermetic concept of “As Above, So Below”—the meeting of the “upper” realms of spirit with the “lower” realms of matter. (The Celtic and even Christian cross arguably have a similar message of the vertical “spiritual” plane intersecting with the horizontal “physical” plane.) The Star of David also represents a balance of masculine and feminine energies in unity. (There are many more ideas packed in there, but that’s a good start for our purposes.) These are powerful concepts that are very much in alignment with today’s ascending universal consciousness.

Unfortunately, this beautiful symbol has baggage. If you show this symbol to a variety of people, depending on their age, ethnicity, geographical location, and religious upbringing, they will have vastly different associations. The emotional “charge” of the symbol will range from passionately positive to violently negative to completely apathetic to perhaps not even recognizing it beyond two overlapping triangles. For those who give it a “charge”, it is so strongly tied to a very specific group of people and their story that it is virtually impossible to separate the symbol from the meanings people have given it. I would never suggest that Jews abandon their Star of David and replace it. (Or any other group, for that matter.) It is a sacred symbol full of meaning and rich with history. I would, however, suggest that one of the “seed ideas” it contains that belongs to all of humanity, “As Above, So Below” could find another expression in symbolic form that could be embraced by everyone. When the idea gets a fresh start, we all do.

There are of course many symbols like this. The Eye of Horus (the “all-seeing eye” at the top of the pyramid on the back of an American dollar bill), the Egyptian Ankh, the Christian cross and fish, the Muslim star and crescent, the swastika, and even the “peace” sign. All of them contain seeds of wisdom and higher consciousness. (Yes, even the swastika had benign and sacred origins among native peoples before it was made infamous by the Third Reich). Sadly, all of them are mired with baggage. We see them and think we “know” what they stand for, so we no longer really see them. They are repositories for our collective projections.

No babies in the bath water, please
While specific symbols with very long or very highly-charged histories may not be “keepers” for communicating fresh concepts, the basic building blocks and their associated universal meanings are all fair game as keepers of the “Legacy of Consciousness”.

"Keep it green; save the fish" of course.

A circle will probably always communicate at a core level a feeling of the feminine, nurturing, inclusion, and wholeness. Yellow will likely continue to evoke hope, warmth, and positivity because of our universal association of that color with the sun, flowers, and the flame of a glowing candle or warm hearth. Most of the basic shapes, colors, and relationships of “ingredients” are enduring because they have followed us up from our pre-verbal state. They not only pre-date language but transcend it.

What are some of the concepts we aspire to that are yearning for symbolic expression? What would a symbol look like for Unconditional Love? Oneness? Sustainability? Wholeness? Connection? Fulfillment?

I am not sure that I am audacious enough to suggest such symbols for general adoption, but I have started creating personal ones. One by one, soul by soul, I have identified what the core essence looks like for each individual I have truly “seen”.

Then again, if “that which is most personal IS the most universal”, I guess I have unwittingly begun to create a symbology of universal consciousness. Mrs. Fender would be so proud—the microcosm IS the macrocosm.

How symbolic.

Last week I wrote about the importance of “doing nothing”. My point was that it can be extremely productive to get out into nature, reflect, breathe, and ask the right questions to get insightful and truly creative answers. In our crazy-making, instant messaging, microwave popcorn world the idea of slowing down and actively doing nothing is revolutionary. Many people have not cultivated their skills in this department.

For many people, “doing nothing” is watching TV or checking FaceBook, or playing video games. This is not the “doing nothing” I wished to address. These are diversions and distractions. We numb our minds to avoid perceived pain; we seek to deaden our awareness and avoid truly being present. They can even be addictions. They are still part of the problem and not part of the solution. They add to the crazy-making and do not bring peace and clarity.

This week I want to talk about the balancing principle to genuinely “doing nothing”.
Do. Something.

Once I get up from my spot under the pine tree ( symbolically pine trees are associated with the eternal and pine cones a symbol of the pineal gland thought to be the brain’s gateway to the Divine—but I digress), I need to balance the vision and the insight of that flow space with practical action. Action can sometimes be simple, fun, and relatively easy. Sometimes one phone call that takes 10 minutes can launch a new business, earn you a new client, or even change your life.

The best, most effective actions are not always so simple and easy, however. Making that difficult phone call, telling your messy truth, paying that bill, starting that exercise program again, writing that newsletter, filing that huge pile of papers. Several of my clients are professional organizers and they are experts at helping people create systems for handling this kind of thing. They can also help you get to the bottom of your issues for NOT doing them, but I am not going there today.

What has been especially helpful to me lately is the concept of “taking imperfect action“. I learned this from coach Christine Kane and it has dramatically altered my approach to taking action. When we get hung up on “not doing it right” or “not knowing where to start” or “what if it doesn’t work?” we just get nowhere by default. There is a saying that “plans never survive the enemy” and it is generally true. If we assume that things are going to go exactly like we expect, we will probably end up surprised or derailed when the entire world doesn’t cooperate with our diabolical scheme. At the same time, if we never had any cool synchronicities, serendipities, or unexpected opportunities then life would be pretty boring, wouldn’t it?

"Baby Steps! Baby Steps!"

What About Bob?
For some reason, whenever I am reminded of this concept, I think of Bill Murray in the movie What About Bob? with his mantra, “Baby Steps! Baby Steps!” and finally his ecstatic, “I’m sailing!” from his roped-up secure position on the sailboat mast. Bob did something vs. just thinking about it. “Baby steps. Baby steps!”

I got a wonderful lesson with this when I took my family to Yosemite last month. When we left, the weather reports looked dicey. There was a strong chance of rain and snow. There was the potential of needing chains. We woke up at the hostel on Saturday morning with several inches of snow on the ground and the news that Yosemite Valley had just received 7 to 10 inches of snow overnight. “The park will probably require chains,” we heard at the check out desk.

Bummer.

I hate putting on chains. It was very tempting to think, “I’ve been to Yosemite plenty of times, let’s just hit the road and come back another sunny day.” But something nudged me to take one small action. “How about we just take a nice drive to the park entrance and see what we see.”, I said.

To our amazement, we got to the park entrance and the front desk was dead wrong. The park was open, the valley floor had been cleared with snow plows, and we would not need chains to go where we wanted to go! We almost missed the most breath-taking, awe-inspiring, photo fantastic, life enhancing visit to a national park my family has ever had. Every tree and rock and waterfall was decorated with 7 inches of pure virgin powder. There were very few people there, and we felt like we had been given a backstage pass to Winter Wonderland featuring Mother Nature’s greatest hits. The difference between a wasted weekend and a wonderful weekend was one action step!

There is a scripture that says, “Faith without works is dead.” (Or in the New American Gnarly translation,”Dreaming without doing is lameness.”)    *slaps self on forehead* “So, that’s what that means!”
We experienced that principle in action. Out of the void of actively “doing nothing” and listening, waiting and clarifying came decisive (even if imperfect) action.

That’s the “one-two punch” of creating.

Lucille Ball said it best, “The more things you do, the more you can do.”

View from Sentinel Bridge by Tania von Allmen ©2011

Want to know the biggest secret for improving your business, your sanity, your relationships, your health, your spiritual growth, and your “joy factor” in general?

Do. Nothing.

Better yet, do nothing someplace that is stunningly beautiful—ideally someplace in nature. I am an unabashed introvert and I am here to tell you that nothing recharges my batteries, clears my head, and fills my heart like sitting under a pine tree, staring out at the lake and watching and hearing the egrets, hawks, ravens, condors, and other assorted birds in their impromptu daily symphony.

As an artist this is (technically) “working” for me. I am practicing awareness; I am practicing listening to the questions I pose to my “inner Chief Intuition Officer” (as my friend Susan Rueppel calls it). I am making space to work ON my business and not just IN my business—although I use this as a way to work on the projects IN my business as well. This is the sort of thing Stephen Covey of 7 Habits fame might call “sharpening the saw” (but don’t tell that to my pine tree friend).

No cell phone. No laptop. No Twitter. No FaceBook. No e-mail. I am an artist UNLEASHED.

I got hooked on doing nothing in the outdoors when I was in my early 20′s. Inspired by the movie reel that always got played whenever we had a substitute teacher in band class in junior high, I took an Outward Bound course. One of the final “challenges” of the course was an overnight event they call The Solo. Now, let’s be clear, up to this point the course was kicking my posterior. We carried 65 pound packs in the high desert for hours, repelled off 50 foot cliffs, did boulder hopping, and hiked and hiked until a sleeping bag on the hard parched ground was a welcome sight for blistered, aching feet. The other members of my group excelled at the physical challenges, but I knew my time to shine awaited as we embarked on The Solo.

On The Solo, each participant was escorted to a spot in the desert out of the view of any other participant. We were given a liter of water, a tarp for shelter, a journal, a pen, and a sleeping bag. Dropped off in mid-morning one day, we would not see another soul for 48 hours.

Some people went crazy and were back at camp with the instructors by the first evening. Some could be heard singing woe-filled country and western songs (is there any other kind?) over the next hill. Most simply endured—bored out of their minds. I had a blast!

When they came to collect me after 2 days, I was lying on my tarp, soaking up the sun, and smiling from ear to ear. I had a journal full of insights, and had a radiance that looked like I had seen The Promised Land.

From time to time I get to enjoy little excursions on my own to “big nature resorts” like Yosemite, but for fast relief of daily living stresses, I rely on my “spot” by Lake Natoma in Folsom. I am fortunate to be less than a 10 minute walk from the scene I described with the pine tree. This is my Sanctuary. My Fortress of Solitude.

When the spot by the lake is too tricky to reach, there is the hammock in the backyard. When the hammock is too cold, damp, or the neighbors too noisy, there is the cozy chair in my (lockable) office. Back-up plans upon back-plans.

The point of all this is that it makes me aware that the way I work today is extremely different from how I worked 15 to 20 years ago. When I used to receive a logo assignment, I would sit at a desk and think and think and think. I would brainstorm my brains out. I would research like I was looking for a cure to some mysterious disease. I would sketch and sketch. After thousands of logos and learning to create from a more intuitive place, I do it much differently now.

Rather than chasing the design solution like a rabbit running through my garden, I sit under a tree and invite the rabbit to join me with a tasty (question) carrot. I have learned to trust that the rabbit always shows up, and it is always perfect. There are not endless variations and permutations. There is no beauty pageant or American Idol contest of logos. There is one clear and lovely solution called forward, and it presents itself. I merely sketch what I “see”.

How do I know it’s the best solution? Simple. The client sees it and gasps, or their eyes tear up, or they call two weeks later and say, “I just keep falling in love with it over and over again. Every time I look at it, it shows me something new about myself.”

This is the power of silence, of listening, of trusting, of waiting, of receiving. It is power, not force, that is the womb of creation. Or, to quote David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., author of Power vs. Force,

“Power is total and complete in itself and requires nothing from outside. It makes no demands; it has no needs. Because force has an insatiable appetite, it constantly consumes. Power, in contrast, energizes, gives forth, supplies, and supports. Power gives life and energy—force takes these away.”

Sometimes it is “doing nothing” with only the right question that is the most powerful and productive use of our time. Works for me.

I have this strange little fantasy that runs through my head from time to time when I visit my weekly breakfast LeTip networking group. Like a scene out of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, I imagine that I have invited the illustrious Benjamin Franklin as my guest, and he is given the opportunity to stand up, address the group, and give his “30-second elevator pitch.”

Besides the fact that he has no knowledge of the concept of elevators (because for him they haven’t been invented yet) and the term “pitch” had other definitions in his day, the wise Mr. Franklin would gather from the performance of the other guests that this is his opportunity to tell everyone in the group something compelling about what he does — in 30 seconds or less.

“Well, I do quite a number of things!” he would say brightly, clearing his throat and standing before us with stately Founding Father good posture. (Our chiropractor would be impressed.)

“I am a printer and publisher by trade. Lately, I’ve enjoyed making some rather shocking discoveries about electricity that have greatly captured the imaginations of the fine people in the salons of France. I have a bit of influence in politics, although I would never seek public office. I’ve started the post office, you know, and the library, and the volunteer fire department… I’ve done some consulting to heads of state, a bit of writing…” *Someone holds up a $100 bill* “and I’m the only non-President on the money!”

He could go on (perhaps a delightful story about how he wanted the turkey to be the national bird), but Mr. Franklin is out of time. The Sergeant at Arms politely smiles and nods and gestures that it is time for him to sit back down until his next “at bat” with a 30 second commercial. And here he was just getting warmed up.

Poor Franklin Dude… He transcends categorization. He baffles branding. If he had a PR department, they would be desperately seeking his “hook”.

Mr. Franklin and I have a few things in common here. We both like to do lots of things—all at once! (This makes for a very interesting and fulfilling life, by the way.) But it is a disaster in the sound bite/elevator pitch/Twitter 144 character era. Here’s a terrible confession I must make. Are you ready?

I have a branding problem.

*Gasp!* Ironic, isn’t it? Every week of every year for nearly 20 years I have helped people with their branding. I help them get who they are and communicate that message consistently and beautifully to others. I’m good at it, too. I see them clearly and help others see them clearly too. So, how can it be that I have a branding problem? If YOU have a branding problem what can you do about it?

Here are Two Things You Need to Know about Branding:

1. What Branding IS: Branding is everything that contributes to what people think of when they think of you. Or, to reverse engineer that, it can be who they think of when they think of what you do. This is great news if you are a Specialist who can do the same thing with great mastery for a very long time. It is a serious bummer if you are like Mr. Franklin and myself and love to do a wide variety of things and are actually quite good at most of them. Eighty percent of the population fits into the Specialist category and only about twenty percent of us fit into the Generalist category.

I’ll give you an example. In the last several years I got very excited about doing Bowen therapy after doing graphic design for almost 20 years. I was shocked recently to discover that a bunch of my best design clients thought that I “no longer did design”. You see, I started posting  FaceBook status updates about my happy Bowen clients. My design clients on my friends list took me out of the slot in their brains for “amazing graphic designer” and put me under the category “does some weird bodywork thing I never heard of.” Fabulous. This is a major branding boo boo.

Now the marketing major (yes, I have a degree in marketing for crying out loud) has grabbed hold of the loudspeaker and is announcing, “Clean up on Aisle 9!” It is time to actively, concisely, and consistently pay attention to my messaging. That’s what this blog is partly about, it’s what my newsletters will be about, and that’s what my Tweets will be about. Aren’t you glad you get to benefit from my experience?

OK, here’s the message: I am the person who sees your soul and captures it symbolically.
I do this with Business Logos, Soul Prints, and Personal Symbols. I can help you put it on anything from a business card to your website to a truck.

This precision and clarity led to changing my Twitter user name to SoulSymbolist. (You can follow me to Aisle 9, it’s now well stocked and totally cleaned up!)

2. Branding is an Inside Job. There is a great spiritual teaching that we can only love others to the degree we love ourselves. Likewise it is true that we can only create clarity in the minds and hearts of others when we first have that clarity for ourselves. There are famous people, well-known people, successful people, who have managed to “re-brand” themselves as they grow and change. There is a delightful quote by Lillian Hellman that states,

“Some people change and forget to tell each other.”

Think of the entertainer Madonna who regularly reinvents her Madonna Personna or Al Gore who has shifted his label from Inventor of the Internet to Vice President to Almost President to Mr. Inconvenient Truth. In 20 years, we have watched Bill Gates morph from just Mr. Microsoft to being branded as one of the great philanthropists of our time. You CAN re-brand, but you have to tell people.

Not everyone will accept your change, but the people who really resonate with what they see you becoming will follow you to the ends of the Earth. They might even follow you back to Aisle 9 to see what has changed.

As I write this, Brett the Handyman is preparing to fix the plumbing in our shower that is leaking into our garage. He has also fixed the damaged garage stucco the home owners association has been bugging us about, some trim that is whacked out from weather damage, and he cleaned up our miniature Gulf Oil crisis under the 16 year old Acuras with (of all things) kitty litter.

These are all things my husband is not particularly gifted at. My husband does marketing and websites. This afternoon, my husband built Brett a website and got him a shot at much more business. In return, Brett fixed all that stuff we had been putting off. As small business owners, we do this sort of thing all the time, but today it went much farther. When my neighbor came out to see what we were doing, she asked if Brett could do the same treatment to her damaged garage. I offered up the extra stucco we had mixed, and Brett struck a deal for a BBQ roast beef sandwich and a little cash.

Everyone helped each other accomplish something they needed by giving them something unique they had to offer. A website, a fixed shower, a BBQ roast beef sandwich, it all somehow works. Earlier today a friend helped me with redesigning our diet, brought over a ton of food, food preparation ideas, and shopping tips in exchange for Bowen sessions. Meanwhile, I am arranging to help another client in exchange for her coaching services.  We are people helping people. This is community.

Actually, this is the future.

I am seeing it more and more, and I am personally experiencing it. Last week I worked with Lisa and North to create the pendant I mentioned in my last blog. It was an amazing experience to see three women who normally work as solo artists coming together, combining their strengths, and creating something that wouldn’t exist without each individual contribution.

Another cool place I am experiencing a new level of collaboration is an awesome workshop I have been working on with three other professional women. On May 7, 2011, we will be presenting Evolving Your Business, a one day workshop that helps participants grow, adapt, and transform their businesses. Each segment will build on the next, and all of our presentations are harmonized to deliver on the theme we chose. We will be taking participants through a process to Know It, Show It, Say It, and Do It to evolve their business. Each of us desires to not only be of service to the attendees during the workshop, but to serve our own clients by introducing them to the other presenters. We have all experienced each others’ services first, and know with confidence that each of the other presenters will create tremendous value for our clients.

The workshop itself is not the only example of the collaboration concept in action. Putting it together has required four solo-preneurs to work together to co-create something that will benefit each of us as well as our clients. Once again, each person brings something to the party to improve the result for everyone else. If we had to write checks to each other to do what we did, it could have been a very costly undertaking. As it turned out, each one contributed a little bit of her own time, talents, and resources and we created something greater than what any single one of us could have done alone.

What would happen if the world financial system collapsed and money ceased to exist? Well, I know a few people who would still have something to offer to turn what they have into something else they need. We all do.

Collaboration. Cooperation. Co-Creation. Community. Some of the most precious, powerful, and amazing things I have or have experienced have come from creating in cooperation with others. But then, that’s how I’ve always worked so it’s not really that surprising. What is so exciting is seeing the variety of other people who are catching on to the idea. There are so many more people to play with now!

What would our world look like with more people experiencing days like I experienced today? I’ll let you know in a few years, but that’s what we’re creating now.

I have a number of friends who are “real artists”. They design jewelry, they paint, they work in clay. These friends are “real artists” because they create something from a vision they generate internally, carefully craft that vision in their chosen medium, then put it out there for the world to see. Often someone in the world falls in love with their creation and must have it — they pay them for it. This makes them professional artists.

There is often a distinction between an artist and a designer. (The title that found its way onto my business card.) Designers also create something from a vision they have internally, carefully craft it with their chosen medium (usually a computer these days) and present it to a client who has often already paid them to produce something just for them. The difference is that we designers are not creating “art” that exists on its own terms with no other purpose beyond admiring and appreciating its intrinsic beauty or thought provoking attributes. Designers create with a predetermined purpose — in my case it’s usually a logo for a business and the purpose is to help brand that business in the marketplace. It’s not expected to elicit a personal, emotional, transcendent response.

I think I’m crossing over. With Soul Prints, Personal Symbols, Life Maps and other recent additions, I am no longer creating to fill an order. People are engaging me for my intuitive, artistic, unique interpretation of their essential self. When people ask me, “So why would someone want one of these?” I find myself with same expression on my face as my artist friends, “Why wouldn’t you want one of these?” Why wouldn’t someone want to see themselves in a new and beautiful way, gain greater clarity and understanding, and have a unique, artistic expression of who they are? But then, not everyone appreciates, views, or purchases art. Millions of people buy posters of Van Gogh rather originals from my friends Brenda Boles or Caren Halvorsen, they buy mass-produced trinkets hammered out in China rather unique inspirations by Lisa and Josh Kewish.

I am inspired by my artist friends. They give me the vision and the courage to create art. They help me see the world, my life, and my business differently. They help me create just because something needs to BE.

Very soon I am going to have an opportunity to work with a team of jewelry artists to co-create a one-of-a-kind piece just for me. I chose the stone at The Rock Shop, my friend Lisa Kewish has envisioned the design, and another jewelry artist, North Marques, is going to bring her artistic magic and silver casting to the party. I will throw my ideas and preferences into the pot, and something wonderful will certainly happen.

What I realized later, as I found myself giddy with delight and anticipation about this project, is that I am going to get to experience what I offer to my clients from the other side. I get to experience another artist’s interpretation and expression of my essential nature through their medium of choice. I suddenly realized that what we really offer with an artist’s view is the gift of being seen, heard, understood, and celebrated. And that is simply priceless.

Have you heard? Authenticity is “in”.

Like its cousin Transparency, it is the product of the times in which we live. We are weary of the fake, the illusion, the bald-faced lie. (What, exactly, is the difference between a bald-faced lie and a big hairy lie?) We are being poisoned by artificial sweeteners, fake food, synthetic pharmaceuticals, and the slick words of people who are personnas rather than human beings. We have had enough.

Much to the amazement of those who try to sell us these prefabricated confections, we really can tell the difference. We know when someone is being real and when they are dressed in their “clown suit”. There is something so pure and refreshing about “the Real Deal”.

That is why I re-designed my entire web site recently, and wrote every word straight from the most honest, transparent place I could summon. I wanted to see what would happen if I just “put it all out there”. The morning after I loaded the site and took down the old one, I woke up the next day in a bit of a panic. I stared at the ceiling and just kept thinking, “It’s all right there. Every bit of it. I’m not hiding any more.” I might as well have stripped naked and run down the street, I felt so vulnerable.

Yes, technically, there is nothing on there that will make the National Enquirer. I am actually a pretty boring person by many standards. But I “owned up” to some things that make me a little different, maybe even a little “weird”. I admitted that much of the work I do in design, bodywork, graphic recording, and now especially with Soul Prints and Personal Symbols is done primarily intuitively. Twenty years of skill development, computer mastery and design and drawing practice are now at the service of a perceptive heart. I used to hide behind the experience and the portfolio and let them speak for me. In this “re-birthing” of my business I decided to settle for nothing less than the real deal, knowing full well that many people wouldn’t “get” me. They might think it was “too fluffy” or “woo woo” or whatever.

It wasn’t that I was lying or misrepresenting myself before. It was a matter of emphasis. The emphasis I had placed on my business before was on my technical skill, experience, and creativity. Lots of talented people can offer you those things. What I did not appreciate or value fully (so, therefore, how could I expect potential clients to value it?) were the “softer” aspects—the listening, the empathy, the intuition, the imagination, the HEART. Oh my, the feminine aspects! Could the market handle it? Do people really want that?

I was stunned to find out how many did get me. I was more stunned to find out that the “quirky uniqueness” I had been hiding was actually what many had been looking for all along and didn’t realize I had that to offer.

Who knew?

No matter how hard we work to present our “digital self” for public consumption on Facebook and Twitter, we never fool anyone. We all know the folks who are always posting their accomplishments, speaking engagements, and profound quotations while never revealing anything that would help you see them as “real” people. Come on, people. Show me your new cat or dog, tell me something funny that happened, or take an inspiring or funny picture now and then. Let me connect to your beautiful humanity and see myself in you and see yourself in me. Then, when you try to sell me something, I might actually listen. Others will too, because we feel like we have a relationship and now we actually care.

Turns out, Judy Garland summed it up pretty well.

“Better to be a first rate version of yourself than a second rate version of someone else.”

What else can we expect from the woman who, as Dorothy, exposed the Great and Powerful Oz as a showman hiding behind a curtain?

Hiding. It’s so… 2010.