After completely failing a rep on bench press one morning during a training session, my powerlifting coach crouches down in front me. She knows I’m pissed and beating myself up about that rep (yeah it’s just one rep but I’m dramatic).
The first thing she says: “Did you eat before you came today?”
Simple question, which should have an obvious answer: YES you should eat something before heavy weightlifting (we were trying to PR aka personal record that day). But in true Ashleigh fashion, I didn’t eat that day. I was in the habit of not eating at all before training.
So I told her no with a sad face and she said “you already know what I’m gonna say”.
She smiled but I know she wanted to strangle me (she told me so a few weeks later over sushi). I did know what she was gonna say. We had talked about it before. Our bodies need energy to get through workouts and pre-workout isn’t enough. I need carbs and a bit of fat and just something in my stomach to help my body push through.
Some people might not, but she and I both knew that I did.
By not eating, I wasn’t creating the right environment for my body to be at it’s best.
So why am I telling you this? Why am I telling you this story telling you some obvious shit like “when you do a strenuous activity your body will need energy to do it” Because when I replayed that morning over in my mind a few weeks later, I realized that I was being a hypocrite. I wasn’t setting myself up for success in something that means more to me every day. I was working against myself.
I was doing something that I see business owners and creatives doing every day that I talk about how wrong it is.
So many entrepreneurs are focusing on a single tree and not the entire forest, and that concept is a cornerstone of my entire brand messaging. So many want to hyperfocus on outputs, and not the quality of those outputs. And not how all those outputs contribute to the overall ecosystem of their brand as a whole. And like me, they want to focus on hitting a PR without actually giving your body the correct level of fuel it needs to hit that PR.
We as entrepreneurs need to better understand our brands as living and breathing ecosystems. A collection of items living, breathing, interacting, and influencing each other.
Brand ecosystems are made up of tangible components that are influenced by intangible factors.
Something I really hate is when someone takes something that we’ve all seen before and tries to “reinvent it” as something new (like that woman that tried to "reinvent" bonnets when black women have been wearing them since the land before time). So I’m gonna say this now: I didn’t come up with this analogy. It’s easily googlable. What I wasn’t really finding in my googles was the application of brand ecosystems for the everyday entrepreneur.
You’ll find the concept or analogy being discussed in relation to big brands, but the overall analogy still works for businesses with smaller teams or those of us that are solo.
An ecosystem (like the ones Bill Nye used to teach us about) is “a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment”.
Let’s break that down a bit more (I was trash in science class in high school so forgive me if this break down is rough).
Ecosystems that we typically think of, like the ones in the rainforest or in the Amazon, have two two main parts that make up that ecosystem:
Part One: The plants and animals that live there (the living organisms) (the tangible components)
Part Two: the environment that those organisms live in (the intangible factors).
Part one is pretty self explanatory. Every ecosystem has a common type of plant and animal that lives, breathes, eats, grows, dies, and pick fights with the other organisms there.
Part two is the temperature, types of terrain, etc that influences how the living organism behave, live, and interact with each other and their environment. That’s why if you stick a polar bear in the desert……he’s not gonna make it. The temperature of that environment isn’t what he’s used too. And if you take that polar bear’s typical environment and turn the temperature up (or maybe turn it wayyyyy down) he’s gonna flip out in that scenario too.
Glad you asked random internet stranger.
Your business is exactly like an ecosystem. Your brand has living organisms that interact with and are influenced by the environment they’re in. The environment isn’t your industry or the world, its the inner workings of your brand. Brand strategy dictates how those living organisms should live, breathe, and behave.
And the living organisms are what I call the tangible components of your brand. They are the things that you can “touch” and are the outwardly expressions and results of your brand and business:
And the list goes on.
Your ecosystem’s environment is made up of intangible factors such as your brand foundation (mission, values, vision, purpose, etc.), brand positioning, target audience, client journey, messaging, etc. These factors (when they’re well thought out and understood by you) influence the cohesiveness and effectiveness of the tangible components.
For example: when you understand the position that you want your brand to take in your industry, you’re able to write copy (or hire a copywriter) that showcases and amplifies that position. You’re then able to create a marketing strategy that does the same. And if you don’t understand that position, you’re not able to accurately convey the difference between you and your competitors. You don’t know what your edge is, so your marketing strategy isn’t cohesive or successful because it has to overall purpose.
Many entrepreneurs aren’t seeing the messages they’re sending to their audience when they lack a cohesive brand ecosystem. They’ve created an environment for their outputs that’s so unstable and the result of that instability are brands, websites, marketing efforts, etc. that are all over the place, lacking of real substance, and are subconsciously saying to their audience: “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing”.
Harsh but……it’s true.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way if you’re willing to slow down and start back at square one.
Spoiler alert: this isn’t gonna happen overnight. It takes time to intentionally and strategically plan out what to tackle first, how to tackle it, and at what level of intensity. The good news is that there is right place to start, and it’s sadly the place that most people don’t start with.
When sales are slow (or non-existent) people tend to focus outwards - hopping on every social media trend, creating a bunch of content with no real direction, hyper-focusing on their website or logo, and the list goes on. Doing that is just spinning your wheels. You’re focusing on how the outside of a house looks, turning a blind eye to the fact that the floors in the living room are caving in.
If creating and maintaining a thriving business is important to you, you have to look inwards.
Let’s establish what those intangibles are for the people in the back:
Those components make up your brand strategy aka the inner workings/foundation of your brand.
Think of brand strategy as being similar to the blueprint of a house. Blueprints give the house shape. Giving structure and dimensions to each room in relation to it’s surroundings. Without blueprints or house plans, you’re gonna have a hard time building a house in an efficient and organized way. The same goes for building a brand: if you don’t have a plan and established boundaries set up, you’re going to constantly go off the rails.
Think of every brand that you admire and why you admire them. I guarantee that every example you give is related to a component of their strategy. The reason why it works and why you admire them, is because they understand that in order to build communities, to drive sales, to create brand legacies - they needed a cohesive brand ecosystem.They understand that every component of their brand and business interacts with and influences each other. And when one is off the rails and not functioning as expected, then the entire ecosystem is in jeopardy.
There are two main steps to creating a brand ecosystem that’s aligned to your goals: establishing/refining your brand strategy then addressing the tangible components through the lens of that strategy.
Having a better understanding of the inner workings (aka intangible factors) of your brand allows you to set boundaries and expectations on how your tangible components need to behave to achieve your goals.
When you’re ready to take action towards a more aligned brand ecosystem there are two routes you can take for your first step: hiring a brand strategist or doing the brand strategy work yourself. No route is inherently better than the other, where they differ is going to be in the results each one produces.
When you do this work yourself, whether you invest in a course, or a workbook, etc., at the end of all that reflecting and research, you may not know what to do with that information after you’ve unearthed it. That course or whatever you bought essentially taught you how to create your very own unique bad ass weapon but didn’t tell you how to actually use it or make it better in the long run. So you run the risk of not being completely back at square one, but something kinda close to it.
Now if you decide to work with a brand strategist, they’re going to work with you to develop that weapon, and (depending on who you work with) they’ll teach you how to actually use it. This comes in the form of guidance on how to use each strategy component in your marketing, branding, website etc effectively. A lot of brand strategists (not all of them!) are also brand designers - meaning they can take the brand strategy that you both developed and turn it into your brand’s visual identity. So by working with them, you’re two steps closer to a more cohesive brand ecosystem.
With the intangible factors setting the right environment, you’re now in a better position to create tangible components of your brand that are more aligned to your goals and can better set you up for success. Now you need to tend to teach component and deciding on which one to start with is going to be determined by what you value the most.
Some believe that having a website isn’t necessary as long as they have a social media platform they are consistent on. Some don’t care to put much effort into social media marketing and prefer to focus primarily on their website and SEO. Some may keep looking inward and put more focus on fine-tuning their offerings and client experience since they deem that to be more important.
All of that is up to you - my only advice is to think about each of those tangible components and which ones have the biggest impact on your business as a whole.
For some, a quick one page website is enough, and spending money on making sure that their marketing and offers are well thought out and scalable is what they think is more important. Some may seen the need to invest more time and money into their website because it is the primary platform to showcase everything about their business and their offerings (like website designers, brand designers, copywriters, etc.).
Focusing on one tangible component first isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Everything is updatable and changeable. Your sales page on your website can be updated as you make changes to your services. Your client experience can (and should!) always be evolving and refining. Nothing is set in stone.
Your brand is much more than the tangible components or the outputs. A new website or a new logo will not save your business from a lack of understanding of the inner workings of your brand and what makes it different than your competitors. That website or that logo is simply a component of a much larger ecosystem that is influenced by how strongly you understand the inner workings of your brand. Put your focus on brand strategy first, then optimizing your outputs second.
Through a strategic approach rooted in Psychology, we put our focus on the human experience behind the visuals. With powerful and clear design, we’ll create an intentional online presence that positions you as not just the best solution for your clients, but the only solution.
