For those of you keeping score, I mentioned in my annual review post that I was starting the massive undertaking of repositioning my brand. Today, I want to give you some more back story details.
Years ago, when I was working with direct sellers, I had a program I offered called "Star Power" (brace yourself for a very old school sales page. This was 2008, after all!). I loved the name and used it for a while, but then I went in another direction.
A few years after writing Creative Freedom, micro business owners started approaching me with a new request. Instead of building a profitable sustainable business doing what they love, they wanted something more.
"I'm already doing okay on profitability and sustainability. But I'm clear that I'm meant for a bigger stage. I just don't know how to get there yet."
Then, they'd say the quiet part out loud:
I want to be the Brene Brown of my industry.
I want to be the Sherlock Holmes of my market.
I want to be the (insert celebrity here) of my niche.
So I did what I always do. I took hold of the problem and started trying to figure it out.
I researched over 100 years of celebrity-making to figure out what it was that separated the most well-known people from the equally talented folks living in obscurity.
That was the foundation of the framework and method I started marketing under the Star Power banner back in the early 2020s. You might even recognize the framework:
It's been a roadmap for every training program and webinar I've developed since my brilliant graphic designer and brand guardian Tracy Lay conjured it for me.
I invested several years doing the research, having the conversations, and marketing this approach. I was actively using it across my business as a "roadmap" of sorts to help people know what the focus of each training was. I've booked clients and helped them develop and navigate their own roadmap to celebrity status in that time. Heck, I was on the verge of creating a reality show around this idea!
I was finally feeling like it was time to take this concept to the next level, so I popped into the USPTO website to look at filing a trademark for the model.
That's when I saw it...
Yeah. Kind of a bummer.
As I've said before, this person doesn't know me or my work. This wasn't their attempt to steal my ideas. They teach something completely different than I do, to an audience very different from mine.
It was just unfortunate and coincidental timing.
Like I said, a bummer. But also a blessing in disguise.
In talking with my trademark attorney, she recommended that we just do an entire rebrand so that we don't have to deal with the headache of proving to the USPTO that we're different enough that we won't confuse the general public.
I confess I had mixed feelings about this revelation.
"razza-frazza... my idea... mumble grumble...will take months... harumpf-galumph"
But then it explained so much.
The heel-dragging on finishing Season 8 of the podcast. The directionless sense of motion on the book. I mean, really. My first two books came together with blistering speed. The Secret Watch was outlined on an airplane trip and written in 90 days. The first draft of Creative Freedom took about the same amount of time.
THIS BOOK HAS TAKEN YEARS TO WRITE... and it wasn't coming together.
That is, until I gave myself permission to suspend the "have-to's" and re-imagine the business.
If you've ever done 1:1 work with me, you'll remember the magic paintbrush exercise. I even gave some of my early clients a magic paintbrush of their own to make it that much more tangible for them.
Imagine you've been given a magic paintbrush. With it, you can "paint the picture" of how you want your life and business to be - down to the tiniest detail.
What will you paint? What will be in your picture? What will NOT be in your picture?
You control the brush. You are the master artist and the canvas is completely clear for you to create whatever your heart desires.
THAT was the invitation that laid before me.
If you've been with me since my back surgery, you know I spent some time laid up thinking about how to make my business work better with my new capacity constraints. But I never gave thought to the idea of totally re-imagining everything from the ground up.
I've been an online business owner for 30+ years, and a business coach for about 20 of those years. I've been a performing artist since I was a child. I've wanted to help people since I was a toddler. But until now, I still tried to compartmentalize and "shape" my work to fit what the world could comprehend... what would be "palatable" or "acceptable", not what I REALLY wanted to be about.
There's a proverb of questionable origin that says something about going fast alone or going farther together. For too much of my career, going alone seemed to be the only option. Or more accurately, the easiest option. I could "go faster" if I just handled everything myself.
That only works for so long.
And to be clear, I think there's a point in the early stages of business where it's good to do most, if not all, of the work on your own so that you can clearly see the landscape you're operating in and know what you're up against. But I've built my businesses over the last 30 years on less than a bootstrap... less than a shoestring, even. Even when that wasn't a necessity anymore, I found myself struggling to find and keep the right kind of help for the long term. My designer's been with me for over a decade, and I've had a few great VAs over the years, but anything more than that has been a challenge.
So in this re-design, I wanted to examine why that is... to really reflect on and unpack all my assumptions about by work.
Immediately, I knew I didn't want to go alone anymore. Not only that, but I really COULDN'T go it alone anymore. I'm not 20 anymore. I don't have the capacity to be as fast as I once was.
THAT was the first stroke my magic paintbrush made on the canvas: Hire the right help to reduce bottlenecking and friction.
That meant connecting to folks who could legitimately help me go farther. I started this last year when I hired Mike Ganino to help me craft my keynote, but with this re-model, I need to re-work the keynote, to match the new direction! While I've still got Mike on speed dial, I also need help from a strategist to get clear on this new direction so that everything works together.
I knew I needed someone to do for me what I do for my own clients. Right away, I knew I wanted a brand strategy retreat with Rachael Kay Albers. But RKA (as they call her in these Internet streets) took a little convincing.
I mean, we're friends. We've known each other for YEARS. We did a 4-part series on her podcast! We've also seen each other through some real-life shit, and that brings a level of vulnerability that is both a blessing and a curse.
I was all "TAKE MY MONEY, PLEASE!!" and Rachael was much more - ahem - mature about things. We talked about personal vs professional boundaries, and how the expectations in a client/provider relationship are different.
Frankly, too few people put this level of care into pre-qualifying their clients. One more reason I KNEW she was the right person to do this work with.
We agreed to start with one of her virtual Unforgettability sessions just to lay the ground work and do a "test flight" together. If that worked well, then we could make plans for an in-person retreat. It was a low-risk way for each of us to see how we actually worked together in this different business relationship.
I was surprised at how much we were able to cover. I mean, I shouldn't have been, because I know how meticulous Rachael is when she is working with a client. I take a similar, deep-dive approach. I want to get my hands DIRTY and deeply understand the context of my clients.
That was the second brush stroke on the canvas: a desire to provide a deeper, more comprehensive level of client care.
I'm talking destination-style extended retreats for deep work. Customer care that feels luxurious. A sense that you're fully seen, safely held, and deeply understood.
As much as I've dreamed of being able to offer things like that over the years, it always felt like there were too many hurdles to make that possible. That's a story for another day.
This re-model allows me to explore what that could look like and how to roll it out in the next year, if not sooner. And I certainly can't do it alone.
I've already ramped up my team support and will be doing more of that in the coming months. But first, RKA and I have some work to do! We're taking everything down to the studs in this build, to see what the "bones" really look like, and how to create the next evolution of my business in ways that match my magic paintbrush imaginings.
I'm taking my time and going WITH people to go farther than I've ever gone before. To that end, I want to make sure we're building in the most efficient and effective way possible. No wasted resources. The best order possible. With the year I've had, we don't really have the resources to waste!
Look for an update when I'm back from Chicago later this month.