#108 - Branding Isn’t A Logo; It’s How People Decide To Choose You

Am I my brand? And does branding even matter when I’m a tiny, one-person creative business?

In this episode, I untangle the belief that branding is mostly fonts, logos, and pretty photos, and I lean on Brand the Change to explore branding as direction – a compass for how you show up, what you say yes to, and how people experience your work.

I share examples from the knitting world, some brands that randomply popped up in my head and that's saying much in itself (think Stephen West, Rowan, Hedgehog Fibres), talk about my own journey from yarn shop to coaching, and get honest about boundaries, privacy, and starting a YouTube channel without burning myself out.

I close with journaling questions to help you see where your branding already shines, and how you can use it as a tool instead of a costume.

• Watch the video version on my YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/@pattern-shift 

 You know me as a guide, mentor and teacher, but I've also set off on a new adventure, coaching. Coaching gets a bad rep sometimes, but when it's done right, it can be really transformational. As part of my coaching education, I'll soon need to do real coaching sessions. And it could be a really great opportunity for you to experience it at no or low cost. If you've ever been curious about working with me in this way, now's the time. Just send me an email: info@ja-wol.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Framing The Question
• 1:14 Am I My Brand
• 2:31 Beyond Logos: Branding As Direction
• 3:16 Brand The Change And Key Definition
• 5:04 Branding As Choosing And Compass
• 8:46 Examples From The Knitting World
• 13:19 Personal Aesthetic And Natural Consistency
• 17:55 Wardrobe Palettes As Brand Metaphor
• 20:30 From Community To Pattern Shift Studio
• 22:20 Offers, Identity, And Staying Real
• 25:05 YouTube Strategy, Boundaries, And Mental Health
• 29:26 Craft Time As Joyful, Strategic Content
• 31:45 Practical Setups And Cadence Choices
• 34:11 Reconciling Values With Selling
• 36:02 Privacy Choices And Authentic Presence
• 38:11 Evolving Offers While Staying On Brand
• 39:42 Branding As How You’re Perceived
• 40:54 Journal Prompts For Brand Clarity

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey and welcome to Patent Shift. I'm Tat Kia, creative life and business coach for fiber-loving makers, teachers, designers, shop owners, and all-around creative. I help you wayfind your next step, organize your business to fit your life, and launch ideas with joyful action. Together we'll untangle the tricky bits like branding, marketing and sales, and build something sustainable, skillful, and truly you. Hello and welcome. We're back with Patent Shift. And I'm here to um perhaps give you a little bit of a different way of looking at things, a different way than of thinking about things, and then perhaps you'll get a pattern shift and you'll have a different way of doing things. And today we're talking about branding, and particularly the question that sometimes comes up with smaller businesses, smaller creative businesses, whether or not they're in fiber crafts, arts and needle crafts, and fiber arts. I did this exact same thing the beginning of last episode. I mean, any of those apply. So the question is: am I my brand? And does branding even matter when I'm a one-person creative business? Where does branding come into all of this? Is it just a big word for big companies or is it something else? So chances are that if you are one of those people that I just talked about, if you are working in the fiber arts, the craft world, anything creative, the chances are that you grew up with the idea that branding is mostly about logos and fonts and color palettes and packaging, that things that look cute, especially when they're pictured for Instagram, and perhaps even a banner for a craft fair or something like that. Because of that, many of us think that branding is something you add after you've made your products, like it's a nail polish, which I just added a new layer of it myself because I the it was chipped and I thought I'm gonna do a lot of talking with my hands, and since I'm on YouTube now as well, you're gonna see those hands and nails. So I did an extra layer. But branding is not a layer you put on top of everything, it's not a nice to have, but not essential. It is actually a huge part of why so many small businesses feel invisible or inconsistent or like interchangeable with any other business in their industry. And that's because branding is more than a layer on top. Branding is direction. So this really became clear to me when I got the book Brand The Change. I've got it here in front of me. It's a beautiful bright yellow book with black letters. It's it's really, I imagine this sticks out when you're in the marketing and branding section of your bookshop. It's written by Anna Milton Burg, Anne Milton Berg for the English speakers. And the way that I look at branding has changed a bit since I got this book. And I've I've had it for years now, and I am in the Brand to Change community as well. Anna has a uh a kind of a different way of looking at branding, which was much more in line with my own views and values, and it's sometimes really hard to weed through all the noise that you get on the internet when it comes to these kinds of things. It's usually focused on I don't know, it feels very masculine, very much aimed at people that are in business to make huge amounts of money, and and looks at it from a perspective of changing the world through branding and actually changing the world with your business and using branding to actually make a dent into the thing that you're trying to change, or perhaps not a dent, but the opposite. Anyway, you know what I mean. I mean, I hope you do. So let me just go right to the page where she gives a definition of branding, and it's a full page, I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but here's a little snippet of it. There have been a lot of books written on branding, and experts can argue about its exact definition until they're blue in the face. For the purpose of this book, we are defining branding as directing how other people think and feel about you. So branding helps your audience, it goes on to say, and brands help people choose. Because you're bombarded by thousands of messages from thousands of people, organizations, and products who think that we should buy them, read them, eat them, and fund them. And developing a brand strategy means not leaving your audience choice to chance, but having a plan about who you want on board to support you and how you can get them on board. You can't control it entirely, and neither should you want to, but if you don't frame how you want to be thought of, others will frame you right or wrong as they see fit. Branding also helps you. Internally, a brand provides purpose, is a compass for direction and a filter in decision making. Branding is choosing. Now, here's a this is a important part. You can't be everything to everyone. If you try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to nobody. A strong brand helps you take better decisions on new opportunities and creates a stronger company culture when values are shared and where actions are more aligned. And in this book, she goes on to give great examples about small businesses, big businesses, huge brands that have made big changes, brands that were not even that big when she wrote about them, but are quite big now, like Tony Chocolone is something you might have heard of, slave-free chocolate. But there's also exercises and things that help you think about your business and your brand, and helps you to get that compass and move forward more easily than when you didn't have an idea of what your brand is and who you are as a brand. And that's when I say who you are as a brand, that's how we come to this because you might not have a team, you might have some people that help you, you might be just by yourself. And is branding still, is it still important? Well, yes, it is. Because branding is clarity about what you stand for, the experience people have when they interact with you, how you behave, communicate, and make decisions, and the emotional resonance you leave behind. So it's so much connected to your values and the way you look at things, the way you speak, the way you dress, even, the way you welcome people into your store, online or not online, there's so many things about it. It's it's how you show up at a festival and how you interact with your customers, but also the wholesalers you work with. How do you want to be known? And if you are consistent in showing up in that way, then you will float to the top. So, like imagine if if a huge brand in the in the knitting world, I'm gonna I'm gonna pick the easiest one. I'm sorry, even though I'm creative, this is just gonna be easy to understand for a lot of people. Stephen West and Westknits are the branding is immaculate. It's branding marketing, everything is uh om doringetje te halen, as we say in Dutch. It doesn't matter if you like the aesthetic that comes with that brand. What matters is that it's clear and that you clearly see this is for me or this is not for me. All the bright colors that Stephen, as a knitwear designer, to those who to the the three and a half person that don't know and haven't heard of him, this aesthetic of brightly colored knitwear in different shapes and different textures, and he has a way of reinventing himself in different ways that still fit the brand because he has that compass. He whenever he does something that's different from what he did before, it's still very much on brand. Like, except for maybe in the earlier days when he was still inventing himself as a brand or growing into it, because it's not all made up. This is something that can be inherently connected to who you are as a person. So his earlier designs have earthy tones as well. Can you imagine? But now, if that would happen, that would be almost like a rebrand. He's always said, if I remember correctly, that he's not as much focused on the fibers as he is on the colors. Other brands are perhaps choosing to stay focused on, like a shop, like the yarn shop that I used to have. My first focus was to offer natural yarns, natural fibers to all budgets. And along the way, I have kind of changed that a little bit as the lower budget yarn was also not serving. I mean, it wasn't serving me well as a yarn shop owner. Not naming any names, but it's a huge Scandinavian brand that sells low-priced yarn, and it wasn't helping me, but it was helping other people, so I kept it for a few years, and then I kind of moved into natural fibers in a wide range, but a little less wide than I had it before. Anyway, I'm losing track here. So a brand that's clearly recognizable, Rowan Yarns, is focused very much on tradition connected to fashion. So it's traditional, but it's also quite current in ways, perhaps not for everybody. But if you look at the designs and the photos, they usually are very much fashion-based with the fashion type models. It's a huge brand. So it's harder to pick out small brands that have a very distinct look to it because it's harder to give that as an example because not all people might know it. I think Hedgehog Fibers is uh a brand that was um building and building on uh from a smaller, smaller business to a bigger business and staying quite consistent in what they do. I recently watched a podcast on YouTube. I still don't know what to call it. I feel like it's not a real podcast if there's video there, it's also not a vlog. I don't know. It was on YouTube and it was with um Sari Nordlund and she also has her very distinct aesthetic, and when you hear her speak, it all fits, right? So what's interesting is that if you are a one-person business and you stay close to your own values, if you stay close to your own the aesthetic that you love, then it's not all that hard to build a consistent brand because it will naturally happen. And it's naturally aligned around who you are as a person. So I've recently been thinking about this a lot since I'm now sharing also my podcast on YouTube. I actually wanted to do something extra, perhaps in between the podcast episodes where you just see me in my workroom talking to you and with a microphone in front of me, and there's not much else happening. I was also thinking about doing vlogs. I've done one or two, not much yet, because I felt like I needed to really think about it a little bit more. And this kind of energy goes in two directions. And one direction is I feel like I want to think about it and kind of design it and kind of organize it around Yavol and PatternShift and me. And the other part of it is I should just do it and should just have fun with it, and it'll naturally become something that is aligned with my brand, because so far I've always been very much connected to the products that I sell, the information that I offer is very much me. So there shouldn't be a real issue there. Although this me person also happens to love a lot of different things, just as in an attempt to get some direction in my wardrobe. Now we are talking about color schemes, although I did say before that branding it is not just color schemes, and these color schemes are something else completely. So I was designing four different color schemes before because I feel connected to four distinct styles. I do also have names for them, but I don't know them by heart, and I left my phone downstairs. And let me just reinvent the names. So I've got this kind of Timbertonesque, black and white, lots of black, by the way, grungy, some powder pink, lots of layers and fringes and things, and then a chunky Dr. Martin's, that's one type of thing. But on the other hand, I also really love greens and a little bit of browns, even a little bit. Things that are more connected to walking in a forest, brown boots and things like that, and chunky knitwear. But I also really love like French classics, like the Breton shirt, and not necessarily all French classics. I don't walk around wearing a beret, but I really love the Breton shirt. I really love Japanese indigo, kind of the the white blue that also that lives within Scandinavian, French, Japanese traditions, those kinds of the prints love that as well. And then there's the more of what I'm wearing today. I'm basically wearing a rainbow and a setting sun, a rainbow striped t-shirt, and an orange cable cardigan. Because I also really love color, and those are four chapters, I would say, themes in my wardrobe. And I use them to inform me what to make or knit or buy next, if there's anything missing in my wardrobe. And I also use an app called index. That sounds really weird when you say it out loud. It's like index, but with a with a Y and an X. I I think that's bad branding. Just PS, just not using like the word needs to be the word. Anyway, I love the app though, and I will probably do an episode about it or a video later on. But having those distinct directions really helps me with every decision I make next. I need a sweater. What color would it be? Well, I look at my wardrobe, I see what I have in each in each theme, and I'll just see where the gaps are. So that's an example of getting direction through branding. The interesting thing is that almost naturally, and I talked about this before, the color schemes have blended into my actual brand of my business. So I have the colors that I love are visible on my website, on my body, in my home. It's very much me. So I guess that's why they call it a personal brand. Although what they mean by that is when you use your name as a brand, I don't do that. I have thought about it, but I'm sticking with Yavl as my business name and Pat and Shift as the podcast name. I did also, by the way, recently change the name of the Yavel community to the Pat and Shift Studio. Okay, I might as well just talk about it now. So the community, after I think I've had it for six or seven years now, has turned into a workspace more than a community. And I was feeling the pressure of growing a community when I was actually using it in a totally different way. So, with the people in the business circle membership, those business owners that work together and with me to tackle some of the more difficult things around running their business, we work together in that space. We have kind of a library of information there that goes beyond business and goes into craft and into fiber, fiber knowledge. There's so much there. It's a library, it's a workspace, and I felt like it needed to shift names to be more aligned with what it really is. So it's now the pattern shift studio, which I'm very happy. I'm super happy about that because it feels so different to me. I don't feel pressured to grow it and to have lots of people in there because there's not lots of people in a community in a studio, but they can still be a community and feel like a community, and that's actually exactly what's happening. So enough about that. That's the name Podcast and the studio. And the name of my brand is still Yavol because it aligns so perfectly with the way I feel about this work, and that is to do it with joy and take action, and just the yes wool and the hell yeah of it, and of what that means, just really feels like that's me. I just love to be inspired and in turn hopefully inspire other people, and Yavel is really just still just says it all. And it is the three-step framework of wayfinding, organizing, and launching that I work with. So I am going on so many different tangents, but it's all connected, everything's connected. So, what I was thinking about, I want to lean back, but then I get away from the microphone. Um, what I was just contemplating, thinking about like just having it like a cloud above my head wherever I go is what does my YouTube channel what do I offer? How is it? What's me? What's my brand? So if I'm looking at, I'm just gonna take this podcast. That's quite clear. The podcast already has everything that is still what it was. So it's it's patent shift podcasts. We I offer things to think about, hopefully, some inspiration, some insights about running a small business in creativity and craft. That's what the podcast is. So that's one thing it's it's done. So I also wanted to show people that I have these different offers for people like you, and I do coaching, but who am I to talk about these things? And even saying I'm here to inspire you, feels like it's a little, you know. So I wanted to show who I am behind the person that's just talking about all those things. I'm actually also doing all the things, and I'm actually also still a creative, and although I don't earn money with the things I make anymore, I am still very much rooted and also still growing in that part of the equation. So I'm a knitter, I'm a crocheter, I'm a weaver, I'm a spinner, I'm a sewist, I grow my own flax, I love interior design, I do journaling, bullet journaling privately as well, not just for business. So I wanted to show that so that people could connect to me a little bit more than just this kind of a me to you information type thing. And I'm figuring it out what that needs to look like. There's been a lot of nervous energy around feeling more private than I had before when I had an Instagram account that I was very active in. Things have changed a little in my life and how I feel about those things. How can I stay a little bit private and have like good healthy boundaries? How can I keep myself, my mental well-being healthy when I am just basically saying this is who I am, this is what I do, and everyone that has an opinion can share it just below. And kind of wanting to connect with people in comments, but also wanting really very much to stay away from the comments. How do I deal with that? And what would things look like? The video, the YouTube channels that I follow are one of two things. They're either very aesthetically pleasing, which I find very calming, but honestly also a little bit annoying, because I cannot step away from the fact that that is probably not the full reality of things. I mean, like I just not believe that your whole life is cream beige white and some brown. I d I do not believe it. Like everybody has to have items in their life that have a different color. And then I don't know, let's say can I think of something? Well, just like the things you put on your sandwich, you set the table, and then your whole aesthetic is messed up because your peanut butter is bright green or blue or red and green. What's the brand? I don't know. It's bright colored, and then it's just an eyesore on your table. So do you decant the peanut butter into a handmade? You know what I mean. I just don't believe in the full aesthetically thing. And that would be something that I could never I could just never do that like for a longer stretch of time that would stress me out so much. I keep forgetting to watch to look at the camera. F it. I don't care. So there's that, and then there's the other channels that I watch, and those are basically just people sitting down like me now in one setting and talking about what they've made, how they're processing it, their thoughts, their ideas. And there's some people that really don't even edit, and I love them, I like their personality, I like the choices they make, I think they're inspiring, they give me ideas, and it's basically just the camera running and them talking into the camera and then putting it online. I don't do this, I am not gonna do this to make money. I'm gonna do this because I want to connect with people, and also, so that's part of the business side of things. It's just really important to me that people know that I'm who I am, so that they know that when they work with me, this is who they're talking to. And hopefully they will see that I'm not fake, that I'm real, and that I make mistakes, and then I'm messy as well. But I sometimes have good insights, and most importantly, I have good tools to help you work with whatever's going on so I know how to use the tools. That's the most important thing in coaching, and then just reflecting on those things. What would my channel look like then? What do I need to keep it mentally healthy for myself and interesting for other people? And so I was thinking about it has to connect back to my brand, and that will help me make decisions, and at the same time it will naturally connect back to my brand. I took some notes, let me get my notes, and I also wrote down how much time would I spend because one of the things is that I I'm not a content creator, I'm a creative life and business coach, and so creating the content is either part of the conscious making conscious choices about marketing and branding in an ethical way that connects to who I really am, or and it also is connected to things I enjoy doing. So I really truly enjoy taking pictures and photographs and making videos. Before I did anything, I went to art school and I studied photography, video, and animation. And I loved that. It was either that or fashion. I didn't so much like the fashion subjects in school, so I chose photography and video. And now I feel like I'm getting back to that, and I really enjoy photographing and videoing, uh, filming, videoing, filming the process. So that's part of what I enjoy. But I also enjoy, of course, the craft itself. And I don't allow myself so much time to do craft. Craft because I feel like every moment I have to do anything should be focused on the business in ways that bring me more income, customers, because that's why it's a business. And so I don't do much craft during the day. And at night I'm tired or the lighting's bad. And I just started to feel this itch of I need to do more craft and during the daytime. And now thinking about it, I feel like, okay, so if I'm recording it and I'm doing it, that's like three birds in one stone. I am doing this for my business, doing it because I need it, and I'm doing it because I enjoy it. And so now I'm at the details part of it. I took some notes about how I can make it easy for myself. Where do I actually craft? Could I have like a few different setups that are always the same? So it's not sew all over the place. So I have my workroom, I have the couch in front of my stash, and perhaps in our cottage, I have a work table that, and those could be three locations that continually come back and be something that's recognizable. But also I it could go in any way. I probably am just gonna try out different things. And although this podcast really needs to come out every other week, I feel like that is an anchor that I have. It comes out every other week, except for the winter break and the summer break. And that is something that's completely doable. That is something that people can rely on. I don't want that for videos on YouTube. I don't want people to be like, oh, where's the video? There's supposed to be a video. I'm gonna do that whenever it feels good to me. And yeah, so about the branding with that is so basically the story that I'm trying to tell is that yes, you are a brand as a small business owner, especially if you care about your customers, especially if you connect your own values to your business values. They don't necessarily have to completely overlap, of course, because the biggest let's the elephant in the room here is that most of us really don't want to be in um a consumerist world, but we run a business. So we are there. If whether we like it or not, that's just where we are. And if you don't want to sell things to people or offers or services to people, then it's probably better that it's your hobby. If you don't agree, let me know. Send me an email, post in the comments, but post kindly. So it's can it's connected to you as a person, but you can be private. I do not plan to share my kids, my husband. I will share my pets. I didn't ask them, but I'm pretty sure they're okay with it. I will not record in my whole house. I will probably try to make myself look okay. Perhaps not perfect, because that is just annoying, but I will not purposely make myself look what shall we say, uncharming. So there is there is there's things that feel good and don't feel good, and it's important to me to think about that beforehand. I know what's important to me, and it is to allow yourself time to create, because it's really healthy and it's really fun, and it serves a purpose. You're making things that you're using instead of buying them from the fast fashion industry. So I feel like I'm starting 700 sentences and not finishing them. That's always the case when I just I have some notes, but this is just something that is happening to me right now, and and I use also use the podcast to figure out what I feel about it, but I also journaled about it. I mean, um I did do some work beforehand. I would like to be myself on camera, and that's hard because I like to, I'm very much someone who likes puns and jokes and like quick, quick comebacks to things people say. And when you're recording yourself, that's not really gonna happen, is it? I mean, I'm talking to myself, I'm talking to you, but you're not talking back to me. So I'll never be myself. I'll always be different in person. And part of it is playing a role. Because you better believe that I put on some lipstick before I started recording. Better believe that I thought about what I was wearing today. I mean, it's it's a little bit of playing a role, and it's a lot being yourself, I think. I think that's kind of the balance. And then a lot of it is also just experiencing it and seeing what's coming up in the actual doing of it and and reflecting back, seeing what works, what doesn't work, and then of course, we're all allowed to kind of change course a little bit. Doesn't mean that you go fully of brand if you decide to do something differently. I still have the same brand, but I don't sell yarn anymore, I don't teach needlecrafts anymore, I don't dye yarn anymore, I don't design craft products anymore, but I'm still the same brand. Now, how is that possible? Because it is still about the same essential vision and mission that I have, and it's all revolving around making better choices when you craft and helping the world come become a little bit more of a brighter, better place and having some fun in the process while crafting. So I think it's time to stop thinking about branding as it is just the fonts you use on your websites, the colors you use, the way you take pictures for Instagram. It's about all the ways that you show up. It's about who you are in your business. So who you are in your private life is perhaps exactly the same. It could be adjacent, it could be overlapping, but branding is who you are and how you communicate and how people perceive you. That's even more important. And that's kind of out of your hands in a way, how others perceive you and your brand. So if you want to do some more work around this, I have some questions for you that you could journal about. So here they are. What do I want people to feel when they encounter my work? What values show up in the way that I run my business? Where am I hiding behind aesthetics? No. Where does my branding already shine without me noticing? So I think what's part of my branding for me is that I am a little bit chaotic. I'm a little bit, I tend to go in all kinds of directions, whether it is in my podcast, in my thinking, in my choosing, the craft that I'm doing, I'm not a one project type of person. Never. I don't think I will ever be, but you never know. So even though I have clear color ideas, I have clear fonts, I have clear slogans, things, lots of my branding is about me being, and that's hard for me to say. That's where it's branding. How are you perceiving it? But I'm I'll try to think about how you are perceiving me. And that's a little bit of all over the place. A little bit what people tell me is that I bring things up that I'll start thinking about and and they haven't thought about it before. That's because my brain really wants to think about things and really wants to make better decisions if I can and struggles when I can't. And then I think of questions, why is that? And I like to bring all of that to you as well. So yeah, my website might look very much a certain way. It is not all of it. My brand is also me talking to you in the way that I talk, and then me deciding what to edit out and what to leave in. It's also branding. So let me know what you took away from this. What was there something new? Is there something you're now thinking about? Is there something you want to change? I would love to hear about it. All right, thank you for listening and uh or watching on YouTube or both. And I'm gonna start making a video, I think. Bye bye.