The Multi-Passionate Entrepreneur's Guide To Defining Your Brand Vision
It’s no surprise that the creative unicorns of the world end up feeling their hearts being tugged in multiple directions. We creatives have curious minds and a hunger to explore. This often ends up with very passionate, soulful people wearing all the hats and wanting to share all of their various passions with the world.
If this sounds like you, I have good and bad news.
The good news is you can still do the things you love.
The bad (but not actually bad) news is that you will need to narrow in on which of those passions are going to:
a) work together cohesively,
b) be sustainable as a long-term focus, and
c) be profitable as a business
The trick is having a really intentional strategy to narrow in on this vision for your brand and assess how your various passions and interests can be incorporated into it without confusing your target audience.
If you’re wanting to uncover how your creative business can reach it’s potential, here are a few of my favourite ways to redefine your brand vision:
Go back to your “Why”
When you don’t know which passion to focus on and invest in as a business, think about why you are driven to do this. Ask yourself these questions:
What tasks fire you up?
What pushes you through even when challenges arise?
Why did you start doing this?
Once you have a better understanding of your “why”, you can move forward with a clearer motivation and can better predict obstacles ahead.
Find a Link
I’ve often had clients come to me with a handful of ideas for multiple businesses and a desire to house those ideas under one brand umbrella. They see some entrepreneurs succeed at “everything businesses” - you know, the lifestyle blogger, podcaster, photographer combo? - and want to show the world their multiple passions as well.
However, when you really examine why certain multi-passionate creative entrepreneur icons have succeeded, you can see that there is always a link between their passions.
For example, you don’t see a newborn photographer + food blogger + fashion blogger under the same umbrella brand.
What you will see is a wedding photographer offer resources to other wedding photographers and grow into offering resources for all creative business owners. OR you’ll see an interior designer evolve into a lifestyle brand and YouTuber. The common factors are always the link between target audiences and the evolution of their content as their audience grows.
READ MORE: Smart Targeting: Defining Your Audience
Start Small
Can you commit to focussing on one targeted business for one year?
Especially when people are first getting started, it can be massively beneficial to add some boundaries to your wandering, creative mind. Start with one strong idea. Your BEST idea. You can always grow and take on more projects down the line once this business gets off the ground.
You can take this same approach when you do add linked passions to this brand. Don’t go from zero to 100 all at once. Slowly introduce new types of content (still with a link, of course) to develop a more diverse audience.
measure long term viability
Hopping on the latest fad or doing something because you see somebody else succeed in it is not a long-lasting strategy.
If you are considering any new creative business you need to ask yourself if you can see yourself doing this in 5 years. What about 10-20 years? Is there going to be a long-term market for your service offering/product? Furthermore, you also need to ask if you can see yourself still being passionate about this in the long run.
Being motivated by another’s success in the same field is not the same as being motivated by your own unique passion and abilities.
Separate Work Project Time and Hobby/Personal Project Time
Resist the temptation to take on new personal projects during your work time. Instead, carve out a weekly or monthly schedule that gives you the reassurance that you’ll still have time to tackle those passion projects… even if you don’t do it RIGHT now!
Creating boundaries for yourself is essential if you want to stay on track and still be the creative, multi-passionate person you are.
SPLIT YOUR VENTURES
If you really want to grow two very different businesses, you will likely need to split those brands. Here are some signs that a division is right for you:
Your multiple offerings have completely different target audiences.
Your brand voice is different/conflicting for each offering.
You want different aesthetics for each part of this business.
It’s very possible to split up your businesses (heck, I did it too!) and still succeed in a social media identity-focussed world.
The key is making the best use out of your time (scheduling), outsourcing & automating whenever possible, and being realistic about what one person has the time for without compromising either business.