“I don’t have a product ‘cos I don’t know what I stand for.”

Something I grappled with when I realised what I was selling was different to what I valued and I needed to uncover how to align them.

What do you stand for? Sounds corny.

Maybe, but useful in this discussion. Its tied to your passion – what drives you creatively, what type of business person you are, what type of projects you accept or don’t, and how you navigate relationships and handle conflict. It will be an underlying factor in your decision making and what type of work you subconsciously go after. For example, I’ve always been obsessed with identity construction for most of my adult life but wasn’t really conscious of it. But only a few years ago an art teacher shone a light on it and I’ve been interrogating it, more consciously, ever since.

I realised I loved creating identities for companies because I love creating or recreating a persona – a face, a cloak, a mask – for someone or something. Its a playful way of constructing realities and spaces for people and companies to inhabit temporarily. I think it also ties into my other personal obsession with architecture – how we construct our physical realities, no pun intended. The idea of many possible scenarios, many interations of an ‘face’ is a fun space for me to inhabit albeit challenging. But it is tied to what I stand for on a deeper personal level – the notion that there can be more than one solution to any situation (in my life) as long as my voice (beliefs and values) is consistent. My voice can inhabit many different spaces and have many different versions as long as the message stays the same.