Would you still wear retail when you can afford couture?

This hot take is brought to you by my number one business coach pet peeve: when they love to show off about "not needing a BrandTM to get to $1M / insert aspirational number and you don't either."

A question for the coaches and other kinda weird business owners who “didn’t need pretty branding” to succeed:

If you’ve already mastered marketing, sales, strategy, content, copy, energetics all the way to ~$1M… 

Why would you NOT want to bring the aesthetics of your business up to match them for like $10-20k?

If you can afford couture, you wouldn’t show up to a red carpet in the same thing you wore to your first ever networking event years ago. So why is sticking with your old make-do branding ok with you???

How “big” are you really playing if you’re still hiding behind your notes app and using your signature as your logo? What do you have to lose?

Rebranding -now- that you can afford it isn’t going to take away from the success you built without the fancy brand. 

You can still tell your audience that they don’t need a fancy brand until they reach a threshold of financial success. It won’t make you a hypocrite, because you’re no longer in the phase of business that they are.

To be clear, I’m not saying that you should present yourself as a non-human corporate entity just because you “made it.” 

It’s absolutely possible to have an elegant brand that embodies and celebrates the same grit, edge, and sprinkle of delulu that got you to $1M, instead of erasing or beige-washing it. (That’s what I do.)

Rebranding isn’t superfluous or overkill when you can afford it. It actually makes all of your marketing much more efficient. Especially for master wordsmiths who identify as “not visual.”

When you have a cohesive brand guide to give the people designing your sale pages, social graphics, etc, you know that whatever they put together with it -will- look good without having to play creative director or quality control over anyone’s shoulder.

If rebranding in a way that’s actually true to you sounds hard and annoying, and you don’t want to go on that ride, hire someone who truly does the WHOLE thing for you.

I don’t do open-ended “explorations,” there isn’t a soul-searching journey, it won’t take 6 months.

You don’t need to know exactly what you want to start. It’s my job as a brand designer to get to know your business and tell YOU what you need. I’m all about hands-off, minimal emails and meetings. No hemming and hawing.

Having a hugely successful business and being PROUD of “not needing a real brand” doesn’t give the resourcefulness or smarts that it did while you were still building.

At this level, it’s like wearing retail to the met gala. It gives a lack of respect for your own work. It’s a humble-brag. It’s ole fashioned self-deprecation.

It gives not having your shit together — not in the “I give zero fcks” way — but in the “I’m afraid of my own success” way.

Whoever finds you more “relatable” because of your DIY brand probably finds having a $1M business unrelateable anyway.

So, why not give your business the couture gown it deserves to be seen in and remembered by?

(If this is you or someone you know, I would genuinely like to know the answer... email inbox @ swail.studio and let's chat!)