There are 2 places my homeschooler undoubtedly shows: on the dance floor at a wedding and when writing something by hand.

Whatever you’re imagining for the first is probs right on the money, so let’s skip to the second.

I’ve been told on many occasions that I have great handwriting. 9x/10 my reply is, “Thanks. I used to write my spelling words and definitions in cursive every day.”

[most 👏 homeschool 👏 answer, 👏ever. Give ‘er a blue ribbon.]

The reason? One, psshh, I wanted that brag-worthy handwriting. The other? When I wrote out the words and definitions daily, I didn’t have to study so hard for the test.

🎯 Today, we’ll use a similar hack to help you refine and remember your brand identity.

*There’s more proof than my middle school experience to back this theory, pinky promise.

The sitch.

A brand guide ‘written’ in your mind–doesn’t quite count. When we only store things in our brains without a copy scribbled on *actual* paper, there’s an understanding gap.

“Writing things down doesn’t just help you remember; it makes your mind more efficient by helping you focus on the essential stuff.”

– Mark Murphy, Forbes

→ Enter Encoding – ie. what seven Chrome tabs of reading taught me I accidentally hacked back in 8th grade.

Lemme do my best to sum it up for you:

Encoding is a process where the things you perceive – think, read, create, etc. – travel to the hippocampus (your brain’s sorting function) to determine what goes in your long-term memory bank. (paraphrased from here and here).

“In other words, when you write it down, it has a greater chance of being remembered.” (Bryan Goodwin)

And your long-term memory shapes your future days.

We live in the reality of what we know and remember.

Meaning if your brand isn’t in a format that is easily referenced and remembered, it isn’t as powerful as you think. If you forget it, you won’t work from it.

☝️ One more thing.

Writing things down forces you to visualize and reason through an idea. Ehem, it’s why voice texts and conversations IRL often feel easier than texting a friend back in detail.

And also why it can be hard to put words to your brand.

Your brain can conceptualize it in your imagination, but pairing words with it to bring it into reality? The blank stares, thinking faces, blinking cursors, and pure mental agony at times – that’s the work of making your brand a real brand.

Unless you can withdraw the concept out of the bank of your understanding – it isn’t in a form [anyone else] can truly comprehend.

If you can’t grasp it, creating from it or strengthening it is nearly impossible.

🕵🏼‍♀️ Thesis Proven: your brand simply *must* be written down.

What even goes into a written brand guide?

A brand guide details the purest form and identity of your business.

The vision, mission, values, strengths, message, and target audience all work together to form one main idea—the brand.

Here’s a pocket mining guide in a Google doc to start scribblin’. → Print it or don’t. But *at least*, copy it.

A brand gives your business something to be—rather than only something to do.

It provides personality. Something to be about. To say. To dream.

Most importantly, it’s something no one else can be or copy.

It unites heart and vision to create a clear understanding of what this is all about so that the practical parts of the business can even feel like they exude the same unified spirit.

When you read an article from HubSpot or The Hartford about defining your brand, they’re talking to a wide audience. And I’d wager most are not solopreneurs.

The reality is you set out on this work of defining your brand by yourself.

There isn’t a conference room table full of people keeping the dialogue flowing, chiming in with their ideas and vision to workshop this awesome and extensive brand identity in 48 hours—it’s just you.

80% of the ideas they throw around in that room will go right to the trash. The 20% they keep will be written and simmered down to leave only the essence of the conversation and the heart of the brand defined.

Our version of this board room? Paper and pen.

Our fuel for the brainstorm? Ample amounts of coffee.

And our 48 hours? Will probably be more like 2+ weeks, give or take the amount of time you’ve previously spent figuring this out.

Going it alone is hard, especially in feats like brand-defining. However, it’s work no one else can do. You can have a consultant ask you the right questions to get it all out on a whiteboard and various life-size sticky notes.

But they can’t create it for you – it has to come from you.

This is truth—a truth I don’t love because I love helping people connect dots in their brand and brain to make impossible-feeling-things possible. But alas, any other response wouldn’t be honest.

You must reckon with your own brand.

*You are* the board of directors wearing all the hats to take hold of the vision of the thing you’re building. The CEO, CMO, CBO. All the Cs combined to put words and figures to the visions in your imagination.

If this is starting to feel too big—like, “No way can I figure this out.”

Here’s a beautifully encouraging reality: Your brand is living, breathing, and evolving; always.

The work you do now to write, understand, and refine it? It’s all working toward total cohesion in a future version of your biz.

Like how you thought you knew who you were in your 20s. But, the moment you wake up on day one of year 30, you realize there is so much you don’t yet know [or, so I’ve heard]. It’s sort of like that. 

Your writings on your brand are 80% for you to have clarity now. They’re also for you to remember and refine in the future.

→ 📝 Didn’t copy your brand mining guide yet? Do that now and get a draft written down.

How do I translate a defined brand from all the words on this page?

If your start looks a little tangled-mess-of-twinkle-lights-y on the page – you’ve got it right. 

Time to start unraveling your twinkle-light-mess.

If you have it written digitally, I suggest printing it out and grabbing a fave beverage.

1. Start by reading through it and eliminating the non-relevant stuff.

In copywriting, this is called “killing your darlings.” Be willing to part with things that sound or seem good but are actually non-essential.

• If you [like me] have anxiety about them being gone forever – cmd+x and move ‘em down to an “eliminate” section of your digital doc. Kind of like recently deleted but able to be restored? Then, go back and x them out completely after a few days.

Once you’ve eliminated all the fluff (about 1/2), it’s time to put on your spectacles and start analyzing.

🔎 Watch for patterns, repetition, and what’s too important to skip over.

✍🏻 Take a highlighter, make notes in the margin, and paraphrase your thoughts on a different page. Whatever you can do to whittle it all down to the most concentrated version yet.

• Note: This is where analog will be most powerful. Writing the letters on a page, circling, underlining, and paraphrasing, combined with forming the letters themselves, stimulates parts of your brain that enhance encoding. This makes it easy to recall your final version later, and different parts of your brain work better together. This means you may end up with a more creative and concentrated version than if you had only done this digitally. (idea paraphrased from this article and this one.)

The hard stuff – done ✅

Now comes the fun part. Piece it all together.

Once you’ve stripped it down, translated it, and are feeling good about the final product, a good Brand Plan template would come in handy → find one right here.

Format it all into your new brand plan and put 👏🏻 that 👏🏻 thing 👏🏻 to work.

And for that – queue up zis post right here.

→ 5 Ways to Put Your Refined Brand Identity to Work

👊 You got this!