How My Brand Gets Stronger Every Time the World Falls Apart

Every time the world has faced economic uncertainty, I've somehow found myself launching something new. Coincidence? Maybe. But after navigating business launches during four major economic downturns (2001, 2008, 2020, and now 2025), I've discovered something unexpected: chaos doesn't weaken your brand—it can actually strengthen it, if you know how to harness its gravitational force.

Each time I've stepped into a new business phase, the external world has decided to throw a whole mess of curveballs. I must be onto something this time.

Historically, I’ve tried coping in several different ways:

2001: Blissful Ignorance – Fresh out of college, where I first discovered my love of design… I thought I’d start my own business one day. Instead, the downturn accelerated my business-starting plans. I launched with enthusiasm and very little understanding of how world events might impact me. Sometimes, not knowing all the challenges can be its own superpower… I tra-la-la’ed through the project boards on Craigslist, gathering interesting projects and building brands for personal organizers, coaches, and even big corporations like Bechtel, where I drew a library of illustrations for their brand in an 8-week consulting gig.

2008: Creative Immersion – As financial markets tumbled, I dove deeply into creating. I produced countless infoproducts and ebooks, focusing intensely on teaching rather than the uncertainty swirling around me. Developed my BrandStyle brand archetype program, the Profitable Brand Strategy course, and more. I stayed busy, I helped people, and I grew my business despite it all while further exploring what I could really teach and doing lots of hands-on client design work.

One problem - I never really felt like I found “my thing” to teach. I’d gone from intensely focusing on the question of “what do I want to be when I grow up?” straight to trying to make my life dreams come true, with no real time taken to figure out who I was or what I even liked, and I was missing critical pieces of that puzzle until the world got quiet in 2020 and I could really focus on it. I knew how to be good at what I did when I was alone, but I didn’t understand enough about my own process at that point to communicate it to anyone else.

2020: Isolation + Revelation – The pandemic years were challenging in entirely new ways. The isolation was overwhelming, yet paradoxically, it was during this period that I accidentally lost my mind (went manic due to a medication side effect) and found my true self simultaneously. This was critically important to my brand alignment and growth, because prior to this I was not acting in my own interests because I really didn’t know myself.

This time, I’m trying something a bit different…

2025: Clarity + Community – I'm extracting all the knowledge from my head and transforming it into tangible products and systems. I’ve finally figured out how to show others how to do the Tying-Everything-Together brand unification and alignment process I have been doing instinctually for clients throughout my career. This is the process that makes me super good at creating, curating, and growing brand families out of sometimes disconnected pursuits, and it helps clients get super clear in their marketing and create a brand that’s tied all together in ways that make sense to their audience.

If you're feeling a similar need for positive focus, come join me in the brand new Brand Gravity Alliance Facebook group. We can strategize about making your brand generate that client-attractive force that helps you truly connect with them (or just chat about the awesome things already happening in your business). Sometimes the best response to negativity is creating something beautiful.

What I've realized through these cycles is that chaos doesn't have to derail your brand—it can actually clarify it. Each period of uncertainty has taught me something essential about creating gravitational pull when everything else feels unmoored,

When external circumstances feel unpredictable, your brand's core purpose (your "sun") becomes even more important. It's what keeps everything in orbit despite the turbulence. This is precisely when you need to double down on your brand clarity—not abandon it in reaction to every shifting trend.

Over the past week, I've been on an intensive mission to bring greater alignment to my own brand. It’s still a work in progress, but so far this journey has included:

• Getting specific about who I truly want to serve: entrepreneurs who contain multitudes—those multipassionate business owners who struggle to find coherence across their diverse interests and offerings

• Making my system for finding a multipassionate business's Center of Gravitymore tangible and accessible

• Writing several new ebooks that articulate this and other aspects of the Brand Universe framework. Now I have a lot to design!

• Developing a comprehensive Center of Gravity workbook that I'm now in the process of illustrating - planning to release it next week.

• Refining the Consistency step of my Brand Gravity system, specifically creating a better method for organizing the graphics files that get used repeatedly in your brand (here’s a peek - at first glance it doesn’t look like much, but having everything pulled together in this way instead of separated across files has saved me actual hours this week)

What I've discovered is that clarity creates more clarity—it's like a spiral of increasing gravitational pull. Each element I align makes the next alignment easier to achieve.

Think of your brand as a solar system during a cosmic storm. External asteroids and debris may be flying everywhere, but if your central sun (your purpose) burns bright enough, all your planets (offerings) will maintain their orbits. The stronger your gravitational center, the less those external forces can disrupt your brand universe.

If you're feeling the chaos of our current moment, here are three practical ways to strengthen your brand's gravitational field:

• Reconnect with your why: Take 15 minutes to journal about your core purpose—your sun. Some starter questions:

  • What problem in the world do you feel compelled to solve?

  • When do you lose track of time because you're so absorbed in your work?

  • What makes you jump out of bed excited to work, even on hard days?

• Audit your consistency: Look at your last 5-10 brand touchpoints (social posts, emails, client communications). Are they all clearly from the same universe? If someone saw them without your name attached, would they know they all came from you?

• Clarify your Center of Gravity: In chaotic times, complex messages get lost. Can you distill your core offering into language so clear that even a distracted, overwhelmed person would understand it immediately?

• Simplify your messaging: In chaotic times, complex messages get lost. Can you distill your core offering into language so clear that even a distracted, overwhelmed person would understand it immediately?

The most common response during uncertainty is to frantically react—throwing random marketing meteors into space hoping something hits. But that approach creates brand chaos rather than clarity. Instead, the businesses that not only survive but thrive during turbulent times focus on strengthening their gravitational pull.

This is precisely what the Brand Universe framework is designed for. When all elements of your brand—your messaging, visuals, offerings, and experiences—orbit around your core purpose, you create a system with enough gravitational force to naturally attract the right people without exhausting yourself in the process. Your energy goes toward strengthening your center rather than chasing every passing comet.

What I've learned through four cycles of uncertainty is that clarity isn't just a nice-to-have—it's your business's lifeline when everything else feels unstable. Your brand's gravitational force might be the very thing that keeps you centered when the world around you seems to be spinning out of control.