This is something I grappled with when I realized what I was selling was different from what I valued. I needed to uncover how to align them. A key factor in knowing how to define your product.
What do you stand for?
Sounds corny, but useful in this discussion.
It’s 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 but wasn’t really conscious of it until only a few years ago an art teacher shone a light on it.
I’ve been interrogating it, more consciously, ever since.
I realized I loved creating identities for companies because I love creating or recreating a persona – a face, a cloak, a mask – for someone or something.
It’s 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 (read: spaces).
The idea of many possible scenarios, and many iterations of a ‘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.
How to define your product
Knowing what you stand for is based on your values, more often than not, your deeper personal ones.
Uncover the things that drive you, the things that instinctively are non-negotiable, and the activities you engage in without struggle – the stuff you’re not overtly conscious of.
Here’s where your magic is and where you’ll add more value – to your product offering that is.
If you liked this Micro Read, you’ll love this one.
