When someone asks, 'What do you do?' answer not with your profession, job title, or company. Tell them what creates meaning for you. This gives people a window into your occupational soul and it may also prompt them to ask a deeper question or themselves.

→ Chip Conley, Peak

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Strange times shatter paradigms.

They create, out of sheer necessity, a shift in our thinking. Until the cement of some new normal hardens in our minds, they offer us an opportunity to look at ourselves, at what we do, & at who we are through a different lens.

I hope you're taking advantage.

A few months ago, perhaps you would have answered a question about "what you do" by talking about running a gym or being a trainer. But what about now?

If your gym is dark, you certainly can't claim to be running it these days. Yet, you're still working.

Everything's the same. Just entirely different.

Instead of offering a building filled with whiteboards & barbells, you're providing motivation & accountability. Instead of creating an accidental community, you're instigating it. You're designing opportunities where there would otherwise be a void.

By stripping away all the tactics, all the details, all the commonly-held practices, these few months are revealing something important.

They're revealing what it is you do for a living.

You show up.

You serve.

You design.

You fill a void.

As we — too slowly — get closer to the light at the end of this tunnel, I hope you let this reminder infect your brand & your self-identity when the lights go back on.

With everything these long few months will have taken from you, I hope you let them also give you a gift of recognition.

I hope you'll see that "what you do" has always been more about who you serve & how you're creating change than it ever was the what of your service or the where of your physical address.

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Functional Branding exists to help change-makers make change. If I can ever be of service to you, just hit reply.