Discover Your Purpose in the Digital Wilderness

Have you found yourself asking these questions?

What is a purpose-driven brand?

Creating a purpose-driven brand starts with discovering what you’re truly passionate about and ends with finding your tribe. At the intersection of your passions, platforms, content, and commerce activities, you will find your brand’s ultimate purpose. There are some pitfalls you should avoid along the way, so proceed with caution.

How do I find my North Star?

The purpose of this framework is to help you find your North Star. It starts with aligning your business activities with passion and purpose. Like an ancient navigator using the stars to guide them through the wilderness, you can use what you’re passionate about to help find your tribe. After that, the sky’s the limit.

How do I inject passion into my career or brand?

If you’re looking for career motivation, creating or joining a purpose-led business can help you find fulfillment in what you do every day. There are many ways to inject your passions into your career, from monetizing a hobby to starting a business. The key is to make sure that all of your spheres are in alignment with your purpose in life. After that, your passions will act like a magnet, pulling you toward your True North.

BRAND FRAMEWORK

The Purpose-Driven Brand Framework

Whether you’ve been in business for decades or are just starting out, there is a simple way to inject purpose into your brand strategy.

Based on Ikigai, a Japanese philosophy that helps you find your purpose in life, we have created a framework to help guide your business to its highest purpose.

It begins with discovering your passions, followed by understanding how the content you create can contribute to your niche, engaging in commerce that provides value to your target audience, and finding your tribe on the platforms they use to share their stories with the world.

Let’s dive into each sphere.

SPHERES

The spheres of this brand strategy framework represent the most significant components of a purpose-driven brand. It begins with passion, the magnetic pull that makes your compass point to True North. After you discover the passion that inspires your brand, you can think about the content that you can create to contribute to your niche. Then, it’s time to market your brand and create commerce to help sustain it in the future.

The final sphere that brings us back to passion is platforms, which is where the magic happens. We use platforms for everything, from creating content to sharing it with our tribe on social media. In the center is your purpose, which is spread throughout each of these spheres, intersections, and the pitfalls to avoid along the way.

Passion

Passion is like a magnet. Like a compass uses the earth’s magnetic field to help guide your way in the wilderness, your passions create a similar pull that can guide you to your true purpose.
Platforms

Platforms are the gateway to connection. They enable everything from content creation to e-commerce. Social media platforms are where you find your tribe and a way to monetize your brand.
Content

Creating content is how you contribute to your niche and share your story with the world. It helps you contribute positively to your market or industry. It’s also how you build trust with your audience.
Commerce

If you’re not engaging in commerce, you’re not running a business. Generating revenue is how you sustain your business over time. It’s how you pay your team and invest in your brand’s future.

INTERSECTIONS

At the intersection of each sphere, you discover the relationship between each framework component. When passion and content collide, you find your unique niche. And content relates to commerce through marketing.

Likewise, how you engage in commerce on platforms is monetization, and the result of sharing your passions on platforms is finding your tribe.

Niche

At the intersection between passion and content, you find your niche. Go deep within your passion and figure out how to create unique and specific content, even if it’s for a smaller audience at first.
Marketing

To create commerce around your passion and content, you want to start with a marketing plan. This component still requires content creation but takes it a step further by incorporating a sales funnel strategy.
Monetization

Digital platforms have created new ways to generate revenue for a business. Platform and content monetization provide new income streams for brands to engage in commerce activities and cover their bottom line.
Tribe

Finding your tribe and keeping them happy creates brand loyalty that can last a lifetime, even generations. It’s based on connecting with like-minded people on platforms based on your shared passions or interests.

PITFALLS

In a perfect world, we would hit each sphere and intersection with all of our activities. However, there are times when we are deficient in one sphere, and the result is a pitfall that can veer you off the path of a purpose-driven business.

If your organization is lacking in the content sphere, you might end up with many followers on social media but no substance. Not engaging in commerce can mean you might have lots of love but no cash to fund its future. And concentrating only on commerce and not on finding your tribe on platforms can leave you with money but no fans. Finally, lacking passion can leave you and your team unmotivated.

Fans But No Substance

Simply engaging on platforms isn’t enough. You can build a following on social media without necessarily creating content tied to your passion. The problem here is that your audience will become starved for substance.
Love But No Cash

Sometimes we confuse being purpose-driven with doing everything for free. But as most of us know, income is necessary to turn your passion into a brand. To avoid this pitfall, you need to engage in some form of commerce.
Money But No Fans

Some companies have been in business for years but haven’t developed a following on digital platforms. As a result, you might be creating income but have no audience. Over time, this can allow a competitor to steal your market share.
Cash But No Motivation

If you’ve ever sat in bed when your alarm clock went off and wondered what you’re doing with your life, you might lack motivation. Injecting your passion into what you do to earn an income is the key to avoiding this.

FIND YOUR NORTH STAR

So, how do you use this framework to find your North Star?

Discover what you’re genuinely passionate about.

Developing a passion begins with curiosity. Over time, that develops into an interest that can become a dedication and eventually something you master and can share with others.

Create content that generates value.

Creating content is more than just an aspect of marketing your brand. It’s how you contribute your own knowledge or expertise to your niche. It’s also how you share your story with the world.

Engage in commerce to sustain your business.

Even if your brand is a non-profit, engaging in commerce is about more than just making money. It’s how you can sustain your brand, pay your team, and create a future for your passion.

Use the right platforms to find your tribe.

These days, platforms enable everything. We use them to create content, conduct research, distribute content, manage sales funnels, and, perhaps most importantly, find our tribe