I was attending a wellness seminar last month and the speaker referenced a study on dumbbells that just floored me. The gist of the study was, a group was asked to lift weights for a certain period of time. Another group was asked to visualize lifting weights, but not actually lift them. At the end of the study each group had made similar gains in muscle mass.

The lazy, dreamy part of my brain started imagining dumbbells everywhere because wow, why not? Heck, I’m doing a plank while I’m typing this right now!

The analytical part of my brain immediately started applying this to the branding world in which this business lives.

Let’s say you’re in the startup phase of your business and while you have a lot of passion for your business, you don’t have a lot of capital to fund everything you want to do… yet. So you think, maybe I’ll have my cousin whip up a logo and I can get my brother to make a quick website for me, because I don’t have money flowing in yet. You can use that photo of you from your best friend’s wedding. You’ll even choose the bridesmaid color as your brand colors to make it easy. As soon as money starts flowing, you think, you can always replace these elements. Right?

While I’m sure we could search and find a successful person that started that way, I’d wager they were successful based on pure grit rather than because they had a brand to back them up.

If studies show visualizing creates equal strength gain as actual weightlifting, just imagine what branding a higher level ideal could do for your business.

What if, instead of cobbling together an unintentional mess, you invested the time and energy into even just one piece of your brand at a level beyond where you currently identify?

Imagine the possibilities of showing what it FEELS to work with you.