What to do when branding keeps slipping to the bottom of your to-do list

How many times have you put "update brand values" or "redesign website" on your to-do list, only to keep moving it to another day, another week, until it vanishes completely? As creatives, we prioritise urgent tasks and branding often gets pushed down the list.

But branding is both urgent and important. If you're reading this, you probably know that—you just keep delaying it. Today, I'll give you practical tips to finally make progress on your branding and transform your creative business!

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Let's talk about why branding deserves priority in your business

Firstly, every person and business already has a brand—including you—and right now yours might be doing more harm than good. Look at your website, social media, and customer touchpoints: if they're inconsistent, messy or confusing, you have a problem.

I know that’s not the easiest thing to hear, but maybe the truth that you do need to hear.

When misalignments exist (like having bright, fun work but a bland brand, or targeting relaxed mums with chaotic visuals), you're losing customers, opportunities and money.

An intentionally built, aligned brand transforms your business by attracting the right audience.

Secondly, you're likely trying to solve the wrong problems. If you're struggling with low engagement, slow audience growth, or lack of customers or clients, these aren't separate issues—they're branding problems. You're probably not attracting the right people, communicating clearly, or showing up confidently.

When you work on your branding, you figure out who you want to attract and how to appeal to them. This naturally improves engagement because you're connecting with the right audience. You'll also clarify your messaging and feel more confident in what makes you different, which leads to more views, engagement, and customers. ALL the good things!

Branding really is at the root of everything in your business and solves a lot of the problems that we think are coming from elsewhere.

Finally, branding impacts every other part of your business, which is why we need to stop working on the wrong projects. Social media, content creation, customer service—these are all ineffective if your brand isn't right FIRST.

You need to work on your brand first and get that in a great place because it impacts every other part of your business and is important to do before you start working on all these other projects.

Creating content that doesn't align with your brand values or doesn't appeal to your ideal audience is a waste of time. Customer service that doesn't reflect your brand voice means customers aren't experiencing the best version of you, which affects whether they'll return or recommend you to others.

Now that we understand WHY branding is so damn important, how do we actually stop pushing it to the bottom of our to-do list?

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One: Set Dedicated Time Aside

You want to set time aside. I talk about this all the time in every aspect of branding, but if you want to improve your brand and see the results that you can do from that, you need to be intentional about it.

You can't just keep saying, “Oh, someday I'll work on it. I'll put it on my list, but I won't give it a deadline” or anything like that. You need to actually be intentional, set time aside and say, this is when I'm gonna work on my brand because it's important to me and I know I need to work on it. 

So how do you do this? Block out time in your calendar: Maybe it’s a little time everyday, every week or every month.

Whatever is gonna work for you. Just set some time aside and maybe start small, right? Like 10 minutes a day, 10 minutes once a week, or half a day, once a week.

Put that time in your calendar to actually work on your brand and stick to it. That's the important part! You want to set that time aside in your calendar and say, Okay, Thursdays in the morning, I am working on my brand for an hour. That's it. That is the rule. That's the guideline. That's what I'm doing.

So number one is to set that time aside. Protect that time and commit to it. Commit to working on your brand!

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Two: Break Tasks Into Small, Achievable Steps

Break those big tasks down into achievable steps. Instead of just putting “branding” in quotation marks on your to-do list, break it down because big, vague tasks like that are hard to dive into because we don't know where to start which can be super overwhelming!

So instead, you want to decide what you want to do and figure out the steps to do that.

For example, if you want to get clearer about your ideal audience, you could start with:

• Writing down the top five clients or customers that you’ve had and why they were your favourites.
• Look at the analytics on Instagram to see what you can find out about your current audience.

Those are much more concrete, small, actionable, achievable tasks that feel doable rather than these big, vague, daunting ones like “branding”.

So have a look at your brand. Think about what you wanna do and what you want to improve and what you want to change, and then break it down into those really actionable tasks.

If you're not sure what tasks to break things down into, in the Brand Your Passion Collective we have lessons for each part of branding that give you a list of tasks you can do to make it happen.

For example, in module one, which is all about your purpose, we talk about your vision, and there are three steps or tasks to help you to write your vision. You could do one of those every day or you could do all three tasks all in one day, but you know what those three tasks are to help you write your vision.

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Three: Get Accountability

Now it’s time for some accountability. We all know that working on your own can be really challenging when it comes to actually making progress on the things that matter, but it is so much easier when you have something or someone holding you to that or motivating you to make it happen.

You could work on your brand together with another creative, committing to making progress together, and checking in on each other and working towards your goals. Together, you might set a to-do list that you're all going to do, or you're both going to have regular calls. Something like that to help you and your friend both achieve your branding goals.

Another option you could get a coach who will meet regularly with you. There are branding coaches, business coaches who will help you with your branding. They'll meet with you regularly, give you the task to work on and check in on your progress to make sure that you are achieving your goals.

Or you could join a community that gives you tasks to work on, dedicated time to work on your brand and the people to support you and check-in on your progress.

There are so many ways to get some accountability.

You could also post publicly. That's a great way to get some accountability is to share publicly and say, “Hey, I'm working on this thing. I'm gonna do this series where I'm gonna talk about it.” And that can help you stay accountable as well when external people know what you're working on or what you've said you're gonna be working on.

So whatever way works best for you, whether it's one-on-one with a friend, with a coach, or in a community, you wanna get some accountability to help you actually start working on your brand. 

Again, the Brand Your Passion Collective is a perfect option for this. If you want the community vibe and the community way of getting some accountability, we have the intentional curriculum for you to work through regular coaching and co-working calls to keep you motivated and give you the time to work towards your goals and check-ins for me and other people in the community to keep you accountable and moving forward.

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So those are three practical ways to stop pushing branding to the bottom of your to-do list. To recap:

1. Set that time aside. Whenever and how often works for you. Set that time aside, protect it and stick to it!
   
   
2. Break your tasks down into achievable, actionable steps. So we are not putting branding on our to-do list. We’re being very specific such as: writing my vision statement, look up inspiration for my logo. Small actionable tasks that we can actually achieve.
   
   
3. And lastly, get some accountability. Whether it is another person, like a friend, a creative person, a coach or a community. Get some people around you who can help you make progress towards your branding goals.

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If you'd like support with all of the dedicated time, actionable tasks and accountability you need, join us in the Brand Your Passion Collective. We're a community of creatives committed to building brands that lead to creatively fulfilling, financially stable businesses!