Functional Branding by Patrick Cummings

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The Secret of Making Fine Things

To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.


→ Kevin Kelly, 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice


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One of the biggest mistakes we can make with our brands is to think we're ever done developing them. That the making of minor improvements & major upgrades ever stops. That there is an end to designing them & a start to working on everything else.


But like getting fit or eating clean, building a brand doesn't have an endpoint. Better instead to think of it as a process of (continually, subtly, intentionally, empathetically) re-building it as long as we have the privilege of serving others.


These days, that re-building has felt like it was going at warp-speed. It's felt less like building a house & more like putting out a house fire.


But it's still just part of the process. Our brands were never going to be static. They were never going to be "done."


These days have been hard & uncertain, no question.


But they've been made harder by our wish for & our focus on what was.


Better, always, to focus on what's next.


Better, always, to focus less on what we've built & more on what we're building.


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I'll be joining a panel of smart folks tomorrow, talking about how gyms might navigate the changes we're all dealing with. If that sounds like something helpful, you can register here.

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