Reading 10 pages a day. Every day. Alternating between work and self-help books.
📚 Started in February, now 11(!) books down.
Turns out the self-help books became my most relevant professional development.
While reading about authentic self-discovery and vulnerability, I watched European automotive brands face the exact same crisis.
Chinese price pressure exposed an uncomfortable truth: their "premium" identity was just expensive. Not distinctive. Not authentic.
Strip away the price, what's left for people to love?
That's the same question the self-help books keep asking: Who are you really when the external validation disappears?
✨ Two European brands aren't panicking: Dacia and CUPRA. Because they actually know who they are.
Dacia owns being unapologetically simple. CUPRA knows they're distinctively Spanish with accessible performance.
Chinese competitors can match specs and undercut prices, but can't replicate authentic character you actually own.
💡Reading self-help taught me that brand strategy is organizational psychology. The vulnerability needed to discover your authentic self is the same vulnerability organizations need to define real brand character.
When I work with clients on brand identity, defining their mission, their purpose, their unique character before making it tangible in design, we're doing the same work as those self-help books. Just at organizational scale.
Finding who you are at your core. What makes you genuinely different. What you can own that nobody else can replicate.
💠What's one book that changed how you see your work?
📚 Started in February, now 11(!) books down.
Turns out the self-help books became my most relevant professional development.
While reading about authentic self-discovery and vulnerability, I watched European automotive brands face the exact same crisis.
Chinese price pressure exposed an uncomfortable truth: their "premium" identity was just expensive. Not distinctive. Not authentic.
Strip away the price, what's left for people to love?
That's the same question the self-help books keep asking: Who are you really when the external validation disappears?
✨ Two European brands aren't panicking: Dacia and CUPRA. Because they actually know who they are.
Dacia owns being unapologetically simple. CUPRA knows they're distinctively Spanish with accessible performance.
Chinese competitors can match specs and undercut prices, but can't replicate authentic character you actually own.
💡Reading self-help taught me that brand strategy is organizational psychology. The vulnerability needed to discover your authentic self is the same vulnerability organizations need to define real brand character.
When I work with clients on brand identity, defining their mission, their purpose, their unique character before making it tangible in design, we're doing the same work as those self-help books. Just at organizational scale.
Finding who you are at your core. What makes you genuinely different. What you can own that nobody else can replicate.
💠What's one book that changed how you see your work?
