What does it mean to be a lifestyle brand?
According to The American Marketing Association:
“A lifestyle brand is a brand that strives to embody the values, aspirations, interests, attitudes, or opinions of a group or a culture for marketing purposes. Lifestyle brands seek to inspire, inform, and motivate people, with the goal of their products and/or services contributing to the definition of the consumer’s way of life.”
Our interpretation
Kyle Fisk, Co-Founder and Visionary of Boho Hobo, stated;
“It’s about creating a brand around your lifestyle. In order to do this, you must figure out what you want to do with your life and why. You can develop this through introspection and self-awareness. The deeper you can develop your sense of self, the more unique and authentic of a lifestyle you can create.
Once you have this understanding, you can create a sustainable business model around this lifestyle. You’ll be able to live a personalized life, make a positive impact, and get an income for doing so.
The key is to create a business that works for you as opposed to having you work for the business.”
Let’s break down what we mean with this definition and give you some insight into this interpretation. Hopefully if you are reading this, this alternative definition will help you start to think about how you can create your own lifestyle brand.
What is your why?
When it comes to branding, we have found that without a strong ‘Why’ for what you are doing, there is always going to be a sense of uncertainty and instability. Your ‘Why’ acts as the foundation of your brand. It could be to help people, spread knowledge, to better humanity, etc. Whatever your ‘Why’ is, we suggest you set it in stone before even attempting to execute on any ideas. For us over at Boho Hobo, our ‘Why’ is
Branding your authentic lifestyle
Once you’ve established your “Why” you can begin to formulate a business model around your unique lifestyle. For example, you could be really passionate about scuba diving, and your ‘Why’ may be that you want to help inform as much of humanity as you can about the tragic effects of global climate change on the Earth’s oceans. Some ways you might be able to do this is through content creation, blogging, video production, etc.
The next step is to make a name and logo for your business or organization you decide to run as. This is your chance to give your brand an identity that people will remember it by.
Keep in mind, you are building a lifestyle brand, so when you decide on whether your business model will sell a product or service, it should be something that reflects your ‘Why’ and will ultimately help to enhance your brand’s message while still providing value to your supporters.
What kind of work will you do?
Once you find your ‘Why’, create a look, and choose a medium of communication to voice your messaging, decide on the business model that will create capital for you to run the brand. This could be selling clothing, making video promos for clients, running an outdoor gear blog and getting paid by brands to guest post and test their gear.
Get as creative as you can for this is part. This is going to be your means of living, so make sure it’s something you’ll enjoy doing on a daily basis.
It’s your lifestyle guiding the brand, so let that be reflected in the work you do.
Mentality is key!
My last bit of advice when it comes to starting a lifestyle brand has all to do with your mentality. In order to know what kind of lifestyle brand you should start, you are first going to need some self-awareness development, one of the five essential skills of emotional intelligence. This is very crucial for establishing what your intrinsic values are that ultimately are guiding your life. These intrinsic values will help guide you to your:
- Why
- Passion or skill set you want to use as the vessel for your brand
- Medium of communication for the messaging of your brand
Begin your journey to a self-sufficient lifestyle
The journey to developing a lifestyle brand is done over a long time. You will you be navigating your inner most thoughts and feelings to develop an understanding for what your values are and what you believe your purpose to be.
A big commitment of time and effort is necessary too, for bringing it all into existence. This brand will guide you to hopefully discovering your own unique, self-sufficient lifestyle.
Your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors will be working together with your beliefs, values, ideals, and personality. It’s about using all these different elements of your life to create a personalized mindset that you can use in the world to live your own truth.
To be continued…
I would love to sit here and tell you that’s all you will need to know to establish and execute a well oiled lifestyle brand, being able to live the rest of your life doing what you love. The truth of the matter is that there are going to be plenty of outside circumstances that will pose a big threat your ideas and purpose.
Financial, socioeconomic, psychological, and biological threats. We want to continue to provide value to you by not ending the guide here. These potential setbacks will be ongoing through your life and sometimes unavoidable, but with continued insights into how to battle and overcome them, you will be able to continue to strive towards fulfilling your life and successfully executing your lifestyle brand.
For more information into mindset development and curating a self-sufficient lifestyle, head over to our blog home page and check out our other blog posts.
“A lifestyle brand is a brand that strives to embody the values, aspirations, interests, attitudes, or opinions of a group or a culture for marketing purposes. Lifestyle brands seek to inspire, inform, and motivate people, with the goal of their products and/or services contributing to the definition of the consumer’s way of life.”