Hi,

You may have noticed the newsletter looks a little different this time. That's because I changed my business name sort of impulsively, but not at all, really. Mid-rebuild. Website still unfinished. Visual identity nowhere close to sorted, and feeling very exposed right now (!!). My mentor had told me it didn't matter that much… I could have listened.

Except… I'd spent a year doing marketing backflips to make an ill-fitting name work, and I couldn't operate under that cognitive and messaging drag anymore. I couldn't keep telling clients their message matters while I pointedly ignored the friction with a name that stopped fitting me years ago. So I changed it! My own rebrand is still crawling along. I keep smiling as I say: "the cobbler's children have no shoes" and trying not to cringe. My decision's timing was objectively terrible.

I did it anyway because waiting for perfect conditions is how you stay stuck forever.
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Are you doing some version of this right now?

Do your materials match your mission anymore?

Maybe it's the website copy that makes you sound like everyone else. Maybe it's the piece that still lists programs you phased out two years ago. Maybe it's the donor language that your community stopped using before the pandemic.

You know it needs to change, and you've known for a while.

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​But first, let's wait for absolutely everything to be perfect!

The full rebrand feels impossible right now. You don't have the budget. You don't have the internal capacity. You don't have a clear enough strategy to know what the new brand should even be. So you wait. You focus on "more pressing issues." You tell yourself you'll tackle it when conditions are better.

Here's what that waiting costs you: every day your outdated materials are out there, someone lands on your website and doesn't understand what you do. A potential partner sees your communications and assumes you're not serious. Your own team has to explain around the gap between what you say you are and how you actually show up.

This isn't neutral. The cost of waiting isn't "things stay the same", it's "things get worse while you wait." Your mission is too important to be undermined by a brand that doesn't serve it anymore.

What's stuck? I read every reply.

I've been trying to write new homepage copy for a website that doesn't exist yet, using a visual identity I hadn't created, for a brand name I changed six weeks ago. Every sentence feels like building a house on sand. But I'm writing it anyway. Uncomfortable? Absolutely. But I couldn't wait for everything else to be perfect before fixing the thing that was a constant cognitive/messaging/alignment drag.

Rooting you on, pal.

Reesa

• ​Brené Brown on perfectionism​
  ​Brown calls perfectionism "a 20-ton shield we lug around thinking it will protect us, when it's actually the thing preventing us from being seen." Perfectionism isn't about excellence, but about trying to earn approval.
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• ​How to be your most productive self: let go of being perfect​
  ​Research shows perfectionism has spiked significantly over the last three decades. But "perfect" and "productive" aren't the same thing. Perfectionists' nitpicking ways are actually hurting, not helping, their output.
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• ​Are you 'time poor'? Here's what you can do about it​
  ​Holmes studies "time poverty"—the sense of not having enough time for what matters. The cruel irony: perfectionism creates time poverty by making everything take longer than it needs to, all while you wait for the "right moment" that never comes.
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• ​Naomi Klein on the future of climate justice​
  Klein argues that COVID showed us what it looks like when institutions treat an emergency like an actual emergency—immediate action, spending, doing "whatever it takes." We've passed endless climate emergency declarations, but nobody has responded with the urgency the crisis demands.

P.S. If any of this resonated with you, here are three ways you can let me know:

• Reply and say hello—I read every one.
• Forward this to someone who needs to hear it.
• Bring me in as a design partner when your team needs someone who actually gets it.

About Reesa​
I work with nonprofits and social enterprises on accessibility-focused branding and websites, helping make sure your marketing shows how your message matters™. Member of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Canada. Parent of small humans, vernacular jazz dancer, weightlifter, and unreasonably attached to a sourdough starter named Pudding.