I’m not talented

I used to be so bothered when someone looked at my images and said:

“Songy you’re so talented.”

I often heard that statement as:

“You’re so lucky to be born with that talent”.

I suppose I had a bit of talent for playing with colours and shapes when I was a child, and sometimes I enjoyed doing that more than going out playing with other girls. But truth to be told, it wasn’t really much more than that.

For many years I took bad photos. How many? Roughly about half a million. I can say that because I had to replace the shutter units on two DSLR cameras. Shutters last up to 150,000 shots give or take.

From about 2008 onwards, I also published those bad photos pretty regularly. I got better over time. What people don’t usually get to see are truly bad photos because they are not worth sharing. Right now, as a result of the skills I developed over 10+ years, I take less bad photos.

What I have are skills that I developed gradually over a very long time.

Guess what? Brand building is also a skill that one can develop. The good news is that it doesn’t take all that long.

You may be pleased to know that I certainly was not born with ‘brand’ talent.
You may also be surprised to discover that I didn’t have any brand to speak of 3 or 4 years ago.

Could one build a brand quicker? Yes, of course!  One of my clients did it in less than six months.
If you’re feeling stuck right now thinking that you’re not getting anywhere, let me tell you this. Simply keep going.
I often read my old diary entries to see how far I’ve come.

The truth is that it’s never about talent.

It’s the skills we practice and develop each and every day.

Knowing this, I invite you to simply keep going.