Why I Waited Two Years for a Tattoo (And What It Taught Me About Building Brands That Last)
My daughter had one request for her 18th birthday: get a tattoo together.
It seemed straightforward enough. Walk into a shop, pick something meaningful, and walk out with matching ink. But as I stood there looking at flash art on the walls, I realized this decision would follow me for the rest of my life.
If I was going to put something on my body forever, it couldn’t just look pretty. It couldn’t be trendy. It had to be true.
So I did something that felt almost radical in our instant-gratification world: I waited.
The two-year search for truth
For two years, ideas surfaced and disappeared like waves. I’d fall in love with a concept, sit with it for weeks, then watch it lose its pull. A flower felt too obvious. Celtic knots seemed borrowed from someone else’s heritage. Abstract designs looked beautiful but felt hollow.
I kept returning to the same question: What would still feel like the truest version of me thirty years from now?
That question changed everything.
Instead of asking “What looks good?” I started asking “What means something?” Instead of browsing Pinterest for inspiration, I began examining what had shaped me. What values had carried me through decades of growth, challenge, and change?
Then ginkgo found me.
When symbol becomes story
The ginkgo tree is one of Earth’s oldest living species. It has survived ice ages, mass extinctions, and the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. In traditional medicine, it represents resilience, longevity, and the bridge between opposing forces.
In those fan-shaped leaves, I discovered every quality I hoped to embody: the strength to survive whatever comes, the wisdom that comes with time, and the grace to hold contradictions without needing to resolve them.
But the real magic happened when I connected it to my family. Each leaf would represent one of us—my husband, our two kids, and me. Each stem intertwined with the others, separate yet inseparable. My daughter would carry a single leaf on her arm. Together, we’d have four leaves, one family, one root system.
Sitting in that tattoo chair, something clicked. The way I’d chosen this design was exactly how I approach branding with my clients.
The brand meaning crisis
Most business owners approach their visual identity the same way I almost approached my tattoo—by asking the wrong questions.
They ask: “What looks professional?” instead of “What feels true?”
They ask: “What's trending?” instead of “What will still represent me in five years?”
They ask: “What will impress people?” instead of “What will connect with the right people?”
This backwards approach creates what I call “beautiful emptiness”—brands that look polished but feel hollow. Logos that could belong to anyone. Color palettes chosen because they're "on brand" for the industry, not because they reflect the person behind the business.
I see this constantly. A life coach with a generic lotus flower logo. A consultant with stock photography that could represent any service provider. A creator whose visual identity tells you nothing about their unique perspective or approach.
They’ve prioritized aesthetics over authenticity, and it shows.
The inside-out approach to brand building
Here’s what I learned from my tattoo journey that completely transformed how I work with clients:
Meaning creates beauty, not the other way around.
When visuals are rooted in genuine meaning—your story, your values, your unique perspective—they radiate authenticity in ways that purely aesthetic choices never can.
My ginkgo leaves aren't beautiful because of their design. They're beautiful because of what they represent. Every time I look at them, I see resilience, connection, and the quiet courage it takes to keep growing. That meaning makes the visual come alive.
Your brand works the same way. When your colors, fonts, imagery, and messaging are grounded in who you actually are and what you truly believe, they become magnetic in ways that generic "professional" design never could.
The questions that change everything
Before we talk fonts or color palettes, I ask every client to sit with these questions:
What have been your defining moments? Not just the highlights, but the challenges that shaped your perspective. The failures that taught you what matters. The experiences that changed how you see your industry or your clients.
What do you believe that others in your field don’t? Where do you disagree with conventional wisdom? What unpopular truth do you know to be real based on your experience?
What would you want to be remembered for? If someone described your impact thirty years from now, what would you want them to say? What legacy are you actually building?
What parts of your story do you try to hide? Often, the experiences we’re most reluctant to share become the foundation of our most authentic brand positioning.
These aren’t branding questions. They're identity questions. But until you can answer them honestly, any visual identity you create will feel like borrowed clothes—technically fine, but never quite right.
Why most brands feel temporary
I recently worked with a client who’d been through three “rebrands” in five years. Each time, she’d hire a designer, get a beautiful new logo, launch with excitement, then slowly feel disconnected from her own brand again.
The problem wasn’t the design quality. It was that she’d never done the foundational work of understanding what her brand actually stood for. Without that anchor, every visual choice felt arbitrary. Without meaning, beauty becomes just another trend to outgrow.
We spent our first session not talking about colors or fonts, but about her journey from corporate burnout to building a business that aligned with her values. We identified the core beliefs that drove her work, the transformation she was uniquely positioned to create, and the aspects of her story that made her approach different from every other coach in her space.
Only then did we talk about how to express that visually.
Six months later, she told me: “For the first time, I look at my brand and think “Yes, that’s me. It’s not just pretty—it’s true.”
The patience of authentic growth
The hardest part of my tattoo journey wasn’t finding the right design. It was resisting the urge to settle for “good enough” when I knew I hadn’t found “right” yet.
I watched friends get spontaneous tattoos and felt envious of their decisiveness. I questioned whether I was overthinking something that should be simple. I wondered if my standards were too high.
But I’m grateful I waited. Because when I finally found ginkgo, I knew. Not because it looked perfect, but because it felt inevitable.
Your brand deserves the same patience. The same commitment to authenticity over urgency. The same willingness to sit with uncertainty until clarity emerges.
This doesn’t mean taking years to launch your business. It means taking time to understand what your business is actually built on before you try to express it visually.
Building brands that last
The most powerful brands I encounter—both as a strategist and as a consumer—share one quality: they feel like natural extensions of the people behind them.
You meet the founder and think, “Of course this is their brand.” The visual identity, the messaging, the entire experience feels inevitable rather than constructed. Authentic rather than aspirational.
This alignment doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when someone is willing to do the internal work first, to understand their own story and values before trying to communicate them to the world.
It happens when they prioritize meaning over trends, depth over surface appeal, and long-term authenticity over short-term aesthetics.
Your turn to go deeper
So here’s my question for you: What is your brand actually built on?
Not what you think it should be built on. Not what would look good in your industry. But what values, experiences, and beliefs make your approach genuinely different?
If you stripped away all the surface elements—the logo, the color palette, the polished photography—what would be left? What’s the core truth that everything else is expressing?
That’s where your real brand lives. Everything else is just the expression.
If you’re realizing your brand has been built more on aesthetics than authenticity, you’re not alone. Most successful business owners reach this point—where they’ve grown beyond their original brand identity and need something that truly reflects who they’ve become.
The question isn’t whether you need to evolve your brand. The question is whether you’re ready to do the deeper work first.
If you’re ready to build a brand that feels as authentic as it looks professional, let’s talk. I help established business owners move from beautiful emptiness to meaningful expression—brands that work because they’re true.
Ready to discover what your brand is really built on?