The Aesteria Codex //018: A Letter to Past-Me About Building My Apex Brand
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Dear me of 22,
I wish I could go back in time and tell you this,
In the years ahead, you're going to change direction more times than you can count. Design, marketing, consciousness, and back again. There will be seasons where you're on fire, certain you've finally found "your thing," and seasons where you look at what you've built and wonder why none of it feels like it fits yet.
You're not getting anything wrong. Every turn you're about to make is part of the same path. It just takes years for you to see it, and I want to hand you that clarity now, at the beginning.
Where It Started: A Design Business at 22
At 22, I started my business doing design and digital marketing. My first clients hired me for their logos, branding, and websites. And then I landed my first 7-figure thought leader, and she hired me to be her designer.
I was incredibly excited. It was my first long-term contract work, my first multi-5-figure retainer, and the first time I could comfortably sustain myself and my business without needing to "hustle" during the month for more sales. It was, honestly, incredible.
But being her "designer" became so much more than design. I was managing her Instagram, then her landing pages, then her email marketing. Next thing you know, I wasn't a "designer." I was a digital marketer who was also doing her design.
That was the first time my work outgrew the box I'd built for it, and it kept happening over and over again.
Every "Pivot" Was a Thread of My Apex Brand
Throughout my first two years, I built up a team of 9 to work with thought leaders in the online space. We helped new entrepreneurs build their personal brands, their websites, their landing pages, their marketing. And even though I kept being hired for design, I kept ending up in digital marketing, and the more marketing I did, the more I saw how much embodiment and mindset decided whether any strategy worked.
So I "pivoted" into consciousness and manifestation. At least, that's what I called it at the time. But people still came to me for the same reason they always had: to make money as a personal brand and become a successful entrepreneur. And "embodiment" kept growing past its own definition, into personal image, mastery of consciousness, your visual brand, your style, your personality, your flavour.
From there, it evolved back into marketing and Brand Archetypes: web design, landing pages, blogs, content creation. I've told you the story of those rebrands before. But at the time, even I couldn't have told you why I kept "pivoting."
And here's the part that took me years to understand: every one of those "pivots" made me mind-blowing money. Selling around consciousness and manifestation made me incredible money. Coming back to brand identity and marketing built my first passive income. None of those changes meant the way I was marketing myself before was wrong (even though I thought it did.) I was being drawn to learning another of the threads that make up my overall brand identity.
There were so many times I thought I was "pivoting" when really I was evolving. I just couldn't see what the end big dream looked like yet.
Because I wasn't running four different businesses. I was discovering the five threads of PRISM: my Brand Identity Framework, one era at a time:
The design years were my Signature thread: the visual world people could see.
The marketing years were my Influence thread: who I was speaking to, and how to reach them.
Consciousness and mindset were my Presence thread: who I was inside, as the brand owner.
Personal image, style, and flavour were my Magnetism thread: how I showed up in person.
Brand Archetypes were my Resonance thread: the soul of the brand itself.
Put together, they were never separate businesses at all. They were my Apex Brand coming together, the kind of brand people recognize on sight and pay 5-6 figures for. I was building it the entire time. I just couldn't see it yet.
So, to you, my 22-year-old self: don't doubt yourself. And stop thinking every change is a "pivot," because it isn't. Every change is leading you back to the same end vision.
You Only Need to Be Certain of Two Things
What I want you to take away from this is: not everything is a pivot. But also, don't expect yourself to know your entire journey.
I say this to my clients all the time: you only need to feel clear and certain on 2 parts of your journey at any given time:
What is the end vision
What is your next step
All the other steps will fill themselves in along the way.
And the good thing is, you don't have to go through all the years of trial and error I did. My PRISM framework hands you the map of all five threads from the start, so you can see exactly what your brand is asking you to learn next.
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