Yeah, I’m not perfectly consistent. In fact, no one is.
Even so, I felt ashamed, guilty, and dare I say even hypocritical for missing the past couple of weeks of the podcast. So what better way to make a comeback than… to TALK ABOUT IT?
And while we’re at it, let’s talk about how we’ve got consistency all wrong. Because if we let it mean never missing a beat, we’re setting ourselves up for failure before we even start. REAL consistency lives somewhere between showing up every single day and disappearing for 3 months because life happened.
In this episode, I’m unpacking why your bounce-back rate matters more than than never falling behind, the difference between consistency in marketing vs. branding, and how your visual identity can become the system that makes consistency easier (not harder). We’ll also dig into why so many entrepreneurs mistake a shiny rebrand for a solution to inconsistency… only to stall when it’s time to actually use it (you guessed it… consistently).
So if you’ve ever felt guilty for dropping the ball, burned out from chasing the algorithm, or stuck in a cycle of redesign–retreat–repeat, this one’s for you.
I missed a couple of weeks of the podcast for the first time ever. And I'm not gonna lie, I've been beating myself up for it.
There's a pretty specific kind of guilt that hits you when you're the person trying to preach about consistency and then you're suddenly the one who isn't consistent. The irony isn't lost on me... You've already read the title of this episode, so it might as well be in neon letters for all I care.
I spent those two weeks wondering if it even was a good idea to record this episode to begin with, procrastinating everything associated with it because I'm already too far behind, I kept telling myself.
Until I had this realisation that actually stopped me mid-self-deprecating moment.
I kept telling myself that being consistent meant perfectly showing up every single Tuesday at 10am with a new podcast episode. And when that didn't happen (because life) I immediately made it mean that I wasn't consistent at all.
When in fact, this was the first time it happened. And now I'm here. Again.
Taking the words of one of my mentors, Alice Benham (who, by the way, is the guest on my next episode, but you didn't hear that from me): what matters is your bounce-back rate. The only consistency that matters is your ability to get back on it.
Because let's face it, perfect consistency is impossible. If that's what you're aiming for from the get-go, then you're setting yourself up for failure to begin with. And that lack of perfection starts feeling like something you can't recover from, like now you're too far behind to even get started, and then you stand still.
That's when I realised something big: this pressure we put on ourselves to be flawlessly consistent doesn't just affect how we show up online, but it affects how we use what we've built. Because if we're afraid of breaking the rhythm, we stop trusting ourselves to start again.
And that's exactly what happens with branding as well.
We treat rebrands like a finish line instead of a starting point. We think that once it's done, it will magically run itself and solve all of our business problems. But in reality, consistency only exists when you keep implementing what you've built, even when life gets messy.
Here's a strange phenomenon I've noticed happens a bit too frequently in the branding world: brands invest thousands in stunning visual identities. They hire their dream designer (hopefully me). They do the strategy homework. They get the shiny new logo, the dreamy colour palettes, the brand book that everyone else has on their own Pinterest boards.
And then one of two things tends to happen:
I never really understood why. Because on paper, they've got everything they need: the dreamy visuals, the fancy new logo, the slick website, beautiful brand guidelines. So why on earth aren't they using it?
But the longer I've been in this industry, the more I've realised that the problem isn't the design. It's how businesses aren't building the capacity to implement any of it.
If you've ever rebranded or announced a visual change of any kind, you know that the day of the launch feels electric. You're glowing, the comments flood in: "This is so you, I'm obsessed!!"
And then it fizzles.
You eventually have to come out of launch mode and back to the day-to-day of running a business with all the other tasks that entails. The templates you loved and paid good money for gather digital dust. Your social posts start drifting back to the old layouts, and Canva starts feeling intimidating again.
There's no system, no real plan for what happens after launch week. And suddenly you're back to square one: posting whatever feels right in the moment, haphazardly living captions, improvising visuals because it's faster this way.
And if you're listening to this and cringing a little, please know you're not alone. I've seen it so many times, and I've done it myself.
This has nothing to do with your new branding or with the quality of the design. It's just that improvisation is easier than learning how to implement a new system.
Improvisation feels safe. It's familiar. It's fast. And it's what most of us used to build our businesses in the first place, way back when we first started. Because when you start out as a solopreneur or a creative, there's not really much time to strategise or plan. You just need to validate your ideas and post the thing and send the invoice and make the sale.
That just-wing-it muscle becomes default, eventually.
So even after the rebrand, when life gets busy (and it always does), that old muscle memory kicks in and you go back to what you know: winging it, taking that messy action. The design is beautiful, yeah, but the habits behind it never changed.
Because planning content ahead, checking alignment, updating your assets, using the new templates... All of that takes time to learn how to use, extra capacity to adapt to your routine. Creating these new habits is basically walking the tightrope between not letting neither perfectionism nor chaos take over.
There's also a second group: the ones who do use their new brand... until the next rebrand. A few months go by and suddenly it's not enough anymore. Something feels off or outdated or not you.
While it looks like a normal sign of evolution and quick growth, when you zoom in, it's often the same story as the ones whose branding never sees the light of day all over again. The moment it's time to commit to a direction, they pivot.
It's easier to sit in that in-between phase: that awkward stage where either your visuals feel outdated for where you're at right now, or like you're trying to fill shoes that are too big for you, where your new tone feels too bold and too different and too visible. So instead of learning to live in that new identity, you retreat to the drawing board.
Trust me, I get it. There's a very specific kind of rush associated with fresh starts and seeing a blank canvas. It makes you feel like anything's possible again. But sometimes reinvention becomes a coping mechanism for discomfort, and you end up stuck in a loop where you're just constantly going over the same stuff instead of growing your business.
At the core of it all is the fear of making the wrong decision and the discomfort that comes with committing to one. Because committing equals consistently making the same choice and working towards the same goal, which involves a lot of time and hard work.
When someone reverts back to their old visuals or jumps into another rebrand six months later, it's not really even a failure. It's just proof of how hard it is to break free from the improvisation reflex, that constant urge to tweak, change, or chase newness.
Because improvisation feels like motion, but it rarely creates momentum (kinda like planning feels like taking action, but it's worthless without the action-taking part).
That's what we get wrong about consistency. It sounds simple, but it's anything but. It requires patience in a world that rewards instant results. It requires discipline in an industry that kind of romanticises chaos. And it requires trust that the version of you who built this brand knew what she was doing, and that her vision deserves to be lived and not constantly rewritten.
When we talk about consistency in the online business world, most people instantly think of social media: posting every day, staying top of mind, not breaking the streak. We're told that consistency feeds the algorithm and it might stop loving us if we forget about it.
That's why I felt so guilty about missing a couple of weeks of the podcast. I was thinking of consistency as never missing a beat, as if my value lived in my visibility.
Social media lets you believe that it's all about the frequency, the output, the presence at all costs. It teaches you to measure success in likes and engagement metrics instead of impact. Because the more active and present and online you are, the more these social media platforms grow. They need you to grow.
But that being chronically online, as we often joke about, is precisely what burns people out long before it builds anything real. It's why 90% of podcasts don't make it past three episodes. Why many new brands fail within their first year in business. Because when your worth is tied to how often you show up, missing a single week is failure.
But when it comes to branding, I think of consistency slightly different.
Instead of focusing on the amount of times you show up, focus on how recognisable you are when you do.
Branding becomes that system that you can rely on and the thing that makes things easier rather than more difficult. When you've built a brand with intention — when you have the reusable templates, the organized design assets, and the guidelines for how to use it all — branding becomes your safety net for when life happens to your consistency streak.
And life will happen. You will miss a week. You'll get sick. You'll fall behind on your content plan. You'll have one of those seasons where everything feels a bit chaotic.
When that happens, consistency stops being about never missing. It becomes about how fast you can bounce back. You'll open your Canva brand kit, your asset library, and slot yourself right back in without there being room for overthinking or perfectionism. Because the start is already there for you.
That's what the brand is meant to give you.
While social media consistency tends to be about frequency, brand consistency is about memorability. You don't need to show up constantly. You need to show up consistently.
This version of consistency is the kind that builds a real identity for your brand, one people recognise you for, no matter when you last showed up on socials.
A pretty brand might catch attention once, but a consistent one keeps it. It makes marketing faster, selling easier, and builds momentum where improvisation burns energy and much-needed brain cells.
So the next time you catch yourself obsessing over a new design, ask yourself instead: do I really need to burn it all down for something new, or do I just need to get better at using what I already have?
Because the businesses that win aren't the ones that look the best. They're the ones that keep practicing their brand until it becomes second nature. So it doesn't depend on motivation or inspiration or perfect timing. It just depends on implementation, on giving yourself something solid enough to come back to over and over again.
That's why a consistent brand beats a pretty one every single time.
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✦ Listen to Episode 002: What If You’re Bored Of Your Own Brand?
✦ THE COLOUR CIRCLE: Bring the Canva design you’ve been (over)fiddling with for hours
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Over the last 5 years as a Brand & Marketing Designer, I’ve helped freaks like us design their unconventional brands so they can step onto the main stage & own their weird. Because if you wanted to be, look or sound like everyone else, you wouldn’t be where you are today. Now it’s your turn.
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