Can We Build a "Better" Brand?

As I sit at a coffee shop today and prepare myself for the launch of YANA, I reflected back on a question that we had in the very beginning:

Can we build a healthier, "better", & more restorative brand?

I pondered about whether or not the query was the goal itself... or... was it more-so the lens through which we wanted to do things?

The more I thought about it, the more I felt that it maybe isn't so much about building a more restorative brand... but being a more HUMAN brand - one that revolves around the concept of what it means to be 'of the earth'.

Clean ingredients?  Sure.  Sourcing from actual plants while staying away from things that feel overly synthetic, clinical, or disconnected from the natural world seems to be a given. In a way, that part feels more straightforward. A relatively “easy” ethos to stick to.

But what then, aside from our recipes, does it mean to be MORE than just an entity that uses clean ingredients?

As I continued to ponder about this, I realized that attempting to make a company “be more” than the value proposition of its products is, in many ways, completely unnecessary.

But then again, the same could probably be said about us as human beings.

We don’t technically need to “be more.” We don’t need to constantly chase some higher, loftier version of ourselves. In fact, when I reflect on the concept of “being more,” it feels like a fundamentally unstable foundation to build oneself upon.

Towards what purpose? Towards what result?

Combine that with the knowledge that life is and always will be predictably unpredictable — and “being more” can quickly become an ever-changing, aimless, and almost certainly unreachable goal.

So maybe it isn’t about simply trying to be more.

Maybe it matters more that we choose the perspective we want to move through the world with.

To say:

“I want to do things this way.”

“I want to value these things.”

And last but not least, to act on it.

It seems amazingly clear just how alike a person and a business can be. And perhaps, if both can successfully align, there may be a very powerful and compounding effect.

So the question of whether or not we can build a “better” and more restorative brand is maybe better asked by pointing the finger back toward ourselves:

“What actions can we take and implement to be more restorative, healthy, and good to ourselves and each other?”

Not perfectly. Not performatively. But through small, repeated choices in what we do and how we treat ourselves.

"Being more" then, may simply mean being more ourselves - more human.

Not with a perfect answer.

Not with the assumption that we can even remotely know what this can and could become.

But with a commitment to keep asking better questions, to keep choosing with intention, and to keep returning to the same simple idea:

That what we make and do should not pull us further away from ourselves, from each other, or from the earth.

It should help bring us back.