Brand Strategy for Creative Entrepreneurs Who Refuse to Be Broken
When I was working as a wrangler in Wyoming, I fell in love with the underdog of the ranch.
It ended up teaching me more about brand strategy for creative entrepreneurs than any marketing book ever could.
His name was Biscuit.
An opinionated, borderline pony with scars, stubbornness, and a very clear sense of self. The kind of horse who had clearly watched Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and decided that was his entire personality.
You know the scene. Spirit refuses every rider, bucks off the cavalry one by one, and makes it clear through sheer force of will that he belongs to no one.
That energy.
Just slower.
Because Biscuit was old. And little.
Still, he carried the soul of a mustang trapped inside the reality of guest ranch work, with very specific opinions about who got to sit in his saddle.
Spoiler. It was not most people.
Biscuit Had Standards (And Made Them Everyone Else’s Problem)
The other wranglers would say Biscuit had a “personality,” which is cowboy-speak for this animal has standards and you probably do not meet them.
His favorite moves included:
Trying to scrape riders off by walking under low-hanging tree branches
Lying down mid-ride when he decided he was done working, rider still in the saddle
Choosing mild violence whenever he felt even slightly inconvenienced
One guest, a woman he had tried to remove via tree branch roughly forty minutes earlier, returned from her ride and said, “Biscuit gave me the experience of a lifetime.”
And on my first ride out into the backcountry, when it came time to saddle up, Biscuit was assigned to me.
To me, the girl who was there because she needed to remember who she was outside of who everyone expected her to be.
Choosing Each Other Without Trying to Fix Anything
Despite every rough edge, every scar, every moment he made it clear he was tolerating my presence as a personal favor, I chose him back.
That season, Biscuit and I went everywhere together.
Over rambling red rocks.
Along dry desert valleys.
Through storms that made me question every decision that led me there.
Into stillness under night skies full of stars.
To fields of wildflowers that caught their breath with the rising sun.
He was not easy.
Neither was I.
But something in the wildness between us brought me home to myself.
Biscuit did not care about my resume or the string of identities I had tried on in recent years. Firefighter. Ranch hand. Ski patroller. Backcountry guide. A quarter-life crisis with good intentions and no map.
He did not care if I was good enough.
He cared if I was present.
If I could meet him exactly as he was, scarred, stubborn, unpolished, without trying to fix him or turn him into some version of a “good horse.”
Just see him.
And let him see me.
That was my first real understanding of what it means to take form without constraint.
Spirit Was Never About Being Tamed
If you have seen Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, you know the turning point is not when Spirit gets broken.
It is when Little Creek stops trying to dominate him and starts trying to understand him.
When the relationship shifts from control to partnership.
When Spirit realizes he can be wild and connected.
When his power no longer requires isolation.
That is the moment everything changes.
And honestly, that is the exact inflection point I see with almost every creative entrepreneur I work with.
Brand Strategy for Creative Entrepreneurs Who Refuse to Be Broken
You have been running wild for years.
Building your business on instinct, grit, and sheer force of will. Refusing templates that flatten you. Strategies that feel hollow. Branding that sands down your edges until you are barely recognizable.
You kept your freedom.
But at what cost?
Maybe it is the exhaustion of recreating everything from scratch every time.
Maybe it is the isolation of being the only one who truly gets your vision.
Maybe it is the quiet knowing that you were meant for more, but things are not lining up yet.
You do not need to be tamed.
You need to be seen. And then supported with structure that lets you run even faster.
This is the kind of brand strategy for creative entrepreneurs that is built on presence, truth, and partnership, not performance or polish.
I Learned This the Hard Way Too
Someone once said to me, “Amy gives out a lot of advice she does not follow herself.”
Fair.
I have been the scrappy business that tried to scrape people off by being too complicated.
I have laid down mid-project when I decided I was done.
I have chosen mild violence when people did not understand my vision, and I had not invested in a process that made it easier to communicate.
Eventually, I learned what Biscuit already knew.
You do not have to be expected or perfectly palatable to be valuable.
You do not have to be tamed to be trustworthy.
But you do have to let the right people see you.
Branding as Partnership for Creative Entrepreneurs
I am not asking you to become someone else.
I am offering partnership.
The kind that lets you stay wild while building something that lasts.
The kind where your brand stops feeling like a performance and starts feeling like home.
Where your work is recognizable because it is honest.
Where your presence carries conviction without explanation.
Where the right people feel you immediately, and the wrong ones quietly pass by.
At its core, brand strategy for creative entrepreneurs is not about control. It is about creating the conditions where your work can move freely and be received fully.
This is the work I do through story-led brand strategy, thoughtful design, and deeply collaborative partnership.
Not to polish you into something marketable.
But to see exactly who you are and build something spacious enough to hold all of it.
Coming Home to Your Unbridled Form
Biscuit did not make me a better rider.
He brought me home to my unbridled form.
To the part of me that existed before the roles, before the expectations, before I learned how to make myself smaller to fit into spaces that were never built for someone like me.
He showed me what it looks like when someone sees your wildness, the scarred parts, the stubborn parts, the inconvenient parts, and says:
Yes. That. Exactly that.
And then gives you the terrain to run free.
That is what I exist to do for you.
If you are ready to stop performing and start becoming, there is space for you here.
Curious what that might look like for you.
P.S. If you, too, feel drawn to the moments between moments—the things that shape us, shift us, and call us forward—you might like The Reverie.
When I move things from my head and heart through my hands, it tends to make its way to The Reverie. Subscribe to my semi-monthly newsletter to gain exclusive access to storytelling tips, studio behind-the-scenes, and my deeply sacred, often untamed journal entries.
For more brand strategy, storytelling, and design resources to grow your business, click here to visit my Freebies page where you can snag the free storytelling guide for brands. This page is full of free downloads, design recommendations, the best business tools for running your business, as well as curated playlists for brands I’ve built. (Playlists are kind of my thing.)
For more support with the strategy and intention behind your business, visit the Brand Strategy & Design Shop and connect with me on Instagram for all the latest storytelling tips, brand features, and untamed studio behind the scenes.
