Patagonia sports clothing company deliberately dropped 30 percent of its clothing line in 1990, partly out of concern for ecological impact (“We need to use fewer materials. Period.”) and partly for fear of the effects of runaway growth.

I was clearer, however, about why being a brand sat so uneasily with me. Good brands are immune to fundamental transformation. Conceding to having become one at age thirty would have meant foreclosing on what I saw as my prerogative to change, evolve, and hopefully improve.

There are different levels of meaning associated with any given brand, some of which are absolutely new to a moment, and others that are continuously there over time. A brand is composed of these meanings. These meanings are being carefully chosen and crafted. And then they’re managed, because we’re swapping meanings in and out to make the brand ad

Society has ingrained in us a very particular idea of what success in business looks like. You work as many hours as possible, and when your business starts to do well, you scale everything up in every direction. To this day, this strategy is considered what it takes to be a success in business—solving problems by adding “more” to the solution. Any