Mixing the breaks. Finding values in systems and communities

I was presenting at an event recently, talking through the five stages of a brand, at the end, I got asked a very specific (and personal) question.

“How do you unravel your values?”

At another event not long after, someone asked me something different but strangely connected.

“When was the first time you remember doing the thing you’re passionate about?”

Both questions landed harder than the usual marketing chat, because they were honest. I could feel the person asking them trying to work something out for themselves.

Unravelling your values for business might sound abstract to some, even manipulative to others. One of the simplest exercises I know is this. Write the sentence “I believe X is important because…” and finish it. Then do it again. And again. Fifty times if you can.

It feels almost too basic to be useful, but if you stick with it, something always surfaces. Patterns emerge, purpose pans in and out. Energy picks up and fades. But something true about you will continually emerge.

It’s one of the most generous things you can do for yourself.

I use this exercise a lot in brand work, especially when teams feel stuck in transactional conversations with their customers. When you put yourself in your customers’ shoes and ask what they believe is important and why, the tone of conversation shifts. 

You stop talking about features and start talking about shared ground.

But that second question stayed with me. When was the first time I did the thing I cared about, without knowing that’s what it was?

The early themes you don’t realise you’re following

For me, it goes back to being about thirteen.

A friend of mine had started volunteering at a homeless charity in Torquay. He mentioned they had no way of keeping track of the people using the service. No sense of who was turning up, or who had stopped coming.

He knew I was interested in IT and asked if I could help build a simple database.

So I went along and did just that. No big plan. No sense of purpose. Just solving a problem that needed solving.

But I did feel connected.

Looking back now, it feels obvious. Twenty five years on, I work in technology trying to create social and environmental impact. That same friend has spent his entire career supporting people experiencing homelessness and now designs services for the NHS.

When I run brand exercises with clients, formative experiences come up again and again. Sometimes it’s something later in life, illness, loss, responsibility. But often it’s the things we gravitated towards as teenagers, when we were still figuring out who we were, tend to leave deep grooves.

And sensory experiences go deeper. For me, it needed a big beat.

In the mid-90s, Eminem arrived like a wrecking ball. He was crude, funny, chaotic, and completely different to what else was around. 

As a teenager, it was impossible not to be pulled in.

That curiosity led backwards, to Dre and smoking chronic. To when N.W.A said fuck tha police. I looked to Slick Rick for bedtime stories. And then to the roots of hip-hop itself and fusions with jazz.

I was around when two heroes of mine killed each other as money and egos went sky-high.

I’ve recently been watching Hip-Hop Evolution, and it reminded me why all this matters far beyond music.

Hip-hop didn’t start in record labels or studios. It started because poor Black communities in New York couldn’t access the glossy disco culture being built for the wealthy. 

So they made something of their own.

DJs like Kool Herc setup underground parties and instead of spinning records, they smashed together the the break sections of songs so people could come along and dance. 

That’s where breakdancing came from. 

Then Grandmaster Flash refined the mixing technique, inventing new ways to transition and scratch records together.

MCs picked up microphones and narrated what was happening around them. Someone double-parked outside. Someone dancing particularly well. Everyday moments turned into rhythm and rhyme.

Fast forward a couple of decades and that same movement has the power and purpose to reach a young white kid in Devon, shape how he feels the world around him and how he thinks about creativity, systems, history and equality.

Finding your place in the wider system

Connection is important for me, personally, professionally, my survival depends on it.

PPC is moving away from rigid keywords and towards intent, context, and wider behavioural signals. SEO has evolved this way too. Topical relevance matters more than individual keywords, which is why we build content plans around products and services as connected eco systems. 

It’s less about the exact phrase someone types and more about what they’re trying to do. That reflects real human behaviour. We think in needs and questions, not perfect search terms.

And that human nature exists within the natural eco system.

I’ve just finished Big Daves latest doc, Kingdom. As ever it’s a powerful reminder that nothing exists in isolation. Every action has consequences that travel far beyond the point of origin. 

And now, sadly, the nature documentaries I watch have wild animals with collars on and we learn the “natural” world through human created, protected areas.

We’re all nodes in much bigger networks.

Understanding your values helps you understand where you sit within those systems. 

What you’re here to protect. 

What you’re here to challenge. 

What you’re happy to move, and what you’re not willing to compromise on.

And when you shouldn’t.

In our own business, that clarity has changed everything. Over the last few years, more work has come through agency partnerships than through traditional end-client routes. Some people might see those partners as competitors. We see them as collaborators.

That only works because we’re clear on the type of work we value and the role we want to play. We know the conversations we want to be in. We know the ones we don’t.

Nature doesn’t try to be everything. Neither should a brand.

So if you’re wrestling with those questions, how to unravel your values, or when your passion first showed up, my advice is simple.

Look backwards without judgment (pay attention to the early threads), and look around and ask where you fit within the wider system you’re part of.

Find your unique voice in the communities where you feel you belong.

Then you can thrive in a way that feels sustainable, honest, and distinctly your own.

Did you hear about the rose that grew

from a crack in the concrete?

Proving nature’s laws wrong,

it learned to walk without having feet.

The Rose That Grew from Concrete, Tupac Shakur