World-Building as a Brand
How conscious business ownership can shape the new world
The phrase “world-building” is having a moment, both here on Substack and over on TikTok. It isn’t new, of course. Writers and filmmakers have been using it for decades to describe the weaving together of imagined worlds.
But something about the timing feels different. Why now?
Because, not to be dramatic but, the world as we’ve known it is basically unraveling. Institutions are cracking, certainty (about anything) seems to be dissolving, and what once felt fixed is suddenly unstable.
At the same time, many of us are experiencing profound spiritual awakenings, coming back into our bodies, our intuition, and our creative gifts. This liminal space is both disorienting and fertile. It’s also the invitation to reimagine everything.
World-building is no longer reserved for fiction.
In truth, we’re all being invited to step into it. I don’t see this so much as escapism, but more as a practice of resonance and embodiment. The choices we make now, and the frequency we transmit through our work, are quite literally laying the blueprint for what comes next.
A few summers ago, I had the honor of working with Alex McDowell, one of the pioneers of world-building and founder of the World Building Media Lab at USC. He’s designed entire universes for films we all know, but his deeper work has always pointed toward something bigger: that the same principles used to craft imaginary worlds can also help us reimagine our collective future.
So what could happen when we stop asking only what is and start asking what could be?
When we begin to understand ourselves and each other more deeply, ideas move through us with a kind of effortlessness. We’re standing in the rubble of old systems, but we also hold the brush to paint something new. Every choice, no matter how small, becomes a signal. It ripples outward.
And as business owners, those ripples are amplified. Our platforms magnify the choices we make. By embodying a new way of working, by saying “this is enough” or “this is okay,” we allow others to see it that way too. We literally are able to model a different possibility.
The impact of resonance
Your brand is so much more than a business. Think of it as a transmission where every word, image, or promise carries a frequency.
I’ve been talking at length about how we’re moving beyond the knowledge economy into the resonance economy – a space where value is measured not by output, but by how deeply you’re felt. Resonance becomes the differentiator.
When you choose alignment and embody your own truth, your business becomes a field others can step into. A place where people remember what’s possible for them, simply because you are holding it.
This is the work of Brand Somatics: bringing embodiment and energetic awareness into the way you build, lead, and create. When your nervous system is regulated, your message lands. When your body is grounded, your community feels it. When you honor your own cycles and limits, you give permission for others to do the same.
This is also how we evolve our businesses for 5D consciousness: using them as a bridge between the practical and the energetic, the everyday and the infinite.
Think of the everyday choices you make as moments of resonance:
How you start a client call.
Whether you pause to breathe before answering an email.
The energy you bring into your pricing conversations.
Even the way you close your laptop at the end of the day.
Each of these is an opportunity to choose coherence instead of contraction, alignment instead of performance. And over time, these micro-moments create a field that people can feel and will return to. Why? Because it nourishes something deeper than information or strategy.
In many ways, this is the lived experience of the liminal space: the recognition that what feels small or ordinary in the moment is actually shaping the texture of what comes next.
I’ve seen this in my own practice. There have been moments when a client arrives on a call overwhelmed and scattered, and before diving into strategy, we take three minutes to breathe together. Their shoulders drop, their eyes soften, and suddenly the conversation shifts. What emerges from that state is always clearer, more creative, more alive. That moment of presence does more for their business than any checklist ever could. It’s a reminder that the field we hold is just as important as the words we speak or the plans we make.
Integration
Ask yourself the following:
What am I modeling through the way I work and lead?
Where am I still unconsciously echoing old collapsing structures?
What would it feel like to let my brand become a channel for resonance instead of performance?
What small choices can I make today that will ripple outward as new models for others?
A short ritual for imaginative shifting:
Close your eyes.
Take three slow breaths, softening into your body.
Imagine yourself as a tuning fork. Your business hums with the same note you carry in your chest. Feel the vibration extend outward, into your words, your offers, your relationships, your impact. Imagine someone stepping into your field, attuning to your resonance. Notice what shifts in their body, what becomes possible in their imagination.
Place your hand on your heart and whisper: I choose to embody the future I believe in. I choose resonance as my way of creating.
Let this intention guide you.
You have the capacity to become a model for what comes next: an architect in this liminal space, shaping the resonance of the future through every choice you make. Each choice, act, and offering becomes a frequency you’re transmitting into the world.
Take it deeper
Clarity Sessions: 45-minute 1:1 office hour chats, available Mon, Thurs, + Fri.
Coaching: A five-session coaching container designed to support your next evolution. Rooted in Brand Somatics and designed to meet you wherever you are along your journey.
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~Jess
What you’re doing right now is so important and so needed!!
What am I modeling is such an important question in so many areas.