The Restoration of Perception: How I Found My Way from Photography to Brand Storytelling

by Deevo Tindall Read time: ~7 minutes

Why You Should Read This

This isn’t really about branding. It’s about perception, how we see ourselves, how that vision shapes everything we build, and how growth often begins the moment we stop trying to become something new and start remembering what has always been there.

If you have ever looked around at a successful life or business and quietly wondered why it doesn’t feel like you anymore, this story might land somewhere familiar. I will tell you upfront that nothing in here is original. It is all recycled truth, reshaped through lived experience. The difference is not in the concept but in the translation. That is what mirrors, reflections, wingmen, and truth serums like me actually do. We translate meaning into language that people can finally hear.

How I Got Here

I have owned a photography studio in Charlotte for almost fifteen years. It is one of the most decorated studios in the region, with enough medals and trophies to fill a small museum, though most of them are tucked away in boxes.

For years, I traveled the world capturing people’s stories through my lens, documenting everything from corporate campaigns to private portraits. Somewhere along the way I began to see a pattern. My real gift wasn’t photography, it was the ability to see people, not just how they wanted to appear but who they were beneath the armor.

I could sense when someone was performing, and I knew how to help them drop it. I met them where they were, easing them into that fragile space between who they thought they were and who they actually were. When that connection happened, the camera stopped being a tool and became a mirror, and that became my magic mojo.

The photograph was never the point; the reflection was and the work was never about lighting or lenses, it was about helping people see themselves again.

That awareness began to reshape everything. I started working with founders, creatives, and small businesses, helping them tell their stories through visuals, through brand shoots, through messaging. In that process, I realized that most of the stories people were trying to tell were rarely aligned with who they truly were. They were performing for an audience they no longer cared to impress.

Then one day, it hit me. I didn’t actually know my own story either.

That realization cracked something open. I started doing the deep work, therapy, reflection, uncomfortable truth-telling. I began asking hard questions about why I had built what I had built and how much of it had been shaped by conditioning, programming, and the quiet need for validation, (I even learned I was an anxious attachment, more on that next week). Like most entrepreneurs, I had been sprinting toward the next goal without ever stopping to ask why.

Once you start asking that question, you cannot unseen what it reveals.

The more I understood myself, the more I began to see the same pattern in others. People do not get stuck because they lack potential, they get stuck because they stop seeing themselves clearly, or never took the time to ask who they are in the first place, and once you lose that clarity, everything else begins to drift.

That understanding pulled me into this next chapter of my life, guiding other people through that same process of reflection. Helping them find the thread between their identity and their impact. I did not become a coach, I became a mirror, a wingman for clarity, a truth serum for people who had outgrown their own reflection.

The Work I Do Now

These days, my work lives at the intersection of story, identity, and strategy. People often come to me thinking they need a brand refresh, but what they really need is perspective, a way to translate who they have become into the world they are building next.

That is what I call The Becoming You Blueprint™. It is the process of turning the chaos of potential into the geometry of form, of taking everything you have lived and learned and giving it structure so it can breathe in alignment with who you are now.

Before you can tell your story to the world, you have to see it yourself. Because your brand will always reflect your current state of self-awareness. If you are unclear, your message will be too.

Growth as a Field, Not a Line

Growth is not a straight line, and it is certainly not a finish line. It is an open field, a space you expand through awareness, curiosity, and perspective.

The more you evolve, the more your perception changes. The cleaner your lens becomes, the more everything around you sharpens. That is what I mean when I talk about the restoration of perception. It is not a one-time event. It is a continuous act of remembering, refining, and realigning.

When perception clears, movement follows. That is when life, business, and relationships start to find their rhythm again.

The Myth of Originality

Let’s be honest, nothing about this work is new. It is ancient wisdom wearing modern clothes. Everything I teach or reflect on has existed for centuries, passed through philosophers, poets, and thinkers all trying to make sense of what it means to be human, and anyone today, who implies they were the originator is a fraud… that was a personal barb at some inside reference…

What makes it powerful is not originality, it is translation. My voice, my scars, my humor, my perspective, that is what gives it life. And that is why mirrors, guides, and truth-tellers exist. We help you interpret your own reflection.

This work isn’t about inventing meaning, it’s about helping you remember yours.

The Geometry of Becoming

I don’t help people build bigger brands, I help them build truer ones.

I work with founders, leaders, and creatives who are standing in that quiet, uncomfortable space between who they were and who they are becoming. When they begin to see themselves clearly again, everything else starts to take form. The brand, the message, the energy, all of it starts to move in harmony with truth.

That is when you stop performing and start embodying. That is when alignment becomes visible.

Final Thought

You do not need another strategy, you need a mirror, and maybe a little courage to stand in front of it long enough to remember who is looking back.

Everything starts there, in stillness, in awareness, in the restoration of perception.

About Deevo

Deevo Tindall is a storyteller, strategist, and recovering overthinker who helps founders and creatives rebuild clarity from the inside out. His work blends psychology, narrative, and brand strategy into a mirror that reflects who you have become and what you are meant to build next.

Follow him on LinkedIn explore his work at thebrandstoryteller.com or find him on Instagram @deevothebrandstoryteller