I Wasn’t Living my Brand Truth: 5 Lessons
I remember the exact moment I realized I wasn’t living into my own brand truth.
I was sitting in my car outside the boys’ daycare, parked and ready to walk them inside. The early morning drive to and from “school,” as we call it, was something I’d come to look forward to.
The drive winds around a lake and state park we live near and, on most days, it’s rather peaceful and serene (with the occasional sibling spat in the backseat). Most days I concede to listening to my kids’ current music obsession (right now, Sing 2…on repeat😆). But that day they were distracted, and I got to listen to one of my regular podcasts while sipping coffee.
It was just as I pulled into the daycare parking lot that the podcast guest said something that hit me unexpectedly, and hard:
Is the way you talk about that online the way you’d actually talk about it in real life? Do you sound like the same person?
Here’s the thing… I’ve heard a version of this idea many, many times before, from many people. It’s also something I challenge my own clients on all the time. And yet this person, this day, broke through all my mental clutter and forced a reckoning.
As much as I wanted to resist it…
I knew the honest answer was that I’d been trying to show up a certain way in my business, in a way I thought I should. Based on what I saw from others. Based on how I’d been trained for years in corporate. Based on what I believed was more “safe” from judgment. Simply put, I was showing up in a way that checked off a bunch of criteria that originated outside of me, rather than inside.
So, was the way I was talking about my area of expertise and business online the way I talked about it in real life? No. No it wasn’t.
Of course my first thought was “How did this happen?” followed by “If I don’t have my own brand voice locked tight, how can I help other women in business get clear and confident in theirs?”
These thoughts followed me on my entire drive home and hung around through the day. It shook me up, to be honest. And while I wasn’t so kind to myself about it initially, I did eventually come around to several important realizations:
What we have a natural talent for seeing and extracting from others, is sometimes the very thing we can’t see in ourselves. Just because we have expertise in something, doesn’t mean we don’t still have to do the work ourselves. After I had my moment of wicked imposter syndrome (well, several moments), I came around to this truth. This is why I will forever and ever, Amen, invest in communities, mentors and coaches who help me see in myself what I am too close to see. We can’t read the label from inside the bottle. Or as I once heard a fellow copywriter I admire once say, it’s like trying to kiss your own elbow. It seems close enough that it should work, but it just doesn’t (go ahead, give it a try).
It’s never too late to course correct because that is the WHOLE POINT. It’s growth. It’s progression. It’s identifying what isn’t working and trying something else. Many times, that “something else” is what feels most natural and obvious to you but that you’re resisting. Which leads me to my next point…
Don’t resist what feels easy for you. Embrace it. Lean into it. Settle into and be proud of what form of expression flows most naturally for you. I’ve tried to awkwardly post videos of myself talking about things I’m passionate about and the message fell flat because what I really love doing — what feels most natural for me — is this. WRITING.
Limit your consumption of others’ content, especially around the time you’re creating your own. Whether conscious or not, your brain is influenced by the patterns, words and tone of that content you’re mindlessly consuming. It can sneak into your content creation process in the form of overly censoring or editing your words (and blocking what really needs to come through) or taking on a voice and tone that isn’t genuinely yours. Give yourself as much of a mental blank canvas as possible to let your own creative expression, point of view and voice come through.
And finally, learn to embrace the discomfort of learning hard lessons. Because as entrepreneurs, there are always new, usually hard lessons to learn. Always. I learned a few big ones that day that I now prioritize in my business and in my work with clients.
Let me say that last one again: The hardest learnings are sometimes the most important ones. Give yourself some grace. Keep going. And surround yourself with a supportive community to remind you that this is all a normal part of the process.
