Thrilled that so many of you are digging this piece on unbranding yourself and becoming a cosmic beacon for people who want to pay you. Welcome to the Dark Side
I think if you started your career between 2010-2019, there was a generally accepted idea that 1) everyone needed a personal brand, 2) your brand had to be a tidy, cohesive, easy-to-understand-in-ten-seconds package.
Like we're all just little human products sitting on a shelf, desperate to be the perfect solution to someone's ultra specific problem.
"Hi, I'm Jessica, a mindful productivity coach who helps burnt-out executives reclaim their mornings!"
And while I don’t think it’s baaaaaad to be specific, it feels like we collectively internalized that “niche down!” idea a little too well, which resulted in a generation of people on the internet who feel they need to cut off important parts of themselves to the world in order to be more easily marketable.
Since when are we hanging out in elevators and pitching????
As my friend Chelsea Riffe pointed out on Threads (and I'm paraphrasing here): when was the last time you were actually trapped in an elevator with someone who needed your life's work distilled into 30 seconds?
Never, right?
Even if we only have the briefest moment to make an introduction — let’s say, someone is scrolling through social media, maybe, and stumbles across a post from you — wouldn’t we want to give them a better idea of the fullness of us?
To the outside observer, your enthusiasm for mid-century dental tools and ambient electronic music and butterfly migration patterns is compelling. IMO, the exact parts of yourself you're hiding — the weird interests, the seemingly disconnected passions, the stuff that "doesn't fit" —are precisely what people want to learn more about you, and what you do.
Show, Don't Tell
YOU: OK, so this is all great in theory, but what about in practice?
ME: Yes! So true, bestie. Let’s talk websites.
I think your website is one of the best places to show your 🌈 multidimensionality 🌈
The beautiful thing about having a website as your digital home is that you don't have to justify or explain the connections between your interests. You can just... put them all there.
Your website doesn't need to scream "HERE'S HOW MY LOVE OF VINTAGE LEGOS CONNECTS TO MY EXECUTIVE COACHING PRACTICE!" It can simply showcase both, trusting that the right people will sense the connective tissue.
With that, I put together an inspo list of some of my favorite multi-faceted people’s personal sites. All of these people are creating a laboratory of their lives. "Here are the experiments I'm running right now. Maybe I'll tell you how the experiment is going. Maybe I won't."
Example Sites:
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