Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - This Five-Minute Exercise Can Catapult Your Career
Episode Date: June 1, 2023When the term “personal brand” first entered the zeitgeist, people were stoked to talk about it—but the conversation went sour because, let's be honest, the phrase got overused by people with ch...eesy personal brands. And that's a real shame because thinking about your "personal brand" is a tool that can help you leapfrog in your career. This Help Wanted episode is proof - and Money Rehabbers have to hear it. When Nicole and Entrepreneur Magazine editor in chief Jason Feifer get a listener-submitted question about building a personal brand on their podcast Help Wanted, they decide to phone-a-friend: Aliza Licht, an incredible marketing guru. Jason, Nicole and Aliza take the caller through an exercise that you can use to build your reputation, get recognition for the work you love and secure the opportunities you've always wanted. Find Aliza's latest book, On Brand, here: https://alizalicht.com/on-brand Subscribe to Help Wanted here: https://link.chtbl.com/85RcT5bT
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash.
But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start, or even too complicated,
if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full-time in San
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something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you.
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I'm Nicole Lappin,
the only financial expert
you don't need a dictionary to understand.
It's time for some money rehab.
The idea of developing a personal brand has really exploded in recent years as the way we consume
and use social media has evolved. Most people will tell you that a personal brand is only
important for entrepreneurs who are the face of their companies, but that is not true. I've also felt
a shift in the way we listen to advice about personal brands. When the term personal brand
first entered the zeitgeist, people were stoked to talk about it. But the conversation I think
kind of went sour when the term was overused, especially, to be honest, by people who have kind of cheesy personal brands. And that's a real shame because I do actually believe
that thinking about this is valuable. Think of a personal brand as a strong reputation rooted in
your strengths. Who doesn't want that? You can see why that could be beneficial in advancing
in any industry, whether you're the face of a company or a brand or not. This is something that recently came up on Help Wanted, the podcast I co-host with Jason Pfeiffer.
On the show, Jason and I talk people through their biggest work questions.
Recently on the pod, we talked to a listener who wanted help rebuilding their personal brand,
and we phoned a friend, Aliza Licht, an incredible marketing guru who just put out her second book,
On Brand.
Aliza is a pro. She's got a ton of experience in the space, and her personal brand is certainly not cheesy. Aliza takes our listener through an exercise that anyone can use at home to build a
strong reputation and advance in your own career. So, because I want money rehabbers to have all
the best resources for getting it together and getting it all. I'm sharing that episode of Help Wanted today. If you're into it and you want more career and
business advice, subscribe at the link in the show notes and never miss an episode.
Chris, welcome to Help Wanted.
Hello. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
What's your question?
So my question is about rebranding. If you were to enter a certain industry and you want to shift or pivot, would you attempt
to rebrand entirely or would you bring this new brand into the existing image?
This is such a good question.
I'm assuming this is something you're experiencing right now yourself.
I'm assuming this is something you're experiencing right now yourself.
Yes.
You're not just esoterically wandering around the philosophy of branding.
No, no, I've been thinking about this.
And to be clear, when you say brand, you're talking about you.
You're rebranding you, correct?
Yes.
About a decade ago, I started Blackanista, essentially, as this... It was almost like a joke because I was very interested
in fashion and I was like, okay, well, just play off Fashionista. And I wanted to go into fashion
design, which was fine. And then I started to transition into animation and visual development.
And I almost feel like the people who would follow Blackanista under the assumption of it being, you know, fashion related or very fashion heavy.
And then they get like animation and just things that they weren't expecting.
I didn't know if it would be worth trying to bring in that artistic side to Blackanista to the point where it's like, okay, so I'm an animator,
but I'm also interested in fashion? Or do I try to rebrand so that someone who sees it would
immediately know, oh, this is what I'm leaning into? Just to clarify, Blackanista is a social
channel? Yes. It was the handle I shifted to for pretty much all social media.
I see. So I was going to ask the exact same question. So just so that we're all clear,
we understand what you're talking about. Blackanista is not a company per se. It is
your personal brand. So you are in the world and presenting your work under the label Blackanista.
Yes.
Got it.
So that's the thing that you're wondering about whether to rebrand or how to do it because
it started as one thing, but now it slash you, which is complicated, but this is what
personal branding is, complicated complicated is shifting into other work
and one more clarifying question so on that social handle are you selling anything not in the sense
of like someone interacting with it and they're being an immediate product but more on the side
of like commissioned art art wait where did art come Well, that's what I mean with the whole shift and pivot thing.
Because when I initially did it, I wasn't posting things like that.
It really was just like, oh, well, I'm interested in fashion, so I'm going to talk about it here.
And then when I started leaning into, okay, I want to do the business aspect of it, at the same time, I also shifted into animation.
But the way you made money was commissioned art. Yes. business aspect of it. At the same time, I also shifted into animation.
But the way you made money was commissioned art.
Yes.
And you would get leads from your social posting.
Yes.
Okay, got it. This is very, very personal brand heavy. And we thought our favorite person on this topic would be a wonderful person to dig into this and help you navigate it.
Elisa Licht, friend of the show, brilliant brand builder, the author of a brand new book
on brand, Run, Don't Walk and Get It. Elisa, welcome to Help Wanted. Thanks for helping us
and Chris. Oh my God. Well, I'm so happy to be here, Nicole and Jason. And Chris, I am so happy to see you
because I know Chris from a decade ago from Blackanista on Twitter. So I didn't even know
that you pivoted into animation. Well, and so for our audience, we might not also know all the
amazing things that Aliza does. She is one of my favorite humans on the planet. She was also the brilliant force behind DKNYPR Girl and wrote a first book, Leave Your Mark. And so she's been
super like all in early Twitter. So I'm not surprised that you've come across him because
you're on the pulse of anybody cool. And Chris, you look and sound pretty cool. So that tracks.
Chris, you look and sound pretty cool. So that tracks. In fact, what Nicole mentioned of my former life as DQIPR girl was an entity kind of like Blackanista, right? I remember tweeting with
Blackanista back when I was tweeting as DQIPR girl. So I think of it more as an umbrella brand
and you can be Blackanista as your handle and then your name could be Chris McIntosh.
You can connect the dots between a brand
and your actual persona.
I think it's important to build equity
with those two things together, right?
Unless you want to be anonymous like I was back in the day
and no one knows who you are,
which lasts for a period of time
and then eventually everybody knows, right?
So I think one of the first exercises on brand is like, well, what do you want to be known for?
And you don't have to niche down to like a singular thing.
So honestly, the Venn diagram exercise that we all know from good old marketing is the best way to visualize your content buckets. And like,
so fashion is one circle, right? And animation is another circle. And what is that sweet middle spot? Because when I think of animation, I think of lines, I think of curves. When I think of
fashion, I think of lines and curves too. So there's definitely a through line between both
of those interests. But I think, you know,
your skill set, the experience and the skill set really is something that you can bring into
different mediums. So the question becomes, what is the goal of your personal brand? Because
everything you do needs to be in service of that. So for example, if you were going to say, well,
I want more clients, I want more commissioned art, then we need to start seeing your work, right? So when you think
about where you're actually putting that work online, do you have a website or a portfolio
that you are actually showing your work right now? I don't. So I need to really consolidate the work
that I've been doing over the last couple of years and future projects and have a spot that people
can see. So like my identity is linked to that. Yeah. And I think, listen, this is all low-hanging
fruit, right? So I think first and foremost, understanding your content bucket. So like the
Venn diagram exercise is really helpful. So you can connect the dots between those two worlds.
But then it becomes a question of,
do you have examples of your art in the fashion space also,
or only in like a certain genre?
I did have fashion designs out there.
You had like the early,
when I was initially doing stuff on Twitter,
I did occasionally post things.
Can we do that Venn diagram exercise?
Actually, Aliza, do you mind walking Chris through that?
Absolutely not.
OK, so, Chris, you got a little piece of paper and pen.
You got a pen.
Great.
OK, so if we do our first circle of fashion, let's think of five things you think of when you think of
your point of view on fashion and how you like to show up as someone who
speaks about fashion, draws about fashion, appreciates fashion.
So people can picture it. A Venn diagram, of course, is that diagram where there are two
overlapping circles. So there's going to be two buckets of things and then some kind of overlap
that we're going to identify. So you're starting to build that with the first circle.
Correct. And this first circle is just going to have a title at the top where it's like fashion.
So where does that show up for you? Or maybe some keywords you can think of?
I love the design aspect.
What about other aspects like specific types of drawings or color or texture?
What do you like about fashion? I really got into knitwear pretty heavily. like specific types of drawings or color or texture?
Like, what do you like about fashion?
I really got into knitwear pretty heavily.
Knitwear?
And fall fashion.
Okay, cool.
And when you were drawing fashion in the past, were you drawing it just sort of the actual product,
like flat lay, or were you drawing people?
Like, how did you visualize fashion when you did it in the past? It was always people, like a figure study of sorts.
Okay. And did these drawings of people look like people in the sense of like very literally,
or were they exaggerated? Like a lot of times in fashion, when people sketch, they draw
exaggerated versions of people. So they're super tall or their proportion is off. Like
what was your style of drawing? I had that exaggerated in the very beginning. And then I
ended up shifting towards the more realistic. Okay. Now we're going to move over to the other
circle, which is going to be
anime. First of all, how did you get into anime? I got into it. Basically my mom was really
watching it. And then I kind of linked into it that way. Eventually I ended up stumbling upon
it on TV and it was like, oh, this is this nice. How do I end up doing this? And then I was like,
oh no, like that's, that's not a career path like I can't do that and then
as an adult I was like oh this this is a thing I can actually lean into so animation and anime
when you think about your job in that bucket what are some attributes that you think of like how do
you approach that art it's very conceptual and like you have your base concept and you build
upon that um for me i like using very strong like a line of action so there's that and a lot of
movement with transitions it's kind of like the signature i have for that okay and this is all
in digital right for the most part okay do draw animate? Like, do you draw those characters just in 2D?
Yes.
Okay. So we've got digital, we've got movement. Are things exaggerated in this space as well?
Sometimes, yes. It'll be like to, you kind of do it in a sense that to give motion,
because if you did it literally,
it would be, it would end up coming off stiff. Okay, great. So, and you're drawing people,
characters, animals, like what is your... It's mostly people. So now when you look at both sides,
both circles, is there anything that you've written down that is a shared attribute?
you've written down that is a shared attribute. It is both in fashion and it is both in animation or anime. I feel like this, the digital aspect and the exaggerated forms definitely show up in both.
And it's probably a big part of why it seems so natural when I initially made the shift.
For sure. And there's other ways to also connect the dots.
For example, you could connect the dots through a color story or a certain character, right? You
could reuse the same type of persona to draw in fashion and also in anime. You could bring that
person through. So I think in general, when you look at the center and you visualize what both sides have in common, there actually are a bunch of things that they both share.
So to me, when we think about your brand, and it all can live under Blackanista, if that is, you know, the umbrella brand that you feel most represents you, you need verticals, right?
you, you need verticals, right? So you can have your fashion vertical of art, and then you can have your anime version of art, and then you could actually add other types of animation if you wanted
to do food animation or any other type of vertical. What connects the dots through all of them
is really the design aspect of what you're doing. You're creating from scratch,
you're visualizing something, and it doesn't really matter if it's Japanese art or if it,
or it's a look down the runway, you're, you're taking something and you're exaggerating it and
you're, and you're putting your own point of view on it. So I actually think these things live in harmony together,
but I want to make sure you see that too. Yes, I do.
Yeah, I think art is like the biggest part of the shaded diagram. It's, you know,
actually what you're selling and what you should potentially think about leading with.
When we think in terms of shaping our narrative and what you want to be
known for, that identity that you share on your Instagram bio, on your website, on your LinkedIn
page, wherever you're showing up, needs to be able to explain that you are an artist and in whatever
forms you want to describe yourself as right and i think
this is really the low-hanging fruit for you because you have not yet if you had to think
about the headline of chris mcintosh right it's like what would someone if there wasn't if the
new york times was writing an article about your art how would they describe you in like a sound
bite that is what you actually have to work on. Because
when we look you up on LinkedIn, or we look you up on Instagram, or wherever you are,
it should be really easy and clear for any of us, me, Nicole, Jason, anyone, stranger, to know
exactly how you think of yourself, right? So first and foremost, you're an artist, right? You're an
artist who works mostly in digital and you have a love of fashion, you have a love of anime and
probably a lot of other things, but you need to boil that into, you know, 140 characters or
whatever the bio length is for wherever you're putting that.
So that is actually one of the first steps after the Venn diagram is really boiling that title down so that people can understand how you're showing up and what you do.
Stick around.
Help Wanted will be right back.
I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash. Stick around. Help Wanted will be right back.
I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash.
But I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that.
If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and
your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations,
messaging your guests, giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you.
I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work,
but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels
like a scramble, so I don't end up making time to make my house look guest-friendly.
I guess that's the best way to put it.
But I'm matching with a co-host, so I can still make that extra cash
while also making it easy on myself.
Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host.
Welcome back to Help Wanted. Let's get to it.
If you don't tell people who you are, they will not know. This sounds so simple. And
this thing that we're talking about right now, probably for anyone listening,
sounds obvious.
Wait a second. You don't know how to explain what you do? How is anyone supposed to know? But
when you are actually in it, it turns out to be something that you can very easily overlook
because you spend so much time thinking about the things that you make that you forget that you need
to communicate that to other people. And I remember in the early days of me trying to figure out how I brand myself. And I had recognized that for me, there was a big
opportunity, a marketplace opportunity in being positioned as an expert in change management.
I wanted to help people understand how to navigate change. And I was struggling to figure out why I
wasn't getting more speaking engagements and why
people weren't calling me on this subject. And I was talking to my friend, Adam Bornstein,
who runs a consultancy, and he went to my website and he said, you know, I would never know that
you're positioning yourself as a change management guy because I'm looking at your website right now and it doesn't say that.
And I thought, oh, wait, that's a problem. It was the most obvious thing in the world. And I work with people all day who are talking about branding and I didn't think about it.
You went to my website and it didn't at all say what I did for you. So here we are now, Chris,
and you are thinking about all these things that you do
and like to do, but you have not figured out the very basic story of how to communicate that to
others, which feels like the project we need to tackle first. So well said, Jason. And I have to
say, you're not alone, Chris. So we don't want you to feel bad that you haven't done this. I think this exercise is daunting for people.
It sounds, like you said, so simple.
It's like, how would you not know?
Yeah, it's simple but not easy and so anxiety provoking.
For all of us, too.
We've all been there.
Yes.
This is not like we figured this out.
This has been like super easy.
We say it.
You know, I still practice this stuff.
Yes. And what do you want people to know as far as your services that you offer? How can they
work with you? So then you get into a vertical of, well, you can hire me. I'm making this up to do
films. You can hire me to do poster work, like, you know, print marketing, like all of the different mediums that art shows up in, like,
what is that list of sort of areas that people can, can commission you for? Because you can build
this out, you can, you can do merch, you can put your art on a lot of different mediums. So you
have to really think about like, what is, what is it that you're actually offering people as a
service? Because I imagine it's not just like, oh, here's a piece of art to hang on your wall.
The art is used in different mediums, right?
And when you're offering a service, what you're really doing is you're solving someone's problem,
which means that what you need to do, and this is embedded in everything that Aliza
just said, is you need to think about how you're telling the story of yourself as it
relates to other people.
What's the thing that you do for them? One of the things I found really fascinating as an exercise that's worth thinking about is if you have a website, what should that say? If you
don't have a website, start thinking about what it would look like. But I'm going to just do a
little trip for you down the internet here where you've got three people on this call who have
websites that are designed to position them in some way or another. And I'm going to tell you the first
thing that each of them say. You go to Elisa's website, elisalick.com. Shape your narrative,
share your vision, shift their perception. You go to nicolalappin.com. It says control your money,
master your, and then it kind of rotates between things career relationships finances again
Nicole is positioning herself as here's what I do and here's what I do for you you go to my website
it says change is inevitable thriving is up to you I'll show you how that was the solution to
the problem that Adam had pointed out because before it said I don't even remember but whatever
it said it wasn't that useful so it's's worth thinking about. And look, these are, I'm sure Aliza and Nicole, just like me, have spent like a lot of
time thinking about that language and you're not supposed to have that language immediately.
But you need to get to that kind of language for you if you want to be able to present yourself
as a solution to others. So it's just a really useful exercise to imagine your face or your work
or something of you on the front page of a website. And then what are the
three to eight words that are going to explain who the hell you are?
And to add to that, Chris, while Jason was talking, I looked at your Instagram.
while Jason was talking, I looked at your Instagram and your Instagram is an opportunity to show your work. And that is really important. So it's not just your website. It's like anywhere
you are. So right now, even if you're like, you know what, I don't want to be on Instagram anymore.
That's fine. Then let's delete that entire page because what's there right now is not serving your goal, right?
Your goal is to get more commissioned art. So at the end of the day, our personal brands need to
be in service of whatever it is we're trying to do. So right now that Instagram page is not,
and that's okay because these are easy things to do. The other thing that's like really simple is in your personal email signature.
Every single person you're interacting with, that email signature is such an opportunity
to brand yourself.
And how many people do we know you guys that are basically saying sent from my iPhone,
which is basically marketing for Apple or excuse my typos, which is basically saying
you don't take care in the way that you communicate. Instead, here's a link to my
latest project for animation for X brand, or check out my portfolio, or sign up for my newsletter,
or listen to the latest episode of my podcast. Whatever it is that you're trying to promote, you need to deliver
who you are on a silver platter. And on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on your website,
we shouldn't have to work to figure out what you do, right? You should be like,
here is what I do. This is my talent. These are the mediums that I do it in. These are the genres
that I work in. And this is how I can work with you.
And as Jason says, help solve whatever artistic problem you have. And also, Aliza, I pulled up
Chris's Twitter. I would love to try to workshop potentially. The bio there says I have big dreams
and a bigger appetite for cupcakes. Don't we all? Very cute, but not serving the goal. So we don't know you're
an artist. We don't know what you do. And listen, a lot of people on Twitter especially have like
these quirky sort of bios, like Netflix junkie, Swifty, whatever. But again, if there is digital
real estate where you can double down on who you are
and the value you add and what your gifts are, and you're not taking advantage of that, like
Nicole just pointed out, it's just a missed opportunity. It's not wrong. It's just a missed
opportunity. You know what I like to think of with the bios on social media, you know who gets to write a cutesy bio of themselves
that doesn't explain themselves?
The Rock.
Which is literally, it's so funny that you just said that.
That's literally the page that I just pulled up
as an example was The Rock.
It just says founder.
And he gets to do that
because everyone already knows what he does.
And that's a lot of celebrities.
You go to their social media
and their bio is not explaining who they are
because they don't need to do it.
But until you become as famous as The Rock,
you have to do it.
We're all doing it and you have to too.
What do you make of that?
Admittedly, I wrote that and I think,
I don't know, it's been a lot long time
since I've updated that.
As soon as Nicole said that she pulled it up, I was like, yeah, I know where this is going because I knew that I had that there
still. But you know what's great, Chris? Black Anista is very catchy and you have the handle
on all of these platforms. So now you just need to exploit it and build it out, right?
If you were to just start over with a blank if elon was like
i'm resetting all the bios everybody has to write a new bio that could happen that could happen
tomorrow it could happen it totally could happen and see i'm not even sure because my mind just
defaults to like well i draw a lot let's start with that and you know it doesn't have to even
be a sentence.
It could be words.
It could be digital artist.
It could be anime lover.
It could be whatever. But like, at least the words are going to help you progress in your career, right?
Search is really an important factor in social media, right?
How when people are looking for animation artist, those words better
be somewhere on your bio or on your page because they're also not going to come up. So I draw a lot,
but okay, let's take a step further. You draw a lot in what mediums? Mostly digital. I lean heavily
into character design and environmental studies, but I'd probably lean more into the character
design aspect because that's what I prefer. Complete the sentence. I am a digital character
designer covering anime, fashion. I am a multidisciplinary visual development designer
in animation. That's already way better.
And how do you buy your stuff?
Who buys it?
What do you give them? of animation and fan art for a manga that a book that didn't have animated series yet
and i just kept doing that and was tagging the series and eventually the studio that
decided to develop it that's how i got the connection. And I know that's a problem
because if one of the two studios that I had been working with in that capacity doesn't want to work
with me anymore, now I don't have a platform. So I know that I need to address that. And I just
kept spending more time working on things instead of working on the
branding aspect of it. But that's okay, Chris, because you have the work. You already have the
portfolio of work. So now it's a question of just putting it somewhere so that people can
find you. I think being findable and being able for someone to quickly see your talents
are really important. And by the way,
there's nothing wrong with getting business via word of mouth and through earning social capital
and having people know you're good at that thing, and then they're going to recommend you to
somebody else. But people should be able to know that without having to contact you or a reference.
And that is what an online portfolio slash social slash LinkedIn will do for
you. As people think about this for themselves, a place they might want to go scroll around
is LinkedIn. And the reason for that is because there's a movement on LinkedIn where people
realize that a lot of titles aren't all that useful and names of companies don't say anything.
Titles aren't all that useful and names of companies don't say anything.
So people stopped, a lot of them stopped using the place where you usually put your title and your company in your bio because that's what will show up in the feed.
And they instead just started describing what they do.
And there's a ton of them.
You just scroll on to LinkedIn, you'll find that all over the place.
I just went to LinkedIn as we were talking just to find a couple.
So here's a guy named Jeffrey Klein.
Instead of a title, what it says is, I help brands connect with their audiences to drive
business through visual storytelling. Great. Here's Gene Kang. It says, I empower people to
land and thrive in program management jobs. Great. Sarah DeBoucher. Sorry, Sarah. I don't
know how to pronounce your last name. I am on a mission to help 1 million people globally experience positive intercultural belonging and inclusivity when
relocating to a new country. All of those are so clear statements of exactly what this person does.
And it's way more useful than a job title in a company anyway. Because now, if I, you know,
somebody a long time ago told me
that the very first question anybody asks about anything
when they encounter it,
whether it's a product or a person,
the very first question they ask is,
is this for me or is this not for me?
And you want to make sure that if you are for someone,
and look, nobody's going to be for most
people, but you're going to be for some people, that you have enough information right up front
so that the people for whom you are for see you and see your work and say, ah, yes, this is for me.
For sure. And just to take LinkedIn a step further, the banner at the top of LinkedIn is a great place to showcase your work.
Again, you're a visual person, your product is visual. So like, we need to see what you do,
we can't just read the words. So having, you know, posting some of your favorite pieces that you've
done, and, you know, tagging, you know,
like putting those up as featured posts, like building out all of that, I think is really
important. And one of the things that I recommend in OnBrand is that you do all of this yourself.
Like it is very easy and you're digitally savvy to just like get a website on Squarespace or even
the graphics that you need, you know, pull up Canva and make some things to like fit the specs.
even the graphics that you need, you know, pull up Canva and make some things to like fit the specs. But because this is an ever breathing, evolving representation of yourself, it is going
to change a lot. So you really want to learn how to update yourself as opposed to relying on someone
else. So what do you have now? I wrote down, I'm a visual development artist working in animation
as like the framework so that someone
knows that like, if they see this, they at least know that I'm an animator.
What would happen if it was, I am a visual development artist specializing in, now go
a step further.
What are you specializing in?
In character design or animation.
In character design design in animation
and fashion.
Animated character design?
I don't know.
Fashionable animated character design.
So Aliza, can you give him
what you would write?
Something makes me want to say
I bring characters to life
through...
It could even be like I bring your favorite characters
to life through animation. even be like i bring your favorite characters to life through
animation yeah i can i think you know again every single bio has a different character count so like
maybe you can expand a little bit in certain areas maybe for the shorter ones you need to
be very succinct like you just said but i think you, making the list of like the key words that like need to be there
and then stringing those together. But I think there's definitely something to work with here,
for sure. How are you feeling now, Chris? A lot better than I did 40 minutes ago.
Amazing. Chris, can I, can I offer a little perspective here that maybe brings us to a close, which is
we started this conversation with you talking about needing a rebrand.
But what I'm hearing is that you never actually branded in the first place.
You put work out.
And to the degree that people followed that work, they had a sense of what it was that
you did.
that people followed that work, they had a sense of what it was that you did. But you never really went through the process of very clearly defining yourself, which in a way is pretty good. It means
that you're not going through rebrands at all. You're going through the brand. You're doing the
hard work now. And what came before was an exploration of exactly what it was that you did
and what your marketplace fit was. And, you know, let's be frank. You don't
have as many social media followers as The Rock, which is fine. Good. That means that it's easier
to pivot. It's hard for The Rock to pivot. If The Rock woke up tomorrow and he wanted to be known
as a ballerina, it would take a lot of work. But, you know, you start telling your story and then people will follow. And don't be so caught
up with whatever came before because frankly, you didn't tell that story as strongly as you
could have anyway, which means that you get to start again now. I love that summary. It's
perfectly said. And I think this is an exciting opportunity, Chris, because really we started this conversation with you thinking that you had to choose between two areas of interest.
And actually, that was never really the problem.
Yeah.
It's made it so much easier.
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