You Are Not A Brand

Remember back before “personal brands” were a thing? When social media was a place to connect and express ourselves, rather than a place for curated “content”? When we were allowed to be more than one thing, have more than one interest, talk about more than one topic, and share all the various facets of our life in one place?

Ten years ago, Gary and I were giving workshops about branding because no one knew what it was yet. Just a few years later, the concept was so mainstream that many of us felt pressured to create a “personal brand” so people could get an immediate sense of who we were with one quick glance at our social media profile. 

Maintaining our image became less about our physical appearance in real life and more about our social media presence. Carefully curating our feeds to present a cohesive personal brand became such a thing that many people felt the need to create multiple social media accounts to keep things tidier. We have a professional profile, a personal profile, an account for our book recommendations, an account for writing, one for our travels, one for our pet… and on and on it goes. Each piece of our life, neatly contained its own little box, never overlapping with the other pieces or confusing people.

Now, let me clarify a couple things: 1) I have no problem with people having multiple accounts for their own purposes, privacy, or convenience. I’m talking about people who feel pressure to keep things tidy for other people. 2) I’m NOT anti-branding—it’s literally what I do for a living (I’m a brand strategist)—so I’m very aware of the importance/necessity of branding and the fact that it’s exceptionally useful for marketing and growing a business.

But we are not brands. We are humans—complex, multifaceted, ever-evolving, growing, changing, and overflowing with nuance, paradox, and contradictions. We have a multitude of interests, experiences, and perspectives that contribute to our understanding of ourselves, each other, and the world. 

This pressure to distill ourselves down into one easily digestible nugget, as if we were a tagline incarnate, robs us of our nuance. It feeds stereotypes and fuels tribalism by making us believe that people with similar personal “brands” must all agree on everything. It trains us to believe people are simple, one-dimensional, easy to understand, and therefore easy to judge. 

But it’s not that easy. We are all much more than can ever be communicated on social media, and (if we’re healthy) we don’t fit neatly into boxes or stereotypes.

I, for example, am what my bio says: a writer, speaker, and activist. But I’m also the mother of two neurodivergent children, a minimalist, a peacemaker, and a life-long depressive who only recently figured out how to manage my depression. I live in a rural area, we foster two horses, and my husband is a hunter but we fly a Black Lives Matter and a Pride flag from our farmhouse. I have a degree in Biblical Theology and I’m a former evangelical Christian who is happy to join my Muslim friends in prayer but I find that meditation gets me closer to the divine than any kind of prayer ever did. I’m deeply empathetic (but not at all sympathetic), I’m not competitive (except with myself), I’m not afraid of a fight (but only if it’s worth fighting), and I’m not nearly as confident as I come across. I’m a feminist and a former homeschooler (both as a student and a parent), an introverted extrovert, and a warm-weather person who lives in the snow. I am all of these things at once. Every day.

Humans don’t come in neat packages. We are beautiful mixed-up messes that make very little sense. I wish we were more willing to wade into the confusion together instead of oversimplifying ourselves to satisfy an algorithm or make strangers feel like they know us.

So show me your contradictions, your deep thoughts, your random funny memes, your latte art, and your cat. I want to see it all, take it in, and get to know all the various pieces of you and your life. Or, if you don’t want to share everything about your life because you’re a private person and don’t want to, more power to you!

Just… don’t filter yourself because you’re convinced the world can’t handle your nuance. 

Nuance is exactly what we need.