[62/260] The weirdness of bringing Self back

I mean, in a branding sense.

Happy Sunday gorgeous one,

As you already know, I’m in the beautiful leadup to parenthood, and have made some decisions about what’s going on in the business as a result.

The one that took me by surprise, however, was to take the We out of Brutal Pixie.

If you’ve never run a business before, it might seem odd to you that small and micro businesses act, think, and talk as if they’re bigger than they are. This is why you get solopreneurs who say ‘we’ (even though there is no ‘we’). In many industries it’s literally the only way to onboard large corporates as clients.

The idea that there is more than one person involved in a venture is comforting, because it mitigates risk.

What kind of risk? Well, you know, illness, you getting hit by a bus, on the one hand. And also timing conflicts with scheduling and so on, on the other.

I’m no exception to this, although the caveat is that for much of the past seven or so years I have had other people involved. At one point I had employees; at other points a bunch of contractors. Hell, even a virtual assistant counts as a ‘we’, right?

But not any more.

In yet another cycle of rewriting the narrative of the business, I’ve started with the niche, and the positioning.

Thus, the observant will have noticed that my tagline on LinkedIn changed this week, and also my email signature.

No longer the Queen of the Pixies (as fun as that title is), I’ve become The Brutal Pixie.

And you know what? It’s confronting as hell.

It’s fun to imagine that you’re at the helm of something much bigger than yourself.

More to the point, however, I had originally stuck like glue to the branding because I always had a desire to sell the business. You know, grow it to a point and then sell it off. The branding, I figured, could just go as part of the organisation’s assets, and it would leave me free to do other things, unencumbered by everyone’s prior ideas about what it is that I do.

Except for one thing.

Everyone calls me Pixie.

One thing I never counted on is for the brand to become synonymous with Yours Pixieness, to the point where people forget my name and call me Pixie instead.

So it is, that in putting some things in place to create a shift in such a way as to reduce the impact, stress, and requirements on me, I’ve decided to blend the two together.

The work has only just started.

There is a whole lot of world building to do on the back-end of this between now and September, which will impact the public-facing nature of the brand and the business.

Baby steps.

All puns intended. ;)

An observation I’ve made this week is that at least one of my clients is naturally orienting to do the same thing. She had been a consultant, and then created a brand. But at the same number of years into her business (7), she’s bringing herself back into the story.

There’s a kind of cognitive dissonance in businesses, which I believe is the reason why personal branding is so important.

That is:

You can have a brand, and a presence. But if the two aren’t a perfect match, or you somehow create a separation, then people will never truly buy into what you offer.

This, darling reader, is why it’s so important to be all-in on anything that you’re selling, even if you’re an employee. Not believing in the product is the greatest sales sin you can ever make. So when the product is effectively yourself or a set of skills that you have, it takes a whole lot of faith, courage, and trust to make it work.

In my case, shifting the narrative feels really good.

It’s long overdue.

Time will tell how effective it is.

~ Leticia