When you’re self-employed or lead a small business, taking care of your brand and taking care of yourself go hand in hand. And it’s not always easy.
For the job at Verdict Communications, the advertisement’s headline read ‘Brilliant Account Manager required’. My covering letter pretty much just had a single sentence about how my typical English modesty prevented me from calling myself brilliant but that I hoped my CV would be of interest.
It’s taken me 20 years to finally realise that what I always classify as modesty is actually something quite different, and not always constructive. It’s a kind of imposter syndrome that, at its worst, is suffocating.
It’s a common feeling that most of you will have experienced at least once, that sense of not being worthy of someone’s belief, of irrationally feeling out of your depth when you’re actually only up to your ankles. It’s a fear of stuffing up, even while doing something you’ve done perfectly well many times before.
It never affects my family relationships, and rarely shows itself to my friends. Until recently, it had only popped into my work life a handful of times. But, this year, it turned up at my door, let itself in and made itself at home for a while.
In agency days, I was surrounded by supportive colleagues, able to keep feelings of self-doubt at bay. I was driven to not let the team down or, more honestly, not look a fool. As a consultant or contractor, smart clients and motivated teams focus me, even if they don’t realise the positive impact they have.
When your business is built around you, based on your skills and expertise, you are your brand. The two are intrinsically linked, unless you’re being totally inauthentic or fabricating a different persona… good luck with that if you are.
I realised this year how underplaying my own abilities could be damaging to my business. If someone asks you if you can do something and you answer ‘yes, I think so’ or ‘I’ll give it a go’, it obviously gives them less confidence in you than if they hear an emphatic ‘yes’.
Many of us live with the fear of over-promising and under-delivering. But the risk in leading your customers to have low expectations is that they have a poor understanding of what you’re genuinely capable of.
I now understand that an outright ‘yes’ doesn’t seem arrogant and big-headed, which was always my fear. It doesn’t push you into the dreaded ‘fake it till you make it’ zone, worrying if you can deliver on what you promised. It shows that you’re more than ready to rise to the challenge.
It wasn’t until a client called me out that it really struck home. He literally told me off for selling myself short – “you’re better at this stuff than you give yourself credit”. During that thankfully honest conversation, I finally realised that I might send my business into a downward spiral if I wasn’t careful about how I articulate my own knowledge and experience. If I didn’t remove the filter of insecurity, I’d be limiting the kind of work I could be getting in the future.
I once heard someone described as FIGJAM – where the last five letters stood for ‘I’m great, just ask me’. This person was the epitome of blowing their own trumpet, allergic to humility whilst over-estimating their own ability. As a client, that’s not the attitude I’d want to see from a supplier of mine, so that level of overt self-belief isn’t something I aspire to personally. But, like everything, there’s a healthy middle ground that will be authentic for me and the right fit for the types of clients that I want my brand to aspire to.
Many people have felt that the 2021 lockdowns were harder than 2020 and for me, the enforced period of semi-isolation led to introspection. However, we increasingly also seem to be more open to sharing our mental health battles, even just a small blip like mine.
So, with the help of the wonderful Jean at Everest People, I’ve been focusing on taking care of my own brand through getting to understand my own brain. And life is already so much better for it.
Marketers are often neglectful of their own brand story, like the plumber with the leaky tap. But now I have insights into what makes me tick (or rather, what makes me stop ticking) I have a much clearer focus on what my own brand is all about.
I’ll be following my own advice, at last, and will nurture my own brand with more care and attention in 2022. Because…I can.
