Ever been annoyed at being told to niche down? Irritated by the advice that if you want to be successful quickly, you have to be “specific” and focus on only one thing? If you’re a multi-passionate business owner, determined to rebel against being put in a box… this episode is for you.
In this episode, I’m sharing some in-the-moment reflections and light bulb moments about why I’ve been feeling so restricted in my own business lately and how the idea of becoming known for “just” Brand Messaging has been freaking me out… even though I know it’s making things harder.
Listen to this if:
- You’re multipassionate and have been struggling to stick to one thing
- The idea of being know for “one thing” feels restrictive
- You are struggling to commit to one message
- You want to add new things to your business
…and you’re not scared of a little tough love! 😉
Prefer to read? Here’s the transcript:
What’s up my friends. So I’m gonna be completely real with you and tell you that I don’t know how this episode is gonna go. I don’t know where we’re going to end up, I don’t know what points I’m necessarily going to be making.
However, recently, I have had a bit of a lightbulb moment around a certain restriction that I’ve been feeling in my business. And I really wanted to just come and share it with you while it’s still fresh in my head. Because I think often, you know, we can go and neatly tie up these things and put a nice little bow on it afterwards, which is great and make it really clear for people. But I do think there’s certain insights that can only come in the moment. And I think actually the messiness of it is important to acknowledge because when we experience certain things and only present them when they’re all kind of nicely tied up, we actually do a disservice to the people that we’re sharing that story with, in that we make it sound so simple, we make it sound so straightforward, when honestly, often, the process of transformation, the process of realisation, and having these lightbulb moments is messy as hell. So just a pre warning, if I ramble a bit, you’re just gonna have to stick with me. And I do recommend that you do stick with me, because what I’ve got to say, I think is going to be really, really helpful and really powerful for a lot of people, especially if you’ve been feeling restricted too, in what you do in your business.
So let’s dive into it. So I would say for over a year now, I’ve been feeling very restricted by the idea that I will become known for brand messaging, I have had a lot of inner turmoil and a lot of resistance to that. Because just brand messaging, it’s felt small for me, and I’m very much a person who has multiple interests. I really see myself as a storyteller and as a creative and by limiting myself to the topic and the services of brand messaging, it felt like I was doing myself a disservice. This is something I actually see play out for a lot of my clients and people I speak to my audience as well. Often when we talk about their messaging, there is a lot of resistance to getting super specific about what they do and who they serve. And it might come from a people pleasing perspective of you know, oh, but I want to serve everybody, or it might come from a fear perspective of ooh but if I get too specific, am I going to turn other people away? And these are both valid points. But I actually think there is a deeper issue that a lot of us probably have, but aren’t aware of. And it’s something that I’ve only become aware of in myself in the past week or so. It came about because I was speaking to my husband. He was off from work last week so he was around a lot more and kind of got to witness my turmoil a little bit. And he was asking me like, “Becky, why are you confused? Like what’s going on?” And I’d say things like, “Oh, I just don’t know what I do.” Like, I do know what I do. But I just it feels confusing to me, like and I know on my website is probably super clear. And I know probably even in my content, it’s pretty clear as well. But to me inside, I just feel really confused by what I’m actually trying to do here.
Yes, I know, with brand messaging, it’s something that I’ve offered since 2020. So it’s something I do have a reputation for already. I also am fascinated by storytelling, I want to help people with content creation as well. But I don’t want to go into marketing, because that just doesn’t feel like the right fit somehow. And I mean, I did also acknowledge to him, and I want to acknowledge to you guys too, as well. I don’t always feel like that, you know, I might say, Oh, I’ve been experiencing this inner turmoil for over a year now. But it’s not been constant. It’s mainly just been at certain points, where maybe sales get a little bit slower for me, or I step away from Instagram for a bit and start to feel a bit isolated from my community. I tend to turn inwards and go, Becky, what are you doing? What are you trying to do? Just brand messaging, really, that’s what you’re limiting yourself to but these negative thoughts and this particular thought pattern around just brand messaging being known for just this one thing has been a recurring thought pattern for a while. But what happened in this last week through that conversation with my husband where he did lovingly challenge me and was like, “why are you trying to overcomplicate it?” and I kind of ran a couple of my new ideas for how I could tell people what I do. And he was like, “Yeah, okay, I don’t actually know what that means, though.” And that’s usually what I do for my clients. So it was really great to have somebody that was willing to lovingly challenge me on it as well.
But it was also in combination with an idea which I heard recently, I can’t remember where. And I think I’ve kind of heard it in passing, and then it slipped into my subconscious and then re-emerged this week. And the idea is this, the thing that makes you prosperous, the thing that makes you money does not have to be the same thing that is your passion. Your passion, and your prosperity can be separate. And I know this probably doesn’t sound like a particularly novel idea. But I think a lot of us that started our business, because we were passionate about the idea of what we do. We were passionate about the change that we could create, there tends to be a pretty heavy overlap between these things. But what I’ve realised in over four years of business now is that our passions will probably change, the things that excite us, that interest us that pique our curiosity, they will continue to develop. And that’s okay. I believe that is a completely human thing.
But what I found myself doing because of this blurred line between my business and the thing that I’m passionate about, on my emails, on my Instagram, on this podcast, I wanted to talk to you about all of these different ideas, but the expert in me around messaging knew that to start to bring in more topics and more ideas would actually be to the detriment of clarity. And although I am a self proclaimed master of the Segway – I pretty much can always link anything back to brand messaging or storytelling – it was really this inner conflict in me that I wanted to talk about so much more that I knew ultimately ended up in me just not talking about anything, because I was confused about, okay, is this going to be confusing for my audience? Is this on message for me? And everything just tied back to this idea that I felt really restricted by simply talking about one thing, about brand messaging. But this week with the collision of thoughts of being challenged by my husband, and also the idea that my passion and my prosperity get to be separate, it really shone a light on the fact that I have been – a little bit vulnerable for me to share here – but I have been confused and unclear about where my business ends and me, Becky, begins. And my business and my brand, very much was a huge part of my identity. And the main way that I honestly I express myself, but because of this because I use my business in this way, the reason that it then started to feel restrictive, is because I am so much bigger than a neatly tied up clarified message. I am a complex and multifaceted human that is going through a consistent series of evolutions. And yet the logical side of me knows that to really build a thriving successful business, it needs to be clear what that business is about and who it serves and what it helps people with. There’s been a real conflict between unfiltered unselfconscious expression versus tactical strategic sharing with the purpose of helping other people. And from conversations that I’ve had with friends, I think this line and this boundary between who we are as a complex human, and what our business is, which should be a simple, understandable service, even if it’s a product, it’s a thing that solves problems for others. It’s this blurred boundary, which I believe is the source of probably a lot of people’s confusion, and a lot of people’s resistance to getting more specific and to actually making their business life easier for themselves.
Now, if you’re into human design, and even if you’re not, I’m going to explain what I’m about to say, I am a projector and one of the things about a projector is that we are here to be recognised by others. And I just know within myself as well, I do crave recognition. It’s not something that I’m necessarily proud of, but it’s something that I accept about myself. I want to be recognised. I want my skills, my expertise, my ability to contribute and my value to be recognised by others. It’s really rewarding for me when that happens, it’s probably why I like speaking on stage so much and yes, that might sound a bit egotistical or narcissistic but it is what it is right. That’s who I am. I am accepting this. But because I was not clear about the boundary between my business and between Becky, only being recognised for the singular thing that I do brand messaging felt limiting. It felt like, but hold on, I’m so much more than just brand messaging, I’m so much more than just my business! But I’ve had no other output or even had that clarity in my head of separation. And so subconsciously, I know probably what I’ve been trained to do is used my business as a vehicle to be recognised with a full, complex human that I am. And this has been to the detriment of clarity, this has been to the detriment of my own focus, because I know in my heart that if I stick to brand messaging, if I really go for it (which by the way, it’s a topic, I flippin love and anytime I’m one to one in client work or writing about it, I get so much joy and fulfilment out of it) if I let my business be this absolute incredible powerhouse of service around clarifying messaging for people, I know I can have an incredible impact in the world, because people will know who I am, what I do, and how I can help them, there’ll be no confusion there.
But to do that, I know what I actually have to do is separate the rest of me from my business, I have to stop expecting my business and my brand to fulfil every single human need that I have. And the thing is, this requires effort, right? It requires me finding other outlets. But already since I’ve actually had this realisation that I do need to create separation between me as a human and me as a business owner, I’ve already felt a weight lifted off my shoulders, I’ve already felt a renewed sense of purpose towards what my business is, and what my business isn’t, between what my content is there to do for other people. And not just what my content is there to do for me. To try and wrap this up neatly before you in a bow and make a bit of a more solid point is that if you’ve been feeling restricted by the idea of getting specific about what you do, if you’ve been feeling restricted by really clarifying your message and owning the one thing that you want to be known for, because we all know if you do get specific, if you do get clear, if you do really nail one thing, even if you have multiple different offers, which solve this one thing or deliver this one thing, or are expressions of this one thing, we both know your life would be a lot simpler, the decisions you make would be a lot easier because you have a clear end goal, you have a clear thing that you’re trying to become known for. Instead of feeling like well, I want to be known for this. And this, and this. If you’ve been feeling resistance around that, maybe just have a little think about what needs are you trying to have met by your business? If you’re a creative are you hoping that your business will solve all of your creative needs? If like me, you recognise in yourself that you do have a desire for your value to be recognised by others, you do want to be seen as an expert, you do want to be seen as somebody who has got their shit together essentially, is that actually hindering you? And I guess the main question for you to really consider is, do you know where your business ends? And where you begin? Are you clear on the purpose that your business is serving for you? And if it is there to provide you with wealth? If it is there to create prosperity for you, then are you actually overcomplicating that and hindering that by also trying to let it be an outlet for your passion as well?
I don’t know if it’s the same for you. But I actually do recognise that I have an entrepreneurial brain, I tend to always look at things and think how could I monetize this? For example, my own exploration with human design and more recently into gene keys. My default thinking pattern is to go “oh my God, this could be so powerful combined with messaging, should I now go learn to be a gene key reader should I go and train about how to do human design readings for people and then infuse it with messaging?” Same with storytelling, in all honesty, I get so excited about what I’m passionate about that I want to suddenly deliver it as a service to people because it’s been life changing for me. So I’m like, Ah, this could be life changing for my clients too! But how this actually ends up playing out nine times out of 10 is flip flopping between different services, different offers, different messaging, and this lack of consistency, even if it doesn’t actually get projected out, there’s lack of consistency in understanding of what my business is and the purpose is here to serve, essentially has me feeling like I’m stopping and starting all of the goddamn time and that is tiring.
So where I’m at right now, the result of this lightbulb moment, if you like, is that I have really been able to understand cool, what is my business here to do? It’s here to help people simplify their message and essentially use storytelling to share it. That’s it. It’s that simple. And to you on the outside, you might be listening to this and be like, Becky, that’s what you’ve always spoken about. But to me, I can tell you hand on heart, I’ve had so much internal conflict around it. And the effect of said internal conflict is that I haven’t been as consistent as I could be. I haven’t gone all in. I’ve held myself back, always just with that question mark of like, okay, but is this really what I want to do? And the answer is, yes, it is what I want to do. I flippin love brand messaging. It sounds geeky as hell I know, but I love helping you simplify what you want to be known for. Because I know the power of it. I’ve seen it for myself, I’ve seen it for others. And often getting specific, getting clear is an unleashing of so much energy and potential within you, because you can be focused. So once again, I am back on the old website. And again, most of my website messaging is still on point.
For the longest time I’ve had this idea of essentially doing a bit of a brand message self study slash guided mentorship hybrid programme thing, but I’ve not done it yet. Because I think I’ve always felt that resistance of like, really, brand messaging? But now that I’ve managed to separate the part of myself that wasn’t satisfied with just brand messaging and realise that actually, that is a completely separate part of me, the bit of me that loves it is like hell yes, now is the time to get that hybrid programme made, created and out there into the world because I know it is going to be absolutely incredible. And that’s what I’m going to leave it today. If you want to of course be in the loop about when that is officially getting launched and all that fun stuff. And of course, make sure you are on my email list. As that is the first place I will be dropping it. But as I’ve said a few times already, the question I want you to ponder is “Do you know where your business ends and you begin?” and if you are feeling restricted in really niching down to just one thing is that because you have got too much expectation around what your business is there to do for you? Go get creative, my friends, take messy action. And of course, don’t forget to have fun with it. See you next time.