Who Am I?

The first step for building your brand

Hi Cringers,

I started Cringe Letter to share my process of growing my brand. I advertised it as, “Follow my cringe journey,” and then got distracted by all the colors (Red, Orange, Yellow, etc.). 

To people who have been enjoying the Color Series, you’re welcome. To people who haven’t, I’m sorry.

If you're interested in reading more on color history, I highly recommend The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair. I got several insights for the series from this book. 

I may jump back into the Color Series later on, but for now, I’m switching gears to talk about personal branding from more of a self-development perspective.

If you’re thinking I’m all over the place, you’re not wrong. My process has been messy and my branding unclear because, unlike a company, I don’t have a set offer yet.

I’m embarrassed to admit this. I’m well aware of everything I should be doing (have a clear service, CTA, way to book a call, menu, etc.) but the truth is I’m still sorting out a lot internally. It’s hard to market yourself while trying to understand yourself.

Some people have a mid-life crisis and buy a convertible. Others start a Substack on personal branding and try to become LinkedIn influencers. To each their own, eh?

While building your platform can bring you freedom, it can also be paralyzing. How do you neatly package your experience, skills, and personality in a marketable way?

It’s not easy, especially if you’re like me and curious about a lot of things.

I don’t like to be one way or in one place doing one thing for long. I want to be everything everywhere all at once. How do you market that?

I confuse myself sometimes. The truth is, I don’t know where I see myself in five years because I barely know where I see myself next month. 

I think a lot of my confusion comes from being neurodivergent. Some say neurodivergence is like having a different operating system. Instead of thinking in straight lines and linear stories, I think in webs, every idea linking to another until it’s five hours later and I’m fifty tabs deep into exploring deep sea slugs.

Sea Sheep

I can never predict what I'm going to be interested in from one day to the next. My train of thought can sometimes feel like hopping across twenty different tracks, jumping from one train to the next, each one speeding in different directions. 

The point of all of this is that you need to really know yourself before you market yourself. That might be obvious to most people, but it wasn't for me.

I’ve realized that this whole time I’ve been marketing a version of me I thought I should be or was expected to be, not really the version that is most me. If that makes any sense…

Because the version that is most me is messy and unpredictable and hates to be branded one way or another. Yet here I am writing a blog on personal branding...figures. 

You have to be really honest with yourself about who you are, what kind of life you want, and how you want to communicate that to the world.

That's step 1 of personal branding. That’s the big lesson I’ve learned recently.

I’ll get more into it in the coming months, but I’ve realized that neurodivergence is a big part of who I am and that I would be leaving a big part of myself out if I didn’t talk about it more publicly.

This discovery has dramatically changed how I think about myself and how I operate in the world.

I’m excited to bring more attention to neurodivergence as I think it’s still widely misunderstood, especially in women.

In the next Cringe Letter, I’ll get more into what neurodivergence is, my experience with it, and how neurodivergent terms like “masking” can help us understand identity and public persona in new ways.

Until next time, Cringers!