When you're a solopreneur, the line between 'me the human' and 'me the business' gets blurry fast.

We've all heard people say things like:

"you are the brand" or

"people buy from people."

That advice is meant to be liberating, but honestly it usually ends up feeling suffocating.

Cause instead of feeling free to just be ourselves, we end up swinging like a pendulum between two different fears:

1. The fear of looking unprofessional

You want to be authentic, but the question becomes how authentic is too authentic for a business, especially if you come from a corporate background. That fear makes us police ourselves alot (and sometimes we end up also policing others).

2. The fear of being boring

On the flip side, you worry that if you actually show up as yourself, if you talk about your life and the random stuff going on in your head, nobody's going to care. And every time you post something you actually care about and get crickets, your brain goes, "See? I told you so.". (Spoiler: Your brain is lying.)

So let's talk about some of the things that make this line so hard to navigate.

The Online Space Oversimplified Authenticity A Bit Too Much

Authenticity has been "in" for years now. Every single January, the industry predicts that the big trend of the year is going to be authenticity, but nobody actually explains what that looks like in practice.

So we often end up asking ourselves, are we doing this right, are we being authentic enough?

To make it worse, the online space pushes this narrative that if you're truly authentic, people will magically gravitate toward you and buy your stuff. In reality, it's a lot more complicated than that.

(Authenticity doesn't always equal sales. Usually the people who are killing it are authentic AND happen to be really good at selling, or they're authentic and have a highly strategic sales page doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes. But that's a soapbox for another day.)

At the end of the day, authenticity gets people to look at you, but the strategy you've tweaked and put in place is what gets them to pay you.

Strategy is the unsexy stuff you don’t see, a solid offer that's been tweaked half to death, a smooth customer journey, and copy that actually does its job.

So because the internet oversimplifies authenticity, we overthink it to death. We start believing the reason our business isn't growing is simply that we're not authentic enough. But don't let anyone gaslight you into thinking that. Authenticity is deeply personal, and it's definitely not a template you can copy from someone else.

Let's Talk About Being "Cringey" (And What It Can Teach Us About Ourselves)

The line between being yourself and being a brand is exactly where you decide it is. And where the line sits for you might not be anywhere near where it sits for somebody else.

We’ve all scrolled through social media and came across a post that made us cringe. But here's a little reframe for when this happens:

The cringe we feel watching other people's content actually says more about our own self-imposed limitations and fears than it does about them. And I'm not talking about posts where someone is clearly mentally unwell or something crazy like that, just something normal that is wayyyyy outside of our comfort zones.

When someone does something that feels cringey to you, they just don't carry the same fear around that specific thing. So instead if judging them, get curious. What is that reaction telling you about yourself?

You don't need to go do the cringey thing yourself by the way. It's just a different way of thinking about it. And this should also help you understand that no matter what you do, your content will feel cringey to someone else even if that's not your intention.

So What If Being Authentic Just Feels Like You're Speaking Into a Void?

The people you admire most online all have one thing in common: they were initially speaking into a void just like you. They talked about unpopular things, or things that didn't fit the current industry standard. And that's exactly why we gravitate toward them now. They feel like a breath of fresh air in a space where everyone sounds the same, with AI is only making that worse.

These people feel different because they're talking about something different.

They're not riding the wave of whatever trend the industry is obsessed with that week, they're talking about their own thing. Something they usually feel passionate about and care about.

So if you're constantly trying to figure out what's working for everyone else in your industry just so you can replicate it, that might actually be what's holding you back.

Cause algorithms are trained to reward you for using the exact same trending audio and the same hooks as everyone else. Stepping outside of that might mean you see a drop in numbers for a while, while the audience that's actually aligned with you finds their way to you

Obviously Toxic Positivity Sucks (And You Don't Need To Do That)

You don't have to be endlessly positive just because you run a business. You're allowed to have a bad day, and you're allowed to talk about it. If something in your business is hard, if the industry feels exhausting, if a situation rattled you, you can talk about it.

The goal isn't to hide the bad days. Cause venting online can help other people feel less alone in an industry that loves to act like everything is fine all the time.

I need that from the people I follow, and I'd bet you do too. So you shouldn't feel like you have to mute yourself or pretending everything's rainbows.

You are allowed to have opinions. You are allowed to disagree with how things are done in this industry.

Authenticity Is Not a Template

Here's the thing I want you to walk away with today. This is your business. You built it, and you get to do whatever the hell you want with it. I might not even agree with what you do with it but if it's not harming people it's none of my business. It only becomes my business and other people's businesses when people are being harmed.

So you do not owe the internet full access to your personal life just to prove that you're authentic.

If your version of being yourself, of being human, is talking passionately about your craft, or sharing a weird pop culture hyperfixation (looking directly at the Swifties here), or keeping your personal life completely behind the scenes, that is still authentic. All of it counts.

You get to set the boundaries. You choose what gets shared. You get to decide exactly where your line is.

The real question is whether you're going to trust yourself enough to actually do that. A lot of people struggle to trust themselves when it comes to choosing where their own line sits, and that's part of why this whole thing feels so difficult. So give yourself the permission to figure it out in real time. And if you're an introvert who needs a bit of help with this, I created my personal branding service for you. Check it out here

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