Welcome to Issue 46 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about how to become a better storyteller and grow your brand. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.)

Hello Reader,

August always feels like the Sunday of months for my partner, Tyler, an art teacher approaching his 20th year at the same school, who has remained loyal only because he gets the luxury of taking the entire summer off.

Until recently, I didn’t fully understand this sentiment.

How could someone who just got nearly two months of blissful, kid- and email-free freedom be so whiny and entitled about returning to work?

But today, officially back at my desk, I finally get it.

This year, the stars aligned for me to take the whole summer off, too. And for the first time since college, I experienced the regenerative bliss of stepping away from cognitive overload and constant stimulation to have embodied experiences in the real world. I'm talking feet in the sand, wind in my hair, long mornings without a single Slack ping kind of break.

It was glorious and refreshing in every way.

For the first time, I understand how hard that readjustment to work can be. But I also have a hundred new experiences, conversations, and insights I can bring to my work.

What I have is a fresh perspective.

A Good Trend

Lately, I’ve noticed a trend on LinkedIn of people asking their network who’s worth following. It’s a call to purge their feeds of bot-written sludge, doomsdayers, and generic content.

If you’ve ever been tagged in one of those posts, you know the rush. There's a confidence boost and sweet dopamine hit you get from being not only noticed, but publicly recognized for your work.

One post in particular stood out from a connection on a mission to “refresh” her feed.

She wasn’t just looking for people who post regularly. She wanted people who consistently stop the scroll, add nuance, and shed new light on tired conversations. And she gave these people the perfect name:

Perspective shifters.

A perspective shifter, as I see it, isn’t just someone with a hot take. It’s someone who says something that makes you pause and reconsider the way you’ve been seeing the world.

This person (or brand) expands your worldview with a reframe on a trend, a nuanced take on a complicated topic, or a vision of the future you hadn’t considered. They bend our brains and stretch our sense of what’s possible.

Think less thought leader, more thought provoker.

What’s interesting about these perspective shifters is that we especially trust the ones who’ve lived the other side of their argument—people who were immersed in one way of thinking and then completely reoriented.

Take Jen Hatmaker, for example. Once a superstar in evangelical circles and beloved by conservative moms, she blew up her life, left the church, and now speaks openly from the other side of faith and politics.

Whether you agree with her or not, her lived experience on “the other side” gives more weight to her new position.

Or Jillian Michaels, the celebrity trainer who once identified as hyper-liberal and now emerges as a compelling voice in the MAHA movement.

We love these stories because they hold two key storytelling ingredients: tension and transformation.

Transformation is what makes a story a story. And tension is what grabs our attention and propels the story forward. (You can read more about that here.)

But maybe the bigger reason we love these perspectives is because they remind us that change is possible—that we, too, can outgrow old beliefs, or at least interrogate them more deeply.

They give us permission to question the water we’re swimming in and to explore identities that might contradict each other.

And there’s one more reason: when someone shares something smart, different, or surprising, we take that information, internalize it, and make it our own. We get to be the ones with a fresh perspective.

And, as individuals who want to feel both belonging to a group—but also find status and stand out within that group—that hits the sweet spot.

A Good Framework

So, how do you become a thought-provoker instead of just another tired thought leader? Two things:

1. Share stories from your own shifts in perspective along with the insights they uncovered.
2. Become the person people look to for new ideas.

Step one in this process is diversifying your inputs.

If you’re relying on the same sources as everyone else, you’ll end up with identical outputs.

So, don’t just read industry blogs. Read the news. Read outside your lane. Step away from your laptop and pay attention to the world. Talk to strangers in the grocery line. Don’t just order on the app—interact with the human. Pay attention to what others overlook.

When you start noticing, your entire life becomes perspective-expanding content.

But don’t just consume—give yourself time to process. Read that article and then pause before jumping to the next one. Letting stuff marinate—and talking it out with other people—is how your brain makes new connections.

(It's worth noting that without that step, you’ll be up at 2 a.m. thinking of LinkedIn posts, like I used to, and wondering why you feel so foggy by lunch.)

Piggybacking off of my last point, step two is collaborating with your audience.

I recently did this on LinkedIn with a question about a branding client. Not only did the post spark significant engagement, it helped me see the problem from angles I hadn’t considered. It was like free market research that also gave my audience a small window into what I'm working on.

The formula is simple: share your perspective, invite dialogue.

Lastly, take a stance, but leave room for exploration.

You can’t be a perspective shifter if you’re not willing to shift yourself.

A strong point of view is necessary for building a brand reputation online, but it doesn’t have to be an unbending manifesto. Think of it as a thesis. And through dialogue and new inputs, your thesis expands.

A Good Takeaway

I don't have to tell you that the internet is flooded with repetitive, recycled takes. And if you're tired of seeing that stuff from others, it's likely that people are tired of seeing it from you.

Perspective shifters stand out because they break expectations and earn our attention by giving us something valuable: A fresh way of seeing things.

None of us needs to be louder. We just need to be sharper in our thinking in a way that helps others do the same.

Here are some questions I ask my clients to help draw out fresh perspectives that you can use as content prompts this week:

• What’s the tension I notice between how things are and how they should be?
• Where do I see two truths coexisting that most people frame as opposites?
• What feels both uncomfortable and important to say out loud?
• Where in my own story did I have to let go of certainty to make progress?
• What’s the “common wisdom” I find myself quietly disagreeing with?
• What assumptions in my industry do people rarely question—but maybe should?
• What do I believe now that I didn’t believe five years ago, and why?

Lord knows the world doesn’t need more content. It needs more perspective shifters like you and me.

And after a full, glorious summer away, I can tell you this: A fresh perspective isn’t just good for understanding your partner and audience building. It can be the reset that makes your work feel alive again.

A Few Good Resources

1. Seats are quickly filling up for this 1-day bootcamp I'm co-hosting on Sept. 12th with community genius April MacLean and newsletter growth expert Tyler Cook. We're going deep on the topic of developing a perspective and sharing the exact frameworks we've all used to strategically and sustainably build an audience that results in community.
2. ​This is a great article and framework on how to strategically diversify your inputs so that you can develop a unique perspective.
3. A new, optimistic perspective can give us hope. And did you know that optimists make more money?

Hope you have a good one,
Renee