Welcome to Issue 44 of A Good Reputation, a newsletter about how to use storytelling to grow your brand. (Did someone send you? Subscribe here.)

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Hello Reader,

"It's taking me a minute to get used to it. Unlike us, you're all so friendly, open, and optimistic. It almost makes me a little suspicious—like, are you being authentic? But at the same time, everyone's also so anxious and stressed about...well, everything."

That's how my French friend, Aurelie, responded when I asked her how she's feeling about being back in the States after more than two years away.

Aurelie and I met after I picked her up at the neighborhood playground when our daughters were babies. I could instantly tell she was French—a little distant, unimpressed, and more put together than the American moms. Then, of course, there was the accent.

Aurelie originally moved to the U.S. to be with her American husband, Ryan. After about a decade in California with his family, they decided to try a year in France to be with her mother and ailing father. But while they were there, the pandemic hit and they got pregnant. Thanks to government-sponsored healthcare and all the rest, they decided to make the move permanent.

While Aurelie lamented how much the French complain, she said moving back to Europe has made her feel more alive.

Unlike here, life in France doesn't revolve around work. In general, she said, people are much more relaxed and communal. They mingle at cafes. They take their time at lunch. And when meeting someone new, what they do for a living is usually the last thing you learn about them.

With all the news around layoffs and uncertainty about the job market thanks to AI, she added, "It's no wonder you're all having a massive identity crisis."

She's right. As Americans, our sense of self-worth and value is inextricably tied to our job titles. Companies are where many of us find community. And, as people building businesses online, our reality isn't felt—it's experienced through a screen.

As a result of all of this (and more), I’ve noticed this fascinating shift in how people are showing up online.

While it might look like an existential identity crisis to some, to me it feels almost like resistance to the ways things have always been done.

Instead of tidy narratives with insightful takeaways, this new and interesting set is exploring the inner workings of their mind out loud as it's happening. They seem to have more questions than answers. They share their insecurities. They're okay with changing their mind.

While there’s still plenty of polish and performance across social channels, this growing chorus of distinct voices is getting louder, and they're forming their tribes by outwardly exploring their hidden selves, acknowledging the unknown, and openly accepting that they’re full of contradictions.

Going against all the traditional business and branding advice, they're prioritizing relatability over positioning and conversations over consistency.

It’s less like building in public and more like becoming in public.

I understand that this approach to brand building is more interesting, natural, fun, and personally satisfying.

But, I wonder, is it good for business?

A Good Question

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you might’ve seen my recent post where I posed this question.

As usual, the response was mixed. While the overwhelming majority of people within my circle enthusiastically embrace the shift, a handful think it's unhinged and toeing the line of oversharing. And few could make a compelling case for whether it’s actually good for business.

For some, the perceived risk of revealing too much isn’t worth it. They fear that coming off as unsure or too personal crosses a professional line that could result in a loss of credibility and turn off potential clients.

But for others, the question of whether or not it’s “good for business” is entirely beside the point.

​Vanessa Childers, who accurately felt like my post was aimed at her, is one such person showing up online as a way to explore her voice. Privately, she told me it’s a way to “ditch the mask and heal the people-pleaser in me.”

This idea of getting comfortable with making other people uncomfortable as a way to grow into a more authentic, self-actualized person is a theme I’ve seen from a number of others exploring in public, including Liz Delleheim, who said her fear of being misunderstood previously held her back from posting. And now, she's using her writing and publishing routine to unlearn that way of being in public.

Instead of editing herself, she wants to practice being herself in front of an online audience whose perception she can’t control.

While Vanessa said that she knows something will eventually come out of what feels like a rebellious and open-ended way of audience building, making money isn’t her top priority. And, perhaps as a result, no direct business has come of it. But that’s just fine with her.

So far, Liz said her activity hasn't resulted in direct leads because she doesn't have a business. But it has led to introductions, warm job leads, consulting work, and reconnections with old coworkers. But mostly, she’s treating it as a way to “build a signal online” and seeing if a throughline for her work will emerge in practice.

For others with a business, like Katie Skelton, showing up more freely and with less filter has also resulted in direct leads. She told me her “unleashed nature” has increased social engagement, grown her email subscriber list, and—her ultimate goal—led to more sales.

She gets both more business and feels more overall satisfaction when marketing.

​Neely Kimey, who runs a podcast called Intentional Oversharing, said something similar. As an AuDHD coach, she helps people break the cycle of burnout while frequently talking about how she’s managing it herself. She told me that publicly writing about her Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy and her trauma healing has—without a question—directly led to inbound clients.

“They often say they don't hear these things being talked about so openly online, and they end up choosing to work with me because it helps them feel understood or seen,” she said.

When I asked her if she ever felt like she crossed a line or needed to delete a post, she said no—she simply leans into the cringe and treats it as a learning opportunity. Part of her own brand and messaging guidelines includes oversharing as a value, so she’s practicing what she preaches.

In Neely’s case, what’s good for her sanity and personal development isn’t just good for business—it’s deeply personal, too.

Then there are people like Nick Power, who works for a company and isn’t trying to build a business through his content. Awareness is the business goal, and the popularity of his personal profile has led to a “double-digit” uptick in customers to his parent company, The Noun Project.

But more in line with Vanessa's goal, embracing thinking out loud has led to some serious self-discovery.

While most of Nick's content is a form of Dadaism—meaning absurdity as clarity and chaos as commentary (yes, I also had to look it up)—he sprinkles in some reflective pieces about being shy and how posting on the internet has given him a space to open up.

In a recent post, Nick said his approach to social is a way to humanize his experience and that of others, while also “confronting that shyness in myself publicly.”

All that’s to say: For people like Neely, Nick, and Katie, this way of openly airing inner thoughts and tough transformations is both good business and deeply personal. And for people like Vanessa and Liz, there's a confidence that the path to monetization will eventually show itself.

And simply judging from the engagement they all get from their respective audiences, this “becoming in public” approach is…well, becoming of them.

The reason, I think, revolves around what my French friend Aurelie pointed out: we're all suffering a collective existential identity crisis.

Everything we know is turned on its head. The future, while always uncertain, feels especially murky. And the threat of AI replacing all of us and the jobs that define us is making us question what the hell it even means to be human in the first place.

So, when someone comes in and helps us reflect our inner struggles back to us and explores our messy, complicated, unsure, unknowing nature out loud, we feel better. We feel validated and less crazy. We feel connected.

And, perhaps most importantly, lighter from not having to hold it all in.

While it's not sharing "value" in the form of frameworks or expertise, it might just be the kind of value we're all looking for and need.

A Good Shift

Whatever the goal or outcome, all these deeply human, messy ways people are showing up to tell their story reflect a broader cultural moment and a growing recognition that maybe human identity is not static, but fluid and performed.

As New York Times columnist and book critic Parul Sehgal pointed out in her recent piece about the evolution of biographies, each era has its own way of depicting humans and drawing conclusions about personality and identity. And ours is obsessed with the unpredictability of it all.

Citing a slew of recent biographies, Sehgal points out that we’ve shifted away from trying to create a tidy, definitive, finished portrait of a person and instead embraced a more open, complex, and unfinished notion of who someone is—one that’s full of nuance and contradictions.

This new trend is a big departure from the older tradition of the genre, which was about presenting a subject’s public achievements and polished legacy.

In other words, we seem to have accepted that human beings can’t be defined by simple, black-and-white characteristics, like shy or curious or creative. And none of our lives have a unified, heroic narrative.

Embracing that—and navigating the uncertainty of it all publicly—is apparently as compelling in biographies of famous people as it is for our peers building brands—even if it makes your positioning unclear.

We’re even catching glimpses of this shift in celebrity culture. For instance, the Kardashians, once the queens of curation, are now publicly walking back years of airbrushed fantasy.

Khloé Kardashian recently responded to plastic surgery speculation by not only confirming but proudly detailing a long list of procedures. Kris and Kylie followed suit, offering up specifics that were once taboo. What was once a tightly held secret is now a form of content.

Is this strategic transparency? Maybe. But it still signals a shift: Even the most branded among us are being rewarded not for consistency of image, but for openness about change.

I understand that this could be a hard pill for us in the business world to swallow. Consistency, after all, is what we’ve been told sells. And our messy, questioning, incomplete selves are hardly consistent.

According to all the marketing rules, the things that matter for brand building beyond consistency include knowing yourself and having a crystal clear understanding of your value, as well as deeply understanding your audience. Your positioning should be clear. Your values outlined on your website.

But this new way of showing up doesn’t seem to pay credence to any of that.

Exploring yourself is inherently inconsistent. And people like Vanessa or Liz, who are unclear on who they want to reach, are instead allowing the right-fit audience to discover them.

Content, after all, is a long game when it comes to brand building. So is building a business. And when you're in it for the long game, you should expect things to change along the way.

Taking us along for the ride has always been a winning strategy. But now it's just a little more personal.

A Good Takeaway

It seems like we’re finally waking up to the fact that work can’t fill all the holes our society and culture have created, so we're in desperate need to make our work mean more.

What I like most about this newish approach is that when we frame our brand as a fixed identity, we cut ourselves off from the evolution that makes us interesting, relevant, and human. But when we frame it as a journey in progress, we give ourselves and our audience permission to grow.

Like any approach you choose to build your brand, this one doesn’t have to be for you. It also doesn't have to be all the time. We have to remember that we're building narratives here, and becoming known for something happens one little story and interaction at a time.

Taking a little risk here and there in the way you show up might not be that risky at all.

If the more traditional way isn't working for you anyway, maybe showing up with your own voice and story—even if it’s messy or unfinished or unhinged—and discovering who your audience is rather than targeting a certain set might be just as effective because people will always be endlessly fascinated by other people.

Learning about other people’s lives and inner workings—even or maybe especially when they’re still sorting it out themselves—can help us make sense of our own and allow us to feel less alone.

Because of that, I think we’ll only continue to see more people sharing this messy middle across all kinds of playing fields, with all sorts of goals.

In any case, it seems like the window to experiment is now.

If you haven't done so, what would it look like to outwardly explore your hidden self? What are the shadow parts of your personality that feel scary to admit to yourself, and what would happen if you admitted it to a bunch of strangers?

What would it look like to openly acknowledge your gaps? Or document the changes you’re noticing in yourself over time?

I know I’d be curious to follow along. And maybe you’ll even convince me or someone else to buy something you're selling.

A Few Good Resources

1. ​A contrarian take. Justin believes personal brands aren't personal at all—they're performative. And, when done well, it's a craft.
2. I love how my friend Oren put it about not keeping the messy internal stuff private: "Professionalism is not sounding regulated while quietly repressing your emotions."
3. Jasmine Bina said this era of "tension branding" is a huge opportunity for brands.
4. Since we're on the topic of sharing, people are having big feelings about Gen Z overdoing it in the office.
5. Heather said our conversation felt like going to "storytelling church." I'll take it.

*One final note: I'm moving over to Substack. I'll let you know how it goes :)

Hope you have a good one,
Renee