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I am so grateful we live in a time where building a personal brand is a doable thing in the online space. That literally by leveraging your views, personality, and interests, you can create a business. I mean it’s not THAT simple, but generally speaking, it’s perhaps more doable than any time before.

We’ve briefly talked about the challenges of boundaries – what to share and what not to share when building an aligned personal brand. But today I want to give you permission to EDIT that, and many other things as you grow your brand.

Editing your personal brand

I was in the DM’s with two different FitsPRO’s from my FitsPRO Foundation course and both were talking about how they feel like they’re “done” talking about a certain subject. Maybe even a subject they widely built their current business on. We know that messaging matters – it’s something that I teach pretty aggressively. But we have to come back to the nuances, transitions and flow of building businesses ran by evolving humans.

Now, I want to make something very clear. This does not mean that its a wise move to re-evaluate your messaging, what you talk about and what you don’t talk about every week. That, in fact, will NOT allow you to build a successful, recognizable or profitable brand. I do think there is a balance between have a brand that is consistent and trustworthy, but allowing ROOM – a percentage that is allowed to change and evolve if needed.

These FitsPRO’s aren’t changing their businesses or the business model – they’re simply refining and honing in on the next season of their business.

I am sure you follow entrepreneurs that have changed their focus, or approach over the last five years. I know I have. And in that process I have fallen more in respect for some and decided to unfollow others. Even if I unfollow, I have to respect and give kudos to the fact that they had the courage to say, “I don’t want to teach ‘x’ anymore, or offer ‘y’ – “I want to pivot, or just remove one aspect of my overall messaging.” I deeply respect and fully understand that from a human and entrepreneurial standpoint.

In a very literal sense, I did a lot of things when starting out because I though I had to. I didn’t know it was acceptable to ONLY offer training without nutrition. But I never enjoyed offering nutrition services. 2.5 years in I finally edited that out of my messaging, freebies and paid offers. THIS IS NORMAL. I can’t stress enough how normal it is to start very wide and broad when you’re building a business. You try a bit everything in order to confirm what sticks, what you do want to do, and what is a no go for you. That is 100% to be expected! That’s how we refine right? It’s taking the tree trunk and carving off chunks to find the art or masterpiece beneath. I know that can sound woo woo but it’s a fantastic and very applicable parallel to the process of building and maintaining personal brand.

Obviously the nutrition piece is literal, like I said. But there are much more emotionally loaded topics on the table as well. Maybe you’ve talked about bodies – sizes, neutrality, positivity, the process vs the result. that’s fantastic, it’s not a BAD thing, but you find that you maybe resent talking about that now – you’re “sick” of talking about that topic. You don’t feel it’s needed, or you’re happy to refer your audience to other professionals for that given topic. People who align with your past messaging – who you can now just tag when someone asks about said topic.

I have also experienced this over the years. As a woman I very much so appreciated accounts that normalize cellulite, aging skin and truly “normal” bodies. But I also see that this is STILL a way to dress up hyper-focus on the human body in a different way. I mentioned on a recent podcast with another professional that my wish is just LESS OVERALL FOCUS AND ATTENTION ON BODIES, period – whether photoshopped and airbrushed, whether using the utter most flattering angles for the gram, or showing the “mom bod,” stretch marks, extra skin, fat, cellulite, fill in the blank. It’s all fucking focused on the body and without a doubt, more often than not ON WOMEN’S BODIES. I just personally can’t help but think what if we just DIDN’T post about them? What if we just lived by example? Showed up differently? I don’t have the answers, but I realized that talking about bodies was not going to be a main part of my messaging anymore. It was never something I hyper focused on, but still, was something I felt very strongly about.

I think there is so much power in being seen – and much of the content I see around normal bodies DOES do that. There is just a double edged sword in having bodies in your face 24/7. Is it better? I don’t know.

Point is that you are free to edit and audit and pivot and transition your brand if you are beginning to feel long term tension and resistance towards a given topic or messaging. This is to be expected as you learn, hone, refine as a human and professional.

WITH THAT – no need to make rash decisions. These are things to journal about, consider and reconsider as you reflect on your business and it’s legacy. So some questions for you to look at and hopefully make this choice easier:

What is my resistance towards this topic?

• Are you currently just really overwhelmed with multiple things and this on particular area or topic is taking the brunt? Would you feel differently about it if overall stress and overwhelm was lower?

Why do not want to do or speak about ‘x’ anymore?

• Straight up, what’s the reason? And where did that come from? Why does this topic or thing no longer appeal to you? Do you disagree with your past self? Is it that you simply need to talk about the topic or offer the thing from a different angle? in a new light? Not necessarily get rid of it all together?

How might you phase this thing and/or topic out?

• This largely depends on how much stake this topic or offer has in your business, right? So if it’s one of your mother categories for content or a piece of your main paid offers, I encourage you to look at wha that alternative is. How can you phase it out while respecting expectations of your clients and audience? Is that even needed? Or can you make the adjustment easily?

Lastly – what does it look like to keep this up or change it?

• What do each of those scenarios look like?

Ideally you’re not making this decision on a whim but due to experiencing high levels of resistance for an extended period of time. WE don’t jump ship at the first sign of trouble in business. So make your considerations carefully – we’re shooting for brand consistency and also personal alignment. 

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