There's something that connects all your work

Struggling with your different work niches? Author and self-promotion expert Lucy Werner discusses how we can take confidence in having multiple strands of work and link it under a theme.

When Lucy Werner joined Substack, I was excited. She manages to find a great balance between sharing personal stories and self-promotion tips. We started an email conversation and Lucy kindly - though unexpectedly - said:

“I don’t know if it helps you but I can really see all the jigsaw pieces of Raise your SQ / The Freelance Mum / Shy / poetry / writing etc and how they all fit together as part of brand ‘Annie’.”

This is something I occasionally grapple with, as a freelance writer, coach and business owner. I have all these different interests and love learning about new topics and tech but I worry I’m spreading myself too thinly across them.

Having Lucy say that she could see how all the dots joined up felt really reassuring and so I asked if she’d write an article for my Substack for other freelancers / multihyphenates / business owners / creatives on this subject.

We decided to do an exchange - I wrote a coaching piece for Lucy: Reflecting on 2023, dreaming and planning for 2024 (you can read it for free) and she has written one for me (well, you) about what brings all the different strands of your work together.

---

There's something that connects all your work

by Lucy Werner

I knew Annie from her days as a journalist writing The Early Hour, while I was in the thick of running my PR agency and thought her platform could be ripe for a few clients to pitch interviews with. 

Somewhat awkwardly, perhaps obsessively at times, I have followed her journey. Only a few freelance women talked publicly about being an ambitious creative against the juxtaposition of parenting. 

Annie’s first book, The Freelance Mum, was on a mood board (see below) that I sent to my publishers when creating the cover for my book Hype Yourself because I also wanted something bright that jumped out on the shelf. 

Our careers zig-zag across each other with as many similarities as opposites. What is the main difference between us, though?

Our strong brands.

I don’t mean our colours, fonts or logos. Instead, I mean us, as individuals, running our businesses and writing our Substacks (and non-fiction books) with a clear set of values at the centre of our brands.

You could strip away the design part of the branding but we would still retain our brand values. 

---

“A beautiful brand is amazing, but a meaningful one is better” - Hadrien Chatelet, Brand Yourself 

Annie covers a range of topics - spirituality, creativity, empowerment, work, motherhood and shyness - but it’s her values that remain consistent. The aim, she tells me, is to help her audience to feel hopeful.

While what links all my work together, at its core, is self-promotion and creativity. 

There is some crossover in terms of the topics we cover - freelancing and PR, for instance - but we don’t compete or create the same work, because of the unique way we make our audience feel. Our personalities and our brands are not the same. 

In the book I co-authored with the co-founder of my children, Hadrien Chatelet, we give this example:

Let’s imagine you are a butcher, and a second butcher comes along and takes a large part of your market. You have the same quality, but his prices are lower than yours – he’s undercutting. you. You have three options to regain your market:

1. You can fight him over price or quality. This might get you a temporary win, but realistically it is only a matter of time before a new butcher comes along to do better than both of you. 

2. You can buy her out and regain the monopoly. This will need a lot of capital, and in some countries, a monopoly is illegal.

3. You can be aware that what makes a consumer choose one brand over another is affinity and loyalty. In many cases, a consumer will choose based on values that feel right for them. This can be an even stronger driver than the price point.

---

Don’t over-explain all the ways people can work with you

When you’re powerful in what you’re about and who you’re for, you don’t need to keep explaining how someone can work with you. They’ll go looking for the information.

I’ve seen people online try to list all the ways we can work with them out of fear we won’t work with them at all, if we don’t know everything.

But it has the opposite effect.

With the focus on getting all your products and services out there, what you stand for can quickly become lost. After all, your ‘brand’ is not a sales machine.

I know how detrimental it can be to sell yourself too hard, because I wrote a book on hype and exhausted myself with having ten different ways you could work with me.

Instead, go for the old ‘show don’t tell’ idea, where instead of being explicit, you put out meaningful content and people will naturally want to know what products and/or services you offer.

---

Do over-explain your overarching themes 

Consider this your permission slip to keep sharing the different parts of your jigsaw. The themes as opposed to the nitty gritty.

The magic - your magic - is all of the different parts to you.

Yes, I could write one Substack about living in France, one about creative living and another about self-promotion tips, but the bit that makes it interesting is the holy trinity of all three intertwined. 

That’s what people are paying for when they become paid subscribers of my Substack. Usually, they’ve been following me for some time on social media, have bought my books or done my courses and are buying into my brand.

I see a danger sometimes in people diluting themselves with multiple Instagram pages or Substack publications, because they fear there are too many different parts to them. Or that someone might not like one aspect of us or our work. 

We can’t turn off bits of our personality in the real world, so why do we try to segment ourselves on social media when the objective is to sell efficiently to an audience that ultimately buys into our authentic selves? 

---

Show a bit of ankle

The creative freelance economy is only set to increase. Reminding your audience what fuels you helps them to connect with you and your work. 

Sure, it would be easier for us and them if we made one core product and only focused on scaling that. But a lot of what makes us buy from an individual is a connection with them, just like we choose a friend in real-life. We don’t expect people in real-life to only talk about one thing so don’t put that expectation on yourself in business. 

I like to call it showing a bit of ankle, a pinch of who you are. When you give us that taste of what makes you tick, it’s so much more interesting and relatable. It can also feel more comfortable than constantly having to sell. 

Having a complicated jigsaw is a generous gift. It means you can show so many different sides of yourself that will help your audience to connect with you. 

Readers of Annie Ridout can use an exclusive 20% discount before December 31st on a paid subscription: https://hypeyourself.substack.com/annie