Last night’s BOOKWARD BOUND was cut short by technical difficulties, but I did manage to get some writing done before going suddenly dark.
III. Knowing who you are. So you can be it.
You just knew I was going to bring up this dual concept phrase pair again. It is the base pair concert of NonFiction Branding after all. To be 100% authentic is laudable. The share 100% of yourself is a mistake, and for many of the reasons outlined above and throughout this book.
If you truly know who you are, you know when, where and with whom to share parts of yourself, and when not to. Personally, there’s only one person on the face of this earth that gets the full feed (for better or worse). The rest of all y’all are just going to have to accept a carefully curated part of the whole. And that’s exactly as it should be.
Whenever I see someone oozing everything about themselves in public, I immediately raise shields. Why? Because in my experience, those super sharers are doing it for one reason: a gain some level of control over you. Con men have known this technique forever. By sharing the ooey gooey, they bypass your natural defenses and activate your sentimentality for their benefit. Need proof of that? Just deconstruct any political campaign, charitable initiative, or hard luck story.
But when you know who you are, and have clear audience-oriented goals in mind, you can deliver without concern exactly the best you can offer, and in a way that is immediately recognizable, and ultimately appreciated by the people you’ve attracted to your business or service. The worst possible thing in marketing is over promising and under-delivering. When you truly know who you are, and are being it, there’s no chance of that happening.
…and there’s much more to come.
BOOKWARD BOUND / Daily Build is just what it says: the writing I did today in order to get my book a little bit closer to its publication. It is presented here exactly as written and complete with all the misspellings and grammatical errors you’d expect of a rough draft. Don’t worry, it’ll be edited later. The above was written during a livestream video of BOOKWARD BOUND that you can find on my YouTube channel any time you’d like. – DP Knudten
@2020 DP Knudten LLC – all rights reserved.
