How much of your ‘true self’ should you really bring into your business?

Is your business just a reflection of you?

As an employee, I wished I could  take a blank canvas and paint my dream role onto it. Most roles don’t give you the kind of freedom you need to ‘paint the canvas’ of you onto them as employers have jobs that need doing and employees have to get on board, or jump ship.

When you start working for yourself, you realise you have all of this autonomy and choice available to you. As the business owner, you are at the centre of your very own masterpiece and can create your business to reflect the different sides of you that won’t always fit into a neat box or a job description.

It's your very own entity and fiefdom… if you want to work in the evening hours because that’s when your brain is most active, then you can. Perhaps put memes into your client presentations, if that’s your style. Perhaps work from warmer climates. Perhaps sell and deliver work completely asynchronously (no calls) because you prefer less human interaction and more time freedom. Perhaps ‘launch’ twice a year rather than try and hit a sales target every single month. Your call. 

This can be summarised as bringing your ‘Unique Contribution’ into your work, and is the basis of what I do as a business coach for new one person business owners.

So hopefully we can all agree… it’s helpful to navigate your work from a starting point of knowing what you want.

But in my coaching sessions, I am often navigating a slightly different question from clients about how much to bring into their work.

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Examples of the questions I am being asked by clients are as follows (names changed to protect confidentiality):

• Oliver’s experience is in a very academic field but his heart lies in a more spiritual and arguably more ‘woo’ field of interests. Does choosing to focus on one, alienate the other?

• Andrew’s background is in clinical healthcare but wants to work for himself, sharing holistic ideas and practices and helping people in a 1-1 setting. Is it possible for him to write about ALL of these practices spanning from gardening, to yoga, to meditation. Would sharing this dilute his years of clinical credibility? Or add to it? 

• Yasmin’s network is in her native tongue but wants to branch out to English speaking audiences but doesn't want to exclude the people who know her. How does she avoid alienating loyal audiences, whilst expanding into new territories?

• Kim’s background is in VC backed tech businesses, and could open a lot of doors in this space for her new business. Except morally she doesn’t feel aligned to this space any more. What’s the best approach?

• Anna spends her days practising so many different skills that do not neatly fit into a ‘ business idea’. What needs to give?

Reading those questions, you might have some opinions, or be able to relate to similar tensions yourself.

One of my personal contradictions is figuring out where I sit on the manifestation vs practical spectrum. Or the religion and astrology one. Or the hustle vs flow approach to my work. Maybe I’m just somewhere on a long spectrum for every one of these choices, or, one day I sit on one side and the other side the next.

Precisely because we are so multi-dimensional and complex as humans is why we are all full of contradictions and tensions. 

I would prefer that my business is not so fickle, however.

That my business make some clear choices about who it is, what it does, and what it doesn’t stand for.

My own personal tensions and questioning stops me feeling clear about the ideas or advice I want to share; in case it’s not fully aligned or authentic. 

So, is my business me, or its own entity? And if it IS me, how much of me is the 'right amount'?

To bring this back to you, I have thought about this from the various ‘sides’ of a person that can be used to bring into a business (or not) for us to explore.  NB any single one could be an article in itself, so I have kept it high level for brevity’s sake!

1. Your personality and strengths

Your personality and your strengths play a huge role in how you show up in the world. Whether you walk into a room with confidence, take centre stage or hang back. How creative you are, or prone to overthinking.

I am a big believer in building your business around these aspects of yourself because it means not only will you be better suited to do what your business needs from you but you’ll enjoy running it more. The more enjoyment you experience, the better your chance of success. So find activities that align to who you are at your core, and make those activities map to how you get paid. 

Where we want to be careful though, is avoiding any and all activities that don’t perfectly match strengths, such as self-promotion or networking activities if you are more introverted. When you work for yourself you can’t fully avoid doing those things if you want to find clients, so there is a degree of pragmatism required. Also, be careful about the story you are telling yourself about your personality. Is your story expansive, rather than limiting? Don’t talk yourself out of being able to do things that aren’t ‘in your nature’ before you’ve had a go at doing them. Business is all about personal growth and overcoming limitations.  

Similarly, there may be sides of yourself that you prefer to keep for yourself, to be separate from business and that’s okay too. Perhaps you are really funny, but your business is in a field that requires more ‘serious’ sides of you. Ask yourself: do you feel you can still enjoy your work without expressing this side of yourself? Is it ok you are not getting PAID for this side of yourself? Or is this a contradiction and feels inauthentic, thus requiring a change? 

2. Your skills and work history

Your professional history is a goldmine for ideas and approaches you can bring to bear in your business. You will naturally be using the training and skills you have from employment to fuel your business. If you aren’t, then just know that it will be a longer road, because you have to not only acquire those skills but also get good enough to be able to charge enough to make a living. Employers typically pay you to learn on the job but when you work for yourself that can be a tricky situation to navigate.

Do you need to bring every aspect of your skillset and work experience to bear? Perhaps you have really marketable skills in a field such as programming, design, or languages but you have no interest in using them as a business owner. The answer is no, I do not believe you have to make every piece of your skillset fit. It’s like making a meal solely out of the food you already have in the fridge. It might work out, but it could also just taste quite bad. 

You have to be selective about the skills and experiences that are relevant. Choosing those that you enjoy and want to keep developing, but also those that will help you to make money and solve client problems. The rest? You can leave them out of the recipe.

3. Your values and goals

Values and goals are what you prioritise, and often, are what you can achieve as a result of your business’ success. For example, many people value success, or independence – and so run a business to make those values become their reality. 

A one person business is usually a lifestyle business. Since you are inherently capped by your ability to scale or grow bigger than yourself (even with freelancers) you are usually choosing to enjoy life as well as find business success. More so than a founder raising investment might be. Your goals for your life are very important to defining what your business does and how it operates, because if they are not aligned, you will fall out of love with what you are doing… fast.

Does that mean your business can help you to achieve every goal imaginable? If it's to become a world leading ice skater and your business is in accounting… I would argue no. Or if your biggest value is in family, and your business needs you to work weekends to survive, you will start to notice that tension and conflict seep in. To find the balance here, you should align on a core set of principles that are relevant to your business based on your values, and make those as true to your core wishes and desires as you can. Then, the hard part is sticking to them!

4. Your interests and beliefs

What you are curious about and interested in is often a big drive to work for yourself. I speak to lots of people interested in the fields of human dynamics, self improvement and behavioural science. Those are inherently interesting fields, which are hard to find jobs in. I wanted to spend my days talking and thinking about this stuff, hence becoming a coach. That was just a interest and curiosity of mine – and for many others who become coaches for this reason. I wrote Why does everyone suddenly want to be a coach? on this exact topic.

Whatever your interests … from baking, to geopolitics, to pop culture… the internet has shown us that we can make money from them. There is a sub culture for everything, and the ‘1000 true fans’ concept demonstrates that you don't need EVERYONE to care about your niche interest to build a successful business.

So should you bring all of your interests and curiosities into your business? This is the question clients like Oliver, Andrew and Kim are asking themselves.

In short – no. It doesn't make business sense to put everything into a business proposition and hope to spend your days being paid for every interest you have. That’s what hobbies are for.  But do you have to HIDE your interests, beliefs or sides of yourself? Also, no. You can share those as parts of connection with your customers, who may have the same ones and decide to choose your services for the reason that they feel more connected to you as a person. 

Or, what's harder to do but ultimately more valuable, is to look for the intersection and commonalities between your interests, and come up with an approach that captures it all neatly. Choosing a niche is important to stand out in a crowded space, and niching does generally mean letting go of certain parts of you that could be included. But with intentionality, you can still find ways to bring the other aspects of your interests and beliefs in.

I used to want to do ‘personal development’ coaching alongside business for example, but soon realised that business building IS personal development, there really is no trade off.

5. Your style and taste 

Your ‘vibe attracts your tribe’ is an expression you hear in the online space, and I believe that’s especially the case when you have a visual component to your business such as video content, design or in person interactions. How you look matters. The world would be a fairer place if it didn’t, but it does I am afraid, and that has been true for a long time. Sharp suits and elbows were the attire of the boardroom and for you, as a one person business, what you wear, how you present your business and ideas is something clients will be drawn to.

So I do believe it's worth bringing your style, taste and aesthetic into your business, but only where it is helpful. If your customer is a corporate, and your bedroom at home resembles a shrine to 90s girl bands, is there an overlap? Perhaps not. Use your judgement here. Your taste is generally going to show up when you make design choices, but if you are someone who is less aesthetically driven, or skilled, consider bringing a professional in, to make sure your lack of abilities in this department doesn’t let you down. 

Your business needs its own brand identity to perform the job it is supposed to for its customers. That won’t always be a direct match to your true self.

Should you bring every single side of yourself into your business, then?

You should absolutely bring yourself into your business. The whole reason to work for yourself is having that freedom and authenticity to choose activities, design choices, and ideas that align to who you are. You can do the work that you are best placed to do in a way that suits your temperament.

This is your Unique Contribution at play. 

But a business is more of a clearly defined entity than a human being is. As a human, you are complex and always evolving.

So it can’t really be an exact mirror to you for that reason. However, I love what I do because it's in the complexities and the intersection where things get interesting.

Here you get to stand out from the crowd; bringing a different perspective or unique take on an existing field. Or a certain ‘vibe’ that makes what you do stand out more so from competitors.  

For me, my ‘Unique Contribution’ shows up largely in my business model aka how I make money: 1-1 work, writing, and thinking about the future of work and entrepreneurship. Those core skills/interests combo are a great fit for me, and how I make my income. Then there is the style and the approach I take to these things. For example, long form newsletter/blog posts with case studies, research and quotes can be attributed to a three year History degree learning how to write and argue a point (backed by evidence). Finally, that history degree came in handy, huh? Then there are aspects of things I do that are very ‘me’, like being in groups or networks with people also living in London, or even specifically, East London.

But there are other sides of my identity that have no real place in my business – at least not overtly. There are interests that don't ‘fit’ or have the chance to be explored, and that is ok.

Making an income from every single aspect of my identity was never the goal – and nor should it be  for you. The point is to get it close enough to being a profitable enterprise that is a great fit for who you are, what you enjoy, are good at, and what comes naturally.  

Questions, comments? I love to hear from you.

Get in touch for a chat or to explore working together 1-1 on your business here.