This happens to me more than I’d like to admit.
I’ll be reading a book with a gorgeous cover. Deep jewel tones, a little gold foil, the kind of cover that sells the book before you’ve read a word. I’ll pop it in my Stories, and a DM comes in: “Ooh, what’s that one about?”
And I’ve got nothing.
Four hundred pages. Hours of my life. And I can’t tell her what it’s about. I can’t tell her the main character’s name. I type back “It’s a fantasy! It’s good!” which, let’s be honest, is not a review. It’s a shrug with punctuation.
The strange part is that I liked it. I finished it. It was nice and easy to read, and it was gone the second I closed it.
Two kinds of books, two kinds of brands
I’m a big fantasy reader, and over the years I’ve noticed my shelf splits into two groups. There are the books I could tell you everything about. And there are the nice ones.
The nice ones follow a pattern. The characters never really change. The world feels like somewhere I’ve already been. And the author never takes a stand on anything. Everything plays by the book, pun very much intended.
Nobody writes an angry review of that book. It just doesn’t stay.
Content fails the same two ways. The first gets talked about constantly: the pushy post, the one that grabs at you so hard you can feel it grabbing. The second is quieter. Content that’s polite, professional, pretty, even genuinely helpful, and completely forgettable.
I call it wallpaper.
Why nobody tells you you’re wallpaper
The pushy brand finds out it’s pushy. Someone unfollows loudly or leaves a comment. The wallpaper brand never hears a thing, because nobody complains about something they didn’t notice.
That author never heard from me, either. I didn’t leave a bad review. I just forgot.
What’s actually missing
When I think about the books that disappeared, it comes down to one thing. The author wouldn’t take a stand.
I understand why. A stand means some people won’t like you, and when you’re small, every reader feels precious. So you sand off the edges. You make the safe choice, then the next one, then the next, trying to keep everyone.
And you end up kept by no one.
The wider net myth
This is the part that feels backwards. It seems logical that the more people you talk to, the better your odds.
It’s the opposite.
When you talk to everyone, the woman you built your business for has no reason to believe you’re talking to her. There’s nothing specific enough for her to recognize herself in. You can’t be for everyone, and you’re not supposed to be. The goal is to attract the right person and let the wrong one realize, on her own, that this isn’t her place.
That doesn’t mean being combative. A stand doesn’t push people away with hostility. It makes you clear enough that people can find their way to you, or away from you, without anyone getting shoved.
So here’s mine
There’s a popular idea that you can hide behind your brand. Let the logo, the pretty grid, and the templates do the talking, and keep yourself out of it.
I don’t believe that works for a small business. You don’t have a famous brand name to lean on yet, so you win on relationships, and people build relationships with people. That means your voice, your personality, and your stories belong in your brand.
Some people read that and think it’s not for them. Good. That’s the stand doing its job.
And no, that doesn’t mean posting your whole life. I share about my kids and about the hard parts of running a business. Other things stay mine. You get to decide which parts of you are on the table.
But somebody has to be sitting at it
The gap in her teeth
Now for the other kind of book.
There’s one I read a few years ago, and I couldn’t walk you through every plot point. But I will never forget that the main character had a gap between her teeth.
Out of an entire book, that’s what stuck. And it’s a flaw. The author could have given her perfect teeth, nobody would have noticed, and I’d have forgotten her like all the others.
That was a stand too, just a small one. The author decided exactly who this woman was instead of writing someone anybody could picture.
A stand isn’t always a bold declaration. Sometimes it’s your honest opinion about something ordinary. The story you’d usually cut for being too personal. The detail you’d edit out for being a little weird. Big stands and small ones come from the same place: being willing to be specific instead of safe.
Your move: magnetic or forgettable?
This week, decide which one your brand is.
The tricky part is that almost nobody thinks her own brand is forgettable. I didn’t think that book was forgettable while I was reading it. It felt fine.
Fine is the problem.
So try this. Picture someone messaging one of your followers and asking, “What’s she about?”
Could your follower answer? Not “she does brand stuff” or “she’s a coach,” but something you actually believe?
If she could, you’re magnetic. If she couldn’t, that’s not a failure. It just means you’ve been playing it safe, and now you know.
I still couldn’t tell you what that first book was about. But the girl with the gap in her teeth? I’ll carry her around forever.
Be the gap in the teeth.
Want the full conversation? Listen to this episode of the From Scratch Podcast.
Your Coach,
Kary ♡
