POV: you're me at 22 years old, sitting inside a small, dark, blackbox theatre in the middle of Midtown, Manhattan. 

 

You're in an acting class. A Meisner technique class, to be specific. (It's basically where they teach you how to mentally divorce the script from the emotion so that you can live authentically in the moment instead of focusing on the words you memorized. It's a whole thing.) 

 

On the scale of actually artsy to commercial artsy, this is one of the more actual artsy spaces you've been in. Everyone in here is a serious actor—not just a Broadway girly like all the folks you normally associate with. 

 

It's not uncommon to cry here. The teachers push you. It gets real vulnerable, real fast. If you've ever seen a “serious acting class” be portrayed on TV, it's… honestly kind of like that.

 

So, okay. You're pretending you're me:

 

“Who's next? Sarah & David, get up there," the teacher says. 

 

David is talented, and experienced. He's a bit older, too. You can tell he's in his “prime”—handsome & charming. His resumé must be absolutely stacked, you think to yourself. 

 

It's a little intimidating.

 

You begin the “repetition exercise”—which, if you're not familiar, is a CORNERSTONE of Meisner technique. Basically 2 actors stand face-to-face, and one person starts it off by commenting on something physical about the other person: “You're wearing a green shirt.”

 

Then, the other person responds: “I'm wearing a green shirt.” 

 

You're supposed to go back and forth about the green shirt like this, using the repeated words to have an emotional conversation that transcends the green shirt entirely. 

 

But you and David don't get that far, because you're way too in your head. And as always, the teacher can tell:

 

“Sarah, you're not living the story with David. Try again.”

 

You're wearing a silver ring.

I'm wearing a silver ring.

You're wearing a SILVER ring.

I'm wearing a silver ring?

You're wearing a silver ring!

I'm wearing a silver ring.

 

The teacher interrupts again:

 

“Sarah, a story gets told whether you choose to live in the story or not. But if you don't tell the story, the story becomes: ‘Sarah doesn’t know how to tell a story'. And you don't want that.”
 

------

 

I don't think I fully understood what ^that^ meant until after I became a marketing girlie.

 

Because it works the same with branding: everyone has a personal brand, whether they want one or not. Whether they think they do, or not.

 

You could be website-less, Instagram-less, Facebook-less, TikTok-less, literally live OFF THE GRID in the woods, and that still tells a story about you. 

 

 

I know from working with hundreds of creatives that the idea of “personal branding” makes people nervous because it often implies influencer or public speaker or something. 

 

I don't think it's that at all.

 

To me, personal branding is all about stepping into your power as the storyteller of your own narrative, & proudly owning the ideas/things/people/places you love & believe in. 

 

Because if you don't, ideas/things/people/places will get imposed on you regardless. (And maybe not the ideas/things/people/places you want to get imposed.)

 

 

(Buuuuuut, I guess building a business around this idea is the next best thing. 🤗)