To those who want to be the face of your brand, more power to ya! Me, well, I'm an extremely private person. I'm also an introvert. I really don't want to be the face of my brand. I have absolutely no desire to be famous or to put my personal self out there in videos, photos, or voice. I've been down this path before — back before many of you reading this were even born.
Then
I am one of the OGs of the 90s who started a few websites that blew up. That was before social media, obviously, and when you had to create your own sites from scratch without all these fancy tools of today that do most of it for you.
All that attention back then was overwhelming and sometimes scary. My sites were considered “controversial” by 90s standards — not by today's — so the topics generally attracted more trolls, hate, evil, and nut jobs than you can imagine. Remember, the internet was something new that people weren't used to and many didn't want certain topics being discussed in the open. Up until that time, most topics had few channels to reach a broader audience and the existing channels had gatekeepers so reach was limited. Not with the internet. Those who were inclined also found their hate easy to spread. The internet leveled the playing field and gave a voice to everyone.
While I could have taken those sites to much bigger heights if I had the option to scale, which I didn't for a variety of reasons, I decided to move on and return to corporate America for my livelihood. Up until that point, though, I was one of the original Richardson, Texas affiliates who made a full-time living promoting a dating company, for example, that you now know as Match.com. I promoted other companies as well, but Match was my biggest income earner.
Now
Now everyone creating content online is an affiliate of something.
What content creators are doing now is what I tried to do back then but there wasn't the infrastructure, support, or vast number of resources like there are today. Professional websites were so expensive to build if you didn't do it yourself and if there wasn't an existing script already created for some functionality you wanted for it. Hiring tech was not an option.
When I think about all of the ideas I've had rolling around in my head for decades, I'm sometimes disgusted that I continued to go the expected corporate America route and not take a big plunge into building something of my own.
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Honestly, I've never really had a network of people around me who are as technically inclined as I am and I rarely sought them out. If I had, I might have made connections that would have changed the trajectory of my life.
So here I am, in the afternoon of my life, feeling that if I don't pursue all of these pent-up creative interests I've had over the years, I will miss my opportunity.
Let that be a lesson to you young'uns. There has never been a better time than now to begin your content creation journey — whether it's art, writing, photo, video, or audio, the format doesn't matter. Just get out there and seize the moment.
And for all of you who are in mid-life or older, it's never too late. Don't give in to the regret that you didn't seize your moment. We have an abundance of wisdom and experience to share and so many tools these days to help us do just that. Share yours with the world and do good things.
Being the Face of Your Brand
So back to being the face of my brand. Honestly, my audience or customer base is going to likely be fewer because people enjoy following and/or buying from people and not companies. I get that. Just know there is a person behind this company and she's a little less socially inclined than most.
But that doesn't make the quality of what I create, want to create, or my desire to give value and make a difference in the world any less. It just means you will need to adapt and get accustomed to alternative approaches and formats and to the fact that many of us don't want to put our lives out there on blast for all to see because we've been there, done that, and don't want to experience it again.
Personally, I'll leave that to you in the younger generations. Before you tire of it and while you still can.
