Work Your Brilliance: the uncommon art of being paid to be yourself

Most people who struggle to share their work have not misunderstood marketing. They have misunderstood themselves.

What changes when you share from a different place

The word 'marketing' isn't the problem

Most people who struggle to share their work have not misunderstood marketing. They have misunderstood themselves.

A friend once said to me: we need a new word — marketing has become contaminated. And I completely understood. The word has become associated with manipulation, with noise, with the performance of expertise you haven't quite claimed. No wonder the body tenses before the mind even notices why.

But I've come to think the word doesn't need changing. The energy underneath it does.

When you operate from what I think of as the small self — the part that's striving, proving, managing how you're perceived — marketing feels like a performance. You're trying to convince people of something you're not quite sure you believe yourself. The message doesn't land because it was constructed to impress rather than to connect.

When you operate from a different place — the part of you that already knows what you carry, that trusts the truth of your work, that moves from alignment rather than anxiety — marketing becomes something else entirely. It becomes the act of making it easier for the people who need what you have to find you. Simple. Clear. A service rather than a spectacle.

The question isn't how do I market better?

It's who am I when I share my work? Because the answer to that question shapes everything.

Work Your Brilliance is a daily publication for people living the uncommon art of being paid to be themselves.