MEG LEWIS ON WHY YOU SHOULD RESIST THE NICHE

During last week’s call with the amazing Meg Lewis, I retold her story about being true to who you are, and how that brings the right people into your orbit – the people you wanna work with!

Exactly. We don’t give people enough credit. There’s so much advice out there that you need to be a certain way to be successful, to win big, to niche down… advice that goes against who we actually are, which is really complicated, interesting people.

It’s so freeing to realize that I’m constantly very complicated. My career is so strange. It doesn’t make any sense. You can’t put me in a box or even explain me to anybody else. And that goes against all the advice that everyone always gives.

But we really underestimate people’s ability to be comfortable with complexity. People are totally fine with the fact that I’m unusual, and they still somehow get it. That allows me the freedom to keep being unusual and complicated. I don’t feel like I’ve wedged myself into a category I can’t get out of.

Being loudly complicated… people get it, and I’m so amazed that they do. People understand that humans are human, and now more than ever, people really want to see real human beings. That’s how you truly innovate: being somebody and doing something different than anybody else could possibly do.

Any of us could play the game and follow the formulas for success. But we’re not going to be fulfilled. We’re going to feel terrible, because we’re still performing as this other version of ourselves.

The pressure to niche down is big – we see it everywhere, pushed especially from the social media platforms. As Jaime Derringer says, “the algorithm. The feed, the platform, the notification. These are all literally designed to sort us, to puts us into categories, so it can feeds us content that confirms and deepens those categories.”

But as Meg says, “we really underestimate people’s ability to be comfortable with complexity.” We are expansive, and deep, and there are people out there that will resonate with your depth!

If you’re done performing as the bland, algorithmic-friendly version of yourself, you belong here.