Years ago I caught an Uber and it was a nice newer black Infiniti sedan. Along the way, the driver explains that his day job is a financial advisor and he drives for Uber on the side for extra cash because he’s newer in the business. Now ask yourself, In that moment, was he an influential financial advisor to me? No, because I had already put him in the category of Uber driver. He couldn’t market and sell himself to me as both an Uber driver AND a financial advisor. In my mind, there’s only room for him in one category. But we’re making this same mistake every day, and that’s the topic of this episode. One of the missions of the podcast is to break down things that are confusing and frustrating so we can be less critical of ourselves and move forward with more calm, confidence and clarity. So I want to dive into a common frustration we have with branding and marketing, which is how do we market ourselves when we sell more than one thing? In my opinion anyone can become MicroFamous, yet we have to be strategic, focused and consistent to get there. To reach the level of being famously influential. It’s hard to be strategic, focused and consistent when our energy is pulled in a bunch of different directions. Not to mention the fact that people automatically put us into one category. “Jeff is a business coach, Linda is a consultant, Jay is an author, etc.” Because people have a really hard time putting us into more than one category, it’s hard to become famously influential for more than one thing to the same people. And when we’re talking about different offers and services to the same people, that’s basically what we’re doing. We end up confusing people. And if you think everyone but you has their s#%t together, think again. Even big companies who know better do this kind of thing all the time. The best example I’ve seen lately are the hilariously terrible Bud Light Seltzer ads. Have you seen these? So here’s the backstory. Bud Light’s parent company tries to get into the hard seltzer space with a new brand and it flops. So they come back with a brilliant idea to market hard seltzer under the Bud Light brand. You can see how screwed up this idea is in their own commercials. One of their TV ads starts this way: “The Bud Light logo makes people think our seltzer is a beer, so we hired recruited retired NFL players Nick Mangold to Block It Out! Now it’s a mildly amusing commercial, but it’s less funny when we realize we’re doing the same thing when we’re selling a bunch of different things. We basically have to go around saying, “Hey I know you think I sell ABC, but I actually do XYZ! Surprise!” Of course, we know we’re confusing people, we just don’t know what to do about it. So we start asking ourselves questions like: How can I be more clear with my brand and my message? Could I put everything under the same brand? Can I find one brand that allows me to do all the things I want to do under the same brand? I call that the Search for the Magic Umbrella. A Magic Umbrella is a brand or an idea that acts as an umbrella we can put over just about anything we want to do or create or sell. And I see people twisting themselves into pretzels trying to find it. It’s a very noisy, cluttered world out there. Especially online. One of the core principles of the MicroFamous system is that in order to cut through the noise, we have to deliver a Clear and Compelling Idea. An idea that is so razor-sharp clear that people understand it very quickly, and so compelling that it grabs their attention and makes them say, “Holy cow, I didn’t know that thing existed. How can I learn more!?” Unfortunately, searching for a Magic Umbrella where we can market and talk about several different offers and services leads us away from a Clear and Compelling Idea. Instead of a powerful idea that cuts through