When Your Work Grows Beyond What You’re Known For

A few weeks ago, I was in Sydney, in a room full of marketers, and I noticed how readily I reached for the word marketer to describe myself.

It’s a word I’ve earned. I’ve spent nearly three decades in marketing: building an agency, bringing brands to life, writing, teaching and helping people recognise the value of what they know. I feel at home among marketers. People understand my experience without much explanation.

And lately, that familiar introduction has started to feel a little too small.

Most of my days look quite different now. My co-founder and I are building a technology company, and we spend them exploring markets, developing partnerships, building the product and working towards something big we both believe in.

So why, in a room where I had nothing to prove, did I still reach for the old word?

That question stayed with me after Sydney.

The comfort of a familiar introduction

I have good reasons to feel confident in my marketing identity. I ran a multi-award-winning agency for twenty years. I’ve served as state chair of the Australian Marketing Institute and become a Fellow and Life Member. I’ve written books, created Marketing Me®, and spent decades working with people whose ideas and expertise I deeply believe in.

That work continues today, albeit in a different form. The question I’ve been asking myself is how often I reach for those credentials because they explain what I’m doing today, and how often I reach for them because I know they’ll help me feel comfortable.

I’ve experienced the hesitation in surprisingly small moments. I can be absorbed in a company strategy conversation, confident in the decision we’re making, and yet pause over a sentence in my bio.

The work and the introduction have been moving at different speeds.

Seeing my own history differently

As I thought about Sydney, I found myself going back further than my agency.

In 2001, in the dot-com era, I co-founded a technology venture that grew from an idea into a globally known brand and was eventually sold. At the time, I was also running my agency, raising a growing family and pastoring a church. Life was full. There was little space to stop and absorb what that venture had taught me about building something from the ground up.

Over the years, I spoke far more often about my marketing agency than I did about that founder experience.

I kept building, though. Companies, products, communities and intellectual property. I recognised opportunities, shaped offers, brought people around ideas and stayed with the work for years. A great deal of what I did involved marketing, so that became the category I defaulted to.

I’m looking at those experiences with fresh eyes now.

Opening partnerships, earning trust, recognising what people need and helping them understand the value of something new are all part of building a company. I’ve been developing those abilities for a long time.

That recognition has given me more confidence in what I bring to Expert Everywhere®. It’s also made me curious about the way a familiar professional label can shape how we understand our own experience.

The next chapter was already underway

In 2020, I began winding down my agency. It was at the top of its game, and from the outside, the timing puzzled people. I wanted to explore something I felt traditional marketing had left out: the role of personal identity in how people build a business and connect with others. That exploration became central to Marketing Me® and much of my writing and teaching.

Three years ago, I co-founded Virtually Myself® with technical genius and strategist extraordinaire Alex Hagan.

We began with people who had substantial bodies of work and wanted a better way to find, use and share what they knew. As we developed the technology, we saw the same need inside organisations.

Expert Everywhere® is the company we’re building around that wider opportunity. My work now includes company strategy, market development, partnerships, positioning and creating the conditions for people to understand and adopt the technology. My background in marketing is especially useful here because I understand trust, behaviour and what it takes for a new idea to make sense in the market.

There’s a very personal joy in building alongside Alex, too. I love sitting down together, mapping out possibilities and deciding what we’re going to pursue. Being a co-founder feels like my sweet spot.

If your introduction belongs to an earlier chapter

I’ve been noticing the difference between how I feel doing the work and how I feel describing it.

I’m drawn to the new conversations and the scale of what we could build. And for a while, I felt exposed when I tried to give that work a more visible place in my public identity.

I suspect many people experience some version of this during a transition. You find yourself doing work you’re capable of, even enjoying it, while the way you introduce yourself still belongs to an earlier chapter.

If you’re there now, it may help to pay attention to both responses.

Which conversations stay with you afterwards?

Where are you contributing with confidence, even while you’re finding the words to explain your role?

What kind of work are you willing to keep choosing when it asks more of you?

I’d look for evidence in your days as well as your feelings. Excitement can draw your attention to something worth exploring. The work you return to, the value you create and the commitments you’re willing to make can help you understand what that excitement is telling you.

And yes, going all in can feel scary. There’s a particular vulnerability in allowing people to see you step into a role before you’ve become accustomed to saying it out loud. I’ve felt that alongside a great deal of belief and anticipation.

Giving a personal brand room to grow

A reputation takes shape through repetition. People associate you with the ideas and work they’ve seen from you over time. That familiarity can open doors, and it can take a while for their picture of you to catch up with what you’re building now.

I have a part in that process. If I keep introducing myself solely through the work people already know, I make it harder for them to see the full scope of my contribution.

So I’ve been asking myself:

Am I describing the contribution I’m making now, or the one I’m most accustomed to explaining?

I’m bringing my founder identity forward. My authorship, Marketing Me® and marketing experience come with me. They inform how I think about identity, trust, knowledge and what makes a person or organisation distinctive. They also inform the company I’m building.

There is something thought-provoking in experiencing this from the inside. I’ve taught personal positioning for years, and I’m still finding that a shift in identity takes more than a change to a headline. I need to recognise my own experience fully enough to speak about it with conviction.

Choosing how I build

When I first sat down to write about this, my first line was, “Nothing’s changing on the inside.” I then went on to describe a substantial professional shift.

I think I meant that the work feels familiar at a deeper level. I’m still drawn to helping people bring something valuable into expression. I’m still interested in identity, knowledge, trust and the ability to act from our own convictions. Those interests now have a technological expression, and I’m ready to give that work more of my attention.

Agency, in the other sense of the word, runs through our technology: giving people and organisations greater choice over what they know, how it’s used and the decisions it informs. It has become personal for me, too. I get to choose how I use the experience I’ve built, where I put my energy and how I describe the work I’m here to do. That includes the life around the company. I have substantial ambitions for what we’re building, and I want to be present with my children, look after my health and have the capacity to do this work well.

So, here’s the introduction I’m growing into:

I’m an Australian technology founder and company builder. I’m the co-founder of Expert Everywhere®, a knowledge technology company. I draw on decades of experience with identity, knowledge, trust and the work of bringing valuable ideas into use.

I’m still getting used to saying that. I’m already doing the work.