The problem is...
On consistency, building in public and claiming the room you actually belong in
My friend and I met on the Upper West Side, wine open, a charcuterie spread between us.
My friend is an art director. Or rather, she is an art director, but she hasn’t fully claimed it yet. She’s lived and worked in London, Italy, Mexico City, and New York. She has helped dress celebrities like Kendall Jenner and Jennifer Aniston. She knows more about heritage brands and designers than most people… She has the kind of taste that takes decades to develop and can’t really be taught. She has an eye.
She showed me her phone as she was telling me about her Substack. Her first post launched on May 5th.
She proceeded to ask me questions about my newsletter, to figure out cadence, how often to publish, whether she was doing it right.
I told her what I wish someone had told me: start at a pace so slow it feels almost pointless. Once a month. Because consistency is the only thing that actually matters at the beginning, and most people quit because they started too fast and burned out before anyone found them.
When I created the newsletter for Working Women Agency in January 2025 I published only once a month for five months. That was it. Five posts before I let myself think about scaling. And after that, it built naturally, twice a month, then more. Now I sometimes publish four or five times a month. But the foundation was boring and slow and completely necessary as I found my footing.
You don’t know what you don’t know so you have to start with what you have and the knowledge and stories that exist within you.
The problem is.
That’s the phrase I kept hearing from her as we (me) got excited about her substack.
Every time I offered an idea, something she’d said that was worth publishing, an angle she hadn’t considered, she’d pause and say: well, the problem is.
The problem is I have imposter syndrome. The problem is I don’t know if anyone will care. The problem is, what cadence should I be publishing?
I’ve said all of these things at one point. Every person I’ve worked with has said some version of them.
Here’s what I told her: a personal brand is not an audition. You’re not publishing a substack to prove anything. It’s a room you build yourself, you decide what goes in it. The only person whose permission you need is your own.
There’s something else I noticed, and I’ve been thinking about it since I got home.
She’s been passed up for more corporate roles at big-box mass retailers. And honestly? When I really thought about it… of course she was. Her references are specific, her eye is calibrated. Her entire sensibility and vibe is built for luxury, and she’s been trying to make herself legible to rooms that weren’t going to understand her.
The misalignment is a signal.
But here’s the thing: she hasn’t fully admitted that to herself yet. She hasn’t said out loud, I am a luxury creative, I am an art director showing my eye, and that’s the world I’m building toward. Until she does, she’ll keep shrinking herself to fit spaces that don’t fit her.
The Substack is her format of where she starts to say it.
Building a Personal Brand with a Nonlinear Career
This conversation is actually what gave me the idea for the workshop I’m running.
If you have a nonlinear career, if you’ve lived in multiple cities, worked across industries, built a body of work that doesn’t fit neatly into one job title and you want to start building your name in public, I put something together for you.
How to Build a Personal Brand with a Nonlinear Career — free workshop →
It’s everything I would have told myself five years ago. And everything I told my friend over wine last week.
“The problem is” is so relatable. Thanks for sharing!