No One Was Buying Me...

No one was buying me for 18 months.

Not just left on the shelf. Out the back. In the storeroom. Hoping not to be written off as old stock.

Let's be honest — "early-old" bald men aren't exactly flavour of the decade.

Post-Covid, I was made redundant from my dream role and disestablished a further two times in the following three years.

My script had been torn up.

For a long stretch, I felt my identity, my relevance, and a chunk of my self-worth quietly slipping away.

Here's what that taught me about Human Identity:

Outside of being a father, husband, son, brother and mate;

A huge part of my identity was what I did and where I worked.

I discovered I'd built a good chunk of my sense of self on 'leased premises'.

No one was coming to save me - certainly not AI, although its pretty cool...

Those who know my value have their own things to be dealing with.

So as a ‘brand guy’, I did what brand guys do — I went back to first principles.

I asked myself one brutal question:

"As a brand, would I buy me?"

The answer forced me to stop relying on external validation and start rebuilding from something no employer, economy or restructuring process could take from me:

Who I actually am.

That shift — from what I do to who I am — up-ended my perspective.

It became the foundation of my work on HI and Human Identity.

Eventually, it became the idea I took to the TEDx stage a couple of weeks back.

So I'll ask you the same question I asked myself:

As a brand — would you buy you?

If it's a resounding ‘hell yeah’, then that’s awesome!

If the answer's not so clear and a little uncomfortable... that might be where the work begins.