“Family thinks I should just relax and stop trying things” is a phrase I hear often enough, in one form or another, from people in exactly my own position. I understand it more than most, because at seventy-one, I have heard a version of it myself more than once.

There is a quieter cousin to that worry, though, & it rarely gets said out loud. It is the fear that even if you do keep trying, nobody will notice. What you put online looks & sounds much like everything else already out there.

That fear is worth taking seriously, because it is often true, & the fix is not working harder or shouting louder. Learning to stand out online is really about becoming, in small & honest ways, a little harder to mistake for anyone else.

Why Sounding Like Everyone Else Costs You The Attention You Need

Open ten websites in the same corner of the online business world, & you will likely find the same handful of words repeated across every one of them. Proven, powerful, life-changing, game-changing.

None of those words are dishonest exactly. They have simply been used so often that they have stopped meaning very much at all.

The same thing happens with content itself.

If your emails, articles or updates could just as easily have come from the person down the road, there is very little reason to remember them. Nobody has any reason to recall that they came from you.

Over the years since I started writing under my own name rather than hiding behind a brand, I have found something important. Being truly recognisable matters more than being polished.

You do not need to be loud to stand out online. You need to be unmistakably yourself, which is a far gentler & more sustainable thing to aim for. That is why I still write these updates the way I would talk to you over a long cup of tea, rather than dress them up as something they are not.

A Simple Exercise For Finding Your Own Edge

Here is a small exercise worth trying, & it takes no longer than fifteen minutes with a notepad or an open document.

Write down ten things you could say, share or publish that would make someone who knows you say, “I did not expect that from them.” Do not judge the list as you make it, & do not worry about whether each idea is sensible. Some of them should feel faintly ridiculous.

Then read back through the list & look for the one idea that still feels unmistakably you, even though it surprised you a little to write it down. That is usually the one worth pursuing.

This is a habit I try to return to every month or so, & it has done more for the way I write than any amount of studying what everyone else in this space happens to be publishing that week. If it is useful, you might also find something in other articles I have shared recently, several of which grew out of exactly this kind of small exercise.

You do not need to be loud to stand out online. You need to be unmistakably yourself.

A Redundancy That Taught Me Not To Play It Safe

I was made redundant within a year of moving to Dubai for what I thought would be my last corporate role. It was my third redundancy, as it turned out. I remember thinking at the time that it was simply another door closing on the same predictable career I had followed for years.

Rather than come straight home, I found sponsors so I could stay & work legally, freelancing on marketing & PR projects. It was during those six years that I was first introduced to internet marketing & early social media. That included working alongside a mentor & helping out at some of the events run by visiting gurus.

None of that happened because I followed the safe, predictable path I had been trained for. It happened because a door I had been relying on closed. I chose, somewhat reluctantly at first, to try something that did not look like anyone else’s career.

The same thing applies, in a smaller way, every time you sit down to write something for your own audience. The predictable version of the post has already been written, by somebody else, probably several times.

The version worth publishing is usually the one that only you could have written. It is worth remembering that the moment something ordinary falls away is often exactly when something more distinctly yours gets the chance to appear.

Why I Keep My Own System Simple, Not Loud

None of this means turning yourself into someone unrecognisable, or performing a personality you do not have. That would be its own kind of predictable in the end.

For me, standing out online has meant writing under my own name, & being honest about the fact I am seventy-one & still figuring parts of this out. It has also meant keeping the practical side of things as simple as I can manage.

Everything I run, from my list to my emails to the pages you might land on, sits inside eShowcase. That is largely because I would rather spend my limited hours writing than wrestling with half a dozen separate systems that do not talk to each other.

It is set up for everything I need, & that leaves me free to focus on the part that matters most. That part is sounding like myself rather than like everyone else.

Where This Naturally Leads

Once you have something worth saying, & you are saying it in your own voice rather than borrowing everyone else’s, a natural question follows. How do you turn that into something more than a hobby?

Nick James put together a free resource on exactly this, called Six Figures A Year In Information Publishing. It walks through the thinking behind building a real income from the kind of writing & teaching many of us are already doing for free. It is worth a look if you are further along than the notepad exercise & wondering what a proper structure around it might look like.

I have not built my own business from a script, & I doubt you will build yours from one either. But a little help with the structure, once you have found your own voice, is no bad thing at all.

Whatever stage you are at with this, I hope something here has given you one small thing worth trying this week.

Kind regards,
Angus

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