No more being brilliant in private.

At 10:47 on a Tuesday night, I am changing my Instagram bio again.

I remove the word passionate and replace it with visionary. I remove that immediately as my imposter syndrome kicks in.

I have seventeen tabs open, forty-two unfinished captions in my Notes app and a cup of tea I forgot to drink.

The business itself is good.

I have clients who love what I do. Kind messages I keep meaning to turn into testimonials. Ideas that arrive while I’m walking, driving or trying to sleep.

Ask me about my work across a kitchen table and I am electric, especially with a glass of wine in hand.

My hands start moving. One thought becomes six. I tell you the story behind the offer, what a client said last Thursday and the idea I haven’t shared because it might be a bit much.

After consulting Claude, I open Instagram and I write:

Helping women thrive through transformational solutions.

WTF! Who has taken my personality?

I record a Reel. Watch the first 0.8 seconds. I decide my face, voice and entire personality are wrong. I delete it.

I save other people’s posts for inspiration, then somehow remove every interesting part from mine.

Online, I have turned myself into a beige cardigan, as I post a picture of my cat.

Then, I find The Untitled’s Short Story and they are talking about me! It’s a no brainer.

I book it immediately and show up for my online call thinking maybe a full-time minimum wage job would be better.

Gracie asks me questions. Proper ones. The kind that make me stop halfway through an answer and realise I have never said this aloud before.

I mention something and immediately add, “That’s probably irrelevant.”

It isn’t. Apparently, it is the whole story.

We find the opinions I keep watering down. The experiences I dismissed. The ordinary parts of my work that somebody else would find fascinating.

Then we make them visible.

There are words that sound like me. Photographs where I’m not pretending to type beside a strategically placed coffee. Film with movement, humour and an actual pulse.

When the gallery arrives, I zoom in on my double chin first - obviously!

Then I look again.

Oh.

There I am, the real me.

Not a polished business-owner character. Not the woman I thought I needed to become before anybody would take me seriously.

Me. All my character, both inside and out.

I feel clearer, braver and considerably harder to ignore.

Now I post the idea before talking myself out of it. I say what I actually think. I show the work. I make the offer.

The right people start leaning in because there is finally a real person to connect with.

Technology helps me move faster, but I stop asking it to invent a personality for me. I hadn’t realised how toxic this had started to feel.

My business gets lighter. My ideas get bigger. I start building it around the life I want instead of disappearing inside another job I created for myself.

I didn’t need to find my voice. I needed to stop lowering it.

I am the same woman but the lights are gradually turning up, along with the volume.

I can now breathe as I am no longer being brilliant in private. Off to do an intense 3 months now with Grace and cannot imagine where I will be in the new year!