My conversation this week with Leslie Castro-Woodhouse has thrown me back into questions about identity and purpose that I’ve been grappling with ever since I left academe.
The asymmetry of power between employer and employee makes it hard to be perfectly aligned, and capitalism almost always gets in the way. Part of the problem too are leadership models that seek to manage people rather than empower them to help achieve common goals.
Yes -- all those clear organizational charts and lines of reporting do make people feel expendable, not essential. I suppose once one reaches a certain level of influence within a corporation or institution, one can demand less invisibility within the machine. But I'm thinking of all those UXR researchers that got laid off last year. Some of them were raging success stories in the academe-to-industry transition. And then suddenly they were back on the market, sweating out six months or more of a grueling search. To which I would simply add that managing budgets often means ignoring people, and this is one of the leadership blights of our time, as well.
I just got a television for my new home, and I was watching the free streaming channels while making soup, and the hosts at Bloomberg+ were talking about stocks. They mentioned that Wayfair, a company I just bought some home goods from, had laid off 200+ people and saved a ton of money in the process, which was making their stock rise. And I was like WTF?! Those people just don't matter.
I'm reminded of another line from "The Wire" and other crime shows. No one who is in "the game" expects to get out alive. Getting capped is just part of the deal at some point. The fact that layoffs are normalized is just insane to me. How do you buy a house, move your family to a community, and expect to keep that good thing going if every six months to a year you might have to flip your "Open to Work" banner back on? And how exactly is this better than academic roles, where you might sweat out enrollment every year and live through some indignities with the admin, but actually be able to keep your home and friend network...? I'm certainly not one of those that sings the praises of post-academe life. It's pretty bleak out here, too.
I'm reading Emile Zola's brilliant Germinal (1885), a tale of hardship of a young working man on the move. Much seems the same as today, only harsher because there was no social safety net or environmental regulations. Which, of course, are under assault by Republicans.
"The fact that layoffs are normalized is just insane to me". It's why Taleb thinks that the most secure option is self-employment, but that's rarely practicable.
I myself have a tentative essay brewing, along the lines of "what am I doing here?". For what it's worth, I think it's important to stay as true to one's own values as possible, to treat oneself with consideration, and to be honourable towards others. Sorry if that sounds trite.
That makes sense -- and I don't see simplicity as trite. It's how to do everything you've said while deciding whether or not to play the branding game (which is increasingly encourage for job seekers, not just for entrepreneurs) that complicates things.
Josh, just to clarify, you did brand yourself as an academic, no?
I was explicitly trained to curate oneself as a scholarly brand, and I've noted over the decades that the academic meat market reinforces that in the extreme. It's more obvious, I think, to people like me who specialized in non-mainstream fields.
I believe I did this. Part of my “recovery” (or “Unprofessoring”, if you will 😉) has been figuring out the aspects of my work persona that I put on in order to succeed and which parts are my core identity. The good news is that there is still something left when you take the girl out of academics.
How interesting, Liz. This is one thing I love about your series, that conscious uncoupling from relentless productivity. We are an interesting study in contrasts: a generalist and a scholar with a focused research agenda (an academic brand). I would imagine that the transition has been harder for you as a result.
I don't know if we have different conceptions of branding, but it seems to me that if one were to eschew any kind of branding whatsoever, that stance would constitute their brand. At the other extreme, if someone produced books, articles, ebooks, mugs, t-shirts etc all with their logo on it, that would be their branding. I wonder if a good way of thinking about it is to ask what one would like others to associate them with. But to be honest, I don't know enough about academia in general, or USA academia in particular, to be able to contribute anything useful to this discussion. My edxperience has been in secondary education (mainly) in England.
You're right that branding has become a kind of catch-all that others can say you're doing even if you don't want to be doing it. Rage Against the Machine = the machine in the end. Or, as Dylan says, "You've gotta serve somebody."
This needs to simmer longer, but I think I might be reacting against the ways that branding was used oppressively at my former employer, and the ways that I see universities doing this now, trying to simplify a mission, encourage everyone to hew to the "brand pillars," etc. It can create winners and losers within an academic institution (what if your discipline doesn't fit the brand?) and reckless spending (investing in fancy football stadiums, hoping the boys do the brand proud on Saturdays).
But what I hear people gently suggesting is that I don't have to carry all of that baggage into my writing life and entrepreneurial ventures. I really think Matt, in a different comment, nailed the distinction. If I can recognize branding as a tool to use rather than as a system that uses me, then perhaps there's a path forward.
I’m so glad our conversation has resonated with other scholars out there, Josh! I reject hustle culture, and refuse to play that game. And I’m just Gen X enough to find “personal branding” icky, as well. But there are several entrepreneurial thinkers carving out space for “slow” business practice, like Mark Silver (“Heart of Business”), Kerstin Martin (Calm Business, https://mycalmbusiness.com/) and -- here on Substack! -- Emma Gannon, author of The Success Myth. I think “moving slow and not breaking things” is what will save us in the end. 🙏🏼
Thank you, Leslie! I really need to read some of these folks -- they are all new to me. You are a few steps ahead of me in this transition, and so I appreciate your mentorship!
@Joshua, in the entrepreneurial world we went through this and periodically re-cycle through it. A successful startup is one that grows fast and unreasonably so. This is driven by the venture capital model (which gets 95% of the startup/entrepreneurial press) is all about grow fast, scale and the need for VCs to provide returns to their limited partners (their investors) means 5-6 of every 10 companies they fund fails, 2-3 barely return the money and that 1-2 that hit out of the park provides unreasonable returns across the entire investment made (into all 10 companies). Which means for every Google, or Facebook numerous failed startups (and husks of entrepreneurs are left behind).
This spawned the Small Giants movement (https://smallgiants.org/about/) back 20 years ago. Of course historically there have been the Inc. 500 or 1000 and similarly Zebras Unite ('we need Zebras not Unicorns') who "co-create and catalyse community, capital, and culture for people building businesses that are better for the world" (https://zebrasunite.coop/our-vision) came 10 years ago. So the quest persists non just in academe or for content creators.
So everything here, every comment, is way above my pay grade. But hey, I'm going to wade in and say what I can about academe, and leaving it all behind.
First of all, I'm not very academic. Anything I've learned about life has pretty well been self-taught in the school of hard knocks. I worked in a sawmill my entire life. I started there when I was 19. The only reason I didn't start at 18 was that my parents gave me a year off to be a writer. They asked me what I was going to do when I go out of school (1975-76), and I said I wanted to write. I had all those dreams of riches and fame. The one thing I learned was that economics are important, but not everything. I had a good job, and made a lot of money. There were times I was making more money than most academics, bringing in 80-90,000 a year, with a lot of overtime. And then there would be a strike and you'd lose everything you had, and have to start over again. I went through that about 7 times. No biggie, that's life.
Through it all, I've always written. It was my saving grace, so to say. I never sent anything out, thinking I was never good enough. When I did finally submit my stories, I never made any money at it. I never questioned my role in life. The one thing I had to do was provide for my family. That was it. Anything that I wanted, anything that I needed, was put on hold for the needs, and wants, and desires of the kids we had. They were all that mattered. And it should be all that matters. Your life as a parent should be about the kids.
I came here under strange circumstances; I left work under traumatic circumstance that resulted in the death of one of my best friends under the wheels of the machine I was driving. I was, to put it bluntly, a little "fucked up". I look at life differently now. Life goes on, I always say, until it doesn't. And you never know when that will be. Okay, we all get that. My way through it all was Milton: "The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a Hell of Heaven, or a Heaven of Hell..." or something like that. When I started my'Stack, it was to reinvent myself. All of what happened before, all of what I'd done and been through, all of the drugs, the drinking, the screwing around, meant nothing. They were stepping stones to where I am today.
I don't write essays. I suppose I could if I put my mind to it; I write fiction. I write stories that appeal to me. I have a lifetime of experience just the same as everyone else, and I put it to good use. I ask myself one question: What if? That's it. That one question has led me to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria; the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya; the independence of Congo. The one thing I learned about working and living, is that living is far more important than working; family is the only thing that matters; and everything that you want to make of yourself after all of that is over, is possible. People ask me what I want to do now that I'm retired. Okay, I want to write. I want to see if I can succeed at this, not for my wife, or my family, but for me. I am doing this to show myself that I belong here.
I try not to overthink life. I take things one day at a time. I don't make plans for the future because "here is a name writ in water..." Don't be too hard on yourself because you can't figure it out right now. You're not supposed to. Life is a mystery. It's meant to be enjoyed. I put my stories out, and look to the next one. I look for things that excite me, things that challenge me as a writer. I sometimes succeed, and I sometimes fail, but my readers see things differently. What I see as a failure, they don't. And that, my friend, is the answer. You can only do as you do, and what you do. Nobody is going to know the inner turmoil we all face.
Thanks, Ben -- I'm a subscriber and look forward to reading more of your work. We actually share a blue collar background. My grandfather worked at a sawmill for his entire life. My father was a land surveyor and now works seasonally as a firefighter (at age 73), as I did as a college student.
Happily, my kids are well cared for and I'm not in immediate need of providing more for them. So there is some privilege involved in thinking deeply about the "why." The separation of work and identity is easier, I think, in some of the trades. You take pride in your work, but you know that it's *just* work, and you cultivate other interests outside it, as you did with your writing, as my grandfather did with hunting and fishing. It is both a blessing and a curse to make a living with one's head, moreso than with one's hands. Some of my favorite jobs were manual labor -- firefighting, caring for wilderness trails. The work was simple, and not glamorous, and often it was repetitive enough that it freed the mind. Many of my poems come from my summers in the back country, when I spent my days clearing brush or pulling a crosscut saw through wind-fallen cedar.
Reading your interview with Leslie Castro-Woodhouse, and this follow up post, prompted me to upgrade my subscription to paid. Thank you for creating such a wonderful resource and community!
I left the Harvard PhD program in history in 1996 for reasons similar to what you and others have discussed. I hope it isn't too depressing to say so, but I'm still looking for a workplace that feeds the "why," after all this time. But I haven't given up! I worked in administrative support at a university for a while as I sporadically pursued freelance writing on the side. Then I became an environmental attorney. Then I suffered a career crisis and burnout and left the legal profession. Now I'm in my third year of trying to figure out what comes next.
I'm deeply drawn to stories like yours and Leslie's, of former academics trying to carve out a niche as individual practitioners, applying academic expertise to build problem-solving relationships with individual clients who need and hope for one-on-one attention, using emerging electro-digital-network-y tools like Substack. Having experimented with Substack just a bit, the potential for individual connection and community building is clear.
Anyway, reading this post and your interview with Leslie have helped encourage me to think more deeply about what my specific expertise is, who could benefit from that, and how to reach them. In my case, I have an interest in topics that are hot button political and cultural issues (e.g. ideological polarization and its costs in personal and professional life), which are causing controversy and strife not only in academia but in workplaces and public discourse more generally. I think I have some personal emotional baggage around those topics, and I'm currently working on those, among other things, with an excellent career coach and wise human being.
I wish I had answers to the issues around idealism that you raise in this post. In the decades since I left Harvard, my experience taught me that even in the best organizational setting, we have to set aside our personal emotional needs and values to at least some extent, for the sake of just getting s*it done and making the organizational machine hum along. I can see where the same kind of conflicts between personal values versus the needs of the work (often totalizing needs) could arise in working-for-yourself settings. I fear that there may be a deep contradiction between the hyper-individualist celebration of personal autonomy and actualization in US professional culture and the very real, necessary demands of a twenty first century economy based on economies of scale and constantly changing technology. I worry that in any conflict between the personal and the economic, the economic has to come first.
I have a vague fantasy that tools like Substack may allow the formation of something like intentional economic communities able to live something close to their preferred lives, at a slower and more deliberate pace, more connected to transcendent, irreducible personal values shared with others, in an alternative space connected to but distinct from the larger, hyper-fast, technology intensive economy. But it is just a fantasy. If I were a graduate advisor reading what I just wrote, I would say: uh, yeah, that needs some fleshing out. Glittering generalities, etc.
Anyway, please pardon the long comment. Thank you so much for creating this space.
Welcome, and thanks for making my day! I'm so glad that Leslie's story and today's post resonated with you. It's always nice to know that we're not alone.
There's a lot to unpack here, but I love these lines: "I fear that there may be a deep contradiction between the hyper-individualist celebration of personal autonomy and actualization in US professional culture and the very real, necessary demands of a twenty first century economy based on economies of scale and constantly changing technology. I worry that in any conflict between the personal and the economic, the economic has to come first." You have anticipated the subject of my next interview, with Dr. James F. Richardson. We spoke, in fact, earlier this week -- but it will take a little time to edit and publish our conversation. James feels that we need to counter hyper-individualism and the alienation it produces with networks of reciprocal obligation. But he is a living paradox as a high-ticket consultant who counsels clients on brand strategy even while critiquing the ills of capitalism. As someone living with Asperberg's, he recognizes that many of the qualities that make him successful and capable of enduring the loneliness of solopreneurship are not natural or healthy for others.
Your closing paragraph is catnip for someone who has been writing on Substack for nearly two years and who has struggled the entire time to decouple my own goals and vision from the core mythology of the platform, which is precisely the fantasy you describe. They trot out many success stories of people who earn their primary income here. But typically those are folks with already-large followings, who are not starting at zero. The ones who do start at zero and grow to that scale often embrace a truly obsessive and relentless mindset. Take for instance, this writer's story: https://writinginthedark.substack.com/p/how-i-grew-my-substack-from-zero?utm_source=cross-post&publication_id=1145905&post_id=139418743&utm_campaign=1376077&isFreemail=false&r=16vgt
As someone recovering from my career pivot and now redefining myself post-divorce with shared custody of three kids, I'm slowly beginning to realize that it's OK to not have this all figured out immediately. And I have an almost knee-jerk reaction now against anything that feels like it could suck me in and command all my waking energy. That means accepting more modest growth and not launching immediately to a self-sustaining income. But I think there is a principle here that is also true of the much sought after "viral" content.
As I said in a comment thread recently, I've only had one truly viral post. It was written at a unique time when I was participating in a writing workshop in Prague and reading Václav Havel for that reason. I was feeling bold and went for it, and the edginess resonated with a lot of readers. It led to a spike in followers (nearly tripling over two weeks), but also to a lot of subsequent inactivity. Many others have said the same -- rapid growth leads to churn, people subscribing and then leaving because they aren't getting the exact thing they liked every week. I prefer slower growth because it feels more durable. Like Bill McKibben, I prefer to depend on a workhorse rather than a racehorse. I may seem like I'm plodding along, and I may not hit top speed down the home stretch, but I'm not going to break my leg in a muddy patch.
Thanks again for joining my community! As I'm sure you've seen in my welcome email, I'm always happy to follow up privately, too.
Almost all those overnight success stories I've seen came from relentless hussle. Obsessions. And, to be honest, would be either impossible or self-destructive of one's relationships for most people.
Thanks so much for writing about your experiences. It definitely helps keep me a little more grounded about my own expectations for Substack and its alluring fantasy. I deeply, deeply grok where you're coming from when you wrote of your "almost knee-jerk reaction now against anything that feels like it could suck me in and command all my waking energy." I'm single, no kids, but I have nieces and nephews and family and friends and so much else that I want to do to feed the soul even as I pursue work that might do the same.
Also, I just read your post on the cult of positive thinking in academia and had several of those "oh-my-god-yes-someone-else-gets-it-I'm-not-crazy" moments while reading.
I'll write more in the course of hanging out here and will drop you a line privately with a few more thoughts. Take good care and best wishes to you!
So much wisdom and insight to gain from all these wonderful responses. Thank you Joshua for starting and facilitating this conversation. I wish I had more to offer here than just a public acknowledgement of my gratitude, but the fact is I’m just now working through all of these questions. When I went back to school at 23, I spent the next decade or so building an academic identity even though I realized early on in graduate school I didn’t want to do research or become a university professor, but there’s no way I could let myself quit and leave the program. I’d feel too bad about myself, so I kept going and found comfort in my “why” of helping students and pursued my goal of getting tenure at a community college (where I went). Then, of course, I found myself in the world of adjuncting, and that was no good either. And while I’m happy with my transition to full-time academic staff and part-time teaching, I left this whole process not having a clue about who I am as a writer and thinker outside of the university. I still cling to my professional identity as a teacher, to my degree for some type of validation. And while Substack has proven to be a wonderful and supportive place to figure all this out, I still find myself feeling self-conscious about writing essays (or comments) that my colleagues would approve of. In other words, I still feel like I carry the brand of the university with me even in my personal pursuits (like this). Anyway, apologies for the ramble. All this just to say I’m invested in these questions and looking forward to figuring them out with you and your community. Thanks!
This is really interesting, Jacob: "I still find myself feeling self-conscious about writing essays (or comments) that my colleagues would approve of. In other words, I still feel like I carry the brand of the university with me even in my personal pursuits (like this)." A fun side note: I heard that the president at my former employer referenced my Substack in his remarks for the 2023 fall faculty workshop. I guess he had seen my academe to industry interview series, and the notion that faculty might be thinking about other opportunities as more attractive caught his attention.
But it makes me wonder how I would feel if I were writing my Substack while teaching full-time. In fact, I had a conversation with a colleague last fall about a potential full-time faculty position at a nearby institution, and almost immediately I wondered whether what I've written here would disqualify me from consideration. But I know of several folks who are writing happily and authentically from within academe. If you don't know Tara Penry's "Quiet Reading with Tara Penry" or John Halbrook's "Personal Canon Formation," you ought to check them out! There are, of course, plenty of other academics who use Substack to leverage their research brand (Jonathan Haidt). But I'm heartened to see others probing these kinds of questions about identity and values.
Thanks for the recommendations! I’ll check them out. Part of the fun of being new to this platform is constantly discovering all these great writers. It’s also helpful to be reminded that plenty of academics are still managing to work at the university and write here as well (or, in your case, leave and still get the attention of the university president 😂). But, I think this is when it’s helpful to return to one’s values. I spent years telling my students how much writing and reading taught me and improved my life, and that they were pursuits worth integrating into their lives regardless of major or future profession. If a colleague or any of my former/current students happen to stumble across a comment or post I’ve made, all they’ll see is me trying to follow my own advice and live as authentically as I know how to.
“I have no trouble leaning into the grindstone. I’m actually too good at doing that. I just want to know that I’m doing it voluntarily, sharpening tools that I know I’ll use to good purpose, not being held there...”
Have you ever read Brooke Erin Duffy's Not Getting Paid to Do What You Love? Most of the book is about the aspirational labor of creative and cultural workers, i.e., the viability labor creatives do for free in the hopes that we'll one day be paid at a full-time rate. In her conclusion, she says that she thinks the modern academy functions in the same way. There, she quotes Ros GiIll--also a good source on this--"Consider academic labour as a species of cultural work, beset by many of the same challenges and experiences that characterize work in the cultural and creative industries." I have Duffy's conclusion on my desktop right now, and I can send it to you if you email me. I'm also talking about similar issues in my post coming out on Tuesday.
Thanks, Jenn -- I don't know Duffy's work. So much good reading yet to do? I'll probably have to forge ahead with my ignorant screed on personal branding next week or soon thereafter, but I have a good list to work through now to get a better grasp on this larger conversation. I'm glad that others are pushing back against hustle culture.
Your questions prompted me to think about means and ends. Not in the usual moral way, but in a practical sense. And to focus on means and where there is clarity and efficiency.
It's not just governments and academic institutions, but any organization that can lose their ability to have tolerably efficient and productive means.
Let's stipulate that the end goal is consistent with your values. And that there is nothing immoral about your means. Then I think means should be evaluated as to whether they are efficient.
I'm not sure what personal branding is, but if it's reputation and if you seek a wider reputation consistent with what you believe your abilities to be, then I don't see anything amiss.
Oof. I relate to this more than I want to. The profession I separated from several times before the final “divorce” I’m contemplating now was nursing. My ideals were not only unrealistic but rooted in a savior complex I am still trying to unravel. What happens to people when we make them solely responsible for the health (education, government, etc) of others?
The responsibility can be crippling. And those to whom we feel responsible disempowered and dehumanized.
I can also relate to the call toward the current cult of branding. As a primarily non-fiction writer, what I’m “selling” is essentially myself and when that doesn’t sell, what does it say about my value and worthiness? How can I comfortably try to earn an income away from the institutions that don’t align with my values without joining the ranks of the performative?
I certainly don’t have the answers but I’m glad others are asking the questions.
Indeed -- we can remind ourselves that the speaker of our memoir is not "me," but things get a little murkier when authors must also think about a long game with marketing. Not to keep feeding you back links, but I wrestled with some of this in a piece called "Numbers Trouble." I think it's unhealthy that nonfiction writers must essentially become minor celebrities to be considered worth an agent's time.
Are you familiar with the term or concept of the "caregiver's dilemma?" It sounds like you're articulating it. It's a constant threat to those in caregiving professions, especially because people outside those professions--per the dilemma--ignore how the demands of the cared-for can hollow-out the care-giver. Too often, people utterly ignore the giver and expect infinite giving. Hence, the caregiver's dilemma.
Yes! There's also a power dynamic at play, especially in the health care system where patients aren't empowered to take responsibility for their own health. This is a topic I could talk about for DAYS! But having language and vocabulary to articulate aspects of the experience is helpful.
I'm an ethicist, and this issue is a textbook one in ethics going back decades.
However, like so much of life, it seems that the institutions ignore this.
I have an almost fear of the medical system just because of how many times I've been actively disempowered in it as providers "just want to get one with it" and yet they're making obviously bad choices. I struggle with blaming them because I know--in all probability--they're horrendously overworked.
So, speaking more generally, the systems tend to overwork providers and encourage an assembly-line like approach to care, but the latter almost universally disempowers patients. Even knowledgeable, active ones like me. So, the vocabulary I'm providing is "systemic disempowerment." The way the institution operates, despite intentions, creates repeated, pervasive outcomes (systemic) that disempower both providers and the cared-for. It also forces providers to protect themselves against the demands of the cared-for, despite both the mission and protocols of the institution. In this way, administrators can make claims about what their policies are--they're awesome right?-- while ignoring the fact that the implementation forces outcomes adverse to those policies. Blame is then placed on the provider. This is all a "strategic deferral of responsibility." It's strategic in that the most deft administrators are aware of all this, and make it someone else's problem.
I learned this, btw, in academia. It does this. A lot.
I hope this gives you more ideas and vocabulary for articulation. I specialize in institutional effects, and such.
I'm thinking -- head swirling -- about things like "...a continued partnership will do us real harm" (Dolezal, above) and the concept of hustle, grind, branding, identity, purpose. On my very best days, which are few and have a lot of "far" between, I think, "Well, nothing mysterious here about my 'why.' There is no purpose/why. Just don't be an asshole, laugh at what's funny, and love my people. Death will come, no worries."
The rest of the time, I think about things like the implications of trading my time for money; the realities of introversion; philosopher Byung-Chul Han's work on "burnout," accomplishment society, and idleness; current-day Marxist and Weberian thinking regarding the transformation of 'work' into a set of imperatives, where our souls and 'purposes' are colonized.
Is 'everything' in the middle-class United States just marketing? Has 'the Internet' bullied us, insisting that we are truly just objects (to others and to ourselves), that we need to persist in representing ourselves as objects, constructions, identities, items to be branded with "merch"?
"A continued partnership will do us real harm," Josh, yes. In this case, the partnership is...me + hustle, me + grind, me + 'why,' me + 'purpose,' and me + capitalism, generally.
Oh, Rebecca, sending compassion and love for you on those many *bad* days, when your thoughts must be far dimmer. I recognize much of what you say in my own thinking before both my work separation and my divorce. And it says something about our institutions (or relationships) when they leave us feeling like death will provide welcome relief. I so hope that you can find a more sustaining day-to-day way of being.
You've nailed my resistance in your second paragraph. I did feel that my soul and purpose had been colonized during brand conversations at my former employer. And as I say in my response to Jay above, I don't think that I have to accept capitalistic parlance as the default for everything in my life, anymore than I have to accept Bob Dylan's notion that everyone worships something whether they are conscious of it or not (why does the word have to be "worship" -- why does the word have to be "brand"?).
Sending solidarity to you in resisting the systems that would make us objects even to ourselves! Fuck that, Rebecca. I don't wake up thinking that anymore, I'm grateful to say. I have a solid year, likely two, to give my entrepreneurial ventures a go. And I mean to use that time to restore myself. I hope you can find a way to do the same.
I haven't figured all this out--especially about aligning one's why with an employer, which I think is mostly about finding a workable compromise--that is a compromise that doesn't compromise one's values. I have much to say about the academic's transition into office environments, but that is not what motivated me to want to comment.
Instead, it's the personal branding thing you were talking about as a self-employed person/entrepreneur. When I was freelancing, I found it important to be myself and not try to be everything to everyone. For me, the term "personal branding" borrows so much from advertising and positioning that I find it offputting from the outset. It's also a potentially damaging way for me to look at it because I already struggle with authenticity. Instead, over time I learned to speak well about what I have to offer (as an editor) and what makes me different from someone else. This comes from within, but obviously is put in perspective and context with the world. (This not unlike some of the work of teaching.) But "personal branding" makes it sound like it's an exterior process. Our culture is heavily bent toward these kinds of exterior processes (and is in fact a powerful way that our consumer capitalism works). Resist those tendencies and think about what excites you and tell people you want to do that. Excitement and enjoyment are catching. Be you.
Ah, I like the interior/exterior distinctions. I think you're quite right about resisting the exterior process. In fact, it might be liberating to think of my coaching and editing as a trade, rather than as a brand. My uncles run a tree removal service that is basically driven by their reputation as good sawyers. But they play zero games with exterior marketing, and they lose no sleep over the ups and downs of demand (it's seasonal, it's life, they do other things during the winter).
I have been thinking about how to communicate the value of my training as a memoirist to coaching clients who need help with personal statements and applications, since I think that is a somewhat unique combination. But you're right that reminding myself about what I'm excited to do and communicating that genuinely is better than getting twisted up in the marketing, which I will always suck at and hate.
You can always rebrand if the first one doesn't work out. Like Coke Classic. Joshua Classic? I don't mind branding. The only time it's tough as a writer is if you are pigeonholed by it. I write humor.... but so much more... but mostly humor. I guess "mostly" is the key.
"Mostly" is a good way of thinking about it. And it's possible that I'm bringing a little "overthink-itis" to the concept. Although there is a rather sordid history to the term and some truly damaging impacts on higher education from the obsession with it. Since you are a newer reader, you might not have seen this one from a while back.
But I quite take your point (and Matt's below) to heart. Branding does not need to be oppressive if we turn it to our own purposes rather than feeling that it rules us.
One of the things I admire about you, Josh, is your characteristic questioning of yourself and your situation. Here's a question: what's the difference between branding and expressing who you are?
Thank you, Jay. That question lies at the heart of the essay that I feel I must write. My knee-jerk reaction is to wonder why corporate marketing gets to claim my authentic expressions of who I am. It really is a Matrix-like dynamic, where the parlance of capitalism creeps into everything we do. Do I need a brand for my backyard garden, for fuck's sake? Is my homemade bread part of my personal brand? I also feel that artists who have too-clear brands become predictable and repetitive. There was a reason why Kurt Cobain worried about being "stupid and contagious."
Matt's comment in this thread has me wondering if I might be carrying some of my baggage from my former employer into my entrepreneurial ventures. I was part of all those consultant-led conversations about institutional "brand pillars," and I saw how the STEM focus of many of them pushed the humanities aside. I saw this repeated in marketing materials, in admissions recruitment, even in boilerplate press releases for one of my own grants.
But it's possible that I might think of branding as a tool, like my Stripe account, to be used for my own purposes -- not a system that I fear grinding me up or betraying my core values, as was true at my former employer.
I've decided to go with a craft essay for next week, but the longer treatment of this topic is coming soon!
So here's what I'm thinking. "Branding" can be, mostly is, a superficial, commercialized presentation of an identity. We can adopt the term, if we want, to any appearance that attempts to present a self. So my style of dress is a kind of "branding." I'd rather not adopt commercial language to my living out of an identity. I'm attempting to shape my substack as an (obviously limited) expression of who I am as a writer-person. I recently revamped my welcome post again, switching up among the two logos I've used. I have reasons for it, and that can be conceived, since I do have commercial desires on Substack as a branding move. But if you think about it, the new appearance might be only marginally clearer to some visitors. More importantly for me, it communicates what I want to communicate about myself in this context, regardless of its commercial results, which are not primary for me.
As I see it, part of you, on Substack, has similar desires as a writer and a thinker. But unlike me, you are trying to build a post-academic working life, and Substack, again, is an important tool you've chosen to use in that project. That requires a kind of actual commercial branding that is different from what more personally feels like an authentic and satisfying presentation of ourselves to the world.
These two different goals are producing a tension in you. You know this. I just thought I'd offer whatever benefit there may be in seeing it through someone else's perspective.
Thanks, Jay. I think my year-in-review post was my attempt at saying that I'm *not* going to be deliberately using Substack for branding. If some of that natural expression of my interests and sensibility suggests something like a brand to people, then so be it. Tomorrow's post will be a craft essay that directs readers -- hopefully gently, and only at the end -- to my coaching business.
It's the coaching business where I feel more of this tension, because I do recognize that one needs to stand out to scale up, and that telling a coherent story about one's services is part of that. But even then I find that much of what repelled me from the corporatized university still bedevils me as an entrepreneur. I'll post about it when the essay feels ready -- this discussion has helped me sort out what the core questions are, and how I might avoid simply projecting my own baggage onto the subject.
I recall your year-end post and what you said there -- was glad to read it, too. I didn't mean to suggest anything about what your Substack was conveying, rather to respond to what you were saying here, and now you've clarified for me where you're feeling that tension. Glad to read you're sorting out the issues.
I've been here almost a year and I want to stay so am starting to think about the why's and wherefores, and how I want to stay. I know I don't want to limit myself and I know I don't want to 'do' anything that isn't absolutely me - that includes unnecessarily 'branding'. Does 'integrity' work as branding do you think?
Thanks, June. By "here," I think you mean Substack? If so, welcome to the club. And I've begun to fairly consciously uncouple my coaching/editing business from what I produce on Substack, except as proof of concept of what I offer. My Substack proves my sensibility, and sometimes allows me to delve into the craft of literary memoir, but I'm not likely to use it for workshops, etc. It's more of a public notebook and creative playground, and I'd like to keep it that way.
The proponents of branding would say that integrity can be part of your personal brand. But if I hear you correctly, there is a difference between the way you (we) define integrity and the way that someone leverages integrity in a space like LinkedIn. I'll spare my whole side rant about this, since I'm writing about it for an upcoming post, but I think about how the local economy in my Montana hometown worked. There were people who you knew could do things. Some of them were better than others (there was a guy who could do simple pine bookshelves and another guy who could do more ornate built-ins). But typically it didn't matter if one was a tent-meeting preacher (like my uncles) or a blind drunk after working hours. If they could cut down the dead tree in your yard, you'd give them a call and pay them what was fair. And I don't think there was a lot of bitter competition among local businesses or a lot of money spent on marketing. You had a reputation, which drew as much from how you behaved while cheering for your kid at Little League games as it did from what your ad in the local newspaper said, and that was how people judged your integrity. Virtual spaces -- where brands thrive -- are completely different.
" the way that someone leverages integrity in a space like LinkedIn" I have to say that I think that language is horrible and that the people who think like that (which I'm assuming does not include you) bring to mind that old chestnut: If you can fake sincerity you've got it made. I'd say that 99% of my contacts on Linkedin who I trust are people I've interacted with in 'real life'. And you're right -- I was thinking of this just a few days ago in fact -- the way people behave in ordinary situations says an awful lot about them. I can think of two people who asked me if I'd work with them, and when I saw how they treated people they regarded as beneath them I quietly allowed the matter to drop.
"Many colleagues on LinkedIn tell me that personal branding and authenticity go together, that I’m falsely dichotomizing the two." I agree that I don't think I agree with that sentiment. Not with social media, anyway. Too many of us know people who post a synthetic version of themselves on Instagram or some other site.
Professionally, I guess I agree with Jason: but then it's not personal branding, is it? It's just branding. One doesn't need to know if a plumber is a superstar individual when the reason he's there is to fix a pipe. But I guess when the product is ourselves, blending the two is inevitable. But is a refined chocolate bar the same as the original cacao?
As we embrace homo deus, we increasingly cannot appear unsavory and "human." At least not the definition of human that conveys a flawed being. Many will benefit from this: but just as many, if not more, will be driven mad.
I think personal branding only applies to those applying for mid-management or senior level positions. In that case, there does seem to be a need to supplement skills with some curated form of "character" or "personality" or "values." Tradespeople might have businesses with reputations, and if they grow to a certain scale, they might be able to play the branding game. But a lot of plumbers have a long waitlist of people who desperately just need a water hookup to their ice maker and who don't care whether the guy has a catchy jingle playing on the radio.
Your last two sentences are quite wise. As I said in response to Jason above, grieving is bad for branding. But sometimes that is a necessary part of what we bring to the table as colleagues and employees. And it can eventually become a strength, if we're allowed to be seen in that way. Shamans, as I'm fond of saying, are typically credentialed by some psychological crack-up or illness that reduces them to the same level of vulnerability as their patients. Western culture prefers the myth of the ubermensch, the professional who can batten down the personal hatches and not inflict those things on anyone, even though they might be actual sources of connection.
I actually found it sweet that the guy I bought a TV from at Best Buy felt comfortable confiding in me that he had gone through a bad break-up recently (I'd revealed that I was buying another TV so soon because of my divorce -- because my name was still on record as having bought the one at the house I just left :). But he was Puerto Rican, and I guess he brought a different cultural sensibility to our conversation, which could have been much more transactional. I don't think he was simply being manipulative or spinning a yarn -- though there's perhaps no away of knowing. But I think any training manager would have discouraged that level of self-revelation, even though it made me much less exhausted by the purchase than I usually am after that kind of transaction. He actually thanked me for giving him something to do, because he had just been dusting off computer monitors during a slow day. I think corporate models really miss out on the potential for genuine human connection. He had nothing to do with the "Best Buy" brand. He was just a guy being present to another guy. It was great. (I knew what I wanted, so there was no upselling involved, although in telling this story I'm aware that some might be squinting at it wondering whether I was being coerced in some way. I really don't think so.)
I think if you were in a tourist zone somewhere, you'd be right to be skeptical about a random guy's story. Stores don't seem like that kind of place. Abroad, I noticed that Americans are very forthcoming about personal stuff. The term "open book" is very applicable. For that reason, I would have believed him. Puerto Rico, different as it is, is nonetheless an American territory. (beautiful place, by the way: very underrated)
It's also easier to share personal stuff with strangers because you'll probably never see them again. Who will they tell? Not everyone's friendships are the kind where it's easy to share that kind of thing.
Interesting about shamans. Their role kind of reminds me of writers, actually. In the past, their state of "oddness" - which was certainly a vulnerable condition a lot of the time - allowed them unique knowledge of the human condition.
The asymmetry of power between employer and employee makes it hard to be perfectly aligned, and capitalism almost always gets in the way. Part of the problem too are leadership models that seek to manage people rather than empower them to help achieve common goals.
Yes -- all those clear organizational charts and lines of reporting do make people feel expendable, not essential. I suppose once one reaches a certain level of influence within a corporation or institution, one can demand less invisibility within the machine. But I'm thinking of all those UXR researchers that got laid off last year. Some of them were raging success stories in the academe-to-industry transition. And then suddenly they were back on the market, sweating out six months or more of a grueling search. To which I would simply add that managing budgets often means ignoring people, and this is one of the leadership blights of our time, as well.
I just got a television for my new home, and I was watching the free streaming channels while making soup, and the hosts at Bloomberg+ were talking about stocks. They mentioned that Wayfair, a company I just bought some home goods from, had laid off 200+ people and saved a ton of money in the process, which was making their stock rise. And I was like WTF?! Those people just don't matter.
I'm reminded of another line from "The Wire" and other crime shows. No one who is in "the game" expects to get out alive. Getting capped is just part of the deal at some point. The fact that layoffs are normalized is just insane to me. How do you buy a house, move your family to a community, and expect to keep that good thing going if every six months to a year you might have to flip your "Open to Work" banner back on? And how exactly is this better than academic roles, where you might sweat out enrollment every year and live through some indignities with the admin, but actually be able to keep your home and friend network...? I'm certainly not one of those that sings the praises of post-academe life. It's pretty bleak out here, too.
I'm reading Emile Zola's brilliant Germinal (1885), a tale of hardship of a young working man on the move. Much seems the same as today, only harsher because there was no social safety net or environmental regulations. Which, of course, are under assault by Republicans.
Yes, it's eerie how many echoes of the nineteenth century we hear now.
A good title for your next post.
"The fact that layoffs are normalized is just insane to me". It's why Taleb thinks that the most secure option is self-employment, but that's rarely practicable.
I myself have a tentative essay brewing, along the lines of "what am I doing here?". For what it's worth, I think it's important to stay as true to one's own values as possible, to treat oneself with consideration, and to be honourable towards others. Sorry if that sounds trite.
That makes sense -- and I don't see simplicity as trite. It's how to do everything you've said while deciding whether or not to play the branding game (which is increasingly encourage for job seekers, not just for entrepreneurs) that complicates things.
Josh, just to clarify, you did brand yourself as an academic, no?
I was explicitly trained to curate oneself as a scholarly brand, and I've noted over the decades that the academic meat market reinforces that in the extreme. It's more obvious, I think, to people like me who specialized in non-mainstream fields.
Not well. I was a generalist, not a niche researcher.
I believe I did this. Part of my “recovery” (or “Unprofessoring”, if you will 😉) has been figuring out the aspects of my work persona that I put on in order to succeed and which parts are my core identity. The good news is that there is still something left when you take the girl out of academics.
How interesting, Liz. This is one thing I love about your series, that conscious uncoupling from relentless productivity. We are an interesting study in contrasts: a generalist and a scholar with a focused research agenda (an academic brand). I would imagine that the transition has been harder for you as a result.
I don't know if we have different conceptions of branding, but it seems to me that if one were to eschew any kind of branding whatsoever, that stance would constitute their brand. At the other extreme, if someone produced books, articles, ebooks, mugs, t-shirts etc all with their logo on it, that would be their branding. I wonder if a good way of thinking about it is to ask what one would like others to associate them with. But to be honest, I don't know enough about academia in general, or USA academia in particular, to be able to contribute anything useful to this discussion. My edxperience has been in secondary education (mainly) in England.
You're right that branding has become a kind of catch-all that others can say you're doing even if you don't want to be doing it. Rage Against the Machine = the machine in the end. Or, as Dylan says, "You've gotta serve somebody."
This needs to simmer longer, but I think I might be reacting against the ways that branding was used oppressively at my former employer, and the ways that I see universities doing this now, trying to simplify a mission, encourage everyone to hew to the "brand pillars," etc. It can create winners and losers within an academic institution (what if your discipline doesn't fit the brand?) and reckless spending (investing in fancy football stadiums, hoping the boys do the brand proud on Saturdays).
But what I hear people gently suggesting is that I don't have to carry all of that baggage into my writing life and entrepreneurial ventures. I really think Matt, in a different comment, nailed the distinction. If I can recognize branding as a tool to use rather than as a system that uses me, then perhaps there's a path forward.
I’m so glad our conversation has resonated with other scholars out there, Josh! I reject hustle culture, and refuse to play that game. And I’m just Gen X enough to find “personal branding” icky, as well. But there are several entrepreneurial thinkers carving out space for “slow” business practice, like Mark Silver (“Heart of Business”), Kerstin Martin (Calm Business, https://mycalmbusiness.com/) and -- here on Substack! -- Emma Gannon, author of The Success Myth. I think “moving slow and not breaking things” is what will save us in the end. 🙏🏼
Thank you, Leslie! I really need to read some of these folks -- they are all new to me. You are a few steps ahead of me in this transition, and so I appreciate your mentorship!
@Joshua, in the entrepreneurial world we went through this and periodically re-cycle through it. A successful startup is one that grows fast and unreasonably so. This is driven by the venture capital model (which gets 95% of the startup/entrepreneurial press) is all about grow fast, scale and the need for VCs to provide returns to their limited partners (their investors) means 5-6 of every 10 companies they fund fails, 2-3 barely return the money and that 1-2 that hit out of the park provides unreasonable returns across the entire investment made (into all 10 companies). Which means for every Google, or Facebook numerous failed startups (and husks of entrepreneurs are left behind).
This spawned the Small Giants movement (https://smallgiants.org/about/) back 20 years ago. Of course historically there have been the Inc. 500 or 1000 and similarly Zebras Unite ('we need Zebras not Unicorns') who "co-create and catalyse community, capital, and culture for people building businesses that are better for the world" (https://zebrasunite.coop/our-vision) came 10 years ago. So the quest persists non just in academe or for content creators.
So everything here, every comment, is way above my pay grade. But hey, I'm going to wade in and say what I can about academe, and leaving it all behind.
First of all, I'm not very academic. Anything I've learned about life has pretty well been self-taught in the school of hard knocks. I worked in a sawmill my entire life. I started there when I was 19. The only reason I didn't start at 18 was that my parents gave me a year off to be a writer. They asked me what I was going to do when I go out of school (1975-76), and I said I wanted to write. I had all those dreams of riches and fame. The one thing I learned was that economics are important, but not everything. I had a good job, and made a lot of money. There were times I was making more money than most academics, bringing in 80-90,000 a year, with a lot of overtime. And then there would be a strike and you'd lose everything you had, and have to start over again. I went through that about 7 times. No biggie, that's life.
Through it all, I've always written. It was my saving grace, so to say. I never sent anything out, thinking I was never good enough. When I did finally submit my stories, I never made any money at it. I never questioned my role in life. The one thing I had to do was provide for my family. That was it. Anything that I wanted, anything that I needed, was put on hold for the needs, and wants, and desires of the kids we had. They were all that mattered. And it should be all that matters. Your life as a parent should be about the kids.
I came here under strange circumstances; I left work under traumatic circumstance that resulted in the death of one of my best friends under the wheels of the machine I was driving. I was, to put it bluntly, a little "fucked up". I look at life differently now. Life goes on, I always say, until it doesn't. And you never know when that will be. Okay, we all get that. My way through it all was Milton: "The mind is its own place, and of itself can make a Hell of Heaven, or a Heaven of Hell..." or something like that. When I started my'Stack, it was to reinvent myself. All of what happened before, all of what I'd done and been through, all of the drugs, the drinking, the screwing around, meant nothing. They were stepping stones to where I am today.
I don't write essays. I suppose I could if I put my mind to it; I write fiction. I write stories that appeal to me. I have a lifetime of experience just the same as everyone else, and I put it to good use. I ask myself one question: What if? That's it. That one question has led me to the Japanese invasion of Manchuria; the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya; the independence of Congo. The one thing I learned about working and living, is that living is far more important than working; family is the only thing that matters; and everything that you want to make of yourself after all of that is over, is possible. People ask me what I want to do now that I'm retired. Okay, I want to write. I want to see if I can succeed at this, not for my wife, or my family, but for me. I am doing this to show myself that I belong here.
I try not to overthink life. I take things one day at a time. I don't make plans for the future because "here is a name writ in water..." Don't be too hard on yourself because you can't figure it out right now. You're not supposed to. Life is a mystery. It's meant to be enjoyed. I put my stories out, and look to the next one. I look for things that excite me, things that challenge me as a writer. I sometimes succeed, and I sometimes fail, but my readers see things differently. What I see as a failure, they don't. And that, my friend, is the answer. You can only do as you do, and what you do. Nobody is going to know the inner turmoil we all face.
Thanks, Ben -- I'm a subscriber and look forward to reading more of your work. We actually share a blue collar background. My grandfather worked at a sawmill for his entire life. My father was a land surveyor and now works seasonally as a firefighter (at age 73), as I did as a college student.
Happily, my kids are well cared for and I'm not in immediate need of providing more for them. So there is some privilege involved in thinking deeply about the "why." The separation of work and identity is easier, I think, in some of the trades. You take pride in your work, but you know that it's *just* work, and you cultivate other interests outside it, as you did with your writing, as my grandfather did with hunting and fishing. It is both a blessing and a curse to make a living with one's head, moreso than with one's hands. Some of my favorite jobs were manual labor -- firefighting, caring for wilderness trails. The work was simple, and not glamorous, and often it was repetitive enough that it freed the mind. Many of my poems come from my summers in the back country, when I spent my days clearing brush or pulling a crosscut saw through wind-fallen cedar.
Reading your interview with Leslie Castro-Woodhouse, and this follow up post, prompted me to upgrade my subscription to paid. Thank you for creating such a wonderful resource and community!
I left the Harvard PhD program in history in 1996 for reasons similar to what you and others have discussed. I hope it isn't too depressing to say so, but I'm still looking for a workplace that feeds the "why," after all this time. But I haven't given up! I worked in administrative support at a university for a while as I sporadically pursued freelance writing on the side. Then I became an environmental attorney. Then I suffered a career crisis and burnout and left the legal profession. Now I'm in my third year of trying to figure out what comes next.
I'm deeply drawn to stories like yours and Leslie's, of former academics trying to carve out a niche as individual practitioners, applying academic expertise to build problem-solving relationships with individual clients who need and hope for one-on-one attention, using emerging electro-digital-network-y tools like Substack. Having experimented with Substack just a bit, the potential for individual connection and community building is clear.
Anyway, reading this post and your interview with Leslie have helped encourage me to think more deeply about what my specific expertise is, who could benefit from that, and how to reach them. In my case, I have an interest in topics that are hot button political and cultural issues (e.g. ideological polarization and its costs in personal and professional life), which are causing controversy and strife not only in academia but in workplaces and public discourse more generally. I think I have some personal emotional baggage around those topics, and I'm currently working on those, among other things, with an excellent career coach and wise human being.
I wish I had answers to the issues around idealism that you raise in this post. In the decades since I left Harvard, my experience taught me that even in the best organizational setting, we have to set aside our personal emotional needs and values to at least some extent, for the sake of just getting s*it done and making the organizational machine hum along. I can see where the same kind of conflicts between personal values versus the needs of the work (often totalizing needs) could arise in working-for-yourself settings. I fear that there may be a deep contradiction between the hyper-individualist celebration of personal autonomy and actualization in US professional culture and the very real, necessary demands of a twenty first century economy based on economies of scale and constantly changing technology. I worry that in any conflict between the personal and the economic, the economic has to come first.
I have a vague fantasy that tools like Substack may allow the formation of something like intentional economic communities able to live something close to their preferred lives, at a slower and more deliberate pace, more connected to transcendent, irreducible personal values shared with others, in an alternative space connected to but distinct from the larger, hyper-fast, technology intensive economy. But it is just a fantasy. If I were a graduate advisor reading what I just wrote, I would say: uh, yeah, that needs some fleshing out. Glittering generalities, etc.
Anyway, please pardon the long comment. Thank you so much for creating this space.
Welcome, and thanks for making my day! I'm so glad that Leslie's story and today's post resonated with you. It's always nice to know that we're not alone.
There's a lot to unpack here, but I love these lines: "I fear that there may be a deep contradiction between the hyper-individualist celebration of personal autonomy and actualization in US professional culture and the very real, necessary demands of a twenty first century economy based on economies of scale and constantly changing technology. I worry that in any conflict between the personal and the economic, the economic has to come first." You have anticipated the subject of my next interview, with Dr. James F. Richardson. We spoke, in fact, earlier this week -- but it will take a little time to edit and publish our conversation. James feels that we need to counter hyper-individualism and the alienation it produces with networks of reciprocal obligation. But he is a living paradox as a high-ticket consultant who counsels clients on brand strategy even while critiquing the ills of capitalism. As someone living with Asperberg's, he recognizes that many of the qualities that make him successful and capable of enduring the loneliness of solopreneurship are not natural or healthy for others.
Your closing paragraph is catnip for someone who has been writing on Substack for nearly two years and who has struggled the entire time to decouple my own goals and vision from the core mythology of the platform, which is precisely the fantasy you describe. They trot out many success stories of people who earn their primary income here. But typically those are folks with already-large followings, who are not starting at zero. The ones who do start at zero and grow to that scale often embrace a truly obsessive and relentless mindset. Take for instance, this writer's story: https://writinginthedark.substack.com/p/how-i-grew-my-substack-from-zero?utm_source=cross-post&publication_id=1145905&post_id=139418743&utm_campaign=1376077&isFreemail=false&r=16vgt
As someone recovering from my career pivot and now redefining myself post-divorce with shared custody of three kids, I'm slowly beginning to realize that it's OK to not have this all figured out immediately. And I have an almost knee-jerk reaction now against anything that feels like it could suck me in and command all my waking energy. That means accepting more modest growth and not launching immediately to a self-sustaining income. But I think there is a principle here that is also true of the much sought after "viral" content.
As I said in a comment thread recently, I've only had one truly viral post. It was written at a unique time when I was participating in a writing workshop in Prague and reading Václav Havel for that reason. I was feeling bold and went for it, and the edginess resonated with a lot of readers. It led to a spike in followers (nearly tripling over two weeks), but also to a lot of subsequent inactivity. Many others have said the same -- rapid growth leads to churn, people subscribing and then leaving because they aren't getting the exact thing they liked every week. I prefer slower growth because it feels more durable. Like Bill McKibben, I prefer to depend on a workhorse rather than a racehorse. I may seem like I'm plodding along, and I may not hit top speed down the home stretch, but I'm not going to break my leg in a muddy patch.
Thanks again for joining my community! As I'm sure you've seen in my welcome email, I'm always happy to follow up privately, too.
Affirming Josh's comment about relentlessness.
Almost all those overnight success stories I've seen came from relentless hussle. Obsessions. And, to be honest, would be either impossible or self-destructive of one's relationships for most people.
So, don't do that...
Hey, how about some gardening talk, instead? ;)
Gardening content coming up! Seeds ordered today, in fact. Big plans.
Hello Josh, I'm glad to be here!
Thanks so much for writing about your experiences. It definitely helps keep me a little more grounded about my own expectations for Substack and its alluring fantasy. I deeply, deeply grok where you're coming from when you wrote of your "almost knee-jerk reaction now against anything that feels like it could suck me in and command all my waking energy." I'm single, no kids, but I have nieces and nephews and family and friends and so much else that I want to do to feed the soul even as I pursue work that might do the same.
Also, I just read your post on the cult of positive thinking in academia and had several of those "oh-my-god-yes-someone-else-gets-it-I'm-not-crazy" moments while reading.
I'll write more in the course of hanging out here and will drop you a line privately with a few more thoughts. Take good care and best wishes to you!
Hugs!
Thank you!
So much wisdom and insight to gain from all these wonderful responses. Thank you Joshua for starting and facilitating this conversation. I wish I had more to offer here than just a public acknowledgement of my gratitude, but the fact is I’m just now working through all of these questions. When I went back to school at 23, I spent the next decade or so building an academic identity even though I realized early on in graduate school I didn’t want to do research or become a university professor, but there’s no way I could let myself quit and leave the program. I’d feel too bad about myself, so I kept going and found comfort in my “why” of helping students and pursued my goal of getting tenure at a community college (where I went). Then, of course, I found myself in the world of adjuncting, and that was no good either. And while I’m happy with my transition to full-time academic staff and part-time teaching, I left this whole process not having a clue about who I am as a writer and thinker outside of the university. I still cling to my professional identity as a teacher, to my degree for some type of validation. And while Substack has proven to be a wonderful and supportive place to figure all this out, I still find myself feeling self-conscious about writing essays (or comments) that my colleagues would approve of. In other words, I still feel like I carry the brand of the university with me even in my personal pursuits (like this). Anyway, apologies for the ramble. All this just to say I’m invested in these questions and looking forward to figuring them out with you and your community. Thanks!
This is really interesting, Jacob: "I still find myself feeling self-conscious about writing essays (or comments) that my colleagues would approve of. In other words, I still feel like I carry the brand of the university with me even in my personal pursuits (like this)." A fun side note: I heard that the president at my former employer referenced my Substack in his remarks for the 2023 fall faculty workshop. I guess he had seen my academe to industry interview series, and the notion that faculty might be thinking about other opportunities as more attractive caught his attention.
But it makes me wonder how I would feel if I were writing my Substack while teaching full-time. In fact, I had a conversation with a colleague last fall about a potential full-time faculty position at a nearby institution, and almost immediately I wondered whether what I've written here would disqualify me from consideration. But I know of several folks who are writing happily and authentically from within academe. If you don't know Tara Penry's "Quiet Reading with Tara Penry" or John Halbrook's "Personal Canon Formation," you ought to check them out! There are, of course, plenty of other academics who use Substack to leverage their research brand (Jonathan Haidt). But I'm heartened to see others probing these kinds of questions about identity and values.
Thanks for the recommendations! I’ll check them out. Part of the fun of being new to this platform is constantly discovering all these great writers. It’s also helpful to be reminded that plenty of academics are still managing to work at the university and write here as well (or, in your case, leave and still get the attention of the university president 😂). But, I think this is when it’s helpful to return to one’s values. I spent years telling my students how much writing and reading taught me and improved my life, and that they were pursuits worth integrating into their lives regardless of major or future profession. If a colleague or any of my former/current students happen to stumble across a comment or post I’ve made, all they’ll see is me trying to follow my own advice and live as authentically as I know how to.
“I have no trouble leaning into the grindstone. I’m actually too good at doing that. I just want to know that I’m doing it voluntarily, sharpening tools that I know I’ll use to good purpose, not being held there...”
Yes. 💯
Have you ever read Brooke Erin Duffy's Not Getting Paid to Do What You Love? Most of the book is about the aspirational labor of creative and cultural workers, i.e., the viability labor creatives do for free in the hopes that we'll one day be paid at a full-time rate. In her conclusion, she says that she thinks the modern academy functions in the same way. There, she quotes Ros GiIll--also a good source on this--"Consider academic labour as a species of cultural work, beset by many of the same challenges and experiences that characterize work in the cultural and creative industries." I have Duffy's conclusion on my desktop right now, and I can send it to you if you email me. I'm also talking about similar issues in my post coming out on Tuesday.
Thanks, Jenn -- I don't know Duffy's work. So much good reading yet to do? I'll probably have to forge ahead with my ignorant screed on personal branding next week or soon thereafter, but I have a good list to work through now to get a better grasp on this larger conversation. I'm glad that others are pushing back against hustle culture.
I'll email you separately! I'm at dolezaljosh@gmail.com
Your questions prompted me to think about means and ends. Not in the usual moral way, but in a practical sense. And to focus on means and where there is clarity and efficiency.
It's not just governments and academic institutions, but any organization that can lose their ability to have tolerably efficient and productive means.
Let's stipulate that the end goal is consistent with your values. And that there is nothing immoral about your means. Then I think means should be evaluated as to whether they are efficient.
I'm not sure what personal branding is, but if it's reputation and if you seek a wider reputation consistent with what you believe your abilities to be, then I don't see anything amiss.
Thanks, David. I see reputation and branding as distinct, but there is some overlap. This is why I likely need to write about it!
Oof. I relate to this more than I want to. The profession I separated from several times before the final “divorce” I’m contemplating now was nursing. My ideals were not only unrealistic but rooted in a savior complex I am still trying to unravel. What happens to people when we make them solely responsible for the health (education, government, etc) of others?
The responsibility can be crippling. And those to whom we feel responsible disempowered and dehumanized.
I can also relate to the call toward the current cult of branding. As a primarily non-fiction writer, what I’m “selling” is essentially myself and when that doesn’t sell, what does it say about my value and worthiness? How can I comfortably try to earn an income away from the institutions that don’t align with my values without joining the ranks of the performative?
I certainly don’t have the answers but I’m glad others are asking the questions.
Indeed -- we can remind ourselves that the speaker of our memoir is not "me," but things get a little murkier when authors must also think about a long game with marketing. Not to keep feeding you back links, but I wrestled with some of this in a piece called "Numbers Trouble." I think it's unhealthy that nonfiction writers must essentially become minor celebrities to be considered worth an agent's time.
https://joshuadolezal.substack.com/p/against-numbers
I agree! Send me all the backlinks. We should promote our "old" work as much as our new work! I'll take a look today and check it out :)
Mariah,
Are you familiar with the term or concept of the "caregiver's dilemma?" It sounds like you're articulating it. It's a constant threat to those in caregiving professions, especially because people outside those professions--per the dilemma--ignore how the demands of the cared-for can hollow-out the care-giver. Too often, people utterly ignore the giver and expect infinite giving. Hence, the caregiver's dilemma.
Yes! There's also a power dynamic at play, especially in the health care system where patients aren't empowered to take responsibility for their own health. This is a topic I could talk about for DAYS! But having language and vocabulary to articulate aspects of the experience is helpful.
Oh...
I'm an ethicist, and this issue is a textbook one in ethics going back decades.
However, like so much of life, it seems that the institutions ignore this.
I have an almost fear of the medical system just because of how many times I've been actively disempowered in it as providers "just want to get one with it" and yet they're making obviously bad choices. I struggle with blaming them because I know--in all probability--they're horrendously overworked.
So, speaking more generally, the systems tend to overwork providers and encourage an assembly-line like approach to care, but the latter almost universally disempowers patients. Even knowledgeable, active ones like me. So, the vocabulary I'm providing is "systemic disempowerment." The way the institution operates, despite intentions, creates repeated, pervasive outcomes (systemic) that disempower both providers and the cared-for. It also forces providers to protect themselves against the demands of the cared-for, despite both the mission and protocols of the institution. In this way, administrators can make claims about what their policies are--they're awesome right?-- while ignoring the fact that the implementation forces outcomes adverse to those policies. Blame is then placed on the provider. This is all a "strategic deferral of responsibility." It's strategic in that the most deft administrators are aware of all this, and make it someone else's problem.
I learned this, btw, in academia. It does this. A lot.
I hope this gives you more ideas and vocabulary for articulation. I specialize in institutional effects, and such.
I'm thinking -- head swirling -- about things like "...a continued partnership will do us real harm" (Dolezal, above) and the concept of hustle, grind, branding, identity, purpose. On my very best days, which are few and have a lot of "far" between, I think, "Well, nothing mysterious here about my 'why.' There is no purpose/why. Just don't be an asshole, laugh at what's funny, and love my people. Death will come, no worries."
The rest of the time, I think about things like the implications of trading my time for money; the realities of introversion; philosopher Byung-Chul Han's work on "burnout," accomplishment society, and idleness; current-day Marxist and Weberian thinking regarding the transformation of 'work' into a set of imperatives, where our souls and 'purposes' are colonized.
Is 'everything' in the middle-class United States just marketing? Has 'the Internet' bullied us, insisting that we are truly just objects (to others and to ourselves), that we need to persist in representing ourselves as objects, constructions, identities, items to be branded with "merch"?
"A continued partnership will do us real harm," Josh, yes. In this case, the partnership is...me + hustle, me + grind, me + 'why,' me + 'purpose,' and me + capitalism, generally.
Oh, Rebecca, sending compassion and love for you on those many *bad* days, when your thoughts must be far dimmer. I recognize much of what you say in my own thinking before both my work separation and my divorce. And it says something about our institutions (or relationships) when they leave us feeling like death will provide welcome relief. I so hope that you can find a more sustaining day-to-day way of being.
You've nailed my resistance in your second paragraph. I did feel that my soul and purpose had been colonized during brand conversations at my former employer. And as I say in my response to Jay above, I don't think that I have to accept capitalistic parlance as the default for everything in my life, anymore than I have to accept Bob Dylan's notion that everyone worships something whether they are conscious of it or not (why does the word have to be "worship" -- why does the word have to be "brand"?).
Sending solidarity to you in resisting the systems that would make us objects even to ourselves! Fuck that, Rebecca. I don't wake up thinking that anymore, I'm grateful to say. I have a solid year, likely two, to give my entrepreneurial ventures a go. And I mean to use that time to restore myself. I hope you can find a way to do the same.
I haven't figured all this out--especially about aligning one's why with an employer, which I think is mostly about finding a workable compromise--that is a compromise that doesn't compromise one's values. I have much to say about the academic's transition into office environments, but that is not what motivated me to want to comment.
Instead, it's the personal branding thing you were talking about as a self-employed person/entrepreneur. When I was freelancing, I found it important to be myself and not try to be everything to everyone. For me, the term "personal branding" borrows so much from advertising and positioning that I find it offputting from the outset. It's also a potentially damaging way for me to look at it because I already struggle with authenticity. Instead, over time I learned to speak well about what I have to offer (as an editor) and what makes me different from someone else. This comes from within, but obviously is put in perspective and context with the world. (This not unlike some of the work of teaching.) But "personal branding" makes it sound like it's an exterior process. Our culture is heavily bent toward these kinds of exterior processes (and is in fact a powerful way that our consumer capitalism works). Resist those tendencies and think about what excites you and tell people you want to do that. Excitement and enjoyment are catching. Be you.
Ah, I like the interior/exterior distinctions. I think you're quite right about resisting the exterior process. In fact, it might be liberating to think of my coaching and editing as a trade, rather than as a brand. My uncles run a tree removal service that is basically driven by their reputation as good sawyers. But they play zero games with exterior marketing, and they lose no sleep over the ups and downs of demand (it's seasonal, it's life, they do other things during the winter).
I have been thinking about how to communicate the value of my training as a memoirist to coaching clients who need help with personal statements and applications, since I think that is a somewhat unique combination. But you're right that reminding myself about what I'm excited to do and communicating that genuinely is better than getting twisted up in the marketing, which I will always suck at and hate.
You can always rebrand if the first one doesn't work out. Like Coke Classic. Joshua Classic? I don't mind branding. The only time it's tough as a writer is if you are pigeonholed by it. I write humor.... but so much more... but mostly humor. I guess "mostly" is the key.
Thanks, CK! Good reminder. "Joshua Classic" 🤣
"Mostly" is a good way of thinking about it. And it's possible that I'm bringing a little "overthink-itis" to the concept. Although there is a rather sordid history to the term and some truly damaging impacts on higher education from the obsession with it. Since you are a newer reader, you might not have seen this one from a while back.
https://joshuadolezal.substack.com/p/branding-will-be-the-end-of-us
But I quite take your point (and Matt's below) to heart. Branding does not need to be oppressive if we turn it to our own purposes rather than feeling that it rules us.
One of the things I admire about you, Josh, is your characteristic questioning of yourself and your situation. Here's a question: what's the difference between branding and expressing who you are?
Thank you, Jay. That question lies at the heart of the essay that I feel I must write. My knee-jerk reaction is to wonder why corporate marketing gets to claim my authentic expressions of who I am. It really is a Matrix-like dynamic, where the parlance of capitalism creeps into everything we do. Do I need a brand for my backyard garden, for fuck's sake? Is my homemade bread part of my personal brand? I also feel that artists who have too-clear brands become predictable and repetitive. There was a reason why Kurt Cobain worried about being "stupid and contagious."
Matt's comment in this thread has me wondering if I might be carrying some of my baggage from my former employer into my entrepreneurial ventures. I was part of all those consultant-led conversations about institutional "brand pillars," and I saw how the STEM focus of many of them pushed the humanities aside. I saw this repeated in marketing materials, in admissions recruitment, even in boilerplate press releases for one of my own grants.
But it's possible that I might think of branding as a tool, like my Stripe account, to be used for my own purposes -- not a system that I fear grinding me up or betraying my core values, as was true at my former employer.
I've decided to go with a craft essay for next week, but the longer treatment of this topic is coming soon!
So here's what I'm thinking. "Branding" can be, mostly is, a superficial, commercialized presentation of an identity. We can adopt the term, if we want, to any appearance that attempts to present a self. So my style of dress is a kind of "branding." I'd rather not adopt commercial language to my living out of an identity. I'm attempting to shape my substack as an (obviously limited) expression of who I am as a writer-person. I recently revamped my welcome post again, switching up among the two logos I've used. I have reasons for it, and that can be conceived, since I do have commercial desires on Substack as a branding move. But if you think about it, the new appearance might be only marginally clearer to some visitors. More importantly for me, it communicates what I want to communicate about myself in this context, regardless of its commercial results, which are not primary for me.
As I see it, part of you, on Substack, has similar desires as a writer and a thinker. But unlike me, you are trying to build a post-academic working life, and Substack, again, is an important tool you've chosen to use in that project. That requires a kind of actual commercial branding that is different from what more personally feels like an authentic and satisfying presentation of ourselves to the world.
These two different goals are producing a tension in you. You know this. I just thought I'd offer whatever benefit there may be in seeing it through someone else's perspective.
Thanks, Jay. I think my year-in-review post was my attempt at saying that I'm *not* going to be deliberately using Substack for branding. If some of that natural expression of my interests and sensibility suggests something like a brand to people, then so be it. Tomorrow's post will be a craft essay that directs readers -- hopefully gently, and only at the end -- to my coaching business.
It's the coaching business where I feel more of this tension, because I do recognize that one needs to stand out to scale up, and that telling a coherent story about one's services is part of that. But even then I find that much of what repelled me from the corporatized university still bedevils me as an entrepreneur. I'll post about it when the essay feels ready -- this discussion has helped me sort out what the core questions are, and how I might avoid simply projecting my own baggage onto the subject.
I recall your year-end post and what you said there -- was glad to read it, too. I didn't mean to suggest anything about what your Substack was conveying, rather to respond to what you were saying here, and now you've clarified for me where you're feeling that tension. Glad to read you're sorting out the issues.
I've been here almost a year and I want to stay so am starting to think about the why's and wherefores, and how I want to stay. I know I don't want to limit myself and I know I don't want to 'do' anything that isn't absolutely me - that includes unnecessarily 'branding'. Does 'integrity' work as branding do you think?
Thanks, June. By "here," I think you mean Substack? If so, welcome to the club. And I've begun to fairly consciously uncouple my coaching/editing business from what I produce on Substack, except as proof of concept of what I offer. My Substack proves my sensibility, and sometimes allows me to delve into the craft of literary memoir, but I'm not likely to use it for workshops, etc. It's more of a public notebook and creative playground, and I'd like to keep it that way.
The proponents of branding would say that integrity can be part of your personal brand. But if I hear you correctly, there is a difference between the way you (we) define integrity and the way that someone leverages integrity in a space like LinkedIn. I'll spare my whole side rant about this, since I'm writing about it for an upcoming post, but I think about how the local economy in my Montana hometown worked. There were people who you knew could do things. Some of them were better than others (there was a guy who could do simple pine bookshelves and another guy who could do more ornate built-ins). But typically it didn't matter if one was a tent-meeting preacher (like my uncles) or a blind drunk after working hours. If they could cut down the dead tree in your yard, you'd give them a call and pay them what was fair. And I don't think there was a lot of bitter competition among local businesses or a lot of money spent on marketing. You had a reputation, which drew as much from how you behaved while cheering for your kid at Little League games as it did from what your ad in the local newspaper said, and that was how people judged your integrity. Virtual spaces -- where brands thrive -- are completely different.
" the way that someone leverages integrity in a space like LinkedIn" I have to say that I think that language is horrible and that the people who think like that (which I'm assuming does not include you) bring to mind that old chestnut: If you can fake sincerity you've got it made. I'd say that 99% of my contacts on Linkedin who I trust are people I've interacted with in 'real life'. And you're right -- I was thinking of this just a few days ago in fact -- the way people behave in ordinary situations says an awful lot about them. I can think of two people who asked me if I'd work with them, and when I saw how they treated people they regarded as beneath them I quietly allowed the matter to drop.
Thanks. Nicely articulated. I see what you mean. More thinking required by me.
I've always thought of integrity as part of my personal brand, plus other things.
I feel the same. Tbh, it's the only characteristic I really care about.
"Many colleagues on LinkedIn tell me that personal branding and authenticity go together, that I’m falsely dichotomizing the two." I agree that I don't think I agree with that sentiment. Not with social media, anyway. Too many of us know people who post a synthetic version of themselves on Instagram or some other site.
Professionally, I guess I agree with Jason: but then it's not personal branding, is it? It's just branding. One doesn't need to know if a plumber is a superstar individual when the reason he's there is to fix a pipe. But I guess when the product is ourselves, blending the two is inevitable. But is a refined chocolate bar the same as the original cacao?
As we embrace homo deus, we increasingly cannot appear unsavory and "human." At least not the definition of human that conveys a flawed being. Many will benefit from this: but just as many, if not more, will be driven mad.
I think personal branding only applies to those applying for mid-management or senior level positions. In that case, there does seem to be a need to supplement skills with some curated form of "character" or "personality" or "values." Tradespeople might have businesses with reputations, and if they grow to a certain scale, they might be able to play the branding game. But a lot of plumbers have a long waitlist of people who desperately just need a water hookup to their ice maker and who don't care whether the guy has a catchy jingle playing on the radio.
Your last two sentences are quite wise. As I said in response to Jason above, grieving is bad for branding. But sometimes that is a necessary part of what we bring to the table as colleagues and employees. And it can eventually become a strength, if we're allowed to be seen in that way. Shamans, as I'm fond of saying, are typically credentialed by some psychological crack-up or illness that reduces them to the same level of vulnerability as their patients. Western culture prefers the myth of the ubermensch, the professional who can batten down the personal hatches and not inflict those things on anyone, even though they might be actual sources of connection.
I actually found it sweet that the guy I bought a TV from at Best Buy felt comfortable confiding in me that he had gone through a bad break-up recently (I'd revealed that I was buying another TV so soon because of my divorce -- because my name was still on record as having bought the one at the house I just left :). But he was Puerto Rican, and I guess he brought a different cultural sensibility to our conversation, which could have been much more transactional. I don't think he was simply being manipulative or spinning a yarn -- though there's perhaps no away of knowing. But I think any training manager would have discouraged that level of self-revelation, even though it made me much less exhausted by the purchase than I usually am after that kind of transaction. He actually thanked me for giving him something to do, because he had just been dusting off computer monitors during a slow day. I think corporate models really miss out on the potential for genuine human connection. He had nothing to do with the "Best Buy" brand. He was just a guy being present to another guy. It was great. (I knew what I wanted, so there was no upselling involved, although in telling this story I'm aware that some might be squinting at it wondering whether I was being coerced in some way. I really don't think so.)
I think if you were in a tourist zone somewhere, you'd be right to be skeptical about a random guy's story. Stores don't seem like that kind of place. Abroad, I noticed that Americans are very forthcoming about personal stuff. The term "open book" is very applicable. For that reason, I would have believed him. Puerto Rico, different as it is, is nonetheless an American territory. (beautiful place, by the way: very underrated)
It's also easier to share personal stuff with strangers because you'll probably never see them again. Who will they tell? Not everyone's friendships are the kind where it's easy to share that kind of thing.
Interesting about shamans. Their role kind of reminds me of writers, actually. In the past, their state of "oddness" - which was certainly a vulnerable condition a lot of the time - allowed them unique knowledge of the human condition.