At some point, the list of things you’ve done starts getting in the way of the thing that makes you distinctive.
My first job out of college was managing child actors.
I worked for my friend’s parents’ management company in New York, and if you’re picturing adorable kids singing show tunes while skipping through Manhattan, you’ve seen entirely too many movies.
What I discovered was that even children had categories.
There were “commercial” kids.
There were “legit theater” kids.
There were film-and-television kids.
We even created our own category: ComicKids, a showcase of very young comedians, aged 5-15. I’d often write material for them which is a story we’ll save for another article.
Each category came with its own criteria, its own expectations, and its own implications.
At any given time, we had clients appearing on Broadway in productions like Les Misérables and Big. Other clients were showing up in national commercials for cereal, toys, fast food, and products they were probably too young to use.
The categories mattered.
Casting directors used them.
Agents used them.
Managers used them.
The industry needed them.
But then something funny would happen.
Someone would ask a kid to talk about themselves.
And out came the résumé.
“I was in three commercials.”
“I guested on Silver Spoons.”
“I was recurring on General Hospital.”
“I’m represented by…”
“I take acting classes.”
Nobody ever answered the real question.
Because the real question wasn’t:
“What have you done?”
The real question was:
“Why do people remember you?”
That’s a much harder question.
And it’s the one that follows us into adulthood.
Fast-forward a few decades.
Replace child actors with entrepreneurs, founders, consultants, authors, executives, speakers, and experts.
Ask what makes them different and out comes the grown-up version of the same list.
- Twenty years of experience.
- Three exits.
- Two books.
- Blank Under Blank list.
- Featured in Forbes.
- Spoke on this stage.
- Worked with those clients.
- Certified in twelve things nobody outside their industry has ever heard of.
The résumé gets longer.
The distinction gets harder to see.
The irony is that success often makes the problem worse.
Success creates identity.
Identity creates expectation.
Expectation creates a category.
And eventually the category becomes a container.
A very profitable container, perhaps.
A respected container.
A container that took years to build.
But a container nonetheless.
Lately I’ve noticed a pattern among the people I work with.
They aren’t struggling because they lack credibility.
Quite the opposite.
They’re successful.
Established.
Respected.
Known.
The challenge is that something larger is emerging.
The identity that created success is no longer large enough to contain what’s next.
A lawyer starts becoming something more than a lawyer.
A consultant becomes known for a way of seeing.
A founder discovers that the business was never the real story.
An expert realizes the framework they’ve been building points to a larger category.
Meanwhile, the market keeps introducing them using yesterday’s résumé.
This is where many accomplished people get stuck.
The world keeps describing them by what they’ve done. They’re trying to become known for how they think.
Those are not the same thing.
A résumé is a historical document.
A category is a living thing.
One explains your past.
The other explains your significance.
I’ve spent much of my life watching people get categorized.
Actors.
Filmmakers.
Entrepreneurs.
Authors.
Speakers.
Business owners.
Sometimes the category fit.
Sometimes it flattened them.
Sometimes it became so familiar that nobody noticed the person had outgrown it.
Which can be challenging.
Because the people who eventually become categories themselves aren’t remembered for a title.
They’re remembered for a lens.
A recurring question.
A way of seeing.
A thing they cannot stop noticing.
And that’s where we’ll pick up next time.