The clue to what makes you distinctive is usually hiding inside what everyone else considers obvious.
For a long time, I thought I had a knack for representing commercial directors.
That was the category, anyway.
It was a fun business.
One day you’d be talking about a Super Bowl campaign.
The next day you’d be talking about a filmmaker’s transition into features.
The people were fascinating.
The work was creative.
And I was too busy doing the job to notice the pattern.
Looking back, the pattern was practically waving a giant foam finger at me.
I represented the Coen Brothers for commercials around the time Fargo came out. The first time they came into the office, I thought they were bike messengers.
The production company I worked for repped Jodie Foster, not as an actor, but as a director of television commercials.
When I moved from sales into public relations and launched my own firm, I developed a niche handling PR for directors working in commercials.
Later, I handled publicity for directors like Jason Reitman and Theodore Melfi before audiences knew them for films like Juno, Up in the Air, St. Vincent, and Hidden Figures.
At the time, I thought I was representing commercial directors.
Looking back, I seem to have developed a specialty in representing people whose categories were becoming too small.
That’s a very different observation.
The Coen Brothers were commercial directors.
They were also something else.
Jodie Foster directed commercials.
She was also something else.
Jason Reitman directed commercials.
Theodore Melfi directed commercials.
And yet nobody who knows their work would stop there.
The category wasn’t wrong.
It simply wasn’t sufficient.
That’s an important distinction.
We spend a lot of time trying to find the perfect category for ourselves.
Entrepreneur.
Consultant.
Lawyer.
Coach.
Founder.
Speaker.
Author.
The category helps people understand where to place us.
The trouble starts when the category becomes the whole story.
Somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t particularly fascinated by commercials.
I wasn’t even particularly fascinated by publicity.
What fascinated me was something underneath all of it.
Why do people become known for certain things?
Why do people become known for certain things?
Why do audiences interpret one person one way and someone else differently?
Why does one story stick while another disappears?
Why do some people outgrow the categories that once explained them?
Why do audiences interpret one person one way and someone else differently?
Why does one story stick while another disappears?
Why do some people outgrow the categories that once explained them?
I didn’t have language for it at the time.
I certainly wasn’t calling it interpretation.
I was just following the thing I couldn’t stop seeing. That’s the funny thing about distinctive people.
They often assume their lens is normal.
They think everyone notices what they notice.
- A lawyer who constantly sees patterns of risk assumes everyone sees them.
- A consultant who notices hidden complexity assumes everyone notices it.
- A founder who sees opportunities before they exist assumes everyone sees those too.
They don’t.
What feels obvious to you often looks like magic to somebody else.
That’s why the question isn’t:
“What are you good at?”
The question is:
“What do you keep noticing?”
What conversation do you keep returning to?
What problem keeps pulling your attention?
What question has quietly followed you from one chapter of your life to the next?
When I look back at managing child actors, representing filmmakers, building brands, writing books, and helping leaders clarify who they are becoming, the industries look completely different.
The question underneath them is exactly the same.
How do people form conclusions about people, ideas, identities, and opportunities?
Apparently, I’ve been chasing that question for decades.
I just didn’t know it.
That’s often how a Category of One begins.
Not with a declaration.
Not with a slogan.
Not with a clever positioning statement.
With a recurring question.
A lens.
A thing you can’t stop seeing.
The category comes later.