Meet Luvvie Ajayi Jones

And learn why you too can be a #ProfessionalTroublemaker

I will let Luvvie speak for herself

What is there to say. I’ve witnessed more than one glow-up in my day (or should I say in my many years in these Internet streets), and Luvvie’s is one of the glowiest.

But for years before Luvvie became an NYT bestselling author with book #1, she was an example I used when telling the story of professionalizing blogging. See, most people advise you to go narrower and narrower, niche-ier and niche-ier, if you want to be able to stand out and ultimately make a business out of your content.

I always agreed that having a unique angle/beat was one path. but there is another path, and that’s having a unique voice.

A voice that can talk about anything and you know who’s talking.

You’ll just have to take my word that years before they became best selling authors, my two examples for this path to greatness, were Jenny Lawson (the Bloggess) and none other than Luvvie Ajayi Jones (AwesomelyLuvvie).

Evidence: Over the years Luvvie has talked about branding and websites, Game of Thrones and Scandal, inequities on the speaking circuit and elsewhere, and shoes. She has a whole extra Instagram account about shoes. You’re gonna want to read it all because she’s the one talking about it. It’s her voice, not her niche, that built an audience.

So you can listen to her actual voice in this week’s episode of The Op-Ed Page podcast. Having read her book I wanted to talk to her about the things I loved and the tensions it brought up for me. Tensions between eschewing Imposter Syndrome but staying curious and humble (a topic I’ve written about before). Tensions between understanding that impact trumps intention, but you can’t always control impact. For me, the best parts of our conversation are when Luvvie explores those tensions and talks about how she tries to operate within them in her life. I’m curious if you’ll agree.

BONUS LINK: Doing this interview made me a bit nostalgic, so I went and found the video of when I interviewed Luvvie as our #BlogHer17 keynote speaker. Enjoy.

PS: Buy her book. Might I suggest the audio version? She reads it herself :)

Last week-ish

Couple of fun things to check out. I wrote column #3 for the Kinder Beauty blog, and it’s all about how to look and communicate more clearly when onscreen or behind a mask. It’s entitled Minimum Viable Make-up and Other #PandemicAdvice, and I’m tickled about the headline (which, yes, I wrote). It’s just got to come in handy sometimes to have been both a former actor and a current business speaker (and an explorer of Zoom filters).

I was also included on a list of 8 LinkedIn folks to follow by the kind folks at TueNight.com. This also tickles me because I feel like I was VERY late to the LinkedIn-as-content/social-platform game. I joined LinkedIn back in the day when they actually told you to only accept invites from people you had actually worked with and felt you could honestly recommend for a job. Now I get endless invites from people I’ve never met or heard of (most of whom seem to want to sell me services as an executive coach) and I struggle with the rudeness of just ignoring their invites, but I can’t bring myself to either accept the new LinkedIn reality and accept them, nor do the more seemingly aggressive rude thing of outright declining. So instead I keep operating in the LinkedIn of the early oughts. I also operate on it as the same person I’ve been online for the last nearly-20 years…the personal, the professional, and the political all rolled up into one person. Some people like that kind of thing, and if you do, you’re my kind of people!

Coming this week-ish

I have a speaking gig coming up next Thursday, March 11 at 7 PM PT that I’m excited about. The Voices in Action group of the San Jose Women’s Club invited me to come speak about social media and the first amendment, in an evening entitled Twitter, FB, & Parler...Social Media & Our Right to Free Speech. This is one of my VERY FAVORITE TOPICS. In fact, you might have heard elements of it in my Clubhouse Contrarian rant episode a couple of weeks ago. RSVP to via@sjwomansclub.org to get the Zoom link and join us!

I’m also excited about next week’s podcast episode because I’m interviewing two local heroes who are doing the actual work to prevent as many people as possible from becoming unhoused to begin with. I have a story about how I connected to them that’s pretty pretty cool.

And for my fellow #theatrenerds, a friend tipped me off that there will be an online reunion of sorts of the original cast of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins on Monday, March 8th at 5 PM PT at broadwayworld.com.

And if you think I can help you break through the things that are keeping you stuck, you can always set up your first introductory 30-minute consult for free by booking it in my Calendly.

Have a great week-ish!