Be Interesting. Not Impressive.

Somewhere between becoming “visible online” and building our personal brands, a lot of very interesting people became incredibly boring (sorry).

Think about when you’re at a dinner table or at a bar or on a walk… People share their brilliant stories. They have weird opinions, niche obsessions, spectacular failures, strong recommendations, questionable decisions and things they could talk about for hours.

Put them on LinkedIn and suddenly:

“I’m delighted to announce…”

What happened?

I think somewhere along the way, we confused being visible with needing to be impressive. And they’re really not the same thing.

Your CV is not a personality

There is obviously a place for talking about what you’ve achieved. If you’ve built something brilliant, won something, been promoted, launched a company or done work you’re proud of, tell people. Scream it from the rooftops, please!

But if the only things I know about you are your job title, awards, revenue milestones and speaking engagements, I might think you’re impressive but I’m not sure I know you…

The people we remember usually give us something else. A perspective. A story. A sense of humour. An obsession. A slightly controversial opinion about something incredibly mundane.

Credibility matters, but personality gives people something to attach that credibility to.

Interesting people are interested

One of the easiest ways to become more interesting has absolutely nothing to do with talking about yourself. That is a one-way ticket to vanity-town.

Be curious! Read things outside your industry. Go to events that have nothing to do with your job. Talk to people who do completely different things. Watch documentaries. Travel. Ask questions. Develop niche interests. Fall down occasional internet rabbit holes. Have a life!

Because if every piece of information you consume is about your industry, eventually every idea you produce starts sounding like your industry too.

Some of the best ideas come from connecting two things that seemingly have absolutely nothing to do with each other. You need things to connect first.

Tell me what you think, not just what you know

Expertise is useful. Perspective is memorable. There are probably thousands of people who know what you know professionally. Far fewer have your exact combination of experiences, observations and opinions.

So don't only teach me how something works. Tell me what you've noticed after doing it for ten years. Tell me what everybody in your industry seems to accept that you quietly think is nonsense. Tell me what changed your mind.

That doesn't mean manufacturing a controversial opinion every Tuesday because somebody told you hot takes perform well (please don't do that).

You don't need to be provocative for the sake of it. You just need to have a point of view.

Tell the story, not the achievement

Compare:

“Delighted to have spoken at an incredible event alongside some industry leaders.”

Versus telling me you nearly said no because public speaking terrified you, what happened five minutes before you went on stage, the question somebody asked afterwards or the thing you realised while preparing".

It’s the exact same achievement but executed into a better story.

The irony is that when we try hardest to impress people, we often remove the details that would have made them care.

Stories give achievements context. They show the messy bit before the polished result. That's usually where the interesting stuff lives. This is where people relate. This is where people go “I’m glad they feel the same way as I do”.

You are allowed to contain multitudes

Another slightly strange side effect of personal branding is the idea that once you've decided what you want to be known for, you're only allowed to talk about that thing forever.

Marketing. Marketing. Marketing. Marketing. Please send help!!

You can be a brilliant CFO who loves interior design. A founder obsessed with Formula 1. A lawyer who reads terrible romance novels. A strategist who has extremely strong opinions about hotel breakfasts.

Not everything needs to become a “content pillar”. Sometimes the seemingly irrelevant details are exactly what make somebody remember you. Being known for something doesn't mean being known for only one thing.

Stop polishing everything to death

Professional does not mean personality-free. Sometimes the sentence you'd actually say is better than the one you rewrote six times to sound more intelligent.

Sometimes the slightly chaotic story is more compelling than the perfectly structured case study.

Sometimes the photo where you're laughing is better than the one where you're staring purposefully into the middle distance with your arms crossed.

And sometimes saying “I have absolutely no idea” makes you more credible, not less.

We spend so much time trying to control how we're perceived that we forget people need something human to perceive in the first place.

Impressive might get attention. Interesting gets remembered.

You don't have to choose between being credible and having a personality. You can know your stuff and be funny. You can be successful and curious. You can have authority without sounding like you've swallowed a corporate press release.

In fact, I think the people who do this best rarely need to tell you how impressive they are. You work it out yourself.

Through the stories they tell. The things they know. The questions they ask. The work they've done. The way other people talk about them.

So yes, share the promotion. Celebrate the award. Put the impressive logo on the website.

But tell me about the weird bit too.

Tell me what you noticed.

Tell me what went wrong.

Tell me what you're obsessed with.

Tell me something I couldn't have learned from your LinkedIn bio.

Being impressive might make someone notice you. Being interesting gives them a reason to remember you.