Awl Week 5

Week 5 of @1909's Applied Learning Workshop and this one hit different.

The session was about marketing and StoryBrand, and the facilitator said something that stuck with me: "You are not the hero. Your customer is. You're Gandalf, your customer is Frodo."

So I tried it and wrote out the StoryBrand script for my business and realized I'd been telling the wrong story. I kept leading with what I do... resume/code reviews, pair programming, career strategy, 22+ years of experience. Features. Credentials. Me.

But the story isn't about me. The story is about an engineer who's doing the work, not getting the recognition, and navigating it completely alone. Maybe they got laid off and the job market looks nothing like they remember. Maybe they're watching AI reshape everything and wondering if they're falling behind. Maybe they're grinding through a toxic culture and don't know if they should stay or go.

The common thread isn't the specific problem. It's that they don't have someone like them but with more experience in their corner.

That reframe changed everything. My one-sentence brand message went from a list of services to this:

"I'm a working engineer helping other engineers build careers that compound."

We also did a brand personality exercise where you pick 5 keywords, 4 expected and 1 weird to create tension. Mine were Collaborative, Real, Experienced, Irreverent, Determined.

The tension lives between irreverent and determined. I'm funny and I don't quit. I can work with that.

The other thing I walked away with was being different is better than being better. Being the best is arbitrary but being different is memorable. That tracks with everything I've learned so far in this program, from the branding mentor telling me to lean into the juice angle to a past client calling me "the team member they didn't know they needed" instead of a mentor or a consultant.

Nobody else is doing what I'm doing the way I'm doing it. That used to feel like a problem, but now it feels like the point.

Week 5 down. 7 to go.

#BuildInPublic #LearnWithOJ #CareerGrowth #SoftwareEngineering #TechMentorship