November 2026
Week 248 | Curated Conversation | Self-Expression
*Week 249 | Mind Your Business | Self-Expression
Week 250 | Manage Your Mind | Self-Expression
Week 251 | What’s On My Mind | Self-Expression
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What’s Inspiring Me: The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon
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🧠 Weekly MindSweep No. 249 | Mind Your Business | Self-Expression
“So, What Do You Do?”
The tidy answer, the true answer, and what self-expression asks of our business
"So, what do you do?"
I've been asked that question in more rooms than I can count. Chamber events, networking breakfasts, social gatherings for local business communities. Sometimes you’re standing in line, minding your own business, grabbing your bland, watered-down brown water at a hotel conference, and someone lines up behind you, and it’s their introductory question for you. Who does that before coffee?
As I’ve pondered Self-Expression this month, I've noticed something about how I answer it.
Before the words even leave my mouth, I'm already reading the room. I hear the answers going around the circle. Real estate agent. Financial planner. Accountant. These are clear labels that most people understand. Defined boxes and categories that our brains need so we can repeat them to a friend on the drive home.
I deeply respect those labels and the expertise behind them. It takes real brilliance and real work to earn them. And, in some of the work I do, these humans are a great referral source for me.
But when it's my turn in a room like this, I feel the squeeze.
Because my true answer is so much wider. I see the 10,000-foot view clearly. I can take all the pieces of the human behind their work – how they think, how they behave, and what they're afraid of. And I can connect that with all the buckets of their business: the revenue and cost challenges, the dreaded part of sales and marketing, the difficulty of moving product, and identify the root of what's really going on. Society hasn't really made a label for what I do that fits in a box.
So, in those rooms, I say: "I'm a business consultant."
It's true. It's tidy. It's a label people can walk away with.
It's also a mask.
I've been watching myself do this for years, and through our work here I can now see what is happening. I don't water it down because I'm unsure of what I do. I water it down because I've decided, in advance, that the room won't understand it. I shrink the answer before anyone even has a chance to misunderstand the real one.
And in the rooms where I feel safe and unmasked? I answer completely differently.
I say: I support minds of all kinds to build a business they’re proud of. I love neuroscience, human behavior, executive functioning, sales psychology, and helping creatives get paid their worth. I’ve spent decades in other people’s businesses learning sales, marketing, distribution, and inventory management, which is why I also love working with retail stores and why I’m uniquely qualified to support creative entrepreneurs.
I use the word “proud” in my opening sentence with intent. I know how much shame so many of us carry about our businesses. I support creative humans because I understand how they think, move, and see the world. And with every client, so much of the real work is personal. Fear of visibility. Shame about looking at the numbers. The struggle to charge what we’re worth.
That's the answer with my fingerprints on it.
They are both me, doing the same work, yet I offer two completely different answers, depending on whether I’ve decided the room is safe for me to be self-expressed.
Forts in Business
Last week, in No. 248, we started our Self-Expression series with a fort in the woods, built long before any of us had a filter.
And, that story clearly landed. Last Monday in Curated Conversation, so many of you shared your own version: a treehouse, a place in nature, a tree you named, an animal who accepted you exactly as you were. Places where you didn't have to perform.
Then we talked about fingerprints, and how masking is a lot like wearing gloves.
This week, I want to talk about where so many of us put those gloves back on.
Our business.
Where Business Sands us Down
Business has its own set of "shoulds," and they're loud.
Be professional. Be marketable. Be clear. Pick a niche. Make it commercially viable. Have an elevator pitch that fits in thirty seconds. (Can we stop doing that already?!)
None of that is wrong, exactly. Clarity helps people find us. But somewhere along the way, "be clear" quietly becomes "be smaller." And for creative, neurodivergent entrepreneurs, smaller usually means sanding off the very parts that make our work ours.
It shows up everywhere:
The intro that shrinks to a label the room can handle.
The website copy that sounds like everyone else in our industry.
The offer we reshape until it's "sellable," and then wonder why we don't love selling it.
The intensity, humor, or depth we filter out because "that's not how a professional shows up."
The "too much" we were told about as kids, is now showing up as "too much for a business."
As we said last week, personal branding can be helpful. But if your brand requires you to tuck yourself away to be understood, it may just be a prettier mask with your logo all over it.
A Collage is a Valid Form
When we have multiple passions, our body of work can feel like a jumble of pieces that don’t fit well together.
We spend so much energy trying to force it into a conventional, acceptable shape like a perfectly square puzzle.
As creatives, we are not making puzzles; we are making collages.
And a collage isn't a mess. It's a legitimate form of creativity with many different pieces, intentionally placed together, to create something that no single piece could ever say on its own.
So many of us have been told our breadth is a problem. "Multi-passionate" can sound flaky to some people. What they hear is unfocused, can't commit, and scattered.
But I'd argue it's the exact opposite. Holding many pieces at once takes a wider view, not a weaker one.
Seeing how the pieces connect is a skill. For many of us, it's the skill.
Self-Expression isn't Confidence
I also want to clarify that Self-Expression is not the same as Confidence.
Confidence can feel like a high bar. You have to feel sure, completely ready, and absolutely certain that it will land.
Self-expression has a much smaller on-ramp for creative entrepreneurs. You don’t need to feel confident to let one true thing show.
You need the courage to take the first step.
When I think about how we created forts as kids, we didn’t gather sticks thinking our fort had to be any good. There was no expectations or a bar to reach, so we were free to gather, place items, change our minds, start over, and build on top of what we'd made.
We had the freedom to create all of the things. And it was joyful.
In business, we often do the opposite. We raise the bar so high that we never start. Our creative writing sits in drafts. Our new offer stays in the notebook. And in rooms of opportunity, the real answer to “What do you do?” never leaves our mouths.
So this week, let’s practice making the on-ramp smaller. Take one small, courageous step and gather data on how self-expression feels. Want to make more videos? Record the video in one take. Want to share how you really think? Share your genuine thoughts before you polish them. Want to practice your answer to “What do you do?” Say the real answer to one person before trying it with a whole room.
Honor, then release, your expectations about the final product.
Create one true thing and put it out into the world.
Should, or Want?
There is one more filter that I've already started using from our discussion last Monday.
When a decision in your business feels heavy, ask: Do I "should" this, or do I want this?
The shoulds are heavy because they were never ours to begin with. They come from the industry, the algorithm, the well-meaning advice, and the rooms we've decided won't understand us.
The wants feel different. Lighter. More like the pull we followed as kids.
You don't have to throw out every should. Some of them keep the lights on. But notice the difference. Notice how each one feels in your body. And notice, maybe, the little rebel that shows up when you hear the word "should."
Where to try it this week
Here are five places to let a little more of you show up in your business this week. Pick one. Just one.
Your introduction. The next time someone asks, "So, what do you do?", try the answer you'd give in a safe room. Try it once and notice what happens in your body, and in their response.
Your content. Practice sharing one thing without polishing it. One-take videos. One honest thought. Let your fingerprints show.
Your offers. Look at one of your offers and ask: Did I build this, or did I sand it down until it was sellable? Is it a collage I've been forcing into the shape of a perfectly squared puzzle?
Your sales conversations. Notice where you shrink, discount, or soften. Notice where you're performing "professional" instead of being the person they actually want to work with.
Your capacity. Tell the truth about what you can actually carry right now. Saying "my nervous system can't take this on right now" is a form of self-expression, too.
Networking Rooms
I still say "business consultant" in some rooms. I'm not going to pretend I don't.
But now, I've started noticing the moment it happens. The quick scan I take of the room. The decision, made in advance, that the true answer won't land. I can now see the gloves going back on.
And lately, every once in a while, I take the risk. I say the real answer instead. I support minds of all kinds to build a business they're proud of.
Sometimes people nod politely and move on. That's okay. That's a no I can survive. They are giving me the information I need to know if they are a good fit for me.
But sometimes someone leans in and says, "Wait, tell me more."
And that's the person I was meant to meet.
My questions for you this week:
What's your tidy answer to "So, what do you do?", and what's the true one?
Where in your business have you been forcing a collage into a box?
Reply and share with me! I read and reply to every one!
✨ You Belong Here. I Can Help.
It's easy to see someone else's brilliance and so much harder to see your own. Sometimes it takes a second set of eyes to find the language for everything you are.
In a MindSweep Mapping Session, we look together at where your business asks you to shrink, in your introduction, your offers, your marketing, and your sales conversations. Then we find the words, and the structure, that let more of you show up. Not tidier. Truer.
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Curated Conversation
You Read It. Now Come Sit In It.
Curated Conversation Evolution is the room where you don't have to give the tidy answer.
This month we're exploring Self-Expression: telling the truth, letting our fingerprints show, and finding the quieter courage it takes to be seen in our lives and our businesses.
Bring the collage. Bring the half-formed idea. Bring the version of you that doesn't fit in a thirty-second pitch.
We talk about what's actually true, and take a few minutes to ground before we start our week.
Listen if you want. Speak if you're ready. Stay if it feels like home.
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What I’m reading
The Pirate Queen
by Ariel Lawhon
A sixteenth-century pirate queen taught me something about self-expression: the push to play it safe, and the pull to build what we’re meant to build.
What's Inspiring Me: Grace held true to the pull of her true calling when a world kept trying to push her into the constraints of societal expectations.
In other news…
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