by Oto | Mar 16, 2026 | Branding, Personal, Personal Development
I have always lived with this tension between honesty and performance. To an extent, we all do.
I don't know exactly when it started, but it has always been there subconsciously, colouring my work and my lived experience. I think it comes from my experience growing up in the church environment, as the first born son of pastors.
There was a lot that was great about that and I wouldn't change it for anything. The community, the camaraderie with friends at Youth Group. But there is an insidious side effect that I've had to wrestle for years. That tension between honesty and performance.
But it's not just church, it is everything - society, school, work, culture. There are the unspoken rules, the expectations, the structures. The systems that punish you for stepping out of line, for daring to be different, to be you.
The Nigerian cultural context I grew up in was one that emphasised a deference to authority, a respect for elders, a sometimes hyper-conservatism.
So I learned to perform. I learned to fear being seen.
I learned to act a certain way to get along, get approving smiles and nods. I shared enough to seem open, but not the dangerous truth, the one that could get me in trouble. I desperately tried to be who I thought I should be. Who they want me to be.
I wore masks hoping that one day they would become my face.
…
I started blogging about 16 years ago. Fresh out of college, burnt out from a lifetime of trying to perform and conform to expectations that were literally killing me - I was depressed and suicidal - I was finally learning to radically accept myself, to break the rules. To embrace my sincerity and truth, wherever it might lead me. I had rebelled against this perpetual pressure to perform, and I was drunk on the freedom of saying exactly what I thought.
I wrote about life, and philosophy, and ways of being. It was a raw freeform exploration of ideas, sometimes universal, sometimes personal, sometimes taboo. I wanted to discover and document.
Who I was. What the meaning of life was. How I should live.
I have always loved self-help. There is definitely a through-line from preachers to motivational speakers. So, naturally I gravitated towards writing that sort of content. And I thoroughly enjoyed writing about that. I was learning, applying and sharing.
Even though I started with a raw honest voice, the need for performance crept back in, this time wearing secular clothes.
I wanted to sound credible. I wanted to grow. I hoped to become a name in the space. So I muted my voice, I conformed. I wrote like 2017 Medium (it was 2017 and Medium was all the rage). I wrote in numbered lists, with the motivational closings, in a voice that made it seem like I had it all figured out.
I lost the spark that made me unique.
And soon, I burnt out, running out of things to say, feeling trapped by this narrow niche I had chosen for myself.
In my work, the same tension exists. There is the work I think they would like. The design they have conditioned me to make. The one they usually emphatically accept. And then there's the work I want to do, the things that call to me. The level of design I want to make, the concepts I want to explore. The ones they usually reject, the ones they don't understand.
So over and over, I am pulled between both poles. I create from a place of honesty, then retreat to the safety of conformity.
…
There is something I always say to my friends (more a reminder to myself) - 'be yourself, and your people will find you'. It is always easier said than done.
The core of my writing and thinking is about knowing yourself and being yourself. How to create a life that is true to you, how to live intentionally, how to create a life by design.
How to become fully yourself when the world - family, friends, society, culture, the church, the business world, the creative industry, the social media algorithms - keeps offering you masks that almost fit.
The core of my work is helping clients understand themselves, understand what they are really trying to do with their brands and helping them express that truth - in identity, in web environments, in content.
How to create a brand identity that resonates with themselves as founders and with their customers.
I have always kept these two things separate. Writing on life and the process of becoming, on one platform and branding and design on another. But they are all really about the same thing - discovery of a core truth and the courage to express it.
Understanding yourself, expressing yourself. Understanding your brand, and expressing it. Honestly, boldly. A person is only as authentic and magnetic as the extent to which they live their truth. A brand is only as authentic and compelling as the extent to which it embraces and delivers on its truth.
Whenever we get stuck in performance over creative honesty, we deny our lives and our work the richness of the fullness of our being. This tension, this cycle of creative honesty and retreat, has made me brilliant sometimes and meh other times. It has helped me create many remarkable things that never saw the light of day.
I'm kind of over it.
…
I have a fear of being seen. I think it's because it feels a bit cringe. Also, it does not feel nice to be seen and then misunderstood, or seen and rejected. It is safer to create from truth in private if lucky, but most likely, just in our minds. Our dreams buried in a sea of 'what-ifs'. It is harder to create honestly in public, in the stream of the algorithm.
But I want to create, and I want to succeed doing it, from a place of truth.
To create and share the way I see it, instead of performing towards some external idea of success.
I will allow myself to be seen for better or worse.
I am not hiding anymore.
…
I started this Substack to start afresh on a new platform. To share my writing with an audience, and hopefully as a funnel to my branding studio.
But all I've posted is what I thought I should be posting - things I am learning and working through, but in a voice that is not quite my own. And it has held it back.
So now, I am just going to write… like my life depends on it.
Not how I think I should sound, like a 'professional' studio, or a guru, or an expert. I will write as I think. I'm just a person, living, grinding, creating, trying to figure this thing out.
This is my space to think aloud, about the intersections between life, authenticity, identity, creativity, communication, business, systems, design. It will be a bit messy and chaotic sometimes, highly structured and precise other times. It will be profoundly deep sometimes and profoundly dumb (in the dad joke kinda way). It will be about anything and everything. It will be me.
I'll write about my experiences in business, about my clients and what I am learning from them, about philosophy and concepts I am pondering. I'll write about Jujutsu Kaisen if it's the burning thing on my mind when I sit to write.
Maybe that will make me seem less professional, or all over the place. I doubt that though. We'll see.
It's been 16 years of thinking and creating, designing my life, helping others design theirs. I am not where I want to be yet. I am not an expert, not an authority. I am a very keen student, a practitioner, an operator, a seeker, and I have some things to say.
So, if you are out there, like me - cooking, striving, somewhere between the life you are in and the one you want. If you are on the journey to being and creating something that feels authentic to you, this is a space for you.
Let's walk, think and create together.
by Oto | May 21, 2017 | Branding, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Inspiration, Musings, Personal Development
I heard the above quote from a Tai Lopez podcast sometime in 2015, and it stuck in my mind ever since. It even made it to the little pile of post-its I keep on my desk covered with odd notes and scribbles. It reminded of me something I heard Marc Ecko say back in 2012 – that the phrase ‘Artists and Instigators’ was a more apt way to describe what startups and entrepreneurs do. We get stuck sometimes on the nuts and bolts of creating businesses and launching brands, managing teams, balancing books, developing markets, we miss the essence of what these activities are, or what they should be. Which is making something we believe should exist to communicating an opinion, a point of view.
That is the true allure of being a designer for me. It is the chance to make something, the ability to offer my take / perspective on an idea, a product, a service, a business that wakes me up in the morning eager to get started.
I watched a talk by Sasha Strauss on ‘branding in the normal’ last week, and he so elegantly distilled the essence of what a brand is. As a matter of fact, the idea he put forward is the founding conceptual framework behind all the great institutions of our time – religions, nations, and so. The core of brand is this – there is the idea, and there is the belief around that idea. Religion has the idea that there exists a god or gods. The belief system in relation to this idea, i.e. how we interact with and behave because of this god or gods is what makes different religions appeal to different people. The Virgin Group takes on multiple markets and products but the core ideas are business, products, and services. Their belief is that business should be fun and that customer service is the most important thing a great company can have.
I don’t know what your motives are for getting into business if you are an entrepreneur, but the best businesses and the most creative works of art succeed because they have a point of view. There is something they believe in, and they stop at nothing to birth a world that expresses that. It might be in the way they treat the customer, it might be in the way they do business, but they believe something.
That goes double for the freelancer, the creative, the solopreneur. You got into this because deep down, you want to create a specific kind of life; you want to do something remarkable. You became an entrepreneur, to make something specific happen. There are a multitude of people doing the same thing you do – designing, writing, photography, coaching, etc. What will separate you from everyone else is the same thing that makes you unique. It is your DNA, it is your opinion, its your point of view, it is what you truly believe. Don’t hide away from it; don’t dumb it down to fit in. Embrace that and recreate the world in your image.
by Oto | Oct 4, 2010 | Branding
In my post Surviving the Future I mentioned the idea of living from your personal genius. Discovering your passions, your talents, exploiting that and intersecting that with what people want. The greatest tool in this quest is your personal brand.
What is a brand? It is the prevailing idea, or feeling associated with a product, company or in this case a person. Branding differentiates you from everyone else in the market. It articulates what you are all about and how that would be of value to other people.
You need to ask the following questions in determining and articulating your personal brand.
1. What is the prevailing major idea of your life?
This is the basis of your brand, the core idea. What you are all about. Steve Pavlina defines his brand as providing personal development for smart people, specifically exploring and distilling knowledge on various parts of life into core principles and ideas. Chris Guillebeau explores unconventional ways of living and solving problems while travelling the world. Jay Z’s personal brand has evolved from street hustler/ganster to hiphop maturity and global business man. Steve Jobs centres around innovation, creativity and coolness. My personal brand? Well my core idea is the intersection of youth and popular culture, design communication and life paradigm shifts. I hope to create things that speak in the language of popular culture effectively changing the way people think and live, creating a better world for humanity.
Your brand can be highly specific or it can be loosely broad. But if it is broad, connect the pieces together under a theme.
2. What channels will you communicate your brand through?
How will you get your message across to your audience? Will you be centred around the internet and cyberspace. Or will your brand expression be predominantly in tangible products, goods and services. This is entirely up to you. We have seen a great proliferation of bloggers who communicate their ideas via the internet – websites, blogs, social networking media, and with the creation of intangible assets like ebooks, seminars, and so on. Others create organisations that provide a service or seek to change the world in some way. Some people design, dance, create music, write poetry, etc. Others build businesses.
3. Who is your audience?
Who will listen to you? What is your target market. Which group of people will receive the most value from what you have to offer. Focus on these people. Do not try to cater to everyone, it is one of the fastest ways to failure in any endeavour. Focus on your right people. Those who are attracted and interested in what you have to offer. Analyse them, interact with them, figure out their needs and fulfil them. For instance, Chris Guillebeau writes for people, artists, creatives, travellers who want to live an unconventional life, profiles them and provides resources and ideas for them. Mark McGuinness speaks to creatives and helps them make a living from their craft.
4. Why should your audience listen to you?
What sets you apart from everyone else, what value do you bring to the table. Why should your audience listen to yo? Why should they come back time and time again?
5. Nurture your audience
Now that you have your audience, and have determined why they should listen to you in the first place, take care of them. Nurture your audience, keep on creating value for them. Provide only those services that will actually be of value to your clan, your tribe, your band of merry men. Give them a reason to be loyal to you.
6. Grow your network
No dream worth pursuing is ever pursued alone. You will need to interact with many other people, within your field and outside of it. Ideas are transferable across niches and categories. We need various skill sets and personalities to create whole functioning systems and products. Connect with people, especially the best in the fields. Get mentors, collaborate, partner with people and learn from one another. With the internet these days, it is easier to connect and work with people from all over the globe.
7. Put the time in
Create the product. You have to put the time in to write the articles, make the art, write the poem, build the organisation. Whatever it is that you bring to the table, you have to create it. Ideas are no substitute for action and tangible products.
by Oto | Oct 4, 2010 | Branding, Inspiration, Musings, Personal Development
We have all said it before, and I’ll say it again, this is not your grandfather’s world. From the many technological advancements, to the incredible upheavals in business practices and realities to paradigm shifts in the meaning of life and how to live it. Life is very different from the way they used to be. Gone are the days of company loyalty for 30 to 40 years, climbing up a corporate ladder for a gold watch and a handsome retirement. Chances are, you will shift through at least five different careers over your lifespan. So, since external circumstances are always shifting, we must look beyond them to internal principles, skills and mindsets that will ensure we thrive no matter what is happening out there in the world.
Let’s look at the big picture for a second, and rediscover the amazing fact that each of us has been born with a specific set of personality traits, innate talents and interests. We have been engineered to function in a specific niche. This means that we can all provide unique value to the world that no one else can in quite the way that we do it. This is why its so important to be you. One, because everyone else is taken, and two, because no one else can be as good a you as you. You have complete monopoly in the area of being the wonderful, unique you.
You are going to have to take time for self-introspection and meditation. Rediscover yourself. The sad thing about most institutions of education, business, education, etc is that in passing through them, we learn to surpress our sovereignty, deny our personal genius in favour of taught techniques and established ways of doing things. But this one thing stands true, there is something that only you can do in the way that you do it. Do it. The world needs it.
You may have to unlearn a lot of things and get in touch with yourself. Make some changes, course corrections, etc. But it is the best thing you could do for yourself. Because once you start living who you are, you will begin to operate in a high level of excellence. You will also experience a joy that comes from living with passion, and doing that which you were made for.
To survive and thrive in the future, everyone has to be entrepreneurally minded, regardless of what field you are. This essentially means taking responsibility for your career. Don’t give your personal power away to another entity. It means being comfortable with taking risks, being creative, spotting opportunities and providing value. Think of yourself as your own company, and you are the president of You Inc. Look at the space where what you love to do and can do intersect with what people need and you have found the sweet spot. The place where work becomes play and you rake in the money J
