One of the biggest challenges multi-passionate individuals face is figuring out how to showcase all their different skills, talents and experiences under one cohesive personal brand. When you've pivoted multiple times, are building a portfolio career or have an extensive professional journey, it can feel impossible to honor everything you are without confusing your audience.

And more times than not it leaves you with the stomach clenching question of: If I can’t make sense of it, then how can I even begin to explain it to someone else?

Firstly, take a deep breath and a few steps away from that soon-to-be crisis. Having worked with a clients as diverse as their interests, and having wrestled with this question myself, I can guarantee you that there are threads connecting your brand. All it takes is a change in perspective.

Let Go of Narrative

The process of branding requires you to get abstract in your approach. While it might seem intuitive to reflect on every pivot you’ve made and identify the emotional drivers behind them or think through your journey in chronological order, taking this route is whats getting you caught up.

Narratives and story-telling are incredible tools for explaining your brand, but they hold you back from zooming out and seeing the bigger picture. In this brand building stage your focus is understanding, not explaining.

Donald Miller’s StoryBrand framework? That’s explaining. Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle? Explaining. Trying on Carol Pearson’s brand archetypes? You guessed it.

So what framework is needed for taking a step back and understanding your brand? For me, this it’s City Building.

The City-Building Framework

Maybe this comes from my love of The Sims or looking at maps, but when I look at my brand from a birds eye view I see it laid out as a diverse, yet cohesive city.

With your past experiences, skills sets, part-time jobs and the people you met along the way all laid out on the table, you begin to see how they naturally fall into different groupings, or in this case neighborhoods.

Your origins and hometown memories reside in one district
Your college experience forms its own neighborhood with the skills and connections you gained
Different industries you've worked in branch off from there
The skills you've developed create their own communities within these neighborhoods
Past versions of you live in all of them, giving them a unique flavor

This non-linear approach allows some neighborhoods to blend into each other, while some end up on the opposite side of town. As a multi-passionate person, you are bound to enter certain seasons where a large share of your time will be spent developing one or two areas as the other neighborhoods quietly exist in the background.

Applying This To Personal Branding

This framework transformed how I approach personal branding for the multi-passionate. Instead of seeing my diverse experiences as disconnected pieces on a timeline, I could visualize how everything interacts organically and also not feel the pressure to be representing or residing in every neighborhood at once.

For instance, my spiritual neighborhood (where astrology and paganism reside) has been thriving for years, but recently I've felt called to invest more energy in developing the neighborhood where my design, branding, and creative direction skills live. This area is definitely a central hub in my city, as it connects to so many of my past careers, where as the spirituality section resides closer to the outer edges of the city limits.

Now, my focus is clear- this is what I’m investing in! Here are the other neighborhoods that border it. This is what it feels and looks like in this district. I’m able to understand clearly where I’m at. Now I can start explaining.

Also, I want to make clear- I'm not abandoning my spiritual neighborhood. I'm just not currently investing as much time or creating as much content around those topics. Instead, I’m focusing my efforts into building up another area and letting the spiritual district continue to operate as usual.

Finding Peace in Your Multi-Passionate Personal Brand

For visual thinkers, this city concept provides a powerful framework for personal branding. But don’t feel like you need to physically plot everything out- your city can remain a mental or energetic exercise. You might create mood boards for different neighborhoods or find other creative ways to engage with this concept.

My personal brand city has allowed me to feel at peace with my multi-faceted nature and stop worrying about whether everything fits together perfectly. It just does. The only real consideration is which neighborhoods I'm currently investing in.

For the multi-passionate entrepreneur, creator, or professional, this non-linear approach to personal branding honors your entire journey while giving you permission to focus your energy where it's needed most right now.