Why sharing who you are is one of the most powerful things you can do for your business
Last week I posted something completely unplanned to Instagram.
An hour in the garden with my youngest son. Autumn light. Lilly Pilly fruit. The cat stuck in the tree because the dog had chased her up there again. My son watered the four elderberry trees I’d planted the night before and we just wandered around, looking at things.
No strategy. No lesson. No call to action. Just a morning that felt full and worth recording.
That Instagram post reached 22,000 people. It got 665 likes, 82 shares, 235 saves, and 197 new followers over a few days. On an account with just over 5,000 followers.
I’ve posted far more “useful” things that barely moved.
Table of Contents
The trap of always delivering value
I want to be honest with you here, because I don’t think I’m alone in this.
For a long time I felt like if I wasn’t offering a how-to, a tip, a takeaway, some kind of value, then why would anyone care? Every newsletter, every post, every caption needed to be teaching something or it wasn’t worth sending.
This year I’ve been trying to shift that. Writing more conversationally, sharing more of where I’m actually at rather than packaging everything into a lesson. And every single time, I spend hours on it, finally feel like it sounds like me, go to press send and then... I feel suddenly yuck. Who cares about me? Shouldn’t I be offering something useful?
And then I press send anyway. And those are often the ones that get the warmest responses.
Here’s what I’ve come to understand: delivering value absolutely has merit. A plan that includes how-tos, practical tips, and useful content is a good plan. But the trap I fell into was making that the only thing. The missing piece wasn’t more value. It was my point of view. My way of seeing things. My school of thought alongside the value.
Because people don’t just come to you for what you know. They come for how you see the world. And when you only ever deliver information, you’re giving them the what without ever showing them the who. And the who is what makes them choose you.
I’m not there yet. I’m still figuring this balance out in real time. But the evidence keeps nudging me in the same direction.
“I booked you because I love how warm and authentic you seem.”
“I love seeing your garden updates, they’re so inspiring.”
“I admire how brave you are for showing up on your YouTube even when you’re scared.”
None of those comments are about my expertise. They’re about who I’ve let people see me be.
Morning snapshots taken on my phone of our garden and life.
People don’t choose a service. They choose a person.
Your ideal client isn’t scrolling through Instagram looking for the most competitively priced option or the best package deal. They’re looking for someone they trust. Someone whose world they want to step into. Someone they’ve been quietly watching for months, maybe years, thinking: yes, that’s the one.
That kind of trust doesn’t come from a well-structured carousel about your process. It comes from the accumulation of small, real moments. The morning in the garden. The book you’re reading. The thing your kid said. The way you talk about the work you love. All of it adds up to something that feels like knowing you, and knowing you is what makes booking feel safe.
This is why “people buy from people” isn’t just a nice saying. It’s actually how it works.
Photos of my youngest taken in our garden on my phone.
Brenner and I had been in each other’s worlds for years
Brenner is a client I photographed when I visited North Queensland last year (where I grew up!). We’re both creatives, and over the years we’d been following each other’s work, the way you do with people whose eye you admire. She was always there in the comments on my personal work, the raw, nature-led images I make for myself, the ones shot on film with no brief and no deliverable. Genuinely encouraging in the way that only another creative can be.
When she reached out to book a shoot, she was direct about what she wanted. She didn’t just want generic brand photography. She wanted me to bring that same creative self to her work. The way I see the world, the feeling in those personal images, that’s what she was after for her own brand.
We spent a morning at her Queensland home surrounded by banana trees, then drove an hour to Emerald Creek, a location she loves for its eerie, otherworldly feel. By the end of the day I was wading into the water with her as the sun dropped below the gum trees.
The images we made look like Brenner. Not a version cleaned up for a website. Her.
That shoot happened because of years of two creatives genuinely following each other’s work. Not because of a well-timed promotional post.
The layers are the point
I think a lot of creative business owners hold back the personal stuff because it feels self-indulgent. Like sharing your garden or your morning walk or the way autumn light falls across your kitchen isn’t contributing anything to your business. Like you should save that space for something more professional.
I’m still working on this myself. That feeling of “who cares” doesn’t go away entirely. But I’m learning to press send anyway, because the evidence keeps showing me that the personal stuff is doing something the how-tos can’t.
The people who choose you over every other person in your industry aren’t choosing your package or your pricing. They’re choosing you. The whole you.
The person who plants elderberries at dusk before the rain comes. The person whose youngest jumps on the trampoline while the cat and the dog sort out their differences in the tree above. The person who cares about what autumn light does to a garden and thinks it’s worth an hour on a Tuesday morning.
That’s what makes you unmistakably yours. That’s what no competitor can replicate, no matter how good their work is. Because they’re not you.
Photos of flower garden and house garden captured on my phone.
What to actually share
If you’ve been wondering whether your life is interesting enough to post, or whether the personal stuff belongs on your business account at all, here’s how I think about it. And I say this as someone still figuring it out alongside you.
Share the things that genuinely fill you. The morning light, the process, the place you work, the things you grow, the books on your bedside table, the small rituals that make your days feel like yours. Share them because they’re true, not because you’ve worked out a content angle.
You don’t need to overshare or manufacture vulnerability. You just need to let people in a little. Show them the person behind the work. The life that informs the craft. The reason you do what you do beyond the invoice.
Your ideal client is already looking for that person. Give them enough to find her.
A note on what this looks like with photography + Video
If there’s a gap between who you actually are and what your current images show, that’s worth paying attention to. The most common thing I hear from clients before a shoot is some version of: my images look professional but they don’t feel like me.
That gap is what personal brand photography is designed to close. Not to make you look polished. To make you look like yourself, in the fullness of who that is.
If that’s something you’ve been sitting with, my Brand Story Package is a full day on location built around exactly that. I come into your world and make images that hold the layers, the work and the life and the person underneath both.
Honey xx
Frequently asked questions
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No, but it helps. The businesses that build the deepest loyalty tend to be the ones that let their audience see the person behind the work. It doesn’t have to be deeply personal. It just needs to be real.
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Anything that genuinely reflects how you live and work. Your process, your environment, what inspires you, small moments from your day. The key is that it feels true rather than performed.
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Not necessarily. Personal posts often outperform educational content because they trigger an emotional response rather than an intellectual one. People save and share things that make them feel something.
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Only what feels comfortable and true. You don’t need to share everything. Even small glimpses, a garden, a morning ritual, a book you’re reading, go a long way toward building the sense of who you are.
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Yes, and often more than any promotional post will. The client who has been quietly watching you for years and finally reaches out already trusts you. The conversion is easy because the relationship is already there.
