How To Seem Authentic

These days it is important to be authentic, like Lana Del Rey. It is bad if everyone thinks you are inauthentic, like Lana del Rey from ten years ago. So if you are an artist trying to make a career, it is vital that you make all the right steps so that people will think you are authentic. What is authenticity? Let’s find out. Here’s a step by step guide on how you too can seem authentic.

Watch the rising young stars of your era and see what they do. Then, do a version of what they are doing that would be the way you do it. Their life is just a template for yours. That is how you should see other people. Like a stencil, or a book of raffle tickets from the 1990’s.

Find what makes you uniquely you, as long as it is something other people have already had success with, and then find out how to turn that uniqueness into a commercial product. Your unique selling point can’t be manufactured. It must be realised, like figured bass.

Put lots of effort into your appearance, but don’t make your appearance look like effort.

Don’t be transparent. Transparency is a terrible brand. Things that are transparent are unlikely to be consistent, and that can be confusing. Consistency is a better brand than confusion. But be careful not to repeat yourself, as that can be boring, so be inventive. Inventiveness is a better brand than being boring. If you are boring people will see straight through you, like a ghost, a small glass cup, or some other transparent thing. Because the most important thing is your brand, which expresses your unique selling point. If you don’t have a brand, people will forget which farm you belong to, and that’s bad for cow management. You just have to be an inventive, consistent, non-boring opaque cow that knows its place and stays there, waiting to be consumed.

Eat vegetables.

Go to networking events and chat to people about what they want to hear. If you have a thought you would like to express, make sure you do it as if it is someone else’s thought that you are also expressing with them. That way, people can relate to your thought as if it was theirs, and not just yours.

Work hard, but play hard, and show people that. It’s vital to have downtime, and also to be planning constantly, so make sure you put work into maintaining your work-life balance. As we know, all work and no play is bad for people who play for a living. No one likes someone whose just always strumming away at their guitar, even on the toilet.

Always take advice from people who know better. If they were your age they also might have taken advice from them at their age.

Build a consistent persona, but don’t let your persona be your personality. Allow your identity be your personality in the form of your persona.

And remember, if someone else has succeeded, it means that what they did is correct. That’s how you know they are authentic.