Do you wonder how to express your ideas online? Or, do you lack the courage/direction to be seen?

These are common questions I get asked daily; they’ve inspired me to start a new series,  “Rise to your platform & Shine,” to help busy high-achieving professionals develop the courage to turn their ideas into reality. Just to be clear, I refer to “platform” as any stage where you showcase your unique talents.  

Today, the platform will be blogging, as I invited my friend and award-winning blogger Anne-Sophie Reinhardt to share the story of how she rose to be a beacon of light online. My hope is that you will find comfort in the message and use the insight to take action in your daily life.

Anne-Sophie Reinhardt is the founder of the award-winning blog, Make Peace with Food, Your Body & Yourself.  She's an Eating Psychology Coach, a Martha Beck Life Coach, a speaker, and a workshop leader. She loves her baby son, her daily Hazelnut Latte, practicing yoga and meditation, and helping women to finally find peace around food, their bodies, and themselves.

Like many of us, Anne-Sophie started her business with the desire to help others; sound familiar?!  I had to ask Anne-Sophie to share her story and start off this series, as we both created our online platforms with the desire to help others and generic names that weren’t truly meaningful or representative of our missions. Her original site name was aMINDmedia and mine was EveryBody Beautiful.

Asked how changing the name of her website influenced her confidence/impacted her business, Anne-Sophie responded:

“When I started my business in 2011, I had no idea what I was doing or what I wanted to do. It all began with a podcast that resulted from my deepest pain and challenge in life: my messed-up relationship with food. All I wanted to do was help others – the business side of things didn’t really matter to me back then.

Over the years, as my business began to grow slowly, I started to search for cool and impressive business names, which isn’t my strength at all. I am not a native English speaker, so I don’t have a knack for trendy sounding names. I love words, don’t get me wrong, but I just couldn’t think of a fun way to name my business.

Of course, I looked around and compared and always felt that my ideas came up short and sounded dumb. One day, my husband came up with the idea of aMINDmedia. I forget what it was really meant to mean and represent, since I’m not about the mind at all; I’m all about the heart, the body, the vessel, the inner beauty. At that time, I had low self-confidence and didn’t know how to say ‘no’; so, I just went with it.

It never felt right, it never sounded good, but I had the logo and bought the domain and so I allowed aMINDmedia to be the word that represented my work online.

Over the years, it bothered me more and more, and every time I thought of the brand, it felt icky. During that time, annesophie.us was born. Here’s the thing, though: in the end, my business, my work is to Make Peace with Food, Your Body & Yourself and I’m pretty sure that I’ll change names and maybe even my direction in the future.

I’ve come to the conclusion that names don’t really matter. It’s about what’s inside the package. Yes, marketing matters. Yes, brands are strong, but if your message is weak, none of it will be heard and seen.

Using my own name, making it my signature made me feel empowered but raw. Sometimes I still wonder if people think I’m full of it. Sometimes I still fear that it keeps customers away, but then I remember that I’m Anne-Sophie. It’s my name. I’ve carried it since I was born. So, it’s only fitting I use it as a way of helping potential clients find my work, my vision, my services.

Once they have found my website, it’s what I do and how I allow myself to be used by the universe that makes the difference in people’s lives, not the URL they put into their browser to find my website.”

Thank you, Anne-Sophie, for sharing your insight with all of us! You are a shining light to so many! No matter what direction you go, you, your blog, and your business will continue to stay true to its original mission: a space to help others. Anne-Sophie, thank you for the reminder that we can help others and make a difference in the world by simply being our amazing authentic selves and letting ourselves be seen! 

That is how we each can make a difference in the world, by showing up. Just like the world needs the sun, it also needs each of us to shine our special light! So, whatever your special light may be, whatever you feel called to do, embrace it! It is unique to you! You have such a bright purpose! Remember, life is about the journey, not the destination.

Thank you for reading and for your presence at this beach retreat! You Rock!

When you rise to your platform & shine, you give others permission to do the same. We could all learn from hearing your stories of how you started your brand, or how creating your business name influenced your confidence and/or provided clarity to your online vision. Add your thoughts in the Comments section below. 

See you at the beach!