I was talking with my friend, Brenda about my Keep it Juicy podcast.

“You have to brand yourself,” she told me.

Now, I know enough about branding to know that she wasn’t talking about a flaming piece of metal to my flank. She’s talking about the marketing kind of brand.

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as: “A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers”

Companies do it all the time. The Pillsbury Doughboy is the playful provider of family baked treats, and Zappos is the online provider of shopping made easy for all the shoes you could want. Or at least, that most people could want. Maybe not me, because I have a true shoe addiction. But that’s a blog for another day.

So, I guess in that sense, branding myself is setting myself apart from everybody else out there. And that’s kind of a problem.

Talk about uncomfortable! I went to school to be a journalist. This was back in the Woodward and Bernstein days, when the reporter – well, reported – the story. You stayed in the background, didn’t let your real opinion show, and just gave out the who-what-where-when-why.

That’s not me! I’m not the story! I don’t want to be a brand!

How can I maintain a consistent brand when I’m still figuring stuff out? Even at my advanced age, I’m still making it up as I go. Heck, on any given day, you don’t know how I’m going to leave the house – dressed in Earth Mother flowy clothes, or a sharply tailored dress. It all depends on my mood.

Moodiness is fine. But, what Brenda explained to me is that I’m all over the place. I have a lifestyle blog called, “Stilettos Not Required,” that lets me get really up close and personal. And I have a podcast called, “Keep it Juicy!” that lets me act as the objective interviewer. I have followers on both.

But, unless you’re my husband – or Brenda – you probably don’t know about each other.

So, this blog is an introduction.

Stilettos, Meet Juicies. Juicies, meet Stilettos.

I think you’ll like each other.