The hardest part was realizing I’d been hiding...
Not from the world—but from myself.
Most people know me as a guy who’s worked behind the scenes.
I’ve run a design and marketing agency.
I’ve run a gallery.
I’ve produced art fairs, as well as film and animation festivals.
I’ve published a well-known arts magazine in Los Angeles called Fabrik.
In recent years, I’ve also coached executives, creatives, and artists—helping them find clarity in their work and confidence in their voice.
I’ve spent years elevating other people’s voices—businesses, entrepreneurs, writers, curators, creatives, and artists of every kind.
I’ve built platforms that helped them become known.
But somewhere in all that work, I started to disappear.
My own story, my voice, my ideas—they became background noise to the platforms I’d built.
And for a long time, I was okay with that.
Because it felt easier to be behind the curtain.
It felt safer to make the thing without being the face of the thing.
And maybe—if I’m honest—it felt more comfortable to tell myself:
“This isn’t about me.”
But deep down, it was about me.
I just didn’t want to be seen.
Not fully.
Maybe it was imposter syndrome.
Maybe it was fear.
Maybe it was the stories I told myself about who gets to be ‘the voice’—and who should stay behind the curtain.
I don’t think I’m alone in that.
A lot of creative people—maybe you too—have built something incredible:
A career, a business, a body of work.
But you’ve done it behind a kind of mask.
One that keeps you from fully showing up.
And that mask can look like a lot of things:
A polished portfolio that hides what you really want to say
A business that feels misaligned with who you’ve become
A voice that doesn’t sound like yours anymore
“Sometimes we think we need a rebrand.
But what we really need is to reclaim our identity.”
—Chris Davies
Sometimes the change we need isn’t external.
Maybe it comes from within—like a quiet return to yourself.
I reached that point a couple years ago.
And it’s taken me time, reflection, and a whole lot of resistance to realize:
I wasn’t stuck.
I was hiding.
And like this quote from Carl Jung…
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
That idea—that you can ‘choose’ to become…
It helped me to start looking at things a little differently.
I gave myself permission to start asking:
What do I want to be known for now?
Who am I really trying to reach?
What part of me have I been keeping quiet?
You don’t have to burn it all down to make space for a new version of you.
You just have to start listening to what’s already there.
Tomorrow, I’ll share how I began doing that—and the first question I asked that helped everything begin to shift.
See you tomorrow,
Chris
That’s it for today.
If this brought something up for you—or reminded you of a moment in your own journey—I’d love to hear from you. Just hit reply and let me know.
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