You Are The Media (YATM) is the home for marketing misfits. It started in 2013 at the seaside, in England 🌊 The community is built around creativity, interdependence, visibility, experimentation and co-learning.
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Hi YATMers, Jo O’Connell here - waving from Southbourne. I was at one of the very first YATM meet-ups all those years ago!
I run two businesses. My PR company JellyRock PR, specialises in travel and wellbeing PR. My travel business Jo and Jo – Not Just Travel is with my husband (also called Jo).
We book dream holidays for people. We say that our job is creating joy for people, it’s very fulfilling.
My ultimate recommendation is Brain FM. It’s a game-changer. Distracting office talk or annoying noise on the train? Plug yourself in, listen to the neurosciency music and immediately focus. Worth every penny.
I’ve just signed up to drive a tuk-tuk over 1000 miles across India. If you've ever been in a tuk-tuk in Asia, you know how uncomfortable and stressful it is. Imagine six long days of it!
50 female founders are travelling in a convoy to raise money to build safe classrooms, send girls to school, and fight maternal anaemia.
For a flavour of the challenge, watch this short but powerful video.
Identity is the signal you create by showing up the same way, again and again, until others feel part of it too.
It helps people make an association and to say ‘that’s me.’
It took me a long time to realise this.
For years, I believed that sounding complex made you look serious. I took a content marketing approach to the underlying YATM theme.
I led with answers and detail, assuming trust was something you earned through volume. The problem? None of it made it easier for people to understand who YATM was for.
People showed up because it felt relaxed and different, but they didn’t always understand the role it could play for them. I was asking people to associate with ideas, not with an identity.
It took me a decade of building You Are The Media to realise, clarity beats clever, and identity beats description.
People stay because they recognise themselves in what you do and that matters so much. Today, YATM is for people who choose to not fit in and would rather figure things out with others on their side.
Let me show you how that identity formed. It’s intended to help your side to galvanise people around your campfire.
Identity Is How People Decide If They Belong
In 2025, the YATM identity is clear, we’re a home for misfits. It doesn’t mean chaos, but thoughtful non-conformists.
It’s for people who don’t want to follow the industry rulebook, the “best practice,” or the behaviours that supposedly make you look legitimate.
We’re for the people who want to build something they can put their own stamp on, personal, and meaningful and bring others with them who are already familiar.
Needles to say, this identity didn’t arrive fully formed. It happened from listening, watching, and noticing how people behaved when they were part of YATM. The best affirmation I hear is, “I finally found my place,” or the one we all secretly love, “I’ve found my tribe.”
Identity isn’t something you’ve created in the moment, it just takes a little bit longer to figure out.
When people see others like them inside, they understand the role it plays, “People like me belong here.”
Identity is what helps people join, engage, participate, and contribute not just follow.
Progress Is Built On Identity
Longevity comes when people see themselves in the story, not when they admire the founder.
People stick around when the work helps them recognise something true about themselves. When you share clearly and confidently, people connect their own experience to yours. They feel represented, understood, and seen.
It took me years to realise, but identity to what you do is the connective tissue. It’s not about how you describe the work, it’s how people describe themselves through the work.
At YATM, people don’t say, “I joined because Mark writes about community.”
They say things like:
“I like being around people who think like this.”
“I don’t feel like the odd one out here.”
“This feels like where I fit.”
Many people join the identity before they join the activity.
The Framework: Bringing Identity Into Your Work
Let’s break identity down to something workable, a simple structure that creators, business owners, and community builders can apply immediately.
1. Know the people you serve
For YATM, it’s small business owners and solopreneurs, not corporate entrepreneurs or influencers.
It’s for people who are finding their voice, building something from scratch and shaping their own space.
If you don’t know who you’re for, everything becomes generic, which doesn’t help anyone make an attachment.
2. Know the problem you solve
For YATM, this is around the important of learning and figuring it all out together. Doing it alone is hard, doing it together is so much better.
People join because they want learning, support, momentum, and connection. They want a place where they’re not the only one figuring it out.
When you solve a real human problem, identity forms around it naturally.
3. Know what makes you different (your clear identity)
For YATM, it’s the misfit identity, people who don’t fit neatly into usual categories and don’t want to perform the behaviours others tell them to adopt.
It all comes down to lived experiences. For many people going to a work event and starting with a World Record to break, just isn’t for them, that’s fine. Your difference isn’t what you claim, it’s what your people take from it.
Put these three together and identity becomes a natural outcome:
People like us (misfits), solving this problem (audience growth and not wanting to be isolated), in this particular way (learning together).
If you can articulate that, you already have everything you need to build something meaningful.
Identity Accelerates Connection
In “Why People Join Networks,” I made the case that belonging is built from the sense that a group or community is “for people like me.” Humans are wired for association and we’re constantly scanning:
Who here behaves like me? Who sees the world the way I do? Who wants the same things?
Identity hugs the edges of those questions and it makes the answers obvious.
If you’re building your own thing, newsletter, business, community, side project, here are the questions that sharpen identity and help people associate themselves with your space:
🤔 What do people feel when they find you?
🤔 Do they recognise themselves in what you stand for?
🤔 Can they see themselves beside you, not just watching from a distance?
🤔 What behaviour or belief do you give people permission for?
🤔 What do you want to be remembered for?
🤔 And importantly: who is this clearlynot for?
Let’s Round Up
When you know who you’re for, people come closer because they can finally see themselves in the picture.
Identity isn’t your logo, or your content strategy, or the messages your share. It’s your invitation and
👉 How do we signal to an audience that this is ours?
Doing it in front of everyone
Building in plain sight means everyone is in for the ride.
It shows what works, the problems faced and the process it takes.
You build when you have a project that can find momentum, and you share when you are ready to report back to everyone. It becomes a place for ideas, inspiration, bonding and being prepared to show people the work that goes into what you do.
To make these voyages work it always takes someone to put their flag in the sand first and show the way.
Let's flip Black Friday...
Here are our YATM friends at Lewis-Manning Hospice Care. Maybe you've had a loved one who needed end of life palliative care? The support is amazing.
This is what we're going to do...
£20 from every Creator Day booking goes to Lewis Manning. Not for one week, as part of the Black Friday bonanza when it all goes crazy, but for the full month to December 24th.
Creator Day is £199 and it goes up to over £200 from Sat 29th. Book here.
If you'd like a hand and spread over 4 months, reply to this email and let me help you out.
Come to the YATM Christmas Afternoon Party, Party...
The last Christmas event we had, ended in disaster and that meant we haven't done anything to close the year since 2022. If you'd like to see why, you can see it unfold in this video.
It's time to put the past behind us and have a Christmas event where we can let our hair down.
This is what we're going to do...
Bottomless pizza and unlimited drinks at Pi Pizza, in Poole. Before the bell goes, what we'll do is look back at 2025 and the theme for the occasion is 'gratutude' and Ashley Crocker will lead this segment and a chance for people to share how they looked back at the year. Maybe you'd like to share.
We start at 12.30pm and we'll make sure you have a great afternoon out. To book your Chirstmas afternoon out, book here.
Come & Join In
Here's what's up and coming into next week...
📝 It's Work Together at 9.15am today in YATM Club, join here
🔥 Beth Carter's Week Map is Sunday at 7.30pm GMT in YATM Club join here
🎁 It's Sense Check next Wednesday at 3pm GMT, book here
You Are The Media (YATM) is the home for marketing misfits. It started in 2013 at the seaside, in England 🌊 The community is built around creativity, interdependence, visibility, experimentation and co-learning.
