Why you haven’t found your voice yet

It's not a niche problem. It's an identity problem

After 2 years of posting videos on YouTube I thought I’d found my voice.

I had a niche. I was posting consistently. My systems were solid, my output was steady, my engagement was going up, and yet…something always felt off.

I had a perspective but my voice was thin. It felt like scaffolding, built to support something I hadn’t yet found the courage to construct. It was shaped by surface-level tactics - topics, titles, hooks and frameworks… all the usual stuff that gets touted.

But I hadn’t stopped to ask the deeper question:

Who is all of this coming from? Who am I and who do I want to become? What values do I want to embody? What do I stand for?

That was the point I stopped asking what to post and started asking who I was becoming. Because the longer I created the more I realised that the real work of voice has nothing to do with finding the right idea and everything to do with discovering the depth of the self behind it.

This is the step that most people skip. They chase clarity at the surface level - niche, format and positioning - before they’ve built any sort of coherence at the root. As a result their work feels scattered, inconsistent and empty, even when it performs well.

After 2 and half years of posting on Youtube I did something drastic. I audited myself. I purged over half of my videos I developed core values and started testing the boundaries of my niche to see if I could escape the cage I had confined myself to.

That’s when things finally started to change. This letter is about that change. It’s about the cost of skipping identity work, and the clarity that comes when you build from the inside out.

The modern pressure to be clear too soon

There’s an enormous pressure today to know exactly what you are from the start. Pick a niche. Define your pillars. Optimise your message. Scale your clarity.

It sounds responsible. It feels strategic. But often, it’s a trap, because clarity without self-awareness isn’t clarity at all. It’s mimicry wearing a mask, a kind of premature certainty which is borrowed from others.

We are told to niche down from day one. But that advice only works if you already know who you are, and most people don’t. Especially not in the early stages of creative work, where identity is still unformed and in flux.

Picking and sticking to a niche works well for marketers and product businesses. If you are trying to sell a product, sure just pick a pain-point and talk about it endlessly. However for writers, creators and deep thinkers this approach backfires. Every single time.

The whole idea of “niching down” sounds clear until you realise it’s a form of self-censorship. Most people aren’t refining their message, they’re amputating everything uncertain, and without uncertainty, your voice has no place to grow.

When you niche down (on a topic) too early, you reduce yourself to a persona. You shape your work around performance, not presence. You end up writing what you think will work, not what you actually believe. And while the algorithm may reward you, your audience won’t connect.

Because deep down, they can feel the dissonance. And so can you.

Identity Before Niche

There’s a subtle truth that most growth advice leaves out:

You have to become someone before you’re worth following. Not in a self-promotional sense. But in the sense that real creative clarity doesn’t come from looking outward it comes from learning how to listen inward.

It’s not about inventing a persona; it’s about having the courage to channel the voice that’s been yours all along.

Noam Leon Kaestner

In his piece on voice evolution, writer Noam Leon described how he started out by imitating others. His early work didn’t feel fake, but it didn’t feel fully his, either. It took months of writing through the discomfort, shifting tones, breaking form, and taking risks before a more authentic style started to emerge. And even then, he said, it wasn’t so much that he “found” his voice, it was that he grew into it.

This is the real work. It’s less glamorous than virality and less measurable than growth. But it’s what everything else depends on.

How do I actually build that identity?

If voice is a reflection of identity, then we have to ask:

What is identity? And how do you build it?

Sure, personal branding, aesthetic, positioning are a part of it but I also mean identity in the older, deeper sense:

The inner architecture that holds your contradictions. The values you return to when you’re not performing. The emotional weight of your lived experiences, shaped into a story you can stand inside. That’s where voice comes from, not a list of topics, but the integrity of that inner structure. And that structure doesn’t emerge by accident. It’s built intentionally.

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1. Identity is built

Many creators wait for their voice to show up, like if they just keep posting consistently they’ll eventually stumble into it. But your voice doesn’t appear until identity has been formed, or at least chosen.

In psychology, this is the idea of narrative identity: the evolving story you tell yourself about who you are, where you’ve come from, and what your life means. That story isn’t static. It’s something you participate in and shape over time.

And when you avoid shaping it, when you avoid choosing who you are and what you stand for your voice stays flat. You default to mimicry, echoing the values of whoever’s voice is loudest around you. You drift into content that might perform, but doesn’t feel like yours.

This is why the work doesn’t stick. It’s not rooted in anything, and if you want a voice that lasts, it has to be.

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2. Your values are the soil. Your voice grows from there.

You don’t have to have your life figured out to write well. But you do need to know what matters to you. If your voice feels scattered, the first question isn’t

“what should I write about?”

It’s:

“What do I believe in so deeply that I can’t not write about it?”

What are the questions you keep returning to, even when you try to avoid them?

What are the beliefs you’d defend even if they cost you something?

What are the tensions in your life you still don’t know how to resolve but can’t look away from?

These are not branding questions. These are spiritual questions and your answers become the bedrock of your voice, not just what you say, but how you say it. Your rhythm. Your tone. Your attention. Your focus.

Topics are interchangeable. Tone isn’t.

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3. Your contradictions add depth (if you let them).

A lot of people feel blocked because they can’t settle on one clean identity. They feel too scattered. Too complex. Too inconsistent.

But that confusion isn’t a flaw, it’s a starting point. It's a sign you're paying attention to all the parts of yourself, not just the ones that fit neatly into a brand.

Contradiction is not your enemy. It’s your material. Trying to compartmentalise yourself too early is a fast way to lose your depth. Your voice becomes thinner, safer, more predictable, and predictability is the death of resonance.

This work is about making sense of the storm in your head, not pretending it isn’t there. It's about turning internal friction into something that sharpens your edges.

You can be spiritual and strategic. Angry and kind. Still figuring things out and still worth listening to.

Your depth is not in your polish. It’s in your process of reconciling what doesn’t yet make sense. That’s where the weight comes from.

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4. Make a habit of writing from identity, not about topics.

If you want to build a voice rooted in identity, you need to write from your values not just about your ideas.

This doesn’t mean you have to write personal essays or share your life story. It means that whatever you write, whether it’s about AI or ambition or aesthetics, should carry your fingerprints. Your lens. Your tone. Your beliefs underneath the surface.

The fastest way to start this?

Stop asking “what would perform?” and start asking “what do I actually think?”

Before you write, take five minutes to ask yourself:

Why does this topic matter to me?

What part of me is speaking right now, my fear, my ego, or my truth?

What would I say if I didn’t need it to land?

This is how your voice sharpens, not through volume, but through alignment.

The more you write from your core, the clearer that core becomes.

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5. Revisit your work and trace the thread.

We often think voice is something that happens going forward, something we develop by pushing ahead. But really the clearest picture of who you are emerges by looking back.

In all honesty you already have your voice, you are just not aware of it. The way to become aware of it is to look back and that is why writing is so important because it can make you aware of your own blind spots and things you didn’t know about yourself.

Take ten of your past posts or pieces. Print them out. Read them slowly.

Ask:

• What ideas or themes keep showing up, even unintentionally?

• What emotional tone keeps recurring, even across different topics?

• Which pieces felt like performance? Which ones felt like me?

You’re not looking for a niche. You’re looking for a throughline, a pattern that shows you what already lives inside your work, even if you didn’t mean to put it there.

This exercise doesn’t just help you refine your identity it reminds you that it’s already there. Voice isn’t something you fabricate. It’s something you learn to recognise in yourself.

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These five steps now form a clear internal logic:

1. Identity is constructed, not found

2. Values are the foundation

3. Contradictions are part of the depth

4. Write from your centre, not from strategy

5. Trace your own pattern through your past work

When the Voice Starts to Come

Once you start working from identity, things begin to shift.

You stop obsessing over whether something is “on brand” and start asking if it’s true.

You stop switching lanes every three weeks. You stop needing to be unique. Clarity begins to emerge. Not because you picked the perfect topic or ran the numbers, but because you built a centre and now you have something to write from.

This is what most creators get wrong. They look for output without coherence. They want a voice before they’ve built the self that voice belongs to.

If you're in this in-between stage where you're creating, but not yet clear on what it all points toward, my toolkit, The 2Hour Starting Point, was built for you. It's a foundational guide to help you clarify your identity, develop your direction, and build something sustainable from the inside out.

Because the work gets easier when you start from first principles and stop writing from someone else’s point of view.

Thanks for reading. If you found this helpful consider sharing it with someone else.

All the best,

Ben