If you've got more time 👇🏻
Once upon a time,
there was a freelancer wannabe.
It was a cold October day in 2017, and I was returning home from my 9-to-5 job... Furious as usual.
It was a repetitive, alienating job that demanded more than humanly possible; I was doing an absurd amount of 'mandatory overtime' (so trendy in Italian companies) and living in a climate of mobbing, ignorance, and increasing disorganization as you climbed the hierarchy. A real nightmare.
My husband Matteo, who couldn't stand seeing me consumed by gastritis, that night encouraged me to grab pen and paper and think about what I could do to get out of that terrible company.
After a couple of weeks of mental rumination, I discovered copywriting and SEO - yes, I didn't even know they existed before, I was living under a rock, okay? 😂
I started studying.
I also started a blog to immediately put into practice what I was learning, with a name I'm still proud of today.
My brand name was something like...
... "Something writy is going on".
Actually the real name was "Qui Penna Ci Cova", a funny rephrasing of an italian saying.
The website was all pastel colors, which were so trendy at the time (the idea of 'differentiating yourself' wasn't clear to me yet, and I didn't even know where branding came from).
I didn't have a VAT number yet, so I couldn't promote my services, but I offered a free course to 'figure out what to do when you grow up'. The same course that Matteo and I had done in those weeks of October 2017.
Today, this makes me smile a lot, you'll understand why in a few paragraphs.
I get bored of things in no time.
You should know that I'm as curious as a cat - and I have the attention span of one too - and if I get the chance to learn something new, I almost always take it.
So, do you think I wouldn't start studying web design, when I have a husband who creates (created) websites?
Classic rounds of friends and relatives, I look for websites to build to get my hands dirty.
I get good results and, with Matteo, we decide that we can offer ourselves as a web agency that offers websites, SEO and copywriting.
In the meantime, in December 2019 I quit my job and opened my VAT number in September 2020, in the face of pandemics and former colleagues who told me to hold on to my full-time, permanent and secure job.
At that point, however, things get serious: I was no longer an aspiring freelancer, I really was one.
And Qui Penna Ci Cova, the little blog I started, no longer made sense.
ChiocciaLab launches, a new incubator for freelancers.
That's where I discovered Giada Centofanti, who at the time offered a branding course (today she's a badass impact coach, you should
check her out).
She helped me define ChiocciaLab's identity, to decide to target artisans (hey artisans, those were the good old days!) by focusing on all the elements I needed to create a website that represented us.
And of course, I fell in love with branding and started studying it!
I started to lose interest in building websites and wanted to focus mainly on branding. In the meanwhile, Matteo started to want to go in a different direction too. So I decided to create my personal brand...
P.S. ChiocciaLab means something like "mama hen lab" - yes, I'm kinda obsessed by birds and chicks. 🐦🐦⬛🦤
The Digital Chick Hatcher.
In italian "Chioccia Digitale", as the domain you are in right now.
That's when I started offering personal branding courses and communication plans, with a special focus on Instagram. It's been my go-to platform for years.
I was always trying out new things: challenges, podcasts, comics, and even a newsletter that was constantly evolving. I had so much fun!
At the same time, in ChiocciaLab (with Giada and Matteo) we started combining business planning with personal branding in our courses.
July 2022: time to get that psychology degree!
My journey has been all over the place (some call it being a 'multipotentialite,' I call it having an ADHD that didn't believe in itself enough). I felt like my education was pretty scattered.
I'd gone from thinking I could do anything to thinking I could do nothing. The classic Dunning-Kruger effect.
And all the positive feedback from clients didn't help. I just felt like I wasn't good enough.
So I figured:
Branding is basically applied psychology 👉🏻 maybe I should study psychology to be really good at it 👉🏻 let's try that university entrance exam.
They actually accepted me, at the Faculty of Psychological Sciences in Genoa. Poor souls.
Between two worlds.
I'm now in my third year of university and I'm loving it! I'm so sure that this is the right path for me, and I'm really excited about becoming a psychotherapist.
I want to help people who are going through a tough time, especially those struggling with their identity.
People who feel lost and need to find their way.
I mean, I could totally offer them that "figure out your life" course I used to do (LOL, I had the answer all along!).
Right now, I'm kind of caught between psychotherapy and branding, which are similar in some ways but very different in others.
And once I'm a psychologist, I'll have to manage all these brands: Chioccia Digitale, ChiocciaLab, QuiPennaCiCova, and my personal brand.
That's a lot of plates to keep spinning!
I love trying new things, but even I have my limits.
So, I've decided to simplify things like this 👇🏻
Shufflebrand,
the branding research agency.
Offering branding and personal branding tools, online very very soon.
