Very early in my career, I lied to get a job at a well-known local agency.
I told them I was an artworker.
At the time, I didn’t really know what an artworker was. I’d seen the word “art” in the ad and decided that was close enough to design to make the rest feel negotiable. It wasn’t. The role was deeply technical, which meant I was exposed fairly quickly. Within a month, it had become obvious I had no idea what I was doing. I got warned, managed not to get fired, and then had no real option except to learn the job properly.
Two years later, I was a reluctant artworker. I’d learned a lot, grown to respect the technical side of design but wanted out. I made a play for the design studio, where I’d always wanted to be.
The problem was that by then, everybody already knew me as an artworker. Reliable. Technical. Not creative. At least not in their eyes.
I tried to shift that perception for a while. It never really got me anywhere.
One afternoon, I heard about a creative meeting and decided to sit in. I walked into the boardroom, found a spare seat, and sat down. A senior art director next to me turned and said:
He looked genuinely confused at the idea that I an artworker would be in a creative meeting. I spent the rest of the session wishing I hadn’t come.
At the time, I experienced it as a credibility problem. It wasn’t. It was a categorisation problem.
Everyone in the agency had filed me under a label. And once people do that, they rarely reassess it. The category starts doing the thinking for them. It shapes what feels believable about you, where you’re expected to show up, and what role people unconsciously assume you’ll keep playing.
The difficult part: your reality can change long before anyone else updates their version of you.
A few months ago, a client told me about something that happened at an industry event.
Their business is well known in a specific B2B category. Strong reputation, deep expertise, years of credibility in a defined space. More recently, they’ve moved into a new area built around capabilities they developed internally over years of operating at scale.
At the event, another attendee looked at them and said: “What are YOU doing here?”
Almost word for word.
The second I heard it, I recognised it. Because this is exactly what happens when someone encounters a brand that no longer fits the category they’ve already assigned to it.
Most of us process complexity through shortcuts. We build mental categories around companies, industries, and people because constantly reassessing everything from scratch would be exhausting. Once those categories settle in, they’re surprisingly stubborn.
The stronger a company becomes associated with one thing, the harder it becomes for the market to picture it anywhere else. Legitimate new capabilities get discounted not because they aren’t real, but because they clash with the existing mental shorthand. In a strange way, success can become restrictive.
You can see this tension across B2B right now.
Historically, companies were defined by what they sold. Retailers sold products. Banks provided financial services. Consultancies advised clients. That was the map.
The map has changed.
A growing number of established businesses are now commercialising capabilities they originally built for themselves. A retailer develops logistics infrastructure sophisticated enough to become a standalone service. A bank builds cybersecurity systems robust enough that other organisations want access to them. A consultancy develops AI tools to improve delivery and realises the platform itself has market value.
From inside the business, these moves feel entirely logical. The capability exists. The expertise exists. The organisation is simply externalising something it became exceptionally good at internally.
Markets don’t experience the internal journey. They experience the announcement. And when the announcement clashes with the category already attached to the brand, the reaction is predictable: “What are YOU doing here?”
The brands that handle this transition well make three things clear.
The capability emerged naturally from what they already do.
When people hear the explanation, the reaction isn’t “that’s surprising” it’s “that makes sense.” Amazon Web Services is the obvious example. AWS didn’t emerge because Amazon randomly decided to enter cloud computing. The company built massive infrastructure capability because running a retail business at that scale required it. Eventually, those systems became products. Markets accept expansion far more readily when there’s a believable bridge between the old identity and the new one. Without that bridge, the move doesn’t feel earned.
Their history is the strongest proof they have.
Many brands instinctively treat their existing reputation as baggage as though entering a new category requires distancing from the old one. It rarely does. A bank’s cybersecurity product developed inside one of the world’s most heavily regulated and security-sensitive environments carries a different weight than one that emerged from a start-up with no operational history. The smartest brands don’t run from their past. They use it to make the case.
Successful repositioning isn’t about pretending the old category never existed. It’s about helping the market understand why success there created the conditions for credibility here
The market hasn’t caught up yet and that’s expected.
This is the hardest part, because capability changes faster than perception. Inside the business, the shift is clear. Outside, the market is still using the old category because it’s familiar and efficient. That lag is normal. Recategorization rarely happens instantly. It happens through accumulated exposure: case studies, partnerships, launches, proof and repeated visibility over time. Eventually, the unfamiliar starts feeling expected. The reaction moves from “What are YOU doing here?” to “Of course they’re here.”
I understand that question differently now.
Watching brands wrestle with this at scale changed how I think about it. The question isn’t the problem. It’s often evidence that you’ve evolved and arrived somewhere your reputation hasn’t fully reached yet.
The brands that navigate this well keep showing up, keep making the case, keep building proof until the market updates its assumptions.
The same is true for people. Any serious career move means walking into rooms where your existing label no longer fits. It will feel uncomfortable. Imposter syndrome will arrive on schedule. But if the capability is real and the evidence keeps building, the category eventually changes.
“What are YOU doing here?” might be the best question you can be asked as a business or as an individual. It means you’ve made a leap. Now you’ve been given the chance to make the case. Start talking.
