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The unspoken rule that's been used to keep you small — and why the most successful founders have stopped following it.
THE COSTUME THEY GAVE YOU
I grew up on the East Coast, where the business culture had one unspoken rule: look the part or lose the room.
Tattoos got covered. Piercings came out. Hair stayed its natural color — and by "natural," the standard meant straight, neat, and white-adjacent. Women were discouraged from being "too feminine." LGBTQ+ people were expected to dress and present in ways that made everyone else comfortable. And anyone who pushed back was told the same thing: know your place, be patient, your work will speak for itself.
It didn't. It doesn't. And I say that with zero apology.
I watched less-qualified people get promoted over me. Get paid more than me. Take up more space than me — while I stayed quiet and "respectable" and wondered why excellence alone wasn't enough.
THE WOMAN WHO CHANGED EVERYTHING
The shift didn't come from a book or a TED talk. It came from one person in my office who was brave enough to be herself first.
She had tattoos. A completely unique style — think renaissance faire meets forest fairy — but still workplace-appropriate, just entirely, unmistakably her. And she was an absolute badass at her job. Reliable, consistent, excellent. She wasn't penalized for standing out. She was remembered for it.
Watching her exist in that space — unapologetically herself while also being undeniably excellent — gave me permission I didn't know I was waiting for.
So I started small. Business casual, but in bolder colors. Fun heels. Leaning into my femininity instead of apologizing for it. And something unexpected happened: it worked. My confidence grew. I asked for a raise. That led to a promotion, which led to a better job at a better company. All of it traces back to one person being brave enough to show up as herself.
That is the power of representation. That is the cost of hiding.
WHAT RESPECTABILITY ACTUALLY MEANS
Let's be honest about what this word has been doing.
"Respectability" was never about competence. It is a filter — designed to make you palatable to the most conservative possible audience. It is the business world's way of saying: sand down your edges so the people who are uncomfortable with difference don't have to do the work of getting comfortable. And here's what that filter actually costs you:
It erases you from your ideal client's view. Your ideal client isn't looking for a "respectable" version of you. They're looking for you — your specific perspective, your specific aesthetic, your specific way of seeing the world. When you sand that down, they can't find you. You look like everyone else.
It attracts the wrong people. When you perform respectability, you signal safety to people who value safety above everything else. Those are not your dream clients. They're the ones who will dilute your work, exhaust your energy, and haggle on price.
It is statistically not working. When every brand looks, sounds, and feels like a "respectable" version of itself, none of them stand out. None of them convert. The sea of sameness is not a metaphor — it is a measurable market reality.
THE BRANDS THAT REJECTED THE PLAYBOOK
This isn't just a philosophy. It's a proven strategy.
Before 2017, the beauty industry had an unspoken agreement. Fenty Beauty foundation lines topped out at around 20 shades, clustered in light to medium tones. Women with deeper skin tones mixed products, used workarounds, or simply accepted that the prestige beauty market wasn't built for them. This was a $650 billion industry. The gap was enormous. The industry chose not to see it.
The respectability playbook for beauty said: serve the mainstream market first. Deeper skin tones are a niche. Keep it "universal" — which really just meant keep it white.
Rihanna ignored all of it.
She launched Fenty Beauty with 40 foundation shades — nearly double the industry standard — and put the deepest tones at the center of the launch. Not as an afterthought. Front and center, with the same urgency as every other shade. The message wasn't "we made something for you too." It was: "this was built for you first."
The industry called it revolutionary. The women it was built for called it overdue. Together, they generated $100 million in sales in the first 40 days.
But here's what makes Fenty more than a product success story: it permanently changed what the industry was allowed to do. Within a year, every major beauty brand scrambled to expand their shade ranges. The "Fenty Effect" became an actual industry term — the ripple that forced a reckoning with who had been excluded on purpose.
Rihanna didn't add diversity to a "respectable" brand. She built the brand around the people respectability had been designed to exclude — and created a $2.8 billion business in the process.
That is not a coincidence. That is a strategy.
Then there's Liquid Death — a company selling canned water in an industry whose entire visual language is mountain springs, soft blue palettes, and words like "pure" and "refreshing."
Liquid Death looked like a heavy metal album cover instead.
Skulls. Gothic typography. A tagline that says "Murder Your Thirst." The founder got the idea watching concertgoers secretly fill Monster Energy cans with water — because they wanted to stay hydrated but couldn't bring themselves to be seen holding a plain plastic bottle. They were choosing dehydration over looking uncool. That's how powerful the respectability standard had become — even water had to perform it.
But here's what makes this more than a branding stunt: Liquid Death understood exactly who their audience was and what they actually needed. An entire generation is drinking less alcohol — choosing health without wanting to sacrifice identity. Sober people at concerts. Gen Z at bars. Straight-edge communities who never had a beverage that felt like them. These people didn't need water to look "healthy." They needed it to look like them.
So Liquid Death gave them that. A can that fits in your hand at a concert like a beer. That turns heads. That lets you make a healthier choice without performing respectability to do it. They now have a $1.4 billion valuation and an exclusive Live Nation partnership across 120+ music festivals and concert venues.
Not despite the "too much" branding. Entirely because of it.
THE DEFINITION IS SHIFTING
Every generation recalibrates what "respectable" means — and right now it's shifting faster than most businesses are adapting.
With the rise of AI-generated everything — perfectly polished, endlessly optimized, utterly soulless — we are watching a massive consumer shift toward reality. Toward imperfection. Toward brands that feel like actual humans made them. People need to see themselves in the brands they invest in. And "respectable" in the old sense — sanitized, personality-free, safe — is becoming the thing that signals inauthenticity, not credibility.
This doesn't mean abandon standards. It means stop shrinking yourself to fit someone else's outdated definition of what success looks like. When you have a strong brand strategy, you get to decide what respect means for you and your ideal clients — and you make that decision from clarity, not fear.
THE NAO PERSPECTIVE
I made the full shift in 2026. Bright hair, visible tattoos, a brand built entirely around who I actually am. It has been the single best business decision I've ever made — on the ROI side, and personally.
I share this because I know what it feels like to wait for permission. I needed to see someone else go first. So consider this yours.
Respectability is a costume designed by people who benefit from your smallness. It was built to keep women patient. To police Black women's hair. To force LGBTQ+ people into conforming costumes. To keep anyone with tattoos, piercings, bright hair, or a "too much" personality in line — because the status quo is more comfortable when you don't challenge it.
At Nao Creative Studio, we don't build respectable brands in the old sense. We build true ones. Strategically designed around who you actually are. Brands that repel the wrong people on purpose — because that's the only way to become exactly right for the ones who matter.
You have been taught that respectability is the price of admission to success. It isn't. It is the tax you pay to stay invisible.
Your "too muchness" was never the problem. It never was.
I hope that my doing this helps someone else be brave enough to do it too.
I take on a small number of clients at a time to make sure the work gets the attention it deserves. If you're ready to stop filtering wrong clients manually and start letting your brand do it for you — let's talk.
