I was not prepared for what Justin Bieber did at Coachella.

Now, hear me out, I know you might be tired of hearing about it, but there is a perspective I want to share that is different than the thousands of articles discussing if it was crap, or who won the battle… Sabrina vs Justin. 

What we all saw…A laptop. YouTube. And a duet with the 12-year-old version of himself.

No backup dancers. No pyrotechnics. No setlist. Just a grown man sitting on the world’s biggest stage, pulling up the videos that started everything. The ones filmed in a bathroom, in a driveway, before anyone knew his name, singing along with the kid he used to be.

He didn’t try to be bigger than who he was. He brought that little kid along with him. And said yeah… that’s still me.

No “I’ve evolved past that.” No embarrassment. Just complete ownership of every version of himself over the years.

And I think that’s what we’re all starving for right now.

We’ve Been Quietly Editing Ourselves

Here’s what I’ve watched happen in the creative industry, and honestly, what I’ve watched it happen to myself too.

We build something. People connect with it. And then over time we get a little more polished, a little more “professional,” a little more curated. We start trying to sound smarter. More put together. We swap the real story for the cleaner version that seems to us more impressive, easier to digest, positions us in a better light.

We stop communicating like ourselves and start sounding like the person we think we’re supposed to be.

And somewhere in that process… the thing that made people love us in the first place just slips away.

I’ve done it. I’ve caught myself mid-caption thinking this is too much or that sounds too simple or people are going to think I don’t know what I’m doing if I say that. And I’ve edited it out. Smoothed it over. Made it safer… curated a PR version of Jamie that I thought made me more digestible. 

What I didn’t realize was that safer also meant smaller. Every time I edited out the real part, I was editing out the connection point that brought them to me in the first place. And if we are honest, we always feel it when we are playing small.

The Internt Has Never Been More Tired of Performative people

There’s a reason millions and millions of people have now watched videos of a guy playing YouTube videos on a laptop at a music festival.

It wasn’t the nostalgia, although that was part of it {epic, right?}. It wasn’t the spectacle, because there really wasn’t one. It was the relief of something finally feeling real. The exhale of watching someone on a stage that size choose to just… be who they actually are.

We are living in a content era so saturated with performance that authenticity has become the rarest thing in any feed. Everyone is optimizing. Everyone is positioning. Everyone is building the version of themselves that looks the most credible, the most together, the most worthy of being taken seriously.

And then Justin Bieber sat down with a MacBook and harmonized with his 12-year-old self, and people lost it.

Not because it was impressive. Because it was honest.

That is the whole lesson. Right there. I really could stop talking at this moment… but there is a point I want to make here. 

What This Actually Means for Your Brand

Here’s where I’m going to push on something a bit, because this isn’t just a feel-good moment about one pop star.

If you are a creative entrepreneur – a photographer, an educator, a coach, a service provider building something – you are making this mistake right now. Maybe not dramatically. Maybe just in the small daily choices about what you include and what you leave out.

You’re leaving out the story from before you figured it all out. You’re leaving out the offer that didn’t work. You’re leaving out the version of you that got started with way less than you have now.

Because for some reason you’ve decided that version is embarrassing. Or irrelevant. Or not consistent with the brand you’re building today.

But here’s the thing Justin Bieber understood that we often don’t… the beginning is not the part you outgrow. It’s the part that proves you’re real. We don’t have to outgrow ourselves to grow. 

Your audience doesn’t need you to be further along than you are. They need you to be honest about where you’ve been. Because the version of you that you’re most tempted to hide? That’s the one people are actually waiting to see.

You Don’t Have to Outgrow Yourself to Grow

I think a lot of us have bought into a version of growth that requires leaving earlier versions of ourselves behind. That the more we evolve, the more distance we should put between who we are now and who we used to be. That professionalism means shine, perfection, curration. That authority means having no visible history of us figuring it out and struggling. 

It doesn’t.

The people who build the deepest audience trust aren’t the ones who “arrived” perfect. They’re the ones who brought their whole story with them. Who lets us follow along. Who didn’t clean up the narrative before handing it over. Who let people see the before, not just the after. The messy middle is where its at. THAT is the connection point for us all. The relatability of it all. 

Justin Bieber has one of the most public, messy, documented lives in modern celebrity. Every bad decision, every difficult season, every version of himself that didn’t work, it’s all on record. And instead of distancing himself from it, he walked onto the Coachella stage and sang with it.

That took more courage than pyrotechnics.

Stop Curating. Start Owning.

I’m not telling you to overshare. I’m not telling you to put every hard thing online or lead every caption with your worst moment. Crying online is for a select few who seem to make that work, and that is not what I’m encouraging. 

What I’m telling you is to stop editing out the parts that are actually true.

The real story of how you started. The offer that flopped. The year things were harder than they looked from the outside. The version of you who had no idea what they were doing and figured it out anyway.

That’s not a story you should protect people from. That’s the content that makes someone trust you enough to buy from you, follow you for years, and tell someone else you’re the real thing.

The most magnetic thing you will ever be is exactly who you already are.

Not the version thats performing. Not the version you’re building toward. The one that already exists, right now, with all the history attached.

Don’t edit it out.

That’s the thing that makes people stay for your journey. Thats the thing that makes people want to cheer. 

If this hit something for you, come hang out with me over at Just Jamie — my podcast about building a real business, a real brand, and a real life without editing out the parts that actually matter. The stories that no one shares. The person behind the persona. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts, or at https://jamierichins.com/podcast/