TBL: Why You Need A Personal Brand
Whether you are a CEO, a highly visible company leader or just starting out, a personal brand can become an asset for you that is portable
You probably hear the term personal brand all the time today. As hard as it is to imagine, however, this concept was hardly discussed a decade ago.
For many years, personal branding only mattered for CEOs at the biggest companies. But increased employee mobility and the dominance of social media makes a personal brand quite valuable for people at every level of an organization.
Recently, I hosted Rory Vaden, co-founder of Brand Builders Group, on the Elevate Podcast. Rory and his team help some of the world’s top thinkers and authors distinguish themselves in a world where attention is hard to hold. Personal branding was the central topic of our discussion.
Rory got his breakthrough working with Lewis Howes, host of one of the world’s most popular podcasts, The School of Greatness. Rory guided Lewis to go all in on the podcast as the centerpiece of his brand, and it scaled from 30 million downloads to 500 million in just a couple years.
If you’re looking to become known as a leader or creator, or if you’re looking to distinguish yourself early in your career, you should start thinking about your personal brand. Your personal brand is not about your follower count, content, or messaging. It is your reputation, digitized.
Here are some other nuggets from Rory and my conversation on how to best develop a personal brand.
Focus Drives Breakthroughs
My favorite concept from the interview is called Sheehan’s Wall. It’s the invisible barrier separating people who are well known in their field from people who aren’t.
On the well-known side of the wall, people have diversified brands. For example, a famous business leader may have books, a podcast and courses. Seeing this, many people who want to become well known try a ton of different things to get attention and see what sticks.
This scattershot approach causes people to bounce off Sheehan’s wall without making a dent. Conversely, the best way to break through the wall is to hit a single spot over and over.
Pretty much every famous person and business initially earned their status by doing one thing well before diversifying. LeBron James became a world class basketball player before he started investing in media, education and business. Rihanna became a multi-platinum singer before launching her extremely successful clothing brand, Fenty.
As Rory said in our interview: “If you have diluted focus, you’ll get diluted results.” Conversely, remember that Lewis Howes got exponential results by focusing completely on one thing.
When you start building a personal brand, you’ll be tempted to try a ton of things—make videos, post constantly, try to write a book. Instead, pick your one thing or one channel where you have the most traction or passion and master that first. For some it may be a TikTok video each day or a newsletter, for others it might be LinkedIn posts or a podcast. Build your reputation and credibility for your one thing, and expand only after you’ve broken through Sheehan’s Wall.
Clarity Beats Cleverness
Great branding is often associated with catchy slogans, professional logos and clever copy. But that matters much less than clarity: make it super clear what you deliver to your audience, and make sure it’s something people want.
There are many companies who prove this point. While these businesses have well-designed, flashy branding, most of their potential customers don’t even know what their product is, and no one wants to buy it. My favorite example is the short-lived streaming service Quibi, which spent millions on a buzzy Super Bowl ad, only for most viewers to think it was a food delivery service.
Your branding needs to reach an audience that already knows what they want. Tell that group of people, clearly and loudly, that you’re the person who can give it to them.
Rory’s work is targeted at people who say “I want to be wealthy and well-known,” which is what he named his most recent book. That statement tells you exactly what he does, and it works for him.
Authenticity Builds Trust
AI makes content creation easier than ever, and aspiring brand builders are going to be flooding feeds with AI generated content. In this AI-saturated environment, authenticity will be your differentiator.
As Rory puts it, “you’re not going to outthink the machines. But you can out-human them.”
As you build a brand, share small snippets of your life: your kids, your dog, your partner, your favorite hobby. Opening yourself up creates connection and trust. But to be clear, these need to be authentic, not staged or performative. Everyone is getting tired of only seeing the best five percent of people’s lives online, so you should aim to be human, not superhuman.
Personal vs Company Brand
Many people who want to build a personal brand today are part of a larger company that they do not own or lead. This was a prominent part of our interview, and we agreed that a personal brand needs to amplify your company’s business, not compete with it.
This is easier when you’re a CEO or Founder, as you’re the face of the company and your personal and company brands are quite linked. Of course, this can be negative if you aren’t careful—see Elon Musk and Tesla.
But if you’re a leader or employee building within a company, it’s a bit murkier. You want the brand to be aligned to your company, while still being something portable you can take with you.
For example, if you are a top sales guru who shares sales tips across your industry, that brand boosts you, but it also draws attention to your company and its products. Your star grows in tandem with the company.
But people get into trouble when they start monetizing their message outside the company. Say you’re still a top sales guru, but you have a popular, fast growing beauty channel on YouTube that appears to take a lot of your time and energy. Before long, colleagues and bosses are noticing it, and you don’t want your personal brand to be seen as a distraction that takes all your passion and attention. That’s a recipe for conflict.
Whether you are a CEO, a highly visible company leader or just starting out, a personal brand can become an asset for you that is portable. It’s never too early, or too late, to start building, but it requires work and intention.
To learn more, I recommend checking out my full interview with Rory. He’s also made his new audiobook that deep dives into this topic, Wealthy and Well Known, available for free for my readers.
The Better Leader (TBL) is a bi-weekly newsletter that delivers a strategic playbook for leaders, drawn from my 20 years of leadership experience and insights from top CEOs and leaders I’ve worked with. Each edition is concise and tactical, providing frameworks you can implement immediately to elevate your leadership. TBL is available exclusively to Friday Forward premium subscribers.