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I’ve sat through a lot of personal branding workshops.

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Most follow this pattern:

• Do values exercise 👉🏼 Find your top 5 values
• Write your brand positioning statement
• Create content themes
• Post some shit #YouGotThis #Winning

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A simpler (IMO, better) approach is:

1. Who are you?
2. What do you want to be known for?
3. How are you gonna do that?

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To help you get there, here's...

1. The ‘You-est’ You

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There’s def validity in those ‘values’ exercises. The problem is that you end up with a list of words that sound similar to everyone else in the room: “Authenticity, Integrity, Honesty…”—and it fails the “so what?” test.

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Professional Creators say that the best ‘brands’ are just “you pushed out into the world”.

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The closer you get to your true character vs a persona you create, the easier it'll be.

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Questions to try:

• What childhood traits still define me today? (Hint💡ask your fam)
• What filter or lens do I use for difficult life decisions?
• Which commonly cited values don't gel with me?

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Soph's example:

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2. But Whyyyy

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You won’t be motivated to put in the effort until you’re clear on the payoff. Why do you even want to build your brand?

• Grow cred and network for your next role?
• Pivot careers?
• Establish yourself in a new company?
• Be perceived as a future leader by your current leaders?

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Soph's example:

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3. Pick Two Things

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Professional Creators try to get super sharp on what they want to be known for.

The reality is, that most of us aren’t going for that level of brand association or maybe we just don’t know what we want to be known for (🙋🏼 me for most of my career).

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Instead, with your ‘why’ in mind, pick a theme/thing in each of these 👇🏼

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A) Prove your expertise [show competence]

Pick one area within your current field/domain or where you’re trying to get to. For example, “growth marketing” or even more specifically, “new-school growth marketing for scale-ups.”

• What’s something you find easy that other people find hard?
• What’s something that people come to you for help on?
• What expertise do you want recruiters glean from your profile?

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B) Learn in the open [show humility]

Pick something you’re on a journey with and document it. Take people with you. The best advice I got when starting my TikTok was:

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“People don’t want to learn from 20 year veterans, they want to learn from someone who's a few steps ahead of them, because that person knows how it feels.”

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Soph's example:

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⚡I'll be sharing tactical steps for communicating your (A) Expertise and (B) Journey themes in upcoming newsletters.

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4. Brand Vibe

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This is my fav part. Reflect on everything you've written down in the previous points, plus:

• What feeling do you want people to be left with?
• How does your approach differ?
• What conventional wisdom do you challenge?
• Who don’t you want to sound like?
• The “Is / Isn’t” table is helpful for tone of voice

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Soph's example:

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I just work here,

Soph ✌🏼

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