What a brand strategist wishes you knew before building your personal brand
This thought has probably been on your mind for a while: “I want to have my own business”, probably for a year or two – but you’ve got sidetracked by fonts, logo colours, whether your Instagram grid looks cohesive enough…
But the visual part is the easy part because what actually makes a brand work is what you say and how you say it. Literally what most people skip entirely – when you focus on your story, the message you have to share with world and who you’re for and why you’re doing, it’s what makes it harder to give up.
You have to know your why before you post a single thing
The number one mistake people make when building a personal brand is starting with the output instead of the intent. Before you film a reel or pick a color palette, you need to get really clear on what this is actually for. Are you building toward something? Or are you just doing what you've seen other people do because it looks exciting from the outside?
These are wildly different starting points, and they lead to wildly different results. If you want out of your corporate job in two years, your brand strategy looks completely different than if you're building something you want to monetize in six months.
Getting honest about the destination changes everything about the route.
Starting messy is still starting
You don't have to have it figured out before you begin.
This is such a cliche, but there’s a reason why cliches work. The best creators started before they knew their niche, before their content was polished, before they had a logo. They just started, and made it perfect as they went.
The algorithm isn't what kills most personal brands. It's the paralysis of trying to get it perfect before putting anything out. You will not know what resonates until you try. You will not know what you love talking about until you talk about it. Done and out there beats sitting in your drafts forever, every single time.
You don't need a logo to get your first client (gasp)
If you’ve already gone down the Canva rabbit hole, this is probably gonna sting a little bit. But the amount of time you’ve spent obsessing over visual brand and early stages, could’ve probably been spent actually talking to potential clients, building relationships, and getting those first few yeses.
Of course the branding matters, but it doesn't need to come first.
What gets you your first client is showing up and offering your thing.
A simple sticker on a brown paper bag.
A clear, human pitch in someone's inbox.
A testimonial from someone you helped for free.
Start small, start scrappy, and build the beautiful brand once you know what you're building.
Focus on your message over your aesthetic
Ask any brand strategist what the most important part of a brand is, and the answer might surprise you: it's not the logo, it's not the website, it's not the colors. It's the words. What you say — out loud, in captions, in your bio, in how you introduce yourself at a party — is what people are actually going to remember and associate with you.
Your brand is not what you look like. It's what people say about you when you're not in the room. And that gets shaped by the message you're consistently putting out into the world. So before you spend hours on the visuals, spend time getting clear on what you actually want people to think, feel, and do when they encounter you.
The shift that changes everything: you are not the hero
The most magnetic personal brands have one thing in common. Think about the creators you can't stop watching, the coaches you find yourself recommending to friends, the business owners whose content always feels like it was made for you – they've figured out that their audience is the hero of the story, not them.
You are the guide. The mentor. The person who has been where they're going and can help them get there faster and with fewer wrong turns. The moment you stop making your brand about showcasing yourself, and start making it about what your audience gains from knowing you, everything shifts. The connection deepens, the content gets easier, and the right people start finding their way to you.
Want more of this?
This post was inspired by a conversation I had that I honestly didn't want to end. We went deep on building brands without burning out, what your story has to do with your strategy, and why imperfect action is almost always better than perfect inaction.