Start your personal brand swipe file
The gross-ungross side of building a personal brand.
I’ve never posted on LinkedIn.
That probably makes me unqualified to teach you about personal branding (feel free to unsubscribe now 😝).
But, personal branding is more than just LinkedIn (and, so you know I’m not totally useless, I did grow a TikTok profile from 0 to 45K in a few months).
Because I’ve neglected personal branding a bit in my career (and yep, I do regret it), I’m going hard on researching and experimenting now.
I consumed 100hrs of personal branding advice so you don’t have to.
Join me in the learning journey and we’ll grow our personal brands together💁🏼.
I’ve always believed you live and die by your reputation.
Your reputation is shaped by two things:
What other people think and share about you
What you think and share about yourself
Personal branding is the tool you have to craft both those things and I’ll be going deep on it over the next month in this newsletter.
It's consistently a ‘Top 3’ topic I get asked about, so you prob don’t need convincing, but…
Is your 'brand' really that important?
Seth Godin nails it:
If Nike announced a hotel, you’d have a pretty good idea of what that would be. If Hyatt announced a shoe, you wouldn’t.
You already have some form of ‘brand’ that people associate with you (whether you like that brand is another story).
Your personal brand makes it easier or harder for you to do what you’re trying to do.
It’s your intangible perceived value. And it's important to be intentional about crafting and communicating it:
internally within your company, and
externally or publicly (the part I neglected)
Build brand equity in yourself and grow it over time.
Your next job likely won’t come from submitting (your AI-crafted) resume to a faceless portal.
You’ll have better luck with a strong online presence and network of people who know your brand.
And it’s not just about landing your next job, it’s about people in your existing company having a fuller picture of your work, your opinions, your humanness.
Ok where to start?
Start with jealousy.
I’ve taken multiple personal branding workshops and would always get stuck on crafting the perfect brand mission statement or nailing the exact 3 words I wanted to be known for.
Instead, start by getting inspo from other people and looking for patterns in:
Why you’re drawn to them
What they share that informs your perception
This isn’t about copying someone’s brand ⚠️
Big red flag 🔻 nope🔻 to that.
Personal Brand 101 is that it needs to be (a) totally authentic to you and (b) distinguished.
We’ll get into all this in upcoming editions, but for now, it just helps to suss the vibes.
Start A Swipe File
A swipe file is a collection of best-in-class advertising examples that copywriters and creatives use for inspiration.
I adapted the concept for my own (scrappy) referencing:
The pattern I observed is:
Smart + Cool + Humble kept coming up.
When someone had the first 2, but not ‘Humble’, it jarred for me.
Did this help me start to define my own brand? Yes.
Start one for yourself
Research people you’re drawn to
What about their vibe do you like / not like? Why?
What stuff do they talk about? Themes / content categories?
What are their extracurriculars (stuff they do outside their core job)?
Where do they share? What formats do you like? Bookmark posts
Adapt this template if you want (keep it v.simple!)
Oki byeeeeee
Soph ✌🏼
Really interesting to reference the people you’re inspired by with this so it quickly helps you connect the dots! Thanks for sharing that! ✨