Hello! Hope you’re having a good start to your week.
Well, the timing of this week’s podcast episode is very apt because while I’ve been off in the newborn bubble, the internet has decided to start debating personal brands, and genuinely coincidentally, we pre-recorded an episode on exactly that for this week.
You might have seen Emma Grede talking about this recently. Her take, essentially, is that we’ve become far too focused on building a personal brand before we’ve actually built anything worth having a personal brand around. That the women we admire got really good at something, built brilliant careers and businesses, and then people wanted to hear what they had to say.
I agree with a lot of what Emma is saying (I’m also a massive fan of hers and we had her on the podcast last year). I don’t think a personal brand should ever become a replacement for doing the actual work. I think it takes extraordinary effort to get extraordinary outputs and you cannot manufacture expertise with a good content strategy.
BUT, and you knew there was one coming, I also feel very strongly about the other side of this.
Being intentional about my personal brand has been one of the biggest multipliers of my career. My personal brand was essentially a marketing grant for my businesses when I founded them. It’s allowed me to co-own companies and start a podcast. I would never have had a fraction of the opportunities I’ve had if I’d done all of the same work quietly and just hoped somebody eventually noticed. And, importantly, there was strategy behind that. I’ve been very intentional about what I want to be known for, what I put out into the world and making sure the work I’m doing is visible to the right people.
I’ve been thinking it over a lot this week, and I think both things can be true.
Do brilliant work. Get really fucking good at something. But I also don’t think we should be afraid of making sure people know about it and strategising around that at the same time.
Which brings us VERY conveniently to this week’s Future Self episode with Grace Andrews.
I planned this episode as part of the series months ago because I genuinely believe your personal brand can be one of the biggest multipliers for getting you closer to the career and life you’re reverse engineering towards. And crucially, this isn’t an episode about becoming a content creator or getting more followers. It’s about becoming known for the things you actually want to be known for, so the right opportunities can find you.
So consider this our very conveniently timed contribution to the personal brand discourse.
p.s | If you’ve been loving all the personal brand chat, I may have been putting together something to help you build your own (homework may be involved). It’s been in the works for a while now, and I’m VERY excited to share more with you soon. That’s all you’re getting out of me for now, but watch this space for more info!!
As you can tell from that very long introduction, building a personal brand is something I could talk about for hours, so I was always going to be very picky about who I handed this one over to. Grace Andrews worked her way up to Brand Director at Diary of A CEO, and has since built opportunities and a career for herself, using a very specific personal branding strategy, so she knows her stuff when it comes to reverse engineering your reputation.
There were so many gems packed into this episode, but the one thing that really stuck with me was:
“You don't need a viral framework or 100,000 followers or the grabbiest hook in the world. You need your territory. You need a specific goal. You need to know the signals that get you chosen, and you need to build content that proves them on purpose until it compounds.”
For this week’s homework, Grace has given us six questions to work through, taking us from what we actually want to achieve to what we need to be putting out there to make it happen.
Also, if you haven’t watched the full episode yet, I’ve dropped it below.
I’m with you because I also get stressed by my wardrobe most days and somehow forget every outfit I’ve ever worn the second I’m standing in front of it.
One thing I’ve started doing which genuinely helps is taking a full-length mirror selfie, shoes included, whenever I put an outfit together that I actually really like. I save them all into a dedicated album on my phone, so I basically have my own little look book to scroll through.
Then on the mornings where my brain is simply not interested in making another decision, I can just pick an outfit I know works and recreate it rather than trying on four different things and ending up hating all of them.
I also think having a few go-to outfit formulas helps SO much. Like trousers + fitted top + blazer, or jeans + shirt + loafers. You can switch up the individual pieces without having to reinvent the wheel every morning.
I saw a TikTok from Farron Clark the other day where she said she lays out all her outfits for the week on hangers on a Sunday so she doesn’t need to make a decision every morning. That’s something I aspire to do, but at the moment I’m rotating my flares & trackies between feeds.
The TLDR is: anything that removes a decision at 6am gets my vote!!
If you've been following the series so far, you'll know that I’ve been trying, along with the help of some amazing experts, to build out a pretty complete picture of what it actually takes to become your future self - the mindset, the mental fitness, the habits, the long-term plan. And next week Dr Megan Rossi will be taking us somewhere a little rogue, but stick with me: we're talking about your gut.
I hope you have a wonderful week & I’ll see you very soon,
