Let’s get the first order of business out of the way. A personal brand is not about self-promotion above all else. A real personal brand is about providing a service to an audience you really love and care about. I rarely see an exception to this rule when it comes to thought leaders.
In our newest podcast episode, Jean-Louis and I dive into what the future of personal branding looks like and how far it’s traveled from what people think it is. You can watch it above, or if you’re more of a reader like me, see my notes below.
What a personal brand fundamentally is
At its core, a brand is a story that directs attention to create a specific expectation. One of the most persistent personal brands of our time is Steve Jobs. He’s been described as many things (good and bad), but we tend to have a singular version of him in our minds because that is how he directed the attention around him.
The question you have to ask yourself is What are you directing attention to? There are two layers to this that you can work with:
Your identity, which is how you direct attention to yourself
Your perspective, which is how you direct attention to the world
A personal brand sits somewhere in between these two things.
When it comes to the service you are actually providing to your audience, here is what I see time and time again (and what I believe naturally happens if you approach your thought leadership from a genuinely expansive place): the best brands tap into a latent emotional experience that isn’t being expressed, and when you name it, people feel relief and recognition.
Rick Rubin gives us permission to blend creativity, spirituality, and commercial pursuits. He recognizes a desire people can’t quite name - to treat all of those pursuits as sacred rather than keep them separate - and giving them permission to do that is his service.
You have to grow. There is no way around this.
You need to be a trajectory. We follow thought leaders because as they grow, we grow too.
If your job is to help people evolve, you have to visibly evolve yourself. Scott Galloway started as the business school professor with a sharp tongue who turned into the tech industry truth teller, who then turned into the guy that told you how to live a good life, that is now proposing a new model of masculinity.
Kyla Scanlon and Casey Newton used to provide dry reporting on tech and the economy, but look at their writing now. They’re providing content that acts more like sensemaking, that helps you orient yourself both intellectually and emotionally in the world around you.
When they grow, we grow. It’s that simple.
Don’t get stuck in one domain. You have to be continually crossing over into new territory. Hank Green was a science communicator, but now he’s the internet’s dad.
Get comfortable with the fact that you will always be in a state of change. That’s usually not an easy thing to do. It’s awkward. It’s risky. Oftentimes it’s tiring, but that’s part of the service you provide. It’s legitimate emotional labor.
What underlies all of it is vulnerability. You will have to, by definition, make yourself vulnerable to criticism and exposure. That’s simply the cost of being someone with a meaningful personal brand today. Vulnerability is the most fundamental precondition for growth.
Skin in the game is the only credential worth having
Mr. Chazz is deeply, personally invested in healing the emotional bonds of children and parents today because of what he experienced growing up. Your Rich BFF uses her own life and finances as a master case study that’s always evolving. Alex Hormozi is an in-the-trenches operator who’s candid about his sacrifices.
None of these people lead with their credentials or degrees or certifications, and even if they had them, it wouldn’t matter because nobody would care. Our information ecology has shifted in some pretty significant ways. We used to perceive people through status from a distance, but now we see them through the lens of sacrifice and vulnerability.
We’re wired to read each other at a startling resolution. Tears of sadness are slightly more viscous than tears of joy, so they roll down the cheek slower and give someone else a better chance of noticing. We're one of the only animals with visible whites around our eyes, so others can track exactly where we're looking. We are sophisticated social detectors by nature, and personal branding runs entirely on that machinery. It's also why audiences can sniff out a brand built on bullshit, because we've been reading each other this closely for a very long time.
Information is infinite, but true skin in the game is not. Skin in the game means you are going to get dinged up. I write more about that here:
Surviving Your Personal Brand
"Periods of failure can be periods of growth but consider the possibility that many of today’s wanderers are also tomorrow’s superstars... Periods of exploration can be like winter farming; nothing is visibly growing, but a subterranean process is at work and will in time yield a bounty."
People who are risking something, who have a deep personal investment in the thing that they are chasing, cut through the noise.
On balance, that’s a great thing because it means personal branding today is less about creating distance between you and your audience, and more about sharing an experience with them. But it’s also a much higher bar to aspire to.
This is also why so many “rebirth” brands fall flat (i.e. the founder who sold the company, made a fortune, and now wants to give back or reinvent themselves.) The reason people don’t buy it is because there’s no sacrifice. Sacrifice has become the language of trust, and you have to show you’ve closed other doors or given something up to earn it.
Remember the guy who loved trains, built a huge following on it, and landed a Gucci collab because of that love, until it came out that his persona ran through an LLC and wasn’t what it seemed? What scandalized people wasn’t necessarily the business side of it, but the sudden doubt of whether he actually loved the trains.
That’s what people are asking. Do you really love it, and can you prove it?
The service you actually provide
The service is a form of release. It can be intellectual, emotional, or relational release, but it’s something that makes your audience feel witnessed. You’ll start to get emails and messages from followers that say things like, “I was thinking about that, but I couldn’t find a way to express it.” Or, “It feels so good to know that somebody understands what I was feeling but couldn’t articulate.” This is the goal of a personal brand, for people to be seen, because when people are seen, it gives them access to a new model of being.
We all need stories to understand ourselves in the world. In fact trauma is often defined as the inability to form a narrative about yourself, and thus healing is the formation of a cohesive narrative where there wasn’t one before.
When you give people access to a model of being where they can see their experiences, or their beliefs, or their perspectives, or their emotions through your shared lens, you’re closing a vital loop for them.
When you come in that way, you can see how shallow the previous era of self-promotional personal branding was. It’s fool’s gold. It’s a booby prize. Why settle for that when you can bring something so much more meaningful forward?
Awe Has Arrived
If you've been hearing about "awe" a lot over the past few weeks, so have we - it was our topic this month in Exposure Therapy. When a word starts showing up everywhere at once, it usually means something. People are ready to have a bigger conversation about finding wonder in times of change and uncertainty.
Last week, we hosted a Midnight Solstice experience for our Exposure Therapy community in Topanga Canyon to bring awe back. People arrived at this remote, beautiful location - many acres, an ancient oak tree, a private sound bath in a giant dome, and the stars above us - all to ourselves. We dressed witchy and mystical and leaned into the magic of the liminal space between seasons.
I have an intention for every party or event we hold, and for this one I told our members this:
Of all the things we know, we know for sure that the rest of the year holds some real surprises for us. Personally, in our communities, and for the world, big shifts are coming.
The invitation is to take that energy and deliberately channel it into whatever you want it to be. Don't let the chaos take you. Decide to channel that chaos and build exactly what you want.
I offer this intention to you as well. As people who study culture, we know just how much change is ahead of us, and I'm willing to bet you're tired of being swept up in the current. But I'm also willing to bet you're gaining some perspective on what kind of life you want to create for yourself in the coming seasons and perhaps feeling some optimism about what's possible.
I don't think that's because the material conditions around us have changed. I think it's because people are waking up to their own power. And when people wake up to their power then things change for real.
One Last Thought
This was originally developed to help you understand how trust is formed in culture and markets, but I think the deeper value is in using it to help you understand yourself.
You might be surprised at what it reveals about what trust means to you and how you find it in the world:
Yours,
Hi, I’m Jasmine Bina. I’m a cultural futurist. If you love this newsletter and need more:
My private culture and strategy community Exposure Therapy
My 3-week masterclass on How To Build A Culture Brand
My agency Concept Bureau
