[NEW INSIGHT] Personal branding – what it is and what it isn't
Founders: building a successful company is only half the battle. The other half is building a strong personal brand that protects your reputation and opens doors to opportunities you’d otherwise miss.
Done right, personal branding positions you as a credible, inspiring, and forward-thinking founder, someone people want to follow, invest in, and work with.
In this article, we explore seven practical personal branding strategies you can implement to stand out and drive growth.
Your company’s purpose, impact, and objectives should always come first. Recognition for your work will follow.
One of the most damaging traits for a founder building a personal brand? Ego.
Far too many founders unintentionally develop one when they launch a pioneering product, achieve early success, and step into the spotlight.
But instead of admiration, they’re often met with unhappy audiences and stagnation.
This isn't to say that it's inherently bad to be confident about your startup's prospects, but there's a fine line bullishness and arrogance. Cross it, and you risk poor business decisions, an alienated team, and a toxic culture, which matters when 95% of employees say leaders must be likeable.
So, how do you avoid an ego?
Seek, embrace, and implement feedback: This can come from advisers, employees, and customers who challenge your assumptions and help you stay grounded.
Prioritise growth over personal accolades: Your company’s purpose, impact, and objectives should always come first. Recognition for your work will follow.
Admit mistakes quickly: The sooner you own up to errors, the quicker you'll build credibility and a culture of learning within your startup.
Stay curious and humble: Approach problems as a learner, not a know-it-all, and celebrate others’ contributions to show that you care.
Effective personal branding is all about momentum. The negativity that comes with an ego is the first thing that will halt any progress. Don't make this mistake. Stay self-aware.
There’s no formula for perfecting your startup or personal brand. Growth comes from your own approach.
As a founder, there’s often a misconception that you need to all the right things to be successful, leading you to replicate others and never stand on your own two feet.
If you're not called out for this, you risk limiting yourself by:
Not developing your own voice: This is the key differentiator that helps your entrepreneur brand stand out in crowded markets when it comes to attracting investment, growing your client base, or recruiting.
Not developing a niche: Mistakenly ticking every box can make you a jack-of-all-trades but a master of none, which damages your credibility.
Not developing a healthy approach to risk: To truly innovate and discover your strengths, you need to embrace experimentation, not avoid it.
The bottom line: There’s no formula for perfecting your startup or personal brand. Growth comes from your own approach. That's how you instil lasting confidence among stakeholders.
This means having a business plan with clear actions and objectives, sticking to them, and sharing interests and opinions that you actually believe in.
Good examples of authentic leaders include:
Jamie Dimon: Known for his consistent, informed, and often blunt views on financial markets, business strategy, and industry trends.
Emma Walmsley: Recognised for speaking candidly about the challenges of leading a global company while advocating for innovation and inclusivity.
Satya Nadella: Known for leveraging multimedia and storytelling to communicate Microsoft’s vision in a way that's personal and easy to digest.
While Jamie Dimon isn’t a traditional entrepreneur, he exemplifies all the right leadership qualities that have given him lasting influence, much like Walmsley and Nadella.
Essentially, anyone can become a respected leader with the right commitment.
Your perspective could take the form of a bold prediction, a timely hot take, or a data-backed challenge to conventional thinking.
Most comms experts agree that a personal brand is only as strong as the content you produce. So, what elevates content the most? A clear, contrarian perspective.
This is how you stand out from the crowd by moving timely conversations forward in a way that drives genuine impact, whether that’s influencing policies, advocating for sustainable industry practices, or addressing emerging risks in your sector.
Your perspective could take the form of a bold prediction, a timely hot take, or a data-backed challenge to conventional thinking that looks like this:
Tech: A founder predicting how generative AI will replace traditional software development tools.
Finance: A leader arguing that interest rates could remain high for years, contrary to market consensus.
Healthcare: A founder advocating for remote patient monitoring as a standard practice.
Sustainability: A leader proposing mandatory circular economy initiatives for electronics.
Of course, not everyone will agree with your views. That’s fine. The main thing is that you spark healthy debate in a way that drives engagement and allows you to defend and reinforce your ideas.
And the more consistently you share your perspective, the more your personal brand strengthens, as you become the go-to voice on that subject.
PR teams are profile-building experts who work with dozens of founders a year. They know how to perfect your messaging and tone, and handle various technicalities.
It’s often easy to hide behind media coverage and social posts, especially if you’ve secured national coverage or gone viral.
That said, audiences won't really know the real you, which is why it’s equally important to prioritise content that gives people a chance to hear your voice, through videos, podcasts, and conferences.
These tools help your personal branding by allowing you to:
Introduce the person behind the job title.
Showcase passion and confidence.
Speak about personal interests.
Diversify your channels.
Create reusable assets.
The tangible benefits? Video alone can increase website visits by 4x, while LinkedIn posts often receive 4x more engagement.
Now, it’s understandable that some founders may avoid this additional groundwork based on time shortages and a lack of best practice knowhow. But this is exactly why we recommend working with a PR team.
PR teams are profile-building experts who work with dozens of founders a year. They know how to perfect your messaging and tone, and handle various technicalities like filming, audio recording, photography, and event planning, which, taken as a whole, can be priceless for your personal brand.
You’re not just providing thought leadership, you’re demonstrating it with action, reinforcing your personal brand through authenticity and transparency.
While insight-led content is a key aspect of your personal brand, it’s equally important to give audiences a behind-the-scenes view of how you lead, the progress you're making, and the values guiding your decisions.
You can do this by sharing case studies, projects, team-building activities, and any other initiatives that not only highlight outcomes but also the people and processes behind them, making your personal brand more relatable, trustworthy, and, most importantly, human.
Even better, you can tie these behind-the-scenes stories to the same insight-led campaigns you’re already running.
For example:
If you’re discussing innovation in your industry, share a glimpse of a product sprint or brainstorming session.
If you’re commenting on workplace culture trends, show how you’re fostering collaboration internally.
If you're arguing for greener practices, highlight the sustainable actions each of your departments are taking.
In each case, you’re not just providing thought leadership, you’re demonstrating it with action, reinforcing your personal brand through authenticity and transparency.
Remember: Content really is king. See everything you do as an opportunity to promote your personal brand.
Demonstrate resilience and growth to investors, board members, employees, clients, partners, and the wider industry.
It might seem counterintuitive but focusing on failure as much as your successes can be one of the most powerful moves for your personal brand.
Other than showing you're humble, it also ensures that you constantly take control of narratives when things go wrong, whether a project fails or a client deal falls through, restoring confidence in your leadership.
But while you should always be transparent during crises, you don't need to share every little misstep in a way that floods your profile with negativity.
Instead, pick a few meaningful examples that highlight lessons learned, where you can demonstrate resilience and growth to investors, board members, employees, clients, partners, and the wider industry.
Then, when you do achieve wins, their impact will be even stronger, because audiences see how hard they were earned.
While it might take a while to achieve that vision, this is more about the journey than the destination.
Your personal brand isn’t just about what you’ve done. It’s about where you’re going. The vision that creates an end-goal and unifies your content.
This isn’t about vague statements or buzzwords. It’s about clearly articulating:
The future you want to create: For your company, your industry, or world.
The actions that need to be taken: By who and why.
Your role in shaping that vision: What makes your perspective unique, and why people should trust you.
While it might take a while to achieve that vision, this is more about the journey than the destination, giving you the motivation to keep going despite any setbacks.
But, more importantly, it encourages your audiences to keep following and supporting you, which is fundamental to both your personal and startup's success.
Though the payoff isn’t immediate, every deliberate step you take today makes your eventual success even more rewarding.
Building a personal brand as a founder isn't a one-off task. It’s a continuous practice that combines:
Mindset.
Authenticity.
Visibility.
Relatability.
Resilience.
Vision.
All things considered, you can accelerate growth, not only by boosting your visibility but also by fostering trust, forming new relationships, and cultivating genuine influence that unlocks opportunities you couldn't access before.
Though the payoff isn’t immediate, every deliberate step you take today makes your future success even more rewarding. So, trust the process, and never give up.