You're not the main character
I told my personal brand story over 100 times before I had this realisation.
I’m not the main character → my audience is.
When I started my first business, The Calming Club, back in 2019, I spent most weekends at craft markets selling my self-care stationery products and speaking to customers.
I would often get asked about what inspired me to create my best-selling product, the Calming Cards, and I would recite the story of being diagnosed with anxiety at 12 years old and how I turned the tools and techniques I learned over the years into colourful illustrated cards that you could take on the go to manage anxiety symptoms.
But it wasn’t my story that made them want to buy the product; it was how they saw their experience reflected in my journey
Back in 2022, when I hosted my own pop-up shop for The Calming Club.
No matter whether it was their own experience of a panic attack, a family member going through a difficult time or someone they knew at work who’d been feeling anxious, they wanted to tell me their story.
Sharing my journey helped me build trust and create a sense of relatability. They felt understood, and the product I was selling became a tool that was going to help them on the next step of their journey.
By moving the spotlight onto them as the main character and acting as a guide on their journey, I was able to give them the support they needed while helping my business grow and succeed.
This was how I discovered that I’d fallen for the first lie about personal branding….
Hot Take 🔥 6 lies you’ve been told about personal branding
Number 6 is the one that frustrates me the most 😅
Lie 1: You’re the Main Character, you’re the Director
For a long time, we’ve been told to put ourselves in the centre of the story we’re writing. After all, we’re the founders of our business, and we probably started on this journey after experiencing something personal that inspired us to take action.
But your audience doesn’t want you to be the hero in their story; they want you to be their guide. They want you to show them what’s possible so they can do it too. You’re a mirror reflecting their potential back at them.
The shift: Stop making every post about you. Start showing them what they can achieve. By being the director, you control the storyline; you can still show up as a main character in the narrative, but you want your audience to feel a part of the story too. They are the stars of the show, too.
Lie 2: Just be yourself, and people will follow you
Being likeable is a key part of building a personal brand, but to find your 1000 true fans, you have to have more depth to your story. If you don’t know what you want to be known for or what value you want to share, you’ll soon run out of content ideas and give up.
You need to find where your interests and skills intersect - that’s where you can provide the most value.
Lie 3: Vulnerability = Oversharing Everything
There’s a difference between strategic vulnerability and trauma dumping on LinkedIn. Being vulnerable gets clicks (and it stops the scroll), so when it’s used effectively and in a genuine way, it can help build relatability.
The key is to share struggles when there’s a lesson, not just for the sake of sharing or as a way of processing emotions. Otherwise, content creation will burn you out and leave you feeling resentful.
The shift: If it doesn’t help your audience, keep it private.
Lie 4: “Authenticity” Means no effort
Authenticity is the buzzword everyone is talking about, but authenticity isn’t just sharing your thoughts without being intentional.
No matter whether you are creating content for your business brand or your personal brand, every post should sound like you and deliver value. This doesn’t mean it has to be performative or fake; it should showcase your personality in a way that is unique to you.
This could be in the phrases you use, the style of writing or tone of voice.
Top tip: Use Voice Notes to capture your thoughts so you retain your tone of voice. You can’t beat this method for retaining authenticity.
Lie 5: You have to be everywhere to be successful
When people start out building their personal brand on social media, they make the mistake of trying to be on every platform.
Instead, they find their energy is spread across so many platforms that all need different types of content. It takes less than a few weeks for them to burn out and give up altogether.
Depth on one platform beats shallow presence everywhere.
The shift: Master one platform first. 10,000 followers who know what you stand for > 1,000 on five platforms who have no idea what you do.
Lie 6: Building a Personal Brand Is Free and Easy
This is a big one. Personal branding is often seen as something you should do in your free time, not worth investing in as much as traditional business marketing channels.
The truth is, your personal profiles have 100x the reach of your business profiles on social media. So, by not investing real time, money and energy into these areas, you are leaving so much attention on the table. That’s real customers and clients who are not discovering what you do because you’re not giving it the investment it deserves.
The shift: Treat your personal brand like the business investment it is.
Lucky Founders Club has launched 🤩
Earlier this week, we officially launched Lucky Founders Club with our founding members!
We’d been planning this launch for months, and to see it finally come to life was a bit surreal.
On the call, everyone shared their plans for building their personal brand and the challenges they were facing right now.
And something happened that I wasn't expecting.
Just by talking through their barriers and seeing that other people felt the same way, you could see the weight lift off their shoulders.
You could see the moment an idea clicked, when something finally made sense, when they found the missing piece they'd been looking for.
That’s one thing that AI can’t replace:
Real connection.
Being able to be honest about what’s holding you back, feel safe enough to be vulnerable and to actually feel heard.
Only human conversation can do that.
