How to Build a Personal Brand That Doesn’t Suck

You don’t have to be famous to make money being yourself.

Influencers are the end of culture.

Friends of mine often say that they want to be influencers in order to have “freedom”, but if your influence is based around you selling other people’s products, what are you really besides a glorified employee?

You’re an employee with a lot of followers and maybe a promo code with your name on it, you’re not free. You have the illusion of freedom. Being a “brand ambassador” or “sponsored” is not the goal of having a personal brand (take it from a former sponsored athlete). The goal is to build an audience, create value, and influence people’s thoughts, not their wallets (at least, not directly).

The ultimate goal of a personal brand is to get paid to be yourself.

Here’s how I did it, without becoming “famous”.

Stop pretending

In 2021, pretty much everyone has a personal brand.

If you have a social media account and you’ve shared original content, congratulations, you’re basically a “content creator”. You’re an entrepreneur if you want to be. You have a business, and the business is you.

This is concerning to a lot of people, and rightfully so. In a culture that romanticizes hustle, bravado, and workaholism, it’s a slippery slope from “creating a personal brand” to becoming someone like Bellator MMA fighter Dillon Danis, whose personal brand is literally based around him being as big of an asshole as possible while promoting products. Dillon is a great example of a personal brand that sucks — even if he’s “successful” by Instagram’s metrics.

This article isn’t about how to get followers and promote Dos Equis products, this article is about how to build a personal brand that makes money and doesn’t make other people want to gouge their eyes out.

The problem isn’t that the brand exists or that social media makes us “fake”, the problem is the cultural obsession with gaining social clout, followers, and “influencing” people. Anything is bad in excess. Your personal brand is no different.

If you become obsessed with trying to maintain a character that you’re playing online, you’re going to destroy your mental health, burn yourself out, and worst of all, your brand probably isn’t really going to grow. The internet is an extension of reality, not a reality in itself. Your brand is a personal brand, not an “internet-only” brand. It still exists when you turn your phone off.

Short-term strategies lead to short-term prizes. I’ve watched too many friends attempt to build personal brands by buying followers and then selling out to the first company that comes knocking. Their desperation is off-putting and ultimately hurts their brand in the long run.

It sounds cheesy but authentic, personal storytelling is the easiest way to build a brand.

Your brand needs “Y.O.U”

I can’t speak for big corporations because I’ve never run a Fortune 500 company, but I have managed to create a livelihood based on my own personal brand.

I have less than a thousand followers on every single platform I use, and I make a living with my personal brand.

My “brand” is an extension of me and my own personal understanding of the world. I’ve read a lot, lived a lot, and I’ve obtained information from other sources as well. My personal brand is based on my understanding of the world around me.

Your personal brand needs you to thrive. “Your own understanding”, or “Y.O.U”, if you like acronyms.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: there are a lot of really good writers on the internet. If you’re anything like me, you probably don’t think you’re the best one. However, you do have something going for you that’s far more important than technical prowess or eloquent wordplay, and that is your own understanding of the world based on your own life experiences. You have years of stories to tell, and that itself is more than enough to build a brand.

If your brand is just maxims, charts, and how-to manuals, it’s probably going to fade into the vast oblivion of the internet. People find you because of the content (so you need to create good content), but they stay for the person behind the content.

Show a little bit of yourself to the world and people will begin to notice. Bleach your hair, make funny sloth poses, do things that you want to do. Be you, and add “Y.O.U” to your personal brand. This will not only be more fun and enjoyable, but it will also make it incredibly easy to develop the consistency needed to build a brand online.

Be obnoxiously consistent

There are 7.5 million blog posts published on the internet every day.

Statistically, it’s impossible to stand out. It’s impossible to get anyone to read your writing, and it’s definitely impossible to build a following.

So how do people do it? More importantly, how do people do it so well that they are able to make a living off of writing, teaching, or making videos?

The answer is partially by being themselves, partially by creating good content, and partially by adding value to the online community that they’ve created. However, the most important aspect of building an online brand is being consistent for an extended period of time. Lots of people are writers, millions of people create accounts on sites like Medium and Quora, but most of them quit posting content long before they’re able to see any type of return.

Most people aren’t willing to put their heads down and do something badly for an entire year.

My early blog posts are trash. My first Jiu-Jitsu highlight video got like 100 views, and most of them were from my mom’s friends after my mom shared the video on Facebook. I won a world championship in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and my post about it got a measly 200 likes on Instagram.

The early days and years of my personal brand sucked, and it was entirely due to a lack of consistency. Without consistent content, you are relying strictly on the dumb luck of virality to build your brand. Unless you’re incredibly lucky or you have connections (Dillon Danis used Conor McGregor to propel himself to stardom), your work will not be viewed.

To truly build a brand, you need to demonstrate credibility again and again for years and years. This is true for writers, athletes, business people, or anyone who wants to build a brand.

Content without consistency is just content. You need more than that to succeed.

Closing thoughts

For the longest time, I didn’t even want to admit that I had a personal brand.

I told myself and other people that I was an athlete and a writer, but I sure as hell didn’t want to be lumped into the category of “influencer”. Even just writing that word makes my blood boil. I’m a lot of things, but I never want to become a “brand ambassador” for a brand I don’t even like.

Maybe it’s just my obnoxious moral compass, but seeing that from others on my social media feeds pisses me off.

However, genuine content creators inspire the hell out of me. Writers who build careers off of telling stories, creating value, and helping others are the future. It might sound a little corny (and maybe it is), but in a world where automation and technology are beginning to dictate basic human connection, the power of genuine self-expression is going to be amplified, not diminished.

That’s why storytelling is going to be one of the most valuable skills of the next decade.