"Building a personal brand"

This week, I got a question on TikTok asking me how I feel about the idea of "building a personal brand."

To me, when people talk about personal brands, what we’re really talking about are things like name recognition, credibility, associated value and ultimately, the degree of trust you hold with an audience.

The way I see it, there are two ways to make money with an internet business: You can build an audience and then charge companies for access to that audience (think influencer, affiliate marketer, podcaster with ads) or you start the company and sell products and services directly to those people (the entrepreneur).

Most business owners I know sit somewhere in the overlap between these two, ensuring a variety of income streams. Which is convenient, because in both instances, your #1 job is to build an audience of people that trust you — people that trust your recommendations, your ideas, your insights and/or your taste.

I won’t lie, there’s something dystopian about the idea that we’re all supposed to be walking talking “personal brands” with marketable niches and content calendars and insights and palatable perfect ideas.

At the same time, I do recognize the creative (and the financial) potential in diving deeply into whatever material it is you find most interesting.

As an artist and a Sagittarius and a contrarian, I have a lot of resistance to the idea of being pigeon-holed, but I notice that this resistance comes up only when that pigeon hole feels wrong. Reflecting on it, I have no problem with you all seeing me as like “The Creative Business Girl.”

That might change in the future — I retain my right to wake up one day and decide to be a completely different person. But for now, that feels like a generous and infinitely exciting way to describe my work. It’s taken me a long time to find the language.

When you think about a personal brand, obviously you might think of aesthetic elements like fonts and colors and logos, but to me a much more important question is “What do people trust you with?”

Ultimately, my philosophy on personal branding is that if there are ideas you are repeatedly drawn to, people you specifically want to help, and/or problems you want to contribute to solving, you should try. As you try, people will inevitably begin to trust you as someone in their life who can help them answer those questions.

So, how can you build trust today? Can you share an interesting tip or a relatable meme? Can you inspire, encourage, entertain or educate my audience? Tag me in it — I wanna see.