It’s Simpler Than You Think

Alex Lewis
Aug 27, 2017 · 3 min read

“So what you’re pretty much telling me is, ‘Be genuine’?”

“Yep.”

My friend recently came to this conclusion after taking me out for lunch to ask my advice about personal branding.

I got back in my car after lunch and thought to myself, ‘I hope I didn’t just waste his time.’


If you’ve been following my recent work, including a Medium post called “I’m Not a Brand, you might know that my relationship with personal branding right now is shaky at best.

Hear me out. I get it.

Social media has leveled the playing field in a lot of ways and opened the door for everyday people to gain influence and form communities around their content.

However, I know, for me, I spent way more time trying to craft an image of how I wanted people to see me than I spent actually getting to know the real me. And it’s interesting how my content actually suffered at my lack of authenticity.

These are the stats for a series of branded articles I published back in May:

Views, Reads, Read Ratio, Fans

Now, here are the stats for stories I published last month in which I pledged to be more authentic:

Views, Reads, Read Ratio, Fans

Obviously, numbers aren’t everything, but, in this case, they are a good gauge for seeing which posts actually connected with people the most.

Isn’t it funny that we lose people the harder we try to capture their attention?

I wanted to the be the next Gary Vaynerchuk. You may want to be the next Kim Kardashian or Carl Lentz, but the truth is you weren’t made you to be someone else.

Your story matters. Your voice matters.

The people you really want following you are the people who can accept you for you. If you’ve operated from a place of giving people what they want, your likes or views may take a hit when you decide to share stories that actually explore more of who you are.

On the other hand, that may be exactly what your tribe has been waiting for.

In closing, I’ll leave you with this reminder from the legendary Dr. Seuss:

)

Alex Lewis

Written by

Social @jenisicecreams + practicing kindness @carwindowpoetry. Irrational @nuggets fan. Views are my own.

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