The Personal Brand Paradox
If you look closely at the most successful “personal“brands”, what you’ll notice is that their emphasis is almost entirely on other people and service.
Seth Godin has one of the most popular blogs in the world. One of the hallmarks of his work is generosity. All you have to do is look at one of the posts in which he decides to highlight books, projects, and important ideas that other people are shipping.
My friend Michael Bungay Stanier has a pretty impressive list of accomplishments and accolades: Rhodes Scholar, Oxford Grad, a successful Company, and a couple of books. The thing that he’s most proud of is End Malaria, the proceeds all of which were donated to charity.
Another person that comes to mind is my friend and mentor Greg Hartle. The funny thing is that he has a minimal public presence, no books, no popular blog, hardly a twitter following and the occasional sarcastic status update. But the ripple effect of his “personal brand” extends to thousands of people, people whose living rooms he sat in, while shaping and moulding their lives into what they were capable of being.
Brian Koehn’s public visibility has been minimal until recently, but he’s a linchpin of our work. We couldn’t do what we do without him. His “personal brand” has been picking me up when I fall, believing in me when I don’t believe in myself, motivating a community and most importantly surfing with me.
Adam Grant’s first book Give and Take is really about this. After interviewing him about his new book (to be aired soon), I found myself diving back into his old book out of curiosity. And somehow I arrived at this idea of the personal brand paradox.
Over and over we see this. The paradox of the personal brand is that it has to be about something much bigger than yourself. It’s not that personal after all.
I’m the host and founder of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast.
Every Sunday we share the most unmistakable parts of the internet that we have discovered in The Sunday Quiver. Receive our next issue by signing up here
