How to Create Your Personal Brand (with Minimal Discomfort)
When it came time to come up with a personal brand, I struggled. Here’s what you can learn from my discomfort.
I needed an accent color for my professional website. This website represented me, my personality, my soul as a freelance writer. Its pages contained my content and acted as my outward-facing profile. The world would know about me what I chose to put on the website.
What color was my writer soul?
Blue, apparently.
I went with robin egg blue. Why? Because the cute typewriter in Canva that I wanted to add to my logo was that color blue. Not kidding.
To be fair, I enjoy robin egg blue. But what it says about me as a person, or as a writer, or as a content creator? Not much, other than I liked it enough to pick it.
Yet I spent an exorbitant amount of time thinking about it. Too much time. Because I was uncomfortable about cramming my entire persona into one website accent or one Wordpress theme.
Every decision took on a whole load of meaning. And how did I move past it?
Here are my top lessons learned for moving past your discomfort with branding yourself and just getting it done.
You Are Not Your Brand
Understand that your brand does not define you. The brand you create for yourself will be personal, yes, but it will not be the full you. It can’t be. You contain multitudes, damn it.
And yet the world desires a snapshot.
You need distance from your brand. Like some people refuse to call themselves writers and instead say, “I am a person who writes,” you must have a separation from your marketed self. Don’t try to sum up your entire person — that is impossible.
Carving out a gap between your whole person and your logo is the most important step to take when thinking through your personal marketing strategy.
Hopefully this realization makes it a little less skeezy to slap a label on yourself.
Focus On Your Why
While it may feel important to choose the perfect accent color or Wordpress theme, these are minor details. Focus on your why. Why do you want to start a business or become an entrepreneur? What is the purpose and meaning behind this brand you are creating?
For me, I wanted to use my writing talents to help small businesses and entrepreneurs grow. When I started thinking more of the businesses that could use my help and less about my personal discomfort at marketing myself, I could make decisions more easily (like choosing robin egg blue).
You are offering a service. There is a reason you are promoting yourself, to help others. Whether you have to paste a poster with your mission on the wall of your office or get it tattooed on your forehead, don’t lose sight of that.
Remember this: People want what you have to offer. Your brand will help them find you. It’s as simple as that.
Be Real
In order to feel comfortable creating a personal brand, it has to be real. For me, I couldn’t present myself as a cut-throat marketer with a steely website design and a sharp, perfectly crafted headshot. That’s not who I am.
I needed to offer the world a small part of myself that was (as much as this word makes me cringe) authentic — a storyteller. I love to listen to a good story, to craft a good story, to edit a good story. Sign me up.
This is real and true and good.
While pursuing my MFA in creative nonfiction writing, I studied storytelling for two years. In middle school, I sat on my bed for entire weekends and wrote Lord of the Rings spinoff tales. I devoured books, and still do. I have spent my life seeking great stories, and this is something I can feel good about adding to my brand.
“Your business has a story. Let’s tell it together.” Bingo.
I can choose an accent color for a website and design a snazzy business card and promote myself on social media if it allows me to help solid, grounded businesses tell their stories.
Find a way to be confident in the way you market yourself to the world.
Be real and the work will follow.
