You don't need to build a personal brand.

Don't listen to an army of “influencers” who are highly incentivized to sell you their brand-building courses.

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People ask: “How do I build my personal brand? How do I gain followers fast? What should I post to get the most likes? How do I go viral? How long will it take?” Somehow, the message has landed that building a personal brand will lead to more opportunities, higher pay, and greater attention.

But here’s a hard truth: trying to build your personal brand early in your career is pointless. Instead, focus on doing the best work of your life, and your brand will follow. If this seems counterintuitive, it’s because there’s a loud army of “influencers” highly incentivized to sell you their brand-building courses—complete with “grow your LinkedIn following” tips, “build your personal brand” tricks, and algorithm hacks.

You should opt out of all that.

(Unless you want to be a instagram/tiktok social influencer, I guess? But this post is for people who work in corporate world and not looking to become instagram models.)

Because the best way to develop a personal brand is to do exceptional work, deliver results, and provide real value. Credibility and trust come from your contributions and achievements, and that’s what lays the groundwork for a strong personal brand. When people talk about what you’ve accomplished, your personal brand will grow organically. Chase the brand first, and you’re putting the cart before the horse.

Personal brand is a lagging indicator.

Your personal brand is a lagging indicator of you doing great, meaningful work.

Another way to look at this is to compare personal brand efforts to any given company’s brand work. Andrew Chen wrote an amazing post about branding for early-stage startups:

“Brand marketing is mostly useless. Startups build a great brand by being successful, finding product market fit and scaling traction, etc.

If this seems contrarian to you, it’s because there’s a vast ecosystem of consultants, agencies, and other middlemen who are highly incentivized to have you spend $ and effort on non-ROI/non-performant activities. Early startups should opt out of all of this.

It’s easy to confuse correlation and causation: If you’re starting a consumer startup, you see successful late stage cos with fawning media coverage, amazing conference speaking slots, celebrities on the cap table, etc., and think that’s what caused their success: Great brand.

But a great brand is the lagging indicator of success. The buzz is created by the hard work that the entrepreneurs put in: Finding product/market fit, hiring a great core team, finding acquisition channels that scale. Brand marketing is great, but it should be layered on later.”

The same goes for you and your brand. Chasing a reputation before building real expertise is like a startup trying to scale a massive brand without a solid product. Don’t get fooled by the Justin Welshs of the world, selling the dream of monetizing your LinkedIn audience—it’s borderline a marketing pyramid scheme. Don’t get blinded by ‘viral’ posts and endless selfies. Just don’t do it. 

Focus on doing the work, first. Focus on substance over flash.

“Wait, but Elena… YOU have a personal brand!?”

Does it feel a bit odd hearing this hot take from me? It might look like I’ve intentionally ‘built’ my brand. But honestly, that’s never been the goal—even today.

Sure, I’ve invested in public speaking, posting on LinkedIn, this newsletter, and creating courses for Reforge—but that came later in my career and alongside meaningful operator work that I was actively engaged in.

And my primary aim was always to democratize knowledge. If more people shared insights openly, think of all the mistakes we could all avoid. Plus, creating content helped me attract a more qualified pipeline for my advising work, so I could find better-fit companies to collaborate with. 

It was always about impact and effectiveness, not personal brand building. My ‘brand’ was an unintentional output, but never a desired destination (even to this date).

Personal Branding ≠ Content Creation

While I frown upon personal brand building, I do encourage people to share content from the insights they’ve collected. I hesitate to even use the term ‘content creation’ because it’s become associated with content marketing teams churning out meaningless vanilla blogs (more like blah-gs, right?). But creating really good content is a valuable thing. 

I genuinely believe everyone should share their learnings more publicly to democratize information. If the tech industry were more willing to share our insights, we’d all be so much farther ahead. We all have lessons and stories worth sharing, and by doing so, we’d help others avoid the same pitfalls.

Many people fear that sharing their knowledge makes them less marketable, like they’re giving away their value for free. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Frameworks and examples are just data points. The real value lies in how you operationalize those frameworks and execute those examples—that’s where your marketable skills shine.

Story time: How I did it.

My journey into sharing knowledge began with public speaking. And let me tell you… it was rough. I got invited to speak at a BI conference, chose a topic that was way too specific, talked too fast, got way too in the weeds, and ended up with just three people in the audience—none of whom had any questions afterward. I left feeling defeated and convinced I’d never put myself through that again.

It took me a full year to recover from that “trauma” before attempting public speaking again. This time, I knew I needed a better plan. So, I reached out to my company’s events team, who were always on the lookout to sponsor conferences or, even better, find opportunities for internal speakers to deliver keynotes. Sometimes, all it takes is raising your hand!

My big break was a unique situation—I met Brian Balfour at Reforge. This was the real turning point for me, and was the first step-function change: He put me in front of relevant audiences. This allowed me to find the people who actually were interested in what I had to say! Plus, Brian straight up told me: ‘Don’t just talk about one dashboard for your keynote. That is boring. You need to give people the right context, tell them a story, and help them see why it matters to them.’

Getting to create courses for Reforge was an amazing feedback loop. It showed me what people found valuable and what they needed to learn. This was my Product-Market Fit moment. 

And the interesting thing is… if I’d wanted a more traditional career, I might have just kept all of my content within the Reforge system. They’re amazing. The only reason that I set out on my own was when I decided that I wanted to explore solopreneurship. Again, this wasn’t out of the interest of ‘building a brand,’ but to diversify my acquisition channels for my solopreneurship business. I initially started with LinkedIn to increase my reach, but I later added Substack to have ownership of my audience. LinkedIn’s algorithm can boost visibility, but it can also take it away, leaving me with little control.

So, again: The choice to spend more time creating content and posting more than just the occasional insight was directly related to my decision to leave full-time roles.

This is also related to how much ‘market demand’ I was experiencing. After a certain amount of time, people were asking me to post more! I felt a ‘pull’ to post more and could tell that what I was sharing was helping. My whole progression was an evolution: I found the right people and could tell that what I was sharing was valuable, so I kept sharing more. 

Side note: The memes.

If I do have a brand, I would say my memes are a big part of it. Was that some sort of clever strategy to craft a unique brand for myself?

No. I just like memes 😂. Check out my 10 funnies memes here.

But I will say: I love that they are disarming. If you have to hit someone with a hard truth, humor is a great way to do it. People can see the truth, without getting defensive. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Adam Grant said it best:

Final thought: It’s not about you.

If I can sum all of this up, I’d put it this way: Don’t make it about you. So much of our society is about making yourself look good and getting the maximum amount of attention. Yet ironically, the people who I’ve seen be the most successful with building an audience are the ones who are least concerned about their own fame. 

So instead of worrying about how you’re perceived, focus on sharing what you know. Whether that’s through writing, speaking, or mentoring, giving away your knowledge helps you become recognized as a thought leader. When you consistently contribute to your community, your brand builds itself. People start associating you with expertise and generosity, rather than a manufactured image.

By shifting the focus from building a personal brand to building real expertise and sharing value, you’ll not only grow faster, but you’ll also develop a reputation that’s based on substance, not style. So, stop worrying about your brand and start focusing on doing great work—your brand will take care of itself.

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Edited with the help of Jonathan Yagel, Assistant to the Regional Memeger.

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