You Are Not a Personal Brand
“You are not your job. You are not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the contents of your wallet. You are not your f-ing Khakis. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.”
You are not a personal brand.
If Fight Club was written today, I imagine that famous Tyler Durden monologue might include a simple reminder for us that we are not, in fact, personal brands. As so often happens, the marketing world has latched on to this idea of people becoming their own brands. On the surface, it sounds simple enough. But if you dig a bit deeper, the concept of a personal brand becomes something much different than what most people actually want from their lives.
Brands require promotion. So, if you consider yourself a personal brand, that means you have to spend time promoting yourself. Like any brand, if you do something good, you need to tell as many people as you can, as many times as you can.
A brand has to advertise, be written about, have a large following, and be patronized in order to be significant. But the most significant people are those who go about their work without fanfare and praise from people they don’t know.
The people that matter - your parents, your husband or wife, your kids, your friends, your colleagues - these people don’t give a shit about your brand. They care about what you do and how you treat people.
We already have the right word for personal brand. It’s reputation. Your reputation is built by doing good things, caring about people and your community, and working hard.
Reputations are built by what you do. Personal brands are built by what you say.
Now, this may sound like arguing over semantics. But I think there is an important distinction here. If you view yourself as a brand, even a personal one, you end up acting like a brand. Instead of doing something for your community because you feel it’s the right thing to do, you do it because it’s a mini, personal PR stunt.
You are a person. You are not a brand, no matter how hard someone tries to convince you that you need to be.