I’ve been thinking a lot about why personal branding can feel so hard.
So I have this friend. Let’s call him Max.
Max has a favorite t-shirt.
It’s a Nirvana shirt that he got in high school when he skipped classes one day and drove up to Michigan with friends to see them play.
He’s worn this thing to pieces. It’s faded and the print has degraded.
For Max, it reminds him that he had this wild youthful adventure…and that even though we’re all adults with responsibilities, he can STILL have an adventure, whenever he wants to. When he wears it, it makes him feel kind of powerful.
Now, I personally think this shirt is fugly. I wouldn’t wear it if you paid me.
But it’s undeniably Max, and I couldn’t imagine him without it. I’ve gotten used to it, and I’ve gotten used to him in it.
Max’s reaction to my dislike of this shirt COULD be to shrink inward and to feel like there’s something wrong with his taste.
But he DOESN’T.
He doesn’t give a crap what I think.
He wears it for all the reasons I said before. His reaction is to shrug and think, “okay but you don’t have to like it, it’s me, and I love it.”
Which kind of makes me like it too…weirdly enough. Because I like Max, and it’s part of who he is.
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The thing about personal branding, unlike when we do branding for a big business or product…it’s that it’s PERSONAL. You’re putting yourself out there in a big way…and you have to suddenly sum up what you do and express that to other people.
When we start trying to categorize ourselves and who and what we are, it brings up SO many feelings about ourselves.
Any teeny tiny thing you might be self conscious about - suddenly feels magnified by a MILLION.
We suddenly may feel like we need to make all the things we find weird about ourselves palatable, refined, elegant, and digestible (and expensive-looking so that people will pay us).
That’s a LOT of pressure to put on a design system!
And when you start muddying the beauty of who you are by mitigating everything with caveats, that’s when you end up with something that’s a mess that you can’t seem to clean up.
The problem isn’t the font, the icon or colors.
The problem is that you actually have to be pretty comfortable being yourself to other people – “flaws” and all, and how many of us can really 100% say that we are?
You’ll never get to the finish line by stressing yourself out about how to please your imaginary customer avatar. That may work with bigger businesses, but it doesn’t work with a personal brand. Because the thing you’re actually selling is YOU.
Instead…you have to concentrate on finding your “Nirvana t-shirt.”
Your goal is to find something that feels enough like you - while being empowering to what you’re about - that you feel like you can shrug it off when it’s not someone else’s style.
Because it won’t be. Some people will definitely hate whatever you settle on. Especially other designers, family members or friends.
You have to stop depending on their opinions, as hard as it is - because the number one priority should be to keep enough of “you” in there that the right people can recognize something they feel “Fuck yes, sign me up!” about.
That will never happen if you genericize the living crap out of yourself in an effort please everyone.
Ya know?
Hope this was helpful in your personal branding journey. I’ll be working on more installments of this one, so hit reply and let me know if there’s something you want me to discuss.
XOXO
Cathy