personal branding is not about the the “image”
For creative people doing heart and soul work in the world, the concept of “branding” might sound like the anti-thesis of the individual creative spirit. It is a word loaded with pressure to be seen as something to someone, to care about one’s “image” as a separate entity from who we are.
And so, in the Instagram age, we are all pressured to act like “brands,” vying for attention and status in the form of likes and followers. What great pressure. The very word, “personal branding,” can feel so utterly fake — or at best, seem presumptuously narcissistic. Who relieved us of our mundane existence and gave us permission to be a “brand”?!? What makes us a “brand??” Are we a brand once we have an “image” to maintain? Do we live, then, for the “image?”
No.
A life lived for the image alone is not a life, but a dead story.
Be a real, living story. Be alive.
So, I will redefine what branding means, and this definition has nothing to do with image.
Branding is simply the most distilled, potent expression of our truest essence— in ourselves and in our work — in all its forms and possibilities.
We live in a world where everyone is focused on the image, but not on the source of that image, which does not live online. It is the life beneath; the life of you in every moment, which is always changing, pulsating, growing, dying, and being reborn.
Focusing on “the image” limits the fullness of our expression.
If you want to build anything in the world, it is important to have a “brand” — if only because that brand is a vehicle for communicating you and your truest work. But. Be a brand that is true to you, and generous enough to hold the multitude and complexity of you. Branding cannot stand without connection to the real substance beneath. Hence why big brands, in the face of scandal and corruption, have trouble maintaining their “brand image.” A brand that is not built on the truth beneath crumbles.
A brand is a living thing; it is a process of being fully true to yourself
I reflect on my “brand” — and by brand I really mean “expression” of myself — all the time. Every week. I redesign my website every year to reflect changes in my work. Thus, my brand is a living expression of me.
Personal branding, then, is an ongoing process of self-discovery, self-understanding, and self-expression. It can begin with distilling the essence of who you are — and letting it reveal itself in color, shape, form, words, stories — but then it continues. It never stops, because we, as people, never stop changing.