How to build a personal brand when you do lots of things

My three-phase approach (growth hacks not included)

I’ve always wanted to build my personal brand. Not in a “sponsor me and I’ll sell your stuff!” kinda way, but in a “I have ideas worth sharing and I want to impact people while experiencing life to the fullest” kinda way. I’ve known for ages that many of my goals - ownership over my time, a healthy flow of income, writing a book and surrounding myself with the world’s best thinkers - would stay out of reach unless I became visible to the world.

Despite knowing this I remained silent for a long time, caught in a flurry of excuses: I didn’t have a niche and I didn’t want to pluck one from thin air, therefore I couldn’t start. I wanted to talk about everything I was doing but was worried at how it’d look, therefore I couldn’t post. I wanted to appear credible not confused, therefore I couldn’t publish.

I remained invisible until January 2023 when I became fed up with myself and decided to start putting words on a page despite my lack of clarity about what the actual F I was doing. I slowly built confidence until, some months later, I joined Substack and started shouting online in lowercase with the tentative goal to build a community of internet-friends and one day attract opportunities that would otherwise have been beyond my grasp.

It’s been over two years of feeling the fear and posting it anyway, and my no-plan plan is working. I’m tantalisingly close to 10k subscribers. Almost 100% of my work is now inbound. I’ve met new people. Made new friends. Built a business. And each day, with each post, I get closer and closer to knowing exactly who I am.

Through my endless hovering over the publish button with immense fear, dread and hope, I’ve developed a thesis for building a personal brand that is authentic, multifaceted, interesting and diverse.

I hope it stirs something in you.

The ‘Tree Approach’ to building a personal brand

We’re told that the only way to build a respectable online presence is to pick a niche (sigh) and go deep, but this is only part of the story. In my mind, building an authentic personal brand occurs in three phases:

1. Establish the roots (go broad)

2. Grow the trunk (narrow in)

3. Extend the branches (go broad again, with greater intent)

Establish the roots

Every tree begins its life by growing roots that are messy, sprawling and expansive. These root systems act as the tree’s foundation. Without them, it would die.

Building a personal brand starts the same way: through curiosity and sharing different interests, ideas and types of work, even if they feel disconnected. This is precisely how I started showing up online. Instead of arbitrarily picking a niche I made consistency my only goal. I wrote about whatever I damn well pleased - failure, creativity, accidentally being a micromanager, owning mistakes, surviving 48 hours in the wilderness, self-sabotage - if there was a lesson buried in my experience, I shared it. Slowly I started appearing on peoples’ feeds and radars. I piqued interest, sparked conversations, made connections and got in a groove. Oh! And not one person said to me “wtf are you doing?”.

Grow the trunk

As the root system deepens the tree starts growing a trunk. This is a metaphor for when your primary message comes into the light. A core focus. An overarching narrative or theme. A thread that ties together all the things you do and are.

My trunk (at least for now) is the portfolio career, which made itself known after 8 months of exploration. It’s the perfect through line for me because it encompasses everything I know and love: business, personal development and creativity.

Your trunk could be literally anything:

• A value or trait, like empowerment, storytelling, communication, growth, efficiency, creativity or support

• A domain, like STEM, education, media, business, food or personal development

• A purpose, like “I advocate for more flexible work”

• An outcome, like “I use storytelling to help bring brands to life”

• A question, like “What does the future of the planet look like?”

• A worldview, like “Less is more”

• Anything else that makes sense in your mind

Even though I have a focus I still explore a variety of topics: trying hard, standing on your own two feet, sales, my routine, systems. The difference is that everything is now framed within a broader context and narrative. This is the role of the trunk. It’s not here to constrain you, it’s here to create shape.

The branches

Once you uncover a core theme and start establishing a stronger voice, you’ll become more visible, more recognised and more understood. And when people start following you for you, you gain the leeway to talk about pretty much anything. This is what it means when they say ‘the niche is you’.

I’m two-ish years into my ‘being perceived online’ journey and even though my online corner is but a speck of dust in a vast internet forest, I hope that one day I’ll have enough presence to go rogue and write about my unhealthy obsession with Lego (specifically Lego Ideas), or that time my sister and I went missing in Morocco, or the panic attacks I experienced in my final year of high school, or that time I almost chased Beyoncé on a bicycle while in the Hamptons, or my experience taking equity in someone else’s business, or that time I woke up in the middle of the night to my bedroom doorknob turning slowly even though neither of my housemates were home.

Not yet, but one day.

Broad, narrow, broad

I used to believe that without a core message, I’d get lost in the online noise. But what I didn’t realise is that the core message is an output, not an input. It comes as a result of exploration and creative freedom, not the other way around. It is emergent, not preordained.

And so, my personal brand thesis is now this: go broad to explore, narrow to anchor, then broad to become.

If you’re where I was in 2023 - working on many things, sharing none of them and frozen in your tracks not knowing how to make it all work - please know that your problem isn’t a problem. The stress, anxiety, fear and trepidation you feel is not a problem. It’s a point in time called ‘the beginning’. An empty space in the ground for your roots.

Stop lurking in the shadows of someone else’s canopy.

It’s time to drag yourself out into the light.

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Why I’ve been noodling on this topic for weeks, how I came up with this framework, how you should talk about multiple things in practice, and why this is a strong opinion loosely held. Enjoy!

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