The most authentic version of your personal brand might not look anything like the person others have always known you to be. That’s the point.
Would your personal brand pass the celery test? In the book Start With Why, Simon Sinek describes his ‘Celery Test ’ as imagining yourself standing in line at a grocery store. Say you're holding celery instead of chocolate; people can see what you value.
Building an authentic personal brand doesn’t need to be simply about reinforcing who others have always known you to be. It’s about showing who you really are, who you can become and showing the world what you value.
1. Rethink Authenticity
In personal branding, the word ‘authenticity’ flies around like wildfire. It’s the buzzword in the industry, among clients, and it always pops up among audiences in presentations. But what if we were seeing authenticity all wrong?
Your ‘authentic’ personal brand isn’t about projecting to the world,
“This is simply just who I am.”
As Brené Brown has said:
“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we are.”
So, sometimes the most authentic thing you can do is to let go. Let go of the preconceived notions of who you are. The label you or others have put on yourself.
Michelangelo, on his statue of David, said:
“I created a vision of David in my mind and simply carved away everything that was not David.”
He believed life was like a block of marble, and the soul is trapped within it, waiting to be set free:
“I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.”
Instead of seeing authenticity as holding on, see it as letting go, as growing, as rediscovering.
2. Unlock Your Alter Ego
When talking about personal branding, many people worry about seeming fake. But what if you stopped seeing exploring other parts of yourself - your personality, interests and ideas - as fake and more like unlocking your potential - your real authenticity.
Your own statue of David is also within you. Creating an alter ego might help you set them free.
In an earlier blog, Your Alter Ego Advantage: Secret Identities of Elite Performers for Moments that Matter, I discussed how the world’s top performers use this second self strategy. Because sometimes simply “being yourself” is what’s holding you back.
In Latin, alter ego means ‘second I’. Merriam-Webster defines an alter ego as:
A second self or a different version of oneself, such as:
a: a trusted friend
b: the opposite side of a personality
In the book The Alter Ego Effect, Todd Herman says:
"The process of using an alter ego is not about changing one's fundamental self but rather about revealing the heroic qualities that are already present within.”
”I would encourage you to consider your 'alter ego' not as a mask you put on, but a mask you take off as you move closer to your true self.”
"Your alter ego gives you permission to be bold.”
A few steps to create an alter ego:
Name your alter ego.
Know their origin story.
Identify your ‘totems’ and ‘artefacts’.
Establish your ‘activation events’.
For my thoughts on how to rethink authenticity as an alter ego, see the earlier blog.
If authenticity means becoming more of yourself, an alter ego gives you permission to access parts of yourself that your usual identity suppresses.
3. Overcome the Censor
Your conscious mind likely worries about you feeling ‘fake’ because it’s trying to keep you safe. Your logical brain wants you to stay in your box, to stick to your labels, to keep doing whatever has gotten you this far.
Your brain is wired for survival. So it doesn’t want you to take risks that might make you stand out in a crowd. To risk being embarrassed. It thinks that means you’ll be ostracised. It exaggerates the consequences of trying new things and sharing more of your personality and creativity, as if you're kicking yourself out of the tribe. While this might have deadly consequences for our wild-roaming ancestors, your personal brand has a little more grace to move within our modern world.
Julia Cameron, in her book The Artist’s Way, proposes that we need to find ways to overcome ‘The Censor ’ - the logical brain.
As I shared in my earlier blog, Create your ultimate day (in advance): Morning Pages & mini visualisations, my favourite way to do this is by practising Cameron’s ‘Morning Pages’. This prioritises free-flowing, unstructured, uncensored journalling every morning. Capturing your ideas at the speed of thought, before The Censor has time to object. Pair this along with her proposed weekly ‘Artist Dates’ - a scheduled time to reconnect with yourself and your creativity.
Train yourself to spot and overcome The Censor and organically grow into your most authentic personal brand.
4. Share Your Off Stage
One of the most authentic things you can do is share more of yourself. To think beyond your title, degrees or official projects, and share more of the person behind the professional brand. Because a personal brand is more than those things.
As I shared in my blog, 7 Hobbies of Highly Effective People: How Hobbies are the Real Edge for Your Professional Personal Brand, Psychiatrist Stuart Brown said, “Work does not work without play.” So add more of your play to your personal brand.
In Free to Focus, productivity expert Michael Hyatt proposes that we have three stages:
Front stage: When you’re performing visibly. This is usually what others actually see.
Backstage: What you do to prepare for your front-stage time. This usually goes unseen.
Offstage: Seemingly unrelated to your work, but still essential. It prepares you to perform in the other stages.
Steve Jobs understood this idea well. He said:
“A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So, they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”
Jobs, for example, used his knowledge of calligraphy - a course he crashed after he had already officially dropped out of Reed College - to influence the Mac design.
This doesn’t mean you need to share everything you do outside of your 9-5. Share what you want to share, what aligns, what you feel inspired to. And leave the rest just for you and your inner circle.
5. A Uniquely You Visual and Verbal Identity
It’s not always what we say or what we do that matters most. But how we show up. Dress more like yourself. Adopt the tone of voice that feels most like you.
Your personal brand becomes powerful when the internal and external start matching. Authenticity isn't just knowing who you are. It's about expressing who you are.
Trying uncomfortable things can feel less intimidating when you feel like you're doing it in the outfit that feels most like you. Or, as the science of ‘embodied cognition’ would suggest, it could help you step into an identity. Use it to unlock your alter ego. The part of you that you want to express more of.
For more on how to define your visual personal brand, see my earlier blog, Level up your visual brand: Creating a signature visual style identity for your personal brand.
Instead of hyperfocusing on the content of your speech, pitch or your next social media post, focus on your tone. What sounds most like you? Most like the personal brand you want to embody?
For more on defining your verbal identity, see my earlier blog, Build a better verbal brand: Communicate a confident and compelling verbal identity.
Less Labels, More You
Stop worrying that building your personal brand means being fake. See it as an opportunity to become more of who you really are — to explore new sides of yourself, express what matters to you, and let go of the labels that no longer fit.
Your personal brand doesn’t have to reinforce who others have always thought you were. It can rediscover who you’ve always really been — and reveal who you’re becoming.
