The number one tip to develop a personal brand (according to Chris Do)
Aug 18, 2024
Find Your Superpower newsletter 070
Read time: 5 minutes
Topics covered: LinkedIn branding, mindset, Chris Do, bootcamp 60% full!
I stand on the shoulder of giants.
As the founder of the Find Your Superpower community, my mission is to help everyone discover the most empowered version of themselves.
I believe that when we lean into our unique skills and strengths, we transform into superheroes—and unlock extreme value we didn’t even know we had.
But I didn’t get to where I am today with my own abilities and knowledge. I stood on the shoulder of giants.
And one of these giants is Chris Do, the Emmy award-winning designer and founder of The Futur, who gave an incredible masterclass on Friday for my Find Your Superpower Six-Week LinkedIn Bootcamp community and alumni.
We discussed everything from branding to mindset, and I want to share some highlights in my newsletter today:
Social media is a conversation, not a broadcast channel.
Chris: If you just post, you’re broadcasting and that is a very “old-media” strategy. Today, the reason why social media works is it is a conversation.
You’ll never ever run out of ideas if you start a conversation and then someone responds, and you respond to their response. It is a dialogue.
Love yourself, lead others.
Chris: I have a pretty good sense of self. My self-awareness is pretty high, my self-acceptance is very high. I have learnt to say, “I love me, I am my own number one fan,” and for a lot of people, it is like, “Whoa, that’s a little bit too much.”
But I say this to you: people who don’t love themselves become very hard to love. When you meet someone who has this gigantic need to be validated all the time, you’ll find that your energy is very low. You might walk away feeling, “Why does my energy feel this way?” Because you have been pouring into them this entire time.
So the way you begin this process of having thicker skin is having a really good conversation with yourself, doing the inner work, whether that be through a coach, a mentor, or a therapist, so that you don’t feel so fragile. I think this is necessary.
We also have to think of ourselves as, are we leaders or followers? If you’re creating content, I assume you’re a leader and not a follower. So what happens when a leader follows the comments of the followers, then what kind of leading is that? I don’t understand that at all.
I create content mostly for me. For some young version of me out there, who is like, “I needed that today.”
How Chris deals with trolls.
Chris: This is the part of me that is very weird: I love my trolls. When they come hitting on me, I think, “Great, what do you hate?” Because I believe that inside of every hater is a former fan.
They help me to sharpen my communication style because I said something that I couldn’t imagine why someone would be triggered, and it triggered them, so the next time I do this I am gonna write it a little differently so that my intentionality matches my words.
Do this before you try to develop a personal brand.
Chris: It’s kind of tricky, if you are still working through some of your issues and you start posting (on LinkedIn), and people tear you apart. It is going to impact you very differently then it would be, if some of that was resolved.
So I had this question asked of me recently: “What is the number one thing I need to do to develop my own personal brand?”
I said, “Go to therapy!” They were a little shocked, like what?
Well, if you don’t even know who you are, you’re still hurting, and you don’t even know that you’re hurting, you are going to produce content that feels disconnected to who you truly are. So if you can heal that initial wound, that unresolved childhood trauma, then perhaps you’re gonna be a little bit more comfortable in your own skin, and then you can start to create.
But we don’t have to wait for that. You don’t have to be 100% perfect and healed and self-loving. You can say, “Here’s a lesson,” and speak from a place from my own lived experience. I think that is good enough. I don’t think it has to be more complicated than that.
If no one hates it, then no one really loves it.
Chris: I think if you create enough content, you’re eventually going to stir it up. And if you don’t stir up people, I don’t think you’re making content worth reading. That’s just the truth, OK?
If no one hates it, then no one really loves it. So it’s just like this middle-of-the-road milk toast. It’s just really boring, plain Jane vanilla. And no one really cares about that. And you’re sitting there like, why doesn’t anybody show up for my post?
Because you didn’t take any chances.
I don’t mean to encourage people to create polarizing posts to push people apart.... But you’ll notice that I do say things with a certain conviction, and I do reserve the right to change my mind, which I do often. And I’m going to create something because this is how I felt. And then someone will respond negatively towards it.
And I think to myself, is their criticism true, is it valid? If it’s not valid, then I just move on with my day. If it’s valid, I have to ask myself what I want to do about this.
We all have a superpower in us that can be unleashed.
Chris: Each one of you has this exact same gift, this superpower that you can unleash.
But you’ve got to get over yourself. You’ve got to un-program or de-program this voice in your head that, “Oh, you’re calling too much attention to yourself. Who do you think you are? Don’t you know no one wants to hear from you?”
If you can just make that critical decision to be consistent, to put out the work and put in the work, I think great things are waiting for you.
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Thanks for reading issue 070 of my weekly Find Your Superpower newsletter.
For those of you who are new to my newsletter, Find Your Superpower is subscribed to by 39,000+ people, and discusses the following three goals: (1) Making a career transition, (2) Professional branding on LinkedIn, and (3) Reinventing ourselves for the future of work.