The Personal Brand is dead 💀

 

Anyone who knows me well enough and interacts with my content has probably seen the change in me over the years and that comes from a fairly deep part of me.

I came to a startling realisation a few months back. Which has been years in the making.

And this has crystallised over time.

Each of us carries around a unique philosophy and we spread that through ideology.  Sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously.

Philosophy comes from inside and our ideology is how we interpret that and try and enforce it on the world at large.

I have never been comfortable with the term personal brand. 

It seems hollow, empty, vacuous somehow.

Probably the last thing you’d expect to be associated with a human.

When there is a misalignment between this external presentation to the world (I prefer the term ideology not brand) and your internal philosophy (the deeper story, myth and core values that shape how you see the world). 

People can sense it a mile off. At an almost instinctual, animal level as an unsaid form of communication.

We hang out with, socialise with and do business with people that align with our core value sets. 

We see ourselves in them.

Like calls to like. As the old saying goes.

But where do these core values come from and what makes them special? Your core vales determine how you interpret the world and these are shaped in early childhood.

When our core values are attacked (and you’ll see this a lot on posts where people become triggered) people react in strange ways. 

Because people are literally challenging their entire belief structure. 

This is also why I believe the personal brand has had it’s day.

It’s the personal philosophy that will replace it. 

In this new coming wave of AI I believe it’s our inherent uniqueness and way we see the world that will separate us even further from machines building out deeper levels of trust and deepening new and existing relationships.

Think less surface driven and a more deeper alignment between our values and the relationships we enter into. 

Trust will become a much more valuable commodity than we can possibly imagine.

Luhmann (2018) proposes that trust relations are based on three structural components: 

(1) substitution by inner order,

(2) need to learn, and

(3) symbolic control

Trust increases order by reducing the complexity of an "outer" world by "inner" representations of a subject. We trust something more when it aligns with our core value sets.

The perfect model for that is our philosophy.

I predict this will usher in a new renaissance for relationships if you will.

Think of your personal philosophy as an NFT for humans. 

Like a digital fingerprint. 

But what is a personal philosophy?

Philosophy is made up of 

1 part mythology and 

1 part science 

Mythology tries to answer the fundamental aspects of tradition and beliefs. Philosophy tries to answer the fundamental nature of knowledge and reality. And all the best people that we refer to as having brands don't really, they have a philosophy. 

Elon Musk being a prime example.

"My driving philosophy is to expand the scope and scale of consciousness that we may better understand the nature of the universe," Musk said. "I have a sort of proposal for a worldview or motivating philosophy which is to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe" Elon Musk

Let's look at a few other top tier talent, where their personal philosophies come from and what they are?

Richard Branson

"I have always lived my life by thriving on opportunity and adventure. Some of the best ideas come out of the blue, and you have to keep an open mind to see their virtue." - Richard Branson 

Old Dickies is this in a nutshell

Be addicted to fun

"Branson says to himself, ‘If I have fun doing this, I assume other people have fun doing this,’ so fun has become his filter for ‘should I go into it?’ and it’s a great filter,"

Limit risk

But he "is quick to rapidly iterate his ideas, and quicker to shut down a failur

Be customer centric 

"Unless you’re customer-centric, you might be able to create something wonderful, but you’re not going to survive,"

Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients - Richard Branson 

Oprah Winphrey 

The unadulterated queen of day time talk show TV with an estimated net worth of 2.9 billion US!

Oprahs philosophy is a more homespun one (as you'd expect) and comes from a very deep place, you'd expect nothing less from the person who coined the term “Oprahfication”.

Hers is.

Take control of your own life

We are each responsible for our own life -- no other person is or even can be. My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.

An individual's choices and thoughts are central

Understand that the right to choose your own path is a sacred privilege. Use it. Dwell in possibility.

Live your dreams.

Believe the choice to be excellent begins with aligning your thoughts and words with the intention to require more from yourself.

"My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment." 

It's not just these old folks too! The cool kids are in on it too.

Jimmy Donaldson AKA Mr Beast seems to have a philosophy too!

He doesn't seem to be too heavily invested in money

Making money to “buy a bigger box to live in is kind of a dumb way to go about life.”

His can be summarised into

Passion is everything

As a kid he said “I couldn’t find anyone I could relate to — I was miserable.” He was lucky to find his passion young.

The 10,000-hour rule!

At the time, MrBeast was only earning a few hundred dollars per month from YouTube. But, he saw a path to becoming a full-time YouTuber. So, he decided to take a risk.

He enrolled in college but never attended class. Instead, he sat in his car and edited videos. By the end of the year, he was making enough to show his mom that becoming a YouTuber was a real thing.

“I probably spent 40–50 thousand hours.”

Multiplying mistakes divides time

You can grow exponentially faster by learning from others’ mistakes. For this reason, MrBeast loves to mentor others — for free.

Helping others helps you

He finds helping therapeutic — and enjoys doing it. Plus, it helps him too.

“I get data, I learn, I understand what works.”

He looks at mentoring as data aqquisition. It re-affirms that what he’s doing still works.

I guess the real question is what’s yours? Where does it come from? And what can you do to change it?

That’s where the real work begins.