I thought personal brands were dumb until it got me a new job and a six-figure business

yes it's cringe. but here's why it matters and who it matters for.

Hi, it’s Hannah! Welcome to Nonlinear News, where I write for ambitious people who refuse to choose between wealth and fulfillment.

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A year ago, I still thought “personal branding” was for people selling courses on how to sell courses.

I’d scroll Linkedin and see “thought leaders” posting preachy garbage about their management tips or shilling their consulting businesses with bios like “I help Fortune 500 companies unlock synergies.” It was gross. I wanted nothing to do with it.

I had real credentials and experience. I went to an Ivy League school. I worked in investment banking and tech and had good performance reviews. My work spoke for itself.

Or so I thought.

When credentials and experience stop working

I left banking wanting to prove I could operate a “real business”, not just make slides about it. But a lot of companies I interviewed with were skeptical.

“You’re too strategic,” they’d say. In other words: you think about things and make fancy slides, you don’t do them.

My resume showed my track record in banking, so most tech companies only wanted to interview me for finance roles. It didn’t prove I could run operations for a food delivery business or do marketing at a Series A startup. I had the skills - I just couldn’t prove it on paper.

I’ve since spoken to dozens of people with the same problem I had. You know you can do the work. But your credentials are locked into what you’ve already done, not what you want to do next.

This is where personal branding comes in.

But let’s clear something up first - personal brand isn’t being a content creator or influencer. It’s not “posting online”. (I don’t blame you for thinking that - lots of people online use these terms interchangeably when they’re…not.)

You already have a personal brand.

If your previous wins were internal at a big institution, your personal brand was what people said when your name came up. “Oh yeah, Hannah - she’s our best analyst on the real estate team.” (I was not…shhhh…)

That works great inside a closed network. It breaks down the second you want to do something outside that network.

When you want to pivot, start your own thing, or join a company where no one knows you, that internal brand stops working. Your credentials prove what you’ve done, not what you can do next. You need evidence beyond your resume.

So, you need a new personal brand, and posting online is a way to accelerate that.

Here’s 3 ways your personal brand can help you land your next job, be invaluable to a company, and grow your own business.

#1 Skip the job search and attract your next opportunity

AI has made it too easy to fake competence. You can generate a resume, cover letter, and portfolio with ChatGPT in 20 minutes. You can use bots to submit hundreds of job applications.

Recently, we were hiring for a role at my company. We got flooded with applications. Many were clearly AI-generated. The burden of sifting through resumes where we had no idea if the person actually did the work they claimed was exhausting.

Most of the people we interviewed came from referrals or had worked at a similar company in the same role with a track record we could verify.

But the person we ended up hiring landed the job from their “personal brand”.

They’d posted a portfolio publicly, including a teardown of one of our competitors showing how they’d redo the competitor’s marketing.

We reached out, interviewed them, and hired them. They didn’t have the exact title we were looking for. But they showed they could do the work.

This happened to me too. I got two job offers in the last five months. Both came from startup founders who reached out after seeing my LinkedIn content.

LinkedIn message I’ve received from a founder

Both found me via LinkedIn search for the role I had. Posting publicly helped me not only rank higher in search, but also gave the hirer a whole body of content that showed what I was capable of. They could see how I think, how I write, and what I care about.

When you’re attracting opportunities with a personal brand, you hardly need to call it a job “search”.

#2 Learn a high-value skill that companies are paying top dollar for

Just as AI has made applying for jobs easier, it’s also made building products easier. When there are thousands of AI chatbots, AI notetakers…AI agents for finance out there, the key differentiator is your ability to tell the story of your product or build a brand around the founders and employees.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that job postings mentioning “storyteller” or “storytelling” doubled in the past year. Companies like Google, Microsoft, and Vanta are hiring people specifically to communicate their value. Vanta, a compliance company, is offering $274,000 for a “head of storytelling.” In other words, they’re hiring people to build the team’s personal brands.

Deloitte created a “corporate influencer” role - someone who became the face of the company on LinkedIn, generated 400 million impressions last year, and brought in 10,000 leads. That has a $13 million marketing value and they now have 250 employees doing this part-time.

a16z launched a “New Media Fellowship” - a program for “operators, creators, and storytellers shaping the future of media.” Translation: they want people who can build distribution and credibility for their portcos.

The skill of building a personal brand is something companies are actively hiring and paying for. If you build this skill and combine it with real expertise, you’re valuable.

#3 Build and grow your business

For early-stage companies and solopreneurs, founder and team led marketing (i.e. personal branding!) is some of the cheapest and most effective marketing out there.

Poppi (back when it was early stage) built a brand through founder-led content before anyone knew what the product was.

Cluely is an infamous example - product was subpar, but team got great awareness from their differentited personal brand content and raised a round for a16z. (Jury’s out on their approach to building a company via controversy and rage baiting, but no doubt the marketing “worked”.)

Personal brands aren’t just for consumer companies. Rillet, a niche example you might only know if you follow B2B SaaS startups on Linkedin, is trying to replace NetSuite for CFOs. Boring as hell - but their Head of Finance found success building a brand by speaking directly to CFOs on LinkedIn and openly credits LinkedIn as their biggest marketing lever.

I’ve had MBA grads from Wharton and Stanford reach out asking how to grow on LinkedIn because they’re building businesses and need distribution.

Personal brands are also the driving force behind solopreneur businesses. Justin Welsh is a great example, as is Sahil Bloom.

I made over $100K this year from building my personal brand, but I didn’t start posting on social media because I wanted to be an influencer. I wanted to reach people I wanted to advise, work with, and help.

I’ve always seen personal branding as more of a way to practice marketing, reinvest any $$$ from sponsorships, and build credibility for more intentional entrepreneurship down the line.

I’m focused on this next year, even if it’s a less lucrative, bumpier road to start. I want to build for you and with you, and bring you behind the scenes. ~more on this soon!!~~

Your personal brand isn’t built in a day

Whether you’re pivoting roles, trying to develop a high-value skill, or marketing your own thing - your personal brand is a shortcut.

I’m not a woo woo girl, but I believe without a doubt that perception shapes reality. Your personal brand shapes people’s opinions of you before you ever meet them.

When someone’s deciding whether to take a call with you, hire you, or work with you, they’ve often already made up their mind based on what they found about you online or heard about you from their network.

You don’t need to post every day. You don’t need a following. You just need to start with sharing one piece of evidence that shows you can do the thing you’re trying to do next.

Start doing this in January (read this if you need help getting started). Come back to me in six months and tell me how it changed your life.

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