Behind Every Personal Brand There Is a... Person.

Behind Every Personal Brand There Is a... Person.

There is something slightly embarrassing about sitting down to write a weekly newsletter when your last one went out almost three months ago.

When I started Monday Marketing News, I very proudly promised that I would show up in your inbox every Monday morning. I meant it. I still mean it. And then... life happened. I could probably give you a pretty solid list of reasons why I disappeared for a while, and chances are, you would understand. But I'm not particularly interested in throwing myself a pity party here. What I am interested in is something this break made me think about quite a bit.

We spend SO much time talking about personal branding that I think sometimes we forget the most obvious part of it.

Behind every personal brand there is an actual person.

We Ask A LOT From Personal Brands

Think about everything we're supposed to be doing these days. Find your niche. Know your audience. Post consistently. Be on camera. Send the newsletter. Answer comments. Follow up with leads. Tell stories. Educate people. Entertain them. Sell, but please don't sound like you're selling. Pay attention to analytics. Figure out what the algorithm wants this week. And while you're doing all of that, make sure you stay authentic.

Sounds relaxing, doesn't it? ;)

I teach a lot of these things myself. I believe in consistency. I believe in showing up. I believe that personal brands need a clear message and that you cannot expect people to remember you when you appear once every six months and disappear again.

But all of this work is still being done by a person. Someone with ambitions, doubts, talents, insecurities, relationships, responsibilities, good days, bad days, ideas and ocassionally... no desire to turn any of it into a video post.

Sometimes life simply doesn't care about our content calendar, and over the past few months, mine certainly didn't.

Consistency Matters, but Life Still Happens

I don't want to turn my newsletter break into some brilliant business decision because it wasn't. From a marketing perspective, disappearing for almost three months after promising a weekly newsletter is hardly something I would recommend to a client.

You lose momentum. People get used to not hearing from you. Some may forget about you altogether. That's why consistency matters, and I still believe it does.

At the same time, I knew I wasn't ready to come back just because another Monday appeared on my calendar.

I needed some time to heal. I needed to look inward and figure out what I wanted from myself, my life, my business, my relationships with clients and even the way I wanted to communicate. I didn't want to restart the newsletter because I felt guilty for not sending it. I wanted to restart when I actually felt ready to make that weekly promise again.

There is a difference.

I think we sometimes treat consistency in business as if missing a beat means we've somehow failed the entire assignment. In reality, consistency is an incredibly valuable marketing strategy. It is not a measurement of whether you're a good entrepreneur or a responsible human being.

Sometimes the person behind the brand needs your attention first.

Your Personal Brand Is Allowed to Change With You

There is another part of this that I find really interesting.

We spend a lot of time defining our personal brands. Who am I? What do I want to be known for? Who are my people? What do I believe in? What do I want my business to look like five years from now?

I LOVE those questions. I ask them of my clients all the time.

But who decided we're only allowed to answer them once?

Life changes us. Experience changes us. Success changes us. Difficult seasons change us. Sometimes something we were absolutely certain about two years ago doesn't fit anymore, and something we never expected to care about suddenly becomes incredibly important.

That doesn't necessarily mean your branding was wrong before. Maybe you've simply grown.

The past few months have made me think a lot about what I want from my own business and how I want to show up in it. Naturally, that's going to affect my personal brand too. My experiences influence what I care about. What I care about influences what I talk about. My values affect the clients I want to work with. My boundaries affect how I work with them. All of those things eventually show up in my marketing whether I consciously put them there or not.

And I think that's how it should be.

A personal brand that never evolves while the person behind it is changing doesn't sound particularly personal to me.

Authenticity Doesn't Mean Everyone Gets to Know Everything

Now, this is where personal branding gets a little tricky.

We're constantly encouraged to be authentic. Be vulnerable. Tell your story. Take people behind the scenes. Show the real you.

Yes... but also, boundaries.

I just told you that I needed time to heal and that there have been some significant changes in my life. There are parts of those experiences I may eventually talk about, and there are other parts I may choose to keep completely private.

Neither choice makes me more or less authentic.

Authenticity isn't the same thing as disclosure.

I think that's an important distinction, especially for personal brands. You can be honest with your audience without giving them access to every part of your life. You can learn something through a difficult experience and eventually teach what you learned without turning the entire experience into content.

I care deeply about authenticity in marketing, but I don't believe authenticity means we owe the internet everything.

The word is personal brand. Not public property.

So... Here I Am Again

I wish I had maintained the weekly routine I originally promised. Of course I do. I don't like breaking promises, especially ones I make publicly.

But I also don't want to spend the next three months feeling guilty about the previous three.

At some point, you just come back.

I'm writing again. I'm sending Monday Marketing News again. I'm excited about my business, the people I'm working with and some of the things I've been building while I've been quieter over here.

And maybe that's something worth remembering too.

You can believe deeply in consistency and still have periods when you're inconsistent. You can know what you're doing professionally and still be figuring things out personally. You can have a plan and watch life rearrange it. You can be incredibly ambitious and still need time to stop and think.

Life can be messy and organized at the same time.

Honestly... isn't that just beautiful?

Behind every personal brand there is a person.

Please remember to take care of that person, too.