LEANING INTO YOURSELF (PERSONAL BRANDING)
THE BEST PERSONAL BRANDS ARE THE ONES THAT FEEL HUMAN
Recently, Wren and I were invited by Rich White from Werewolf Beer to speak at LinkedIn Wankers – Networking for People Who Don't Like Networking at his brewery in Camden.
Which is either the best or worst networking event name ever created.
We're still undecided.
What we do know is that it perfectly summed up the evening.
No forced networking. No awkward sales pitches. No one trying to sell a revolutionary AI-powered blockchain synergy platform before you'd even finished your first drink. Just a room full of interesting people having real conversations.
And honestly, that's probably why it works.
WHY WE TALKED ABOUT PERSONAL BRANDING
Our topic for the evening was personal branding.
A subject that many people immediately associate with perfectly curated LinkedIn profiles, carefully staged headshots, inspirational quotes over sunsets, and enough corporate buzzwords to make your eyes roll into the back of your head.
Somewhere along the way, personal branding became confused with personal marketing.
People started believing they needed to create a polished version of themselves.
A more professional version.
A safer version.
A version that would fit neatly into what they thought people expected.
The problem?
When everyone is trying to look professional in exactly the same way, everyone starts looking exactly the same.
MOST PEOPLE ARE OVERCOMPLICATING IT
Here's the thing.
Most people think personal branding is about carefully crafting an image.
Getting the perfect profile photo.
Writing the perfect bio.
Building the perfect content strategy.
Curating a feed that makes them look successful, knowledgeable, and impressive.
We think it's the opposite.
The strongest personal brands are usually just people who've stopped hiding the interesting bits.
The accountant who is obsessed with punk rock.
The designer who knits houseplants out of yarn.
The IT company owner who's secretly a stand-up comedian.
The founder who would rather talk about dogs than disruption.
The marketer who's in a death metal band.
These aren't distractions from your personal brand.
They're often the most memorable parts of it.
MEMORABLE BEATS GENERIC EVERY TIME
One of the biggest points we discussed during the evening was this:
The stuff you think makes you seem less professional is often the stuff that makes you memorable.
And memorable beats generic every single time.
People don't remember job titles.
They don't remember buzzwords.
They don't remember the 47th LinkedIn post telling them to "embrace innovation."
They remember stories.
They remember personality.
They remember people who feel human.
That's true whether you're building a personal brand, a business brand, or a community.
People connect with authenticity far more than they connect with perfection.
YOU DON'T NEED TO BECOME SOMEONE ELSE
The best part of the evening wasn't our presentation.
It was the conversations afterwards.
Watching people realise that they didn't need to reinvent themselves to build a personal brand.
They didn't need to become influencers.
They didn't need to become content creators.
They didn't need to start posting inspirational life lessons from airport lounges.
They simply needed to lean into themselves.
To be a little more intentional about sharing who they are, what they care about, and what makes them different.
Because the goal of personal branding isn't to become someone else.
It's to become more recognisably you.
WHY THIS MATTERS MORE THAN EVER
We're living in a time when AI can generate content, build websites, create logos, write posts, and automate countless marketing tasks.
What it can't replicate is your lived experience.
Your perspective.
Your relationships.
Your personality.
Your weird hobbies.
Your stories.
The things that make you different are becoming increasingly valuable because they're the one thing nobody else can copy.
That's true for people.
And it's true for brands.
NETWORKING DOESN'T HAVE TO FEEL LIKE NETWORKING
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the evening was that networking works best when it doesn't feel like networking.
The event felt more like a gathering of interesting humans than a room full of people trying to sell to each other.
People shared stories.
Asked questions.
Challenged ideas.
Connected over common interests.
The business conversations happened naturally because the human conversations happened first.
That's something many networking events could learn from.
FINAL THOUGHT
If there's one thing we'd want people to take away from the evening, it's this:
Stop worrying so much about looking professional.
Start focusing on being memorable. Lean into yourself!
The strongest personal brands aren't carefully manufactured.
They're simply people who've stopped hiding the interesting bits.
And in a world full of polished profiles, generic content, and corporate sameness, being genuinely yourself might just be the most effective branding strategy there is.
A huge thank you to Rich White and the team at Werewolf Beer for hosting such a fantastic event, to Harmony and Mirum for their social media brilliance, and to everyone who came along, shared stories, asked questions, and reminded us that networking can actually be fun.
Promo photo and video:
