Your Fear of Being Seen Is Costing You Your Potential
Why obscurity isn’t protecting you, and how building a personal brand unlocks your full potential.
Your fear of being seen online isn't protecting your reputation.
It's the reason you'll never have one worth protecting.
Obscurity isn’t safety, it’s wasted potential.
You want to be the best version of yourself, at least I hope you do.
You want the money, relationship, community, security, confidence, peace of mind.
But the path is unclear.
Finding your way seems like something everybody but you is able to do.
People who know half as much as you have secure incomes and stress free lives just from posting consistently.
Everyone you see online has a life of freedom, options, and comfort.
And every day life just seems to pass you by.
The vision of who you know you could be slowly slipping away.
To realize your potential, you need an outlet for your potential.
One that builds:
Money
Relationships
Knowledge
Self expression
Mental and physical health
Your dreams will die if you keep them locked in your mind.
Building a personal brand isn't about marketing or getting views.
It's about giving your potential a place to live and grow in the world.
Creating a public space where your ideas, skills, and perspective can develop and find their community.
I’m going to show you why building a personal brand is the only option if you want to live a truly fulfilling life, how it’s affected mine, and how it will change yours.
Side note:
I share a system near the end of this newsletter for how to build a meaningful personal brand.
Every section of this newsletter is an example of the principles in that system.
You already have a brand
Your brand is what people think when they think about you. — Chris Do
That idea changed everything for me.
After years of chasing success, I was burned out and ready to quit content and music entirely.
If my brand is what people think about me, what are they thinking?
I had been shamelessly self promoting for years, rarely ever making it about my audience.
About how who I was could help them.
I was focused on ‘success’, on the outcome, on getting what I wanted.
Humbled and a bit ashamed, I couldn’t unsee what I saw.
Everything became about being someone worth supporting.
Not “how do I make it?”
But “how do I become someone worthy of making it?”
The most successful people, are successful because of who they are, not what they do.
If your brand is what people think about you.
Then your brand is your public identity.
People are already thinking something about you.
None of us can avoid it.
This isn’t a bad thing.
But if you’re not building your identity on purpose you’re missing opportunities.
You could even be hurting your own potential.
We live in a digital age.
Half your life is lived digitally.
Our culture lives on the internet.
Personal brand is the new resume, portfolio, reputation, social proof, community membership.
If you’re not involved you’re missing out on half your potential.
If you’re only consuming online, rather than creating and bringing value.
You’re being influenced and shaped, rather than evolving and improving.
Escaping the herd
The minute we choose to measure something, we are essentially choosing to aspire to it. — Youngme Moon Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd
Most people cringe at the thought of having a personal brand.
They hear content creator and think “Creators are superficial attention seekers”.
That’s why most creators fail.
People have confused attention with success.
This creates an environment where everybody’s chasing attention and copying whoever gets the most of it.
It’s called competitive convergence.
Competitive Convergence: When you compete with someone or aspire to have their success. You start to behave more like them.
Who you become is a result of what you chase.
Chase views, you’ll do whatever gets the easiest views.
Because it’s not about how you get them it’s about if you get them.
That’s why people resent most creators because they resort to manipulation and superficial tactics to steal our attention.
They lack substance and actual value that rewards their audiences attention.
Focusing on the process (why you get views).
Is more important than focusing on the outcome (if you get views).
Here’s what outcome focused personal brands look like:
Picks whatever niche is most popular
Relies on trends and tactics
Lack a real value offer solely monetizes their views
Has no coherent worldview or values
Their content is surface level relying on attention and engagement hacks to boost their metrics
Here’s what process focused personal brands look like:
Creating and sharing your own worldview and values
Niche based off genuine passion and interests
Sharing your thoughts, beliefs, ideas and skills to find a community that relates
Improving peoples lives through your specific knowledge and value offer
Self development through testing and growing your own ideas and skills in public
Relying on quality and substance of content to engage and build their audience
Being process focused gives you a system for improving your own and others lives.
Because what creates a loyal audience is being someone worthy of attention.
You do that by becoming the highest version of yourself.
Being an example for others and offering them a path to better themselves.
Reaching your full potential
Here’s a process focused system for building a personal brand that helps you become the highest version of yourself.
The version that develops the skills, values and worldview necessary to grow and serve the right audience.
Think of your life and personal brand in two stages.
Inputs and Outputs.
Inputs:
What you use to learn new things, build new habits and characteristics.
ex. Books, Podcasts, Shows, Movies and People that you admire and inspire you
Outputs:
What you use to test and solidify these things in your life and reality.
ex. Writing, Speaking, Networking, Creating, Building things that use the new skills, habits and characteristics you’re building
1. Inputs
Choose your focus
Your life is a project for realizing your potential.
Your brand is your outlet for that potential.
Your life consists of 5 non-negotiable areas.
Body
Mind
Community
Business
Spirit
You need to be building these all the time.
These things come with life, they can’t and shouldn’t be avoided.
The things you learn improving these areas also fuel your content.
But there’s also areas you get to choose.
Interests:
No matter what they are, music, stoicism, Japanese design philosophy, 90’s cartoons.
If you don’t already know what you love your mission is to discover it.
You have a unique perspective and it’s hidden in your interests.
If you want help discovering and curating your influences download the Living Source Library.
It’s a free notion template, but what it really is, is a creative system for archiving, consuming and curating your biggest influences and building your brand and creative work.
Which is what comes next.
Curate and Consume
Your interests fuel your brand and the person you’re becoming.
It’s where you’ll acquire all your new skills, habits, characteristics.
And where all your content will come from.
Find people, books, shows, podcasts, activities that relate to your interests.
These should be content and people you admire for a deeper reason than just pure entertainment.
They embody values, traits, aesthetics or characteristics you admire.
Create a list of these people and content (or add them to your Living Source Library).
This is your personal creative archive.
Consume this content daily.
The goal is to learn, study and absorb content that relates to who you are and who you want to be.
You do this by immersing yourself in your influences and interests.
You become whatever you consume the most.
This is how babies learn to speak.
You don’t teach them how you just expose them to language enough and they eventually absorb it.
When applied to your reality all your interests can connect and improve multiple areas of your life.
That’s where Outputs come in.
2. Outputs
Skin in the Game
You learn and become by doing, not thinking and watching.
You’re going to start putting yourself out there and talk about your interests online.
You talk about everything, your specific interests but also how you’ve improved other areas of your life like body, mind, community business, spirit.
Pick a platform, whether it’s video (ex. Instagram), audio (ex. Podcast) or writing (ex. Substack/X).
Start posting using these methods, whichever ones appeal to you.
Teaching:
Teach other people what you’re learning and what’s helping you grow.
This can be related to anything, your specific interests, creative, spiritual, business growth, etc.
Teaching others helps you truly understand what you’ve learned, it forces you to think about whether what you know is true and useful.
Entertain through Creative Expression:
Whether you make music, paint, design, take techniques and styles from your influences and make your own version.
Take what you consumed and create for yourself, this is how you learn and evolve.
Inspire through Action:
Take action on your influences.
If you’re inspired by Video game design but don’t design games.
Actually design a video game and document your process on social media.
You’ll develop a new skill, gain deeper appreciation for influences, start a potential business, show others they can take action and build something themselves.
The Medici Effect
True originality comes from the spaces in between ideas.
There are underlying principles that connect everything in life.
All domains relate to each other, you just have to be able to see how.
Pay attention to themes that tie your list of interests and influences together.
You’ll notice patterns between them all.
When you can start to connect those dots you start to make truly meaningful work.
Frans Johansson calls this the Medici Effect.
When you step into an intersection of fields, disciplines or cultures, you can combine existing concepts into a large number of extraordinary new ideas. — Frans Johansson The Medici Effect
A personal brand is your map, system and outlet for your full potential.
Putting yourself and your ideas out there is how you reach it.
Don’t miss the opportunity to create something only you can create.
And become the version of you, you didn’t even know could exist.
The world will benefit from what you have to offer.
Strive to be your highest self.
Share it with others.
Thanks for reading.
DM me and share what you thought.
We can discuss these ideas together.
CONNECTION.
COMMUNITY.
‘Til next time.
— Edamame Dufflebag