Men Are Building Personal Brands. They Just Don't Call It That.

The idea that men aren't actively and intentionally building their personal brands in corporate, creative and entrepreneurial spaces is untrue and very misleading. They may not call it "personal branding" but they undertake the core strategies that align with it. Of course you should be doing the work and you can't build a personal brand without credibility unless you intend to scam people, but all the things that allow certain people to get ahead and accelerate is personal branding, people just don't like calling it that.

Men rely on personal branding to stand out.

You think Gordon Ramsay's swearing isn't part of his personal brand? Or David Beckham's grooming? Or Richard Branson's communication style? Or Mamdani's suit and smile? Or the current US president's Twitter fingers?

They don't name the thing but it is the thing. Anyone who denies this wants to maintain the status quo. This is why men continue to thrive in certain industries, particularly in traditional organisations. Just because they don't say what it is doesn't mean they aren't doing it. I’d even say that men are thriving in industries which in domestic settings have use women’s labour for free - food, fashion, hairdressing. Any man who has excelled in those spaces is a hard worker but he’s also leaned into his personal brand identity and commercialised his brand identity. I’ve worked with highly successful men across multiple industries specifically on personal branding and they don’t focus on the phrase they focus on the strategy. The public figures with teams, agents, publicists, managers have those teams for a reason - to manage their personal brand identities - again they might not say that’s what it is but that is what it is!

Personal brand building is an exercise in building positionality and men are winning. People don't like the term, I get it, it gives people the ick, but the reality is it's the very thing that ensures people stand out and move forward. It can be a superpower and a force for acceleration if you're exceptional at what you do, but let's not get it twisted, even mediocre entities are using it to catapult themselves. Everything from styling, network & relationships, media positioning, authority building, subject matter expertise, public speaking, thought leadership, social media content, communication style and language, books, newsletters… all of this is personal branding. And to be honest I don't care what you call it but I know what it is. It can be downplayed, minimised, mocked, overlooked but it is what it is.

Any hyper-visible person who benefits from their visibility and uses personal brand tactics through the media and social media to maintain said visibility should not be telling women not to focus on their personal brands. It reminds me of when some super rich public figures would tell their admirers to simply follow their passion as a means of being successful without giving them tangible frameworks. Without the truth many people ended up seeking constant motivation to keep going as opposed to realising that in order to make your passion work you need money, relationships, a network and more - passion was never enough.

Do the work yes but let people know that it's your work. Be strategic about letting people know and also own your authority in certain spaces. If you're good on a certain social media platform, keep using it to amplify your work. I'm "good" at Twitter and it works well for me, people associate it with me and it's part of my brand. I won't deny it simply because other people don't understand. I also work very hard, I'm able to do both and recognise the value of my personal brand to attract clients. In fact I suspect if I had figured it all out sooner and had been able to strategically position my personal brand I would be much further ahead than I am now.

I also think that by convincing a whole cross section of women not to work on their personal brands, those who benefit from the status quo and their own visibility can keep those women in place. They never overtake them or I'd even go further and suggest that women who aren't secure in their own visibility will always look to someone who has gamed the system. That person becomes their unicorn, someone who has achieved amazing things whilst also being visible and because they're told that they don't need to build their own personal brands, just keep doing the work. Meanwhile people who are doing the work AND building their personal brands are making moves and getting the right opportunities.

Don't be misled!

If this is true for women in general, it is even more true for Black women, because we are rarely given the benefit of the doubt that so many of our colleagues receive automatically. In many workplaces and industries a man can turn up with a confident voice, a good, shiny suit and a few strong opinions and be read as a leader almost immediately, while a Black woman with the same expertise, the same results and often more experience is asked to prove herself again and again.

There is also a particular trap that many of us have been taught to walk into, which is the advice to keep your head down, keep working, let the work speak for itself and wait to be noticed. Plenty of us followed that advice faithfully for years and plenty of us watched our ideas, our labour and our results get credited to someone more visible, someone who knew how to talk about the work and who was already well connected to the people making decisions. Being strategic about visibility is not about showing off. It is about making sure that the right people know the work is yours, so that the credit, the opportunities and the money land where they should.

I know that visibility and personal branding carries a different level of scrutiny for Black women because we’re often judged more harshly. But this is exactly why strategy matters so much, because when you are clear on what you want to be known for, who you want to reach and where you will show up, you are making deliberate choices rather than leaving your reputation to be defined by other people. It is also why this should not fall on individuals alone, and organisations have a responsibility to recommend, sponsor and credit Black women properly so that visibility does not become one more thing we are expected to fight for by ourselves.

If you are a woman reading this and you have been told, directly or indirectly, that building your personal brand is vain, unnecessary or somehow beneath the real work, I would gently encourage you to question who that advice actually serves. You can do the work and let people know about it, and the women who are doing both are the ones truly operating at a high level and thriving.