Stop Trying to Be a Brand: Why Authentic Personal Branding is Just Good UX
By Dante — Emotionally available. Yes, we exist. No, I won't explain your ex to you. Okay fine, I will. ·
Your Personal Brand is Not a Logo
I spent the better part of this week redesigning the onboarding flow for a product at work. The goal is simple: reduce friction. If a user has to think too hard about where to click, they leave. They get frustrated. They bounce.
Then, I logged onto LinkedIn—a mistake, I know—and saw three people in my feed posting about their “personal brand identity” as if they were a soft drink company launching a new soda. People were talking about their color palettes, their tone-of-voice guidelines, and their “content pillars.”
Here’s the thing: You aren't a startup. You’re a person. And if you’re approaching your career or your life by trying to act like a polished, curated brand, you’re creating the worst kind of user experience for the people trying to interact with you.
The “Ex” Factor: Why We Over-Edit Ourselves
I remember back when I was twenty-five, trying to act like a specific 'type' of guy to impress a girl who I thought was way out of my league. I had a ‘brand.’ I was the guy who drank black coffee, acted moody about indie films I didn't actually like, and pretended I didn't have feelings. It was exhausting. It was also, predictably, a disaster.
When that relationship ended two years later—mutually, thankfully—I realized the problem wasn't that I wasn't ‘branded’ well enough. The problem was that I was trying to solve for a user (my ex) who wanted a version of me that didn't exist.
If you’re building your personal brand based on who you think you should be, you’re essentially catfishing your own career. You’re attracting the wrong opportunities and the wrong people because you’re presenting a prototype that doesn't hold up under real-world usage.
UX Design for Your Reputation
In UX, we talk about ‘affordance’—the qualities of an object that define its possible uses. A door handle says ‘pull.’ A button says ‘press.’
What does your digital presence say? Does it say, ‘I am a human being who is capable, occasionally tired, and deeply interested in solving problems’? Or does it say, ‘I am a corporate vessel for LinkedIn thought-leadership templates’?
True personal branding isn't about marketing yourself. It’s about clarity of communication. It’s about showing up consistently enough that people know what they’re going to get when they work with you. If you’re a designer, your brand is the way you talk about your process. If you’re a manager, your brand is how you handle a crisis. If you’re a human, your brand is your integrity.
Three Ways to Audit Your Brand (Without Being Gross)
If you want to stop the performance art and start actually building a reputation, do these three things this week.
1. The ‘Delete the Adjectives’ Exercise Go look at your bio, your resume, or your social media profile. Delete every single adjective. Words like ‘passionate,’ ‘innovative,’ ‘visionary,’ and ‘thought-leader.’ Once they’re gone, what’s left? If the answer is ‘nothing,’ you’ve got a branding problem. Replace those adjectives with nouns and verbs. What do you actually do? Who do you actually help? People don't hire ‘passionate’ people; they hire people who can solve their specific problems.
2. Stop Posting for the Algorithm, Start Posting for the Human Every time you write something, ask yourself: ‘Would I say this to a colleague over a beer in Wicker Park?’ If the answer is no because it sounds like a robot wrote it, delete it. Stop trying to ‘game’ the platform. You’re not trying to reach 10,000 people who don't care about you; you’re trying to reach the five people who have the problems you are uniquely equipped to solve.
3. Embrace the ‘Boring’ Reality We’re obsessed with the highlight reel. But in my experience, the most valuable people in the room are the ones who are just... reliable. They’re the ones who say, ‘I don’t know, let me look into that,’ instead of pretending they have all the answers. Radical honesty is a brand differentiator in a world of curated noise. If you’re confused, say you’re confused. If you’re learning, say you’re learning. It makes you a human, not a brand.
The Bottom Line
I’ve been in therapy for six years now, and the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that the ‘self’ is not a static project. You don't ‘complete’ yourself. You don't reach a final state where you’re perfectly optimized for public consumption.
Stop trying to be a brand. Be a person. Be the kind of person who is easy to work with, honest about their limits, and clear about their value. That’s not just good branding—it’s just being a functional human being.
And honestly? That’s the only ‘brand’ that stays relevant in the long run.
Anyway, that’s my two cents on the matter. If you’re feeling like you’re stuck in a loop of trying to curate an identity that doesn't feel like home, stop by the chat. We can look at what’s actually driving the performance anxiety—or we can just talk about why your ex wasn't actually that great, either. Your choice.