You Don’t Need a Personal Brand

(Because You Already Are One)

It’s 10:30 on a Sunday morning. I’m sitting here on my balcony, having a coffee, wearing a cowboy hat—and it occurs to me:

Maybe I should lean even further into my own personality for my brand.

I mean, really. No attempt to be polished. I’m not some McKenzie person. I didn’t come out of an Ivy League pipeline. I’m a state school graduate. I’ve got a lot of international experience, but most of what I know I taught myself. I have a background in firefighting, manual labor, and the service industry.

So maybe that’s the move. Lean into it harder. Consulting for the common man.

This got me thinking about personal branding—a phrase that gets thrown around like you need to build it from scratch. But here’s the thing:

Your personal brand is just your person.

There is no need to create it. You are the brand.

All you really need to do is present yourself the same way you would in a professional setting. That’s it. Ta-da! Personal brand.

Then yeah, you wrap that up in a logo, a catchphrase, maybe some decent design. But the base is just: you. Not some ideal. Not some polished corporate mask. Just you.

Same goes for “company culture.”

People talk like it’s this abstract thing to define—but when you’re a solo operator, you are the company culture.

So here’s how I’m applying that right now:

A few weeks ago, I had this realization that I was still trying to present myself as more academic. More polished. More like what I imagined a consultancy should sound like.

But that’s not me.

I come from a rural background. I’ve worked fire crews and restaurant kitchens. I’ve dug through museum basements, interviewed lawyers, and rebuilt my career from scratch more than once. I’m not highly polished. I’m just a guy from a town of now under 200 in rural Arizona.

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