You Don't Build A Stellar Personal Brand on being ‘Authentic’.
If I see one more article, social post or email on what Taylor Swift can teach entrepreneurs about the power of being ‘AUTHENTIC’ 🤮 I will weep.
She's a literal powerhouse in every sense of the word. And so for me, being ‘authentic’ is the least of it.
Authenticity is down there with much of the other advice that's liberally thrown around, especially to women, when it comes to marketing ourselves and our businesses. The other one that feels me with rage is the need to build the ‘know, LIKE and trust’ factor.
In my experience, women don't need to be reminded to be likeable.
Anyhoo, imagine if Taylor has curated a personal brand with any of that in mind. We'd be left with a seriously diluted version of the Swift.
Love her or hate her, she's an icon of enormous proportion. She changes economies when she visits a country, she inspires fandom that's so die-hard it's almost cult-like and she commands more column inches of coverage than most political leaders.
But she's not someone we ‘know’. She isn't ‘access all areas’ on social media. She doesn't share that much about her day to day life and she’s extremely private about her family, her romantic life, about everything that isn’t her music.
Everything she does contributes towards a killer, single-minded Personal Brand that has supercharged her impact in the world and her business. She's hyper intentional about everything.
This is an important lesson for the entrepreneur building a personal brand. Do you want to be an Influencer OR are you building a profile to feed your business? Assuming it’s the latter, you need to think business-model first and build the brand around it. Otherwise you’ll wind up with a personal brand that doesn’t support it.
It doesn’t give you creds in the areas you want to break into, it hasn’t attracted the people who want to pay you money and your Personal Brand + Business, have very little in common. In a world of social media, content and mediocre advice, this situation is becoming VERY common.
So be more Taylor. She knows exactly what she’s doing. She's curating a wildly exciting and magnetic brand that has people stampeding to her concerts, creating the right kind of hype and blowing up every commercial venture she touches. She’s not trying to be LIKED, she’s…
Politically active and fearlessly opinionated
An active campaigner for wholesale industry change
A brave voice who'll call out injustice and hold people to account
A creative risk-taker, she delights in bucking the usual way of doing things
A voice that's plugged in to the leading edge of cultural change
Someone who cares deeply for her fans and uses her own vulnerabilities as points of connection
She’s actively finding her people through not trying to be liked.
She's certainly authentic, but she's also a masterclass in the importance of knowing what you want to go after and what you want to be known for, for creating a wildly different, stretchy brand, that she lands with utter consistency across every touchpoint we have with her.
A strong idea and a beautiful execution.
Swiftie for life.
