The "Me" Disease: Why Personal Branding Is A Lie

Personal branding is a lie.

And being known for the sake of being known is not the goal.

Instead, today’s creators, entrepreneurs, digital writers, marketers, and even executives and investors should aim to become known for a niche they own—to create a category of expertise built on their reputation to deliver legendary results.

Unfortunately, this is not the way most people think about differentiating themselves today. Instead, much of the business world is consumed in a game of “more content, more outrageous.”

Personal branding is all about capturing attention for attention’s sake—and the idea is that once you have people’s attention, once you have hundreds of thousands of followers, then you can figure out what to do with all that attention (monetize it in some way).

But this is misleading thinking, and has unknowingly educated an entire generation of entrepreneurs to use gimmicks to rack up views on social media opposed to building differentiated assets and publish valuable content that allows them to become known for a niche they own.

In this “mini-book” you will learn:

• How an article in the late 1990s called “A Brand Called You” set off an entire movement of individuals becoming infatuated with the idea of personal branding.
• A brief history of how social media turned everyday actions into “content,” and how personal branding gurus like Gary Vaynerchuk preached the importance of “documenting everything.”
• The “Me” Disease, and why the next generation (86% of young Americans) want to be influencers when they grow up.
• And the big personal branding lie: why people are not brands, and just like The Big Brand Lie, thinking people care about “you” is one of the biggest mistakes you can make as a creator.

Short, sweet, and jam-packed with incredibly valuable insights, this “mini-book” is a Rally Cry for creators to unhook their mindset from caring about building a “personal brand,” and instead focusing on investing in their personal category design.