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- Your Personal Brand Isn't About You
Your Personal Brand Isn't About You
Charlene Li
September 01, 2025
Most people get personal branding completely wrong. They think it's about crafting the perfect bio, posting polished headshots, or sharing their achievements.
My approach to building a personal brand completely changed when I realized one important thing:
Your personal brand isn't about you. It's about the people you're serving as a leader.
When I first started doing speaking engagements, I was told to speak a certain way. The "expert" way. Get on stage, emphasize the topic's importance, and pretend you know everything. It didn’t feel authentic, and I didn’t feel like I was connecting with my audience.
When I shifted my focus from showcasing my expertise to serving my audience's needs, everything changed.
Instead of talking about my credentials, I started sharing stories about the challenges I knew they were facing. I talked about how I fought to fit in as a woman and person of color in a male-dominated field. Not because it was about me, but because I knew others in my audience felt just as out of place.
That's when people started approaching me after speeches, telling me they'd never heard someone share a story that so closely mirrored their own experience.
It's Your Responsibility to Show Up
As a leader, you have a responsibility to communicate. Your team, your customers, and your stakeholders need and want to know what you think.
Do you think the company is doing well?
Do you think the world is headed in the right direction?
Are you optimistic about the future?
How do you see the challenges we're facing?
They want to know how you think and what you care about, because you’re the person they look to for guidance. And one of the ways you lead is by communicating and sharing how you see the world.
I've never created content to glorify myself, or to get more followers. My primary goal is to create content to serve my audience (you!) because you’re at the center of everything I do.
When you keep the people you serve at the center of your content, your network will respond favorably. It’s an economy of give-and-take, and I’ve found that the more freely I give, the more people reach out to collaborate with me, learn with me, and partner with me. The personal stories simply make that connection possible.
Our Process: How We Create Content That Serves
I work with a great team at Arcbound to create content for my personal brand. I’m giving you a look under the hood because transparency about the tools I use is a core value of mine.
I meet with my Arcbound team once a month to talk about topics, then the team creates great content with our conversation.
Here’s the roadmap:
(And you can steal this entire approach!)
1. Think Headlines, Not Topics
Stop brainstorming "content topics." Instead, brainstorm 20 headlines for posts you could write.
Why headlines? Because headlines include a point of view—your point of view. They have your unique perspective baked in.
Keep a running list in your notebook or phone. My current list looks like this:
2. Speak Your Story, Don't Write It
Too often, people sit down at their keyboard and try to do something they don't do every day: write.
If you’re like me, and feel more comfortable speaking than writing, take out your phone, start a voice memo, and record yourself telling the story. Dictate your thoughts. Then give it to someone on your team to write a social media post based on the story.
The content I create with Arcbound sounds like me because it is me: my authentic voice reflected through someone who writes more often than I do.
3. Batch Everything and Schedule It
Once a month, I sit down with my team and brainstorm topics. Then, we go off and create a couple weeks’ worth of content at a time, scheduling it in advance.
This isn't just about efficiency, although it is definitely efficient. It's about consistency in serving your audience, even when life gets chaotic. When I go to Burning Man, have a cross-country flight at an inconvenient time, or when life gets busy, I can feel confident that my thoughts, my stories, and my voice are still connecting with my audience even when I’m focused on the offline parts of life.
The Personal Connection That Changes Everything
I share stories about my kids, but I don’t use their names without their permission. I tell stories about my family that connect to leadership lessons, like when my then-young daughter asked for her "Google bag" when she meant the Yahoo! bag. That became a story about brand recognition and market positioning.
It's personal, but it's not about me. It's about giving my audience a different way to think about their own challenges through stories that connect us all.
The same way you bring storytelling into how you lead your team, you can bring it into how you communicate as a leader.
Before Fall Gets Too Busy...
Now's the perfect time to brush off your social media content. What are you doing as a leader to be present and visible?
If you're not showing up, this is a good time to start.
Your people need to hear from you. They need to know how you're thinking about the challenges they're facing. They need to see that you're leading, not just managing.
Remember: work is personal. Leadership is personal. Your perspective matters—not because it makes you look good, but because it helps the people you serve do their jobs, stay aligned, stay motivated, and reach their greatest potential.
🗨️ Your Turn
What's the biggest mindset shift you've had to make in developing your personal brand? Have you found that focusing on service rather than self-promotion changes how you show up?
What I Can’t Stop Talking About
CEOs: it’s not too late to lead your company’s AI transformation. In fact, it’s essential for C-level leadership to guide their people through the biggest work transition in history, or risk getting left behind.
Fear of AI is up, and for good reason. But it’s not all bad news. Companies and employees alike are finding ways to face their fears, adapt, and grow stronger alongside AI tools – not in competition with them.
My Upcoming Appearances/Travel
Sep 8: Private Client, Washington, DC
Sep 17: Private Client, London, UK
Sep 21-22: Singapore Ministry of Health, Singapore
Oct 7: Keynote, Reston, VA
Oct 15: Executive Women's Forum, Keynote, Denver, CO
Nov 12: Private Client, Santa Barbara, CA
Nov 13: Brilliance 2025, Celebrating Women Disrupting Healthcare Keynote, Chicago, IL
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