Rethinking your approach to Personal Brand

For the longest time we were taught to ‘market’ by ‘messaging’ what our ideal client wanted to hear.

But now that we are in the age of AI and communications, that approach to a personal brand is failing. It sounds performative and sanitized. So what do true leaders do now? How do you create an authentic voice for your ideal client or audience when everyone can use AI to speak to pain points and products and services?

You find your True Voice and express your authenticity in a new courageous way. Today’s LinkedIn Live is where Erin shares her thoughts on the Post-Personal Brand Era and what it means for executives, leaders and narrative communications.

Transcript Below

 Hello, LinkedIn. Hello, podcast universe Erin Trafford here with you after a wonderful long summer break, and I loved hearing from you. Email, text message, at the coffee shop, LinkedIn DMs, “Hey, when are you gonna start going live again? Hey, when are you gonna go live again?” Well, here I am, live and in person.

The date is Tuesday, September 15th of 2026, and I believe I have been off the lives for at least a month We spent some nice time with my family, did some projects around the house, worked on some business stuff, got some planning done. And before I jump into today’s topic, because it is a juicy one, it is a very juicy one, um, I want to seed something with you that is germinating.

I use that term intentionally. Um, there is going to be a few new ways to work with me coming up in the next month or two, uh, actually leading right through into 2027. So I’ve got some fun things that I am cooking up based on some of the work that I have done and some of the observing I have done over the summer.

And listen, I know a lot of us in, you know, who, who run our own businesses and who do our own thing take the summer to slow down, and I, I advocate for that completely. I certainly did that. But I often find that when I slow down, I’m able to make stronger observations about my industry and about my business and all those things, and it feels a little different than that whole December, January, new year, new me kinda start.

It feels a little more organic in terms of how I come to certain conclusions and certain things that I then wanna share. And then September, I find, hits, and it’s like, okay, all hands on deck. So here we are. Welcome to The Narrative Advantage. We are live here on LinkedIn, and I have just checked. In fact, I am actually live.

It’s working. Uh, so if you can see me, send me a wave, send me a comment. I will be monitoring that throughout. Um, and I wanna talk about these observations that I made, ’cause I got really, really quiet. And when I say quiet, I don’t mean inactive. I became more observant over the month of August. There was a lot of stuff going on in the world.

We know this. I’m not gonna litigate that here, ‘kay? We know what’s happening in the world, what we think about it, what we feel about it. Uh, there was a lot of things happening with AI. There was a lot of things happening with the economy. It was just like this onslaught. And so when things like that happen, the old version of me would’ve jumped into action, and I would have just started creating more.

I would’ve created way more content. In the newsroom, that’s certainly what you do. News hit- you know, news breaks, more, more, more, more, more, all the time, all the time, all the time. The new version of me, and I can say this now because I am quite proud of this transition that I have made, gets quiet and observant first.

And why do I do that? I ask myself not, “What do people need to hear from me right now?” But rather the f- the question that comes before that one that we don’t often acknowledge is, “What do I actually think about this right now?” Where do I fit in all of this right now? So I took the month of August, you know, we went to the cottage, we did a big road trip, and I did beach days with the kids and a whole bunch of stuff.

And in the back of my mind, I’m watching all these things happen in the personal branding space, in the thought leadership space, in the economic space, in the public advisory space, in, um, you know, public affairs, in all of these, in media. I mean, the last time I did a live it was because the media landscape had a complete earthquake, right?

So much changed, and I thought, “Hold on.” Let’s get still and see what we think. Another little kind of fun tidbit about getting still is that tomorrow, September 16th, will be my 108th day of daily yoga, and I have been doing yin-style yoga. I’m not gonna go into the ethos of that too much, but I will say, for those of you who have done it, you know yin yoga is about finding a position for your body and staying still for a very long time in what is often a very uncomfortable position.

And the reason you do that is to still the mind. So… And 108, if you are a yogi like I am, you know that that is a very yogic number. So tomorrow I will have hit that benchmark, and it’s very exciting. So all of this to say is I got really still, and now I have something to bring to you, and I have five, five observations.

Five observations that are informing how I wanna show up going forward for you, and things I want you to start thinking about for you, and that are now informing how I want to do work and do my best work going forward. Because I think all of this shifting that has happened in the world, in the environment, in those planes of reality that we as individuals feel we cannot control, has actually shifted certain parts of how we wanna do business and show up as leaders.

So I’m calling today’s episode… I don’t actually know what I titled today’s episode, but here’s a little banner I drew up, Welcome to the Post-Personal Brand Era. It’s meant to be a little hooky. Okay? It’s meant to be like, “What does that even mean?” Well, I’ll tell you what it means. I’ve got five things I wanna talk to you about.

Observations. So the first observation comes from the world of content. And let’s face it, I have been in the world of content for my whole life. Okay? Newsrooms, I built my website, I worked with brands, I sold that website, I grew it to 100,000 page views a month. I did things I never thought I would ever do.

I was cranking out content. I hired people to write content. I learned how to code WordPress. I have lived in the world of content. I had one of the very first Pinterest accounts ever. Like, I was in Pinterest beta. Little-known fact. I don’t log on to Pinterest anymore. It makes my brain hurt. But at the time, I did.

Content, content, content. And now when I work with leaders, the first thing majority of them say, I’d say about 90% of them say is, “I don’t know what content to create.” And like hands up if that’s you. You’re like, “I don’t know what to create. I d- I don’t know what is content. What is content for me? I have a corporate job, I don’t know what that means.

I am trying to start my own business. I’m scared. I don’t know what content to put out. I don’t know. There’s too many facets of myself to pull into one tiny little package and put it out in the world as content.” Okay, so that’s just in a nutshell what most folks have been saying to me for the past decade.

It’s not a new problem. Okay? But here is the shift that I’m seeing. AI has made solving that problem, and I’m doing rabbit ears right now, solving that problem a lot easier for everyone. Okay? I’m looking at my notes. I have notes today, folks. The common advice for the last, whatever, I’m gonna use decade, whatever, forever thus, has been, “Cool, you don’t know what to post.

Let’s figure out who you want to attract with your content.” And I’m, I will come out and be the first to say this was the advice that I gave my clients for the longest time. For the longest time it was, “Well, you know, do you want to sell X, Y, Z? Who wants to buy it, and what do they need to hear?” And it’s not bad advice, and it’s not wrong, and at some point we do have to talk about the thing that we do and what we sell.

But, and also because of AI, it’s really easy to ask that question and get an answer. “Okay, I want to attract this kind of a client. This is their problem. What should I be posting about in order to attract them?” You can get to that answer. So because that is now occurring, we’ve leveled the playing field.

That kind of content used to stand out. If you got really, really, really good at naming your problem and what you were solving, and speaking to that direct audience member, if you got really good at that, you had really good content, you tended to have really good results. And I am living, walking, breathing proof of that, and so are all of my clients that I’ve ever worked with on the coaching side, on the writing side, all those things.

It worked, but now everybody can do it to a certain extent. So what has happened? It’s blunted the edge of that approach. Your personal brand can no longer be just about articulating how well you solve a problem. That’s theme number one. I’m gonna come back around and I’m gonna tell you exactly where we are next, but I’m gonna actually lay this out for you.

So number two, this is an observation I’m now making, too. So my first one is simple problem-solving based content doesn’t have an edge anymore. It doesn’t. It doesn’t cut through. I mean, just scroll through any social media thing, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, I don’t care. My Facebook is full of stuff about running ’cause I’m starting to train again.

All of it’s the same. It’s solving the same problems. I can’t tell one from the other. It’s the same with everything else, right? Okay, number two- The next thing folks have been asking me for, and this is a new, a relatively new phenomenon for me, it’s, it’s been in the last 18 months or so, is not only do I not know what content to create, but I don’t even know how to write.

Writing is a skill. It’s a practice. You get better by doing, and so many people are so busy that they may have the greatest thoughts in the world, but no time, skill, or attention to put into writing. And so in the background, I quietly launched a service where not only will I coach and advise for you, but I can do your writing.

And so there are people in this market who I’m writing for who I’m pretty sure some of you know. You don’t know that it’s me writing for them. You have no idea that’s me, but it’s me But here’s the, here’s the difference. Just being able to write, again, kind of hearkens back to my first point, is no longer enough.

It’s not enough. You actually have to be able to come out and say something now that could potentially cost you something in order to stand out You’re no longer just appeasing the comfort of your audience or your client. Right now, the, the new personal brand, and the reason I’m saying we’re in a post-personal brand era, is that you actually have to stand for something and be brave enough to say it out loud.

You have to be willing to, or write it down publicly. You have to be willing to accept the potential cost of losing those who are not right for you, and lose them viscerally, and lose them quickly, and lose them violently. Because that is the one place AI will not take you. That is the one place that just good copywriting will never get you.

That is why I started this episode by saying, this is no longer about asking what does my reader, my audience, my… What do my people need to see from me today? You need to be asking the better first question, which is, what do I think and believe about this? That is the differentiator that everyone is looking for now.

That for the longest time, your personal brand was about a performance. It was, here is the brand I want you to see so that when I’m not in the room, you can represent me in a positive light and money will flow back to me. And again, I will reinforce, that is not flawed logic. All I’m saying is that in the last little while, getting really still and quiet, and analyzing what’s happening with my clients, analyzing what’s been happening with my own business, looking at what’s been happening in the conversations about media, about what we demand and what we need, we have done a bit of a reversal.

The people we are attracted to are the people who are willing to actually have an opinion that lacks performance. How did I come to this conclusion or thesis? It’s not a conclusion, because everything is evolving, right? We’re always changing. I might change my mind tomorrow . I might change my mind tomorrow.

But how did I come to this conclusion? Well, it was a kind of a beautiful happenstance. When 95.7 closed down, I, I did have a bit of an emotional reaction, and I got so many DMs, and I’ll be the first to admit I’m a human, and I got really vulnerable, and I couldn’t actually emotionally handle it. So I ran a lot of miles and I did a lot of yoga to process that.

But the closure of that station brought me into conversation with folks I hadn’t spoken with in years. Brought me into rooms that felt like home to me for a little bit. It brought me to a place in myself where I started to ask, “What, what was Erin then and what is Erin now?” And that’s just me, ever the philosopher.

I’m a Sagittarius, you can’t blame me. Okay? But I went there. I, I let myself indulge that emotion. And here’s how this all fits into this conclusion about the post-personal brand era, is that when I was given the talk show… Now, you have to remember, I grew up around talk show hosts. I grew up around newsroom people.

They are two distinct characters, the newsroom person and the talk show person. And from the outside looking in, you might not think they are, but they very, very, very much are. The news person is not paid to tell us what they think. The newsroom person is paid to express what they see What they see, right?

We are, and, and, you know, we used to say, I might get this tattooed on my body. I will not. A newsroom reporter is a paid observer. We demand of them a certain set of skills, okay? The talk show host, however, much like the editorialist in the newspaper, is paid to tell us what they think. They are the ones out there with their necks exposed every single day because…

And you heard Rick Howe say this, “If you’re not angry, you’re not listening.” Who was the one that was sparking the flint of anger? It was him. Why? Because he held strong opinions. He held really strong opinions about just about everything. Just about everything. And every great talk show host I have ever had the pleasure of learning from, of mentoring under, has been the same way.

Jordie Morgan, love that guy to pieces, he has some very strong opinions. He also has self-awareness, which makes him wonderful, right? Okay, s- so it’s not that having an opinion makes you a jerk. Having an opinion doesn’t make you less than. It actually makes you stand out. And for so long, we have been taught that our personal brand has to be this sanitized performance.

It has to be this beautiful set of pillars. Oh, Lord have mercy, how many times did I talk about content pillars? That is a strategy, and it is a tactic. And it, again, is not wrong, but it is not alone going to make you stand out, especially in AI. I challenge you to go to your AI of choice today and say, “Hey, robot, tell me my opinion about this thing.”

You know what it’s gonna spew out? It’s gonna spew out your market position per your content strategy. It’s not gonna tell you your opinion And so many of the clients I work with… I actually just onboarded a new client yesterday who I’m working with on coaching and comms advisory. Her problem is she has so much experience, incredible experience for, for a woman her age in the corporate sphere, nonprofit spear- sphere.

She has been so clouded by what she thinks other people think of her, what she wants them to think of her, that in all of that, she has actually buried her own ability to express her own opinion Again, I’ll come back to you. Having an opinion does not make you a jerk. We can talk about what that looks like when you’re a woman in a room full of men later on over non-alcoholic wine, ’cause I don’t drink anymore, but you know what I’m saying.

I’m not making this about being adversarial. Back to the writing thing. So you can come to me and say, “Hey, Erin, I want you to write for me.” Cool. I’m gonna make you work for that time though, because me writing for you is some of the highest value work I can do. You better bet your bottom dollar that I will not write content for you that does not have an edge.

I will push you. I will push you to find that edge, ’cause all of us have it. We’ve just lost it. We have lost it to the advice that told us that personal brand needs to be a performance simply about what everybody else wants from us, and it’s not. It cannot be anymore. It’s too easy to go to AI and say, “Hey, AI, what do these people want from me?”

And then walk around the world acting like that. You will wake up one day and have no sense of what got you there. And I don’t know about you, but that’s not the way that I wanna live my life. That’s not the way that I wanna run my business. That’s not the courage that I wanna show up with, especially in a world as tumultuous as this And you might be listening to this and thinking, “Erin, this is absolutely like horse crap.”

Then you’re not for me. This is me expressing my opinion knowing that I could lose something on the other side There is nothing wrong with that. But I, I’m willing to bet that there’s a handful of you watching this right now being like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve never thought of it that way before. I actually don’t know what I think.

I don’t know what I think.” You’re not alone. I think I was there all of August because so much happened to me. I needed to get really still. Hold on a second. What do I think about this?

The way that this actually manifests now, and I see it, is that the strongest leadership decisions, and this has kind of always been the case, but the strongest leadership decisions are now the no, the, “This is not for me, and here’s why.” It’s that last part of the sentence that’s become really important, because it does not align, right?

The problem with building a business around this tidy little package of what we think a personal brand needs to be is that there’s no fire there. There’s no fire, and fire is what sustains us. Fire is what allows us to keep going. Fire is the heat that propels us. You need a little bit of that, and I see it…

You know, I’m, I’m, I’m actually running through a bunch of my clients right now in my head, and I’m thinking, “Hmm, a good some amount of them,” not half, but a good some amount, have left corporate or government in the last couple years. And they all kinda say, “It sapped the life out of me. I was buried in bureaucracy, red tape, need to, gotta, shoulda, woulda, couldas.”

They had no fire. They had no fire. So they come to me and they say, “I need to find that again.” And it’s my job to create a space for them where they feel safe enough to come out and say, “Oh, my fire has been relit. This is where it is They have an opinion. It’s not about content. It’s definitely not about marketing.

It’s about know thyself and be brave enough to be that

That is what the personal brand is going forward. That is what the leadership brand always has been, and somehow we just forgot about it. We wanna own an idea. We wanna own a little package. We wanna own this little fenced-in area and, and have it be this perfect little slice. But that’s not how we are as humans, and that’s actually not what we’re attracted to as humans.

Think about Brene Brown and how brilliant she is, and how highly magnetic she is, and what she talks about. She’s not perfect. She’s blurred around every edge possible

Holding opinion, an opinion is not a bad thing. We have, majority of us, been afraid to and forgotten how to

So don’t post more. I’m gonna wrap this up here. Don’t post more. Get quiet. Stop going to AI and asking it what to do and what to post and for a content strategy, and start getting still and asking yourself, “What do I really think about this? Where am I?” And if you need help with that, you know where to find me ErinTrafford.com.

Better yet, drop me a DM on LinkedIn. Send me an email, [email protected]. This is what I do I do it with love, kindness, sometimes in a hoodie. Does that really matter? No. I don’t need to wear a blazer for you to take me seriously You know what I’m saying? All right, thanks for checking out The Narrative Advantage today live on LinkedIn.

It’ll be on the podcast feed shortly, up on the website shortly I’m back. I’m back, babies. Have a great rest of your week, and hey, maybe I’ll post tomorrow about what I really feel after 108 days straight of yoga. Do a little history lesson. It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty cool. If you want to nerd out about that, I’m available for those conversations as well.

All right, happy Tuesday, folks. Thanks for listening. See you soon