2ND EDITION | ISSUE #164

If you are a millennial gal who has yet to marry, let me just go ahead and warn you that your mother is going to stress 5x more about what she is wearing to your wedding than you are.

At least that has been my experience so far. So it was no real surprise when she sent me a dress on a Black Friday sale over the weekend and asked me what I thought of it.

What was a little surprising however—was that I had to tell my mom that the dress… and the model for that matter were AI.

And therefore it was an immediate no for me.

In fact—I would be hard pressed to buy a dress online these days that I couldn't see pictures of on real people in the reviews. Because it's getting harder and harder to spot what's real.

Just this weekend AI updates kicked it up a notch and are getting so realistic, that it just may be the end of the influencer era.

In the last 3 years brand aesthetics have gone through a major shift.

We went from the luxury fonts, minimalism, clean girl aesthetic "you are not your business" era. To the faceless content account takeover. To the rise of AI imagery that has soooo quickly become hyper realistic.

All of this however—has been good scratch that GREAT for the personal brand.

Subconsciously—your audience has become less trusting of the online world because of AI, because of faceless accounts.

And you could choose to look at that as a negative because earning their trust and their sale has therefore become "harder".

Or you could look at it as a positive.

Because now more than ever, your peeling face and dark circles (aka me on my stories today), the fingerprints on your MacBook screen, the fact that you are a real person who doesn't always have (or still can't quite master) the perfect blowout—those things aren't just relatable. They subconsciously signal to your audience: hey, this is an actual person like me and if they can help me solve my problem, I can trust them enough to pay them for their services. I feel like I know this person—even though I've never met them in person.

Your brand feeling human is more important than ever. So how do you design your brand to feel more human? Let’s dive in ↓

First I want to dispel some common misconceptions about what it means to have a personal brand.

1. You can have a personal brand without identifying as an influencer (instead, think of it as a founder-facing brand)
2. You can have a personal brand without having to have your name in your brand name
3. Having a personal brand does not mean you have to create content about every moment of your day and share everything
4. Your personal brand is not your brand archetype (but let me know if I should write a wholeeee other newsletter on how to use your brand archetype strategically)
5. You can still have a "theme" to your brand and show up + connect with other humans as a personal brand (my client Ash is the perfect example of this—her brand has a "cosmic cowgirl" theme but she is still very much so the brand)

Sooooo I couldn't pick just one brand to feature in this week's brand highlight section. And since I make the rules—I decided I don't HAVE to - keep reading if you love lots of real-life brand examples.

Developing your brand into a personal brand is about more than the quirky traits and personal details people associate and connect you with (for example, you probably know I drink too much coffee, have a black dog attached to my side 24/7, like to camp and garden).

It's about all of the touch points of your brand reflecting that personality, creating a digital experience that sets the tone for what it's like to interact with and work with you 1:1.

I spent a good chunk of last year nervous about calling myself a "personal brand designer" because I didn't want to back myself into a corner, worried that clients like The Painted Horse Winery or New York Craft Malt would no longer "fit" into my ideal client.

Still, Painted Horse is a founder-facing brand in the sense that Pamela owns being the first female-founded winery in Georgia and not only her face and personal brand, but even her son Jeffrey and daughter Juliette's personal brands are all a part of and reflected in the Painted Horse Winery brand.

​New York Craft Malt is another great example, because Ted—the founder—is very much so the face of the company, the content, and the story behind the brand.

Positioning yourself as a personal brand doesn't mean you have to choose between being professional and earning people's trust with your personality—it means you get to create a reflection of the person people are going to be paying to work with and buy from.

Now let's talk about how to do it. ↓

Your brand should sound like you, especially in the age of AI. And I'm saying that as someone who pays for Claude pro and has many a bot trained to help me with many a things in my business. Your brand voice is no longer a one-day exercise when you first put your business together or create internal documentation and strategy.

Your brand's voice is the #1 thing that is going to make it clear to the reader (subconsciously, or even sometimes consciously) that you are someone they can trust. Even if you still use AI to help write your copy.

My favorite gal to teach you about it is Hanna at Boundless Copy. This reel she posted last week got an immediate SAVE from me when she hit the personal brand positioning nail right on the head and explained brand voice is the perfect fusion of:

(1) who you already are and

(2) who your dream people need you to be…

Your brand voice needs to be as Hanna would say "sticky," and her content and offers are all tailored to help you write more like how you talk in real life.

Something an AI chatbot cannot do.

If you want your brand identity to feel original, you have to find original sources of inspiration. I break this down in detail in the brand color kit where I teach you how to create a mood board to design your brand’s color scheme—but that mood board is the basis for not just your colors, but your brand vibe as a whole.

I recently became aware of a new AI powered color generator website that tells you what isn’t working about your color scheme and then gives you recommendations for new colors to swap.

And since me, a human, does that for you in the brand color kit—my interest was clearly piqued.

“Oh shitttt—is AI taking my brand color kit?

Wait…..

No.”

Because there is still no emotional connection.

It’s not that you can’t create a balanced and accessible color scheme in that generator. You totally can. But if that color scheme doesn’t represent you, the person, your aesthetic, and the world around you—they are just colors. Not a part of your personal brand.

Here’s what I mean.

My friends and family associate my brand colors with me.

Even if they never look at anything in my business.

Because they are the colors I wear. Quite literally pulled from the colors of the mountains and the trees in my travel photos and the leaves in my garden. (They are, however, NOT the colors of my living room right now ngl it stresses me out a little) I digress.

The truth is, you know when you look at a brand and think, ehh. I’ve seen that before. And my goal is that your brand is not THAT brand.

Here’s how.

​01. Create a never-ending mood board for your brand. Here’s mine for inspo. I literally pin a little of everything in there. I just KNOW when I see something that is the vibe and then I add it in. It’s basically the brand and life I’m manifesting all rolled into one. Like this is the world I’m trying to create on paper (aka screens) and in real life.

02. Choose a theme for your brand, and your personal aesthetic being aligned with that theme—and/or the inspiration behind that theme—is what makes a brand stand out from all the trends, colors, and vibes.

For example: My theme and the inspiration behind my brand is very much so “slow living” and directly tied to my “slow branding” philosophy.

Okay—so now you have a brand that looks like you, and sounds like you—but how do you turn around and actually show up as the founder of said brand?

That's where another C word comes in. Nope not clarity this time. But instead, Content.

This is the hard part if I'm being 100% honest. (And I think you'll agree.)

Marketing is hands down the hardest part of my job. Because it changes all the freaking time.

It's a constant challenge. Which is why so many of us have such a love-hate relationship with it.

When it comes to your brand—the goal is to use your brand colors, fonts, voice, tone, messaging, photos, on every platform that you use to market and create/deliver content for your brand.

Quick myth busting moment: Your voice should sound the same on every platform, you don’t need to create different tones for different platforms. And AI will probably tell you that you do.

In fact, if one of your platforms is off—it shows.

This thread is the perfect example ↓

So, that bears the question: How do we show up as ourselves in the same ways on all these platforms? But like, strategically? Because this is a business after all?

My best advice: Embrace your personality. Even when it's cringe. My go-to gal for this one is Nicole at Groovy Social. This post about how to create a content cache is the perfect example of how to create boundaries around how you show up for your personal brand.

The truth is, building a personal brand that actually feels like you isn't a one-day project. It's the kind of thing you refine over time—adjusting your voice as you get more confident, updating your mood board when your aesthetic shifts, testing what content formats actually work for your specific audience instead of what some guru said you "should" be doing.

But the more you show up as yourself—messy blowouts, fingerprints on your laptop screen, and all—the easier it gets. Because you're not performing, you're just… existing, and letting people decide if they vibe with that or not.

Which is exactly what personal branding is supposed to be.