The Problem With Being Your Own Biggest Advertisement

The Problem With Being Your Own Biggest Advertisement

Early in my career, I thought building a strong personal brand was mostly about showing the world how good you were.Show your best work. Your successes. Your achievements. Make people notice you. Make them want to work with you.

A little bit of look at me, buy me, buy me.

And to be fair, I understood where that thinking came from.During my time at California Institute of the Arts, I experienced a different approach to design and creativity. The American way, as I saw it. Ambition, entrepreneurship, making things happen and, yes, making money with it.

Coming from the Netherlands, where my design education had placed much more emphasis on concepts and aesthetics, that was an interesting contrast. It taught me something important: being creative and being commercially successful don't have to be opposing forces.

But somewhere along the way, my thinking about personal branding started to change.I began to realise that the most compelling stories weren't necessarily the most polished ones.

People don't just connect with achievements. They connect with people. With someone's ambitions, certainly. But also with their doubts, their imperfections, the experiences that shaped them and the things they haven't quite figured out yet. Sometimes we recognise ourselves in someone else's story. Sometimes we see the person we hope to become.

And that connection goes much deeper than simply being impressed.

It's something I keep encountering in my personal branding masterclasses and coaching sessions. People often arrive with a professional version of themselves. A carefully constructed story about what they do, what they've achieved and why they're good at it. And that's understandable. We've been taught to present ourselves that way.

But I'm often much more interested in what sits underneath that story.

Who are you when you're not presenting your achievements? What do you actually believe in? Which experiences have shaped the way you think? What makes you different, beyond your skills and job title?

And perhaps most importantly, what are you comfortable showing that isn't perfect? There's a slippery slope here. One I'm very aware of, especially when building my own personal brand. Of course I want to show what I'm good at. I want people to understand my experience, recognise my qualities and, ultimately, want to work with me. That's part of the deal.

But there's a difference between presenting your best work and presenting yourself as someone who has never struggled, failed or changed their mind.

A beautifully designed story can still be an honest one.

And being vulnerable doesn't automatically make you authentic either. The moment vulnerability becomes another carefully calculated selling point, we've simply found a more sophisticated way of saying: look at me. I think the challenge is to find a balance. To be ambitious without pretending to be flawless. To communicate your value without reducing yourself to a collection of achievements.

Because if we're talking about lasting impact, I believe people need something more than a polished image to connect with. They need to recognise a human being.

I don't believe every personal brand needs to become a public diary. Vulnerability isn't something you should manufacture, and authenticity isn't another marketing trick. But I do believe there's room for a more honest, layered understanding of what makes someone interesting.

A strong personal brand doesn't have to pretend that everything has always gone according to plan.

In fact, I think the opposite can be true.

Perhaps a sustainable personal brand isn't built by convincing people you're extraordinary. Perhaps it's built by giving them something real to recognise and relate to.