If you are intentionally building an authentic personal brand that reflects your thought leadership as something that’s uniquely you, hiring a ghostwriter or done-for-you copywriter too early is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.
A copywriter or ghostwriter will be able to write in your voice only after you can clearly articulate and train them on your unique brand voice and story. Till you don’t have that level of clarity, you’ll either be disappointed with what they write or compromise with what you get.
This applies even if you hire the best of the copywriters and ghostwriters because no matter their experience, they cannot emulate your brand voice until you have clarity on what your brand voice identity is!
So what’s the solution?
You need to first work with a personal brand writing and thought partner to gain clarity.
A personal brand writing partner, especially the way I do it, is someone who works with you at identity level to help you get clear on your brand story, your leadership arc and most importantly your unique voice.
Working at your identity level is especially necessary if you are a leader who has gone through or cyclically go through a lot of transitions in life. And with every transition, your perception, interests and hence identity seem to shift, you may find it difficult to authentically weave all your evolving identities together without a brand partner who can reflect back to you what your thought leadership brand truly stands for, amidst your transitions.
A lot of leaders either stick to their old content/brand fearing if they dive too much into their evolving interests and identity they might lose credibility or go all in with their new interests and then feel a little too exposed or write nothing at all.
In my opinion, none of them are healthy for your brand if you want to come off as a vulnerable yet authoritative leader.
This is why I’ve created a signature method of building an authentic brand voice.
Month One:
When we start working together, we do 3-4 calls in a month to excavate the stories you’ve been wanting to share with your audience but either find yourself holding back or probably sharing them in a way that doesn’t land well.
During this month, we not only work on your core story pieces that start forming the foundation of your brand story but also get hyper clear on your identity as a personal brand, especially through all your identity transitions and evolution.
You are free to write a few pieces based on the stories we uncover during this time and I reshape and polish them with story arcs and relevant metaphors.
Initially, the more you write your own brand pieces in co-creation with a brand partner (yours truly in this case) the faster clarity you’ll receive. This is a necessary step that cannot and should not be outsourced to other writers because you need to be the best writer of your brand first and only then others can learn to write like you.
Month Two:
In most cases, we continue everything similar to first month but now we also start curating your brand voice document.
Your brand voice document is basically your “How to write like you” repository and guide. It’s made in such a way that anyone reading gets trained on how to write like you. It’s not a regular brand voice document you may have seen other brand consultants use which has a lot of fluff and doesn’t practically inform the reader on how to truly write in your voice.
The kind of brand voice document we create in my container have actual story pieces, research method, core values of your brand, audience psychographics, a step-by-step guide on how to write like you and many other unique aspects that are necessary but often missing from regular brand voice documents.
By this stage, you start gaining immense clarity on how to make your audience feel inspired and connected with your vulnerable stories without seeing them as “overshares” or “too much” but truly distinct authentic yet authoritative brand stories that only you can produce.
Month Three:
By third month, we start creating systems for your content under your content pillars. Your content pillars are your themes that you love to write about and share with your audience. Normally we choose 3-5 such content pillars for a quarter and keep evolving them over time.
These systems for your content may look like choosing your main platform or monetization strategy or collaboration strategy or content production and scripting method. Basically it’s a process that makes content curation for your personal brand authentic and frictionless for you and your future content team. It could involve hiring a copywriter for your brand but not until you have the confidence and clarity to train them in your brand voice.
This is also the phase where I jump into writing some pieces for you (from scratch) using the research and writing method we curated above in month two to test if the brand document by itself is good enough for someone else to write for you. If we find any misalignment in how I write the pieces versus how you’d like them, it’s a cue for us to get even clearer on your brand voice and how you can teach and course correct someone writing for you and match your exact voice.
Few questions I get about working with me as a personal brand writing partner are:
- What happens after Month 3?
Some clients prefer to continue writing by themselves with me as their writing and thought partner, some feel the nudge to write independently without my support or hire me as their writer or other writers. There are multiple ways how this rolls out and it all depends on you. - Do we use AI during our work together?
I personally don’t recommend using AI till you are clear on your brand voice. Because AI is also just like another writer you hire who depends on your clarity and how you train it to write like you. If you are not yet clear about your brand voice, AI won’t help much, in fact AI content will massively do injustice to your brand in that case. However, you’re free to use AI for any kind of research purpose during our work, I’ve noticed on many occasions that’s significantly decreases time and effort required for curating well-researched brand content. - Who is this container best for?
If you are someone wanting to create an emotionally deep and vulnerable personal brand online that reflects your journey like a memoir and positions you as a soulful leader, my work is for you. Vulnerable (the balanced kind) is becoming increasingly rare because of mediocre AI content these days and more and more people are craving humaness in brands. Not the perfect polished kind and not even the oversharing and ranting kind but the raw vulnerable kind which inspires them with authenticity. So if you’re someone who’s craving to create this kind of a personal brand and are ready for the vulnerability and emotional investment this work takes, I promise you there’s nothing going to be more rewarding than this work. - What kind of results can I experience from this work?
The results are truly endless and nuanced but the biggest of all is the internal transformation you’ll experience while doing this. There’s a reason why many shy away from building a truly authentic personal brand but it’s as much an inward journey as an outward one. Outwardly yes you’ll attract more aligned collaborations, joint ventures, better talents for hire, sponsorships, mentees etc. but inwardly you’ll experience being seen and respected for who you truly are by your people. You’ll reach a stage where you won’t feel the need to hide any parts of you, you’ll share your eccentric parts and be received in love by your audience. That’s the kind of freedom this work can provide you — only if you’re ready!
A little about my experience
Personally, I’ve been writing since I was 6 years old. It was my literal dream to make a career out of my writing.
Professionally, I’ve been writing copy and brand story for highly successful start-ups and entrepreneurs for the last 7 years and have worked with close to 100 clients so far. My favorite kind of writing are long-form articles and newsletters. I’ve honed the skill of building large newsletters through personal brand stories and paid campaigns.
Added to that, I’m a certified trauma-informed life coach which helps me blend identity coaching and NLP skills into my work as a brand writing and thought partner.
It’s my mission to help more and more personal brands build their soul-aligned audiences through memoir-style brand building and storytelling. Your humanness is a gift the world if waiting to receive.
If you feel called to work with me, fill out this form and I’ll get in touch with you to set up a call.
