“Identity before tactics” - what my boss taught me about building a personal brand.

My boss asked a question the other day that’s been stuck in my head ever since: Why do some people seem so magnetic online?

You know the type. They radiate sense of self. They’re not just “good at posting.” They’re the kind of people you actually want to follow. Their content feels natural, almost inevitable, and like it could only come from them.

They don’t bend themselves around trends or over-optimise their strategy. Instead, their sense of self is so assured that it becomes the foundation of their personal brand.

Stanley calls this philosophy "identity before tactics".

Because here’s the cold hard truth:  “I post every day at 9 a.m. on LinkedIn” isn’t what makes someone compelling. Your personal brand isn’t a calendar or a growth hack. It’s the identity narrative you’re actively crafting every time you show up online.

But, how do you actually even do that? Well, here’s the piece of advice that really hit me: “People like this do things like that.”

What Stanley meant was: you choose the part of your identity you want to heighten and put forward. If you want to attract curious, creative people, you show up as the version of yourself who’s always experimenting and sharing ideas. If you want to attract ambitious, driven people, you lean into the side of yourself that takes bold swings.

Your personal brand is essentially a choice: which version of yourself do you want to amplify in order to connect with the right people?

And his final piece of advice? No matter how thoughtful, polished, or authentic you are, people are going to judge you.

They’ll roll their eyes, misunderstand, and they will DEFINITELY project their own sh*t onto you. The balm for this? You have to be ready to not give a single f*ck. Because your personal brand isn’t about pleasing everyone. If you build it around being universally liked, you’ll water it down until it’s meaningless.

It’s the same as irl, I guess. If you spend your life performing in relation to others, trying to make yourself palatable, in the end, you taste bland. Forgettable.

Magnetism comes from certainty, certainty comes from clarity, and clarity means some people will be pulled closer while others will back away. But those people weren’t right for you in the damn first place.

Personal brand is about owning your identity, sharing it consistently, and attracting the people who get it.

The people who seem magnetic in real life are the ones who know who they are, live it unapologetically, and don’t contort themselves to please everyone else.

Online is no different. Identity before tactics. Narrative before hacks. And above all, the ability to truly not give a f*ck. Because that, more than any content strategy, is what makes someone impossible to ignore.

-Sophie Randell, Writer