Hey friends,

Last week, we learned about successful supercommunication - read that here.​

This week — I'm going to share some of my journey building my personal brand as a founder and CEO — what I've been learning, and some tips and tricks too.

How it started.

Well, obviously it started at 0.

In 2017, I started a podcast. Afraid of the camera, and like most people, hating the sound of my own voice — I decided a good foray into publicity was a podcast (before everyone was doing it).

Building an audio audience has many perks but actually, it's not really doing much to build your personal brand publicly.

With no links to click — a social media personal brand, as I learned, needs its own dedicated effort if you're going to make it work — and it's MUCH more valuable than an audio one (lesson learned).

The problem was — I was fucking busy with my startup and didn't prioritise it at all.

From Inner Voice To Public Voice

It may comfort you to know that as recently as 18 months ago, I cringed posting on social. It's been a big personal growth journey, battling my crippling negative self-talk that kept me in the comfort of relative obscurity.

Just like any habit — this one took time to build towards.

My journey has basically been this:

🎙️ 2017 — started a podcast. With this — I honed a skill (interviewing) and got comfortable eventually with the sound of my own voice (some would say too comfortable)

📷 2018 — did a TEDx Talk — which was an amazing opportunity to learn how to write a narrative and perform it on stage.

📧 2019 — started a newsletter for Heights. With this — I started honing my written skills, finding my tone of voice, getting comfortable building another audience.

👀 2020 — doing some camera work for crowdfunding videos for my company Heights, and I started to do video podcasts as a guest. When Steven Bartlett asked me to come on Diary of a CEO — I was pretty reluctant, but he convinced me. I then freaked out a bit (insecure on how I would look on camera) — went to the barber, ended up getting a terrible haircut, and decided to dress like a homeless person to cover it all up instead. Goals.

2021: Recluse. Kind of went back into my shell a bit and carried on with podcasting but did nothing on social.

2022: Twitter era begins. 1k followers (accumulated over 10 years) to 10k.

Instagram era: went from 0 - 33k.

2023: Harder on Twitter (10k - 60k)

LinkedIn era begins: (5k accumulated over 10 years or so to 50K).

End of Instagram era: Sadly my Instagram got hacked, so my account was shadow-banned and totally f*cked, so I stopped trying.

2024: LinkedIn Focus: (now 80K followers).

Newsletter Era begins (that you're reading

Twitter: (now 91k) and…

I'm starting again from 0 on Instagram.

From Insecurity To Consistency

So my journey has been: finding my voice (audio), crafting a narrative (TEDx), finding my tone of voice (writing newsletter), distilling valuable info for others (being a guest), to being a regular 'thought leader' — writing daily on social.

What looks today like someone oozing with confidence on social media — has been a 7-year journey of battling my insecurities and finding a way to build enough credibility (in my head as much as anyone's) to feel like I have the authority to publicly share anything of value.

Why am I telling you all this?

Everyone looks SO bloody confident. I'm sure I do to you. But that's taken 7 years. Be patient with yourself.

Building a personal brand has been the most valuable choice I've made over time as a business leader — and if I could have shut my little bitch brain monologue up sooner and gotten over all my self-doubt issues — I would have done it sooner.

I want you to start.

Why Start Building Your Personal Brand, As A Leader:

1. To write interesting content, you need to read interesting content. Becoming a regular writer is to become a voracious reader — which creates a brilliant learning habit loop.
2. When you read you learn it once, when you share you learn it twice. By posting — you are cementing the wisdom you pick up in your brain — making yourself wiser in the process.
3. Your job as a CEO/leader is to hire well. Great people want to work for visible bosses. I've found the more I write, the more exceptional people gravitate towards me to work with me.
4. It creates business opportunities all the time. There's something inherently strange about having a big social presence — people simply want to work with you. Sales are easier. Hiring is easier. Raising money is easier. As my friend Chris Donnelly puts it — “It's life on easy mode”.
5. In a world of AI everything — skills are becoming less valuable. Your personal brand is your reputation — what is visibly, authentically human might become the most valuable thing you have to offer over the next 5 years.

Success is a habit — and the reality is — to be interesting on social, is a skill.

Once you master the habit and the skill, you increase your surface area of opportunities.

You need to learn what works on each platform, and why certain things work better than others.

The only real way to learn this is to practice — and given building audiences takes years, don't do what I did — just start now.

That's it for this week.

Was this interesting to you? Tell me the truth!

I am in the final stages of working out what content is best for my audience to take forward.

Do you want me to share some of my best tactics on the various platforms next week?

If yes — hit reply and let me know, and I'll go full transparent on how to grow on LinkedIn & Twitter to start with.

If not — I'll know it's not that interesting to most of you so we can skip it, and I'll write about something else!

SOS (Science of Success) Curated:

Tweet of the Week: How to be successful. 7 boring inputs for extraordinary outputs.​​

LinkedIn of the week: My most viral post yet — 45K likes and counting​ - 6 steps you need to overcome your fear of failure​

Video of the week: The most expensive friend you'll ever have. How to find a Co - Founder with Alice Bentinck of Entrepreneur First — who's helped start companies valued at over $10 Billion so she knows.

Here's to our success,

Dan
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​Want to take your success (even more) seriously? 👇​
🧠 Fuel your brain and feed your gut, try Heights here (use code 'SOSDMS' for 15% off your first month of any subscription

🎧 Check out my podcast Secret Leaders here​

👍 Book a coaching or mentoring call with me, for 30-minutes or 45-minutes. (limited spots)
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