← The Futur with Chris Do
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Everything that you think you know about personal branding is wrong. And you will not grow until you learn this one core truth. And I'm going to break it down in detail, so let's not waste any more time. Let's just get right into it. So what is the authenticity gap and why is it hindering your personal brand? The authenticity gap is this invisible distance between who you really are and the person that you show up to the world to be accepted. You might not be faking anything, but you're definitely performing to a degree. You're adjusting how you speak, how you dress, how you express yourself, how you show up in the world to fit in to what people already think and want from you. And over time, this creates a personal brand or impression of you that looks right on the outside, but feels really wrong on the inside. And here's the danger of this. If you pretend long enough to be someone else, you forget who the real you is. And this all comes from a deep rooted fear of not being loved, not being accepted. And this is the root cause of why we show up not as ourselves. So here are five common signs that you might be in this authenticity gap. Number one, you feel drained after making content. You're like dreading it. And after you're done, you're just like exhausted, depleted of energy. Number two, you procrastinate posting because it doesn't feel like you, because it takes a lot of effort to pretend to be someone else. Number three, you're second guessing. Your tone, your message, your vibe, everything. It's just like, are people gonna like this? Are they gonna ignore this? Are people gonna like me? Are they, are they going to think I'm a fraud? Number four, you attract clients, followers that feel like the wrong fit. And although at the beginning it might be nice to get followers and the attention and the reach, after a while you're like, this ain't my tribe. Number five, your growth is inconsistent. Even though you're doing all the right things, you're following all the trends, you're doing as prescribed, but it's just up and down the peaks and the valleys. Now, this authenticity gap might feel small, but let's see how it all snowballs and gets bigger and bigger. The longer you operate from a misaligned place telling an untruth, the more your brain starts to suffer quietly. And I'm not suggesting that you're intentionally creating an untruth or lying. It's just these are survival mechanisms. This need to desire to fit in, to be loved and to be accepted is so Overwhelming. That we might even be doing this subconsciously. So what happens when you stay inauthentic, when you're not being yourself in your content? It starts to wear on you is exhausting. You're going to burn out faster. You're going to feel less motivated to get up and do things. And when the results start to wane, and they inevitably will, you're gonna feel really disconnected from your message, from your brand, from how you've been showing up. And unfortunately, you're going to lose the joy of creating. It's going to rob you of that excitement that you initially had because it feels like you're pretending to be someone that you're not instead of just showing up as yourself. I'm gonna try to make this as clear as possible. If you're stuck in this inauthenticity gap, you're going to suffer mightily. I'm gonna lay out some of them for you right now. Number one, you're going to be constantly doubting who you are and how you show up. You're just feeding the imposter monster that you're a fraud. And you can just keep showing up waiting to be discovered. And this is going to come at your own self confidence, your self worth. And anytime somebody asks you a question that pushes a little bit beyond the surface, you're going to fall apart like a house of cards. I've seen it happen many, many times when people get that whole pause face when they're asked a question, this is what's happening. Their brain is breaking. They don't know how to respond. Do they continue to lie? Or do they finally come clean? And most often they choose to continue the lie. You know that expression, the truth will set you free. I think there's deep wisdom in that statement. If you show up as yourself and stop pretending, you won't have to work overtime to think about the story that you've created for yourself. I'm going to give you a real life example right now. One of the guys who used to work for me, young man, he was still living at home. And when he would go on a date, the question that he dreaded the most was, where do you live? Should we go back to your place? The goal of most young people dating is to finalize that deal. And I remember him telling me the story, and she's like, where do you want me to drop you off? He's like, oh, yeah, I live here. Just drop me off here. So she takes him back and she's like, what do you live with? Because It's a really nice neighborhood, right? It's like a really nice suburb. And he goes, oh, my roommates. And she was looking at him like, this is really weird because your roommates have a lot of money and you're living in, like, a family place. She drops him off, and I think he kisses her and he kind of runs his door and kind of disappears, knowing that his mom and dad are behind that door. So throughout dinner, he has to maintain this story, and he's dreading having deeper conversations about this. One small lie leads to another lie, and it just starts to snowball. So the whole time he's not present, he's not attentive and attuned to what's going on because he's afraid of being discovered. And as I was talking to him, I said, hey, why don't you just tell her the truth? Goes, my God, she's going to think I'm some kind of incel. Total loser and not going to get anywhere with this. I said, well, how did your lie work out? It didn't work out, did it? Here's how I would have answered it. He goes, tell me, Mr. Smarty Pants. So if she asked me, where do you live? So you know what? I still live at home because right now I'm still trying to figure out my life. And I'm using every dollar I make to invest in. In my career as a cinematographer and as an editor. Now, I say that because I know this. If she ain't into you, then she ain't into you. And I want to date somebody who can look past that and say, like, I might not have what you may want right now, but I got that one thing that I know is going to work. It's called ambition, drive. And I have a lot of self discipline. And if she's not impressed by that, she's not worth your time. So how does this relate to you showing up online in your personal brand? It's not very different. You pretend to be someone, but eventually these people will meet you at a talk, at a workshop, at a meetup, or bump into you in the street. And you don't have your makeup on, you don't have your game voice on, and they're going to discover like, God, this person is nothing like the way they pretend to be. Let me tell you this. I was at a marketing mastermind with some of the most successful marketers in the world, and there's this woman, she raised her hand and says, you know what I like about Chris? And I'm like, oh, Shoot. My name is being called. And her name is Molly. And Molly says, I met Chris a while back while we're both speaking or attending Atomicon. And she goes, you know what's refreshing about him? He's exactly who he is online. And everybody was like, wow, that's so cool. And then I said, you know what, Molly, that's very kind of you to say, but I find it sad that you have to say things like this because I wonder why is this the exception? Why are we applauding people for being who they're supposed to be? But this, sadly has become the exception, not the norm. That people are so caught up in trying to be somebody that they're not, that they will eventually be found out for who they really are. You know that person that pretends to be nice to talk about kindness or empathy or generosity or any one of these traits, and then when you see how they act, they're not consistent with that. That is a bigger fall from grace than if you just told people, I'm a transactional person, I got five minutes to share with you, and that's the extent of what I can do. They're going to respect and appreciate that way more. It is better to be hated for the person that you are than to be loved for the person that you're not. Play that back again. So I find this a strange phenomenon that people, when they're posting things and it's a little bit off centered, they're like, oh, that's not normal. You shouldn't be doing that. And I kind of think about this word normal a lot. Like, what does normal mean? Normal means average. It's in the middle. It's the statistical average of things. And I don't know who's going around telling each other that I want to be average. I find that to be super insulting. If you were to look at my content, you say, chris, I love your content because it's average, I would be horribly offended. But that's kind of what we're saying. I want to be normal. This is normal. So what we're doing is we're playing to the middle. We're working really hard to hide in plain sight, to blend in. That's what we're doing with all of our content. So here's how we need to solve this. Here's how we get out of the being normal or being average. You have to focus on what makes you different. Branding is intentional differentiation. So we have to really ask ourselves these questions. What makes you different? What can you celebrate that is Truly, authentically you. Because when you look at all of who you are, it's a very rare combination that very few people are going to be able to claim. This is your superpower when it comes to your personal brand. This is how you close the inauthenticity gap, by doing the most simple and natural thing. You see the solution at least twice a day. Once in the morning when you're brushing your teeth, once a night when you're washing your face. It's you to be you. The most powerful thing that you can do to be authentically yourself is to be more you. And your job is to be the you as you you can be. Because the more you you are, the more you are. Now you might be thinking to yourself, great, Chris, Rah, rah, be me. The me is me I can be. What am I going to do with that? Give me something concrete to hang my hat on. Here we go. I want you to create four columns. On each column, just write this down. And then try to generate as many ideas without judgment. This is the critical part. Krishnamurti says this too, by the way, that the highest form of intelligence is observation without judgment. So let's be really smart when we do this exercise together. So here are the four columns. What are you good at? What are you trained to do? What are you skilled at? Usually this is what you learned in school, how you've apprenticed, where you put your 10,000 hours in. Number two, what are the things that you love? What do you have a deep passion for or even a feigning interest? What are your hobbies? What kind of isocratic things do you explore when no one's watching? And if you had all the money in the world, what would you be doing in your free time? We need to explore that. Number three is what does the world value? What is valuable right now? What is something you're going to be paid for that is in demand at this moment? And the fourth is probably the hardest thing is what does the world need beyond money? What does it need? Does it need a solution to a much bigger problem? And what you want to do is write all these things down. The first two are really about you. The second two are about what the world wants. So column one and two is looking inward. Column three and four is looking outward. And what you want to do is, after you're done, go through your list in each column and underline anything that gives you a little joy, that sparks a little excitement in you. And then this is the hardest part. Find the intersection of all those Words and design. The perfect version of yourself, the one that plays to as many of your unique traits as possible. Let me give you an example. I'm working with a friend right now. Her name is Uma, and we made this list together. So she's like, what are you really good at? And that's the easiest part because we know what that is because we went to school for it. It's usually what we get paid to do. But the interesting part was as a child, she learned how to play the piano. She loves music. And I said, are you good? She goes, yes. And I asked her, what makes you really good? She goes, I know how to draw out emotions by playing the keys. Some people play the song, I play the emotions. Like, wow, what could you do that integrates the things that you're really good at? Which is helping women in the corporate space transition from business to business in a professional context, or from business to personal. She's very good at that. And she's also very good at helping women feel seen and to normalize things that are typically taboo or demonized. She makes it safe for women to show up as themselves, but she's missing this other component of music. So like I told her, if I could sing, I would sing on stage. If I could dance, I would dance my butt off on stage while I'm giving my presentation. But what I have to do is lean in on the gifts that I have, not the gifts that I want. And that's a big difference there. Put in as much of you into this stuff as possible, and that's how you show up truly authentically as yourself. This next part is going to hurt some feelings, especially if you feel called out. But if you feel called out, it's because you're doing something wrong. Let me just tell you that much. There are a lot of people in the personal branding space talking about how to build personal brands that they're so called, quote, unquote experts at this. Most of them use the word personal brand because it's on trend, it's popular, it's in demand. But what they're really talking about is how to build sales funnels or marketing funnels. This is really what they're teaching how to do. How do you create content to attract people because they're concerned about the short term performance of the content that you create. And now there are reasons why you need to do this. Because performance marketing helps to bring in money, it helps to support your business and cash flow. But the more performance marketing you do comes at the cost of Building long term brand value. Historically speaking, we've not had quantifiable ways to look at measuring brand value, but that's old thinking because I'll tell you, this brand has tremendous value besides awareness and reach and sentiment. Because when you take the logo or the mark of a brand, that's very valuable and you apply it to something else and it increases the value of that thing, you now can recognize how much brand is worth. And the classic example I love to give to people is water. One of the most ubiquitous available resources on the planet. Things that literally come from the sky, that if you're in a place that it rains enough, you can collect for free. Yet there are companies out there who sell you this free resource for a little bit to a lot of money. And most of it is built on brand. This is critical for you to understand. And so here's something that I'm going to tie this one together for you, so stick with me. Now, I don't know the exact ratio depending on how old you are, if you're a man or a woman. But we are mostly made up water. That doesn't mean we're 90% water, but the majority of our body is made up of water. So if you're walking around and looking at packages of water and each one communicates a different sense of value, there's a story to it, there's a provenance, meaning where did it come from? And Fiji claims untouched by man, filtered through a thousand years of lava rock. That's his story, that's its providence. Those brands command premium price. All you have to do to prove this is to pull the label off the bottle. And what's more is if you take that water and you open it and you pour into glass, you've completely devalued that water at this point because you've removed any story or anything that makes it different. And then you look at yourself and you look at your content. If the majority of who we are is water, what is the package? What is the story? What is the brand? So are you unintentionally walking around without a label, without a story to devalue who you are? That's the big question to think about. So my perspective is counter to what most of these personal branding experts, and I say that with a lot of like, tongue in cheek, because what I want you to do, instead of looking at this as a marketing platform to go get more customers to fill your pipeline, is to learn about who you are and to connect with it authentically and express that in the purest form to the world. Because in the long run, that's what's going to make you different. That's the thing that's going to create value for you, and it's going to be exponentially more valuable than what you can make by trying to sell your services through the label of brand.