How important is self‑promotion and personal branding for building trust in the industry, especially for professionals like lawyers, and should I focus on it or on direct outreach?
I usually tell people starting out to skip personal branding. A simple LinkedIn page and a one‑minute introductory video are enough and only take a couple of hours to set up. Spending a lot of time building a public brand is a poor allocation of resources because it takes months before you see any payoff and can even hurt your career if peers judge you. Instead, focus on invisible outreach: build lead lists, strip out the companies you’re targeting, and send personalized videos or cold‑email messages directly. I’ve reached millions of people this way without any public branding. This direct outreach lets you grow your business quickly and develop a skill—hunting and converting leads—that’s far more valuable than a flashy personal brand.
Yeah, I agree with that. Just keep in mind you're not starting a brand; you're creating content that indirectly lifts conversion rates across your outbound messaging. I recommend this—it's a core part of Maker School. Have people create social media profiles aligned with their brand, and produce some preliminary content so that when they're Googled, everything looks congruent and aligned. This is a fair approach. The problem is when people treat content as the sole way to get customers, thinking they can publish videos all day without talking to anyone and still make money. That's not realistic unless you're exceptionally good at your craft. Content does help indirectly, especially if you're running cold email campaigns, but you shouldn't rely on content alone.
To stand out and build an agency around your personal brand, first achieve something impressive—a major accomplishment—then build your personal brand around that proof. Starting with the brand first puts the cart before the horse; nobody cares about your brand if you lack results. People listen to those who have demonstrated skill in the field, just as audiences watch pro athletes, not amateurs. So, do something cool, achieve results, and only then record videos and talk about it.
When a campaign isn’t working, pretend you are a prospect on LinkedIn (or the platform you’re using) and walk through every element you control: profile picture, title, how recent your post is, and the actual message text. Optimize each piece—use a clear, professional photo that shows you as young, motivated, ambitious, and intelligent; craft a title that conveys credibility; consider posting timing (you may prefer to engage bottom‑to‑top); keep your message concise (around four lines before it cuts off) and experiment with capitals and emojis to grab attention. Treat the video or content you’re responding to as another input you can adjust. By enumerating all possible inputs and independently optimizing each, you compound small improvements (5 % here, 5 % there) into a large advantage. Apply the same logic on Upwork: use bright profile pictures, keep profiles to six lines or fewer because Upwork truncates after that, and write a tight, high‑quality CV (about 150 characters) with a strong, face‑focused image. These micro‑optimizations add up to an unstoppable edge in outreach.
I don’t recommend starting a brand right away because it demands huge time and effort for little or no payoff, often taking months or even years to see returns. Without credentials or a track record, it’s hard to stand out, and you likely lack the foundational habits needed for success. Instead, focus on making money first through direct outreach—cold email, cold DMs, cold calling, door‑to‑door, etc.—which is far more effective than hoping a social media post will go viral. Once you have something that puts you in the top 1% of your field, you’ll have the credibility and results to build a brand and talk about it. Starting too early leads to low success probability and distraction, as you may invest hundreds of hours with zero revenue and then chase short‑term monetization tactics. So, make money elsewhere first, then worry about monetizing your brand after you have a solid financial base.