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How I Discovered My Personal Brand (And Why It’s Totally Okay If You Haven’t Yet)

Career Advice

Nowadays, most people know me for at least one of three things: content, social media, and entrepreneurship.

I discovered my personal brand by realizing that I love all of those things and I love talking about those things. Now, because of my brand, people are asking me to talk about those things in front of people which is super dope.

But this brand I’ve built didn’t happen overnight. In fact, my lack of a personal brand or niche frustrated me for a long time.

In journalism school, you figure out pretty early on that it helps to specialize in something and I liked everything.

Eventually, I found myself working in marketing and even then, I didn’t really have a “personal brand.” I just applied to jobs that looked interesting to me. Same with my freelance writing. It was only really in hindsight, about three-ish years into my career, that I realized there was a common thread: entrepreneurship.

At my first job, I got to work on a really cool project profiling entrepreneurs and creatives around Toronto and at my second job, I got to do more of the same. After that, I worked at a start-up where I wasn’t writing about entrepreneurship, but I was immersed in the culture day in and day out.

Eventually, it hit me: writing about entrepreneurship was a way to tie all of my miscellaneous interests under one umbrella. Hello, niche!

And then I started googling and realized that entrepreneurship and career content was totally a thing. A big thing, in fact, and many places and publications were looking for writers who specialize in this.

So when I officially launched Jasmine Williams Media a few months ago and started to think about my own content, I had a pretty clear vision for what I wanted to produce and the impact I wanted my content to have. I knew I wanted to talk about my content marketing work and my experience as a newbie entrepreneur. I also hoped that by sharing my expertise and personal insights, I would either a) empower others to tell their stories better or b) help people who have had similar experiences to me feel a little less alone.

Now, you’re probably thinking, “That’s cool, good for you, what’s the point of all this?”

And to that, I’d say, “That’s a little hurtful, but fair.”

The “so what?” of this post is basically, don’t panic. If you feel like you don’t have a brand or you don’t know where to start, that’s okay. I wrote a whole post about how to start building your brand but the truth is, I didn’t set out with a conscious plan to build mine. It happened organically and really materialized in hindsight. I had to look back at everything I’ve done to find a common thread.

So, yeah! That’s it. Don’t panic. You’re doing just fine, and you’re probably on your way to figuring out your special sauce, even if you think you’re not.