A personal brand used to mean something. It took time, commitment and a lot of hard work. Not everyone could have one. Today, anyone with a phone and an Instagram account can call themselves a brand, and with AI it’s even easier.
And when everyone is a brand, no one stands out.
Why would anyone need your product, your solution or your content if they can get it in their Claude or ChatGPT? So if your brand is only what you make and what you post, it can be copied. It can be replaced. The only thing that can’t be replicated is you.
A Value Brand is the part of your brand that only you can bring: your story, your values, and your perspective. It’s what makes you relatable and impossible to replace.
A personal brand, many times, relies on attention only.
A Value Brand relies on connection, offering people meaning.
Answer the three questions, then use them to introduce yourself and what you do. And most important, find where you’re struggling the most on the ladder.
Write your answers down, on paper or in your notes. A memory study found that students who tried to recall what they had read kept much more of it than students who just read it again. Each question comes with two prompts to get you started.
Your story is what you have lived, not your achievements. People connect with you through your experiences and struggles.
Tip: most people tell the finished version. Ask yourself: is this story over? Over, it’s a credential. Still in it, it’s a story.
Which story are you living, and what makes what you do unique to you?
Your values are what you stand for, no matter what.
Tip: many people struggle to name their values, or go straight to words like integrity. A better exercise is to look at the things you refuse to do, no matter what.
What would you refuse to do, even if it paid?
Your perspective is the way you look at things. If everybody has the same perspective, it’s common sense.
Tip: let’s say there is something that your industry knows and everybody agrees on, and you think slightly differently about it, or even completely differently. That’s where your angle is: a good perspective and topic to start on.
What do you believe that most people in your industry don’t?
You don’t need a final answer. You just need a start. The answer keeps changing as you go. Mine still changes.
Put your story, your values and your perspective in a bowl, mix all of that, and you have this imperfect, different thing: you.
Not part of a niche. Your own niche.
You are the Value Brand, and it goes into everything you do and everything you offer.
Next time you introduce yourself, introduce yourself as what you do, the solution you have, and what you bring.
It’s about explaining it in a way that’s unique to you, coming from your values, your story and your experience.
There’s a simple idea that shows why this works, the Golden Circle. Most people introduce themselves from the outside in: what they do, then how, and the why, if it comes at all. The people who inspire us start in the middle, with why.
People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
Watch the talk this idea comes from: How great leaders inspire action
youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4
Apple never talks about the product. They talk about the experience of using the product.
When Apple announced the iPod in October 2001, the announcement led with “1,000 songs in your pocket”. The 5 GB hard drive only came further down.
Exercise: write your next introduction in three steps. It’s a simple way to pitch yourself and what you do.
Start with the problem, told through your story. Who has it? What does it cost them, in time, money or stress? What did you live or see that made it matter to you? Keep it to one or two sentences, so what you do still comes early.
Say what you do in one plain sentence. Specific is better than vague. Then the way only you see it, that’s your perspective, and what you’d never do, that’s your values. If you have one real result, a number that’s yours, add it.
What you want from the person in front of you. Make it one clear ask they can say yes to today: an introduction, a coffee, a trial, honest feedback.
For example, a made-up founder.
“Hi, I’m Mia. I run a meal-prep business. We deliver healthy meals across Melbourne.”
“Hi, I’m Mia. I grew up watching my mum work two jobs and still cook dinner for us every night, and she was always exhausted. Most busy parents I know still end up with takeaway.”
“So I cook the way she did: home-style meals, delivered across Melbourne every Sunday. Most meal services sell speed, but I think what families really miss is food that feels like home, so nothing is frozen and nothing goes in that I wouldn’t give my own family. Forty families order every week now.”
“I’m looking for two offices that want to try it with their teams this month. Do you know someone in HR I should talk to?”
Avoid the trap: we think we have to figure it out first. It’s the other way around. The real value is you living it now.
The brand is learned as you go, and so is what you’re building. The first version won’t be perfect, and that’s how you find out what it should be.
It will help you to understand exactly where you are at in your Value Brand journey, and what you can do to get unstuck and keep going forward.
Feeling like you need extra help? Join my first mentorship group.
Join the mentorship groupcryptojana.ai/ladder/guide
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This book follows Personal Branding for Founders, Melbourne, 21 October 2026. Thank you to Ashish Alexander, Dipu Mazumdar, NERDCONF and ANNG Gallery.
References: Roediger and Karpicke, “Test-enhanced learning”, Psychological Science, 2006. Nückles and others, “The Self-Regulation-View in Writing-to-Learn”, Educational Psychology Review, 2020. Simon Sinek, “How great leaders inspire action”, TEDxPuget Sound, 2009. Paul Graham, “How to Present to Investors”, 2006. Apple, “Apple Presents iPod”, 23 October 2001.
