How Personal Branding for Founders Validates and Amplifies Your Brand

If you’re a founder who would happily let the logo do all the talking while you stay behind the scenes, this one’s for you. You want leads, trust, and sales, but you’re not chasing fame. You’re just wondering if showing up on video and sharing more of yourself is really worth it.

When I joined podcast host Paul Banks on the Market Pulse Pros and Pioneers podcast, we talked about exactly that. Paul is a content strategist and founder of Javelin Content Management, where he helps busy business owners turn one long video into a steady stream of social content.

In our conversation (you’ll find the full episode embedded with this blog below), we kept circling back to the same truth: personal branding for founders is no longer “nice to have.” It’s how people decide who they want to work with.

I am going to break down what that looks like in real life, especially if you don’t want to be “internet famous.”

Why personal branding for founders is not about fame

During the episode, Paul shared a question he hears all the time from clients:

“I don’t want to be famous, Paul. So, I really want to get on video, and like I’m happy to do it for the business, but do you think I have anything to add? And is it going to add anything to the business if I get on video?”

I hear some version of that every week. Founders are not sitting around thinking, “How do I become an influencer?” They’re thinking, “How do I grow this thing without becoming someone I’m not?”

Here’s what I told Paul, and what I want to tell you:

“It’s not going to make you famous. It’s going to make you human, recognizable. That’s it.”

Personal branding for founders is about:

• Making it easier for people to trust you.

• Giving buyers something (and someone) to remember.

• Showing the passion and values behind your business.

When buyers reach the final decision stage and they’re comparing you to a competitor with similar services and similar pricing, your personal brand is often the tie-breaker.

As Paul put it:

“If the person on the other end knows a little bit about you and they believe in you and what you stand for as a person and as a business, then they’ll actually be willing to pay more for that than even just pay the same or less.”

That’s not fame. That’s leadership.

How personal branding for founders starts with documenting your journey

A lot of founders freeze because “content creation” sounds overwhelming. Brainstorming ideas. Writing scripts. Figuring out hooks. Editing videos. Posting everywhere.

So let’s change the language. On the podcast, I shared a mindset shift I teach all my clients:

“It’s not about creating content, it’s about documenting the journey.”

If you’re a founder, you are already doing interesting things:

• Going to your first conference as a startup

• Meeting potential investors or partners

• Standing up your first booth

• Building your product with a small, scrappy team

• Serving your early adopters and learning from them

You don’t have to turn every moment into a polished, viral-style video.

Start by documenting:

• Snaps of your team traveling to the event

• A photo of your product “buckled in” on the plane

• A quick selfie video right after a big sales call, sharing what you learned

• A shot of the booth next to you and a shoutout to their team

On the episode, I talked about coaching a brand-new startup who didn’t really want to be on camera at their first conference. My advice to them is the advice I’ll give you:

Document everything. You can decide later what to post. Right now, you’re building the raw material for your future personal brand.

Think of it as building the “way back machine” for your company. One day, that awkward first booth photo will be a powerful story about where you started.

Why video is the missing piece in personal branding for founders

You can write thoughtful LinkedIn posts and beautiful website copy (and you should), but there’s a reason I push founders toward video. On the podcast, Paul asked me if getting on video really makes a difference. Here’s what I told him:

“If you’re watching this, you can see that I’m excited about social media. You can see that I’m excited about my business and I’m excited about video. I’m excited about helping small business owners. That’s why I’m on video because I can convey that in a written story on LinkedIn. It’s my facial expressions. It’s my enthusiasm. It’s the tone of my voice.”

Video does three things for personal branding for founders that text can’t do as quickly:

1. Shows your passion. People can see your eyes light up when you talk about the problem you’re solving.

2. Signals confidence and stability. If you’re willing to show up publicly, it reassures buyers you’ll also show up for them.

3. Amplifies your team’s work. Your marketing team can repurpose your videos across the company page, email, sales decks, and more.

I also reminded founders of this during our conversation:

“If you’re listening to this and you’re a founder, you’re a C-suite and you haven’t done video, think about this: your videos, especially on LinkedIn, are going to amplify what your team is doing on LinkedIn pages. They’re going to amplify all their hard work on TikTok, on Instagram, everywhere else because now they see you and they can use your content to amplify the whole business voice.”

And no, showing up on LinkedIn or YouTube doesn’t automatically turn you into a celebrity. It simply makes you visible to the exact people you’re already trying to reach.

What my orange glasses taught me about personal branding for founders

My own personal branding for founders journey started with a cardboard pair of glasses.

In my first year in business, a friend from the Netherlands mailed me a flimsy orange pair with a little crown on top to celebrate Queen’s Day. I put them on, snapped a photo, and used it as my profile picture.

Then something interesting happened.

“I would go into town and go to my hands-on networking meetings and my other networking meetings and people would go, ‘Oh, you’re the girl of the orange glasses.’”

They didn’t remember my company name. They didn’t remember my tagline. They remembered the orange glasses. That tiny, human detail made me easy to recognize and refer.

Eventually, I started buying orange glasses, adding orange to my logo, and leaning into the story as a nod to my Dutch heritage. The glasses became shorthand for what I stand for: visibility, boldness, and a bit of fun.

You don’t need orange glasses. But you do need something human and memorable in your personal brand:

• A story about why you started the company

• A small ritual you share (like your Friday founder check-ins)

• A value you keep coming back to (like radical transparency or community-first)

Those human details are not fluff. They’re cues that help people remember and trust you.

Turning personal branding for founders into a business advantage

One of my favorite moments in the conversation with Paul was when we talked about how people actually buy tools and services.

I shared my own process for choosing a new livestreaming tool:

1. I ask my friends what they’re using.

2. I read reviews and forums.

3. I book demos.

4. I pay attention to how the people behind the tool talk to me.

Because at the end of the day, even in B2B, there are humans on both sides:

“B2B, it’s business to business, but it’s really still, as we always say, H to H. It’s human to human. There’s two people signing on the dotted line when they make a contract.”

Personal branding for founders turns into real revenue when:

• Prospects feel like they already know you before the first call.

• Your story clarifies the problem you solve better than any feature list.

• Your visible values attract the right-fit clients and quietly repel the wrong ones.

Remember, most businesses don’t start because someone wants to “make 10 million dollars.” As I told Paul:

“Most businesses are created because they’re solving a problem.”

Your job as a founder is to talk about that problem and how you’re making people’s lives better. That’s the core of your personal brand.

Where personal branding for founders goes from here

If you’ve been hesitating to show up, here’s my encouragement: start small, and start where you are.

• Record a 60-second video explaining why you started your business.

• Take one photo today that documents something real in your founder journey.

• Share a short story on LinkedIn about a lesson you learned from a client, a mistake, or a win.

Then keep going. Your personal brand will evolve as you do. You’ll tell your story 500 times before it feels natural, and that’s okay. Every founder I know (including me) started out feeling awkward and “too ordinary” to be interesting.

The difference between the invisible founder and the trusted, sought-after founder is not talent or charisma. It’s consistency and courage.

As I told Paul near the end of our chat:

“I basically get what’s in your head. I get it out on social media.”

That’s what personal branding for founders is really about: taking what’s already inside you and letting the right people see it. Not to chase fame, but to build trust, opportunity, and long-term relationships.

And if you’re still thinking, “Do people really want to hear from me?” I’ll leave you with this: your ideal clients are already looking for a leader to trust. If it isn’t you, it’ll be someone else.

10 smart AI prompts you can use based on this blog

• “Help me outline a personal branding for founders strategy based on my industry: [insert industry].”

• “Turn this founder origin story into a 60-second LinkedIn video script: [paste your story].”

• “Give me 10 content ideas that document my founder journey instead of ‘creating’ from scratch. I am a [type of founder].”

• “Rewrite this LinkedIn post to sound more like a relatable founder sharing a lesson, not a corporate brand: [paste post].”

• “List simple visual cues I can use in my personal branding for founders (like Dorien’s orange glasses), based on my background: [describe yourself].”

• “Create a week of LinkedIn posts that amplify personal branding for founders for a B2B SaaS startup.”

• “Write a short video script where I explain why my business exists and what problem we solve, in a warm, conversational tone.”

• “Help me turn this conference trip agenda into 5 ‘document the journey’ content pieces for my personal brand: [paste agenda].”

• “Audit this draft founder bio and suggest changes to make it more story-driven and memorable: [paste bio].”

• “Give me a simple daily checklist to build personal branding for founders in 15 minutes a day on LinkedIn.”