The power of personal branding

When I published The Most Powerful Woman in the Room Is You in 2019, I thought I was launching a book. I didn’t realize it at the time, but what I was actually building was a brand. In my first meeting with a creative director to design a simple website, she laid out a range of color palettes. Without hesitation, I chose red and pink. She laughed at how quickly I decided, but that moment became the foundation of everything that followed, first for my book and then for my brand. That decision was not only about the way the colors looked together. It was intentional. I wanted the word “power” to live alongside colors that are not traditionally seen that way. Red and pink are used for things like Valentine’s Day or little girls’ birthday parties. But I wanted to change that and use them to denote power, the way I always feel when I wear those colors on stage as an auctioneer. My website kicked it off; it was red and pink, then we made the book cover red and pink. And when I went on tour, I wore red and pink at every single event for an entire year. That consistency paid off in a major way. Six years later, people still send me photos of red and pink dresses. When Jessie Buckley won the Oscar for Hamnet this year and accepted her award in a custom red and pink Chanel gown, my inbox filled with messages asking if I had seen it. That is when I understood something critical: A personal brand, when done right, works for you when you are not in the room. Who you are I know a lot of people think personal branding is about self promotion. I disagree. Personal branding is about being crystal clear about who you are and what you stand for. It is about making it easy for people to understand you and, most importantly, talk about you in the way that YOU want. Most people are far more memorable than they realize; they just communicate too many things at once. The strongest brands are simple. Think about the people you immediately recognize in your industry. Chances are, you can ins