Your Brand Arrived Before You Did

What a thirty-year-old necklace taught me about what you are already saying

There is a photo of me from a magazine profile taken a few years ago. When Professor Flynn put it up in his Paths to Power class at Stanford recently, the first thing I noticed was my cross.

Not my face. Not what I was wearing. The cross.

I have worn it for thirty years. My then-boyfriend, now my husband of more than two decades, gave it to me when I was twenty years old, about six months into our relationship. I put it on and have rarely taken it off. I did not choose it as a signal or sign to others. I was not thinking about what I wanted to communicate to the world. I was a college student who received a gift from someone she was dating. Yet for thirty years, it has been one of the most prominent things people notice about me.

Seeing that photo in a classroom full of students stopped me cold, because I had been invited to talk about personal branding, a topic I have always found a little awkward. It can sound like performance, like you are packaging yourself into something slick and marketable. But looking at that photo, I realized something I had never quite put into words before. The most visible part of how people experience me was something I never chose. It was just true.

That is the thing about personal brands that no one tells you clearly enough. You already have one. It is already speaking. The question is not whether people are forming associations about you, because they are. The question is whether those associations reflect the truth of who you are.

What we broadcast without knowing it

Over the years, that cross has opened more conversations than I can count. People have asked me about my faith, what I believe, and how those beliefs shape my decisions at work and at home. Some who share my faith have told me their own stories. Others who have been hurt by organized religion have opened up about that too. People asked questions and shared experiences. A small piece of jewelry became, without any intention on my part, a doorway into more honest conversations than almost anything I have consciously crafted.

That is not unique to me. We are all broadcasting things we did not deliberately choose. It may be our accent, the way we dress, or the questions we ask. We are being judged whether we remember people’s names or details about them. Some of what people associate with us, we chose intentionally. Most of it accumulated over years of simply being ourselves in the presence of other people.

The point is not to manufacture something that you want to present that is compelling but inauthentic. The point is to pay attention to what is already being received and ask yourself whether it reflects who you actually are.

Jeff Bezos famously said, “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” Most people hear that as a challenge: go make sure your brand is positive. But actually, you need to first understand what is already being said.

The story underneath the signal

During the class, students worked on short personal brand statements, then Professor Flynn called on them to share. Most of the first attempts sounded polished but distant. Good but somewhat generic statements. But they could have stood for anyone, and I asked them, “Make your statement, an N of 1.” Read aloud to your classmates, they should know it is you.

One student shared he wanted to work in consumer packaged goods and help brands tell better stories. That sounded reasonable, but I did not understand why it mattered to him. I asked him to tell me the story behind it.

He explained that many products do not work well for Black men, and he wanted to help companies build and tell stories about products that actually served his community, people who had been overlooked for too long.

The room shifted. What had been a general statement about brand storytelling became something specific, personal, and real. It was about belonging and representation.

Another student said he wanted to work in transportation, maybe the airline industry. Again I asked why.

He told us that when he was young, he moved far away from his extended family, and flying was what kept him connected to the people and places that made him feel rooted. Travel was how he stayed connected to those he loved.

Transportation was not about logistics. It was about the ache of distance and the joy of return, and a child who learned that movement could be a bridge to those he loved.

Both times, I asked the room whether they felt more connected after hearing their why. Both times, almost every hand went up.

Here is what I kept thinking about as I watched this unfold. Neither student had built a brand strategy. They had simply told the truth about their “Why?” and suddenly their brand meant something deeper and more real.

What this means for you

I have been wearing that cross for thirty years and only recently started to understand what it has been saying on my behalf all this time. It has been telling people about my faith, my marriage, my sense of where I come from, and what I hold onto. I did not plan any of that, but it is just as much my brand as anything else about who I am.

That is the question. Not “what do I want my personal brand to be?” but “what is already true about me that I have not yet put into words?”

Ask people you trust what they associate with you and what stories they tell about you when you are not there. Some of what they say will feel exactly right. Some of it will not, and that gap is worth understanding.

Then ask yourself what you wish they knew. Not what sounds impressive. What is actually true about why you care about the work you do.

The student who wanted to build better products for Black men did not need a brand strategy. He needed someone to ask him one question. The student who wanted to connect families through travel did not need a tagline. He needed to say the true thing out loud.

Most of us already know the true thing. We just have not said it yet.

I did not choose that cross as a signal. I chose it because it meant something to me. And it turns out that is exactly why it resonates with others. The things we carry because they are true are almost always the things that land.