A Special Issue #22
Marked: How Branding Gets Under Your Skin, Part 3
Open LinkedIn on any given Tuesday and count how many people call themselves "founder."
Not CEO, not owner, but founder of something that in many cases is one person, a Canva account, their AI of choice, and a newsletter. Ten years ago, that title meant you'd built a company. Now it means you've built a self-brand, packaged and distributed like a major corporation.
Why Now
Two things happened at once, and either one alone probably wouldn't have created this phenomenon.
The first is platform economics. Algorithms don't reward institutions; they reward individuals. A face, a voice, a consistent point of view outperforms a logo every time because platforms are built to surface people, not companies. If you want reach, you learn fast that "the person behind the brand" performs much better than "the brand."
People buy you before they buy anything you have to offer. Period.
The second is the job market itself getting less stable. Layoffs stopped being a recession-only event and became the norm. When loyalty to one employer stopped being rewarded, or even protected, building a name that belongs to you, and travels with you regardless of who signs your paycheck, started to look less like vanity and more like insurance.
Neither of those is a trend piece anymore.
Together, they're just the current terms of employment.
It’s time for a Sponsor Break!
If you're one of the people now expected to have a voice, a POV, and a "content strategy" on top of your actual job or building your own brand, the Voice Translation Session exists to make that part easier — figuring out what you actually sound like, so you're not guessing at it in public.
The Pushback
Here's where I want to slow down, because the popular version of this story stops at "personal branding is empowering," and that's not the whole story.
Empowerment implies a choice. For some people, much of personal branding doesn't always feel like a choice. If your industry now expects a LinkedIn presence, a POV, a "content strategy" just to be considered for the job — that's not opportunity, that's a new unpaid requirement stacked on top of the actual work. Calling it empowerment is generous.
And even when it is a choice, it's not a fully upside one. A company brand is an asset; you can hand it off, sell it, grow it past yourself. A personal brand is you. It doesn't have an exit, and it doesn't survive a burnout or a bad year the way a company can absorb one. Building it is real work, worth doing on purpose — but it's worth knowing what you're actually signing up for before you commit your name to it, not just what it promises.
That doesn't make personal branding fake or bad. Plenty of people are doing genuinely good, honest work under their own name. In this economy, "everyone's a founder now" is not just a story about ambition. It's also a story about what happens when the safety net gets thin enough that building your own name stops being optional.
Where That Leaves Us
Whether this is actually a return to something more human, or just another face of capitalism, is exactly what next week's issue is going to sit with.
I hope you’ll join me for part 4 of Marked: When Branding Gets Under Your Skin.
Until Next Wednesday,
~Aliya