Your Brand Is Built When You’re Not Looking

Years ago, in Montreal, I met a junior designer named Layla. She had no logo, no tagline, no website, just a borrowed laptop and a habit of showing up five minutes early. She asked sharp questions, sent clear follow-ups, and addressed minor problems that no one had assigned to her. By the third week, people said, “Give it to Layla, she’ll land it.” That sentence was her brand, long before she ever picked a font.

Here’s the truth: you don’t get to “turn on” a personal brand. It leaks from your calendar, your inbox, your promises kept (or missed). It’s built in whispers, how you treat the intern, how you handle a delay, the tone of a late-night message when things go sideways. ,

If you don’t author the story, the world will. Silence is a strategy, too, and it reads as uncertainty. In the absence of your narrative, people stitch one from your patterns. One meeting becomes a motif. One missed deadline becomes a theme. Ten thousand tiny moments become your cover art.

So write on purpose:

• Pick a single “kick” and practice it until it’s unmistakable.
• Ship small promises until your name equals reliability.
• Share the process, not just the wins, because credibility grows in the sawdust.
• Guard your focus like a warrior; depth is a competitive edge.
• When you fail (you will), fail forward in public. People trust the honest climber.

Brand isn’t a campaign. Brand is behaviour remembered.

Layla never did launch that website. She didn’t need to. By the time she asked a developer friend to build it, the domain was just a door—behind it, a reputation already standing tall.

What sentence do people speak after your name today? If you don’t like it, you can start editing it by dinner.