Your personal professional brand is not for everyone and that's ok
Writing for 380 people > writing for everyone
What’s Strategic Pivotery?
Hi, I’m Meg. I advise and consult with startups as a fractional product marketing leader, primarily for B2B SaaS companies. Want to discuss a startup idea, get go-to-market help, or launch your own fractional consultancy? Book an chat with me :)
Mi español es muy malo, pero necesito practicar
👆When traveling in Spain or Latin America, my go-to opening phrase is:
Mi español es muy malo, pero necesito practicar —> My Spanish is very bad, but I need to practice
It’s amazing how patient people are with you when you’ve admitted to them you’re bad at something, but you want to practice that something with them. In my experience, most locals typically suspicious of tourists turn into Spanish language guides. Some even say, “No, your Spanish is great!” (Sweet, kind liars that they are).
My family and I are currently in Spain for 5 weeks (direct benefit of being fractional) and my husband claims he’s in awe of my ability to keep trying to learn and speak Spanish despite my skills being atrocious. He observed, “You don’t know a lot but you overcome that with charm and personality.” He’s not a big flatterer, and only speaks the truth, which means this compliment really lit me up and sparked my writing this post. Generating goodwill is half the struggle when improving your language skills in a foreign country:
Not knowing a lot and just going for it is limited to certain areas, of course. No one is going to let you fly a plane with limited knowledge but a ton of charisma. Startup executives typically have a bias against hiring people with less than ~5 years of experience in their field, for example. If this is you - don’t despair. You should still test out your fractional offering, but your branding and positioning to prospects needs to elevate your expertise so startups want what you’re putting down.
Your brand is the most public version of you
Working for yourself as a fractional means establishing a brand that is differentiated from every other consultant out there. The visual and textual aspects of this used to be hard if you weren’t a creative or marketing expert, but thanks to Canva and Claude/ChatGPT, you can spin up a logo and basic messaging in minutes. I made that terrible graphic above in 10 minutes while sitting in a cafe in Catalonia, sweat pooling behind my knees and other places I can’t mention.
The hard part remains understanding who will want your services, what your services are, and how to package and price them. The best way to get market validation for yourself is to speak to potential customers. But without a deep network of former colleagues or superconnectors, accessing these folks can be difficult.
It is your job to make your brand (and value) accessible - which means you have to build in public, at least at first. If this feels “icky” to you, you have several options:
A: Only outreach to your known network and let your consultancy slowly die before it gets off the ground
B: Test out building in public with a niche community that you trust
(Secret option C) Hire someone like me to help build a roadmap of how to fractionalize and promote yourself effectively
Still considering Option A? Read
’s exceptional piece on why personal branding is critical, and then just go for it:I believe the healthiest approach is to view building a personal brand not as self-promotion, but as a form of service: creating value that helps others while also practicing and establishing your expertise. (For further reading, I appreciate Meg Scheding’s take here: selling yourself shouldn’t be icky).
Kira Klaas via
Being helpful is the best brand out there
Here's the thing: no matter what you do or how long you've been doing it, the fastest way to build your reputation is to genuinely help your ideal customers and the people who can connect you to them.
Let’s examine how you can build in public authentically and win business with the example above of someone with <5 years’ experience in their field (in this case, marketing).
You’ve got 3-5 years of experience as a marketer across a few functions, with at least one role at a large / recognizable / high reputational company.
(This doesn’t mean you need to have worked at Google or Meta — but at a company that is either somewhat recognizable or reputable in a specific vertical. Bonus points if it has “AI” tacked on to the URL… but that’s a whole other post).
Here’s how to become helpful while simultaneously positioning yourself as an expert (in order of lowest lift to highest impact):
Use social engineering on platforms that encourage this. Comment on or share the LinkedIn, Substack, Twitter (no I won’t call it X!) posts of senior leaders at companies where you want to consult. These people (especially senior marketers) tend to write thought-provoking posts about their career, company, or industry so it’s fairly easy to hop into the conversation. The catch: these can’t be lazy one-click reposts or empty compliments or a paragraph of mentions of network connections.
Example: Head of Marketing at Prospect Startup posts about how their team is experimenting with a new tool that you’re familiar with. You chime in with “We used ABC tool at Y Big Company and here’s how we approached it…” Bonus points if you link to the tool’s company page or someone you know who works there, or tag someone else you know who is connected to the senior leader who posted. You could also find a relevant post or resource by Tool ABC company and share with Prospect Marketer in comments or DMs.
Proactively connect your prospects to targeted resources. Research common pain points of your ICP and create posts about how you’d tackle these challenges.
Example 1: Head of Marketing at Prospect Startup most likely struggles with compliance issues because they operate in a heavily regulated industry like pharma or fintech. Create a post about how well you understand this challenge from your time at Y Big Company and what you’d do as a marketer at companies like Prospect Startup to address the issue. I’ve found that only mentioning your prospect startup company is too on the nose - instead, mention Prospect Company within a few industry leaders to elevate their brand, too.
Example 2: You see Prospect Startup is hiring in an adjacent field to yours, like GTM engineering or Product Design. You know stellar candidates in these areas and you shoot the Head of Marketing a DM or post on LI saying you noticed this, and you love Prospect Startup, and you’d like to pass along a few top tier candidates to the hiring manager. You’re gaining their attention by being inherently helpful and not spammy.
Publish your observations and proposed tactics in a dedicated channel, like Substack. This is your chance to completely own the channel, the conversation, the audience, and the brand - aka, your business.
Example: You can position yourself as a generalist who was exposed to every aspect of marketing in that well-known startup you suffered through. Then you can offer all the learned best practices from that (probably terribly toxic) big company to smaller businesses that want to replicate that (perceived) success. This is your brand now - own it!
I’ve done all of these, and it’s no secret that I think #3 is the most sustainable and consistent way to be visible while staying helpful. Next, create a simple bio site that links to your top posts, other content, and ways to contact you. That’s your new resume (and mine).
I’m not a writer, so I can’t Substack or Beehiv or whatever in public
Gonna dive into why you’re so wrong about this 😚 and why it matters for your personal professional branding.
Building visibly is teaching me how to grow a business based on my personal brand and unique voice. I recently chatted with my friends at dynamo consultancy Kite &String for their newsletter and shared this observation:
This is not a popular opinion for substack tech bros but writing (whether for personal or professional purposes) should be approached as the opposite of building a business.
Don’t identify an ICP, or "lock in" pricing, or feel you need a totally polished brand identity. If you’re writing a newsletter only to build a business, it will show. If you write a newsletter to share knowledge or entertain, your ICP will emerge as you see who interacts with and gets value from it. You should also reserve the right to change your mind on what you title it, what the colors are, if you charge for it or don’t, and if you stick within a “vertical” or just write about whatever you want with zero “themes.”
Smaller, purpose-driven communities are the future of the internet - which means your brand has a place. I cringe when people say "everyone is starting a substack now" — not because it isn't true, but because of the inherent gatekeeping judgey vibe attached to the comment. What, only "serious" published writers / people with a large following should publish their work? Hard no — if you can communicate publicly in written format (whatever style that is) and it will help you find and win over your ICP — just go for it!! All the posts about launching a newsletter gives me another opportunity to tell you to start the substack, recipe swap, soccer pickup game, whatever the thing is, because you'll never regret creating a community for yourself.
Champion others who are trying it out, too. There are delightfully niche stacks that I fervently subscribe to. I recently hit 380 subscribers on Strategic Pivotery and I'm more proud of that number than the 10,000 followers I have on LinkedIn because the high-intent and true attention of those subscribers means the world to me. These people want to hear from me, they actually read what I write, and they don’t unsubscribe despite it taking one easy click (that I won’t be linking to).
I saw a note on Substack (that now I can't find) saying something like "If I have 120 subscribers, that translates into filling a large lecture hall for a college class" and that is indeed something to celebrate. I’d be sweating beneath my knees if I had to present live to 120 college kids these days!
The best part is hearing what is tracking for your community. Recently I went to lunch with a friend who said he used a tactic he learned in a post: "It's like you said in your substack. How you can ask people what keeps them busy instead of what they do for a living" and I was glowing all day from that.
Using AI to “find” your brand or anything else
I’m using AI almost daily in my personal and professional work, whether I want to or not 😬 so I’m sharing where I’m using it and where I’m not as I continually build my brand in public.
Where I’m not using AI: to “find” or generate my voice (or anything else related to the first draft of my branding)
Over a year ago I wrote a draft post about what my personal branding is, but never finished it. It didn’t use a lick of AI — instead I looked at your comments (especially my subscribers on SS!) and referrals people had made on my behalf, along with my own inherent sense of what my value is, and distilled it into 3 anchoring concepts:
Helpful: I’ve spent most of my life being inherently, proactively helpful to family, friends, colleagues, even strangers. I am the person who notices if you look lost and offer directions. I meet someone, realize they would benefit from connecting with someone else I know, and make sure they get introduced. I enjoy sharing my knowledge in a productive way with anyone who will listen, really.
A recent reviewer on my Intro page commented: “She has great experience and words of wisdom that truly helped me think about my career goals with the right lens. Thank you, Meg!”
Refreshing: this is a close cousin to insightful, but I prefer refreshing because it reminds me of what an aperol spritz tastes like on a hot summer day in the Costa Brava. I look at the world in a different way, which is very helpful as a consultant where a “fresh set of eyes” is often needed. I’m frank when required, but never curt.
After a 30 min meeting, a friend of a friend said “thanks for a refreshing conversation full of candor about your experiences, especially as a woman and mom working in tech.”
Inspiring: since starting my Substack, people have told me that my posts are encouraging them to consider going fractional. This makes my insides smile!
One guy cold messaged me and said “I saw your post and wanted to tell you that it was just what I needed today. I am toying with the idea of being a consultant and did not know where or how to start. Thank you so much for sharing your journey.”
Where I’m using AI: to summarize my written brand and generate first drafts based on that
I threw a bunch of my most popular LinkedIn and Substack posts into Claude (I ignored the results of my LinkedIn poll on what pro AI I should pay for 😝) and asked it to summarize my voice:
Claude says my authentic voice is a mix of vulnerability about the struggle combined with confidence about your value, with a conversational, thoughtful tone.
I want to experiment more with Substack notes, so I asked Claude to convert one of my most popular stacks into short note format and it did a fairly good job. It also commented that:
The structure moves from personal struggle to practical value proposition, which feels very "you" based on how you typically approach topics. I included the market context about AI disrupting everything since that came up in your chat, and made sure to acknowledge your empathy for people just starting out.
Thanks Claude, but also… shut up Claude you know how to please me and that is worrisome!
How are y’all using AI these days to fractionalize yourself? Planning on doing a whole post on this in the near future if AI doesn’t take my job first…
Happy summer!
Ways you can support Strategic Pivotery
🙊 Book a strategy (or vent) session
Want to discuss how to launch or expand your consultancy? Need help getting unstuck and back on the right track? Pay to pic my brain / book a strategy session with me. Share an agenda, and we problem-solve for the most helpful and actionable next steps per minute.
☕️ Buy me a chai latte
Not ready for a virtual coffee chat but still want to support me? Strategic Pivotery is free (and I’d like to keep it that way, at least for now!). If you find it helpful, it made you smile, or I got a belly laugh — buy me a coffee (well, chai latte - I don’t drink coffee). I prefer monetary validation to another mediocre white dude telling me “you’re actually really good at this.” Thanks, bro!
I love the ❤️ too - like, comment, share, restack this post so it gets discovered by the dark internet.
☎️ Tell me!
What’s the best mother’s gift you’ve ever given or received?
Keeping it real! Appreciate your perspective here so much 🙏
Love the comment about helping people and forming connections....the opposite of being transactional!