“I spent years building Skye Media Group before I realized I was hiding behind the business name; my real brand started when I owned what I actually knew.”
“I wrote my first book in 1996 because I couldn't find a single African voice saying we are all brands in a competitive world. My brand started from that gap: what I knew people needed but nobody was saying. Yours is probably the same gap you keep noticing.”
“I spent years scaling billion-dollar portfolios at Google and LinkedIn while my profile said almost nothing about it. The phone only started ringing differently once I stopped summarizing my experience and started declaring a point of view: the top 5% design their brand deliberately, they don't wait for coworkers to define it.”
“I spent a decade branding politicians and diplomats before I had to rebuild my own public identity, and the real problem was never what to post; it was that what people experienced of me had drifted from who I actually was. Start with what people already come to you for, not the label you want to own.”
“When I left Cisco I had no niche either. I started by asking what problem I kept solving for people even when no one was paying me, and that became my brand. Your brand is not a title you invent; it is the pattern people already come to you for.”
“Start with your customer, not yourself. Write down three things: who your customer is, the problem they have, and what makes you the right person to solve it. That's where most people get tripped up, and it's where I spend the most time working with people on this.”
“I started with what I was already known for solving, not with who I wanted to be. Your brand is what people say about you behind your back, so pick the problem you already help people solve and write about that intersection until the market agrees.”
“Start with what you already love and who you can actually help—not everyone, but someone specific with a real problem you've seen solved.”