Matthew Kelly reflects on the tension in building an authentic personal brand as a founder: being honest and sharing highs, lows, and insights helps connect deeply with an audience but also exposes 'secrets' and attracts competitors. He contrasts authenticity with PR-crafted perfection, notes he is "not PR trained," and describes strong emotional feedback from viewers who say his YouTube changed their lives.
Chapters
Yeah, I'm always a bit conflicted with the whole personal brand thing. I was actually quite early. It's a personal brand. The irony is I just never called it personal brand because I'm the only honest person. Like, I'm one of the only honest people on the Internet, especially in the founder space. If you're honest in your personal brand, you almost give away all the fucking, like secrets and source to some degree, and then you attract competitors. And there's been loads of competitors that have happened because of my YouTube. I think if you're doing personal brand, it almost needs to. The best way to do it is be authentic. But then if you're authentic, you're being honest and you're sharing the highs and lows, and if you share the highs and lows and the insights, then you attract competitors and don't necessarily control the narrative of what other people think about you. Which is probably why a lot of people paint a perfect picture. Maybe I should do that as well. I'm just not PR trained. I'm just honest. And that is good. And that's probably why, like, people come up to me like borderline crying and shit in the street saying, oh, YouTube changed my life. And that's amazing. But I'm also like, oh, fuck, you know?
