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Earlier this month, I was asked to join a panel in New York City about personal branding for CEOs and entrepreneurs.
We had a good pre-call. Smart people, thoughtful discussion. It was the kind of panel where you look at the other speakers and think, I’m not entirely sure how I ended up here, but I’m glad someone thinks I belong.
One theme kept coming up: authenticity.
One of the other panelists made the point that, especially with Gen Z, people want to do business with companies that align with their values. The idea that you can “walk the line” on social issues and avoid taking a stance is fading. If you try, people will call you out anyway.
So you might as well be clear about what you believe—and build around it. There isn’t much of a second prize anymore for playing it safe.
That sent me back to a philosophy class I took in the 1990s—and then much farther back, to Aristotle.
Long before social media or personal branding, Aristotle argued that everything has a telos—a purpose—and that it achieves its “good” by fulfilling that purpose well.
It applies to everything. A pen is better used to write something meaningful than to scrawl nonsense on a bathroom wall. A person with a natural gift for singing flourishes by developing that gift, not by ignoring it or trying to be something else.
You don’t get to your telos by becoming a slightly worse version of someone else. You get there by being a more complete version of yourself.
We recognize that instinctively. We admire it when we see it, even in areas we don’t normally care about.
Think about the Olympics. Sports like gymnastics or figure skating suddenly capture global attention for a few weeks. Part of that is spectacle, but part of it is that you’re watching people pursue the absolute edge of what they’re meant to do, and that’s compelling.
That’s also why I’ve been pushing Life Story Magic so hard this year. It’s a direct use of what I’m actually good at: interviewing people, drawing out their stories, and helping them see that their experiences matter—and preserving them.
That’s a more durable use of those skills than chasing algorithms with a quick-hit article about a menu change at McDonald’s. Not that I’m above that; we all have to make a living.
But one of those things is closer to my telos than the other, and people can sense that.
This is where the branding conversation comes back in. If you’re building a personal brand or a company brand, the most persuasive signal you can send isn’t just building a presence for example on LinkedIn sugesting that you’re “authentic.”
It’s that you understand your purpose and you’re actually pursuing it.
That doesn’t mean everyone will agree with you. They won’t. But trying to be broadly acceptable while not fully committing to anything tends to land nowhere.
The most memorable brands—and the most compelling people—feel aligned. They’re not trying to be everything; they’re trying to be something specific, and to do it well.
Long before anyone imagined the internet, Aristotle was describing an idea that turns out to be pretty useful for anyone thinking about how they show up in public.
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Other things worth knowing …
The New York Times: About 1,100 Afghans who aided U.S. forces are being told they have to choose: Return to Afghanistan with their families to live under the Taliban, or be sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Aid worker: “This is just them wanting to send these people back to … face certain death. They know that Afghans are not going to accept the D.R.C. Why would you go from the world’s No. 1 refugee crisis to the world’s No. 2 refugee crisis?”
The New Republic: The Trump administration is considering a bailout for the United Arab Emirates, where President Trump and his family have extensive business ties including a $200 million investment in Jared Kushner’s investment firm and $2 billion invested in World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency venture run by Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. Also, the Trump Organization is building a luxury hotel in Dubai.
Axios: Workers have never been more dissatisfied with their pay or their ability to get ahead. But the likelihood of moving to a new employer is at multiyear lows. Those are the bleak findings from a New York Federal Reserve Bank survey.
The Guardian: The U.S. spy tech company Palantir published a manifesto extolling the benefits of American power and implying some cultures are inferior to others in a 22-point post on X over the weekend, which also called for an end to the “postwar neutering” of Germany and Japan and exhorted the U.S. to reinstate a military draft.
CNBC: John Ternus is succeeding Tim Cook as CEO of Apple, with Cook assuming the role of executive chairman on Sept. 1. Ternus, a senior vice president of hardware engineering, will join Apple’s board of directors when he becomes chief.
The Wall Street Journal: Car Owners Are Revolting Over Tesla’s Self-Driving Promises: An international backlash is growing over outdated Tesla hardware.
New York Post: The House Ethics Committee published a list Monday of all publicly disclosed sexual misconduct investigations into members stretching back to 1976. In total, fourteen were Democrats and 12 were Republicans.
CBS News: The wife of active-duty U.S. Army soldier who has served in the military for 27 years, including in Afghanistan, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week in Texas at an appointment at an immigration office. Rivera Ortega has been in the U.S. since 2016 and has legal protection that prohibits her deportation to her native El Salvador, but DHS says it can deport her to Mexico, where she has no ties.
Thanks for reading. Photo by Alex Engelman on Unsplash. See you in the comments.