When I first looked for advice on personal branding, I found the same clichés: “be consistent, be authentic.” Helpful, but not enough.
What I really wanted were personal branding examples, real stories of how people turned their presence into influence and opportunity.
That’s what this post is about. I’ve curated personal brand examples across entrepreneurs, creators, athletes, and leaders who built authority in their own way through viral storytelling, thought leadership, community, or bold contrarian moves.
Each story is a blueprint. You’ll see where they started, the steps they took, and what you can learn to shape your own brand. If you’ve ever wondered how to create a personal brand that attracts opportunities, this is where to begin.
How and Why I Created This List of Personal Brand Examples
When I decided to put this list together, I wanted it to be more than just another roundup of big names. The goal was to showcase personal brand examples that are relevant right now and will still matter in 2025 and beyond.
I looked for people who built their brands in different ways: some through viral content, others through books, podcasts, communities, or bold contrarian ideas. I also wanted diversity across niches so that no matter who you are, you’ll find a story that resonates.
This isn’t about celebrity for celebrity’s sake. It’s about showing real journeys of how these individuals started, what made them stand out, and how they turned personal brands into lasting influence.
17 Real Personal Branding Examples That Show What Works Today
Justin Welsh: The solopreneur who scaled with content
Justin Welsh stands out as a modern example of personal branding built on authenticity, efficiency, and deep connection. After leaving a SaaS leadership role in 2019, he committed fully to creating useful, no-nonsense content, starting with LinkedIn and expanding from there.
How Justin Welsh built his personal brand
Over 6 years, Justin organically grew his audience by consistently sharing actionable posts, deep reflections, and business lessons. With no paid ads, he scaled to over 700,000 LinkedIn followers, writing daily content, launching a newsletter (The Saturday Solopreneur with 200K+ subscribers), and developing “Creator Funnels” to nurture his community and drive engagement.
Justin leveraged what’s known as “content operating systems” and “The LinkedIn Operating System” to systemize content creation, achieve 90% profit margins, and stay lean as a 1-person business .
That signature focus allowed him to build a thriving solo enterprise—achieving over $10 million in revenue by mid‑2025, with products like The Creator MBA, LinkedIn OS, and Content OS, all while maintaining 90%+ profitability.
The takeaway: His journey shows that personal branding isn’t about being everywhere — it’s about building systems that magnify your message and let opportunity come to you.
Sahil Bloom: A viral thread writer turned thought leader
Sahil Bloom is an investor, entrepreneur, and writer, but his personal brand was born on Twitter. In 2020, while working in private equity, he began writing long-form threads breaking down complex ideas in business, finance, and life.
How Sahil Bloom built his personal brand
His formula was clarity + consistency. Every thread simplified complicated topics into engaging stories and actionable lessons. This style resonated during the pandemic, helping him grow from 0 to over 500,000 followers in under two years.
From Twitter, he expanded to LinkedIn, where he built an audience of millions, and launched The Curiosity Chronicle, a newsletter that deepened his reach. By sharing vulnerably about his career shift from finance to creator-investor, Sahil built trust as someone navigating the same transitions his readers faced.
Those efforts created opportunities in angel investing, speaking, and building SRB Ventures, where his personal brand now amplifies his business ventures.
The takeaway: Sahil Bloom proves that a personal brand can start with one platform—but by combining storytelling, consistency, and expansion, it can grow into a global stage.
Ali Abdaal: The doctor turned productivity educator
Ali Abdaal began his journey as a Cambridge-trained doctor. However, in 2017, he started sharing study and productivity tips on YouTube, a side project that would become the foundation of his personal brand.
How Ali Abdaal built a personal brand
Ali leaned into authenticity and consistency, posting long-form videos that simplified productivity, creativity, and learning. He blended personal experience with research-backed insights, creating tutorials, book breakdowns, and reflections that resonated with students and professionals alike.
His approachable style stood out in a crowded niche. Over time, he built across multiple platforms: a podcast, newsletter, and courses, all anchored by the same principle: help people work and live better.
That commitment has paid off massively. By 2025, Ali has grown to over 6.4M YouTube subscribers and 500M+ views, launched successful cohorts like the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, scaled a business generating multiple millions in revenue annually, and became a New York Times–bestselling author with Feel-Good Productivity.
The lesson: a personal brand becomes powerful when you turn content into a business ecosystem: one message, amplified across platforms, compounding into influence and authority.
Jay Shetty: Monk turned storyteller inspiring millions
Jay Shetty is a monk turned storyteller, podcaster, and author who has become one of the most recognizable voices in modern personal growth.
How Jay Shetty Built a Personal Brand
Jay Shetty began his personal branding journey from an unusual starting point: life as a monk.
After leaving the monastery, he translated that discipline and wisdom into a modern context by creating short, viral videos on Facebook and Instagram. His calm voice and storytelling ability helped him stand out in a crowded motivational niche.
From there, Shetty built a powerful ecosystem. His videos have been viewed billions of times, he launched the top podcast On Purpose, authored the bestselling book Think Like a Monk, and became a sought-after speaker and coach.
By blending ancient philosophy with digital media, he built credibility across platforms while staying authentic to his roots.
The takeaway: Your unique background is your edge. By framing personal experiences into relatable stories, you can inspire millions and open doors to opportunities well beyond your starting point.
Khaby Lame: The TikTok creator of simplicity
Khaby Lame’s journey is one of the most unique examples of a personal brand in the era of social media. In 2020, he lost his factory job in Italy during the pandemic. With little more than a phone, he began recording short TikTok videos mocking over-engineered “life hacks.” No words, no gimmicks; just a shrug, a glance, and his trademark deadpan expression.
How Khaby Lame built a personal brand
What seemed like simple humor became his personal brand: making life simple. His silence wasn’t a limitation; it was his differentiator. In a noisy social media, Khaby communicated through universality. He consistently posted these relatable skits, and because they transcended language, they spread across continents.
By 2022, he overtook Charli D’Amelio to become TikTok’s most-followed creator, amassing over 161 million followers. His growth wasn’t engineered through strategy decks; it was authenticity meeting timing and consistency.
That authenticity opened doors beyond social media. Brand partnerships with Hugo Boss, millions in sponsorships, TV appearances, and recognition in Time100 Creators proved that a personal brand built on simplicity can have global reach.
The takeaway: Khaby shows that personal branding is not about saying more; it’s about standing out with what only you can bring.
Kayla Itsines: The trainer who redefined women’s fitness
Kayla Itsines is an excellent example of personal branding, showcasing how authenticity and consistency can transform a trainer into a global icon. What began with sharing simple workouts and transformations on Instagram grew into one of the most powerful women's fitness brands in the world.
How Kayla Itsines built her personal brand
Kayla didn’t just post workouts; she built a relatable identity. Her #BBGcommunity, and later the Sweat app weren’t products first, they were extensions of her brand story: empowering women with achievable fitness.
She consistently shared real clients’ results, engaged directly with her community, and positioned herself not as a distant influencer but as a trainer walking alongside her followers. Her approachable, encouraging, and relentlessly consistent personality was her differentiator.
That alignment of brand and business fueled enormous growth. The Sweat app surpassed 30 million downloads and was sold for $ 400 million. By 2023, she reacquired it to lead with her vision again.
The takeaway: a powerful personal brand grows when your values, your community, and your content all tell the same story — authentic, consistent, and deeply human.
Pieter Levels: The indie hacker who built in public
Pieter Levels is the self-taught developer behind Nomad List, Remote OK, PhotoAI, and more solo founder of a multi-million-dollar digital nomad empire, all crafted from a laptop while traveling the world.
How Pieter Levels built a personal brand
Starting in 2014 with a public challenge to launch “12 startups in 12 months,” Pieter embraced radical transparency. He shared every build, revenue milestone, pricing tweak, and bug fix live on Twitter. That openness is part of his “build in public” philosophy, not only motivated him to ship fast, but also attracted an engaged community.
His steady updates, travel stories across 150+ cities, and authentic coding journey made him one of the most followed indie hackers, with over 700K followers and 40+ solo-built products.
His transparency paid off: Nomad List hit $700K ARR, Remote OK reached $3.4M in revenue, and PhotoAI hit $600K ARR—all bootstrapped and solo-built by Pieter himself.
Lesson learned: He shows that showing your entire process—flaws, failures, and fixes—is what builds trust, influence, and income.
Packy McCormick: Brand Built on Newsletter Essays
Packy McCormick is the creator of Not Boring, a newsletter and venture platform that reimagines how we learn about startups, strategy, and investing. But his personal brand wasn’t built overnight; it was the result of deliberate, consistent effort to turn his voice into a trusted authority.
How Packy McCormick built his personal brand
Packy’s personal brand didn’t come from being the loudest; it came from making complex ideas fun. When he launched Not Boring in 2020, he started small, writing to friends and colleagues. However, he committed to showing up twice a week, blending deep strategy breakdowns with humor and cultural references.
On Twitter, he turned essays into threads, pulling new readers into his funnel. He also built trust by sharing subscriber milestones and experiments transparently, making his audience feel part of the journey. Over time, his consistency and unique voice made him stand out in a crowded newsletter space.
That effort transformed Not Boring into a multi-million-dollar business and opened doors to venture investing with Not Boring Capital.
The takeaway: Packy proves that personal branding is about consistency, transparency, and personality — turning a side project into an influential platform.
Tim Ferriss: The podcaster of lifestyle design
Tim Ferriss didn’t just build a career; he built a personal brand by making himself the case study. When The 4-Hour Workweek launched in 2007, he didn’t rely on publishers; he hustled through blogs, forums, and social media to seed his ideas. That grassroots strategy made his book a movement.
How Tim Ferriss built his personal brand
Tim leaned into radical experimentation. He tested productivity systems, fitness hacks, and learning methods on himself and then shared the results openly. This “learn in public” approach created trust; his audience felt they were part of the journey, not just consuming advice.
Over time, he strategically layered platforms: books for authority, a blog for transparency, and The Tim Ferriss Show for scale. Each channel reinforced the same brand: curious, practical, relentlessly experimental.
This approach has led to millions of podcast downloads, bestsellers in multiple categories, and investments in companies like Uber.
The takeaway: Tim Ferriss proves a personal brand grows strongest when you let people learn alongside you, making curiosity, transparency, and experimentation your signature.
. James Clear: The habit builder of atomic influence
James Clear is known for transforming the science of behavior into practical systems people can actually use. He became one of the most trusted voices in personal growth by focusing his entire brand on a single theme: habits.
How James Clear built a personal brand
Clear is committed to writing weekly essays for years, turning complex psychology into simple, actionable insights. His discipline in publishing consistently built trust, while his clarity of focus, habits over goals set him apart in a noisy self-help space. He wasn’t trying to be everywhere or talk about everything; he doubled down on one idea until it became inseparable from his name.
That singular focus created massive opportunities. Atomic Habits sold more than 25 million copies, his newsletter reaches millions, and global companies invite him to share his framework.
The takeaway: personal branding isn’t about chasing breadth, it’s about owning one powerful idea and reinforcing it until the world sees you as the authority.
Simon Sinek: Author who taught the world ‘why’ matters
Simon Sinek began in advertising, but his frustration with uninspired work and disconnected leaders pushed him to ask a deeper question: why do some organizations inspire while others struggle? That question became the foundation of his personal brand.
How Simon Sinek built his personal brand
His breakthrough came in 2009 with a TEDx talk explaining the Golden Circle: why, how, what. Unlike other selling tactics, Simon simplified leadership into purpose-driven clarity. That talk went viral, becoming one of the most watched TED Talks of all time, and turned him into the face of purpose-led leadership.
He reinforced it with bestselling books like Start with Why and Leaders Eat Last, always returning to the same core principle that great leaders inspire action through meaning.
Over time, his personal brand evolved into more than writing and speaking: he built The Optimism Company, launched podcasts, and created platforms that extend his philosophy to new audiences.
That singular idea, articulated with clarity and conviction, brought him from an unknown consultant to a keynote speaker for Fortune 500 companies, a trusted advisor to leaders, and a global voice for optimism in business.
The takeaway: Simon Sinek is a personal brand example of how one clear, repeatable idea, consistently shared with conviction, can turn into a lifelong identity that inspires millions.
Gary Vaynerchuk: The entrepreneur of hustle
Gary Vaynerchuk is one of the most iconic personal branding examples of all tim.
He started in the late 1990s by turning his family’s wine store into an e-commerce success and launched Wine Library TV on YouTube in 2006, well before most entrepreneurs saw the power of content.
How Gary Vaynerchuk built a personal brand
For nearly 20 years, Gary has shown up daily on every major platform, from YouTube and Twitter to TikTok and LinkedIn. His mantra of “document, don’t create” kept his content authentic and relatable, while his relentless pace built unmatched visibility.
What makes his brand unique is that it grew with the internet itself: he adapted his message to each new platform but stayed true to his voice — direct, motivational, and practical. His journey proves that consistency over decades, not months, is how authority compounds.
That long-term effort made Gary more than a marketing guru. He built VaynerMedia, invested early in giants like Facebook and Uber. He became one of the most sought-after speakers in business.
The takeaway: a personal brand is not a quick play. It’s a lifelong practice of showing up, adapting with the times, and building trust day after day until the world can’t ignore you.
Codie Sanchez: The investor making boring businesses sexy
Codie Sanchez is an investor, entrepreneur, and founder of Contrarian Thinking. She built her personal brand by taking the road less traveled: buying “boring” cash-flowing businesses that most people overlooked.
How Codie Sanchez built her personal brand
Codie didn’t follow the polished Wall Street playbook. Instead, she leaned into contrarian ideas of buying laundromats, vending machine routes, car washes, and made them aspirational through storytelling.
On Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, she shared threads and videos breaking down exactly how these businesses worked, while tying them to financial freedom and independence.
By being unapologetically bold, mixing sharp analysis with accessible language, and creating content that demystified acquisitions, she carved out a lane no one else occupied. Her brand became the bridge between everyday entrepreneurs and the world of private equity, powered by authenticity and relentless content.
That clarity has earned her millions of followers, a thriving media platform in Contrarian Thinking, and investment opportunities that positioned her as a leading voice in modern finance.
The takeaway: Codie is a genuine personal brand example of how bold positioning, clear storytelling, and owning a niche can turn overlooked ideas into authority.
Naval Ravikant: The philosopher startup investor
Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, angel investor, and co-founder of AngelList, known for backing companies like Uber, Twitter, and Notion. Yet his reputation as an investor is only part of his story. Naval’s personal brand was built on his ability to translate complex truths about wealth, happiness, and life into timeless insights.
How Naval Ravikant built his personal brand
His breakthrough moment came in 2019 on Twitter, when he published a viral thread titled “How to Get Rich (without getting lucky).” It wasn’t clickbait, it was philosophy packaged for the digital age. Short, sharp, and endlessly quotable, his writing stood out in a platform full of noise.
Naval extended this presence through long-form podcasts, such as The Tim Ferriss Show and Joe Rogan, where his calm, thoughtful delivery contrasted with the hype-driven culture of Silicon Valley. By showing up as both an investor and a philosopher, he built a brand that blends authority with wisdom.
Today, Naval is not just followed for startup advice; he’s looked up to as a guide for living well.
The takeaway: Naval’s personal brand proves that influence isn’t built on self-promotion, but on sharing ideas people return to again and again because they outlast trends.
Elon Musk: The visionary business leader
Elon Musk is not a typical example of a personal brand; he is a phenomenon. While most leaders build careful reputations, Musk built a global stage where his personality, companies, and vision are inseparable.
How Elon Musk built his personal brand
Musk’s personal brand was forged on audacity. He didn’t just found companies; he tied his identity to humanity’s boldest challenges: accelerating the shift to sustainable energy, colonizing Mars, and reimagining communication through X.
Unlike traditional CEOs who hide behind PR machines, Musk made himself the product. His Twitter presence, often raw and unpredictable, blurred the lines between executive updates, memes, and declarations of the future. By living in public, he made himself relatable to millions and impossible to ignore for industries.
This approach has fueled his companies’ growth. Tesla’s valuation is tied not only to cars but to belief in Musk. SpaceX is trusted with missions once reserved for nations. His personal brand is leverage; attracting talent, investment, and attention at a scale no corporate campaign could buy.
The takeaway: Musk shows CEOs and founders that a modern leader’s brand is not about perfection; it’s about owning the narrative, betting on impossible futures, and letting the world witness your conviction.
Taylor Swift: The artist mastering her brand
Taylor Swift is one of the most influential personal branding examples in modern culture, standing out as a female artist who has consistently reshaped power dynamics in a male-dominated music industry.
How Taylor Swift built her personal brand
Swift’s brand has always been rooted in storytelling; using music to share deeply personal narratives that connect with millions. But what sets her apart is how she’s turned challenges into branding opportunities. She fought back against streaming giants, withholding her music from Spotify until fairer royalties were established.
Each bold move reinforced her identity as an artist who refuses to be sidelined. By creating immersive “eras” around each album, she transformed her career into a cultural journey fans live through, not just listen to.
Her strategy has delivered unprecedented results: the Eras Tour broke records to become the highest-grossing tour in history, her re-recorded albums dominated global charts, and she joined the ranks of self-made billionaires—all while retaining creative control.
The takeaway: Swift shows that a personal brand becomes unshakable when you pair vulnerability with unapologetic control. Authority comes not from avoiding battles but from rewriting the rules to your advantage.
Greta Thunberg: The youth climate voice
Greta Thunberg began in 2018 with a solitary school strike outside the Swedish parliament. That simple act sparked a global movement now known as “Fridays for Future,” proving one person’s voice can mobilize millions.
How Greta Thunberg built her personal brand
Her brand grew through campaigns rooted in conviction rather than polish. The weekly strikes went viral on social media, inspiring youth climate protests in over 150 countries. She used symbolic acts like crossing the Atlantic by solar-powered yacht to attend the UN Climate Summit to reinforce her message of sustainable living.
Memorable speeches (“How dare you”) amplified her authenticity, turning her into a moral compass for climate action. Every choice and campaign, school strikes, global marches, and confronting leaders consistently signaled integrity and courage.
Her influence created real change: millions mobilized worldwide, she became Time’s Person of the Year at 16, and her activism pushed climate to the forefront of global political agendas.
The takeaway: Greta is a personal branding example of how conviction, consistency, and courageous campaigns can build influence without marketing polish—when your values and actions are inseparable, your brand becomes impossible to ignore.
Key Takeaways From All Personal Brand Examples
Looking at these stories, one thing stands out to me: personal branding is no longer a “nice-to-have,” it’s a growth engine. Each of these individuals built influence by leveraging their strengths, consistently showing up, and creating value for their audience. That’s the real lesson here: your personal brand is built in the everyday actions that compound over time.
And if you’re serious about building your own brand, especially on LinkedIn, you don’t have to do it alone. That’s why we built Supergrow to make it easier to create authentic content, stay consistent, and grow an audience that brings real opportunities.
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