I'm always telling people about the power of building a platform, but I wanted to hear it from other people too - what actually happens when you start showing up online and sharing your work? So I did what any curious person would do… I asked the internet.
I posted on LinkedIn asking people to share the awesome, exciting, or surprising things that came their way as a result of building their personal brand. Within hours, my notifications were blowing up. The responses ranged from "I got my dream client" to "I met my husband" to "I built a 10,000-person community from a single post."
Some of these stories are absolutely wild. Here's what they told me.
David Nebinski tells me that "my life has fundamentally changed from podcasting for seven plus years. I can't fathom what my life would be like without starting it."
Rachel Meltzer says "I just spoke at a conference all expenses paid for the first time ever because of my personal brand I've built. I didn't apply to speak; I got invited."
Lucy Werner says "Talking about how to hype yourself to small businesses got me invited to Adobe Max LA. I got to hand a copy of my book to Chris Do and appear on The Futur podcast, which led to teaching for his program. Asking in my newsletter for teaching gigs generated over £10,000 worth of workshops from different outlets, and I now run a paid newsletter membership and hypeyourself.com all from raising my profile/platform."
Aditi Chhawacharia says "I'm a high schooler, but so MANY INSANE stuff has happened in my life all over the past year."
Déja White says "I got invited to a wedding after just three conversations with a friend I met on LinkedIn randomly. Plus colleges to speak and get asked to speak on podcasts, panels, and lead workshops."
Marion Siboni scaled her followers from 1K to 13K on LinkedIn in less than a year, launched a newsletter which is now read by 6,000 subscribers every month, and even taught a webinar on personal branding for the US Department of State. Personal branding/thought leadership helped her land numerous public speaking opportunities like South by Southwest, Yale University, etc. Even got a feature in Forbes a couple months ago.
Kayla Morán says "Being invited to testify on Capitol Hill - if I hadn't started sharing my life online in college and law school and used that experience to start my own law firm out of necessity... without using social media to market my firm, I wouldn't have anything I currently do. That invitation was the moment it all came together."
Aiza Coronado says "The big one was to become a networking leader for the world's largest email conference, GURU."
Ayush Gupta says "Several career-defining opportunities through organic outbound and LinkedIn content creation. This is in the world of VC which is extremely opaque."
Jerrica Long says "I've gotten to speak at events and panels, made new connections, even spoken at several media outlets both on the record and off about my work."
Aastha Duggal says "All my dream clients have come to me through LinkedIn. All 10 people of my team came through LinkedIn, and the best doors have opened."
Rich Keller says "I received my TEDx talk by building my personal brand after I left my corporate career to pursue what is now my life's work. I didn't apply to TEDx. They contacted me."
Juliette Paige left corporate engineering to freelance in the experiential marketing industry last year. Since building a personal brand on this platform in January, she's gotten upwards of 75% of her work here, built her entire network, and it's where her co-founder found her.
Girls Into VC is now a community of 10,000+ women around the world, but started as a LinkedIn post from founder Isabella Mandis.
Danielle Farage says "Literally my entire career is because of posting on LinkedIn."
Mita Mallick (with more than 200K+ followers!) says "I became a 2X best-selling author thanks to my LinkedIn community."
Sarah K Peck met her husband. He says "I read her entire blog and couldn't get enough, so asked if we could be pen pals."
Lucy Regan says "There are literally so many - made genuine friends who live near me, coached women from Europe and all of America that I would never have met otherwise who are literally trailblazers in their industry. Podcast guest appearances, potential collaborations. Basically if I hadn't taken that brave step of putting myself out there on this platform, none of that would've happened."
Morgan Young says "Literally all of the above - got to work with my dream brand partners like Canva, Notion, LinkedIn, Lenovo. Got to go to and speak at multiple conferences like Grace Hopper Celebration, Harvard WECode, TEDNext. All of my speaking gigs have come from LinkedIn at Fortune 500s, Ivy League universities."
Grace Ling founded Design Buddies, a massive community of designers, hosts tons of events, made Cocreate, hosts fun collaborations, appeared on podcasts, made Fluffle (a helpful web app to improve productivity).
Sara Berry says "I had no idea how many podcasts I'd be able to guest on; that was a huge surprise. Many of the podcast hosts have become good friends of mine."
Sally Wolf says "In addition to many professional opportunities - from first major six-figure client via cold email after seeing me on one brief LinkedIn live to several speaking opportunities to helping me pivot industries - I was also privileged to be able to record a video for a LinkedIn friend played to him on hospice mere hours before he passed."
Kristin McClement says "I went from being behind the camera to putting myself in front of it now that I'm running my own company."
Raina De says "I became a professor at 26 thanks to my personal brand and taught university students personal branding and image reputation management."
One of the biggest thing that jumps out to me from all of these stories is how many people were genuinely surprised by what came their way.
Like they weren't actively chasing these opportunities - the TEDx talk, the six-figure client, the co-founder, the invitation to testify on Capitol Hill. They were just showing up, posting about what they loved and what they were learning, and then these things just found them.
It's almost like this magic of the algorithm where you put in the work to build your brand around the things you care about, and suddenly you're getting connected with exactly the people you should be finding. You're not out here applying to everything or cold emailing a hundred people - opportunities are actually coming to you.
I think the secondary benefit that really gets me is the actual relationships. This isn't just some self-serving transactional thing where it's like "I want to get money and clients." People are finding real friends. They're building meaningful communities. Someone literally met their husband (!!) because he read her entire blog and asked if they could be pen pals - like how crazy is that? Or getting invited to a wedding after three conversations with someone you met randomly on LinkedIn. That's the stuff you can't plan for (serendipity anyone?!)
And I think this is honestly the future of careers now. Danielle Farage says her entire career is because of posting on LinkedIn. Mita Mallick, who has 200,000 followers, became a 2x best-selling author thanks to her LinkedIn community. So many people have been able to pivot into their dream field or start their dream business because of the platform they built.
[P.S. I’ve loved hearing all of these stories SO much I’m thinking of making it a regular series. If you have an awesome story around building a platform and any tips/advice you want to share, I’d love to hear it!]
My story (and why I'm thinking about this)
I truly believe intentionally shaping your personal platform can be one of the most influential things you do - whether you want to attract your dream job, find financial security, start a business, or even meet friends in a new city.
There's something SO powerful about the internet and putting yourself out there to actually connect with the people and opportunities you want.
It always comes down to agency for me. It puts your future in your own hands. Building a platform is inherently empowering. You're not just waiting for a dream company to choose you or for someone to give you permission to start your business. You're actively saying: this is what I want to do in the world, these are the stories and expertise I have, and you show up that way. (heavy on this energy!!)
Many months ago I was in a workshop where someone gave great advice about how to think about personal brands.
The idea is this: your personal brand exists whether you intentionally shape it or not. It's what someone would say about you when you're not in the room. And if it's not clear what you do, think about how many friends you have from growing up or college where you have no idea what they do. That's completely normal. Even your partner - you're like, oh they're in software. But think about the difference with people who are super crystal clear on what they do. "Oh I help authors have a successful book launch." "Oh I help women C-suite executives find more work-life balance." Whatever it is. You having clarity on what you do and telling this to other people gives clarity to everyone one else.
Always remember that you have this opportunity to ACTIVELY shape this. The way you tell your story is the way you get from A to B.
So for my own life: this time last year I had no formal creator economy experience. I was interested in it, I listened to a lot of podcasts, I was learning about it, and I was like "I would love to work with these companies, I would love to write about the creator economy for a living." There were several people I looked up to and I thought "I want to be like them." But I didn't have any formal experience. So how did I connect those dots?
The answer is I just started posting on LinkedIn. I posted about what's fascinating to me, what I'm learning in the creator economy. I'd listen to a podcast and say "oh I learned this interesting tidbit." That's step one.
Step two was connecting with other people who were posting about the same things. And I could have been intimidated by "oh they have a lot of followers" or "they seem more advanced" but no - I'm building a community and network around me of people interested in the same things. Over time that became this organic community of other creator experts. So when opportunities would come up - "who's writing a newsletter about creators?" or "who's an interesting person to follow about personal branding?" - people started tagging me because that's just something I'd been showing up and doing.
The act of defining what you want to do and then having people start to associate you with that... it becomes true.
In the latter half of this year I've started having companies reach out to me because they've read my LinkedIn posts about the creator economy or really liked the creator interviews in my newsletter. I've gotten referrals from the Creator Spotlight newsletter - all relationships I've built over this year.
I'm doing a lot of reflections around this time of year, thinking about how I want to intentionally show up next year. I keep going back to this idea of not wanting to think too small and feeling like I did many of the things I wanted to do this year. So I'm thinking about what my dream life looks like if all of these things could be possible: going to speaking events, building an awesome community, achieving stable income through educating people and not relying on service-based work, writing a book - all of these things 💫
How do I show up differently? How do I continue to build this platform to attract dream opportunities?
I think it's really exciting. It's a big area I want to continue focusing on - not just helping other people, but really bringing together people interested in these same things.
Want to get intentional about building your platform?
Okay so this is one of my first live events and I'm still kind of figuring it out as I go, but bear with me - I'd love to share some of the insights and awesome stories I've gathered from building my own platform and doing all these interviews for this piece.
Build Your Platform: How to Future-Proof Your Career in 2026
Friday, November 28
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM GMT
💌 RSVP HERE 💌
I'll share what I've learned about actually building a platform (the behind-the-scenes stuff no one talks about), walk through some of these wild stories in more detail, and give you some practical things you can start doing if you want to build your own.
Would love to have you there!