Your personal brand doesn't need a color palette

Have we been overcomplicating personal branding?

I ask because I spent a long time doing exactly that, and I want to save you the detour.

For a while, I was convinced the answer was the look. As someone who started in graphic design, I love the look. If I could nail the colors, have an awesome logo, build a pack of Canva templates so every social post matched, then I would be set. So I made the templates, logos, and brand guideline documents. Everything matched. And it was fine. It looked like a brand.

Then I decided the problem was format. Social media moved from nice single images that matched a color scheme to video. It wasn’t the design; it was the delivery. B-roll reels with text on top, cut to a beat, captioned just right. I got better at that too. That still can be very effective. But something was still missing. It was story. The clips in the reels had to flow into the next.

Everyone started doing storytelling. So I told stories too. And storytelling is real. I still believe in it. Story has a way of drawing people into curiosity, emotion, imagination, and anticipation. But somewhere in there I noticed something I didn’t want to admit.

At their best, all of these things worked. They were engaging. People watched. Yet it still felt blah.

Something was missing, and it took me a long time to acknowledge it.

Here’s what I finally landed on. The colors, the format, the story structure- those are all containers. And I’d spent years perfecting the container without being honest about what I was actually putting inside it. I was so busy making it look like I had something to say that I skipped the part where I said it.

The missing piece was a point of view.

Not a prettier package. An actual opinion. The thing you believe that not everyone believes. The take that you firmly believe. The idea you keep thinking of and talking yourself out of because it’s a little too much you.

That’s the part no template can do for you, and it’s the only part that was ever going to matter.

In 2026, the brand that wins isn’t the most polished. It’s the one with something to say.

Polish is everywhere now. The tools are free, the templates are endless, and everyone’s b-roll looks roughly the same.

When the packaging is a commodity, the package stops being the differentiator. What’s left? The actual scarce thing is a real perspective from a real person who’s willing to speak up.

So here’s the shift I’d make if I were starting over. Stop asking whether your post looks on-brand. Start asking whether it says something you'd actually say.

Share what you actually think. Your ideas, your opinions, the take nobody else is putting out there. Let it be a little uncomfortable. That discomfort is usually the signal that you’ve finally got hold of something worth posting.

Stop perfecting the package. Start saying the thing.

What’s a take you’ve been holding back?