I Grew From 0 To 5M Followers, My 10 Personal Branding Rules

After 11 years and over 1,800 videos on YouTube and elsewhere and millions of followers, I want to tell you my 10 rules that I believe in how you build a powerful personal brand. So without further ado, let's get into it. Okay, rule number one in building a powerful personal brand is to choose authenticity over image. What do I mean by that? Most of us are busy showing up into the world to be loved and to be accepted and we adopt a new personality. We create a persona, someone we feel safe behind and we start to bury ourselves. We bury who we really are, our weird preferences, maybe some kind of thing we've done in the past and bring some anxiety or guilt or even shame to us. And what happens is over time that gap between the persona and the real you gets bigger and bigger. It's a wide chasm between those two points. And I warn people about this that if you pretend to be someone long enough, you start to forget the who the real you is. And this is seen in so many movies and I think it's done for a reason. It's to teach you a lesson, but until you learn it, you're going to watch the same story over and over again. A popular film like this would be Aladdin from Disney where he he has a genie. He's like, I want Jasmine to fall in love with me. So he pretends to be a prince. She walks in with a certain pumps and character. And the weird ironic thing is Jasmine was more interested in the street rat than the fake prince because the fake prince was really into himself, was literally walking with chess forward and kind of strutting around the place when she liked that other guy who was full of adventure and mischief. And so he had to learn that lesson. So these films, these movies, these scripts and TV shows were designed to teach you this lesson to lean into who you really are. Because here's the truth, no one really likes that persona anyways. The second rule to building a powerful personal brand is to understand the power of your origin story. Origin just means the beginning. And the origin story of you is the easiest one to tell because you've lived it. There's nothing you have to fabricate. Answer these few questions. Where were you born? Who were your parents? What did they do? What is your ethnicity? And then we tap into something called cultural currency. The thing that is shorthand for who you are. When you hear somebody's last name, whether it's Garcia, Yamamoto, or Tran, you kind of know a little bit about that person or their culture because this is how we do things. We create shortorthhand or unfortunately the opposite side of that is a stereotype for that kind of person. And this is where it's really powerful because you can play to or against that stereotype. So, if I tell you I'm from Vietnam, I'm a refugee immigrant to the United States without telling you much more than that, you already know a lot about me. Some of it could be true, some of it might not be true. You might assume that I grew up poor and that we did. You also assume that we eat certain kinds of food and we may or may not be Catholic because a lot of Vietnamese are Catholics. And you might think to yourself, Chris probably has typical tiger parents, like where school was really emphasized and getting anything less than A's was not acceptable. And you'd be right. And you might think to yourself, he probably got the belt a couple of times. And you would almost be right cuz there's always a threat of violence at our house. But I never got any of that. I was I was too good, everybody. That's why. If you believe that, I got a bridge to sell you. So these are things that we trade on like our food, our our accents, our certain kind of colloquial expressions and these are things that we shouldn't bury. These are things that we should bring to the surface because when you use those expressions and the terminology in the accent that you do, you warm over the audience and you're letting them into your world. They might speak the same language. They might have the same accent or they might just be really intrigued by your particular type of accent. Now, here's the thing. In America, we're fascinated by two types of accents, or maybe three. The Brits, the Australians, and the French. The French we think of as romantic. The Brits we think of as intellectual or really intelligent. And the and the Australian accent we find to be warm, charming, and sometimes rugged, salted the earth. So, lean into the power of your origin story. Rule number three on how to build a powerful personal brand, consistency across platforms. Okay. Now, here's the thing. I think this about you because I think this about me that to see all of you is almost like too blinding. And if we if we think about it like that, like we never just show everyone all of us at the same time. We're showing them a little sliver of who we are. The metaphor I like to use here is this. If you see light and you're like, "How do you see light, Chris?" Well, if you can see anything, you're seeing light. But it's not until light is filtered through a prism that you can actually see what makes up white light, which is a whole rainbow of colors. And this is the metaphor I like to use because maybe to your parents, you're showing them the warm tones, the warm color spectrum or the warm hues. And maybe to your professional friends, you might show the cooler hues. And sometimes to your professional friends, you might show a broader spectrum. But here's the thing. It's not that they're not you. They're just parts of you. This is important because when you go and create content on Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube, you're showing different spectrums of light or color to that audience designed specifically for how that platform works. I can't show you all of me on Twitter or X because it's contained by a letter limitation. So, I have to really think about what it is I want to say and be as brief as possible. I want to be pathy, short, and powerful. But on YouTube, I want to build a different relationship with you, one that invites you into my office or to my living room and to have a more conversational style format, but all of it is rooted in who you really are. And the last thing that you want to do is to pretend to be one kind of person on one platform and a different kind of person on a different platform. Because when those two worlds cross, you're going to be revealed as a fake, as an impostor, as a scoundrel, and you don't want to do that. So be consistent across multiple platforms, but you're showing different spectrums of your total personality. Rule number four on how to build a powerful personal brand. Give value before you ask for anything. Lead with generosity and do it for as long as you can. There's a need to build your brand and there's a need to make money. Those are two very different ideas on how to show up online. When you're trying to make money, it's a transactional relationship. You're very clear about terms and conditions as how you work. There's an exchange of money or time or resources between you and someone else. And when that transaction is complete, that relationship almost always is over. The reward for being a very good professional service provider is you might actually build a relationship with people. Now, move that aside because I really want to talk about how you build a personal brand. A personal brand is the impression that people have about you. that gut feeling about who you are, your values, your belief systems, and you need to consistently show up as that person. The best way that you can do that to honor people's time and attention, their most valuable assets, is to reward them by giving them value. So, you're going to share what you know, and you're going to build this upon the experience and the things you've actually accomplished, not the things you just read about. And there's a general rule here, which is you do personal development in private when no one's watching. And when you discover things, you teach that in public. So don't get into this need to like rush into this and start sharing everything that you're just learning while you're learning it. One, it might not be good information. Two, you might want to change your mind later on. And we find that a lot of people who emerge or break out on the scene have been quietly perfecting their craft for a really long time and now they're being reflective or introspective and they're sharing with you the lessons they learned and how they learned it. So before you ask anybody for anything, show up consistently for as long as possible. giving them tremendous value with no strings attached. Rule number five on how to build a powerful personal brand is to understand that branding is done through storytelling and not just through visual aesthetics. My guest Michael Margolus who wrote the book story 10x in our conversation said a product, service, organization without a story is a commodity that in this world in a time in which we live in when we expect things to be of high quality quality is no longer the differentiator but it's brand. I read this thing recently online. It says, "They have a better brand. You have a better product. Who wins that?" I want you to think about that. Spend some time today and go look at the products that are superior that have a horrible brand as opposed to the companies that have a better brand but not a better product. Who wins in the marketplace? And if you do your thinking, spoiler alert, the better brand. And how do they do that? Because they have a better story. A story that relates to us. a story that we identify with and that we want to support because we have a choice every single day as consumers. Where do we spend our money? Two products that are similar. Actually, it doesn't even matter that that they're that similar. We will vote with the money that we spend for the company we want to see win in the marketplace every single day. The beautiful thing is there's lots of different people voting, so the market can support more than one story. But we're asking ourselves every single time, when I buy this, when I consume this, what does that say about me? So, right now in the news, we're pulling from the headlines here, if you're listening to this in 2025, Tesla's going through a massive downslide right now for a couple different reasons. One, competition from automakers, really big competition from Chinese automakers, but the self-destructive path that Elon Musk was on. He used to be about let's address global climate change. Now he's all about some really strange esoteric ideas. I don't want to comment on that, but that's really alienated a lot of people. He seems to be for the moment very right-wingleaning when most of his customers were left-leaning liberals. He's created kind of a problem for himself. Now, the cars are still great. They're still probably some of the most dependable, the most researched, the highest performing, longest range cars, but people are not buying them. And in Europe and many countries, sales of Teslas have dropped by 80%. Because the story that is being told about Tesla, whether it's true or not, has had a significant impact on the sales of this. So, what you need to do is understand this one concept when it comes to storytelling. Facts tell, stories sell. So, you can't be going out there objectively telling your story from a third party like biographer. You need to tell it from the heart. You need to tell us what's at stake. You need to make us feel what you're feeling by including sensory details, dialogue, and specific elements. And here's the last tip for you here. Don't let facts get in the way of telling a good story. And you know what? Go tell your story. Rule number six on how to build a powerful personal brand is to learn how to build emotional connections that resonate with people at scale. It sounds hard, but it's not that hard to do. First comes from a place of real authenticity, like true authenticity, like who I really am, and living in a place of peace and inner calm and self-acceptance. And when you can do that, I think people become really attracted to that. I've been thinking about this a lot throughout the spectrum of the kinds of people that live in our society. What makes someone really attractive? Like what really draws people to them that make them magnetic? And when I say attractive, I don't mean physical beauty. That's a different story. I'm talking about what kind of traits, personality, things do they have that people feel compelled to be around, that feel better about themselves. And I've reduced it down to a couple things. Number one is they have that inner peace that we're talking about. They have high degrees of self-awareness self-acceptance and then self-love or self-confidence. And the other part to it is they are truly vulnerable and transparent with who they are. They've moved beyond the shame, the guilt, and the self- judgment that they leave a lot of room for us to be ourselves, to be seen, to be heard, to be recognized, and not to be judged by them. But more importantly, I think what happens is when we're around someone that has that powerful inner peace, and that's probably an oxymoron, this powerful inner peace, we feel a little lighter. We feel a little bit more enlightened. And I think some of that we think might rub off on us and we want to be around more people like that. The opposite, the person who's showy, who's flashy, who's trying to impress you all the time, often is the case that they're not impressive at all, at least for somebody like me. So, put away your watches, your cars, your flashy jewelry, clothing, whatever. And stop telling me about your homes and the trips you've been on and how much money you have in your bank account because I'm not falling for it. Rule number seven on how to build a powerful personal brand is how you're able to stay relevant is through evolution. Evolution isn't a concept. It's something that we can see every single day. The thing I'd like for you to think about is the greatest gift that you have as a human being is your capacity to learn, to adapt, and to evolve. And so many of us are so proud of the fact that they've never changed and I don't understand that. And the funny thing is when I get together with people that I've known for 10, 20, 30 plus years, are they still listening to the same music? Do they dress the same way? Do they still have the same beliefs? And some of them shockingly are still loving the same bands from the 80s and the 90s and they've not moved on. They've not created room in their mind, their heart to like learn and explore new things. To me, the biggest marker of joy for me personally is when I reflect on how I was one year ago, I want to see a pretty big gap between that person and the person that you're seeing today. I'll give you an example. Very recently, I wrapped up season 2 of a TV show that I'm on. And this time around, I got a lot more airtime. I was really involved in the whole production process, and I was made a co-executive producer. Here's the thing. This sounds like great news, but if you were to tell me back when I was like 40 that this was going to happen, I'd scream and run out the window. The reason why is because I couldn't ever see myself being on camera, speaking, coaching, and doing all the things I'm doing today. But what I didn't do was to have a self story that limited who I could become. I was talking to one of my friends recently, and she was telling me the story about how she was going back to doing client work. And that to her was a story about pain, about sadness, because it felt like she was giving up and that she couldn't make it. So this was a story about someone losing. I said, "That's funny because I'm doing some client work and I'm overjoyed with it. I'm getting to help one of my friends do some really good important work and it's work that I'm really proud of. But then I think about all the opportunities I have to share with people, our community, what I did, how much it cost, what were the steps involved to show them transparently. And I was so excited. And I told her, I'm going to make a lot of money on this because people are going to want to see this. So similar stories about going back to work and doing client work. And two people can have very different takeaways from this. So, one person has a story about like how it's going to hurt them and how they feel some some shame about it versus me embracing and saying, "This is freaking awesome. This is evolution." And here's the cool thing. I'm not super crazy about doing client work, but I'm super like overjoyed with doing client work because now I get to share it with the world. It's because I'm not the same person I was 10 years ago because I didn't have an audience and I didn't have this mindset that I can actually teach people from the things that I'm doing. That's why it's really important for you to embrace this mindset where you're going to constantly evolve and change over time. And that's a good thing. Rule number eight on how to build a powerful personal brand. Engage your community. Don't just grow one. Okay, we all know it. A lot of people create content and they adopt a spray and prey strategy. Now, just so you don't get grossed out, it's like when you use a machine gun, you kind of spray it across the room and hopefully you hit a target or something. So what people do is they'll carpet bomb their content and they'll just walk away and they're asking for something from their audience which is please engage, please follow, please share, but they're not doing in this spirit of generosity. They just drop the content and leave. And I know a lot of thought leaders and content creators do this because they can't be bothered to have a conversation with the people they're asking to show up and stick around. The metaphor to all this stuff, it's not my idea, but imagine you you're a host to a party. You invite all these people and you want it to be packed. You want people to be buzzing about it for days and weeks afterwards and everybody comes. What do you do? You leave. You leave your own party. And that's what I think about content. You're inviting people, strangers and friends, to engage with each other with a piece of content. That's the party. Then you're not there. You go. I understand that you have a lot of things to do. So you might give this responsibility to a media manager, but you're missing out on some real things. Number one is true genuine connection. And number two, the comments and engagement and the stories that they share with you is the foundation for future content. Otherwise, you're just talking to yourself and it's very much a monologue. So I'm here to have a dialogue with people. So I want to engage with them and this is how you start to build a real community and not just an audience. So when you see them in real life, hopefully when they come up to you, you're like, "Hey, I'm the one who's DM'd you this whole thing. You remember me? I had to like survive cancer and your content got me through it." You're going to look at them like the deer in the headlights. Look, cuz you don't know what they're talking about. And I think they can feel it. I love getting this kind of question in our comment section, which is like, "Chris, is this really you?" And I answer one word, "Yes." How do they know? Yes, it is me. Of course it is me. Rule number nine on how to build a powerful personal brand. Personal growth is the brand strategy. I think everything you do is a rehearsal for the thing that you're going to become in the future. So it's really important today that you put in the reps that you work on personal development that you learn that you get coached or you put in the 10,000 reps that you need to the 10,000 hours of doing something over and over again. So that when that microphone or so when that person who's interviewing you or for that piece of content you're going to write you have a perspective and you can connect a lot of little dots. For me I believe the reason why people are drawn to our content is because I'm able to bring in this diverse kind of eccentric pool of knowledge and interest and talk about it from different angles. People will find like oh you're you're not going to talk over us. You're going to talk with us and use the language that we already understand. I'll tell you this story. I was speaking at a real estate conference with mortgage brokers and loan officers feeling like I do not belong here because my entire presentation is very designheavy and it's using all the pop culture references that I loved growing up as a kid. I do my presentation and to my surprise minutes into it people were really leaning in. They almost interrupted me like hey wait what what's going on? I saw a level of engagement I had not experienced before. Point of contrast here. Usually when I do this amongst my designer nerdy friends, they're so reserved, introverted, they don't emote, so I don't even know if it hits. But this particular group, they're mostly like alpha types. They're forward thinking, and so they're like leaning into the conversation. So afterwards, somebody came up to me and said, "You know what? I brought my 18-year-old kid and they pointed to me like, "This guy knows what he's talking about. This guy is cool. This is interesting to me." And a different person came up to me and said, "You know what? Growing up, I love these things. I didn't know you could talk about these things in public without being ridiculed. So, some of my favorite comic book characters who were my companions as as a child now evolve into being a part of my professional identity and I'm able to mix those things together. So, if you want to build a powerful personal brand, you need to be constantly working on yourself to expand your interest to be able to have deep conversation with people outside of your normal echo chamber so that you can continue to grow. Okay, here we are. Rule number 10. Build a movement. Don't just gain followers. The difference between followers and building a movement is this. Followers just do whatever it is that you tell them to do. a movement feels like they're involved in the decisions with you, that they're right there in the seauite looking out on the penthouse floor with you and they're going to be champions and they're going to tell their friends about what it is that you're doing. They're going to get into arguments with people in the street because when they hear bad things about you, like don't talk about my boy like that. What happens here is you've enrolled them into a deeper purpose, your mission, your vision, your your why, like beyond money. Why do you exist? have made it very clear to our audience. Number one, our vision, our mission is to teach a billion people how to make a living doing what they love without losing their soul. And if that sounds like you, I am here for you. And the positioning of the future is very specific. It is think of it like private art school without the crippling debt. You've heard me say this over and over again. I believe in education. I just believe it's outdated and overpriced. what I want to do and it's part of the core of who I am. My own personal story is education got me to where I'm at today. But I realized highquality education is the privilege of a few people and not accessible to most. So what we're doing is we're just furthering a system that punishes you for already being poor. How do we elevate society and to move us forward is through education. So it's why I'm so deeply passionate about this. So if people in the audience are feeling like yes, he is the teacher educator for us, he's building something we want to be a part of, they'll continue to show up and be part of this movement cuz they're going to decide, are they on team A or on team B? And I sure hope they're on team future. If you follow these 10 rules on how to build a powerful personal brand, I can almost guarantee you're going to make a lot of progress on this front. However, however, if you screw up this one thing, none of this will matter. For that watch this video. [Music]