Personal Brand & Thought Leadership

The business case

A Thousand Episodes About Wine — Gary Vaynerchuk, Wine Library TV · United States · 2006–2011. Gary Vaynerchuk worked in his family's wine retail business. In 2006 he began recording a daily video programme about wine, filmed cheaply and published online at a time when almost no retailer was doing anything similar.

Why it matters

The audience attaches to the person, not the company. A company brand takes years and considerable money to establish. A founder brand can be built with consistency and a camera. It is also portable. If your venture changes, pivots or ends, the reputation you built personally remains — which makes it one of the few genuinely durable assets available to an early founder. The mechanism was not talent. It was frequency maintained for years while almost everyone else stopped.