Ep. 19 - In The Feed: How to Rebuild Your Personal Brand from the Inside Out to Make it Stand Out?

In this episode of In the Feed from The Underdog Protagonist, we dive into the deeper side of personal branding and the quiet burnout many creators are facing today. From the polished, performative trends to the cookie-cutter templates we all seem to be stuck in, we explore the question: Has personal branding lost its soul?

Pratyush reflects on the overwhelming pressure to stay relevant and the fear of not fitting in, all while discussing how personal brands are slowly becoming homogenous. He shares the painful truth about optimizing for performance over authenticity and how to reconnect with your true voice as a creator.

With practical tips on rebuilding your brand from the inside out, this episode is a wake-up call to anyone feeling disconnected in the content creation space. If you’ve ever wondered whether your personal brand still feels like you or has just become another performance, this episode is for you. 

About Pk:
Pratyush has been a designer for more than 6 years. He started creating content to share his knowledge and establish a connection between design and business. He believes that knowledge grows by sharing and he wants to do just that. He is in a journey to help fellow freelancers and content creators make a profitable career.

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Transcript

Hey. Hey. Hey. You're listening to The Underdog Protagonist, and this is in the feed. The series where we don't just scroll past what's trending, we pause, look and question what it's doing to us.

I'm Pratyush, designer, strategist and full time observer of how we have slowly started sounding and looking the same. Let's be real. You have felt it. You log in to Instagram, Facebook, X, Twitter or even LinkedIn and it hits you. Everything looks the same.

Same typefaces, same carousels, same content and everyone's building in public. Everyone's building in public and somehow everyone's building the same damn thing. You blink and someone else has just launched a newsletter, started an ocean template shop or dropped a canva designed quote card with a productivity hack. But something feels off. Not because it's bad but because it's empty.

Polished, performative, repetitive. So I want to ask a deeper question today and I don't ask this lightly. Has personal branding lost its soul? And maybe an even more important one. If you're building a personal brand, are you still building yourself?

Let's talk about it. Let's talk about design, identity, the quite burnout that comes from trying to always show up and the real cost of trying to stay relevant. This one's not about virality. It's about visibility that still feels like you. So grab your tea, coffee or whatever keeps you grounded because this one's gonna be real.

Let's get started. Let's start where we all are, inside the feed. The land of five word headlines, minimal aesthetics, muted color palettes, and quote unquote 10 things I wish I knew earlier. You know the format. Slide one big bold hook.

Slide two let's dive in. Slide three something motivational and sans serif font with eye tracking. It's clean, it's cohesive, it's clickable. But it's also starting to feel like we're all using the same template for ourselves. And I don't just mean design.

I mean identity. Everyone's learning how to post like a quote unquote creator. Everyone's becoming a quote unquote brand and suddenly what was meant to differentiate us, our personal brand, is doing the opposite. It's homogenizing us. Let me get honest as a designer and strategist, Someone who's been both behind the screen designing brands and in front of it trying to grow one.

Design has never been more accessible. You have got Figma, Canva, ChatGPT, Notion templates, hooks, frameworks, content systems and a whole lot more. But you know what else we have never had more of? Fear. Fear that if you don't follow the formula we'll get ignored.

Fear that if you don't post something experimental it'll flop. Fear that if we speak in our actual voice we won't sound professional. We have mistaken what's popular for what's powerful. So now most of what we're doing is not creating its curating. Curating ourselves, curating our voices, curating our presence and we wonder why we feel so disconnected.

Let's zoom in deeper. Personal branding. It started as this empowering thing, a new way, a way to own our story, build your platform, find your people. But somewhere along the way, personal branding became this. I help x do y without z.

Three content pillars, aesthetics, engagement hooks, cohesive voice. And suddenly you're not a person, you're a persona. A stylized, optimized version of yourself. As a strategist, I've helped people define that voice. I've built those style guides.

But what I've seen most often now is people becoming stuck in their own brand. I want to share this but it does not feel like on brand. I feel like I'm starting to sound like everyone else. I'm scared to pivot because I've built this image. We have become managers of perception instead of creators of connection.

I'll tell you this. I've done this too. There was a stretch of time where my content became a checklist. Big headlines, proven formats, clean visuals. And sure, it worked.

Engagement, up, saves, cool, followers, steady. But me? I felt like I was putting on a costume every time I hit publish. Not because I was lying but because I was not fully there. I was optimizing not expressing and that's where it hit me.

Personal branding if not careful becomes performance and performance without presence is exhausting. And here's where it gets deeper because this kind of burnout you don't even see it coming. You're posting regularly, you're quote unquote doing the thing But inside, you're disconnected. You're drained. You're showing up, but you're not showing through.

And this is a kind of burnout no one wants creators or solopreneurs about. Because it does not look like chaos. It looks like consistency. It looks like success. But you're not present in any of it.

You're just maintaining a version of yourself you don't even recognize anymore. There was a time I had to step away from my podcast. This one. Not because I did not have things to say but because I did not know how to say them as me anymore. I had taken so much advice, read so many guru posts, watched so many breakdowns of how to grow that I did not know what my own voice sounded like.

That's when I realized I was not burnt out from doing too much. I was burnt out from being someone else for too long. So what do you do when you realize the thing you built does not feel like you anymore? Surely you don't burn it down, you rebuild it slowly from the inside. That's where originality starts.

Not in some aesthetic, not in being the first to say something, but in being the clearest expression of who you are right now. Because if you're being honest, most of us aren't copying others on purpose. We're adapting for survival. You see what works, you replicate it. You try a format, it performs, you stick to it.

You're told to niche down, so you shrink yourself. You're told to be consistent, so you stop evolving. And before you know it, you've optimized away your voice. But your voice isn't gone. It's just buried under everyone else's.

So, how do you find it again? Let me get practical for a second. These are things I did slowly, awkwardly and in private to feel like myself again. I stopped designing for performance. I started designing like no one would ever see it.

Just for me. What came out, it wasn't perfect but it was true. I let myself be unsure online. I stopped acting like an expert and started writing like a person. Half finished thoughts, questions, opinions I had not tested yet.

It brought people in not because it was polished but because it was real. And I created without a funnel in mind. Not everything needs to convert. Some things are just meant to express, to release, to exist. And maybe most importantly I started creating things for my past self.

The version of me that was not trying to impress anyone, just trying to create something cool. That version of you that's where your originality lives. Unbranded, unmonetized and unfiltered. Okay. If you've made it this far I want you to pause.

Seriously, when this episode ends go to your feet, scroll 10 posts and ask yourself do I even remember who posted this? Does this feel personal or performative? Do I want to create like this or have I just been trained to? Because sometimes we don't need more strategy, we need more honesty. If your feed isn't inspiring you maybe it's time to stop feeding it and start feeding yourself again.

Let's reframe what originality actually means now. Not as this quote unquote never before seen level of genius but as this being the clearest most honest version of yourself in public. Not the best version. Not the smartest, most optimized aesthetic version. Just the realest one.

Because in a world where everyone is trying to sound right, the person who sounds like themselves becomes unforgettable. Originality is not invention. It's intention. Let me say that again. Originality isn't invention.

It's intention. It's not about you. It's not about being first. It's about being fully you. The way you break something down, the metaphors you use, the stories that shaped you, the contradictions you carry, that's the real brand.

That's the voice people stay for. Here's the thing most people won't admit. We are not afraid of failing. We are afraid of being seen failing. And that's what stops originality before it even starts.

Because being original means you're different and being different makes you visible and visibility opens the door to judgment. But let me ask you this and really think about it. Would you rather be liked for being identical or remembered for being original? It's easy to make things that blend in but it's brave to make things that might get misunderstood. But that's the only way to mean something.

Let's talk to the designers in the room for a second. There's nothing wrong with strategy. There's nothing wrong with optimizing layouts, testing content flows, studying the algorithm. But if the soul of the work is missing, then all you have built is a beautiful echo. And here's what I have realized as a strategist.

Design without story is decoration and story without truth is manipulation. But design with story and truth, that's connection. And connection is the only currency that lasts. Let me say this before we close. I'm not anti brand or anti strategy.

I love design. I love building brands. I still help people define their voice, their presence, their identity. But I've learned this. A good brand does not start with clarity.

It starts with courage. Courage to say this is me right now, messy, changing, alive. And courage to say things before you know how they will land. Courage to build slower but truer because the soul of a brand is not in its visuals, it's inside its vulnerability. Alright.

Deep breath. If you're still here, thank you not for listening to me but for listening to yourself through me. Let's close this out with one truth. Just because something looks good in the feed does not means it's good for your soul. So what do you do?

You pause, you rebuild and you start again. This time with yourself in it. And that's the kind of personal brand that does not just grow, it grounds. If this episode made you exhale a little, if it made you reflect instead of react, sell it to someone who's burning out quietly. The strategist who's tired, the designer who's disconnected, the creator who forgot why they started.

And if you've got work you have not posted not because it's bad but because it's too real. DM it to me. I'll hype it up. You are not alone in this. You have been listening to the underdog protagonist and this was in the feed.

We'll see you in the next episode but until then, take care.