How to build a strong personal brand and paths it can lead you

StarPlatinum

A personal brand isn’t easy to start. I think it’s a constant reflection of yourself. I got into NFTs and created the account because I wanted to get more WLs. To do that, being someone who had no idea how to speak English, I had to force myself to start writing in English because the real communities were in that market.

I’m not gonna lie, it was me and Google Translate against the world lol. For months practically nobody saw me. I posted very random content, talked about the projects I bought or simply shared the art of my NFTs. There wasn’t much more to it, and that’s basically how I spent all of 2022.

But even though a personal brand is also about sharing your journey, you have to offer something to people.

In 2023 I discovered that the best way to grow an account from 0 was to become the dominant voice of a niche. In my case, that year it was Polygon and its NFTs.

At the end of 2022 I lost almost all the money I had on Solana because of the FTX crash. Desperate, a friend recommended Polygon to me.

I went all in after seeing Frank DeGods announce that Y00ts was going to migrate to that chain.

And at that moment I saw that nobody was talking about Polygon and its NFTs. That’s where I saw an opportunity. During the following months I was the only one making content about them. I made threads, shared collections, talked about the projects that were launching.

In my first year I went from 0 to 900 followers.

That year I went from 900 to 12,000, which was crazy knowing how difficult it is to grow on X at the beginning. More importantly, people started to know me on the timeline.

I was the trusted account for NFTs on Polygon.

And even though Polygon went to shit and I had to switch, I still think that’s the best way to grow when starting from 0.

Carlitos

Throughout my high school and university years, I continued to grow my network. And I want to tell you how, because I have seen loads of people introduce themselves wrong and network with an expectation so high, that they always leave events disappointed. Nobody likes to be standing alone without a single friend. So rule number one is to get one good friend. Whatever life throws at you, take it. If you can keep one good friend in your circle you have a proof of concept on how friendships work. It’s a give and take. Most people throw their problems at you, but are rarely prepared to really listen to you. If you listen to people and interact in a genuine way without expecting anything in return, real friendships evolve.

This is how I got friends with an Egyptian called Omar. After some months he told me his father was the chief architect for the new administrative capital in Cairo, Egypt. That they were looking for someone capable of helping them with BD in Europe. I looked at him and told him, I have zero experience, but I am in. This led to roughly twenty trips to Cairo with different European construction companies. Industry giants like ACS run by Florentino Perez in Spain or Strabag from Austria. Through cold and warm outreach, I somehow got to all of them and convinced them to jump on a plane to meet representatives in Cairo. There I sat with three star generals and multibillion dollar ceos while I was twentyfive and fresh out of university. I delivered. Until today I am proud of this.

My advice: Do not walk up to someone with your business card, telling everybody how great you are and that you were top of your class in Harvard. No one cares. Find anecdotes that tell a story, entertain the crowd, and be humble. Same thing on X, where I started out creating content late 2021.

I got into Bitcoin late 2017 and all relevant information was (and still is) shared on X. I created my account and grew it organically over the years. Made a ton of mistakes and learned along the way. For every friend I have now online, I met ten people trying to scam me. Not sure what the ratio is in TradFi, probably its more sophisticated and thus hidden, but yeah. Paving my way among these people was often frustrating and annoying. At one point I even lost my account and had to justify to a bot that I am actually human. Peak kafkasque moment of my life. I

have seen many people come and go, pump and dump schemes and more sophisticated drains that almost killed the entire industry. Those that prevailed through, all of them, are the ones succeeding today.

You have to understand that very rarely success comes over night, and if so, it is very hard to actually sustain it. Growing organically allows you to fail and improve and I truly believe the journey is as important as the destination you want. How you got there matters more than the number itself if you truly understand influence and are not addicted to fakeable metrics.