This week we explore what it means to have a personal brand, whether or not you should build one, and if so how. 

0:00 Intro: personal brand == reputation

1:30 No matter what you do you will have a brand --> be intentional about the kind of brand you want to build and choose how you want the world to perceive you

2:47 Personal branding affords leverage to fulfill ambition --> personal branding efforts should scale with ambition

4:26 The paradox / hypocrisy in "I'm internally motivated, it doesn't matter what others think of me"

10:23 Personal brand is a mechanism to filter to your niche audience

11:45 Example 1: two types of VCs - press machines vs super low key

13:04 Example 2: research / academia world

16:46 Why it does matter what other people think of you

18:48 Inflexibility is the downside to having a really strong personal brand

20:55 Niche fame has less downsides

22:24 Personal brands as a primary source of income vs source of leverage

28:51 Brands are just a slice you so take it with a grain of salt always

32:12 Irony that none of us are active on social media / have strong personal brands

33:51 Post social media, don't consume it

34:17 Andrei vs Wing on influencers

35:26 Wing does not want to be an influencer as he dreams of living in New Zealand far away from people

37:00 Roadblocks stopping our own personal brand development: social media is a plague on society, operational work, inexperience, not high priority

41:47 Wing, Ivan & Andrei's rough personal brand definitions

44:35 Summary

More about us:

- Wing (https://wingvasiksiri.com): "Founder and Managing Partner at iSeed SEA"

- Ivan (https://ivanfj.com): "PhD researcher in Biodegradable Plastics at UC Berkeley"

- Andrei (https://andrei.ai): "PhD researcher in Machine Learning at University of Cambridge"