Why Founders Are Building Their Personal Brands Before They Need It

Stop Letting Inferior Competitors Steal Your Spotlight

Legacy Builder helps founders turn their voice into visibility… and their content into deals and opportunities.

From strategy to writing, Legacy Builder runs your entire personal brand system:

→ Daily posting across all socials
→ Newsletter strategy, writing, and growth
→ All done with your voice, your values, and your business goals in mind

Right Now We’re Running a Promo: Get $2,000 Off

We’re running a limited-time promo right now… get $2,000 off your first month when you sign up to work with us.

If you’ve been meaning to show up like the authority you already are… now’s your window.

Learn more about our services and book a time with our team below:👇

Why Founders Are Building Their Personal Brands Before They Need It

Most founders wait until they need results to start building their brand.

They launch a product. They start fundraising. They’re hiring.

Suddenly, they realize… they don’t have an audience and no one knows who they are.

But the founders who win long term?

They build before they need it.

Because content isn’t a short-term marketing play.

It’s a long-term asset… one that compounds quietly over time.

Every post, every newsletter, every insight shared today creates trust, credibility, and visibility that pays off later:

• When investors are checking your feed before returning your call

• When dream clients DM you because they’ve “been following for a while”

• When top-tier hires already know your story, and want in

That’s why your personal brand matters now, even if you’re not sure exactly how you’ll use it yet.

You don’t need to post for the algorithm.

You don’t need to go viral.

You just need to show up consistently and keep doing it.

Because when the moment comes, the founders who already have attention and trust?

They don’t need to catch up.

They’re already ahead.

Share a “Behind The Scenes” Post

Want to know what kind of content builds trust the fastest?

It’s not thought leadership.

It’s a photo of you and your team actually doing the work… and a few raw lines about what’s happening behind the scenes.

That’s why we’ve started rolling this out for a number of our clients:

• A quick iPhone shot from a whiteboard session

• A behind-the-scenes pic from a client offsite

• A laptop selfie while prepping a launch

• Even a messy screenshot with a line or two of context

These posts work because they’re real.

They humanize the founder.

They pull back the curtain.

And they make people feel like they’re part of the journey, not just the audience.

This week’s experiment:

Share a behind-the-scenes photo from your week, something simple, real, and unpolished, and give your audience one honest insight about what you’re building or figuring out.

It doesn’t need to be deep. It just needs to be true.

That’s what people connect with.

Here’s a great example of a post we found that is exactly what we’re talking about.

_{A quick word from the founder, Clifton Sellers…}

Planning 2026? Here’s My Honest Take on the Marketing Channels Everyone’s Talking About

As we head into Q4, a lot of founders are rethinking where to focus in 2026.

I’ve tested most of the core growth levers, from Meta ads to personal branding to SEO and email, and here’s my take on each one I’ve tried and where I’d put my attention next year, depending on the goal.👇

Paid Ads (Meta / IG)

Pros: Scalable. Fast data. Easy to turn on/off.
Cons: Expensive learning curve. Creative fatigue is real. Requires constant testing.

My take: If you’re not an expert already, consider hiring an agency. But overall, we’ve seen a lot of success lately running ads to our high-ticket offer. I’d recommend experimenting with this method if you have product-market fit and can spend to learn.

Not great for trust-building or longer sales cycles.

SEO / Blog Content

Pros: Evergreen. Intent-driven traffic. Compounds over time.
Cons: Long ramp-up. Competitive. Often too slow for early-stage growth.

My take: Worth investing in if you’re playing a long game and can pair it with something that builds faster traction.

GEO (AI SEO) is something we’re looking at heavily heading into 2026 as well. Will keep you all posted as I learn more there…

Personal Branding (Social Content)

Pros: Trust-based growth. Builds reputation and visibility. Converts quietly over time.
Cons: Requires consistency. Results can feel “invisible” early on. Hard to delegate well.

My take: One of the best long-term bets, especially for service businesses and founders who are the face of the company. I’ve pretty much built the entirety of Legacy Builder using this method, so yeah, I’d recommend getting started here if you haven’t already.

Email Newsletters

Pros: Owned audience. High-leverage. Builds deep trust. Great for warm lead nurture.
Cons: Hard to grow nowadays. Easy to deprioritize. Requires a clear POV to stay relevant.

My take: Every founder should be building a list… even if it starts small.

Video Content (Short-form / Reels / TikTok / YouTube Shorts)

Pros: High engagement. High reach potential. Builds personal connection.
Cons: Time-consuming. There’s a lot more friction with recording videos than there is written content. Often hard to tie directly to revenue.

My take: Amazing for awareness, but needs to plug into a larger system (email, socials, offer, brand) to convert.

What I’m focusing on in 2026:

• Deepening owned channels (email newsletter)

• Diving headfirst into video content and posting regularly on YouTube

• Using ads strategically to support socials and organic content, not as the backbone of growth

Reminder: No one play wins on its own.

But the founders who layer channels with purpose and stay consistent tend to be the ones who dominate the market long-term.

GEO Is the New SEO… Here’s What Founders Need to Know:

AI SEO and “GEO” have become hot-button topics over the past few months. Case in point below…👇

As AI-powered search engines (like Google’s SGE and ChatGPT’s Browse with Bing) continue to roll out, we’re entering the era of GEO: Generative Engine Optimization.

Unlike traditional SEO, which optimizes content for blue-link search results, GEO is about optimizing your content to be sourced, cited, or summarized by AI models.

So, what is GEO?

It’s the practice of making your content more likely to appear as a trusted source inside AI-generated answers.

That means:

• Writing with clarity and authority on your niche

• Publishing under your real name and domain

• Using structured data, citations, and context

• Posting thought leadership content across indexable platforms (like LinkedIn, personal blogs, newsletters)

Why it matters: If someone asks ChatGPT or Google’s SGE, “Who’s the best [insert niche] consultant/founder/firm?” You want your name in the answer.

What founders should do now:

• Repurpose social content onto searchable surfaces (blogs, newsletters, your site).

• Be specific. Authority is earned through clarity, not vagueness.

We’re heading toward a world where AI will summarize the internet for your future clients, and your content needs to be part of what it finds.

Legacy Builder — Our flagship content strategy and writing service. We help founders become the authority in their niche by building a repeatable system for newsletters, social content, and thought leadership that attracts clients and opportunities.

Ingage — The community & workflow system for building authority online. What if growing your brand was simple and structured? Ingage helps you run daily content campaigns, track results, and grow through community-driven support.

Subscribe to the Newsletter — If you were forwarded this email, make sure you don’t miss future editions. Subscribe today and get practical insights delivered weekly.

🤝 Get In Front of My Audience — With more than 85,000+ newsletter subscribers, 360,000+ X/Twitter followers, and 40,000+ LinkedIn followers, my team and I work with dozens of partners in unique ways to help them grow. Interested in a partnership, reply to this email “Partnership.”