Are you reading soul-destroying posts on social media?
Flip the script on personal branding
Introduction
When you wash a cup, it’s not about you. It’s about the cup itself and its need to be washed.
Personal branding isn’t about your need for attention, followers, or sales. It’s about the people you serve—the ones who need your expertise, guidance, or product. The act of sharing your work becomes an expression of respect for those people and the moment.
This week, I flip the personal branding narrative.
Instead of obsessing over what you got, shift the focus to what you give.
This selfless approach makes your personal brand more magnetic. It’s not rooted in ego, but in service. And that’s the essence of real impact.
The History of Personal Brand
The idea of a "personal brand" stole into our collective consciousness over 20 years.
Once, the word "brand" was reserved for products—the swoosh on a pair of Nikes or the golden arches of McDonald’s. Today, it’s as if every individual is expected to be a walking, talking billboard. The shift started with the rise of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where people began curating their online personas as carefully as companies curate their marketing campaigns. Personal branding has since evolved into a cultural phenomenon, amplified by the gig economy and the pervasive pressure to monetize oneself in a hypercompetitive digital world.
For people over 45, this evolution feels jarring. You’ve spent decades refining expertise, solving complex problems, and contributing to a field that values results over optics. The sudden demand to create a “brand” can feel both foreign and superficial—a game better suited for influencers than industry veterans.
Naomi Klein’s book, “No Logo,” argued that companies like Nike were no longer about making things—they were about selling an idea, a lifestyle, a brand. The product itself became secondary. Similarly, personal branding today often feels detached from substance. Just as Nike doesn't manufacture shoes, personal brands seem more about projection than production.
Scroll through social media, and the stereotypes of personal branding become painfully obvious: attractive looks, gym selfies, tales of rags-to-riches success—personal branding dominates the digital space.
But it was not always that way.
Your Personal Brand is Workmanship
We’re sitting in an outdoor cafe in Tel Aviv on a warm spring morning. Michael is helping me debug a technical challenge that I’ve obsessed on over for over a year. A woman with short blonde hair in her 40s, sitting across from us, joins our conversation. She chides us, “You should be careful discussing sensitive information in public like that.” We ask her to join us.
This is what makes Israel great: random people joining your conversation.
I turn to Michael and ask, “So what does being a professional programmer mean to you?”
He replies, “What do we have left after we go? All we have is our workmanship, the way our software helps people.”
Our new friend nods her head in agreement.
The apprenticeship system was popular in the Middle Ages.
A young person (apprentice) would learn a trade by working under the guidance of a skilled employer (master) for a period, often several years.
The apprenticeship was not only about skill acquisition; it also included aspects of moral and social education. The model ensured that skills, techniques, and knowledge were passed down through generations.
The master-apprentice model began to decline with the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as mass production and industrial manufacturing processes changed the nature of work and public school education.
By the mid-1980s, the industrial revolution eventually led to the outsourcing of everything and the birth of companies that are brands, not manufacturers.
The next revolution happened when ChatGPT was first released to the public on November 30, 2022, by OpenAI.
AI replaces jobs.
Editing, coding, analyzing data, transcribing videos, producing voice-overs. Hundreds of applications.
The one thing that AI cannot do is understand the needs of human beings.
Navigating this shift can feel daunting, but it’s exactly where your expertise can shine. If you’re ready to explore how, let’s talk
Not understanding the needs of humans means that it is not capable of translating needs into a product or service that helps people.
The future for people over 45 is to create communities of masters that will flourish by virtue of their expertise and human communication skills.
Your personal brand becomes your workmanship, not your social media posts and selfies.
It’s this attention to workmanship, not superficial branding, that creates a legacy.
Some People Make. Some People Teach.
Some people make things.
I have two saxophones—a Selmer Series III alto and a Selmer Mark VI tenor.
Henri Selmer was a French musician and instrument maker who founded the renowned company Henri Selmer Paris in 1885. Selmer saxophones are iconic because of their exceptional craftsmanship, quality, and tone.
Each Selmer saxophone undergoes meticulous hand assembly and quality control.
Selmer became a brand because of the instruments’ workmanship. Endorsements by legendary jazz musicians such as John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, and Kenny Garrett helped build a legendary brand.
The Selmer factory is located in Mantes-la-Ville, approximately 90 km northwest of Paris, and it is actually across the street from the Buffet Crampon clarinet factory.
140 years later, the workmanship and iconic brands of Selmer and Buffet are still in Mantes-la-Ville (both companies are owned by PE firms today).
Some people teach things.
I did an undergraduate degree in physics and mathematics. I took functional analysis with Prof. Hillel Furstenberg. Furstenberg was the ultimate teacher and a master of memory and clarity. He would take the 400 bus from Jerusalem to Bar Ilan University. He would walk into the lecture hall with a crossword puzzle paperback in his hip pocket. In those days, the crossword puzzle paperbacks had pictures of hip-looking women on the cover for a reason known only to the publisher.
Every Tuesday, Furstenberg would lecture without notes. It was the hardest undergraduate course in mathematics but the easiest learning experience. I got a 90 on the final.
Furstenberg is one of the world’s great mathematicians. He received prestigious awards, including the Abel Prize and the Wolf Prize in Mathematics.
A great mathematician and a great teacher.
The opportunity for people over 45 who make and teach
AI is very poor at the last 30% of a problem.
VC investors are convinced that a world of a billion AI coders will soon be a reality.
A reality check shows how mistaken this is.
A recent thread on LinkedIn led by Reuven Cohen:
Blind coding… 30% of AI-centric coding involves fixing everything that worked 5 minutes ago. What are we really learning?
Non-engineers leveraging AI for coding often reach about 70% of their project effortlessly, only to stall when tackling the final 30%.
This “70% problem” underscores a critical limitation in current AI-assisted development tools. Initially, tools like v0 or Cline seem almost magical, transforming vague ideas into functional prototypes simply by asking a few questions.
However, as projects advance, users encounter a frustrating cycle of bugs and fixes that AI struggles to resolve effectively.
The bug rabbit hole… The typical pattern unfolds like this: you fix a minor bug, the AI suggests a seemingly good change, only to introduce new issues. This loop continues, creating more problems than solutions.
For non-engineers, this is especially challenging because they lack the deep understanding needed to diagnose and address these errors.
Unlike seasoned developers who can draw on extensive experience to troubleshoot, non-engineers find themselves stuck in a game of whack-a-mole with their code, randomly fixing issues without any real idea of what or how these bugs are being fixed.
This reliance on AI hampers genuine learning. When code is generated without comprehension, users miss out on developing essential debugging skills, understanding fundamental patterns, and making informed architectural decisions.
This dependency not only limits their ability to maintain and evolve their projects but also prevents them from gaining the expertise needed to overcome these inevitable hurdles independently.
Don’t ask me how I did it, I just did it and it was hard.
AI democratizes coding, but it impedes the very learning it seeks to facilitate.
Conclusion
If you make things, be like Henri Selmer.
If you teach things, be like Prof. Hillel Furstenberg.
People like Selmer and Furstenberg are successful because they combine great personal strengths with great workmanship, product, and consistent delivery.
And yes—they have a consistent logo.
This is where people over 45 shine.
You may not know how to do something. Or how to create a personal brand.
But you know what to do and what questions to ask.
And that is precisely the essence of a great personal brand.
A great personal brand built on workmanship is incredible.
👉 Ready to build? Jump on a call—I'll show you how.