Hey ,

Personal branding is HARD. When I started my career, I hated it.

I was also one of those that used to think real developers are busy writing code, while fake ones are online.

I also used to believe that building a career in software engineering means only writing code.

Then something happened. I started looking for jobs. I would apply to 10 jobs, 20 jobs, 50 jobs, and got zero replies.

The replies I got from time to time were painful rejections.

I knew I was 200% competent for the job, but almost no one even gave me a chance.

That's when it hit me. I didn't give anyone any reason to care. Why would anyone consider me when no one knew me?

The moment I started working on my personal brand online, I experienced a complete change.

I got three times more opportunities, doubled my yearly salary, and had the luxury of picking where I work.

I started getting emails like these. Notice this was coming from an article I had written.

Personal branding changed my life.

Personal branding changed my life.

I now apply for 1 or 2 top tier jobs, and have the flexibility of choosing from many offers.

In this letter, I'll show you 3 simple steps to starting your personal branding journey. Put in the work now, and never have to struggle as a developer again.

1. Value for value

The key principle to creating a strong personal brand is the desire to provide value. To get value from people, you need to make the attempt to provide an equivalent amount of value back to them.

To better understand it, think of ways to be helpful on the internet. How can I be helpful to someone on the internet today ?

Here are nine ways to be helpful on the internet:

1. Start a podcast. Invite a developer friend, and have a conversation that would create value.
2. Organise and lead Twitter spaces. Send cold DMs to top techies who love talking in spaces. Invite them for a space and moderate. Bonus: This is currently the best way to gain Twitter followers if you're starting from zero.
3. Create a YouTube channel. On your channel, provide valuable content with a specific target audience.
4. Join and contribute to company ambassador programs. Think Auth0 Ambassador, AWS Builders, Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals.
5. Share your knowledge by teaching. This could be an online course, in person classes, or creating educational articles.
6. Build a social media audience. Tweet or share posts daily on LinkedIn that focus on helping developers.
7. Build helpful, valuable products and launch them. Find product ideas that take less than a week, build them, and share them with a target audience that would use it.
8. Organise a tech meet up. Bring people together, and invite one experienced developer to talk to them for an hour or two.
9. Build open source packages. Find startups that recently raised funds and have an open source community. Contribute to their projects by building SDKs or a core feature.

To provide value on the internet, pick 3 out of the 9, and start doing them. When I started my journey, I focused on Number 3, 5 and 7.

Once you identify how you want to provide value, go to the next step.

2. Market your value

When you create value on the internet, you need to make this value known.

During an interview for a job, mention all these helpful and valuable things you did with your time.

Talk about the meet-ups you organised, the open source SDKs you created and how they were helpful.

Whenever you get a chance, do not be shy to bring up your value and use that to network.

3 years ago, I had a nice lady walk up to me at a conference and introduce her non profit foundation to me. Fast forward a few years later, I saw her announced on Twitter as a Github Star.

Her career is now 10 times easier because everywhere she went, she made her value known.

Do not hesitate to send direct messages to other developers on Twitter. Share your work, and tell them exactly how valuable it will for them.

I also recommend becoming active on one social media platform. You don't have to, but it helps a lot in this world where everyone is on social.

3. Stay consistent

Consistency beats skill and talent 100% of the time.

Doing any of the value providing ideas I shared above wouldn't change your career. But, doing them over and over and over would compound.

It is the consistency of doing that that will change your life and career.

Do not underestimate the value of showing up every single day.

Commit to a goal, and keep doing it the right way, and do not back down. That is how you leave a mark that the industry can't ignore.

Writing a blog post once won't help you much. But, writing and marketing a blog post once a week for 1 year straight will make a huge difference.

In conclusion, building a personal brand is a painful and annoying thing to do besides learning to code. But, do it right, and you never have to worry about jobs again. You never have to worry about networking. You also won't need to worry about the next steps to take for your career.

It gives you a boost, and that boost is real.