Yesterday, a woman I was playing golf with asked me a very simple question: “You’re the one who does that personal branding thing, right? But what exactly do you do?”

I started answering. And halfway through, I realised that what I actually do has somehow become a very well-kept secret — even to me. Because a lot has changed over the past few years.

I’ve written a book about personal branding and more than a hundred and forty articles. For years I ran personal branding trainings and worked with leaders on their visibility. From there my work expanded into corporate branding and strategic communication. I helped experienced leaders enter the digital world and start managing their personal brands intentionally — my team and I essentially took over their communication so they could focus on what they were exceptionally good at.

At the same time I studied coaching and NLP, and went deeper and deeper into how people and organisations actually think, make decisions and perceive themselves. Two years ago that same curiosity took me into a doctoral programme, where I research leaders’ digital identities and the use of AI in shaping them. That research has since grown into a visibility system and tool built specifically for leaders, which Jörgen and I have been developing — TOP1.

Alongside all of this I have kept working with organisations — not only making their leaders more visible or positioning their brands, but helping them uncover their real value and express it far more clearly.

At some point I realised that none of these activities, taken separately, described what I actually do anymore. And I realised something else. I don’t want to simply deliver trainings. And I don’t want to work only on the external surface — how someone looks, what they post, what their logo looks like, how their communication sounds.

Because real change does not happen on the surface. The substance sits much deeper: in how a person or organisation makes sense of itself. The stories it tells about itself. And the stories it doesn’t. What it truly values. Where it is going. And whether what it shows the world is aligned with who it actually is — and who it is becoming.

You can always polish the outside. But if there is no clarity underneath, even the best communication ends up as a beautifully polished surface that doesn’t connect.

The core of my work is identity

Today my work begins much earlier. I help people and organisations understand who they really are, and then make that identity understandable, meaningful and valuable to others. Who you have been. Who you are today. And who you are becoming.

Most of the organisations and leaders who come to me have already achieved a great deal — but they have outgrown their old identity. The old story no longer describes them. The new one has not yet been articulated. And their future ambition is already a step ahead of the way the organisation currently sees and presents itself. My work is to align those three, and to put the future identity to work today.

That means I never start with a logo, a slogan, a website or a LinkedIn strategy. I listen. To leaders. Owners. Employees. Clients. I use coaching and NLP tools together with branding, strategy and communication thinking, and I look for the recurring patterns, the language, the values, the tensions — and the thing that makes that person or organisation genuinely different.

I don’t invent identities — I help uncover them

Out of everything I have studied, researched and done in practice, I have developed my own in-depth methodology for getting to the real core of a person or organisation. It is not one questionnaire, and it is not one workshop. It is a multi-layered process built around three questions.

• What makes this person or organisation genuinely different?
• What stays consistent regardless of roles, services or markets?
• What is the value they create in a way others cannot truly copy?

I don’t invent identities. I help uncover them, understand them, articulate them — and package them so that others grasp them immediately.

Because most of the time the core is already there. It simply hasn’t been noticed, consciously articulated or made visible clearly enough. That is why people and organisations tend to recognise themselves very quickly in this work: “Yes. That’s us.”

Once you know the one thing you are damn good at, visibility changes

Visibility stops being about showing yourself. It stops being about ego or the need to be constantly seen. It becomes about owning your uniqueness — and with that comes responsibility.

If you have something that can genuinely help other people, then it is your responsibility to make it visible, understandable and accessible to those who can benefit from it.

And there is not much difference here between a personal brand and a corporate brand. Both begin in the same place. First you have to find what is genuinely yours. Then you have to own it. And finally, take responsibility for making sure the people who could benefit from that value know it exists.

Only then come positioning, branding, visual identity, personal brands, leadership visibility, communication and marketing. Because the stronger the internal foundation, the less you need to artificially come up with things in external communication. And the better everything works.

I had to go through exactly the same process myself

When I started moving more intentionally into the international market a couple of years ago, I didn’t yet fully understand what I was going to do there. I knew what I could do. But I couldn’t yet articulate the one thing I was exceptionally good at, and what made my work different.

Today I work with large international organisations and do work that sometimes makes very accomplished people simply say: “We have never looked at it like this before.” And now I understand why. Not because I do one particular thing better than everyone else, but because my strength is the ability to go deep and see several layers at once — to connect identity, people, strategy, brand, communication, visibility and future ambition into one coherent whole.

Both art and science

What inspires me most about this work is the synergy between intuition, logic and strategic thinking. On one hand you need to listen, sense nuance, notice what is not being said, and trust intuition. On the other you need very clear logic, structure, analysis and strategy to connect those fragments and turn them into something understandable, usable and effective.

That is exactly why this work requires both. Because brands are not perceived only rationally. A huge part of how we perceive a person, an organisation or a brand happens subconsciously — through language, tone, visuals, behaviour, symbols, associations and small signals we rarely notice consciously.

So it is not enough to ask “What do we want to say?” We also have to ask “What signals are we actually sending?” — and look at what people genuinely perceive. What patterns they notice. What meanings they create. What they feel, even when they cannot yet put it into words.

This is where intuition becomes important. It helps us notice what sits underneath the words: tensions, contradictions, recurring patterns and meanings that people or organisations do not yet consciously recognise. But intuition alone is not enough. To turn perception into a strong identity and a strong brand you need logic, structure and strategy — the ability to analyse what you see, break the patterns apart, separate what matters from what doesn’t, and build a deliberate system that works consistently across channels, people and situations.

The art is sensing what is not yet visible. The science is turning it into something others can clearly perceive.

Why boxing is identity work too

One more project fits under this same umbrella, even though at first glance it looks like it belongs to a different world. Together with Monika I created an experiential format called Next Round, where we bring principles from boxing into leadership and teamwork.

What does boxing have to do with branding or identity? Quite a lot. Because identity is not only what you say about yourself. Identity shows up in how you actually behave. How you react under pressure. How you set boundaries. How you hold focus. How you stand your ground. How you trust yourself and others. How you respond when a situation turns unexpected or uncomfortable.

Boxing makes patterns visible very quickly — patterns a person may not realise they have. You can speak very convincingly about confidence, courage, presence, trust or leadership. But the moment the situation becomes physical, fast and unpredictable, the real pattern comes out.

So this format is not a random side project. It is simply another way of making visible the same thing I work with in my core business: helping people and teams recognise, understand, express and genuinely embody their identity.

Identity is not a slide or a slogan

Perhaps this is the most important common denominator across everything I do. Identity is not something you write on a PowerPoint slide. It is not a slogan. It is not a list of values on a wall. It is not a LinkedIn profile.

Identity is how you understand yourself, the choices you make, the way you behave — and the imprint you leave in other people’s perception.

Exactly the same is true for strong organisations. Their real differentiation is usually not found in roles, job titles, activities, services or products — those can all change. Real differentiation sits deeper: in how the organisation sees the world. How it thinks. The choices it makes. What it considers important. Why people trust it. And the value it creates in a way others cannot truly copy.

Every person and every organisation has this. The question is whether they know what it is. Whether they can articulate it. Whether they are brave enough to own it. Whether they can embody it through their behaviour. And whether other people can understand it too.

So yes — I still work with personal branding. And branding. And leadership visibility. And communication. And AI. And sometimes even boxing. But today I see all of them as different expressions of one much bigger body of work.