Personal Branding vs Personal Development

Personal branding and personal development are not the same. Personal branding gurus believe that you can package yourself like a product through personal branding.

What is personal branding?

Personal branding refers to the steps you take to increase your perceived value in the marketplace. For example, a professional speaker may need to dress for success and fake it until he makes it. The speaker may need to call himself the “best motivational speaker in Asia” or the “best selling author” in his online store.

Personal branding is like playing a character. This is why I called it repackaged character development.

Professionals use personal branding to increase their income, credibility, and self-esteem. You can do all of those when you create your personal development plan.

But there is a slight but significant distinction.

In personal branding, you are the product—one brands a product or animal to show ownership. In the olden days, heretics and enslaved people were branded too.

What is personal development?

Personal development refers to the activities you do to become your damndest best. I can also say that it is a journey to personal transformation.

In personal development, you are the creator. You develop yourself to become a leader, teacher, artist, and remarkable person who creates and multiplies value. Your products and services solve problems.

An observer may mistake that personal branding and personal development are the same. The big difference is in the mindset.

The first is a product, and the latter is a creator.

We are done with the guide. Let’s now proceed to explore ideas that will help us grow daily.