10 No-Fluff Rules To Build Your Personal Brand In 2025
10 no-fluff rules to build your personal brand in 2025
The most boring person you know is building their personal brand right now. They're posting daily LinkedIn updates about their morning routine. They're sharing motivational quotes on Instagram. They're trying every strategy they see online, and it's not working. Because they're listening to conflicting advice from seventeen different gurus, changing their approach every week, and confusing everyone who tries to follow them.
Here's what no one tells you: it doesn't matter whose advice you take. What matters is that you choose a method and stick to it. Consistency wins you fans. Flitting around between strategies just creates noise. Your audience needs to know what to expect from you. They need to trust that tomorrow's version of you will match today's.
I've spent years marketing businesses and watching entrepreneurs sabotage their own success by overthinking personal branding. After selling my agency and launching new ventures, I've seen what works and what wastes time.
Chris Do knows this better than most. As founder and CEO of The Futur, he's spent 22 years building design businesses while teaching creatives how to succeed. With over 2.5 million YouTube subscribers and a mission to teach a billion people to make a living doing what they love, he's figured out what works.
His 10 rules cut through the confusion. Here's how to apply them.
"Most of us are showing up into the world to be loved and to be accepted," says Do. "We create a persona, someone we feel safe behind and we start to bury ourselves." That gap between who you pretend to be and who you are gets wider every day. Eventually, you forget which one is genuine.
Stop performing. The quirks you're hiding are exactly what make you memorable. Your weird preferences, your unconventional background, the failures you don't mention. These are your differentiators. Do points to Disney's Aladdin: 'Jasmine preferred the street rat to the fake prince.' Because authenticity beats performance every single time. Share your opinions. Tell your story. Let people see the person behind the brand.
Your background isn't baggage. It's your superpower. "The origin story of you is the easiest one to tell because you've lived it," Do explains. Where were you born? What did your parents do? What shaped your worldview? These details create cultural currency that instantly connects you with your audience.
When Do shares that he's a Vietnamese refugee immigrant, you immediately understand aspects of his journey. Some assumptions might be right (emphasis on education, strong work ethic). Others might be wrong. But that starting point creates connection. Use your accent, your cultural references, your unique expressions. Don't bury them. They're shortcuts to trust and understanding with people who share similar experiences or find your background fascinating.
Think of yourself as light through a prism. Different platforms get different colours of your spectrum, but they're all still you. "We never show everyone all of us at the same time," Do explained. "We're showing them a little sliver of who we are." On Twitter, you're brief and punchy. On YouTube, conversational. On LinkedIn, professional but approachable.
Be the real you, no matter the platform. "The last thing you want is to pretend to be one kind of person on one platform and different on another," Do warns. When those worlds collide, you're exposed as fake. Pick your authentic self. Show different facets on different platforms. But never invent a whole new personality. Your Instagram followers will bump into your LinkedIn connections. Make sure they recognize the same person.
There's a crucial difference between building a brand and making money. One creates transactions. The other builds lasting relationships. "Lead with generosity and do it for as long as you can," Do advises. The data backs this up: 92% of people trust recommendations from individuals over brands. You become someone people trust when you give first.
Here's Do's golden rule: "Do personal development in private when no one's watching. When you discover things, teach that in public." Master it first. Share from experience, not theory. Before you ask for anything - sales, shares, or subscriptions - show up consistently with value. No strings attached. Forget scattered free samples. Establish yourself as someone worth paying attention to before you ever ask for payment.
Your logo doesn't build your brand. Neither does your colour scheme. Your story does. Do quotes Michael Margolis: "A product, service, organization without a story is a commodity." Do poses a brutal question: "They have a better brand. You have a better product. Who wins?" The better brand wins every time.
Look at Tesla's current struggles. The cars haven't changed. They are still high-performing, dependable, with the longest range. But when Elon Musk's story shifted, alienating core customers, European sales dropped 80%. "Facts tell, stories sell," Do states. Share your journey. Include the failures. Make people feel what you felt. Your story is the only thing competitors can't copy. Use it to stand out in an oversaturated market.
What makes someone magnetic? Do breaks it down: inner peace, high self-awareness, self-acceptance, vulnerability, and transparency. "When we're around someone with that powerful inner peace, we feel a little lighter," he observes. Stop trying to impress with external markers of success. The watches, cars, and humble brags aren't connecting with anyone.
This matters more than you think. 91% of Gen Z trust micro-influencers more than their parents for purchase decisions. They're not looking for perfection. They want genuine people sharing real experiences. Be vulnerable about your struggles. Share your process, including the messy parts. Drop the facade to create space for genuine connection. That's when people move from following you to advocating for you.
"The greatest gift you have as a human being is your capacity to learn, adapt, and evolve," Do emphasizes. Yet so many people wear their lack of change like a badge of honour. They're still using strategies from five years ago. Still creating content for an audience that's moved on. Still stuck in outdated thinking.
Do couldn't imagine being on camera at 40. Now he's co-executive producer of a TV show. "I didn't have a self story that limited who I could become," he reflects. Change is evolution, not regression. When Do went back to client work, he reframed it as an opportunity to teach transparently about the process. Your ability to evolve keeps you relevant. Document your learning. Share your pivots. Let people see you grow.
Most creators post and ghost. "They adopt a spray and pray strategy," Do observes. His metaphor is perfect: "Imagine you're hosting a party. You invite all these people. What do you do? You leave your own party." The comments aren't just engagement metrics. They're future content ideas. They're connections. They're the difference between an audience and a movement.
Show up in your comments. Answer DMs. Create dialogue. "I love getting this question: 'Chris, is this really you?'" Do shares. "I answer one word: 'Yes.'" Be present for the people who show up for you. They're not just numbers. They're individuals choosing to spend time with your content. Honor that choice by being there.
"Everything you do is rehearsal for the thing you're going to become," Do believes. His secret? Bringing diverse knowledge to every conversation. Comic books in professional presentations. Pop culture in finance conferences. The eclectic mix makes him memorable.
Stop separating your interests from your brand. Your weird hobbies, random knowledge, and unexpected passions make you three-dimensional. 70% of employers say a personal brand matters more than a resume. Your growth becomes your credential. Read widely. Learn constantly. Then connect those dots in ways only you can. That unique perspective is your competitive advantage.
"Followers do whatever you tell them," Do explains. "A movement feels like they're involved in the decisions with you." Do's movement has a clear mission: teach a billion people to make a living doing what they love without losing their soul. It's bigger than content or courses. It's a shared purpose.
Your movement needs the same clarity. What change are you creating? Who are you serving? Why should people care? Movements change industries. Define your mission beyond making money. Give people something to belong to, not just something to watch. When they feel part of your journey, they become champions, not just consumers.
People are starting to trust individuals more than institutions. That's your opportunity. But most squander it by trying to follow everyone's advice simultaneously. They bounce between strategies. They confuse themselves and their audience.
Pick your approach. Stick to it. Be boringly consistent while everyone else chases shiny new tactics. The most successful personal brands are built on timeless principles, applied relentlessly.
Your boring consistency will win. Start today. Choose your method. Follow through. The person building their brand with steady intention beats the one constantly starting over. Every single time.
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The Hill
20 minutes ago
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Can an American pope apply US-style fundraising and standards to fix troubled Vatican finances?
VATICAN CITY (AP) — As a bishop in Peru, Robert Prevost was often on the lookout for used cars that he could buy cheap and fix up himself for use in parishes around his diocese. With cars that were really broken down, he'd watch YouTube videos to learn how to fix them. That kind of make-do-with-less, fix-it-yourself mentality could serve Pope Leo XIV well as he addresses one of the greatest challenges facing him as pope: The Holy See's chronic, 50 million to 60 million euro ($57-68 million) structural deficit, 1 billion euro ($1.14 billion) pension fund shortfall and declining donations that together pose something of an existential threat to the central government of the 1.4-billion strong Catholic Church. As a Chicago-born math major, canon lawyer and two-time superior of his global Augustinian religious order, the 69-year-old pope presumably can read a balance sheet and make sense of the Vatican's complicated finances, which have long been mired in scandal. Whether he can change the financial culture of the Holy See, consolidate reforms Pope Francis started and convince donors that their money is going to good use is another matter. Leo already has one thing going for him: his American-ness. U.S. donors have long been the economic life support system of the Holy See, financing everything from papal charity projects abroad to restorations of St. Peter's Basilica at home. Leo's election as the first American pope has sent a jolt of excitement through U.S. Catholics, some of whom had soured on donating to the Vatican after years of unrelenting stories of mismanagement, corruption and scandal, according to interviews with top Catholic fundraisers, philanthropists and church management experts. 'I think the election of an American is going to give greater confidence that any money given is going to be cared for by American principles, especially of stewardship and transparency,' said the Rev. Roger Landry, director of the Vatican's main missionary fundraising operation in the U.S., the Pontifical Mission Societies. 'So there will be great hope that American generosity is first going to be appreciated and then secondly is going to be well handled,' he said. 'That hasn't always been the circumstance, especially lately.' Pope Francis was elected in 2013 on a mandate to reform the Vatican's opaque finances and made progress during his 12-year pontificate, mostly on the regulatory front. With help from the late Australian Cardinal George Pell, Francis created an economy ministry and council made up of clergy and lay experts to supervise Vatican finances, and he wrestled the Italian-dominated bureaucracy into conforming to international accounting and budgetary standards. He authorized a landmark, if deeply problematic, corruption trial over a botched London property investment that convicted a once-powerful Italian cardinal. And he punished the Vatican's Secretariat of State that had allowed the London deal to go through by stripping it of its ability to manage its own assets. But Francis left unfinished business and his overall record, at least according to some in the donor community, is less than positive. Critics cite Pell's frustrated reform efforts and the firing of the Holy See's first-ever auditor general, who says he was ousted because he had uncovered too much financial wrongdoing. Despite imposing years of belt-tightening and hiring freezes, Francis left the Vatican in somewhat dire financial straits: The main stopgap bucket of money that funds budgetary shortfalls, known as the Peter's Pence, is nearly exhausted, officials say. The 1 billion euro ($1.14 billion) pension fund shortfall that Pell warned about a decade ago remains unaddressed, though Francis had planned reforms. And the structural deficit continues, with the Holy See logging an 83.5 million euro ($95 million) deficit in 2023, according to its latest financial report. As Francis' health worsened, there were signs that his efforts to reform the Vatican's medieval financial culture hadn't really stuck, either. The very same Secretariat of State that Francis had punished for losing tens of millions of euros in the scandalous London property deal somehow ended up heading up a new papal fundraising commission that was announced while Francis was in the hospital. According to its founding charter and statutes, the commission is led by the Secretariat of State's assessor, is composed entirely of Italian Vatican officials with no professional fundraising expertise and has no required external financial oversight. To some Vatican watchers, the commission smacks of the Italian-led Secretariat of State taking advantage of a sick pope to announce a new flow of unchecked donations into its coffers after its 600 million euro ($684 million) sovereign wealth fund was taken away and given to another office to manage as punishment for the London fiasco. 'There are no Americans on the commission. I think it would be good if there were representatives of Europe and Asia and Africa and the United States on the commission,' said Ward Fitzgerald, president of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation. It is made up of wealthy American Catholics that since 1990 has provided over $250 million (219 million euros) in grants and scholarships to the pope's global charitable initiatives. Fitzgerald, who spent his career in real estate private equity, said American donors — especially the younger generation — expect transparency and accountability from recipients of their money, and know they can find non-Vatican Catholic charities that meet those expectations. 'We would expect transparency before we would start to solve the problem,' he said. That said, Fitzgerald said he hadn't seen any significant let-up in donor willingness to fund the Papal Foundation's project-specific donations during the Francis pontificate. Indeed, U.S. donations to the Vatican overall have remained more or less consistent even as other countries' offerings declined, with U.S. bishops and individual Catholics contributing more than any other country in the two main channels to donate to papal causes. Francis moved Prevost to take over the diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, in 2014. Residents and fellow priests say he consistently rallied funds, food and other life-saving goods for the neediest — experience that suggests he knows well how to raise money when times are tight and how to spend wisely. He bolstered the local Caritas charity in Chiclayo, with parishes creating food banks that worked with local businesses to distribute donated food, said the Rev. Fidel Purisaca Vigil, a diocesan spokesperson. In 2019, Prevost inaugurated a shelter on the outskirts of Chiclayo, Villa San Vicente de Paul, to house desperate Venezuelan migrants who had fled their country's economic crisis. The migrants remember him still, not only for helping give them and their children shelter, but for bringing live chickens obtained from a donor. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Prevost launched a campaign to raise funds to build two oxygen plants to provide hard-hit residents with life-saving oxygen. In 2023, when massive rains flooded the region, he personally brought food to the flood-struck zone. Within hours of his May 8 election, videos went viral on social media of Prevost, wearing rubber boots and standing in a flooded street, pitching a solidarity campaign, 'Peru Give a Hand,' to raise money for flood victims. The Rev. Jorge Millán, who lived with Prevost and eight other priests for nearly a decade in Chiclayo, said he had a 'mathematical' mentality and knew how to get the job done. Prevost would always be on the lookout for used cars to buy for use around the diocese, Millán said, noting that the bishop often had to drive long distances to reach all of his flock or get to Lima, the capital. Prevost liked to fix them up himself, and if he didn't know what to do, 'he'd look up solutions on YouTube and very often he'd find them,' Millán told The Associated Press. Before going to Peru, Prevost served two terms as prior general, or superior, of the global Augustinian order. While the order's local provinces are financially independent, Prevost was responsible for reviewing their balance sheets and oversaw the budgeting and investment strategy of the order's headquarters in Rome, said the Rev. Franz Klein, the order's Rome-based economist who worked with Prevost. The Augustinian campus sits on prime real estate just outside St. Peter's Square and supplements revenue by renting out its picturesque terrace to media organizations (including the AP) for major Vatican events, including the conclave that elected Leo pope. But even Prevost saw the need for better fundraising, especially to help out poorer provinces. Toward the end of his 12-year term and with his support, a committee proposed creation of a foundation, Augustinians in the World. At the end of 2023, it had 994,000 euros ($1.13 million) in assets and was helping fund self-sustaining projects across Africa, including a center to rehabilitate former child soldiers in Congo. 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Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Can an American pope apply US-style fundraising and standards to fix troubled Vatican finances?
VATICAN CITY (AP) — As a bishop in Peru, Robert Prevost was often on the lookout for used cars that he could buy cheap and fix up himself for use in parishes around his diocese. With cars that were really broken down, he'd watch YouTube videos to learn how to fix them. That kind of make-do-with-less, fix-it-yourself mentality could serve Pope Leo XIV well as he addresses one of the greatest challenges facing him as pope: The Holy See's chronic, 50 million to 60 million euro ($57-68 million) structural deficit, 1 billion euro ($1.14 billion) pension fund shortfall and declining donations that together pose something of an existential threat to the central government of the 1.4-billion strong Catholic Church. As a Chicago-born math major, canon lawyer and two-time superior of his global Augustinian religious order, the 69-year-old pope presumably can read a balance sheet and make sense of the Vatican's complicated finances, which have long been mired in scandal. Whether he can change the financial culture of the Holy See, consolidate reforms Pope Francis started and convince donors that their money is going to good use is another matter. Leo already has one thing going for him: his American-ness. U.S. donors have long been the economic life support system of the Holy See, financing everything from papal charity projects abroad to restorations of St. Peter's Basilica at home. Leo's election as the first American pope has sent a jolt of excitement through U.S. Catholics, some of whom had soured on donating to the Vatican after years of unrelenting stories of mismanagement, corruption and scandal, according to interviews with top Catholic fundraisers, philanthropists and church management experts. 'I think the election of an American is going to give greater confidence that any money given is going to be cared for by American principles, especially of stewardship and transparency,' said the Rev. Roger Landry, director of the Vatican's main missionary fundraising operation in the U.S., the Pontifical Mission Societies. 'So there will be great hope that American generosity is first going to be appreciated and then secondly is going to be well handled,' he said. 'That hasn't always been the circumstance, especially lately.' Reforms and unfinished business Pope Francis was elected in 2013 on a mandate to reform the Vatican's opaque finances and made progress during his 12-year pontificate, mostly on the regulatory front. With help from the late Australian Cardinal George Pell, Francis created an economy ministry and council made up of clergy and lay experts to supervise Vatican finances, and he wrestled the Italian-dominated bureaucracy into conforming to international accounting and budgetary standards. He authorized a landmark, if deeply problematic, corruption trial over a botched London property investment that convicted a once-powerful Italian cardinal. And he punished the Vatican's Secretariat of State that had allowed the London deal to go through by stripping it of its ability to manage its own assets. But Francis left unfinished business and his overall record, at least according to some in the donor community, is less than positive. Critics cite Pell's frustrated reform efforts and the firing of the Holy See's first-ever auditor general, who says he was ousted because he had uncovered too much financial wrongdoing. Despite imposing years of belt-tightening and hiring freezes, Francis left the Vatican in somewhat dire financial straits: The main stopgap bucket of money that funds budgetary shortfalls, known as the Peter's Pence, is nearly exhausted, officials say. The 1 billion euro ($1.14 billion) pension fund shortfall that Pell warned about a decade ago remains unaddressed, though Francis had planned reforms. And the structural deficit continues, with the Holy See logging an 83.5 million euro ($95 million) deficit in 2023, according to its latest financial report. As Francis' health worsened, there were signs that his efforts to reform the Vatican's medieval financial culture hadn't really stuck, either. The very same Secretariat of State that Francis had punished for losing tens of millions of euros in the scandalous London property deal somehow ended up heading up a new papal fundraising commission that was announced while Francis was in the hospital. According to its founding charter and statutes, the commission is led by the Secretariat of State's assessor, is composed entirely of Italian Vatican officials with no professional fundraising expertise and has no required external financial oversight. To some Vatican watchers, the commission smacks of the Italian-led Secretariat of State taking advantage of a sick pope to announce a new flow of unchecked donations into its coffers after its 600 million euro ($684 million) sovereign wealth fund was taken away and given to another office to manage as punishment for the London fiasco. 'There are no Americans on the commission. I think it would be good if there were representatives of Europe and Asia and Africa and the United States on the commission,' said Ward Fitzgerald, president of the U.S.-based Papal Foundation. It is made up of wealthy American Catholics that since 1990 has provided over $250 million (219 million euros) in grants and scholarships to the pope's global charitable initiatives. Fitzgerald, who spent his career in real estate private equity, said American donors — especially the younger generation — expect transparency and accountability from recipients of their money, and know they can find non-Vatican Catholic charities that meet those expectations. 'We would expect transparency before we would start to solve the problem,' he said. That said, Fitzgerald said he hadn't seen any significant let-up in donor willingness to fund the Papal Foundation's project-specific donations during the Francis pontificate. Indeed, U.S. donations to the Vatican overall have remained more or less consistent even as other countries' offerings declined, with U.S. bishops and individual Catholics contributing more than any other country in the two main channels to donate to papal causes. A head for numbers and background fundraising Francis moved Prevost to take over the diocese of Chiclayo, Peru, in 2014. Residents and fellow priests say he consistently rallied funds, food and other life-saving goods for the neediest — experience that suggests he knows well how to raise money when times are tight and how to spend wisely. He bolstered the local Caritas charity in Chiclayo, with parishes creating food banks that worked with local businesses to distribute donated food, said the Rev. Fidel Purisaca Vigil, a diocesan spokesperson. In 2019, Prevost inaugurated a shelter on the outskirts of Chiclayo, Villa San Vicente de Paul, to house desperate Venezuelan migrants who had fled their country's economic crisis. The migrants remember him still, not only for helping give them and their children shelter, but for bringing live chickens obtained from a donor. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Prevost launched a campaign to raise funds to build two oxygen plants to provide hard-hit residents with life-saving oxygen. In 2023, when massive rains flooded the region, he personally brought food to the flood-struck zone. Within hours of his May 8 election, videos went viral on social media of Prevost, wearing rubber boots and standing in a flooded street, pitching a solidarity campaign, 'Peru Give a Hand,' to raise money for flood victims. The Rev. Jorge Millán, who lived with Prevost and eight other priests for nearly a decade in Chiclayo, said he had a 'mathematical' mentality and knew how to get the job done. Prevost would always be on the lookout for used cars to buy for use around the diocese, Millán said, noting that the bishop often had to drive long distances to reach all of his flock or get to Lima, the capital. Prevost liked to fix them up himself, and if he didn't know what to do, 'he'd look up solutions on YouTube and very often he'd find them,' Millán told The Associated Press. Before going to Peru, Prevost served two terms as prior general, or superior, of the global Augustinian order. While the order's local provinces are financially independent, Prevost was responsible for reviewing their balance sheets and oversaw the budgeting and investment strategy of the order's headquarters in Rome, said the Rev. Franz Klein, the order's Rome-based economist who worked with Prevost. The Augustinian campus sits on prime real estate just outside St. Peter's Square and supplements revenue by renting out its picturesque terrace to media organizations (including the AP) for major Vatican events, including the conclave that elected Leo pope. But even Prevost saw the need for better fundraising, especially to help out poorer provinces. Toward the end of his 12-year term and with his support, a committee proposed creation of a foundation, Augustinians in the World. At the end of 2023, it had 994,000 euros ($1.13 million) in assets and was helping fund self-sustaining projects across Africa, including a center to rehabilitate former child soldiers in Congo. 'He has a very good interest and also a very good feeling for numbers,' Klein said. 'I have no worry about the finances of the Vatican in these years because he is very, very clever.' ___ Franklin Briceño contributed from Lima, Peru. ___ Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
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Aryna Sabalenka's Appearance in New Photos With Boyfriend is Turning Heads
Aryna Sabalenka's Appearance in New Photos With Boyfriend is Turning Heads originally appeared on Athlon Sports. Women's tennis World No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka is making sure she enjoys her time in Paris beyond just competing for another Grand Slam title at the French Open. Advertisement Prior to her quarterfinal match against Chinese sensation Qinwen Zheng, Sabalenka spent her day off with her entrepreneur boyfriend, Georgios Frangulis. Based on the photos the Belarusian star uploaded to Instagram on Monday, she and Frangulis visited the iconic Hermes boutique at 24 rue Faubourg Saint-Honore 24. It is where the popular rooftop garden in Paris is located, and Sabalenka took several photos from her trip to the iconic landmark. "An @hermes garden is the best garden," she wrote in the caption of her post. Aside from fans commenting on the several boxes of Hermes merchandise she bought, many also took notice of Sabalenka's appearance with her boyfriend. Advertisement The 28-year-old was wearing a simple red shirt paired with wide-leg denim pants, giving off a relaxed vibe. Her supporters also noted how happy she looked. "You are glowing girl," a commenter wrote. Another one said, "U look so cuteeeeee." A fan praised her color of choice for her outfit, noting, "red is ur collor!!" "Loveee this outfit," a fourth fan stated. "We love ur smile!!!!" a supporter added. A follower remarked, "Beautiful," while another social media user echoed a similar sentiment, saying, "You look super beautiful Aryna." Aryna Sabalenka reacts after missing a shot against Zheng Qinwen.© Geoff Burke-Imagn Images Sure enough, it looked like the time she spent away from tennis helped Sabalenka, as she went on to beat Zheng in their quarterfinal showdown on Tuesday, 7-6(3), 6-3. Advertisement Sabalenka will face Iga Swiatek next at the French Open semifinals. Should she keep dominating, fans will probably see more of her off-court adventures in Paris in the next few days. Related: Aryna Sabalenka's Behavior After French Open Match is Turning Heads This story was originally reported by Athlon Sports on Jun 4, 2025, where it first appeared.
