To begin with, let me give you a tiny spoiler, this article won’t tell you which one is better but will guide you on choosing between freedom, or fame in your journey. While running a webinar last year on personal branding, I and my fellow trainers had a very interesting debate on making the choice between fame and freedom.
In the construction of personal brands are we running after the likes & shares only or are we trying to build an institution out of it?
Are we just seeking fame or we are planning to turn this fame into a freedom business model in the long run?
Don’t be confused, let me break it down. Are you a person who prefers fame on different mediums, or do you choose the freedom to represent yourself in your preferred manner without worrying about fame?
Definitely it also leads to a vital question- which one is good: seeking fame or seeking financial freedom?
There is no straightforward answer to it. It all depends on the objective of personal branding. What an individual wants to achieve through personal branding is the very crucial deciding factor.
Will you just become famous through personal branding or do you want to augment your financial freedom through it? In the developed nations people have started making passive income after building their personal brands. In our country, we are also seeing social media influencers focusing on building freedom business models through product endorsement, brand association and so on.
So you can run after both. But definitely, that involves more time and effort.
Now the next vital question is how one can differentiate fame from freedom.
Let’s begin with the topic selection- Fame seekers work with a wide range of content topics starting from COVID19 vaccination to IPL series. With their unique style, they ensure their participation with trending topics/content.
There is no harm as long as they are happy with the gain of likes & shares.
On the other hand, freedom seekers deal with a very niche segment and offer solutions for that niche segment as well.
Let’s talk about Rafsan Sabab, the popular host and social media icon. If he preferred fame more than anything, he would have asked controversial questions to his guests to get a greater share of likes and shares. Instead, he chose to stick to his freedom for building his brand in his preferred way. Now if he had chosen fame over freedom, would it have been a bad choice? As long as he can turn it into a freedom model to sustain in the long run, it’s all good. Someone can choose to stick to the freedom model from the beginning till the end as well.
Whatever choice you go with, make sure:
You serve the purpose to benefit in the end
Stick to a certain set of values that don’t demean our society
Have empathy