When a brand identity crisis hits you, there’s one question you want to ask yourself to take the power back: Who are you, really?
Not your niche. Not your offer stack. Not your aesthetic. You.
Because if you’ve been showing up online for more than a year, there’s a decent chance your brand has drifted. It’s still producing content, still ticking the visibility boxes, but somewhere along the way, it stopped sounding like you. It started sounding like everyone else. That’s not a strategy problem. That’s an identity problem. And it’s the exact thing that leads to burnout.
This is what Episode 2 of CEO Declassified gets into. Consider this your interrogation session.
Watch How to Get Out the Brand Identity Crisis:
Your Voice Is Your Brand, And You Can’t Outsource It
One of the more interesting things that happens when you’ve been creating content for a while: you start to sound like the internet. Polished. Smooth. Vaguely motivational. And completely forgettable.
AI tools are part of this. Not because they’re inherently bad, they’re not, but because too many people hand over the entire creative process and never take it back. The tell-tale signs are everywhere: the same three sentence structures, the same clichéd openers, the same hollow energy that makes people scroll right past.
The rule I keep coming back to: don’t outsource the things that require your presence. That’s a surefire way to trigger the pesky brand identity crisis.
Your voice is one of them. Your DMs are one of them. The actual relationship-building that turns strangers into clients? Definitely one of them. You can use AI as a starting point, sure, but if you’re not rewriting in your own cadence, cutting the buzzwords, putting your actual personality back into it, what you end up with is a brand that sounds like a press release.
“The stumbles, the accent, the opinions that make someone uncomfortable – that’s the stuff people remember. Being imperfect is infinitely more magnetic than inauthentic.”
When someone can read your post and hear it in your voice, without even meaning to, that’s when you know you’ve built something real. That’s brand recognition that no algorithm update can take from you.
The Old Persona Has to Go Eventually
Here’s something that doesn’t get talked about enough: the version of you that showed up online two years ago isn’t you anymore. And that’s fine. That’s supposed to happen.
When I first went live on video (February 2016), I was intensely introverted. My English was still catching up to my thinking. I showed up with energy a few levels higher than I actually felt, because I knew the alternative was staying invisible. It was a kind of performance, but it was also practice. Eventually, the performance and the reality started to sync up.
That’s not identity theft. That’s the real growth you go through.
The problem is when people hold onto the old persona out of comfort or out of fear that evolving means losing their audience. But here’s what actually loses audiences: showing up inauthentically, stiff, and performative, because you’re still playing a version of yourself that retired two years ago.
“You don’t have to change who you are. You get to release who you were.”
The glow-up is real. The style evolution, the confidence shift, the way you walk into a room – all of it is content. All of it belongs in your brand. Let people see the arc.
Visibility Without Identity Is Just Exhaustion
You’ve probably felt this at some point – the grinding, joyless version of showing up online where you’re technically consistent but completely hollow. That’s what happens when you’re visible without being identifiable.
Borrowing someone’s format is fine. Everyone does it, and there’s no shame in using what works. But borrowing someone’s voice? That’s where it starts to corrode. You can’t sustain a persona that isn’t yours. Your audience will feel the gap before you can name it, and you’ll burn out long before they do.
The fix isn’t a new content strategy. It’s a simpler question: what’s actually memorable about you?
Not going to college. A thick Russian accent that somehow became an asset instead of a liability. Opinions that make people stop scrolling because they’re not sure yet if they agree. A background, a path, a set of tastes that no one else has in quite the same combination.
You don’t always see your own differentiators until you start talking to other people. But they’re there—and they’re the only foundation worth building on.
Opinions Are a Positioning Tool, Not a Risk
Here’s a quote I’ve been carrying around since I read it in Dan Kennedy’s No BS Marketing book back in 2015:
“If you haven’t upset anyone by noon, you’re not doing enough marketing.”
I didn’t always live by it. Around 2020 I softened up – the world felt touchy, the stakes felt high, and I started censoring the kinds of opinions that used to be my whole brand identity. For a couple of years I felt genuinely disconnected from my own content. And it showed.
Leaders have edges. And it’s not about being arrogant, but more about taking a stand for something you believe in. When you share a perspective that makes someone lean in or push back, you’re doing two things at once: attracting the people who are built for your work, and filtering out the ones who aren’t. Both are good.
The coached-to-death version of this advice is “be authentic.” The actual version is: share the take that makes you a little nervous to post. Say the thing about boundaries, or industry standards, or the way everyone is teaching the same recycled framework—and mean it. Not to provoke, but because you actually think it.
Your content shouldn’t be vanilla, but rather stir people’s minds and start conversations.
Perfectionism Is Procrastination in a Better Outfit
The most forgettable content is the most polished. I know that sounds backwards, but think about what you actually remember from the last week of scrolling… The stuff that stuck was probably a little rough around the edges. A take that felt real. A story that wasn’t edited down into something tidy.
Perfectionism isn’t about quality. It’s about control. And it’s keeping you in the middle of the road, putting out content so careful and so clean that it registers zero. Nobody shares the safe post. Nobody remembers the vanilla take.
The version of you that posts imperfectly – with your unique and twisted thoughts, your rhythm, your weird obsession with Vampire Diaries, or your strong opinions about coaching industry norms – that’s the version people follow for years.
Five Questions to Interrogate Your Brand Identity
REFLECTION PROMPTS
- If perception wasn’t a factor at all, how would I actually show up this month?
- What parts of my life, such as music, shows, fashion, rituals, and opinions, belong in my content and aren’t there yet?
- Where am I outsourcing presence that genuinely requires me to show up?
- What is the one opinion that would make me a category of one, even if it ruffles things?
- What does Version 2.0 of me wear, say, and decline?
Quick Wins: Start This Week
- Post one unfiltered opinion. Cut every disclaimer and qualifier. Say the thing you want to say.
- Share a micro-obsession. The thing your close friends already know about you, but your audience doesn’t yet.
- Rewrite an AI draft in your own cadence. Keep a voice bank of phrases you actually use, and put them back in.
- Add a signature sign-off. Consistency in how you close posts and emails builds brand memory faster than most people expect.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is brand identity and why does it matter for online business owners?
Brand identity is the combination of your voice, values, opinions, aesthetic, and story that makes your business recognizable as distinctly yours. For online business owners, it’s what separates sustainable visibility from burnout. When your content reflects who you actually are, showing up becomes easier and more effective over time.
How do you build an authentic personal brand online?
Start offline. Figure out who you are in person – the opinions you hold, the way you communicate, the things you genuinely care about, and translate that online. Authenticity isn’t a tone you can copy; it’s the accumulation of small, specific details that make your content sound like you and no one else.
Why does posting consistently lead to burnout?
Because consistency without identity is just noise. If you’re posting to fill a schedule rather than from a clear sense of who you are and what you stand for, you’re essentially performing a character that isn’t yours. That performance is exhausting. The fix isn’t better time management; it’s a clearer sense of self.
Is it okay to use AI for content creation?
Using AI as a starting point is fine. The problem is when it becomes the endpoint. AI doesn’t know your voice, your accent, your weird opinions, or your specific story. If you’re not rewriting AI drafts back into your own cadence, you’re outsourcing the one thing that makes your brand irreplaceable.
How do I find what makes my personal brand unique?
Talk to people. The things that make you interesting are often invisible to you and obvious to others. Start by sharing what you think is unremarkable about your story – your background, your unconventional path, your strong opinions, and pay attention to what generates the most response. That’s your differentiation.
What does ‘brand identity shift’ mean?
It means acknowledging that who you are now is not who you were two or five years ago, and letting your content reflect that evolution. Identity shifts aren’t inconsistency – they’re growth. Hiding the evolution to maintain some false sense of brand continuity is what actually feels inauthentic to an audience.
Final Verdict
Identity isn’t a brand asset you set up once and leave alone. It’s a living thing, it shifts as you grow, gets clearer with experience, and occasionally needs a full audit.
If your brand has been on autopilot, this is your signal to take it back. Not with a rebrand, not with a new niche, not with a content strategy overhaul. With honesty. With the opinions you’ve been holding back. With the parts of your personality you’ve been editing out because you weren’t sure they belonged.
They belong. That’s the whole point.
“Stop letting the algorithm decide who you are. Interrogate. Edit. Re-author. Your presence is the product.”
Subscribe to CEO Declassified wherever you listen to podcasts, and come say hi on Instagram @jelenaostrovska. DM me one identity shift you’re committing to this month.
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