You Do Not Need a Personal Brand. You Need a Body of Work

Visibility matters, but professional credibility is built on the work you actually do

Nov 11, 2026

If you follow discussions about professional development on LinkedIn, you might get the impression that building a successful expert career is largely about being visible.

You should develop your personal brand, post regularly, engage with your network, establish yourself as a thought leader, and make sure people recognize your expertise. Ideally, you should also have an interesting personal story and a consistent visual identity. That is the theory, anyway.

There is certainly some truth to this. Visibility matters, especially for consultants and other professionals whose careers depend on their reputation. If nobody knows what you can do, your expertise might not take you very far.

But I sometimes wonder whether we have become a little too interested in the marketing side of professional expertise.

Actually, I have to admit that I even dislike the term personal brand. To me, it sounds like something influencers develop separately from their actual work, carefully polishing their public image to appear more interesting or successful. I understand what the term means, of course. I just find the idea of deliberately building a brand around myself rather unappealing. I prefer to concentrate on the actual doing.

After all, being known for something and actually having done something worth knowing about are two different things.

Of course, I do my share of personal branding, whether I like the term or not. I have written quite a bit about personal branding and professional visibility myself. I also maintain a steady LinkedIn presence and even run two Substack publications. So I am certainly not suggesting that experts should hide their achievements.

However, I think we should get the priorities right. Instead of concentrating on building a personal brand, concentrate on building a body of work. The reputation can follow.

What Do You Actually Have to Show?

Imagine two experienced professionals working in the same field. One is highly visible on LinkedIn, regularly sharing opinions, commenting on developments, and participating in discussions. The other is less visible but has spent years producing substantial work.

Which one would you consider more credible?

Of course, this is a somewhat artificial comparison. Many excellent professionals are also highly visible, and the quality of a LinkedIn profile tells us rather little about someone’s actual competence.

But I think there is an important distinction. A personal brand is largely about how others perceive you. A body of work consists of what you have actually done, produced, and contributed.

This can mean books, articles, research, software, methods, or other tangible outputs. But it also includes successful projects, improvements to how organizations operate, problems solved for clients, and expertise shared with colleagues.

Education and professional qualifications have their place, too. Degrees, certifications, and training provide a foundation for developing expertise. But there is a difference between what you have studied and what you have accomplished with that knowledge. A doctoral degree is a qualification, while the dissertation itself is also a concrete piece of work. Similarly, developing and delivering training or helping colleagues become better at their jobs can be valuable contributions to your body of work.

Some of the most valuable expert work is almost invisible outside the organization where it happens. A consultant might spend years helping clients make better decisions without producing anything that can be shared publicly. A senior engineer may contribute to critical systems that most people have never heard of.

There is also the question of quality. Producing a large amount of material is hardly an achievement in itself. One genuinely useful solution can be worth considerably more than a hundred articles that say very little.

When someone presents themselves as an expert, I am interested in what they have actually accomplished. What problems have they solved? What have they created? What have others learned or gained from their work?

A convincing answer to these questions is a pretty good foundation for professional credibility.

How My Own Body of Work Developed

My own experience has been somewhat unplanned. I started my career in academic research, producing scientific publications and eventually earning a PhD with a doctoral dissertation on enterprise architecture. When I moved into IT consulting, my output changed to architecture models, presentations, reports, and other client deliverables. Over the years, I have also trained and mentored clients and colleagues, helping them develop their professional skills. Most of this work has remained invisible outside the organizations involved, but it was certainly no less valuable because of that.

In 2020, I started writing articles about the economics of craft brewing, a personal interest of mine at the time. Not exactly an obvious career move for an enterprise architecture consultant. But I enjoyed writing and decided to try something more ambitious.

Those first articles eventually led to my first nonfiction book on the consulting profession in 2021. Since then, I have published several books on IT consulting, enterprise architecture, and professional development, along with articles in different publications. In 2022, I also started writing short fiction, most of which has been published in magazines and anthologies. My writing has since expanded further, including a novel and a children’s book. Quite a different direction from enterprise architecture diagrams.

None of that started as a personal branding exercise. I wanted to explore subjects I knew or found interesting, put my thoughts into writing, and produce something others could read and hopefully find useful and enjoyable. Over time, writing became an increasingly important part of my professional life, alongside consulting.

Some of the activities were more deliberate. I started building an email list around my consulting books, which eventually developed into an early version of this Substack. It took quite some time before the publication really started gaining traction. Later, when my English-language enterprise architecture book came out, I launched a separate Substack dedicated to that subject. What began partly as a way to support the book has since developed a life of its own, with its own readers, discussions, and content.

Writing and consulting have also led to opportunities for public speaking. I had given occasional presentations earlier in my career, and I still speak at events from time to time, often when someone invites me. I have also enjoyed collaborating with universities and students, including giving guest lectures and sharing practical experiences. Public speaking is hardly my main occupation, but it is another way to share what I have learned.

Along the way, I have experimented with different publishing platforms, communication channels, and ways of presenting my work. Some have worked well enough to become regular activities. Others have quietly disappeared from my schedule. I think that is perfectly normal. There is little reason to continue doing something simply because it once seemed like a good idea.

Looking at all this now, I can see how the different activities have gradually started supporting one another. Consulting provides material for writing, while writing forces me to think more carefully about my professional knowledge. Articles help develop ideas for books, books lead to discussions and speaking opportunities, and the publications connect me with people I would probably never meet otherwise.

That is one of the less obvious benefits of building a body of work. The process itself makes you better at what you do. You have to organize your thinking, challenge your assumptions, and turn your knowledge into something useful to others.

And yes, I also promote my work. I would rather have people reading my books than have them collecting dust, whether physically or digitally. I have also become more deliberate about making my work visible as the collection has grown.

But the actual work still comes first. The marketing is there to help people discover it.

Visibility Still Matters

There is a reason why personal branding has become such a popular topic. Being good at something does not automatically mean people will recognize your competence.

That is particularly relevant in consulting, where reputation, trust, and professional networks can have a direct impact on career opportunities. Professional visibility can also be a considerable advantage when looking for a new job, as potential employers may already be familiar with your expertise and achievements. Someone who consistently delivers excellent work but remains largely unknown outside their immediate team may miss opportunities that a more visible colleague receives.

I have written about this problem before, particularly in relation to experts who are too modest about their achievements.

So I certainly encourage professionals to make their work visible. Publish useful insights, share experiences, speak at events, participate in professional communities, and maintain a decent LinkedIn profile.

The important thing is what you are making visible. I would rather read an expert explaining a difficult problem they have solved than another generic post about the importance of leadership, innovation, or continuous learning. There is already plenty of that kind of material available.

Generative AI has made producing polished content easier than ever. That makes it even more important to have genuine experience, original ideas, and something concrete to contribute.

There is also no guarantee that good work will receive much attention. Recognition depends on many things besides competence. But at least you have something substantial to offer when the opportunity comes.

How to Build Your Own Body of Work

You do not have to become an author, researcher, or public speaker to build a body of work. There are plenty of ways to make useful contributions in almost any expert profession.

A few suggestions:

Start with your actual work. Identify problems you have solved, approaches you have developed, and things you have learned. These can provide material for further contributions, whether public or internal. Naturally, respect confidentiality and intellectual property.
Create something useful. A practical guide, reusable template, technical solution, improved process, or well-documented project can be more valuable than an impressive-looking professional profile.
Share your knowledge. Training, mentoring, and helping colleagues solve problems are also valuable contributions. Your expertise becomes more useful when others can benefit from it.
Make your contributions visible. Explain what you have accomplished and why it matters. Document your achievements and their impact, even when you cannot share the actual deliverables. Remember to give credit to others involved.
Finish things. I have found that completing and publishing something is often more valuable than endlessly developing ideas that never become anything concrete. A finished piece also gives you something to improve upon next time.
Keep developing your expertise. Good work requires knowledge, experience, and practice. Producing tangible outputs helps develop these, but there are few shortcuts to becoming genuinely good at your profession.

And remember that your body of work is not limited to what you create alone. Contributing to successful teams, improving how an organization operates, and helping other professionals succeed can be just as valuable as producing something with your name on it.

Let Your Work Speak for You

I understand why building a personal brand can be appealing. You can work on your profile, develop a recognizable style, increase your posting frequency, and measure the attention you receive. It gives you something concrete to optimize.

Building a body of work is less predictable. Some contributions will be more successful than others, and their value may become apparent only much later. There is also a fair amount of ordinary hard work involved.

And you cannot really rush the process. A credible professional track record develops gradually, through actual work and experience. You can certainly make yourself look like an expert rather quickly, especially with all the tools available today. But without much substance behind the appearance, the result can look rather artificial.

Looking back at my own career, I value the research, consulting projects, books, articles, presentations, and other opportunities to share my expertise much more than the attention they may have received. They represent things I have actually done, knowledge I have developed, and hopefully some value I have provided to others.

Of course, I still want people to discover my work. And I will probably promote this article on LinkedIn, too. Apparently, even someone who dislikes personal branding has to do a little marketing.

But I would rather be known for work I have done than spend my time trying to become known.

Build something worth showing. Then make sure people can find it.