From Employee to Industry Expert in 2025: Tactics for Building Your Personal Brand While You Work

“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” - Jeff Bezos

Top 3 Newsletter Takeaways

1. Balancing your personal brand with corporate expectations is crucial.
2. Your personal brand is your career’s roadmap. Define your niche, set clear objectives (like landing a TEDx talk or board seat), and focus on creating value for your audience.
3. Move beyond sharing opinions. Use data, reframe challenges, and provide actionable advice. Thought leadership sets you apart, builds trust, and positions you as an indispensable expert in your industry.

2025 is your year to transform your career and become the go-to expert in your industry!

Here’s the truth: Building a personal brand while excelling in a corporate role isn’t just possible—it’s strategic. When done right, it can open doors to opportunities you never imagined while simultaneously benefiting your organization.

In fact, the 2024 Edelman-LinkedIn Thought Leadership Impact Report reveals that thought leadership does far more than enhance brand perception:

• It drives demand for your expertise.
• It influences sales and pricing.
• It positions you as a trusted authority, making people seek you out and even pay a premium for your insights.

Yet, many professionals hesitate, constrained by strict corporate policies or fear of how their employers will perceive their efforts.

Corporate Loyalty vs. Personal Branding Freedom

This is a tension one of my clients, a pharmacy executive, faced head-on. Bound by corporate restrictions that limited her ability to self-promote, she still aimed to build a personal brand that aligned with her goals of pursuing board memberships and eventually transitioning to a C-suite role.

Her journey wasn’t easy, but it proved that thought leadership and personal branding could coexist with corporate expectations.

Effective thought leadership is built on three pillars:

1. Strong data and research to back your insights.
2. A fresh perspective that reframes challenges.
3. Concrete, actionable guidance.

When you incorporate these into your personal brand, you don’t just create content—you craft solutions that position you as an indispensable expert.

Here are a few items you need to understand as you move from employee to thought leader in. 2025:

1?? Understand Corporate Policies

Before you begin building your personal brand, take the time to understand your company’s rules about social media activity, public speaking, and self-promotion.

Why it matters: Knowing what’s allowed ensures that your efforts won’t conflict with your employer’s expectations, protecting your role while still letting you grow. One of the first things I tell my clients is this "KPI" that isn't tracked in data. It's the word of mouth metric. People WILL want to know what you are doing. They WILL ask questions. And most of All, they WILL support you.

How to approach this:

• Read the fine print: Review your company’s employee handbook or social media policy.
• Open a dialogue: Have a conversation with your manager or HR team to clarify gray areas and ensure your personal branding goals align with the organization’s mission.
• Find the overlap: Highlight how your efforts will benefit both you and the company, such as by positioning you as a thought leader within your industry. Read this newsletter I wrote here on how to get additional company buy in and support.

2?? Clarify Your Brand Goals

Defining your goals is essential to building a personal brand that resonates. Think of your personal brand as a roadmap that guides your career toward specific aspirations.

Why it matters: Without clear goals, your efforts can become scattered and ineffective.

How to approach this:

• Define your niche: Identify the area of expertise where you can make the most impact. For example, are you passionate about digital transformation in healthcare, or do you excel in developing high-performing teams?
• Set tangible objectives: Examples include a new role, launching a book, earning a TEDx talk, gaining a board seat, or becoming a sought-after speaker at industry conferences.
• Focus on value creation: Determine how your insights and experience can solve problems for your audience, making you indispensable to them.

3?? Leverage Thought Leadership

Thought leadership is more than sharing opinions—it’s about offering fresh, research-backed insights that address industry challenges.

Why it matters: Strong thought leadership differentiates you from others in your field, positioning you as a trusted authority.

How to approach this:

• Use data effectively: Incorporate statistics and studies to support your insights.
• Reframe challenges: Help your audience view problems from new perspectives.
• Offer actionable advice: Break down complex ideas into clear steps your audience can follow. When people take your advice and see results, your influence grows exponentially.

4?? Optimize Your LinkedIn Presence

LinkedIn is the most powerful platform for professionals to showcase their personal brand. A well-optimized profile is like a digital elevator pitch that works 24/7.

Why it matters: LinkedIn connects you with decision-makers, peers, and potential collaborators who can amplify your reach and opportunities.

How to approach this:

• Profile essentials: Use a professional, high-quality headshot that reflects your personality. Write a compelling headline that highlights your unique value proposition. Craft an About section that combines your story, expertise, and career aspirations. Where you have been, where you are going and where you are!
• Content strategy: Post consistently about topics in your niche. Share wins, insights, and lessons to demonstrate authenticity. Engage with others by commenting on and sharing relevant content.
• Build your network: Proactively connect with people in your field, including peers, mentors, and industry leaders.

5?? Invest in a Personal Branding Hub

A personal website ( and your LinkedIn) is your digital business card, showcasing your expertise, achievements, and aspirations in a way LinkedIn alone cannot.

Why it matters: Your website establishes credibility and allows you to control your narrative beyond social media platforms.

How to approach this with these Key components:

• Homepage: Highlight your expertise and include a clear value proposition.
• Portfolio: Showcase your accomplishments, such as projects, presentations, or awards.
• Blog: Share thought leadership content that drives traffic and establishes authority in your niche.
• Contact Page: Make it easy for people to reach out to collaborate or inquire about opportunities.
• Position for future goals: Include sections about board memberships or speaking engagements you’re pursuing, signaling your readiness for these opportunities.

Case Study: Here’s how the pharmacy executive made it happen:

The Challenge: Corporate policies limited her ability to self-promote, while she wanted to position herself for future leadership roles and board seat opportunites.

The Solution:

• We optimized her LinkedIn profile, aligning it with her goals and expertise.
• Built a personal website showcasing her accolades, industry insights, speaking, and board aspirations.
• Developed a thought leadership strategy to share data-backed, actionable content.

The Result:

• A seamless transition from VP to a C-suite role at a tech startup.
• Approval for a TEDx talk on her area of expertise.
• Positioned as a thought leader, ready for consulting, speaking, and board opportunities.

Building a personal brand is no longer optional—it’s essential. Thought leadership allows you to share your voice and make an impact while aligning with your corporate mission. What’s stopping you from taking the first step? How will you make 2025 your year of transformation?

Ready to create a personal brand that positions you as an expert and opens doors to new opportunities? It is not too late to join our January cohort for the Elevate Your Influence bootcamp! ’s time for you to step into the career and build what you’ve been dreaming of. If you’re ready to take your career to places you never imagined, don’t wait. It’s not magic—it’s momentum, and this is your chance to start.

Our current students are seeing stories of success everywhere:

? 3 new clients in one week.

? A podcast invite that came out of nowhere.

? A 20-year-dormant manuscript finally edited and ready to publish.

? Laser-focused pivots leading to more leads than ever before.

Join Heather Monahan and I in 2025 for our LIVE coaching bootcamp. Use the code ELEVATE at checkout for $$$ off!! https://elevateyourinfluencebootcamp.com

Today's content provided in this newsletter was written by AI and then polished up and formatted by a human.

Need help getting started with your voice online? The Borden Group is ready to partner with you. Personal Brand Coaching, Managed Personal Brands for LinkedIn?, Personal Brand Content, Personal Brand Strategies, Personal Brand Workshops, Personal Brand Websites, re/Brands, and more!! We work with individuals and teams. I also consult companies and work directly with their internal or external marketing or comms teams. Here are just a few of my testimonials. We have data, case stories, written testimonials/recommendations, and clients who will speak with you to verify their success working with us, and we are always, always accepting new clients!

Schedule a discovery call with me here: https://humantobrand.com/contact/

Your Executive Advisor,

Melanie