When people mention your name in a room, they’re going to feel something. The question is — what do you want them to feel?

That’s the whole heartbeat of personal branding, and in this episode, we’re walking you through our Personal Brand by Friday guide: a step-by-step plan to get your brand off the ground in just five days.

And before you think “I already have a brand” or “I don’t really need one” — we’re talking to you especially. Listen through to the end, and we promise you won’t leave empty-handed.

Your Personal Brand by Friday

When people mention your name in a room, they’re going to feel something. The question is — what do you want them to feel?

That’s the whole heartbeat of personal branding, and in this episode, Chelsea and Kayla are walking you through their Personal Brand by Friday guide: a step-by-step plan to get your brand off the ground (or seriously leveled up) in just five days. From your brand menu to your first on-brand photo shoot to an actual piece of content you can post by Friday, this one is all action.

And before you think “I already have a brand” or “I don’t really need one” — we’re talking to you especially. Listen through to the end. You won’t leave empty-handed.

Do You Actually Need a Personal Brand?

Before you click off thinking this episode isn’t for you, let’s do a quick test.

A brand is a unique name, design, symbol, or feature that identifies a product or service, distinguishing it from competitors and shaping customer perception. It’s a combination of tangible and intangible elements — reputation, promises, and emotional connections that build trust and create value.

Read that back and tell us you don’t need one!

Every author, every clothing brand, every product you love has one. Think about Abby Jimenez versus Emily Henry. They both write in the same genre but have completely different brands.

Now think about service-based industries — real estate agents, lenders, roofers. Most of them don’t have brands, and the reason is pretty telling: they’ve been trained to think “they’ll call me when they need me.” The whole strategy is just being available and waiting.

But if you want to be the name someone says at book club or at yoga class, you have to be more than available. You have to be memorable, and that’s exactly what a personal brand does.

The One Word Exercise For Personal Branding

Think of a brand you love. How would you describe it in three words or less? Lululemon might be wellness, put-together, school drop-off moms. Rhodes might be dewy, minimal, cool-girl. Whatever it is, those words come fast because the brand is doing its job.

Now flip it. What three words do you want people to use when they think of you?

If that feels like too much, start with one. Kayla shared that when she decided she wanted people to think of her as creative, that single word became her North Star. She started asking herself: do I dress in a way that communicates that? Does my content show it? Does how I show up match it? Everything started falling into place around that one word.

Chelsea’s hot take is that words like “integrity” don’t count — if you’re a realtor, integrity should be a given. Telling people you have it is like a guy on a first date saying “I’m a good guy.”

Pick something people can actually picture. “Creative” ties to color, design, the way you dress. “Calm” conjures a zen-like image — warm lighting, a fireplace, no chaos — which is exactly what someone wants from their agent in the middle of a stressful transaction.

If someone can’t visualize it, they can’t remember it, so give them something to see.

How to Build Your Brand Menu

Your brand menu is the mix of things you’re going to be intentionally associated with across your content. Real estate is always there as your anchor, but the brand menu is everything that goes around it to make you a person, rather than just an agent.

The things on your brand menu are what make someone’s brain think of you when they’re not looking at your content. They see a Stanley at Target, and you pop into their head. They pass your favorite coffee shop and think of you.

Your on-brand beverage is a great place to start. For Chelsea, it’s wine — high-end but laid back, approachable, conversational. For a Modern Agent member they interviewed, it was specifically watermelon Red Bull — and she said people messaged her about it constantly, almost by accident.

Your beverage should actually match your brand word. If calm is what you’re going for, Red Bull probably isn’t it.

Your brand menu also has room for a TV show or a network — or really, whatever you do to unwind after a long day. Chelsea’s is Southern Charm and Summer House, no apologies. Kayla’s is Friends or a comfort documentary.

When you mention it, you’ll get responses from people who watch the same thing, and that’s a conversation, which is exactly what builds a brand.

Your Real Life Is Already Your Brand

One of the biggest misconceptions about building a personal brand is that you have to go create a bunch of new stuff. You don’t. You just have to start noticing what you’re already doing and capturing it.

Your morning routine is a perfect example. Even if you’d never call it a “routine,” you’re doing something every single morning. You’re packing lunches, walking the dog, making coffee, listening to a podcast, doing a mirror check before you head out. Those are all content moments; you just haven’t been treating them that way.

Kayla started taking a quick mirror selfie most mornings, not because it was part of a grand content strategy, but because she’d glance in the mirror near her office before starting her day. Eventually, it became a cue. Stop, take the photo, move on.

Chelsea does the same thing a little differently — sometimes it’s the book she’s reading, sometimes it’s being on the playroom floor with her son and his cars before the day kicks in.

Your local spots work the same way. Where do you actually go? The school pickup line, the coffee shop, the park, the ice cream place that opens the second it hits 60 degrees.

When you share those places, something happens in your audience’s brain. They recognize the street. They think “I should take my kids there.” They picture their own life in your town.

Kayla lives in a small Midwest town — not exactly a destination market — but she had clients choose her town specifically because of how she talked about it. That’s the power of local content.

If you’re overwhelmed by how many places you love, Chelsea suggests picking a major and a minor. What’s your main local theme — kid activities, date nights, farmers markets — and what’s secondary? Having a major helps you be more intentional without feeling like you need to document everything everywhere all the time.

The point of it all is to let people see what you’re already doing because that makes your marketing sustainable.

Your iPhone Photos Are Perfect for Instagram

The photos that perform best on Instagram right now are iPhone photos: slightly imperfect and candid-feeling, as if they came straight from your camera roll.

That doesn’t mean blurry or careless. It means intentionally in-the-moment. Hair tossing back, mid-laugh, reaching for your coffee, looking off-camera — with little imperfections that make someone feel like they’re right there with you.

Personal Brand by Friday includes nine photos you can recreate, with notes on what makes each one work. The goal isn’t to copy them exactly but to understand the angle, framing, vibe, and then insert your brand into it.

A few things that make iPhone photos look better without overthinking it:

• use natural light whenever you can
• give yourself some white space in the frame (don’t zoom in too tight)
• and pay attention to colors (if your book cover clashes with your mug, it’ll bother you)

One of Chelsea’s favorite tricks: instead of tapping the camera button over and over trying to get the right shot, just flip to video, move around naturally, sip the drink, look a few different directions, and then go back and screenshot the frame you love.

Give yourself a time limit, like 20 minutes, and that’s it. If you just say “I’ll take photos on Friday” with no end time, you’ll either skip it or take too long overthinking it. Parkinson’s Law: the work expands to fill the time you give it, so give it 20 minutes and move on.

And yes, if you also grab some B-roll clips while you’re at it — zooming in, zooming out, walking, laughing, talking — you’ll walk away from one 20-minute session with more content than you know what to do with.

Agents who develop this skill get to a point where they can show up like a content creator and still have full brain space left for their clients and their business.

Organizing Your Content and Putting It All Together

Once you have your photos, the next move is to get organized, so you’re never digging through your camera roll looking for something usable.

Create an on-brand album on your phone and drop everything good in there. Delete the ones you don’t like — no need to hang onto photos that make you cringe every time you scroll past them.

Then upload everything into Canva and create a folder just for your on-brand photos. When you sit down to make content, it’s all right there. Pick one and go.

And don’t feel like you need a new photo for every post. You can use the same photo in a carousel this week and a reel next week. You can use a B-roll clip in multiple pieces of content over time. When people see the same vibe appearing consistently across your grid, that’s branding. It’s how you become recognizable.

The guide also gives you a done-for-you carousel to customize and post by Friday. The hook: “My Application to Be Your Real Estate Emergency Contact.” It’s five slides, and throughout it, there are small intentional spots to plug in your personal brand — your beverage, your local spot, your morning routine, whatever you’ve decided you want to be known for. If a slide says “whether it’s about real estate or your latest book club reads” and book club has nothing to do with your brand, swap it out, and make it yours.

The template is a starting place, but your brand turns it into something no one else could post.

An honest heads-up before you post it: if this is the first time your audience is seeing content like this from you, the response might feel quiet. Some people will love it immediately. Others won’t quite know what to do with it yet. That’s normal — it doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. It means keep going. The more you show up this way, the more your audience learns how to respond to you. And the more they respond, the more your brand compounds.

Your brand isn’t built in one post. It’s built in the pattern of posts — the consistency of showing up in a way that feels like you, over and over, until the people you want to reach can’t imagine thinking of anyone else.

So download Personal Brand by Friday and get started today. And if you’re ready to go deeper, Camp Modern Agent is the next step!

This episode was edited by Adrienne Cruz.