Layla, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here. I'm excited to be here.

I appreciate it, Natalie. One thing I would love to dive into from the get-go is personal branding.

And talk about how you are thinking about personal branding. I really admire the way that you have

built your personal brand over the past few years. And I'm just curious now that you've really, you've done it on all

the platforms and you've really learned so much. And you've done it in a time where I feel like, I mean,

the world's always changing, but it's really changing. This last 12 months has been crazy with AI.

Are you glad that you've built your personal brand? I'm going to assume yes. And how are you thinking

about that now with AI?

Yeah, and I'll be completely honest. Like, I think personal brand is probably the last thing I think about of the things in my life. I show up and I do make content, but I don't think about it a lot in my discretionary time. And I'll kind of give you my frames for it and why. I am glad that I built my personal brand. I think it's been incredibly helpful for the people that I bring on my team.

I think it's been incredibly helpful for the people that I bring on my team. I think it's been incredibly helpful for, honestly, just like not even just business, but my life. Because I think getting your brand, which is who you are out there, I think it's important. So then you could attract more of the people you want in your life, whether that be customers, employees, friends, like all of those things. And I think it's been incredibly fruitful in that way. And I think that the caveat to that is, I think when I first started putting content out there, I was, there's a book called The Inner Game of Tennis. And it talks about how you have like version one of yourself and version two of yourself. And version one of yourself is like the self that tries so hard and really wants to like people to like them and to do well and like all this stuff. And then version two is like the self that you are when you're like in flow and you're not thinking about what you're doing, but it's like going really well even though you're not thinking about it. You're not like premeditating. In the beginning, I was so nervous even though I'd been running a giant company. Like, doing content was like a completely new thing for me.

And I was like, oh, my God, I was so nervous.

Everyone's going to fucking yell at me and tell me they don't like me and all this stuff, right? And I totally cared what people thought. And I still care what people think. I just care less. And so the version one of myself was what was showing up in the beginning. It's funny because people ask what happened when your brand started growing,

what do you think the contributing factors are?

And I'm like, it literally started growing when i stopped being in version one started being in version two it was like during a time when i just was so busy i had so much going on i actually deprioritized my content i said i have to film less i can't do as much of this i can't do as much of just can't do all this stuff. And I just realized, I was like, I can't let this thing take more of my time anymore. And that is when everything started going well. And what I realized, I was like, man, I was trying so hard and in trying so hard to like be good at making content, I wasn't being myself. And so did I even have a personal brand out there or was it just like this you know shadow version of me and it was

like very robotic and very wasn't being myself. And so did I even have a personal brand out there? Or was it just like this,

you know, shadow version of me? And it was like very robotic and very like, like, I was stressed when I was making the content because I wanted to do it like, fuck, I didn't get that right. And so because of that, it wasn't like, people didn't relate. I don't think that they, I was, I wasn't like super well liked.

I got a lot of negative comments in the beginning.

And so as soon as I took that term where I just said,

like, I'm going to stop trying so hard

and I'm just going to be who I am.

That's when everything like super well liked. I got a lot of negative comments in the beginning. And so as soon as I took that term where I just said like, I'm going to stop trying so hard and I'm just going to be who I am, that's when everything like started going well. And it's like the first, this is the first time my life where me trying less actually resulted in better outcomes. Because normally for me, if I try harder, I get better outcomes. And that just was not working. And so that has changed how I see personal brand,

because what I realize is, like, it's exactly what I've always wanted when I've seen someone's brand, like, the people I follow are the people who I feel like are actually their authentic selves rather than like trying to be something for the camera. And I think you can feel the difference of those things. Like you probably can watch people and be like, no, I think that they're actually being themselves.

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