How to Build a Personal Brand Without Quitting Your Day Job - Ryan Dunlap & Njsane Courtney

Big Swings Only

American Negotiation Institute

Self-improvement, Business, Education

4.7 • 751 Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2026

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

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Summary

How do you build a personal brand without quitting your day job? In this episode, former SWAT hostage negotiator Ryan Dunlap and sitting HR Vice President Njsane Courtney reveal how they each built massive, trusted personal brands while holding full-time careers. Ryan shares the real story behind his viral balloon video — a TikTok post with zero followers that hit 100,000+ views overnight — and the personal branding strategy he used to scale it into a following of nearly a million, without chasing trends or dancing videos. Njsane opens up about building "My Friend in HR" into a top industry podcast while still climbing the corporate ladder, proving you don't have to choose between a stable career and a public personal brand. Connect with Ryan Dunlap www.conflictish.com Connect with Njsane Courtney myfriendinhr.buzzsprout.com Connect with Kwame: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Request A Customized Workshop For Your Company⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Kwame Christian on LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠negotiateanything.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to buy your copy of Finding Confidence in Conflict: How to Negotiate Anything and Live Your Best Life!⁠⁠ @kwamenegotiates across all social platforms

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Granola AI, What Not, Upwork, and Shopify.
0:04.8	Gronola AI is a total game changer. Get started at granola.a.ai slash Kwami.
0:10.5	To scale a passionate community and move inventory fast, search Whatnot. That's WHATNOT.
0:18.1	In the app store, visit upwork.com right now and post your job for free.
0:22.5	That is upwork.com.
0:24.3	Sign up for your free trial at Shopify.com slash Kwami.
0:29.9	One man was a hostage negotiator, sat across from people at the worst moments of their lives,
0:35.3	and talked them back from the edge.
0:37.4	The other, well, he climbed
0:38.9	the corporate ladder all the way up to Vice President of Human Resources and then built an industry
0:43.6	leading podcast on the side, turning into a trusted voice for thousands of professionals by
0:49.4	sharing the truths that most HR departments are too scared to say out loud. And today, they are both in the room.
0:56.2	This is what happens when a career built on pressure meets a career built on influence. So picture
1:01.7	this. A man sitting in his car outside a CVS, holding a pack of balloons, talking to his phone
1:07.5	with zero followers watching. And then he wakes up the next morning to 10,000 new followers, then 20,000, then 50,000.
1:14.6	And then within a day, over 100,000 people are watching a man untie a balloon and using it to teach the world how to survive pressure without pocket.
1:25.6	I had a friend of mine who said, hey man, you need to share this content on TikTok. And I said, with the dancing kids? Nah. I went and got a pack of balloons from a CVS. I sat in her front seat in my car. I put my cell phone resting against the gear shift. And I said, hey, we really need to learn how to start untying our balloons.
1:48.2	Went to bed one night, woke up the next morning, and the TikTok thing was broken.
1:52.8	The balloon video had blown up overnight, and I was like, what is this?
2:02.2	That is Ryan Dunlap, former SWAT hostage negotiator, founder of conflict-ish, author of How to Untie a Balloon,
2:07.7	and the architect of a framework that has helped leaders across four different continents stop managing everyone else's conflict and start mastering their own. And right next to him is
2:13.7	Jasani Courtney, a sitting VP of HR who built the show My Friend in HR into one of the
	...

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