2025 State of Play (+ a roadmap for playing to win while enjoying the game!)

In 2025, the landscape for personal brands and thought leaders is shifting - again.

The convergence of AI, market saturation, and evolving audience expectations calls for a recalibration.

Experts and entrepreneurs who lead with authenticity, creativity, and empathy will stand apart.

Here’s how the core pillars that underpin customer attraction, connection, influence and interaction and retention - are shaping the way forward this year. 

1. Personal Branding

What people know, feel and remember about you. 

Purpose: Create & maintain Connection & Desire
Currency: Trust 

Key Themes:

• Excellence and Humanity in Balance
  

  Your audience craves more than surface-level polish. In 2025, it’s about the intersection of expertise and raw humanity—where excellence meets vulnerability.

They want to see the full spectrum of who you are:

• Multi-faceted yet cohesive
• Authentic, not curated for effect
• Real stories, not manufactured narratives
  
  
  

• The New Essentials
  

  Personal brands that thrive will prioritise:
  
  
• Sustainability: A brand that can grow with you, not exhaust you
  
  
• Mental Health Support: Modelling success that doesn’t come at the expense of well-being
  
  
• Authentic Boldness: True uniqueness—not different just for the sake of standing out, but because it’s who you are
  
  
• Congruence: Alignment between your personal brand and how you live, speak, write, and show up in business and in LIFE.
  
  
  

Where to focus in 2025:

• Double down on consistency over perfection. Show up as you are, but consistently. This signals trust and reliability in an era of "easy come, easy go" fly-by-nighters.
  
  
• Create touchpoints that reflect your growth, both personally and professionally. Let your audience see how you are evolving and adapting. "Show" don't tell.  So people see you in practice, not preaching. 
  
  
• Let your work and energy reflect your real life. Brands built from a place of truth resonate deeper and last longer.
  
  

2. Personal Marketing

Strategic creation/curation of your products & offers
and distribution of your messages.
Purpose: Engagement & Cultivation
Currency: Interest & Action

Key Themes:

• Less Predictability, More Pattern Interrupt
  

  With homogenised algorithmic sameness everywhere we look, audiences crave surprise and elegance. The “copy-paste” formulaic approach to marketing has worn thin.
  
  2025 calls for:
• Creativity that sparks curiosity, not just attention
• Unexpected twists in content and communication
• Infusing art and storytelling into traditionally dry spaces
  
  
  

• Entertainment & Inspiration Over Information
  

  Information overload is driving disengagement. People are drawn to brands that spark possibility and wonder.
  
  Shift focus to:
  
  
• Showing transformation, not just delivering data
• Storytelling that models principles in action, not lofty ideas
• Interactive, immersive content that feels like an experience
  
  
  

• Omnichannel with Purpose
  

  It’s not about being everywhere; it’s about being "in the different places people are looking" with a clear purpose for each place.
  
  Smart integration means:
  
  
• Be open to showing a different facets of you in different places. (especially if you find the same audience engages with you on multiple platforms)   
  
  
• Channels that support each other and weave a cohesive story
  
  
• Investing your energy into content that flows naturally across mediums—articles, video, audio, live sessions
  
  
  

Actions for 2025:

• Ask: “How can I surprise and delight while staying aligned to my core message?”
  
  
• Curate content that feels human-first, rather than technically excellent. Find a way to inject your human-ness into it in a way that no generic AI could replicate.
  
  
• Lead with story and embed the lesson subtly—allow your audience to discover it organically.
  
  

3. Personal Engagement

How you activate, and retain your clients and wider audience.
Purpose:  Engagement, Progression & Retention
Currency: Action, Continuity and Reciprocity

Key Themes:

• Ease, Joy, and Flow
  
  

  The era of “hustle culture” is fading. Audiences are drawn to light, enjoyable paths to results.
  
  Engagement in 2025 is about:
• Ease: Simple, intuitive experiences that feel natural
• Flow: Responding to audience capacity and timing, not forcing rigid schedules
• Play: Introducing elements of fun and experimentation
  
  
  

• Flexible Engagement Options
  

  Audiences will seek choice and autonomy in how they engage. Not everyone wants the same depth or pace.
  
  
• Multiple entry points to work with you—light touch, mid-tier, and deep dives
  
  
• Engagements that offer freedom and adaption, not rigidity and obligation
  
  
• Spurts and slowness—let your audience engage intensely when ready, then pause.
  
  
  

• Generosity (with Boundaries)
  

  Being generous builds trust, but boundaries ensure sustainability.
  
  In 2025:
• Share openly, but value your time
• Offer tiered value experiences that meet different levels of commitment
• Focus on high-value touchpoints rather than the sheer volume of surface/shallow 1:1 interactions. 
  
  
  

Actions for 2025:

• Design offers and products that flow naturally with different levels of engagement.
• Build modular experiences—clients can pick and choose what serves them.
• Create moments of playful surprise in how you engage—small, meaningful gestures that create connection.
  
  
  

My 2025 Approach?

Easeful Excellence

• Inspire possibility in others (and in yourself!)
  

  Find and lean into the things that fuel your energy not deplete it as this will have a flow-on effect to those around you.
  
  We all need energy and momentum boosts. Know what "does it" for you
  
  
  

• Show up as all of you. 
  

  This doesn't mean sharing everything, Hell no. Who wants that!?
  
  But it does mean bringing your full self, energetically and intentionally the parts you DO to choose to share.
  
  This is the breeding ground for emotional connection and credibility in a time where real resonates more than refined.
  
   

• Create and share from the heart with precision and passion.

  Don't be shy to showcase your excellence, humbly of course, but people need to SEE what you're capable of.
  
  It's not being "either" authentic or accomplished - it needs to be both/and.
  
  

• Let strategy and creativity dance together as equals.

This is one area I've been exploring in new ways of late. 

There is such beauty in being "creatively strategic" as well as amazing liberty in being "strategically creative" 

This is another area where the synergistic effect of both together is exponentially more than one or the other in isolation!

If you're wondering about what that even means, let me explain what I mean as equals - and beyond that, as reciprocates! ((though I'm not sure that's even a word, but I'll explain what I mean).

"creatively strategic" is about exploring innovative and unconventional approaches to achieving business outcomes. and harnessing innate creativity around how we get strategic. 

AS WELL AS 

"strategically creative" is about expressively and unapologetically creative which lights up our being, but simultaneously, serves a very clear commercial purpose.

Such a syndergistic combinations of power, passion and purpose!

Definitely something I've been leaning into strongly over the last 6 months or so - and it's been so commercial impactful for my business, and personally liberating for my life. 

The next move is yours...

The landscape is shifting, and it’s asking you to step into a version of yourself that is both bold and real.

This is the year to prioritise your energy, your message, and your impact—not by doing more, but by showing up as more of you.

Experts and entrepreneurs who lead with authenticity, creativity, and empathy will stand apart from the herd.

And while we talk so much about being real and relatable, it's also a time to showcase your excellence, (humbly of course - and to my earlier point, through "show not tell". People still want to SEE what you're capable of.

It's not being "either" authentic or accomplished - it needs to be both/and.

2025 is your opportunity to recalibrate, reimagine, and rise.

So, what will you bring to this new chapter? A fresh perspective? A re-energised approach? A commitment to lead with authenticity and heart?

As you step forward, remember this: your voice matters, your vision matters, and your audience is waiting for you to take the stage.

Let’s make 2025 the year where strategy and creativity, purpose and passion come together in a way that transforms not only your brand but your legacy.

How I can help you elevate your personal brand authentically in 2025:

📘 Get a copy of my book (free sample available)
🎤 Book me to speak at your company conference or event
📝 Browse latest Blogs & podcasts
🫏 Attend the Virtually Myself 1-day AI Bootcamp for authors & experts.
💙 Mentoring & Strategic Advisory in the Marketing Me® Accelerator