Struggles are the backbone of your personal brand

(Here’s how to use them)

Most people who embark on the colourful journey of growing their personal brand either run out of ideas or steer clear from talking about anything interesting.

Struggles might sound bleak, but they make for sticky readers. Your struggles are interesting. They show you’re human.

Your past pains, mishaps and mistakes are ripe for some of the freshest content around.

You don’t need to bang on about the same story of struggle, though.

Your past is comprised of hundreds of micro-stories. These are small but defining moments of frustration, self-doubt, setbacks, embarrassments, and realisations that make your insights valuable to others.

View these moments as the raw material for your most powerful content, helping you build an audience that relates to you and trusts you.

How to identify the struggles that shape your brand

Okay, so where to start?

See your struggles as a bridge that connects you to your audience.

This isn’t about digging up trauma for the sake of it but about looking at what you’ve learned in the less comfortable moments.

Start by asking yourself:

• What challenges have I faced that others struggle with too?

• What hard-earned lessons do I wish I had learned earlier?

• What failures shaped my approach to work, money, health, or relationships?

• When did I hit a breaking point that led to a new way of thinking?

If you’re a writer, you can talk about the times you stared at a blank page for hours, the moments you feared pressing publish because you worried your boss might read it, and the time you sent a hundred cold emails that left you feeling rejected.

How to best write about your struggles (without oversharing)

Struggles are best written about in the context of service.

You’re not sharing your problems to complain. That sends your readers elsewhere. You’re transmorphing relatable moments of conflict into little stories with a single lesson.

Here’s how:

1. Make it specific.

A personal story is most effective when you stop hiding away from vague concepts that cannot be visualised. Instead, you show us the granular details of what happened.

Instead of saying, “I struggled for years with self-doubt,” share a single, vivid moment when it hit you hardest. It takes courage to go into more detail. That’s good.

For example, “I remember sitting in front of my laptop for two hours, rewriting the same sentence repeatedly, terrified someone would think I was a fraud.”

A focused moment sticks. A vague, drawn-out backstory does not.

2. Use the ‘Before → Struggle → Shift → Lesson’ Formula.

Readers connect with transformation laid out clearly:

• Before: What was life like before the struggle?

• Struggle: What challenge or setback did you face?

• Shift: What changed? What did you realise?

• Lesson: What can your reader take away?

Example:

Before: I thought I had to be ultra-polished to grow an audience.

Struggle: But the more ‘perfect’ I tried to be, the less people engaged.

Shift: I realised I needed to open up. I started sharing personal struggles, experiments, and real insights without over-editing. That’s when my audience grew.

Lesson: People follow realness, not perfection. If you want to grow your brand, share the monsters you encountered on your journey, not just the highlight reel.

A clear structure means guiding your reader through a series of insights that make sense and stay with them.

3. Make it about them.

The best personal stories aren’t just about you.

They act as a mirror for your audience.

To write like this, you need to think of how your reader interprets your words. It helps to write like you’re talking to your best friend and want the absolute best for them.

You’re telling your story, sure, but you are telling it to make it easier for the reader to understand how to improve their own lives.

Ask yourself things like:

• Does this story give my audience an “aha” moment?

• Does it show them they’re not alone?

• Can they apply this lesson to their own life?

Turn every story into something they can apply to their own life. That way, this isn’t an ‘all about you’ snooze-fest.

You’re sharing your struggles because you’re here to help someone else. This takes the self-consciousness out of the piece, making the writing feel empowering for you.

4. Be selective about vulnerability.

You don’t have to share everything. Some struggles are too raw to be helpful.

Brené Brown spoke about the value of vulnerability but also cautioned us about ‘airing our dirty laundry.’ Be willing to be vulnerable and specific, but tell us only what ultimately serves the reader once you’ve found the lesson.

If you’re still deep in the struggle, wait until you’ve found the solution and you’ve discovered the lesson before sharing.

The best lessons come from reflection, not from venting or just flat-out telling us how much you suck.

The power of small stories

You don’t need a dramatic ‘rags-to-riches’ tale. Your most valuable content can come from those little, often seemingly inconsequential moments:

• The email that crushed your confidence.

• That time you kept your cool when someone jumped ahead of you in the queue.

• The day you almost gave up but didn’t.

Each of these moments, when framed in a way that helps move the reader forward a step, builds your brand one relatable story at a time.

Your struggles can give you a lot of credibility as a relatable and human writer that people fall in love with. The smallest lessons are valuable.

Start sharing your little (or big) struggles and how you overcame them, and watch how fast people start paying attention.

I know how frustrating it can be when your writing doesn’t get many likes. Engagement is important. It keeps you excited.

My Online Writing Alchemy course solves this. It shows you how to write stuff people love to read.

Learn more about the course here.

Alex

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