Why you should learn to love LinkedIn: Yes you, over there with the corporate job. You.
“Life will knock you down. It’ll kick you in the gut, and knock you to the curb. But you can’t let it rob you of your ness… Now what’s ness? It’s your name, plus -ness. Hang on to that, and as long as you do, you’ll always be ready.”
In the 2006 movie You, Me and Dupree, Owen Wilson (as Dupree) is standing on stage giving a motivational speech - jarring enough, as his life up to that point has been a little directionless and itinerant - in which he encourages his audience to embrace their ness. Their nature. The thing that makes them, them. “I don’t have a career per se”, he says, “I guess you could say my career is to live, and love - and I do that to the utmost”.
Owen Wilson as Dupree in You, Me and Dupree
The speech has become a cult expression of something you’ve probably been hearing about more and more: personal brand.
Solopreneurs and brand builders know this all too well. Building a personal brand is their day-to-day reality (true story).
But what about you out there in the corporate world, those for whom brand-building is someone else’s job, the brand is the employer, and you just have you role to play in that system?
Well, I would argue it’s as important, if not more important for you to start thinking about your personal brand.
Why? Well, for two reasons:
Because work is changing. It has been changing for some time. This is not news. But something has shifted in the past couple of years; I’ve experienced it personally, and I am experiencing it through my clients. People are less willing to play the corporate game than they were in the past, or, better put: they at least want a bigger say in the rules.
Because the market is changing. Getting a job is not the same thing as it was a few years ago. AI has flipped the game upside down (and I’m hardly one to tout AI as this universally paradigm-shifting thing, I think that line is overplayed - but in this case, it’s true).
Let’s look at this through a real-world example. This could be any one of a number of my clients, but in this case it’s not a specific person. More an aggregation of different situations.
Situation #1
You’ve been in your job for a few years. You’ve mostly really enjoyed it. Great coworkers. Great culture. Good benefits. But lately that little voice that tells you it’s time for something new has started getting a little louder. There’s nothing inherently wrong with where you are or what you’re doing. But you know if you stay, it will start to feel like a mistake.
This is the subtle reality of most of these kinds of moments. It’s not the extremes you read about in (mostly fictional) LinkedIn posts. It’s a little change, usually some kind of internal growth or realisation that’s taking place, that says - time to move. Time to get up and go somewhere. Maybe it’s some ancient survival instinct kicking in. Move. There’s a threat just over the horizon.
We’d do well to listen to that voice more.
So - it’s time to think about moving on.
The problem is, you’re at a standing start. Why? Because outside the confines of your daily role at your company, not that many people know about who you really are and what you really do.
Your ness.
It’s stuck inside your office.
Situation #2
You’re in the job market. Not by choice.
Not that you did anything wrong. You worked your backside off. You were a team player. Your performance reviews were nailed on. But sometimes the wrong kind of money runs out, and an arbitrary decision gets made which has nothing to do with merit or performance. It happens.
So your company restructured, you’re on the wrong side of the Reception desk, and you’re dealing with a two-layer crisis: part financial (“how am I going to pay the bills?”) and part identity (“if I’m not Head of Operations any more, what am I?”).
The standard play here is to start Indeed-ing like you’re fresh out of school and looking for your first job. You’re writing cover letters (or Claude is writing them for you) and dusting off your resume (which you haven’t looked at in 15 years).
And what happens? Not much. It feels like progress, because you apply for 25 jobs a day, but the reality is, nothing’s moving.
What’s missing?
You guessed it: your ness.
A resume and a cover letter tell a potential employer almost nothing about who you actually are and what you’re actually good at (take it from someone who has read thousands of them) - and that’s even if you manage to get them through to a decision-maker.
There has to be a better way.
Your brand is literally how people know a piece of work is yours. Doesn’t that feel important? (Pic credit: farmprogress.com)
Well, I think there is, and it’s an insurance policy.
And in 2026, that insurance policy is a personal brand.
It’s something that means you have a voice, an identity, and traction outside your immediate environment. That people know who you are and what you’re about without having sat in a single Monday morning team meeting with you.
And never has this been easier to do. LinkedIn. Substack. Heck, even TikTok (yes, really).
Sure, there’s competition, there’s noise, and everyone has access to the same abundance - but that’s the nature of abundance. There’s lots of it. Would you rather be amongst it, or outside of it?
Because when things start to change around you - whether it’s your feelings about work, or work’s feelings about you - you need a Plan B.
An insurance policy.
A personal brand.
So, a few words on what that looks like for those of you out there in the corporate world.
Start talking about things that matter to you - professionally, and in terms of values - on some kind of social channel. Doesn’t have to be LinkedIn, but it’s a good place to start.
Don’t overthink it. Just write what feels true. There’s a craving for authenticity out there. The top-performing voices on social channels right now are the ones that talk about real situations and emotions. Not thought leadership or “5 ways to x” type content.
Connect as widely as you can with as many people as possible. Ideally outside your current sphere. The goal is to become familiar.
If you’re doing this things, you don’t have to worry about what your topic is. It will emerge naturally.
And all of a sudden (by which I mean, after a sustained period of consistent effort), you will have a selection of next steps laid out before you. Whether you’re ready right now or not.
Zero time on Indeed. No emailing those painful cover letters to unmonitored inboxes.
Because you’ll be living in your -ness.
You’ll be ready.