How to Use Your Old Story to Tell your New One

As America’s leading happiness researcher, Arther Brooks speaks to influential business leaders at international conferences, writes books with Oprah Winfrey, and publishes a weekly column at The Atlantic. It’s a long way from Brooks’ former role as the head of the American Enterprise Institute, a free-market conservative think tank and his past as one of Washington, DC’s most outspoken critics of the Obama administration.

Brooks’ dramatic rebrand seems almost impossible in the era of social media trolls, where the Internet holds onto every word ever said. But he’s done it on a global scale, and the blueprint for how he did it is universal in the digital age.

Here’s how anyone can apply these principles to changing their own career course, and building a new personal brand.

Use Your Old Story To Tell A New Story

The transition from partisan activist to universal happiness researcher wasn’t Arthur Brooks’ first career pivot. He started his professional life as a French horn player before becoming an economist and think tank leader. And he doesn’t run away from any of it – he ties it all into his podcast appearances and speeches so you can see how he ended up where he is today.

That’s because leveraging your personal story in the right way positions yourself in the mind of your audience. It sets the foundation for the brand by framing who you are and giving a story for how you went from there to here. It also builds relational credibility and data points for your target audiences to follow and absorb. And it’s something that’s uniquely yours in the marketplace of ideas – whether those ideas are showing up in a book, a job interview, or on a stage.

The transition doesn’t have to be dramatic. Boston Celtics star Larry Bird was one of the top National Basketball Association players of all time – and he has built a reputation in retirement as one of the league’s top coaches and managers.

Nor does your new brand have to be well-known for people to resonate with it. One of the authors has an uncle who works as a tax preparer for H&R Block during tax season. But he didn’t start there; in fact, he took a financial literacy course in his fifties because he was embarrassed about his own lack of personal finance capabilities. It’s now a passion buoyed by the personal story he shares with clients – “I was there, I understand your questions and concerns.” His past ignorance creates connection and relatability with those he helps navigate the byzantine federal and state tax laws

Disseminate Your Story

What Brooks does exceptionally well is making his story the audience’s story. He frames himself as seeking happiness and well-being, not the master of it. It creates resonance because we’re all searching for the big ideas tied to happiness – relationships, health, money, the afterlife, etc.

He then uses every possible dissemination tactic to reach…well, everyone. He’s practically ubiquitous, with a column at The Atlantic, speaking gigs at college campuses and major conferences, and appearances on podcasts and TV shows. He also has almost 500,000 combined followers on X, Facebook, and Instagram. His influential relationships with Oprah Winfrey and the Dalai Lama have elevated his story to connect with their audiences, as well.

You and your new brand may not have the same reach as Brooks, but that’s okay – you don’t need it. All you need to do is:

• Understand your new audience. Find out what where they spend their time, how they consume information, and join them – whether digitally or in-person.
• Next, make a personal connection by developing content that will resonate with them.
• Finally, use the content styles – writing vs spoken, formal vs casual, punchy vs academic, etc. – that will likely establish your brand.

Take Paul Mecurio, who has won comedy writing awards with both Comedy Central and CBS. He made a massive – and risky – change from being a highly-compensated New York City lawyer to what was initially a little-known, little-paid stand-up comedian. He even went back to lawyering out of desperation before fully committing to comedy.

But as he told the podcast Second Act Stories, he got his comedic start by spending his evenings taxiing from the big law office to hole-in-the-wall comedy bars. He practiced his craft, putting it in front of those who understood and paid for good jokes. And his break came when he wrote a couple of jokes and handed them to Jay Leno at a public event. Weeks later, his jokes were on-air – written by him, said by Leno, and resulting in his star finally taking off.

Reel in your audiences with a call to action 

Influencers like Arthur Brooks are masters at making their stories resonate with audiences. But a newly cultivated brand is useless without a call to action that reels in your target audience. In Brooks’ case, that direction is a digital ecosystem of social media, email newsletters, and online content that funnels audiences into his website and points of sale – particularly to purchase his books.

Again, you may never face quite as drastic of a rebrand as Brooks, but most of us will change or refine our professional niche or even discover an untapped audience we want to reach. And people will only travel down your funnel if you have a path by which your dissemination leads back to your central hub. The speech leads to a video; the video leads to social media; social media leads to a website visit; the site visit leads to signing up for the newsletter; and the newsletter leads to spending money on your product, whether it’s a book or just hiring you at a more lucrative job.

First-time book authors often run into this challenge. They have an existing audience that will appreciate the book’s content, but that audience is often largely organic, built over time. There hasn’t been a need for a systematic approach to cast a wide net of marketing and branding to bring people to a point of sale.

So, when one book author was seeking to promote a professional development book, she hired one of the writers of this piece to build that systematic process. It started by finding and attracting niche professionals on LinkedIn, and then sharing content with that audience. She occasionally dropped encouragement to sign up for her newsletter, deepening her connection to subscribers. Now, months later, she has thousands of invested followers who are eager to hear more from her each week. And they will likely be the first in line when she publishes future books.

Making your story as powerful – and compelling – as possible

It’s easy to overlook how your past is connected to your present and future. But the most effective personal rebrands tell a compelling story that shows where we’ve been, how we got here, and where we’re going. Market research finds those who care about that story and determines which content and platforms will penetrate most deeply into target audiences. And then there’s a funnel to reel audiences back in to engage in the transformation.

You may never hang out with Oprah or work with Jon Stewart or win an NBA championship. But that’s okay – those things probably aren’t your brand, anyway.

This piece was originally published by Dustin Siggins & Mollie Johnson at American Business Magazine.