What is personal branding, really, and do women in business actually need it?

Personal branding is one of those phrases that gets used so much that it can start to feel a bit empty.

It sounds important. It sounds current. It sounds like something you’re probably meant to be doing. But for a lot of women in business, it still feels vague, a bit performative, or like it belongs to influencers rather than actual founders.

And I totally see why.

I’ve worked in branding for over 16 years, and through ReWorded I kept seeing the same thing happen. Women were building smart businesses, doing genuinely good work, and often delivering at a really high level, but the brand around them wasn’t keeping up. The visuals might’ve looked fine, the website might’ve technically worked, and the business might’ve even been growing, but something still felt off. The brand felt flat, anonymous, or disconnected from the person actually driving it.

That’s a big part of why I created Red Bow House as a division of ReWorded. I wanted a space that focused more intentionally on personal branding and founder led branding, because that’s where I could see the market moving.

So what is personal branding, really?

It’s not just a logo, and it’s not a headshot. It’s not posting polished photos of yourself and calling it a strategy. Personal branding is the way people experience you in relation to your work. It’s your point of view, your taste, your standards, your energy, your voice, and the way all of that gets translated into something people can recognise and remember.

A business brand tells people what the business is, and a personal brand helps people understand why you are the person behind it.

That matters a lot more now than it used to.

We’re in a market where trust, relatability, and recognisable perspective carry real weight. Edelman’s 2025 Brand Trust report found that 80% of people trust the brands they use, and that trust now sits alongside price and quality as a purchase consideration. The same report says brands need to start with the personal, because people are looking for optimism, support, and relevance that actually connects to their own lives.

At the same time, creator and founder visibility is becoming less of a side tactic and more of a core marketing reality. Ogilvy’s 2026 influence trends report says the creator economy is no longer optional or experimental and is now a foundational pillar of modern marketing. CreatorIQ’s 2025 to 2026 report also shows creator marketing is becoming more professionalised, more measurable, and more embedded in how brands build awareness and trust.

That lines up with what I’m seeing every day.

There’s more content than ever, more polished visuals than ever, and now more AI generated sameness than ever. That means looking nice isn’t enough on its own. Deloitte’s 2026 marketing trend reporting says marketing is being reshaped by AI, economic pressure, and changing consumer behaviour, which is exactly why clear identity and human credibility matter more right now.

This is where founder led branding comes in.

I talk about founder led branding a lot because I think it’s where a lot of women actually sit, even if they haven’t been using that language yet. Founder led branding is when the founder plays a meaningful role in how the brand is understood and trusted. That doesn’t always mean your face needs to be everywhere, and it definitely doesn’t mean you need to become some kind of online personality. It just means your perspective, presence, taste, voice, or leadership adds real value to how the brand is experienced.

For a lot of service based businesses, that’s already true.

If people are buying your thinking, your process, your recommendations, your standards, your eye, or your way of doing things, then they’re not only buying the offer. They’re buying into you as part of the offer.

That’s why I don’t think women in business need personal branding because it’s trendy. I think many of them need it because the market is already reading their business through them, whether they’ve built for that intentionally or not.

Some of the clearest examples of this are the brands that have managed to build huge traction because the founder’s point of view was already doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

Glossier is a strong one. Emily Weiss didn’t just launch products out of nowhere. She built Into The Gloss first, shaped a recognisable voice and perspective around beauty, and then turned that into a brand with a built in audience and a very clear point of view. WIRED’s reporting on Glossier makes that connection pretty obvious. The brand was never separate from the perspective that built it.

Rhode is another example, even though it sits in a different category. Reuters reported that e.l.f. acquired Hailey Bieber’s Rhode for about $1 billion in 2025 after the brand generated about $212 million in sales in the year ending March 31. Whether people love celebrity brands or not, the point still stands. Founder visibility, recognisable aesthetic, and strong online presence played a major role in how that brand gained traction.

Then there are the quieter examples, which honestly are often more useful for the women I work with.

With Rhiannon Brock, The Edit, the challenge wasn’t making a styling brand look prettier. It was about building a personal brand that felt more editorial, more intentional, and more tied to her eye and discernment. Her perspective was part of the value, so the brand needed to hold that.

With Beyond the Bio, it wasn’t enough to create a podcast cover and a few launch graphics. The whole identity needed to support the tone, honesty, and point of view of the platform itself. That’s founder led branding too. It isn’t always loud, and it isn’t always literal, but it does create a stronger bridge between the brand and the person behind it.

That’s the part I think a lot of women miss.

Personal branding isn’t some fluffy add on you worry about once everything else is sorted. A lot of the time it’s the thing that makes the rest of the brand make sense. If your business is good but your online presence feels generic, if your visuals look fine but don’t really feel like you, or if people trust your work once they’re in your world but don’t fully get it before that, there’s usually a gap in the brand.

And often, that gap sits around personal presence.

A strong personal brand makes it easier for the right people to understand who you are, what you stand for, and why your way of doing things is worth paying attention to. It creates context around the work. It gives people something more memorable to connect to. It reduces the distance between you and the people who are already half looking for someone like you.

That’s also why I don’t treat this as just visuals.

At ReWorded, and now more intentionally through Red Bow House, I look at personal branding through strategy, identity, and creative direction first. Strategy gives the brand something to stand on. Identity makes it recognisable. Creative direction is what helps it hold together once it reaches the real world, whether that’s your content, your imagery, your launch assets, your website, or your social presence.

So, do women in business actually need personal branding?

Not every woman in the exact same way, no. But if your business is tied to your expertise, your visibility, your leadership, your reputation, or your way of thinking, then yes, there’s a very good chance you do.

Not because you need to become an influencer, and not because you need to post your face every day, but because the strongest brands right now are leaning more into the founder, the perspective, and the human connection behind the business. That shift is already happening across media, commerce, and service businesses, and the brands that feel most memorable usually aren’t the ones hiding behind perfect polish. They’re the ones that feel clear, human, and recognisable.

If you’re at the point where the business is solid but the brand still feels a little too generic, too distant, or too surface level, that’s usually the moment to look at this properly.

That’s exactly why Red Bow House exists.

If you want a brand that feels more aligned to your presence, your point of view, and the level you’re actually operating at, you can enquire through Red Bow House or explore the wider body of work through ReWorded.