532 - How Do I Stay Authentic While Also Being Strategic?
Authenticity and strategy are not opposites. Learn how CEOs can stay true to themselves while building a thought leadership system that drives trust, credibility, and business impact.
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How Do I Stay Authentic While Also Being Strategic?
One of the most common concerns CEOs have when building their personal brand is this: How do I stay authentic while also being strategic? Many worry that showing up online means becoming someone they are not, or letting a PR team dictate their voice. But authenticity and strategy are not opposites. When combined, they form the most powerful foundation for long-term thought leadership.
1. Authenticity is being yourself consistently.
True authenticity means your presence online matches the person people meet in real life. If your audience experiences two different versions of you, they will lose trust. The goal is not to play a role, but to show up as yourself in every context, boardroom, social media, or stage.
2. Strategy ensures your authenticity delivers impact.
Being authentic without direction can look random. Strategy helps you align your values, voice, and message with business outcomes. This does not mean faking a persona; it means creating a system that amplifies who you already are.
3. Your humanity is your differentiator.
People don’t connect to perfect scripts. They connect to your voice, your stories, and your imperfections. A leader who shows up as the same person online and offline builds deeper trust and loyalty.
4. Sustainability comes from alignment.
If your content is scripted, pushed, or disconnected from who you are, you won’t sustain it. Over time, you’ll burn out or break character. But when your strategy is built around your real self, consistency becomes natural, not forced.
Final Thought
Authenticity without strategy limits your influence. Strategy without authenticity erodes trust. But when the two work together, you create a leadership presence that is both human and powerful. This episode of The Daily Hint is your reminder: the best strategy you can build is to be yourself on purpose.
Highlights:
00:00 Introduction: The Challenge of Authenticity for CEOs
00:10 The Importance of Being Yourself
00:31 Avoiding the Trap of Playing a Role
00:50 Consistency in Online and Offline Presence
01:04 The Pitfalls of Over-Managed Content
01:20 Conclusion: Strategies for Authentic Leadership
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Transcript:
How do I stay authentic as a CEO and thought leader in the industry by showing up in the internet, which a lot of CEOs don't do. So one of the things that I always recommend is being yourself. You speak in a certain way. You are not reading a script from someone that has written. But how do I stay authentic as a thought leader?
And CEO, especially authenticity comes from being yourself. If you are not playing a role, which you know in real life, it's very hard to do, if you're playing a role all the time, people will see that you're different. I give you the example of a video like this. I record quite a lot of videos in the internet.
I record quite a lot of videos and share them in the internet. And one of the best compliments I always get is that you are not a different person. You are the exact same person that is in the video that I'm meeting now in person. And that's what you want to achieve. If you create content that it is not you, because you have a PR team and you have a marketing team that push you into a certain direction, it's not going to work long term because people will feel that you are not the same person.
Being authentic, being yourself and creating a system and a strategy that helps you to stay there and delivering on the business goals is the number one thing for CEOs if you want to be a thought leader. If not, then you can just forget it.