Thought Leadership v10
How to build your brand before you go pro.
🗓 Thursday September 11th, 2025
Now, more than ever, building a personal brand holds high importance in any field of work. As professional track and field athletes, it’s especially important due to the instability and uncertainty of pay from athletics alone. Building a personal brand is a crucial step in fostering long-term wealth and opening doors to opportunities beyond the sport of athletics.
In this week’s article, we’ll dive into 5 different ways that you, as an athlete, can start building your brand before you go pro.
Tell your story
Leverage social media
Make it easy for people to find you
Talk about life outside of sport
Get out in the community
Tell your story
Sharing your journey is the main element of your personal brand that connects you to others. It’s hard for people/brands/sponsors to want to support you when they don’t know anything about you. Talk about how you got into the sport, what keeps you motivated, show parts of your workouts, etc. Anything that may be interesting or informative to people interested in or learning more about what you do.
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Leverage social media
This is one of the most powerful tools you can learn to utilize in building your personal brand. It’s the easiest way to share your story in an authentic way that can spark endless opportunities. Test out different platforms, jump on trends, and really use them to showcase your personality.
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Make it easy for people to find you
Building on the social media point, you want to make yourself as findable and easily-searchable as possible. This can look like having the same username/handle on social media, using the same profile picture, etc. The last thing you want to happen is for a brand to try and reach out, and they back out because they can’t find your information.
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Talk about life outside sport
This is a big one that many athletes miss the mark on. Giving people an insider scoop on who you are as an athlete outside of athletics is a huge strategy for attracting larger audiences and more sponsorship opportunities. You can share any part of your personality that does not relate to sport - any hobbies, things that keep you grounded, what motivates you to get out of bed in the morning, etc.
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Get out in the community
Giving back is such a great way to authentically build your brand. Volunteer at local events in your town or offer to speak about your experience to upcoming athletes. Anything that connects you to the space that helped build you into the athlete you are is a great way to strengthen your personal brand.
