23. How to Build a Personal Brand in the AI Era | Summer Prediction Series
Episode 23 •
23rd July 2026 • Rich Work: Attract Premium Clients And Build Wealth Through Premium Positioning • Rachel Pearson, High Ticket Business Strategist
I saw a job description on LinkedIn paying up to 10K a month and it confirmed my predictions about building a personal brand this year. It read like a media company hire, not a marketing role, and it named exactly where premium businesses are heading in the next 6-12 months.
Welcome to my first episode of summer series predictions for 2027, where I am talking about the shift into media company model, how to use AI in business to handle the content strategy and the repetitive work without losing your originality, and what premium clients really need to feel before they invest. Tune in to hear where I see premium business going next.
Topics covered on Building Personal Brand:
Why building a personal brand now means thinking like a media company, even if your business is just you.
The LinkedIn job description that signals about where premium business is heading.
How AI is taking over content creation and repurposing, and what makes you irreplaceable once it does.
Why premium clients buy on compounding evidence rather than more volume, and what that means for your premium positioning.
Getting discerning about which platforms and rooms are right for you to be publishing in.
[00:00:30] Distribute your thinking in more impactful ways. Welcome to Rich Work, the podcast for established female entrepreneurs ready to turn their expertise into premium clients and consistent high ticket revenue. I'm Rachel Pearson, global brand and business strategist, skincare obsessed and always distracted by booking the next mini break.
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My Predictions for 2027
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[00:01:39] One of the key things I'm always looking at, because it is so important when you lead a business that is premium, is what's next. It's not about following the next trend or doing the next shiny AI thing. It is about staying ahead of what is relevant for you to be at the cutting edge of, for your business, in your niche, for your clients.
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[00:02:38] If you've listened to this podcast for a while, you will not be surprised to hear that I'm not going to show up and say, "This is what's working in content at the moment. This is how to sell out your offer. This is how to price it." I will go into strategy. I will give you my take on it, but that is also not what is going to help you to be category leading.
Why The Best Entrepreneurs Learn From Conversations Outside Their Industry
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[00:03:26] They don't learn from the conversations that are immediately available to them. They learn from and tap into adjacent conversations, conversations happening in industries that really don't have much to do with what they're doing right now, but they get inspiration from them that takes them out of the comfort level of how they think and the default they've got into running their business. It completely blows open how they think about their offers and their pricing, because something has sparked them to take a different decision, to ask a different question and to shift into a completely different perspective.
Using AI in Business Will Change How You Run It
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[00:04:33] very simple business that is just you. So when I say the structure of businesses, your mind might go to "okay, I have to have a massive team, I have to have multiple different parts to my business." This is about how you think about your business, not about how much you have in place. The businesses I see developing the fastest right now, the ones really preparing to stay relevant in a space that is going to be dominated by AI,
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[00:05:28] But what that also does is free up a lot of time from repetitive tasks, from tasks that traditionally did take a long time, and it means we can be a lot more creative in our businesses, and we can really focus on how we enable more people to connect with our brands and our thinking.
The Future Of Building a Personal Brand Is Thinking Like A Media Company
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[00:06:15] If you're an online business and you are building a personal brand, and I know product based businesses have personal brands as well, but I'm really focused on online, then the future of your business will be thinking about it as a media company. I've been talking about this with my clients for, well, I was going to say months, but it's been years now that I've been saying this.
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What Sam Thompson's £10k Job Advert Reveals About What’s Coming
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[00:07:32] I saw a job description that his sister posted, and she is also in the UK media space. Both of them originally came through reality TV. They both came through a show called Made in Chelsea, which when it first came out, I watched, and I'll be honest, I still watch it now. Who am I to sit here and pretend that I don't?
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[00:08:26] But the job description read like a media operation. It was about owning and executing the strategy across multiple social platforms, so Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat and beyond. It was also about filming and packaging day to day life into a compelling content narrative, managing short form distribution, managing storytelling and pacing, how you retain viewers and turn them into advocates of the brand, how to manage workflows and collaborate across the team.
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Why Chasing More Content Is Small Thinking For Premium Businesses
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[00:09:49] Whereas his business through his personal brand is very much about volume. He's across a lot of social media channels, multiple platforms, but the principle is the same. A lot of online service businesses trying to operate in a more premium space are still thinking about their content strategy as a way to sell their services and their offers.
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[00:10:42] It doesn't matter what revenue level you're at right now. This is about thinking bigger. It's not about putting yourself in the box of "I run a coaching business, therefore I must show up and sell my services on stories every day. I must post content every day. I must be on LinkedIn." There are ways we can get our businesses out there and enable people to get to know about us, but AI is already creating huge efficiencies in how you distribute content, how you create it and how you repurpose it across multiple platforms.
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What A Media Company Actually Does
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[00:12:34] That is what a media company does. If you take it in a really traditional sense, even before any mention of AI, if we take it back to TV, TV is about distributing conversations and topical content through multiple channels. That is what a media company does. It's what a publishing house does. It will take books.
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[00:13:38] It's the same thinking that's in the recipe book, but it has now been distributed out into multiple channels. That is what a media house does. TV publishing, print publishing, magazines now moving into runway shows, look at a magazine like Vogue, it does experiential things like going into cities and hosting catwalk fashion shows within those cities, with a theme that shows upcoming talent.
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The Signature Economy And How Premium Clients Decide Who To Buy From
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[00:15:02] Everything you're sharing in conversation, you're trying to shove into an Instagram post, a LinkedIn post, an email, and then it's "okay, job done, I've distributed it." This is where, when you think from a different perspective, a different dimension, you come at it totally differently. So we want to think less about how to create content and get more content out there.
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[00:15:58] And yes, I am simplifying it, and no, I don't know him, so he might come back and say, "Actually, there's a huge business plan around this, Rachel." But he has not invented anything. He is distributing his brand, his authenticity, through different media channels. He's not thinking, "Oh, I want to get to 5 million followers on Instagram."
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[00:16:39] They are looking for how they can know that you are true and real, because there are a lot of ways to fake things. So they want to know what I've called the signature economy. I believe we're in the signature economy, where any time somebody hears something from you or sees something from you, it has your signature on it.
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Why Premium Clients Want Compounding Evidence, Not More Posts
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[00:17:51] That is one of the ways it happens. That's integrated marketing, connected marketing. To me, that's the bare minimum. But what they want to feel is that they can connect up your body of thinking. This is where the IP, the intellectual property bit, comes in. They want to know that if they were in a conversation with you, and you didn't have the liberty of sitting down and writing an Instagram post with AI, could you come up with this originality of thinking?
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[00:18:48] Can I ask you a question that you have not prepared for and still have you answer it?
How I Run My Own Business Like A Media Company
So when I'm thinking about how I'm creating my business, I am thinking of it like a media company. I don't want to run multiple channels. My business manager will tell you my goal is to keep it as streamlined as possible.
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[00:19:31] She's talking about how everyone building a personal brand business is going to become a media company. What is going on?" My body of work, my thinking, is that I push the boundaries. I want people to come to me because they think, "You think in a completely different way", because that's how I think. I want to be the one who is innovative, who is not sitting back going, "How are they doing that framework over there?
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[00:20:17] That's how I approach it as a media company, not as "how am I creating and repurposing my content." AI will have that covered. It already does, and it's just going to get better. My content always comes from my ideas. I don't use AI to create content, but by repurposing and thinking about it, AI is going to be able to come up with a publishing strategy.
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Stop Shrinking Your Thinking Into A Content Strategy
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[00:21:28] Content is a vehicle, but distributing your thinking is where you are going to make millions. The media company model is not about volume, it is about creating the architecture so you can get your thinking out to more of your right people. So think about what you are publishing. How does it connect up the body of your work?
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[00:22:15] That's up to them. If they're not committed to their business, then we've got other things to discuss. There's something else going on there. But I want to understand how everything is connected, because I can see opportunities for them to create this body of work through how they distribute their content, how they distribute their thinking, and also through what they're not doing.
Where To Publish For The Best Results
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[00:23:07] We also need to get really discerning about what we decide is not for us. Not every room is the right room to distribute your thinking. Not every platform is the right platform for you to be publishing on. I'm not on TikTok. TikTok is not my place, and it's not only from a client perspective, it's also just not a place I want to be.
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She Sets The Standard - My business Event This November
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[00:24:28] It is where you see how to apply this type of thinking to your business. You hear from women who are already doing it, from women who have built incredible businesses and who are able to share their learnings with you. But it's also where you have conversations you do not hear at other business events.
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[00:25:25] The tickets are now live for Friday, the 13th of November. It is in London. The link to the tickets is in the show notes. We are already at 50% capacity before announcing the speakers, the full speaker lineup or the venue, so these tickets will go. I would absolutely love to see you there.
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[00:26:15] This is Rich Work. I'm Rachel Pearson, and I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to Rich Work. I'd love it if you left a review. It helps other women find us. In the meantime, follow me on Instagram, @rachelpearson.co, for a different take on premium positioning, one that's not about fitting a box.
