I Created the World’s First Personal Branding Directory for Professionals: Here’s Why.

By Isaac MashmanSeptember 13, 20269 min readBusinessFirst published on Medium (opens in a new tab)

The internet has indubitably opened up new areas of study, fields of practice, and exponentially more opportunities. It has sped up the potential of mankind, the potential for growth, and the potential for creative execution, yet the creation of a brand new field remains a rare occurrence. It is not as if a new industry is reliably created every year, or even every decade for that matter. Personal branding is one of the fields that has been introduced to the broader populace because of such technology.

The phrase itself, “personal brand,” is, to many people’s surprise, relatively young. It was first used by Tom Peters, a business management consultant who has since retired. Tom, back in 1997, wrote an article for FastCompany titled “The Brand Called You.” Targeted towards C-suite executives and a more corporate audience, his article ultimately evolved into a book of the same name, influencing the early adopters of this new concept known as “personal branding.” I go into more depth about this in the second edition of my book (opens in a new tab), so for the sake of time I won’t rewrite what I have already written. That’s not my intent.

How Edward Bernays Influenced My Perspective

I preface this article with a brief history because it shares similarities with the field of public relations. In the early 20th century, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays, faced similar challenges. Today, he is known as the “Father of Public Relations.” Upon further research, he definitely deserves the title. He worked alongside Woodrow Wilson to influence Americans to get involved in World War I. He is the reason why women in America began smoking cigarettes. His campaign for a meatpacking company is the reason we started eating hearty breakfasts with bacon and loaded fats. Even the kids’ menu at restaurants can be attributed to Bernays.

It is no surprise to me that to a person outside of the field of public relations, he would be entirely unknown. It is ironic because in his books he references shrouded figures that act as the puppet masters behind the masses, but he himself could be viewed in a similar light. Later in his life, Edward Bernays criticized the field of public relations for its lack of formal doctrine. Anybody could consider themselves a counselor on public relations, could practice in the field, and masquerade as a professional with no further verification. There is no BAR exam like that for lawyers, or an oath that requires adherence to.

Fast forward 100 years, I share a lot of the same sentiments regarding personal branding. Social media has expedited the rise of the influencer class. People whose currency is not monetary, but one of influence. The ability to direct attention and monetize it henceforth. Some public figures have made massive contributions to the general awareness of the term, such as Gary Vaynerchuk, yet from a professional standpoint, there are few who have intentionally progressed the field outside of their own individual goals for being number one.

That begs further discussion on what it even means to be number one. Is it the person or consultancy that lands the most clients? Is it the person who generates the most views or follows? Or… Could it be the person or entity that introduces a sense of formalized trust?

I choose to believe the latter deserves further exploration, followed by superficial results. In a large part, that is the reason why I created the world’s first personal branding directory for professionals, the subject of this article.

How It Started

The idea for a directory dedicated to personal branding professionals originated earlier this year. I can’t recall the exact moment when the idea popped into my head, but it is the result of noticing a lack in the market, which is interestingly the same reason why I first got involved with personal branding. In 2020, I was struggling to find a firm directional path for my career. I had tried the stereotypical businesses; I started with an apparel line, ventured into network marketing on multiple occasions, pursued music management, but nothing seemed to excite me. I recognized that there was no shortage of people who worked with businesses, but what about the people behind the businesses?

The words of my digital mentors rang in my head. The phrase “Obscurity is the enemy of success” made a lot of sense. Before 2020, I was building my personal brand and saw the fruits of my labor pay off in various ways; I just didn’t truly understand where my path was taking me or how to truly leverage it. So, one mistake after another eventually resulted in a series of wins that began to compile. I published the first edition of my book in 2021, was invited to speak at multiple events with all expenses paid, built a public relations firm, founded Mashman Consulting Group, academically published my paper on Identity Positioning™, followed by the second edition of my book in 2025.

This is all great for me and those in my direct circle; however, how could I make my own individual goal of building the number one personal brand consultancy worldwide come true? That takes me back to what I said several paragraphs ago, about the person or entity that contributes most to the field of study.

Like the criticisms that Bernays had for public relations, a primary flaw of personal branding as a field is that it is closely attached to a person’s sense of identity, their goals, and their vanity. There are three reasons why one might choose to build their personal brand: money, mission, or vanity itself. Professionals, and that term is in many cases undeserved, understand this fact and leverage it to their own benefit. Whether that be making promises that they cannot keep, fabricating results such as botting a social media account or buying a feature in a press article that has zero authority, or lying through their teeth to gain a prospect’s trust.

That is in and of itself a clear indicator that they do not understand what personal branding truly is about. It is about creating the Midas touch and letting an individual’s results create a sense of undeniable attraction.

What Is Personal Branding Agencies, the Directory?

To solve this problem, I decided to create a directory that is specifically devoted only to people whose primary focus is on personal branding. There are numerous online directories for different niches and generalized businesses, but there is nothing dedicated to the field of personal branding until now.

Personal Branding Agencies (PBA) (opens in a new tab) is a platform that allows ethical and moral personal branding professionals to list their business, grow their authority, and potentially gain more clientele. It is absolutely free to apply for listing; there are no required costs, and there’s no fine print. All the professional has to do is adhere to our platform’s code of ethics and show up for their clients.

To be listed, an agency, consultancy, or individual consultant must first check off the following:

1. Code of Ethics: A signed commitment to the PBA Code of Ethics: a standing pledge against the manipulative tactics saturating this industry. Breaking it, or disagreeing with any part of it, ends a listing.
2. AI Disclosure: A published position on how the practice uses artificial intelligence. Using AI is not disqualifying. Concealing it is, and so is using it to manufacture a perception a client has not earned. The disclosure is published on the listing.
3. Primary Focus is Personal Branding: Personal branding must account for at least 70 percent of the practice’s work.
4. Specialization: A defined lane, stated plainly. Practices claiming to serve everyone are asked what they actually do best.
5. Verifiable Website: A live site that plainly identifies the business and what it does.
6. Verifiable Social Media Footprint: At least one active, public professional profile that can be independently confirmed to belong to the practice.
7. Legitimate Legal Filing: A registered business entity, or a properly filed sole practice. Whatever form the practice takes, it must exist on the record somewhere we can check.

These are the seven criteria required. The Personal Branding Agencies Code of Ethics is as follows:

1. Organic Growth Only: We do not buy followers, engagement, or manufactured social proof, for our clients or ourselves.
2. AI is Disclosed, Not Concealed: Artificial intelligence is a tool, and we use it openly where it helps. We do not let it do the heavy lifting of a client’s intellectual property or speaking voice, we do not pass off generated work as human craft, and we do not use it to build a perception the client has not earned.
3. Earned Press, Honestly Earned: We do not fabricate media features, pay for disguised advertorials presented as earned coverage, or invent credentials.
4. Truth in Results: We do not promise outcomes we cannot control, and we report client results without inflation.
5. Identity Before Image: We build brands on who the client actually is, never on a persona designed to deceive their audience.
6. Transparent Pricing: Our fees, deliverables, and terms are stated before engagement. No bait pricing, no surprise upsells mid-contract.
7. The Client Owns the Brand: Accounts, audiences, and assets built during an engagement belong to the client, always.

Once completed, a phone call with either myself or another member of the PBA team follows. This phone call serves almost as an interview to ensure they, or their company, would properly represent the directory. As long as everything goes well, a free listing with a dedicated page and URL slug is created, and they are able to submit updates which the PBA team must verify before making any changes.

Users, clients, and prospects are able to submit reviews based on their experiences, but even then, reviews must be verified. If a review is negative, we act as a mediator and offer the opportunity to work with the client to provide a better experience before publishing. Users, clients, and prospects are also able to report a listing for a breach of the Code of Ethics (opens in a new tab). Examples would be refusal to hand over assets, paid placements, buying fake followers, or the unscrupulous use of artificial intelligence. Upon receiving a report on an agency, we will contact both associated parties and, once again, verify that the claim was true. If we discover that the company is in breach of our policy, their company will be permanently removed from our platform.

The Upside

I know that the last paragraph might sound scary or fearful, but to the honest and true practitioner, it will only present upside, as anybody who visits personalbrandingagencies.com (opens in a new tab) will hopefully gain a sense of trust in every company that is on the platform.

It is this eventual credibility that the platform’s success will be contingent upon. Every directory listing has the expected SEO benefit, and more importantly, AIO artificial intelligence optimization so models can pull data from the site as its domain authority scales. The more listings we have, the more backlinks and exposure everybody receives.

There is a search feature and filter in the directory with data points such as DFY, DWY, ideal clients, expected costs, and deliverables. We have also built a proprietary Power Ranking leaderboard that is automatically updated every day. The more positive reviews an agency has, the higher they’ll move up in the ranking system.

Note: there are sample agencies live on the site to display the directory’s capabilities.

Paid Plans

Once the platform generates enough organic traffic, we will eventually open up paid plans to support further development of the directory and upkeep costs. We plan to have two plans, “Featured Partner” and “Professional.” Both have their own pros and different costs, but neither will influence the power ranking itself.

The Long Term Version

Our overarching goal with PBA is to make it the most trusted and searched directory that personal branding companies can rely on for visibility, and that prospects can use to discover who best serves their needs and goals.

As a field of both study and execution, personal branding is still in the early stages of development, and with forward thinking such as this, we can all do our part to ethically and sustainably help more people achieve their goals using what I believe to be one of the most important and innate parts of being human.

Their personal brand.

To learn more or apply for a listing, you can visit personalbrandingagencies.com (opens in a new tab)

First published on Medium (opens in a new tab) on September 13, 2026. Lightly edited for this site.