I'm an Introvert Building a Personal Brand. Here's My Workaround.

I hate being on camera. I'm building a personal brand anyway.

That still feels weird to type.

I understand the value of visibility. If I want to do consulting, speaking gigs will probably matter. A body of work matters. Credibility matters. But the thing is, I don't naturally move toward attention. I'm more comfortable building something useful in the background, testing it on my own companies, then maybe talking about it after.

So when I started thinking about butchtanseco.com, my first reaction wasn't excitement.

It was friction.

I'm an introvert. I'm squirmy about putting myself out there. I also don't want to become some online personality whose whole job is to keep feeding the machine. That's not me. I don't want to be "on" all the time. I don't want to wake up thinking about thumbnails, hooks, engagement tricks, and what spicy opinion I need to post today so the algorithm doesn't forget I exist.

And if I'm being honest, there's another layer.

I don't want to attract the wrong fight.

AI has weird politics around it. There are people who are curious, practical, and trying to figure out what works. Those people I like. Then there are people who seem more interested in proving you're a fraud than in solving any actual problem. Especially online. Especially in tech circles.

I don't have much interest in that game.

The funny part is I still think building in public is the right move for me.

Not because I want followers.

Because I want signal.

I want a place where I can write down what I'm testing, what worked, what failed, and what I'm seeing across my own businesses. If that helps somebody else, good. If that turns into conversations, even better. If it eventually leads to consulting work, speaking gigs, or a community of operators figuring this out too, then that's the real upside.

So I needed a workaround.

Not a fake confident version of myself. A format that actually fits how I work.

For now, that format is writing.

Blogs are low drama. That's what I like about them.

I can publish a thought without turning it into a production. I can write about a workflow I tested, a problem I noticed, or an idea I'm still unsure about. I can be specific without performing. I can say, "Here's what happened," instead of pretending I arrived from the future with the final answer.

That feels more natural to me than YouTube right now.

I've been struggling with starting YouTube for a while. Video has a much higher activation energy. You need the setup, the energy, the voice, the face, the edits, the consistency. And the algorithm doesn't really reward thoughtful inconsistency. It rewards repetition. If you're running businesses, that's not a small ask.

Writing is different.

You can publish one clear idea in an hour or two. You can stay close to the actual work. You can sound like yourself. No ring light required.

That's the workaround I'm using.

Write first. Build the body of work first. Let the ideas harden on the page before I try to speak them on camera.

I think this also solves another problem I had in my head. I kept framing it as "launching a personal brand," which honestly sounds a bit gross to me. Too polished. Too intentional in the wrong way.

The better framing is this:

I'm an operator figuring things out in public.

That's it.

I'm not trying to be an influencer. I'm not trying to become some AI prophet for SMEs. I'm a guy who runs businesses, sees a lot of operational friction, experiments with tools, breaks things, fixes them, and writes down what I learn.

That posture matters.

It gives me room to be wrong.

And I need that room because a lot of this is still being tested. Some workflows save time immediately. Some ideas sound smart until they touch reality. Some things that look impressive in demos become useless when they meet actual staff, actual delays, actual handoffs, and actual messy data.

I would rather document that honestly than try to sound advanced.

Later on, I can see video becoming part of it. But even there, I don't think I need to start the usual way. I don't need to sit in front of a camera and act natural while very much not feeling natural.

There are lower-friction versions:

• screen recordings
• narrated slides
• workflow walkthroughs
• voiceover on actual systems I'm testing

That's probably closer to how I should do it anyway. Show the work. Show the mess. Show the before and after. Less personality theater. More proof.

And if people end up following along, good.

But I think the goal has to stay clear.

The goal is not internet fame.

The goal is doors opening.

The right kind of doors.

A business owner reads something and says, "This guy gets the problem."

A team invites me to speak because the ideas are grounded.

A few like-minded entrepreneurs find the writing and we start comparing notes.

That's enough. More than enough, actually.

So this site is my compromise with visibility.

I don't need to become loud. I just need to become findable.

I don't need to perform certainty. I just need to document what I'm learning clearly enough that other people can use it.

And maybe that's the version of personal branding I can live with.

Not branding as self-promotion.

Branding as organized proof.

I'm still figuring it out. This might change. Maybe six months from now I'm posting videos every week and laughing at how dramatic I was about all this.

But so far, this feels right.

Write first.

Stay close to the work.

Don't force the medium.

Let credibility grow from actual things tested, not from trying to look like somebody who has it all figured out.

If you're also building something and the visibility part feels unnatural, maybe that's the move.

Don't start with performance.

Start with evidence.

Note: I use AI as a writing and thinking tool. The ideas, examples, and judgment in this post are mine.