Empathy Beats the Résumé

When I introduce myself at an event, the same thing almost always happens. Someone hears my last name and, before they finish the sentence, I already know what's coming. "Stalman, like Andy Stalman?" Yes, he's my father. I've been answering that question for as long as I can remember, and for a long time I didn't quite know what to do with it.

What being compared to someone else taught me

At first I thought the answer was distance, building something completely different so no one would make the connection. Over time I understood I had the problem backwards. My last name was never the problem. The problem was that I didn't yet have a brand of my own for people to hold on to, last name aside.

Personal brand isn't a logo, or a nice line in a LinkedIn bio. It's what people feel after talking to you, even if they don't remember half of what you said. And that's built on something much simpler, and at the same time much harder: being the same person on stage, in a work meeting, and over coffee.

Empathy beats the résumé

After almost every talk I give, someone comes up to me. And in a year and a half of doing this, I've almost never been asked about my résumé. No one asks where I worked before, or what AI certifications I have. They ask whether I actually believe what I just said, or tell me something personal the talk made them think about. That's what stays with people.

I've spent years working in technology and business strategy, and I keep learning constantly. But none of that is what opens a real conversation with a client, or with a company deciding whether to hire me. What opens it is whether they connect with me as a person before they connect with my profile. Empathy beats the résumé, almost every time.

Coherence repeats

And that's the part that took me longest to understand: coherence comes from repeating yourself, from being the same person over and over. If I'm approachable on stage and distant in a meeting, people notice, even if they can't explain why they don't quite trust it. Coherence is what turns a single encounter into trust, and trust is the only thing that actually builds legacy.

That also changes the format you show up in. I don't mean design or aesthetics, though they help. I mean that the way you write a post, give a talk, or reply to a message has to sound like the same person every time. The moment people notice a gap between how you present yourself and who you actually are, the trust that took so long to build breaks.

And maybe the most important part: a personal brand that only exists to promote you ends up hollow. The ones that actually work are the ones that create opportunities that add value to others too, not just to your own résumé.

People still ask me about my father, and they'll probably keep asking for years. It doesn't bother me anymore. What used to feel like an uncomfortable comparison, I now see as the best reminder I have: no one builds a personal brand by copying someone else's, not even their own last name's. You build it by being, every single time, the same real person.

Thanks for reading.