Build Your Personal Brand, Imran Abul Kashem | Founder, Westend Group
When I first arrived in Australia in 2008, I had a camera, a notebook, a few years of experience as a journalist, and a strong belief that hard work would eventually speak for itself.
I was wrong.
Hard work matters. Expertise matters. The quality of what you deliver matters.
But there is another ingredient that I underestimated for many years: trust.
People don’t simply buy a service. They buy confidence in the person behind the service.
And that realisation has changed the way I think about personal branding.
I used to believe my work would speak for me
I started Westend Photography in a garage in 2013.
From there, the journey grew into Westend Business Hub, Westend Digital, Westend Podcast and other ventures and community initiatives.
For years, my focus was simple: work harder, serve clients well and build good businesses.
I didn’t spend much time thinking about my own personal brand.
My mindset was, “Let the work speak for itself.”
But I eventually realised something important.
Good work doesn’t always speak loudly enough.
Sometimes people need to know who is behind the work.
They want to understand your experience. Your values. Your story. Your failures. Your perspective. And most importantly, whether they can trust you.
That is where personal branding changed for me.
Imran Abul Kashem in Wyndham Business Awards finalists event
Then I asked Trust is becoming the real competitive advantage
The more I learned about personal branding, the more I realised that this wasn’t just a feeling. There is strong evidence behind it.
Research consistently shows that people tend to trust recommendations from other people more than traditional brand advertising.
That makes sense when you think about our own behaviour.
If I am looking for a photographer, consultant, accountant, builder or business adviser, I don’t just look at the company logo.
I look at the person.
Who are they?
What do they know?
What have they done?
What do other people say about them?
Do they seem genuine?
Can I relate to them?
And perhaps most importantly:
Do I trust them enough to start a conversation?
That is the trust gap many businesses don’t realise they have.
Your Network = Your Network workshop at Wyndham Learning Festival
Your personal brand is not your logo
This is something I talk about often with business owners.
Your logo belongs to your business.
Your website belongs to your business.
Your social media page belongs to your business.
But your reputation belongs to you.
And your reputation can become one of the most valuable assets your business has.
I’ve seen this personally.
When people know me, understand what I do and have seen me consistently sharing my experience, they often approach me before they even ask about a particular service.
The conversation becomes:
“Imran, I have a problem. Can you help?”
Instead of:
“What services do you offer?”
That is a very different relationship.
The first starts with trust.
I stopped trying to look perfect
Another important lesson came from my own journey.
I used to think professional content needed to be polished.
Perfect photography.
Perfect wording.
Perfect branding.
Perfect success stories.
But the more I shared my real experiences, the more I understood that people connect with progress, not perfection.
So I started sharing lessons from business.
Things that worked.
Things that didn’t work.
Client experiences.
Community work.
Events.
Podcasts.
Photography.
Entrepreneurship.
And sometimes, simply what I was learning.
I realised that sharing what I know is not showing off.
It is showing evidence.
Evidence that I am doing the work.
Evidence that I have experience.
Evidence that I am still learning.
And evidence that there is a real person behind the business.
Imran Abul Kashem in a Business Workshop
Authority is built one piece of evidence at a time
I don’t believe authority comes from calling yourself an expert.
It comes from repeatedly demonstrating that you know what you are talking about.
If you say you understand marketing, show a campaign.
If you say you understand photography, show your work.
If you say you understand business, share the lessons from building one.
If you say you understand community, show up for the community.
If you say you are a lifelong learner, keep learning.
Don’t just tell people who you are. Give them enough evidence to reach that conclusion themselves.
That, to me, is authentic personal branding.
Your name should not disappear behind your company
This is particularly important for small business owners.
I meet many talented people who have spent 10, 15 or even 20 years becoming exceptionally good at what they do.
But if I search for them online, I can barely find them.
Their company might have a website.
Their company might have a Facebook page.
Their company might even be running advertisements.
But where is the person?
Where is their story?
Where is their knowledge?
Where is their experience?
Where is the reason someone should trust them?
Your company can build a brand.
But you can build a relationship.
And relationships create opportunities that advertising alone cannot always create.
Show up before people need you
One of the biggest mistakes I see is waiting until you need business before you start building your personal brand.
By then, it is often too late.
Personal branding is not a switch you turn on when sales are slow.
It is something you build when business is good, when business is difficult, and everything in between.
Share your knowledge.
Meet people.
Have conversations.
Tell your story.
Celebrate your clients.
Talk about what you are learning.
Give value without immediately asking for something in return.
Then, when someone eventually needs what you do, your name may already be familiar to them.
And familiarity, when combined with credibility, can become trust.
This is where I am taking Westend Digital
This thinking is also shaping the next chapter of Westend Digital.
I want to help tradies, healthcare providers, professional service businesses and other small businesses across Wyndham and Melbourne’s west turn their expertise into visibility and visibility into trust.
Because I believe there are thousands of incredibly capable business owners who don’t have a capability problem.
They have a visibility problem.
They are already doing great work.
They simply aren’t telling their story consistently enough.
And in today’s digital world, if you don’t tell your story, people may never discover it.
Imran Abul Kashem in Wyndham Learning Festival Event
My personal brand is still a work in progress
I don’t consider myself someone who has “figured out” personal branding.
I’m still learning.
I’m still experimenting.
I’m still making mistakes.
But after more than a decade of building businesses, working with people, photographing stories, interviewing migrants and entrepreneurs through my podcasts, and being involved in the Wyndham business community, I’ve learned one thing very clearly:
People remember how you make them feel.
They remember whether you listened.
Whether you helped.
Whether you showed up.
Whether you kept your word.
Whether you were genuine.
That is personal branding.
Not simply having a large following.
Not posting every day.
Not taking the perfect headshot.
Not having the biggest number of connections.
It is the reputation you build when nobody is watching.
Build a brand people can trust
Today, I don’t want my personal brand to be the loudest.
I want it to be useful.
I want people to associate my name with learning, business, community, creativity and genuine relationships.
I want my businesses to benefit from the trust I build personally.
And I want to help other business owners do the same.
Because ultimately, people don’t build relationships with businesses.
People build relationships with people.
And behind every great business, there is a person with a story worth knowing.
I’m still telling mine.
And I’m still learning how to tell it better.
That is the personal brand I am building.
Not louder.
More trusted.
And I’m grateful to the Wyndham business community, my clients, collaborators, friends and everyone who has supported me along the way. Many of you trusted me long before I had the words, data or confidence to explain what I was building.
That trust has been one of my greatest business assets.
And perhaps, without realising it, one of the biggest lessons of my journey.
What does your personal brand make people trust you for?
Imran Abul Kashem is a serial entrepreneur and personal branding expert who arrived in Australia from Bangladesh in 2008 and built the Westend group of businesses, spanning photography, digital marketing and co-working, from the ground up in Wyndham. Over more than a decade, he has worked with 300+ businesses and connected 5,000+ professionals across Melbourne's west, and co-founded Wyndham Entrepreneur Connect to strengthen the region's business network. He now mentors entrepreneurs and small business owners on personal branding, digital marketing and building genuine networks, drawing on lived experience of starting again with nothing and turning it into lasting community impact.