Goldie Chan on Personal Branding for Introverts

0:00Goldie Chan:From the Association of Registered Graphic Designers, this is the Design Thinkers podcast. Design Thinkers is Canada's largest graphic design conference. Originally launched to mark the conference's 25th anniversary, the podcast now reaches a global audience of designers and creatives. Join our host, Nicola Hamilton, as she connects with Design Thinkers speakers to explore the work and ideas shaping today's design industry. Goldie Chan is the author of Personal Branding for Introverts, the founder of the social strategy agency Warm Robots, and the Huffington Post once called her the Oprah of LinkedIn.

0:39She built that reputation kind of by accident. She started posting a daily video on LinkedIn as a way to push her introverted self to speak on camera. She then went on to post 800 consecutive of daily videos between 2017 and 2019. In this conversation, Goldie takes us back to her biology degree from Stanford, a failed fashion brand, and an intervention from her friends that nudged her out of a depression and into a marketing job that shifted her focus. From there, we get into the real substance of her work, the five C's of personal branding, why she thinks the stereotype of introverts as quiet is a complete myth, how she protects her own energy, and the surprisingly playful daydreaming exercise she uses to help people figure out what they actually want.

1:24We also get into her side hustles, of which there are many, including producing films and writing Archie comics. And then we have a candid conversation about why she chose to share her cancer journey publicly. This episode is for anyone building their personal brand or working in branding. It's also for the introverts in the room who feel like the current playbook wasn't written for them.

1:45Goldie Chan:Hi, how are you? Good. How are you doing? Good, thanks. Let's get into it. I want to get into it. I don't want to start with the personal branding. I actually want to go back further because I was like, how did Goldie get into this? And in reality, you actually graduated from Stanford with a degree in biological sciences? Yeah. The furthest thing from marketing I can think of? Yes. So starting from there. So I graduated with a degree in biological sciences. And I like to tell people I exited Stanford with three options because this is what I had actually done, right? Because I think so many people think college too is like a simple thing where you do one project or you're focused on one thing.

2:29And that's not true. So many people have so many different interests. So I actually graduated from Stanford having done a couple of other things on the side. So one of them that makes a lot of sense is I worked a lot in a research lab. So that was associated with my biology degree. That's what I was doing with a lot of my free time. The other 50 million hours of my free time, I was doing two other things. One was I was designing, I was doing graphic design for CD albums, for album covers, for indie bands, analog using Photoshop. So I was doing that. And then I was also running my own fashion brand, my own indie fashion brand that I was doing like cut and sew and running that.

3:15So I graduated with, I remember this, I graduated with an offer to go work at an indie record label in New York as like a junior intern, whatever is the most junior person on the team. I also got offered to do a graphic design at this one like startup because I was in the Bay area. So of course it's startup, um, startup. And then I got offered a role in a super prestigious lab in San Francisco to do research. And I did what any, you know, 21, 22 year old did, which is I sat and I said, I think I kind of don't want to do any of these things. I think, which this is what really changed my trajectory.

4:01So I decided I just wanted to run my fashion brand for a couple of years. Cause I said, you know what? I'm 21 and I feel like I should just go for it. I should just do it now because I can always go back and get a nine to five job later. Right? So I went and ran my fashion brand for two years and then I had what I call my first massive failure. Like I, I had my first big flop. I basically had a turning point where this big box store wanted to put my fashion line in the big box store, but I didn't know anything about manufacturing on scale. Like I didn't know anything about that. I didn't know who I could talk to because all of my friends were people like they were all nine to five jobs, right?

4:42They were, or they were in biology, which is totally different. A bunch of scientists. So I ended up trying to find a co-founder that would be a right fit. I couldn't find anybody who was exactly the right fit. So I ended up folding up shop, being incredibly deeply depressed. I call this my ramen and peanut butter sandwich era because I was just really depressed. And I was, I think at this point I was 22 and I was like, everything is over. My life is done, right? I'm never going to have dreams again. I'm never going to have a career. That was it. That was two, one half, two years of my life. So it's never going to happen for me.

5:21And I remember being deeply depressed and my friends staged what I like to call a friend intervention where they just were like I remember I was playing sims and my sims character was just like lying on the ground sobbing and wouldn't get up and do work and stuff and my friends were like it was just a replica of your existence right I was like I just told my friends I was like I'm fine see like I'm fine like everything is fine and then they're just like goldie look at your literally look at your sims character it's like it's she's she's not fine you're not fine so they're like, just get a job, get any jobs just to get out of the house, you know?

5:59And I ended up getting a super, like, I think I ended up getting a marketing assistant job at, cause I was still in the Bay area. So I ended up getting a marketing assistant job at a startup in the Bay area. And that's what started me on marketing and branding. So that's what got me into that universe was literally just my friend saying, you need a job. And then I applied for, of course, like a bunch of random jobs because I was like, I guess I could try to go back to biology, but I didn't really want to. And I was just like, I just want to do something totally different. So I applied for all these marketing jobs and then I got one.

6:38And then that started me on the career path that took me to where I am today. Okay. I want to roll back even further for a second then, because it sounds like you were doing creative things for funsies while you were studying. Have you always been creative? And then why go into biological sciences? Yeah, I would say that I've always been a really creative person. I think that I always had an idea when I was younger that I would be a doctor or a teacher, right? You know, when you just have these ideas, like you're like, I'm going to be an astronaut and a ballerina or something like that. But they're not based in reality, necessarily.

7:14They're just based in, I've heard of this job before. Well, or people told me I'd be good at this or my parents have these expectations for me. And I definitely had parental expectations that I would do something that was kind of more traditionally, you know, something in the Asian American universe that was like the right job, like something that would look really good. And for my parents, that, of course, was like doctor, lawyer, etc. etc. So I just kind of grew up thinking, well, I like science that I did a lot of science stuff also in high school. But I was also always creative to like I was doing ceramics in high school, I was doing like a lot of other creative writing and stuff.

7:56So I was always creative. But I was always doing science. So I will say that. So I was always doing science as well. So when I got to college, I was like, well, I'm gonna do a biology degree, because that makes sense, right? That's the responsible major to do. Yeah. That's the real adult thing. That's the adult thing. And I was like at 18, I thought I knew what an adult was. Obviously I didn't. I mean, I feel like now years later, I still don't know what an adult is, but at the time I thought, okay, 18, 19, I know what I'm doing. I'm going to be a biology major. Then I'm going to be a researcher or doctor and or doctor when I graduate, my whole path is like set out for me already.

8:41Like I already know what I'm going to do with my life. And like so many of us, I then went down just even doing four years at Stanford and was like, I don't think I want to do this. Like when I graduated, I was like, do I want to keep doing this? And I think I don't want to. And And I think I was really lucky in that I got to actually work in a research lab. Like I applied for and got into a research lab and I was able to do the kind of work that I would probably have done if I had it as a nine to five job. So I was really lucky in that I think respect where I could actually preview what that would have been like.

9:20I was like, I don't know that I want to work in a lab where I see only three other people every single day for the next like 12 years of my life. I don't know if I want to do that. Okay. So then you take the marketing job and it's a few years later, right? Like your like real trajectory now as the Goldie Chan we know and love on the internet starts a few years later when you start posting videos on LinkedIn. That was what, like 2017? 17, 2018. So which is almost a decade ago, which is so wild. It's so wild. So remember at 22 when you thought your life was over and you could never do anything again and now it's...

9:56Yes. I thought at 22, my life was over and I'd never do anything again. So who knows? That's 10 years later. Yeah. You never know. You never know. So years later, I had worked a few years in, you know, startups and stuff like that. And then 2017, 2018. So 2017, I was in between two different marketing roles. I'd kind of climbed up the corporate ladder. I'd just been like head of marketing at a startup. And then I was taking what I like to call a sabbatical, which is a really fancy way of saying not gainfully employed, but sounds better, right? So I was not gainfully employed. And I was like, I'm choosing to not be gainfully employed for a month.

10:31And then I got to get a real job again. So I started making these videos during that month off. Also, so I didn't have a period on my resume where I wasn't doing anything. So I could go into that job interview, because I'm such an overachiever and say, like, look at what I was doing. During this time, I was making these videos. I was trying out this new stuff. Please, please hire me. And during that one month, things, even things started happening pretty quickly. So I started creating videos on LinkedIn. I ended up doing over 800 daily consecutive videos, which that's over two years of videos.

11:08And when I started doing videos, I started getting people who were interested in being my strategy clients. So I like, I think a lot of people start an agency and then they get clients for it. So I started getting clients and then I had to make an agency that could work with those clients that I was already getting, which is, I think pretty funny if you think about it, but I started working with clients. And then since I had now more, you know, runway, more finances coming in, more resources, I was like, well, I can keep doing these videos for a little while longer. Right. So I ended up just doing the videos and then 30 became 60, 60 became 100, 100 became 200.

11:48And then, like I said, it became over 800 daily consecutive videos from 2017 to 2019 kind of plus. I was just making a video every single day about marketing, branding. And that's how I grew my brand was, and this is in the pre-AI era. I always have to say that too, because so many people are like, oh, I could turn out 600 videos now with AI. And I'm like, this was pre AI. This was me manually editing on my phone before I knew how to edit anything or in iMovie or - Yeah. When we had less tools built into the platforms too, like this is like kind of early social media times too, right? Like it's in its first decade.

12:30Yeah. Very, very bad editing in Premiere. Like this was super early editing with like what, as you know, filmmakers use to edit videos, right? And not the super simple editing tools that we have now. And so it was a lot of, you know, it was so funny, because over the course of 800 videos, I mean, I like to think that I've gotten better at editing, period. But also, I like to think that I've gotten a better eye at like, what footage I need to shoot? And like, what do I need to put into a proper video. But also I went through this like really miraculous creative journey where I had been working in-house.

13:08I had been really behind the scenes. And then suddenly I was really in front of everything. And I had done a very brief stint of doing acting, which is totally different though. Of course, you've just been on like a hundred creative side quests in your early life. Yeah, I've been on, I've been truly on a hundred million side quests. I could tell you about the millions of side quests I'm currently on and you'd be like, oh my gosh, like one of them is I currently sometimes write for Archie comics. So I'm going to ask you about that later. Yeah, please, please. So I have, I would say not everyone always thinks of me first and foremost as a creative person, but I like to think that the creativity kind of goes through so much of my process, even the biology, which people don't think is really creative was a really creative thing because I was, I was in biology to do experiments.

14:03So I was very much like experimenter type person that was running a bunch of labs and hyper specifically, I was trying to isolate a specific gene. And to do that, you're just running a bunch of trials. You're trying things. You're like, what if I change this? What if I try this? And I think that's so many creative people. That's what we're always doing. We're running experiments. So to me, that was like my creative brain in action, even though people think it wasn't a creative thing. I think that there's so much creativity in so many more industries than we think about. It's just like a little harder to find.

14:36Okay. So you built yourself like quite the brand. You have like 95 ,000 followers on Instagram. You're up over a hundred thousand followers on LinkedIn. You are probably one of those people who knows that there is in fact a limit to how many people you could follow on LinkedIn. There's not many of those people in the world, but I want to, I want to talk about some of the like choices you made like maybe maybe they were actually accidents and not real choices but like got you to that place okay and we have to start by talking about your hair obviously your green hair started as like a bit of a personal styling choice I assume like it wasn't a branch decision you weren't like if I have green hair everyone will know me as the person with green hair right so I had had a series of different hair colors and just and I will say this.

15:19Luckily, green is actually my favorite color. So I am thankful for that because I'm glad it wasn't just a color I felt like and then it became my brand. But green is actually my favorite color. And I had gone through so many different hair colors before. I'm just a hair color girly, I guess you could say. And I've had, you know, red, peach, blue, gray, blonde, different iterations. Like I've literally done gradients of green and like red, yellow, green, like, et cetera. But green is my favorite. And in 2017, I just happened to have tennis ball green hair during that time. And then when I blew up on LinkedIn, people just knew me for my green hair and they started associating, which is so cute, the green heart emoji with my brand, which.

16:08Because it was the exact same color at the time. So cool. And it was exactly the same color. And so people would just use that green heart emoji when they were talking to me and when they were referencing me. And it was really helpful for my brand that I had something, right? And I just kept the green hair kind of, I mean, I literally kept the green hair almost forever. I'm a cancer survivor. So I had a few years in my life, right? To take time off work and I lost all my hair. but the moment that I could have hair color again I immediately died back to like a teal green color but yeah green has especially green hair has defined a lot of my brand does it feel like you can't get rid of it like you can't change it now or I will say in 2020 I felt some sort of way because this is when I had wrapped up my 800 videos and I felt some sort of way that I wanted to end the chapter by changing my hair color because I was like, well, I'm ready to be a different person now.

17:11And then ironically in 2020, something else happened. Right. And you don't necessarily need to talk about here, but we were all stuck inside for a lot of the time. And so I wasn't even going out and getting it done. So ironically, like part of that was my hair just ended up growing out halfway. And then I was like, I don't like this. So that was the, that was like the hilarious thing about that period of time was it actually gave me time to grow out my hair. And then I realized like, oh, I don't actually want this. So then I, as soon as I could, I like went back and I got my hair back to like a shade of green.

17:51And currently for those of you that are listening, my hair shade is, I like to call this a dirty matcha. It's like a brown green, like a brown olive green shade of green. And I will say this, with my hairstylist, we usually do like two or three sample hair colors every single time I update my hair, because I'm so specific about the exact shade of green that I want. That makes sense. One of your early strategies for growth was like just consistency, right? Like just posting every single day. That was like the thing that really did it. And I'm curious to ask you, like, did the sort of consistency actually start to teach you about your own voice?

18:32Like, I think there is something in doing it every single day. our next design thinkers event is happening in toronto on october 20th and 21st 2026 join us in person or watch live online from anywhere in the world with presentations hands-on workshops intimate discussions and opportunities to connect with the other 2 000 designers creative and art directors managers educators and students in attendance design thinkers toronto is a journey into the creative process and a celebration of strategic design thinking. Speakers include graphic designer and writer, Chip Kidd, lettering designer and author, Martina Floor, visual artist, Tammy Coker, information designer, Valentina DeFilippo, and best-selling author and artist, Adam J.

19:18Kurtz. Use the code PODCAST for 10 % off tickets. That's PODCAST, all lowercase, for 10 % off. Tickets for Design Thinkers in Toronto, both in person and live streaming, are on sale now at designthinkers.com. Yeah, well, I think it taught me about two things. One is it taught me that it's better to show up and be bad than to not show up at all. Right. Because I think so many of us end up being perfectionists or we worry about what other people think of us. I mean, I live in Los Angeles, which is certainly the city that if you walk around, you're always like, is somebody looking at me? Is somebody judging me?

20:00But I want to say that, and we think about that on the internet, we think like, who's looking at me? Who's judging me? Um, but you know, the majority of people probably are not analyzing you that deeply. You're like, you're a couple seconds on their feed. So I think it's so, I think it's so freeing to think about when you are posting really consistently that most people won't catch half of the things you post, right? Most people won't catch 75 % of the things you post. And I think that also taught me then about my voice was I had a lot of freedom because I was posting every single day. And I knew if I posted once a month, somebody would go back and be like, well, that's the one post she did.

20:42So I'm going to analyze it. But because I was posting every single day, sometimes multiple, sometimes twice a day, people would be like, oh, okay. Like I didn't catch the last three videos, but here's like a new video from Goldie. Right. And so it was really helpful for me to be able to experiment even with having what my voice ultimately is and was at the time. But it was great because I was able to be constantly trying out new things. And I didn't have to have a really rigid idea of who I was at the time. Yeah. I want to ask just for our listeners who maybe weren't following you at that point in time, like what were those videos actually about?

21:22What were some of the some of the content? Yeah. So the first, I would say 30 to 45 videos, which is really funny to say without planning it at all. The first set of videos I did were all on pop culture, branding and marketing. So I would go to literally a random place. Um, or I just, I traveled a lot. So I would be like, I'm in Pittsburgh. Here are five facts about the city of Pittsburgh, right. From a branding marketing perspective. Or I'd be like, let's think about trains in America, right? Let's talk to think about like the history of branding, like Amtrak in America, or we have, you know, something that exists like globally, but also exists in America.

22:01And that is those posters you see, the paper paste posters that you see on like random construction buildings or yeah, like the construction hoarding. Yeah. So like I did a video on that, like just talking about like, what's the history of that in America specifically. Right. So I did a lot of pop culture branding and marketing and just like ideas or, I mean, I, once again, I live in LA. So I did a bunch of videos of just like talking about Disney, Disneyland. I did videos at Universal Studios. I did like all these, all these like Hollywood-y kind of ideas of videos. And it was really easy, I think, for me to just be like, okay, I'm just going to go out.

22:40I'm just going to leave my place and I'm going to go out and I'm just going to try to shoot a video. And I also just had that be the thing. I was like, I'm not coming back home until I shoot a video. So I'm just like, I'm not allowed to come back until I'm like done with one video. And that made me as an introvert with a lot of social anxiety, that actually made me feel more comfortable, which is how I can actually speak on stage now, because I had all this practice of talking in public on my little, like to my little phone. And I feel, and sometimes I still feel self-conscious, right? So like I but it got me over that initial fear of speaking in public.

23:20So I remember that that was super, super helpful was just like doing these little videos where I'd have to leave my place and do it. So I don't do a ton of videos like sitting here in my workplace. I like to go outside and do videos. Which is so much harder. Recording yourself in public feels so much weirder. Yeah. And I agree because you're worried about you have that anxiety about are people judging me or people looking at me? And once again, I try to be inconspicuous, honestly, when I film. So I'm not the person that is like with my 20 foot selfie stick going like, Hey guys, what's up? Like, Hey, Hey, Hey, everyone, you know, like I try to do like really quick footage, really quick photos, really quick, like shots and stuff like that.

24:03Um, and I try to be out of people's way. I try to not be that person that blocks traffic ever. Um, so, uh, but even with that, like learning how to even And be a person that does that can sometimes feel like fill me with anxiety still. OK, you've said before that you have no interest in pretending to be an extrovert. Like you are part of your brand is being introverted. But like what does what does that actually rule out for you like day to day? So by not pretending to be an extrovert, like what are the things that you just like don't do? Yeah. So I would say one thing that I don't do is when I get invited to parties and this is so hyper specific.

24:38When I get invited to parties and the party is like five hours long, unless I've pre-agreed with the person hosting the party, I don't stay the full five hours, right? I will go for an hour or two hours. I have limits on my socialization time because I know that I'm so drained by socializing. So I like to have a start and end time to things that I do outside. of course there's always exceptions to this rule but for the most part I like to be really clear about my time and that is an introvert versus extrovert thing for me personally I call my introvert battery I like to make sure that my introvert battery is doing good you know it's that my introvert battery is going to be okay yeah okay I have a bunch of like like introvert questions for you that I want to like rapid fire um okay they don't have to be rapid fire don't worry.

25:30But what's the biggest myth you run into about introverts? I think the biggest myth around introverts is that all introverts are quiet. I have a section in my book called The Loud Introvert, because I think when you get an introvert talking about what they really care about, they are so loud. They're so passionate about that. So I think it's such a myth that all introverts are quiet, shy, et cetera. And then you've also said similar to the sort of party thing, but you're also a fan of small, intentional in-person gatherings, like little things, coffee chats over like the big networking stuff. Tell me what makes those settings different for you.

26:05So I think when you're talking with a small group of people, it just feels so much less overwhelming. Like socially, it feels less overwhelming. And as many introverts are like this, we prefer deep connections with others over superficial connections with like a thousand people, right? So a lot of us want to be really having those beautiful in-depth talks or getting to know people genuinely, as opposed to just skimming the surface or doing a lot of small talk. Yeah. It surprises a lot of people that I am actually pretty introverted, but I'm an outgoing introvert. But my toxic introverted state is that often in big networking events, when my social battery is done, I disassociate.

26:46I am no longer taking in information. Yeah, you're not you're you're physically that I call it you're physically there, but you're mentally not there. Like here is like floating off into space. Yeah, like gone. I'm somewhere else. You're just gone gone. I mean, this is why I tell people at conferences, especially if you're staying at a hotel nearby to to make sure that you like take an hour, go rest at the hotel. well, there's nothing wrong with that. Or just literally go physically outside the conference venue, stand outside in the outside air. Do not be on your phone, on your like smartwatch, on whatever it is.