I'm Building My Personal Brand in 90 Days. Join Me.

Hey, beautiful boss mom. Pull up a chair.

For the next 90 days, I’m going all in on my personal brand. But not the way I used to do it, and not the way you’ve probably been told to do it. If you’ve been trying to figure out what a personal brand for moms is even supposed to look like right now, I want to walk you through exactly what I’m building, just in case you want to build it with me.

Fair warning: by the end of this, you might not want a personal brand anymore. You might want something better. Because the world is asking for something different now, and that’s what I’m going to build.

Why I’m Separating Dana From BossMom

For almost 12 years, BossMom has decided most of what I say out loud. If something didn’t fit BossMom, I didn’t say it.

That’s started to rub up against some edges. Because there’s a lot more to me than BossMom. I’m a messaging expert. That’s my fractional CMO work. That’s the Nurture to Convert system, which helps you build your AI brain. There’s a whole side of what I do that I barely ever talk about.

And honestly? BossMom used to be all about community. Now I see it’s about something bigger: so many brilliant moms living ordinary days with an insane amount of potential that doesn’t match their reality. I’m kind of sick of it. And I want to be louder about it.

That means being bolder. Being more myself. Having an actual personal brand instead of hiding behind BossMom.

Here’s Where I’m Starting From (It’s Probably Not That Different From You)

If you know me, you might know I grew the BossMom Facebook group to almost 80,000 members, and it was one of the most engaged groups on Facebook. I spoke on stages about it. Facebook itself brought me in to talk about it.

In 2024, I shut all of that down and moved the community into its own dedicated app, off social media. It was a big dream, and I made the investment.

And then, within months, life happened. My mom was diagnosed with cancer. My family went through a big move and a big shift in how our household looked. A long relationship that I should have left earlier finally ended. 2025 was hard.

So I stepped back. I did my fractional CMO work, I stopped being visible, I stopped getting on stages, and I spent that year with my kids.

I have zero regrets about that. I will never apologize for it, and neither should you.

But when I came back at the end of 2025, I had all the hang-ups. Am I too old now? Does anybody care? Has it been too long? Am I even relevant without the same size business I used to have?

None of that matters. I’m a smart, capable woman who knows how to solve problems, and I am worth the effort. So here’s where I am today:

• The BossMom community: about 2,000 moms (which hurts my soul a little, coming from 80,000)
• The podcast: great listens, but listeners aren’t automatically buyers
• YouTube and LinkedIn: not there yet
• Instagram: thousands of followers, very little engagement, and until recently, no clarity on what I even wanted to talk about
• Email list: about 8,000 after a lot of pruning

If you’re reading that thinking, Dana, you’re not so different from me after all, you’re right. I’m not.

The Two Decisions You Have to Make First

When you build a personal brand, you have to decide two things:

1. Who are you going to be? What do you want to be known for?
2. What are you actually going to do? Where will you show up, and what does each place do for you?

I just named about ten places I could be. I can’t be equally good in all of them. So I have to be thoughtful about how each place moves someone from “I just found out Dana exists” to “I love everything she does and I’m telling all my friends.”

Here’s how I split it.

Instagram Is Where I Test. Not Where My Strategy Lives.

Instagram is my rapid-fire place. That’s where I’ll be posting every day, testing hooks, testing ideas, and getting fast feedback on what actually lands.

I’m estimating five to ten hours a week on this. My kids are tweens, so I can work 20 to 30 hours a week and evenings right now, and I’m choosing to go big. If you only have 10 hours a week, that’s completely fine. Just be honest about what you can do, and go all in on one thing. The social side, where you can quickly see what works, is the best place to start.

But here’s the part I really need you to hear. If you only take one thing away from this, take this:

Going all in on your personal brand cannot be “decide it and leave it.” It has to be a constant self-assessment. Is what I’m saying hitting the right people? Is showing up as myself getting easier? Is it building authority and excitement, or do I need to tweak it?

Which means you have to stop treating every post like it’s your identity.

Your personal brand is the feeling people experience from you. Oh my gosh, I have hope. Oh my gosh, I feel seen. Oh my gosh, that actually looks easy, show me how.

It cannot be, “That post didn’t work, so people don’t like me.” Or, “That flopped, so that part of me must be unlovable.”

It took me years of therapy to say this without getting a lump in my throat: whether something works has nothing to do with my value, how lovable I am, or what my future looks like. I want you to know the same about you.

Email Is Where My Thinking Lives: The Newsletter Comeback

Here’s the funny part. About a decade ago I did an episode called The Death of the Newsletter. It basically said nobody cares about your newsletter, stop sending it, send specific nurture emails instead.

I have come full circle. Trends do that. My daughter is currently wearing ’90s clothes thinking she’s super original, and I’m like, honey, I wore that in middle school. You look like Rachel from Friends.

Newsletters are working really, really well right now. I’m on Amy Porterfield’s list, and her newsletter genuinely makes me like her more. It gives me insight into the decisions she’s making, the things she likes, how she thinks. Some of it has nothing to do with her business at all, and that’s exactly the point.

Here’s why this matters so much in a personal brand for moms right now: AI can give anyone all the information they need. Any answer, any strategy. So what people need now is a reason to say, “Yeah, but I want to know what Dana thinks.” Insert your name there.

That means your newsletter can’t just be “here’s what’s happening.” It has to be:

• Your interpretation of something happening in your industry
• A lesson you learned from something in your life
• What you’re doing that’s making your life easier, or that you’re just enjoying

Mine goes out weekly, starting next week. (Yes, I’ll be talking about things like the legacy jewelry I wear from my mom and grandma. That’s part of it.)

Become Micro Famous in Someone Else’s Space

The third piece is showing what I’m building.

I’m in a few communities I don’t run, including a Circle community for people who run Circle communities and a membership around AI. I’m going in and sharing screenshots, outlines, and videos. “Hey, I just built this.” “I went down a rabbit hole on this question, here’s what I figured out.”

This is an old strategy I used to teach when I was building BossMom: before you have your own space, go become micro famous in someone else’s space. Show up, participate, become known. People start seeing you as the person who knows how to do things, and opportunities and sales follow.

Inside the BossMom community and my email, I’m doing the same thing, but simpler. My audience doesn’t need big, complicated AI. They need the simplest possible version of the cool things that are making my life easier, helping me make content, and giving me more time with my family.

The Three Buckets Everything Falls Into

Everything I post, everywhere, falls into one of three buckets.

1. Authority. For me, that’s being a messaging expert. If you went to my Instagram right now, you wouldn’t know that’s what I’m great at. But it’s what I’ve always done: broadcast journalism, behavioral psychology and engagement in corporate, community building, multiple books, ghostwriting. And it’s not just words. Words stand still. A message travels. My job is helping you figure out what to say so it travels from person to person, helps people feel seen, and makes them want to share.

2. Identity, or my rally cry. In Nurture to Convert, we used to call these permissions: the things your audience feels judged for that you don’t want them to feel guilty about. In a belonging brand, it goes further. It’s not just “let me help you feel accepted.” It’s “I used to feel this way, and I’m not apologizing for it anymore.” For me, that’s the potential in the wild: the capable woman in an ordinary life whose potential doesn’t match her reality yet. I’m helping her close that gap because I’m closing it for myself.

3. What I’m building. Always centered on messaging. If I’m showing you an AI tool, it’s because it helps me write content easier, understand my audience better, or build a skill that uses my AI brain.

Why It’s a Belonging Brand, Not a Personal Brand

The old personal brand was: share what you’re doing, people like watching you, they trust you, they buy.

That’s not where we are anymore.

Our goal isn’t for them to like us. Our goal is for them to love themselves. To understand themselves more, accept themselves more, and feel seen in their own skin. When they can do that through us, that’s where the power is.

Look at anybody blowing up right now. They’re doing one of three things:

• Using identity labels that help someone feel seen
• Sharing statements and quotes that make people feel accepted
• Giving people what I call proximity hope: “I was you two years ago, and look at me now.” Close enough that you think, I could actually do that.

That’s belonging. And that’s what I’m building.

My 90-Day Goals (Say Them Out Loud With Me)

I’m putting these out there because there’s no reason I can’t hit them:

• At least one piece of content that hits 100,000 views
• At least one piece of content that brings in 1,000 opt-ins
• 10,000 moms in the free BossMom community by the end of the year
• 100 women in BossMom Momentum, my small-group coaching where I personally review your sales pages, messaging, and strategy

Once I’m comfortable with all of this, I’ll layer on YouTube and more. But not before. One thing done well beats ten things done halfway.

Your Next Step

If any of this lit something up, here’s where to go:

Want the full 90-day plan? Find me on Instagram at Dana Malstaff and DM me the word PLAN. I’ll send it to you.

Come into the free BossMom community. This is where I’ll be sharing everything I’m building as I build it, and where moms get real help figuring out their goals, what they want to be known for, and how to do business differently when time is limited. You get free networking events, mindset workshops, daily mindset audios, and real connection with other moms, all in its own app, completely off social media.

When you’re ready to have someone actually help you grow your business, BossMom Momentum is where to go. We’ll build out the right marketing plan for your business, then give you the support to actually implement it and hit your financial goals.

If all of us went all in on this, even if it just ends with you feeling like who you are is pretty awesome and has a lot to give the world, that’s a win. That’s our potential getting closer to our reality.

I’ll see you next week.

xo, Dana