I Think I Forgot How to Just Be Me...

By: Damien J. Branch | September 25th, 2026 | Friday 8:35pm EST

Somewhere between building a brand and trying to make money online, I stopped sharing my life and started marketing it.

It's Friday night.

There's a nor'easter rolling through Long Island. The wind is beating against the house, we're supposed to get rain for the next few days, and I just spent about $300 putting food in the house so nobody has to be running around this weekend.

Tonight? I cooked. Not content. Not a product. Not a funnel. Dinner. Ribs. Mac and cheese. Salad. Carrot cake for dessert. The house smelled crazy. My daughter, who usually doesn't even care that much about real food, asked for seconds on the mac and cheese. Damn near went for thirds.

At one point she's just sitting there eating, staring off into space. I'm like, "What are you looking at?" She goes: "Nothing. I'm just eating." 😂 That's when you know. My son cleaned his plate. My wife cleaned hers. My mother loved every bite. Eventually I sat down, made my own plate and tasted everything together. Yeah. Chef Bundy still got it. That's a name I haven't thought about in a while.

Before Everything Became Content

People who've known me for a long time might remember Chef Bundy. Bundy is an old household nickname of mine. Back when social media felt a whole lot more like social media, I used to post the food I made all the time. I'd cook something, throw the picture online and ask: "Who wants a plate?" That was it.

There wasn't a strategy behind it. I wasn't thinking about conversion. I wasn't wondering whether the picture matched my brand colors. I wasn't asking myself whether this positioned me as an authority. I made some good-ass food. I was proud of it. So I posted it. People really connected with that.

I posted my family. Cooking. Cleaning. Going to the park. Random thoughts. Whatever I happened to be doing. People were basically watching pieces of my actual life. Then somewhere along the way, something changed.

I Started Treating Myself Like a Marketing Department

Social media became business, because I was trying to build something, and eventually make money from what I was building, I started looking at my page differently. Everything needed a purpose. Everything needed positioning. Everything needed to look professional. I cleaned things up. Probably too much. I started thinking about how a businessman was supposed to look online. How an entrepreneur was supposed to post. How somebody building a brand was supposed to present himself.

Without realizing it… I slowly edited myself out of my own page. That's a wild realization. I thought I was improving my brand. Maybe I was removing the exact thing that made people care about the brand in the first place. Me, not some polished version of me. Not me pretending there's a marketing department sitting behind Branch Brand planning a quarterly content strategy, just Damien, just Bundy.

Dad, Husband, Creator, Gamer. The dude in the kitchen making ribs while a storm beats against the windows.

Maybe People Don't Need Another Brand to Follow

That's something I've been thinking about lately. We spend so much time being told to build a personal brand that sometimes we forget the first word. Personal, everybody has a strategy now. Everybody has a content calendar. Everybody is selling something. Everybody is teaching something, everybody is optimizing something. I'm not knocking any of that. I have businesses. I create things. I have things I want to sell. I want my work to support my family.

That's real, you know, maybe the answer isn't getting better at looking like a business. Maybe it's getting comfortable looking like myself again.

Okay… I Still Promoted Something

Funny enough, tonight I still promoted something. I posted the food on my Instagram Story. First I showed the ribs and mac: "Never lost my touch 🥂." Then I showed my plate: "Who wants a plate..?" Underneath it I put a little link sticker: "TAP THIS LINK..🔗" That link goes to the full video of Episode 26 of Word Forward.. 😂 So yeah, there's still a little marketing in me, It felt different.

I wasn't screaming: NEW EPISODE! WATCH NOW! I was just living my Friday night and leaving a little door open for anybody who wanted to see more of what I'm creating. Maybe that's closer to what this is supposed to be.

I Had to Get Away From Everything to Remember

The past month changed something in me. Having Cayden. Stepping away from podcasting for a while. Stepping away from constantly creating. Being home. Being present. It gave me enough distance to notice something I couldn't see while I was constantly trying to build. I missed myself for real. Not the entrepreneur, not the content creator. Not the coach, not the podcaster. Not whatever title fits inside an Instagram bio. Just me...

you know, tonight was such a small example of that. It's raining, my family ate. There's carrot cake in the kitchen waiting for some vanilla ice cream. The kids have games they picked up from the library yesterday. I've got books to read to Donovan. We've got shows and episodes to watch.

There's food in the house. Nobody needs to go anywhere. For the next couple of days, we can just be home. I'm actually looking forward to that. There was a time when I wouldn't have thought any of this was worth posting, because it didn't make me look successful enough. Now? This is success too, maybe more than I realized.

I'm Bringing Bundy Back

I'm still building, I'm still going to promote Word Forward. I'm still going to build Branch Brand. I'm still going to grow The Gamerhood. I'm still going to write, make things, sell things and figure out how to turn these ideas into something sustainable. I'm not abandoning the business side of myself. I'm just not letting it erase the human side anymore.

So you're going to start seeing more food again. More family moments. More behind-the-scenes stuff. More random thoughts. More things that don't have some carefully engineered reason for existing. Sometimes I'm going to post something simply because… I wanted to post it.

Imagine that, social media being social again. If you're one of the people who's been around long enough to remember Chef Bundy? Don't worry, I never lost my touch. 🥂Tonight reminded me something. I'm realizing I never really lost myself either.

I think I just got too busy trying to market him.