Should Your Personal Brand Define Your Business?
Personal branding has become an increasingly popular practice, both for everyday people and public figures alike. And while personal branding is a powerful tool for anyone, it’s especially valuable for business owners — but it’s all too easy for business owners to get wrong.
Personal branding is defined by one source as:
“The conscious and intentional effort to create and influence public perception of an individual by positioning them as an authority in their industry, elevating their credibility, and differentiating themselves from the competition, to ultimately advance their career, increase their circle of influence, and have a larger impact.” — personalbrand.com
Personal branding is just as it sounds: personal. It is rooted in a single person — not linked to a larger business or organization. In fact, personal branding can hold you back if it becomes inextricably linked to your business. Why?
Oftentimes, personal brand + business = limiting
We often work with entrepreneurs who want to name their businesses after themselves or their family. They’re proud of their business and they want to encourage personal connections. However, doing this can be limiting for both you and your business. We usually don’t recommend following that path.
When entrepreneurs and their businesses share a name, they blur the lines between their personal brands and their business brands. This is limiting on both fronts: the growth of their business is stunted before it even gets off the ground, and their personal brands can lose their authenticity.
There’s a lot to unpack when it comes to personal branding and business. Let’s dive in.
Misleading expectations
Combining your personal brand with your business can mislead clients if they don’t get personal attention from you. Often this is a growing pain entrepreneurs deal with further down the line: What happens when your team expands and customers are no longer working with you personally? Clients can become frustrated when they fall in love with you but never get face time with you, personally, because you’ve delegated responsibilities. This frustration can be headed off from the get-go by choosing a separate business name instead.
Long-term growth limitations
Combining your personal brand with your business can limit future growth opportunities. What happens when you want to sell your business or bring on partners? A personally- or family-named business could face additional obstacles selling to prospective buyers who don’t want to inherit someone else’s name. On the other hand, a company with a non-personal name doesn’t face that same obstacle in a sale or change in leadership.
When you start your business, you should assume it’s going to be a household name. And it may not be in your business’s best interest for that name to be your own.
Limiting your voice
Linking your name with your business can inhibit your own voice in the long run. The truth is that things evolve over time, from target audiences to personal beliefs. And what happens when your ideals no longer align with those of your company’s target audience? Or when you make a personal choice that could impact your business? When your personal brand is the same as your business brand, you may be faced with two choices: 1) be unapologetically yourself but risk alienating your clientele or 2) stay silent.
Neither option is particularly appealing. But separating your personal being from your business heads off this problem.
When your personal brand is different from your business’s brand, you give yourself room to speak and room to breathe.
Risk of “cancellation”
Leveraging your personal reputation while tying it to the business is a risk. No one sets out to make a PR fauxpas, but it happens. When a business is so closely tied to a personal brand, they become inextricably linked, and the actions of one reflect on the reputation of the other. This means if you have personal problems or make a public mistake, the consequences can be direr for your business.
No one wants to manage two crisis instead of one, especially when your business is so closely tied to your financial stability.
When your personal brand is one in the same with the business, you need to treat it as such, and that’s a lot of pressure.
Personal branding serves a separate purpose.
Let us be clear: We are not against personal brands. Personal branding is important because it gives you the ability to grow separately from your business.
When you build a personal brand, you give yourself options that stretch beyond your business. At the beginning of business ownership, it can be hard to imagine a day when you won’t want to live and breathe your business. But that day will come. And when you’ve established your name separately from your company, with things like a personal website, a well-established personal Instagram account, or even a podcast, you open up the doors to things like speaking opportunities and business consulting roles.
Creating a personal brand that is separate from your business gives you options down the line. And options are a wonderful gift to give yourself.
You are an important part of your business’s story
“It’s not about ego, it’s about access.” — Emily Heyward, Obsessed
While we do recommend separating your personal brand from your business, we don’t recommend completely removing yourself from your business’s story. People want to connect with brands, and that’s easier when they can connect with the people behind them. But this looks like telling the behind-the-scenes story of how you started your business or sharing your photo on the ‘about’ page. It doesn’t look like morphing your personal brand into your business.
If you’re writing your company’s story in first person, you may be limiting yourself and your business in the long run. But you shouldn’t write yourself out of the story either.
When done right, branding gives businesses and people room to grow. But when personal brands and businesses become intertwined, they can both be limited. The solution? Consider separating yourself from your public-facing business.
