Personal Brand vs. Business Brand: Yes, You Need Both

If you’re like most founders, you put all your time into nurturing your company’s brand, selflessly neglecting your personal brand.

In fact, you may not have a personal brand. You’re strapped for time and resources trying to scale your business. That’s much more important than your personal branding...

...or so you think.

Why You Need a Separate Personal Brand

In the past year, I’ve had five separate conversations with five founders who had recently sold their businesses. Unprompted, in every conversation, they said their biggest regret was that they’d never nurtured their personal brand.

Despite being intelligent, accomplished individuals, these five former owners had zero notoriety to leverage into their next venture. Their entire identity was wrapped in their last business, and no one outside their immediate circle knew who they were.

A personal brand is an intentional trail of evidence you leave behind that makes it easier to validate your credibility. When someone Googles you, you want something to show up. You don’t want your personal LinkedIn profile to look like a ghost town.

Yes, at this stage of your career, it’s time-consuming to maintain both your business’s brand and your personal brand, but it’s critical to focus on both.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t leverage your personal brand to build your company brand. At the end of the day, people buy from people. Can you think of Facebook (now Meta) without thinking of Mark Zuckerberg, or Apple without Steve Jobs? I can’t.

How to Leverage Your Personal Brand

“But Joel, I barely have time to eat breakfast! How can I carve out time to build my personal brand?”

Here’s what I’ve found to be most effective as I’ve helped my clients answer this question.

1. Redefine the Founder’s Role

If you’re involved in your company’s day-to-day operations, your odds of building your personal brand and your company brand are slim to none. If you want your company to grow larger than you, you have to transfer authority to your team.

This develops a more diverse and resilient brand, with multiple voices representing the company. It also allows you to focus on high-level decision-making.

This isn’t every person for themselves. It’s using the collective knowledge of the group to elevate everyone. Use public speaking events, industry conferences, panel discussions, workshops, etc., to build your team’s credibility and showcase your collective expertise.

To start, you’ll need to allocate your responsibilities to people who can’t do them as well as you — yet. But with your mentorship, your team members will eventually tackle those tasks better than you.

None of this means you as the owner have to go dark. It just means you have to see yourself differently.

2. Get Your Team Involved in Content Marketing

As you grow your company brand, not tapping into the knowledge of your team can create a myopic perceived brand view.

Most owners hesitate to involve their staff in content marketing because they don’t want to add yet another task to their team’s plate. Also, you may not trust your team to represent your company as well as you do.

You don’t have to throw your team members into the deep end right away. As you slowly transition into a mentorship role, start by asking team members to write content around their expertise . Include them in a feature in your newsletter, have a team member write or contribute to an article or video, or give them a byline on your blog or your LinkedIn.

3. Set and Maintain a Consistent Brand Voice

Of course, written content needs to be proofread. Your company needs to designate a person, or a team, who oversee(s) the brand voice to create consistency across platforms.

Consistency fosters:

1. Recognition: A consistent brand voice makes your brand instantly identifiable across all platforms. Whether a customer reads a blog post, watches a video, or interacts with customer service, the experience should feel cohesive.
2. Trust: Consistency in messaging builds trust with your audience. When customers know what to expect from your brand, they’re more likely to buy from you.
3. Customer Experience: A consistent brand voice contributes to a seamless customer experience. Whether they’re interacting with your brand online or offline, customers should feel they’re engaging with the same entity.

So, how do you achieve consistency?

1. Develop a Brand Style Guide: A style guide should include your brand’s mission, vision, values, and specific guidelines for tone, language, and style. This guide should be shared with anyone who communicates on behalf of your brand.
2. Train Your Team: Everyone in your organization should be able to convey your brand voice. Provide regular training to ensure all team members are aligned.
3. Regularly Review and Audit Your Content: Conduct regular audits of your content across all channels . Look for deviations in style or tone and make necessary corrections.
4. Leverage Tools and Technology: There are tools available that can help maintain brand voice consistency, such as content management systems, social media management tools, and AI-driven writing assistance tools. These can automate your content creation and distribution processes.
5. Consistent Feedback and Improvement: Encourage feedback from team members and customers, and use it to continuously refine your brand voice and improve consistency.

4. Establish Clear Topics You’ll Talk About on Behalf of the Company and Your Personal Brand

This is important, because your life and identity are not your company.

Start by deciding what you want to accomplish by building your personal brand. For me, it’s to build a reputation that precedes me, build my professional network, leverage for future opportunities, and create consistent lead generation.

Then, work backward to find topics that facilitate your personal brand goals. Create three to five main content categories or “buckets” your content will fall into.

Conclusion: Play the Long Game

Transitioning from a personal brand to a company brand won’t happen overnight. It’s an ongoing process that requires patience, persistence, and adaptability — and you don’t have to do it alone.

Partnering with an SME-focused content marketing shop can lighten the load of your branding responsibilities. If you’d like to see what our team of experts can do for both your company and personal brands, reach out . We’d love to hear from you.