Why personal branding is a terrible idea for your business.

The day McDonald’s opened its first restaurant in the small city of Czestochowa in the south of Poland was a huge event. The restaurant, located in the city centre, was a real standout with its big bright logo and modern design.

The year was 1993 and the venue offered the taste of the Western World to Poles who were finally rid of the communist regime and ready to embrace popular culture. I vividly remember hundreds of balloons that adorned the place and my very first Happy Meal which, of course, came with a toy. I don’t think it would be risky to say that on that very special day every single teenager in town was at McDonald’s.

Today, McDonald’s is one of the largest employers in Poland (population 38 million people), employing more than 22,000 people.

In love with McDonald’s.

The success of the McDonald’s brand is the work of Ray Kroc. Unless you have watched a brilliant movie called “The Founder,’’ chances are you have never heard of Kroc before.

Ray Kroc was a 52-year old milkshake mixer salesman (one of those who knock on the door and try to sell you things) when he discovered McDonald’s in San Bernardino, California. He did not come up with the name or the logo of McDonald’s (Richard and Maurice McDonald did), he did not invent McDonald’s ”Speedee Service System” (today known as “fast food”), nor did he come up with any recipes for McDonald’s world-famous menu.

Yet, Kroc is credited with turning McDonald’s into a global brand. So how did he succeed?

Ray Kroc fell in love with the McDonald’s brand.

He was amazed by everything about it: the name, the logo, the systems, the simplicity and the limitless opportunities the brand presented. While McDonald brothers failed to franchise the brand, Kroc opened 7,500 outlets in the United States and 31 in other countries and territories during his life (given he was in his 50s when he started the franchise that’s an incredible achievement).

Asked about making McDonald's a huge success, he said:

"The McDonald brothers were simply not on my wavelength at all. I was obsessed with the idea of making McDonald's the biggest and the best. They were content with what they had;"

This 'obsession' with making a particular brand 'the biggest and the best' applies to the most successful businesses on the planet such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Alibaba and Nike, to name a few.

But the era of big brands might be coming to an end as more and more business owners get sidetracked by personal branding and end up promoting themselves instead of their business.

Me Inc. - An obsession with "self" in the age of social media.

In 1997 Tom Peters seriously kicked off the idea of personal branding by publishing an article “The Brand Called You” in “Fast Company.”

He famously wrote:

“We are CEOs of our own companies: Me Inc. To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You. (…) I know this may sound like selfishness. But being CEO of Me Inc. requires you to act selfishly — to grow yourself, to promote yourself, to get the market to reward yourself. Of course, the other side of the selfish coin is that any company you work for ought to applaud every single one of the efforts you make to develop yourself”. 

This is all fine if you are an employee working for a company (if you are, you might as well stop reading this article now), but what happens when you are the owner of a business and employ people?

Should your own business applaud your "selfish efforts" to develop and promote yourself?

If you are focusing on developing your own personal brand, why did you even bother starting a business in the first place? These are valid questions that all business owners should ask themselves.

Contrary to what social media want you to believe, the biggest and best businesses on this planet have not been built as an extension of personal brands. The founders of these companies (such as Jeff Bezos) became famous because they created amazing business brands, not the other way round.

What is a business brand?

You came up with your company’s name, you designed its logo and it took you a couple of months to develop your company’s website.

You thought hard and long, you might have even hired a copywriter, and after reading Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” you know your “why” by heart. Heck, you even have branded shirts, pens and mugs! However, all of the above are just a small part of your business brand.

A “brand” is what your customers think of your business when they hear its name or see its logo.

A business brand is the sum of your customer service, reputation, value, USP, logo, website and a social media presence. Even though it's a figment of collective imagination, it has its own voice and identity and how it is perceived might differ greatly from your expectations. 

What is a successful business brand?

If you are travelling around the World and you see a McDonald’s restaurant, you know exactly: what it is, what it does, and how it does it. My 4-year-old can recognize the McDonald's logo without having any idea who Ray Kroc was.

This kind of brand awareness is the ultimate goal of your business brand – to be instantly recognizable, predictable and not tied to a particular person.

A business brand will always be superior to a personal brand.

A business brand comes with the potential to offer infinite consistency and can still exist even after its founder had passed away (Ray Kroc died in 1984 but McDonald's is still going strong). With a personal brand, consistency finishes the second the founder "kicks the bucket" (or has a mental breakdown due to spending too much time on social media).

A business brand is not a human; it doesn't have bad days, or suffer from a hangover on Monday, or take holidays, or unplug to get the right perspective on life. The opposite is true for a personal brand.

When it comes to doing business, people want and expect consistency. Consistency equals familiarity and trust. Once these are established, loyalty follows.

A successful business brand delivers time and time again and has systems and processes in place that allow repetition of the whole process.

To put it simply, a business brand is limitless.

“But I like having a personal brand.”

Personal branding can be so much fun. I totally get it!

From time to time, I also indulge in sharing my thoughts with my social network (like I am right now) and get a nice kick of dopamine when likes, comments, messages and invites roll in. Who doesn’t like a bit of appreciation?!

The problem with personal branding is that it is highly addictive.

Personal branding allows you to talk about yourself and when you see people "liking" and commenting on your post, it validates you and makes you feel good. Your brain secretes dopamine (which controls the brain’s pleasure and reward centre) and the more dopamine released, the more the brain recognizes that it is triggered by this particular reward. So you keep coming back for more.

In no time, you abandon promoting your business brand and put all your efforts into promoting yourself.

Instead of being controlled by rational thoughts, you are being controlled by your emotions, choosing instant over delayed gratification.

Instead of working towards making your business repeatable, systems-dependent, sustainable and scalable, through personal branding you are seriously restricting the growth of your business making it reliant on your presence and personality.

"A business is a repetable process that makes money. Everything else is a hobby."

Paul Freet

Why you should take promoting your business brand seriously.

Have you ever thought about selling your business?

You might not be thinking of it right now, but life is unpredictable and one day due to personal circumstances beyond your control, such as ill-health, you might find yourself forced to part with it. If so, the strength of your business brand will be one of the key factors which will determine its value (this is known as brand value and brand equity).

If your business brand is strongly associated with your person, it will not be worth very much to someone else. They can never be you, right? Rest assured, that your company website, social media activity, reviews, and overall brand positioning will be highly scrutinized by prospective buyers.

Think about how your business brand looks from the outside to someone who has never heard of it. Prospective buyers will not care about how many personal connections you have on LinkedIn or how many likes your recent post on Instagram got. They will not be interested in knowing your personal opinions or hearing the inspiring stories you share with your audience.

What they will be really interested in will be cold, hard facts.

And if your business doesn't have a strong brand, you will be joining 60-70% of businesses that fail to sell (*Investmentbank.com stats).

Successful business brands are not built overnight. Building a business brand is a long-term exercise that requires a clear strategy, consistency and dedication.

Summary

In times when everyone is constantly posting about their lives, it's tough not to participate, but as Steve Jobs said once:

“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do."