Personal Brand vs Business Brand
When you’ve started a business by yourself and especially when it’s you doing the work, it often leads to a Personal Brand developing. Not necessarily in name but you are the brand. Without you the business would just stop overnight.
This is both a blessing and a curse.
Having a Personal Brand is great because a lot of people will connect with you, hear your story and want to business with you. That’s what they get. You.
The curse is that when you want to take a day off or two, hide under the duvet and never look at your laptop again or in emergency situations you have this constant pull towards work and your business. This CAN get troublesome and even more so when you want to scale your business.
Most entrepreneurs aren’t looking for a business with a couple of employees (HUGE generalisation I know and it’s my interpretation of the word entrepreneur). They want to build something big, something world changing.
To do that you need scale. You need to hire, you need to grow to multiple locations that you cannot possibly be in at the same time and you’ll need lots of time to focus on the drivers in your business that lead to that growth.
All very difficult (not impossible) to do when it’s just you doing most things because it’s your Personal Brand.
I’ve witnessed first hand many times business owners get stuck when trying to move from Personal to Business Brand and I understand why. It’s not easy to delegate after investing so much of yourself in something.
It’s a necessity though.
If you want to grow you’ve got to let some things go.
It can be a smooth transition though. What I have found useful is introducing the new person in advance, then slowly create some opportunity for joint communication. Get your new team members introduced to your clients/customers/suppliers/partners and you take the lead explaining how you’re expanding, why it’s good for them and for you.
Before you know it they’ll have the reigns and you’ll be able to drift off to focus on the important things.
It may also be pertinent to think about your brand from a communications perspective. Do you need to change the name? The logo? The stationery? The website? Emails?
As with any rebrand it is a big commitment but worth doing it because then as you onboard new people to your brand it will be exactly what you want. You can focus your attention on your business and your old clients while for new people it’s just the norm.
Moving your business to a Business Brand from a Personal Brand doesn’t mean that you can’t maintain a Personal Brand. If you have something valuable to share and you know it’s going to help growth then keep it going. This can lead to other exciting opportunities such as speaking engagements.
However you decide to progress with your business, know that growth is what you should be aiming for and you as the owner should be focusing on big metrics in your business.
If you want to outsource your advertising and marketing…
Well I know some people that can help
