Should You Build A Personal Brand Or A Business Brand?
- Writer for DDI on Medium
- Jan 7
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 11
There are a few things to consider before your answer can inform an approach to the type of brand you build.
First, and this is nuanced, if you're just selling hard skills, the behavior of your target audience matters. What do they gravitate towards?
Do they feel comfortable working with someone now, cutting their teeth on something they’ve just learned to do, or do they value having skin in the game? What does that look like?
I once worked with a very successful FX company whose CEO told me that their clients typically trust a business brand much more easily than a personal brand. Digging deeper, it turned out the reason working with their creative team over a one-man show is so important to their clients is that it's easier to hand off the work and know they’ll get the quality they’re looking for at the speed they need than with their single service provider.
So no, I don’t think the decision to build the name of the business over your own is limited to whether or not you want to eventually sell. I think it can also be about what builds trust more easily, especially because this FX company started out as a one-man show.
The second consideration is your intention. It counts!
Do you have thoughts and ideas of your own you’re known for and intend on leveraging, or are you someone who's building into the person who eventually does that?
I made the decision to build a business brand eight years ago because it gave me the time I needed, working with clients, to find and develop my voice. Within 3 years of creating the first iteration of the brand, I built 2 successful brands that went from nobodies to literal somebodies, selling their services for thousands of dollars after basically struggling to get 100 dollars for them. And it's important to note that I did that pre-AI. So today, signs of a partial foundation are in place for personal branding, but my hour isn't yet to develop my name.
Yes, people connect with you quicker than the business, but that’s when there's visible expertise, and a body of work that backs up your ideas. It is the absence of this that has birthed many lopsided personal brands in Trinidad and Tobago: no proven ideas or reputation delivering on a promise, but very popular. Of course, they all turned to ChatGPT prompts for messaging.
Which brings me to the third consideration: What situation are you in?
You want to grow a huge audience out the gate; you want authority. How realistic is that goal for someone without a solid point of view?
Piggybacking on the reputation of a bigger company can certainly fast-track you to those outcomes; you can discover your POV on any number of things surrounding what you do, but likely with moments of putting your foot in your mouth—either not knowing what you’re talking about, regurgitating AI slop, or talking about things not particularly interesting because people can find it online.
The decision of whether to build a personal brand or business brand is important because, based on the brand you build, you’ll also know what your marketing looks like.
For example, both of these brands create blogs or articles. But personal brands have a wider range of stages they show up on, while business brands are much more conservative.
As a business brand, I won’t show up at UWI to talk to students. But I did show up to Regus Trinidad’s virtual business event for service businesses.
When you lack clarity on what kind of brand you are, you’ll chase stages that aren’t designed for you.
A fair assumption to make would be that my perspective is based on my own experience working with clients and building my own brand.
I hope it is enough to inform you of what you build.
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