Should I Build A Personal Brand Or Business Brand?

Should I build a personal brand or an agency brand? This question comes in from Bhau and bourses. I'm a solar producer and had been operating under my company's name. I provide graphic and web design as a service. I'd like to build a brand of my own business. So should I continue to operate under my company name? And in that case, should I introduce myself to potential customers as we the company or me as the designer?

OK. This is a really awesome question and it hits close to home for me because I can tell you from my experience how it went. So I didn't have a personal social media account for the first three or four years I was building my agency. It was just at three deep. And that's my agency's name. And I was everything. I was the guy behind the scenes with 3D and I participate everywhere on Twitter and on conversations. And there was really no separating me from the company.

And so when people met me in person, they said, oh, you must be the owner and the founder of Three Deep. And I had built up their capital because that was the business. And that was all I could really think about, was building up that business. Now, over the years, I started to realize that by tweeting as 3D, I couldn't I missed out on certain things. I missed out on the ability to do speaking gigs because they didn't really know who the person was.

So there's certain things that appeal to the person and certain things that appeal to the company. And so, for example, like if I wanted to be a personality onstage or or if I wanted to have my own YouTube videos and just be a personal brand, then doing it as your company can be limiting. And in fact, it actually limits your options to do some things. However, doing it all concentrated as your company means that you're building equity for your company, you're building brand equity. And that's probably more valuable when it comes to cold, hard cash, when it comes to money. And so I did really enjoy our company really grew quickly as I was building up that brand. And now I haven't worked their day to day at my agency since 2013, and it's still very strong because of those choices we made.

Now, if I were to let when I left in 2013, if I were to disband doing it as me, the company would've lost that and the value would have gone down. They wouldn't have had any recognition and any credibility because we'd all been tied to a person. And so I think it's the right move for the company to do this as your business. I wouldn't question that at all. There is some personal things you're suffering out on. Maybe if you wanted to go, go do speaking gigs or you wanted a name recognition for yourself and you know, you usually can tell what things are are based on individuals based on or based on companies.

But I think that it's better to do it for your company because you're building equity in something that's much more valuable than going on stage. And that's somehow you were able to make that your primary business. So going after the business makes a lot of sense to me, and that's what I'd recommend now. I ended up creating Jeffalytics about, you know, after about four years of exclusively using Twitter as my company account. I created a personal account, but I end up finally using it and finally putting my money where my mouth was in building my personal brand. When I decided that I was in a leave the agency in about 2012. And so I lost five years of building things up. And so I had to make a splash and I had to get all the stuff in order from 2012 to 13 before I left. And it wasn't, you know, everything was in order.

Not everything was perfect. And so I wish I would've started that journey in that process sooner. And so that's probably my biggest regret in this thing, is not trading my personal brand or not doing the company brand. But I had ambitions to leave. And so I'm glad that I created my personal brand ERL area. I'm glad I created it when I did, but I wish I had done it sooner. It's like the old adage, the best time to do this was five years ago and the next best time is now. That's how it was with personal brand. So here's the final T.L. Deeyah. If you plan on leaving your company and you plan on having a career beyond that or selling your company, at some point you should establish a personal brand. Now, to level, you're comfortable.

If you plan on creating a bigger company and you want that to be your end all be all, you want that business to grow and equity grow people and you want to grow that thing and have it be known and have basically the cash cow of bringing in clients from that name recognition for years to come. Then I would consider only doing it on your business and not even muddy the waters at all with a personal brand. I would not do the personal brand at all. So that's how I would recommend it. That's what I did and that's how I learned. Now you can learn from my experience if you have any aspirations of leading. I would recommend starting that personal brand, even if it doesn't overshadow the company. One, I would at least get those things secured. Your name secured as quickly as possible. Thanks for the question.