Why I decided to build my business under a personal brand

I have been talking a bit about personal brands versus business brands because this is particularly relevant for those of us with digital product businesses where we are the person showing up and teaching. Also, for those of you who have podcasts, when you're the host of your podcast, you're sort of building a personal brand around that as well.

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Choosing to build a personal brand

Today I'm giving you the breakdown of why I personally made that decision. In my previous blog, I share a few of the things to consider when you're tossing up between a personal brand or a business brand. Again, remember there's no wrong decision. Whatever you decide is the right decision and you can always change your mind. Nothing is set in stone. There's no right or wrong way to do it. You get to make the rules. That's the magical thing about having your own business – you get to just do what you want to do.

 

So my previous business brand was Wildbloom, which was a marketing consultancy. I started it with the vision of growing it into an agency and that's why I launched it under a brand name. Then when I launched this podcast, I wanted to have that as a separate brand because I identified that people who listened to Socialette were people who wanted to DIY their marketing whereas people who came to work with me through Wildbloom wanted somebody to do their marketing for them. At this point, when I launched the podcast, I already had an online course, my Facebook ads course which is now well retired, this was a few years ago. That was under the Wildbloom brand. But they were completely different audiences because the people who were coming to me for the Facebook ads course didn't have the budget to pay a marketing agency to do their marketing for them. That's why they were buying the course.

 

Then what I decided to do was to move that course under the Steph Taylor brand because these were the DIYers. The people who came to Steph Taylor were the people who wanted to learn how to DIY. The people who came to Wildbloom were the people who were like, “Here, have some money, do it for me. I don't want to deal with it myself.” So, very different businesses. The more that I started to show up as myself under the Steph Taylor brand rather than showing up on the Wildbloom brand, the more that I really enjoyed, being able to share my own stories, my experiences, speak in my tone of voice, talk about my own struggles and be real and honest with everyone.

 

So when I started building the Steph Taylor brand, I didn't really think about what growing a personal brand would mean in the future and I didn't really think about what would happen if my brand grew quickly like it did last year. I didn't think about the responsibility that comes with being a leader, that's probably been one of the biggest challenges of having a personal brand. But on the flip side, I also found it much easier to market my business, and to sell, and to build relationships because I was just being me. I wasn't having to be this face of a brand. I was just being me.

 

Many of you may be stuck deciding, do you build your digital products under your personal brand, do you build them under your business brand? Particularly if you already have an existing business brand, it's a really tough decision to make. And I've been there, I empathize with you, it's not an easy decision. I just want you to remember, if you only take one thing away from these couple of blog posts about building a personal versus business brand, I want you to just remember that it's not about making the right or wrong decision, there's no right or wrong decision. It's about making the decision that's going to work best for you and you can always change your mind.

 

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