Why Personal Branding Matters — For You and Your Company

Jul 30, 2024

I recently chatted with an entrepreneur who wanted to improve the content and brand for her company.

My advice to her — don’t worry about “company” content, instead have all that content come from you.

Why?

People buy from people. Not from brands.

Great advice that I first heard from Shannan Brooks who — with 100k followers and posts that regularly get 3M+ views — knows her stuff.

Lauren Goodell (Zinnia) and Troy Munson (Dimmo) are two great examples.

Each has 20k+ followers on LinkedIn, cultivated intentionally through helpful advice and personal stories.

I’ve seen both successfully leverage their audience for:

customer feedback
product launches
customer acquisition
market testing
access to events and PR opportunities

All for **FREE** (minus the time to post and engage) — a startup’s favorite price.

Does this mean that you can be a Lauren, Shannan, or Troy overnight?

Maybe!

Lauren 4x-ed her audience in less than a year. Gauntlet thrown 😉

Here are 5 reasons that investing in your personal brand will pay off big time for your company, especially in the early days!

1. Social platforms reward people over companies.

Same content posted by a company or a person — the person will almost always get more views in the social platform algorithms (LinkedIn especially).

Why?

People like “watching” people so they put personal posts at the top of the feed for better engagement. (Which in turn encourages more personal posts…)

Also — **conspiracy theory alert** — companies are much more likely to pay for ads or promoted posts. Why give them for free what you can monetize instead??

(I don’t know this but it sure makes sense to me.)

2. People are nosy.

Call it evolutionary biology. Call it voyeurism. Call it we-are-all-nosy-and-creepy-and-judgy.

There’s something about seeing into the lives of others — even if it’s in a totally professional context — that connects to some innate human curiosity.

Notice what you click on.

Do you stop to read the SEO content and stock photo from the generic B2B SaaS tool? (Nope.)

Or is it the photo from a real event or personal story and photo from a founder?
(YES! Tell me the secret to life and did they get a haircut?)

3. It can still be professional.

All of these things can be shared by a brand or a person. All of these things are better when shared by a person!

Industry news
Upcoming events
Research/thought leadership (yours or others)
Interviews or advice from other thought leaders
Helpful books or podcasts (including summaries)
Open job roles
Company milestones or team celebrations
Event recaps

If you’re not comfortable in the spotlight (most of us aren’t) or want to keep your private life private, there’s all different styles of personal brands.

Personal brand doesn’t mean pics of your kids, revealing your deepest fears, or taking non-stop selfies.

Sharing helpful ideas can be personal and unique too!

4. More trust and credibility.

Have a difficult message to share? Need to apologize for a product misfire?

It’s 10x more authentic and believable when coming from a person versus a generic company entity.

And it’s 10x MORE powerful, compelling, and forgivable beyond that when you “know” that person because they’ve been sharing thoughts and in your feed for months and years.

Trust and credibility help on the upside too. Looking for beta testers, customer testimonials, or guest bloggers?

You are more likely to get a “yes” when a human asks than when your “company” does.

5. Personal brands endure.

Want to start another company after your first exit?

I sure hope you’ve invested in your personal brand because your previous company’s name, logo, and LinkedIn page is now owned by a PE firm. 🥴😉😂

Want to pivot your business from consulting to a tech product?

Your followers will be more loyal to you than a generic company name. You can tell the story and transition smoothly (human-to-human) instead of spending big $$$ to reeducate everyone through a new website, ads, and other messaging.

Want to recruit your next employee, co-founder, or investor? It’s much easier if they’ve been following you for years vs. see a pitch deck or job posting.

And — maybe this is too obvious to bring up but — it’s often way easier to remember a human first name, last name, and face than the made-up-not-a-real-word-no-vowels business name.

If you’re like me, my brain has not yet evolved to memorize logos and URLs as well as I do people and faces!

But shouldn’t the brand be more than just one person?

Yes.

At some point, it doesn’t scale to have (only) you be the brand. The company brand will mature over time. The marketing team will develop brand guidelines, you’ll have voice and tone documents, and if done well, your company itself will have an enduring identity and style.

BUT — even when you are a multi-billion dollar company (and you will be!) — people still want to hear from people.

Think of the impact of Bob Iger as the head of Disney compared to other movie studios and brands. (I don’t even know any other studio heads other than Reid Hastings at Netflix!) Disney has an amazing stand-alone brand with “Imagineers” and adorable characters and multiple books on the Disney leadership, culture, and training. But a charismatic, well-known leader is still a multiplier.

So unless you are deliberately trying to fly under the radar, you and your company will always be well-served to have company leaders with personal brands.

But what about employees?

You may be thinking:

This makes sense for a founder or CEO but what about employees? If they build a personal brand and leave, they take our company with them.

Here’s the career advice that David Cummings (aka Founding Partner at Atlanta Ventures aka my boss) gives, including to his own employees:

The best thing you can do for your career is build your personal brand.

The world is small and careers are long. Being a generous leader comes back to you 10 fold. Encouraging someone in their career, even if they don’t stay at your company forever, is always remembered and appreciated.

Also, the more great, well-known people who worked for you or who are Ex-YourCompany, the better you and your company look.

I love Morning Brew because the newsletter is written by people. They mention and joke about fellow writers by name. When a long-time teammate leaves for a new opportunity, they give them a shoutout in the newsletter. I don’t stop reading it because one person left. I love the newsletter even more because it’s written by real people and not a generic, faceless brand.

I think this is true across the internet with the rise of influencers, podcasters, journalists starting their own newsletters, and of course, your local VC blog. 😉

Stay tuned for next week when we talk about specific strategies on getting started — especially when you’re already overwhelmed as an early stage startup founder!

Do you agree that building a personal brand helps your company? Are there any exceptions? What’s your favorite personal and/or company brand?? How are you building your personal brand?