As an entrepreneur, your name holds weight, and it’s important that you have a brand that supports not only your goals but also your growth. Personal branding for entrepreneurs helps you stand out, but more importantly it builds trust for potential clients, press and collaborators.
As a brand designer and someone who has a personal brand myself, I understand the importance of personal branding and the role it plays in marketing yourself. ‘Just winging it’ or throwing something together with no strategy behind it is not going to cut it.
So, if you are looking to level up your own brand, let’s examine personal branding for entrepreneurs and some examples of what this looks like with my real clients!
What is the Difference Between a Personal Brand and a Business Brand?
Before diving into personal branding for entrepreneurs, let’s talk about the difference between a personal brand and a business brand.
A personal brand is a brand that is centered around you as a person. You’ll often find that personal brands are named after an individual person instead of a business name.
Business brands, on the other hand, are centered around some sort of product or service that is offered. While these businesses may be started by an individual, they are normally not attached to a specific person.
How to Tell if a Brand is a Personal Brand
Aside from the actual name of the brand (i.e., most personal brands will just be the individual’s name), another great way to tell if a brand is a personal brand is to look at how it interacts and ” sells” .
Some common examples of a personal brand are going to be:
- Coaches
- Authors
- Influencers
Take a coach, for example. You work with them either on a one-on-one or in a group, and they share their life experiences, opinions, and ideas with you directly to help you in some way.
Some personal brands that you may have heard of include people like Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, and even celebrities like Oprah and the Kardashians. You’ll also notice that personal brands (including those just mentioned) have a lot of lifestyle content throughout their brand.
They consistently show you behind the scenes of their daily lives, whether that is the things that they use, where they go, or what they do. While some business brands can do this, too, you’ll often find this much more with personal brands.
Now, just because you have a personal brand doesn’t mean you cannot have a business brand as well. Many entrepreneurs will use their personal brand to bolster their business, especially as it is just getting started. (Sometimes vice versa, using their business to launch a personal brand and secure more speaking ops etc. This is what I did!)
However, their personal brand will always be connected to them (you) as the individual, but your business brand can be separated. For example, once the business is up and running, you can sell that business and brand to someone else, but a personal brand can’t really be sold or passed on (with exception to your family) due to the name. Some people have change the name of a personal brand for this reason.
A business isn’t a requirement of having a personal brand, though. There are plenty of entrepreneurs that have extremely successful personal brands without running a business brand too.
Case Studies: Personal Branding for Entrepreneurs
Paulette Perhach
Paulette Perhach is an author and a coach for other writers. When we were creating her brand, we wanted to make sure that it not only represented her personally but also promoted the coaching programs that she launched.
For her brand, we made sure to create a combination of logos and marks that highlighted just her name that she would be able to use on her website, social media, and for any marketing content she needed with her books.
In addition to that, we also created a group of logos and marks that specifically promoted her coaching program, “Powerhouse Writers.” This allowed us to create a full brand suite that not only encompassed the individual side of her personal brand but also gave her a stand-out brand that she could use to market her coaching services!
Matt Schulz
Matt Schulz is a public figure, prominent speaker, and educator. When it came to his personal brand, we wanted to create something that felt unique to him but also very professional and leveraged his press for his upcoming book launch.
Since he is in the personal finance industry, it is vital that people interacting with his brand have total trust and confidence in him and what he is speaking or educating on. We not only built that through his logos but also in his color palette.
The blues in his color palette help instill a feeling of trust and expertise, while the orange represents passion and change. We balanced all that out with a garnet color to instill a feeling of being established and educated.
Andy Hoffman
Andy Hoffman is the founder of Rogue Finance, a financial business revolutionizing the way people manage their money. While Rogue Finance is his business brand, Andy also has a personal brand based on his coaching and education work.
When it came to creating his personal brand, we worked to create a brand that was relatable and authentic while also feeling empowering to everyone who comes in contact with him. He does a variety of work with his personal brand, from a book he wrote to speaking engagements and other online content.
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Not only is Andy committed to empowering individuals in their financial journey, but he is also out-of-the-box and challenges conventional thought, so we made sure to give his personal brand a unique and edgy feel to embody this.
The New York Stylist
Liz Teich, founder of the New York Stylist, is both a service provider and an influencer and is the perfect example of how your personal brand can grow with you over the years as you expand into new endeavors.
Liz started out with just a personal brand and has more than 20 years of experience in the fashion industry. Using the strong personal brand that she built up over the years, she launched The New York Stylist, a fashion stylist business teaching women how to shop and dress in a way that is not only smart, but also sustainable.
This combination also perfectly embodies the idea of a personal brand that is connected to you and a business brand that you created but that you can also separate yourself from.
Her personal brand will always be her brand, and nothing will ever take away the years of experience she has in this industry. The New York Stylist was built on the success of her personal brand, but it is set up so that she can disconnect it and hand it off to someone else in the future if she ever wants to.
Bethany McCamish
I have also built a personal brand for myself over the years. My personal brand, Bethany McCamish, gives me an opportunity to showcase my press and media coverage, speaking events I have done, and so much more.
While many of these opportunities came about because of the work I have done at Bethany Works®, I also wanted a way to separate the services that I offer from the information that I can educate on, whether through blogs, interviews, podcasts, or anything else.
While we talked about building a business brand off of a personal brand, you can also take the experience and knowledge you gain from your business to expand and grow your personal brand as well!
Final Thoughts on Personal Branding for Entrepreneurs
Hopefully this gives you a better understanding of personal branding for entrepreneurs and how to differentiate it from any business brands that you may have. The most important thing to remember about personal brands is that you will always have one.
Whether or not you use/promote your personal brand, every individual has their own. The key when it comes to entrepreneurs is creating one that is trustworthy and respected while also feeling authentic to you. And remember, since it is connected to you as a person, it is most likely going to change over the years!
If you are ready to build a stand-out personal brand that you are proud of, we’d love to help bring your vision to life. As someone who has built their own personal brand, I understand how important it is and the positive impact that a strategic and professional brand can have.
You can check out my design services here or head over here to get in touch and start your brand transformation journey!
