Personal Branding in Small Business Names
This one has come up more than once or twice, it always seems to be a hot topic with entrepreneurs, especially creative businesses. The question that is on everyone´s startups these days.
“Should I apply my personal brand to my business?”
It seems to cause some confusion what to do with a business name if the person naming it happens to also be the owner. Here´s a practical approach to that question:
“Mr Small Business Owner, are you planning to sell the business one day?”
Many entrepreneurs have that as an exit plan, so with that in mind, having your name on your business would not serve you, as it can deter investors away from a brand that would be challenging to scale. Think about it, if a company named Bob´s Fruits & Veggies (after Bob) arrived at the position of attracting attention from investors, how would the business continue to have its appeal, if the main brand element was now removed from the business? From an investors standpoint, that brand has now lost its value because Bob didn’t really plan for the day when he’d be approached to hand over his turn key business to an interested party.
So here´s a general rule of thumb to apply to hatching new businesses: if you are starting small, you´d do well with a “generic” name, which will allow you to keep it a turn key sellable business. Think of a name that convey the expertise, value and uniqueness of the product or service you have developed. If this can easily used in the domain for the website, you are now compounding searchability with practicality. Points to you. Win.
If you decided to apply your name to the business, then you better be in it the long run. This could come with its own perks, such as building your own name as a personal brand. It will definitely take longer for the market to get used to it, because if there´s no reason to associate Bob and fruits or veggies (still using the previous example), Bob will have to invest extra in advertising campaigns, make an effort to create that connection in the audience´s brains and need time for this to happen. Plus, if Bob decides he´s tired of working on the business for the last 30 years, with his name on it, there will be a huge effort in in redefining the brand association.
It´ll be a whole process of detaching the brand equity from it. A process your investor(s) might not be able to go through, as the success is not guaranteed and it may take a while to achieve.
If YES is your answer (as in you will sell it), then go with a good strong name that is not bound to you. If NO, then go ahead and begin building your future empire.
Having said all this, that doesn´t mean you shouldn´t consider personal branding. This is the absolute way of the future, as many people are slowly resisting to realise. Whether you are a member of someone´s staff, an established professional, a young buck coming up in the trenches, your most valuable individual asset in life IS your personal brand! So, get your domains, social media platforms, even if you don’t plan on using them straight away. You’ll see that 5, 10, 20 years down the track, you’ll be thanking yourself for having the foresight of making reservations for your own “real estate” to grow. I can´t overemphasise how this is important. Make yourself a into a brand even if you don´t have one right this moment.
Here´s a tool that will help you line up your ducks and reserve as many online platforms as you want to: https://namechk.com/
As you can see, you can do a search and immediately find out what platforms would allow you use that particular name (hint: you may also want to try slight variations of it) and you can go ahead and reserve those platforms “real estate” for your future personal brand.
I hope this was useful and if you have any questions or comments, please drop me a line below and have your say.
