🧂Business brand or personal brand?

When you’re just starting out as a founder—whether you’ve only had an idea or just launched your first product—there’s a big question: should you build your business brand or your personal brand on social media?

Most founders default to business brands, thinking it’s the “professional” choice. The logic makes sense: one day, you’ll scale, exit, and sell the entire business, including its social media presence.

But is that really the best way to build?

A conversation that changed my perspective

Before I launched my business, I spoke with a founder who had a small team, more than a million users and subscribers, and several published books. His focus was on system design—both his personal brand and his business brand revolved around it.

Despite his success, he admitted something striking: “I’ve outgrown this topic, but my personal brand hasn’t evolved with me.”

That stuck with me. As I researched further, I noticed a pattern. Many successful founders—Dan Koe, Justin Welsh, Matt Gray—lean into personal branding first. Why?

The lifetime asset insight

Here's what most founders don't realize: personal brands are portable lifetime assets, while business brands become cages you eventually outgrow. A business brand must stay niche and specific to maintain credibility - but what happens when you pivot, exit, or start new ventures? Those followers don't transfer with you because they followed the company, not the person behind it.

Personal brands work differently. They evolve with you across multiple businesses because people are following YOU - your thinking, your journey, your growth in real time. When you build your next company, or your third, or when you become a multi-exit founder, that audience comes with you.

It's the difference between building a business asset that you'll eventually sell and building a lifetime asset that appreciates with every experience you gain.

Why do people trust personal brands?

When I first started building my design business, I did what everyone does - shared the polished work, the revenue updates, the before-and-after transformations. Standard playbook stuff.

But I was hiding something that felt shameful for 10 years: I was building businesses on the side while working 9-5, now with a one-year-old and a three-year-old as a mom. While I was proud of myself trying so hard, at the same time I was terrified others would find out. Afraid coworkers would think I wasn't committed to my job. Scared that people would ask why I didn't just quit and go all-in if I was serious about entrepreneurship.

When I finally opened up to my life coach about these fears, she reframed everything: "Exploring something while having a full-time job is actually lucky. Most people want to build businesses but don't know the path. You're modeling what's possible for parents who can't just quit everything and chase a dream."

So I started sharing the real story - the shame, the fear, the 5 AM work sessions before the kids woke up, the constant worry about being a side hustler.

What happened next surprised me: people didn't unfollow me for being weak. They resonated deeply. My story became sticky and memorable because it sounded like a real person trying to figure out life and business, not another guru with a perfect success story.

Here's what I discovered: struggles don't just make you relatable - they become your credentials. When I shared that I'd failed Meta's interview process twice before finally passing, people didn't see incompetence. They saw someone who understood both sides of failure and success. When I talked about struggling to transition from visual design to product design, overwhelmed by trying to handle both aspects, potential clients saw proof that I truly understood their challenges. My failures became evidence that I could guide others through the same journey.

The mechanism is counterintuitive but powerful: in a world where everyone shows highlight reels, vulnerability becomes a competitive advantage. People trust you more when you've been in the trenches they're currently struggling through. Your struggles become proof of expertise, not evidence of weakness.

Selling becomes so easy when buyers know you “personally”

Here's what I love most about building a personal brand on X: when potential clients schedule calls with me, they don't start with "Tell me about your services" or "What's your pricing?" Instead, they begin with "I love your story! How are your kiddos doing?" It's as if they've known me for decades, even though we've never spoken before.

Trust is built instantly because they've been watching my journey unfold in real-time.

This asymmetric relationship is the secret weapon of personal branding. They know me - my struggles with balancing motherhood and entrepreneurship, my design philosophy, my values around family-first business building. But I don't know them. Yet somehow, we skip straight past the awkward getting-to-know-you phase and dive into meaningful conversations about how I can help them.

In this AI era, when fake and AI-curated content is flooding every platform, this kind of authentic connection becomes a massive differentiator. Anyone can generate perfect-looking content now. But you can't AI-generate three years of real struggles, real wins, and real growth that people have witnessed firsthand. The algorithms might be able to create content, but they can't create the emotional investment that comes from watching someone's actual journey.

What I discovered is that people don't actually buy design services from me - they invest in narratives they want to see succeed. Multiple clients have literally told me, "I want to buy from you to support you." They're not just purchasing design work; they're investing in my story of proving that you can build a successful business without sacrificing family time. They want to be part of making that vision real.

This is story investment theory: when people follow your journey long enough, they become emotionally invested in your success. They've watched you struggle, pivot, grow, and overcome challenges. By the time they're ready to buy, they're not evaluating you against competitors - they're rooting for you to win.

In a world where AI can replicate almost everything, it can't replicate the emotional investment that comes from authentic human storytelling over time.

The real barriers holding you back

Let's be honest about what you're probably thinking right now: "Well, I don't have two kids. I'm not a mom juggling business and family. I don't have these dramatic struggles that make people care about my story."

But here's the thing - that's not actually what's stopping you. That's just the surface-level excuse covering up deeper fears that every founder faces when they consider sharing authentically online.

The real barriers are much more universal.

First, there's the credibility fear: "If I show my struggles, will people still trust me with their money?" We've been conditioned to believe that professional competence requires a perfect facade. Admitting you don't have everything figured out feels like admitting you're not qualified to solve other people's problems.

Then there's the weakness perception: "If I share that I'm struggling with imposter syndrome, or that I almost gave up last month, or that I have no idea what I'm doing half the time, people will think I'm weak." We equate vulnerability with incompetence, even though the most successful people we admire are usually the ones who are honest about their challenges.

The judgment fear runs even deeper: "What will people think when they see this side of me?" Maybe you're worried about former colleagues seeing that you're struggling. Maybe you're concerned that sharing your real story will reveal how unconventional your path has been. Maybe you think your struggles aren't "worthy" enough compared to others.

And finally, there's the relevance doubt: "My story is too specific, too narrow. I'm a B2B SaaS founder in Minneapolis - who's going to relate to that?" We convince ourselves that our particular combination of challenges, background, and circumstances is too niche to matter to anyone else.

But here's what I've learned: these fears are actually backwards. The very thing you think will disqualify you is exactly what qualifies you. When you can openly talk about a struggle publicly, it means you've already overcome it. The sharing itself IS the overcoming. You're not revealing weakness - you're demonstrating mastery over your challenges.

Public storytelling becomes a tool for personal transformation. Each time you articulate a struggle you've worked through, you're proving to yourself and others that you can navigate complexity, learn from failure, and emerge stronger. Your willingness to be vulnerable becomes evidence of your emotional intelligence and resilience - exactly the qualities people want in someone they're going to trust with their business.

The founders who break through aren't the ones with the most dramatic stories. They're the ones brave enough to share their real ones.

Growth in real time vs. after-success stories

Here's what most people get wrong about personal branding: they think you should wait until you've "made it" to share your story. They craft these polished narratives about how they overcame challenges, always told from the perspective of someone who has already reached the mountaintop looking back down.

But here's why I'm such a fan of personal branding - and it's not because I like attention or just want to make selling easier. I'm obsessed with growth in life, and personal brand is the only way to capture that entire journey without feeling like all your past branding efforts have been wasted.

When your business evolves, when your interests shift, when you start new ventures, your personal brand evolves with you. Your business brand has to stay laser-focused on one thing, but you? You're human. You can have multiple interests, run different businesses, pivot in unexpected directions. We all understand that growth isn't linear.

The magic happens when you share the mess while you're still in it, not after you've cleaned it up. When I was struggling to balance two kids and a side business, I didn't wait until I had it all figured out to share that story. I was posting about the 5 AM work sessions, the guilt, the fear- all while I was living it. That real-time vulnerability created a connection that no polished success story could match.

But here's what's crucial: when you share personal stories and challenges publicly, you're not asking people to help you solve your problems or save you from your situation. You're inviting your audience to witness the transformation you're having as a human being.

There's a massive difference between "please rescue me" and "watch me figure this out."

The platform strategy matters enormously here. Twitter rewards real-time authenticity and raw struggle - people want to see the unfiltered journey as it happens. But LinkedIn wants "processed" struggle stories with clear lessons learned. On LinkedIn, you can share the same challenges, but frame them as past experiences you've now overcome, complete with the insights you gained along the way.

This is why personal brands can be human and flawed while business brands must appear perfect. When you share your real-time growth, people aren't evaluating your company's competence - they're connecting with your human journey. They're investing in the person who's brave enough to grow in public, knowing that someone with that level of self-awareness and resilience will likely figure out whatever challenges come next.

The choice that determines your entrepreneurial future

So here we are, back to that fundamental question: business brand or personal brand as a founder?

After everything we've explored - the lifetime asset potential, the struggle-as-strength paradox, the story investment theory, the power of real-time growth - the answer becomes clear.

You're not just choosing a marketing strategy. You're choosing between building an asset or building a cage.

The business brand cage looks safe and professional on the surface. But it constrains you to one identity, one niche, one story. When you grow beyond it - and you will grow - you'll have to start over.

The personal brand asset grows with you. Every struggle shared, every lesson learned, every pivot and evolution becomes part of a larger narrative that appreciates in value. Your audience doesn't just follow your current business; they invest in your journey as a human being who figures things out.

In an AI-saturated world where perfect content floods every platform, authenticity becomes your ultimate differentiator. Your real struggles, shared in real-time, create connections that no algorithm can replicate. Your willingness to be human that shares stories becomes proof of the very qualities people want in someone they'll trust with their business.

The founders breaking through aren't the ones waiting for perfect stories to tell. They're the ones brave enough to share their real ones - while they're still figuring it out.

Your turn to start growing in public

Pick one platform. Pick one real challenge you're facing right now as a founder. Not something you overcame years ago, but something you're wrestling with today. Share it honestly, without asking for rescue, simply inviting people to witness your process of figuring it out.

Watch what happens when you choose vulnerability over perfection, real-time growth over polished success stories, personal connection over business positioning.

Your future self - the one running multiple successful ventures with an audience that follows you everywhere - will thank you for starting today.

The question isn't whether you have a story worth sharing. The question is whether you're brave enough to let people watch you write it.That’s it! Creatives often fail in business because they focus too much on perfecting their projects, stick rigidly to their rates, lack a clear focus, and get stuck in unscalable models. I hope you learned something through this newsletter and let me know what topics I can cover next!

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