Why Personal and Business Branding Work Best Together

Up until September, 2008 I was a full-time freelance writer. I had built myself a little business that kept my family comfortable, and I have to admit, my writer friends who enjoyed hacking away at their fantasy novels after work were a little jealous. I was happy because my lifelong goal, ever since I could clasp a pencil between a few fingers, was to make my living from writing.

The problem in this story was unrestricted growth. Maybe you think I sound like a bit of an ass looking at growth as a problem when many people are losing their jobs and closing up their shops, but don’t make that mistake. Unrestricted growth can be a problem, and saying it can’t be is a bit like the obese person telling the anorexic that they don’t have any real problems.

I was killing myself with work, and still taking on new clients because I didn’t want to let any of that growth “go to waste.” Nobody wanted to be around me at the time because I could barely hold a conversation after spending long, hard days doing nothing but writing and editing.

When it became clear that I couldn’t take on any more work whatsoever and I wasn’t comfortable with raising my prices anymore than I already had, I did what anybody in my situation would do.

I took a job.

Well, maybe that’s not what anybody in my situation would do, but at the time it was a good way to step back from what I’d gotten myself into. One of my biggest clients offered me a full-time position that was less to do with writing and more to do with some of the editorial and managerial work I was doing, but I wasn’t complaining. I needed some work that I still found meaningful but didn’t burn me out, either. The main reason that I took the job was that I liked the idea of what the company was doing and the people in it, and had worked with an organization with similar goals in the past that did not quite work out. This was a chance to be part of developing that agenda again. But at the same time, I knew I needed a break from freelancing. In my own quest for growth I had burned myself out by not using the right framework for it.

I’m not recommending that freelancers turn in their businesses for employment. From many points of view, freelancing will always be the superior option. What I’m doing is warning you about a mistake I made. Despite all the growth I was experiencing and the high rates I was charging, there was definitely a big mistake made. I didn’t plan for that sort of growth from the beginning.

If I had a plan to turn the business into a scalable one, I would probably still be in freelance writing with a team of writers working with me to produce content. But by the time I needed the plan, there wasn’t enough time left in the day or opportunity to implement it. My clients were coming to me because (as arrogant as this sounds — I’m only repeating what they were saying) they didn’t want anyone else for particular jobs. That meant there was no room for me to bring on some trusted writers and go from freelancer to writing firm.

I’d dug myself into a hole by constructing my business around myself. The only person my clients would deal with or take deliverables from was me. I could not expand the business as it was.

You might be fine with that situation. Good for you! But when things start to plateau in any area of my life, even if it’s a contented sort of plateau, I do not remain happy for long. I need constant growth or I get bored. In my mind, something ceases to be worth doing when there is no more growth in it. I couldn’t bring myself to continue at a gallop pace doing the same thing every day. If you can coast along happily I do envy you. For the rest of us, you know what I’m talking about.

Personal branding helped me. It built me a business as a freelance writer and I picked up a number of wonderful clients and made a comfortable living for myself, doing what I’d wanted to do since childhood. I won’t go on the record to badmouth this type of branding and I encourage you include it in your plan. We’ve even got a book on it at Rockable. Use the tool that is personal branding, but remember that if you plan to expand, you need to expand that plan beyond just yourself.

Many in my situation would look back on that experience with the belief that business branding was the way to go, just because personal branding did not end up working out. My retrospective solution is that both personal and business branding are important for the success of a freelancer. You should plan to develop both from the get-go. It’s not a glamorous or fancy solution — it’s a simple one — but the debate on this topic has polarized opinions and led us to think in an either-or fashion.

In fact, I know two people who write about either one and are successful in both. Skellie, who wrote the aforementioned minibook on personal branding, has developed a strong personal brand online and yet two of her properties — Skelliewag and Anywired — have developed strong brands of their own. James Chartrand who frequently teaches freelancers about the benefits of business branding is a well-known personality under his own name while his business, Men with Pens, shares the same high reputation.

It just goes to show: don’t get too caught up in one camp. A balanced approach yields the best results. Perhaps you want to develop a plan for slowly transitioning from personal to business branding over time, executing steps as the workload percentage increases. Perhaps you plan to develop both from the beginning in a symbiotic way. There are several ways to pull it off. The important point to remember? In the world of freelancing, the best way ahead is the one that covers all the bases.

Joel Falconer |
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Joel Falconer is an editor, writer and musician in Melbourne, Australia. He's the guy at Envato who runs FreelanceSwitch, WorkAwesome and the Netsetter. He's a writer who has been published all over the place (we're not going to try and list that here!). As an editor and journalist he believes in running sites that boast the best in web content. Visit his website or follow him on Twitter.

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