If I googled your name, what would I find? A few old photos and a dormant Twitter account, a full-fledged portrait of you as a person and professional, or something in between? You may not be on the internet at all. But what’s best? If you’re trying to build an impressive business, do you have to be active and present or does it make no difference?
Does every business need a front man?
Mike Winnet has an opinion. In 2017, he sold his company, Learning Heroes, for $11 million and now shares insights on sales and marketing on his entrepreneur YouTube channel (with 90,000 subscribers) and in its Views are mine community of 6000 members. Within the community, Winnet and members explore topics such as building personal brands, whether paid networking events are worthwhile, anti-marketing methods, and sales strategies for marketing professionals.
I spoke to Winnet about how necessary having a personal brand is to build a significant business.
What benefit does a personal brand offer?
“For me, it has opened doors for people I wouldn’t be able to talk to otherwise,” Winnet says. With a solid platform, an audience in the business niche, and more than 200,000 subscribers and followers, hard-to-reach people want to answer his call. “They’ve seen my stuff, they know my content, and they know there’s something worth discussing. They see the benefit of talking to me.” For Winnet, this is the power of a personal brand.
“I didn’t follow a strategy,” admits Winnet, of how his personal brand grew from scratch. “I just made observations about my industry and shared them whenever I felt like it. I tried to make them humorous.” Instead of following a formula, joining an engagement pod, or trying to please the algorithm, Winnet just posted what he thought would resonate with the kind of people he’d want to do business with. It worked. “If you think about how to be authentic, it probably isn’t. Authenticity is what people think you are, not what you’re trying to make.” Your real personal brand is who you really are, online and offline, and that’s the version that benefits.
Access to a large network, connections with powerful people, and a groomed audience of people who know, like, and trust you without actually meeting you is enough to make someone famous for their work. But what is possible without this in place?
Can you grow a business without a personal brand?
“There are plenty of multimillion-pound companies that don’t have a front man,” explains Winnet. This includes the startup he sold. “Except for a LinkedIn profile that I rarely used, I had no social media before selling my business.” He spent his time winning sales rather than sharing a message with the masses. And that’s important.
The best personal brands come from success, not telling people how successful you are without having anything to back it up. Be the example before you preach it, just as Winnet did. “My personal brand is the result and result of scaling up, then selling a business and people wanting to know how I did it.” Step by step, one move after another, trusting that it would happen when the time was right.
“You may not have heard of Nick Read, Noel Quinn, Roisin Currie, Jitse Groen and Nick Beighton,” explains Winnet. “But you’ve heard of Vodafone, HSBC, Greggs, Just Eat and ASOS.” So yes, your personal brand can be important, “but you can be incredibly successful in business without posting on LinkedIn.”
So what should you spend energy on, your business or your personal brand? Winnet says the first. “Limit the time spent mindless scrolling and forcing messages” in favor of your “challenging to-do list tasks to build a strong business that serves your customers well.” Pleasing the algorithm and growing your followers is not the goal, satisfying your customers and growing your business is.
“The reality is that for most people posting content isn’t going to interest people or grow your following.” If you don’t have the time, ability, or support team to share consistently and intentionally, then maybe all of you wait together. As Winnet joked, “no one cares that Colin from Coventry who runs a roofing company drinks 3 liters of water and mediates at 5am.” Instead, focus on the fundamentals of the company, not “post online and pass for real work”.
Does every business need a front man?
Are there any downsides to building a personal brand?
Being famous online and in real life can have its drawbacks. If your online presence sets the bar high, others have high expectations of you that you will have to match in real life. “Building a great personal brand can hurt some people because they’re so boring,” warned Winnet, who said he’s met people who are “like dishwater in real life.” He’s noticed a huge difference between “the version they create in their content, which is often outsourced to a branding agency,” and the person they really are. He said it’s the business equivalent of a catfish on Tinder. “You wouldn’t want it done to you, but that’s what a lot of people do with their personal brand.”
How similar is your online persona to the one that comes to life when the camera isn’t rolling? When the ring light is out and the audience isn’t looking, who will show up as you? Ideally they are exactly the same.
What is the verdict?
While you can absolutely build a business without a personal brand, having a business can help your business grow faster. The missing ingredient is substance. “The biggest personal brands on LinkedIn are people trying to sell branded personal services,” Winnet says. This creates a bubble that can easily burst. “Any idiot can build an audience, but there’s a huge difference in building the brand of someone selling a solution to a real problem.”
If you’re selling the solution to a real problem, talk about it. “You can’t pay the bills with impressions, likes and comments, so share content that speaks to your ideal customer about the things they’re looking for,” Winnet advised. “Solve their problems.” This isn’t about building an audience for the sake of “going viral, fueling controversy to get opinions, likes and attention of any kind.” Stay away from that side of building a personal brand and opt for the value-added, real things you can share.
Finally, choose your partners carefully, Winnet warned. “Hiring a personal brand expert who has no business experience is not going to work,” he said. If they say they can grow your business to nine figures, but they haven’t managed to do it themselves, “I would question their ability to do it for you.” Your personal brand strategy should be built with the goal of making sales, not building an audience in any way. “Get the help of someone who gets it,” he advised. Someone who has practiced what they preach to a resounding success.
Be there when you have something to say. Share content that adds value. Grow your business before growing your audience. Dust, no smoke. Actions, not words. Quality not quantity. When done right, a personal brand is a multiplier of entrepreneurial effort. When done poorly, it is a superficial undertaking that is a struggle to persevere and worse than not to bother.
