How do I brand myself when I have two different businesses? Do I have a personal brand, and a business brand or just one?

Now this is an excellent question. And many of you out there have your businesses set up like this. Especially if you are a service based business. For example, if you are an agency that trains copywriters, but you also do that yourself….do you have one brand for everything, or do you have two separate brands. What if you are a fitness instructor and gym owner. You want people to come to your gym because it’s good for the gym, but you also want people to sign up for your specific classes. So what do you do?

Let’s go back to that copywriter as an example. Let’s say that you are a copywriter that takes on individual clients, but you also have a copywriting agency, where you hire or contract out other copywriters. You essentially have two businesses, right? So do you keep those two brands the same or separate them out?

There are two different ways to go about it and it all depends on the goals you have in your business. 

One option is to separate out your brands. This means that you have a brand that works and fits for you as a personal brand and one that fits for your agency. This works out really well if you have two distinct feels to your brand or your marketing to two different clientele. Perhaps your agency is marketing to a wider range of people, and then they can choose which copywriter best aligns with their needs. If you have two separate brands, you can more easily hone in on the type of people you want to attract and work with directly, and still have a steady increase of customers to your agency. 

This also works well if you don’t particularly feel attached to your agency’s brand. It gives you a little more freedom between the two brands.

Your other option is to keep them together. This works really well if you started out building a personal brand and people come to you because of YOU. It’s okay to still have an agency, but you will be building the brand as you and as you attract people to you, they will trust you to take care of them by either working directly with them or fitting them to someone who will be best for their needs. Does that make sense? Think about the fitness industry, for example. You can follow the brand 24 hour fitness, and you can also follow the brand of an instructor there. Those are two separate brands. I’m sure at one point in time the original owner of 24 hour fitness actually taught there. On the flip side, you can have a fitness brand like Tracey Anderson. Tracey Anderson builds her brand and business around her and people come to her business for her, but then she has many fitness trainers under her that use her methods and train like her. In fact, they are just an extension of her brand.

So which one will work best for you? Once again, it all comes down to the goals you have in your business. If you want some autonomy, then break them out, if you know that the best part about your business is you, then keep them together. If you want to expand and franchize, it’s easier to do that with two separate brands. If you have serious name recognition, use that to your advantage. Don’t forget the added workload it takes to manage two separate brands. That might be a determining factor for you. 

There’s no wrong way to do it. Just get intentional about why you’re doing it!

Keep sending me questions so that I can keep bringing you these fun bonus episodes. Connect with me at britbennion.com or on instagram @ brandingbybrit. See you soon!

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