Dear Bhav…should I shift to more generic brand positioning, or keep it personalised to me?
A freelancer growing from solo operator into a small team gets in touch with a brilliant (and very relatable) rebrand dilemma. Growing bigger doesn't mean leaving yourself behind.
I’m currently branded/positioned as myself. But I’m considering a pivot; I’m going to be bigger than just me, though I’m still going to be leading everything, with some amazing people supporting me. A small powerhouse of a team. Should I shift to more generic brand positioning, or keep it personalised to me?
Dear Growing Beyond My Name,
Here’s the bit I’m going to very gently push back on...the examples we tend to reach for in this sort of situation usually aren’t actually personal-name brands. Look closer and there’s almost always a business name doing the heavy lifting behind the famous face.
Joe Wicks trades publicly as The Body Coach (not Joe Wicks Fitness) and that’s the app, the website, the name millions of people actually know. Martin Lewis isn’t the brand either, MoneySavingExpert is - it’s a name he built deliberately separate from himself, which is exactly why he could later sell it for a millions and still have “Martin Lewis” free to do whatever he wants next.
So the choice isn’t really “me” or “generic.” I think it’s actually something else entirely.
The real question...are you the product, or are you the door people walk through to get to the product?
If people hire you because it’s specifically, irreplaceably you, it’s your take, your voice, your face on the content that brings them in then that’s a genuine asset. Don’t dilute it down just because you’re growing.
But if what people actually buy is an outcome, the strategy, the delivery, the results, and you happen to be how they currently discover that, then the thing you’re building deserves its own name. Not something generic. Something distinct and ownable, with room in it for other people’s names to sit alongside yours one day.
Three ways this can go
Do clients want you, or what you produce? Be honest. If a brilliant hire on your team can’t deliver it as well as you under your current name, that’s not a branding problem to solve, it’s a business one.
Would you ever want to sell this, or hand it on? A name that is you is hard to fully sell or hand over. A name that isn’t can grow a life beyond your day-to-day involvement.
And even when you can sell an eponymous name, that doesn’t mean you get to keep using it freely afterwards. Jo Malone sold her fragrance brand, including the rights to her own name, to Estée Lauder. She left a few years later, waited out her non-compete and built a new brand, Jo Loves, from scratch. Fast forward to a 2019 collaboration with Zara, and Estée Lauder are now suing her for using the phrase “Created by Jo Malone CBE” on the packaging, arguing it breaches the terms of that original deal. Selling your name doesn’t just mean selling a business, it can mean losing the right to be called yourself in your own industry, indefinitely. And this is still an ongoing case so it’ll be interesting to see the outcome with this one.
Will your team ever get their own byline? If the plan is a small powerhouse where your hires eventually get named and credited in their own right, a personal name at the top can make that harder. Everyone’s always working for you, never as the studio.
If you want to sit with this a bit longer, Steve Folland at Being Freelance put together a brilliant compilation episode on exactly this question, pulling together voices from the podcast archive. Worth a listen, especially the bit on future-proofing your name for wherever you pivot next.
The bottom line
You don’t have to choose between you and generic. Keep your name as the content engine, the voice, the thing that gets you known. But give the business itself a name with room in it. You get to build the door and stay the person people are glad to walk through it towards.
Go and build something that can grow past you, on purpose.
Onwards, Bhav x
Thinking about repositioning as you grow past just you? This is exactly the kind of strategic groundwork I love working through with founders. Book a call with me.
Go on, ask…
Got a burning brand question you're too embarrassed to ask out loud? Whether your logo is giving you a headache, your website feels a bit Frankenstein, or you just don't know where to start, send it over completely anonymously to dearbhav@b81designs.com.
No judgement, just honest advice. Anonymously.
