What’s more powerful: the entrepreneur personal brand or the company brand
Posted on June 9, 2005
Building your personal brand and become “googlable”
You are probably already asking: what do you mean by personal brand? When you are young at the beginning of your career how do you present yourself when talking to someone? I bet you say: I’m calling you from “Acme company, I’m John Doe”. What does this mean? It means that you are using the company brand when addressing the customer. Just because nobody knows you, but they probably know the company. And if they know the company, you gain enough mana to be accepted as a known person.
What I’ve noticed after a while is that people started to know me after my name. The knew I’m a reliable person, and the guy to be contacted for any issue. Right in the same moment, the company became unimportant. My name presented enough warranties for a good job and therefore the company commitments towards its clients were replaced by my personal mana. My brand became more important than the company brand. Now you’re shouting over the phone: “Hey, I’m John Doe, how are you today?”. No company name, no nothing. (of course this happens with known persons)
Just when my brand started to grow, I realized that I also became “googable” meaning my name appeared all over google. I just found it out by mistake, when I was talking to hire a guy. Just in the middle of the interview he said: “I know you, I’ve found about you on the google when looking for some PHP stuff”. As you can imagine, the guy was instantly hired 
I was hurrying to my desk to “google” myself
I think basically this is what happens with small companies lead by a charismatic entrepreneur. Due to his mana, you might not know about his company, but know him. You don’t thrust me? Here is an example: there is a guy (Joel Spolsky), with a very interesting blog : Joel on Software. To tell you the truth, I know about Joel. I don’t have any clue about his company (my bad sorry) - well I had a look and its called Fog Creek Software: http://www.fogcreek.com/ . Now imagine that somebody (called John) would call you from Fog Creek Software. You would be completely lost, not having any clue about the company. But now imagine that a guy called Joel Spolsky would call you. I bet you would feel in heaven.
So, when was the last time you googled yourself? How is your entrepreneur brand today?
PS: I send my very best regards to Joel as I really enjoy his blog and work and I hope he will see my post in a positive way.
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When my first written articles/tutorials were posted on DMXzone, Google sucked them up instantly and I really enjoyed seeing my name climb to #1.