Franchising is a highly competitive and dynamic business environment. With so many brands and concepts vying for entrepreneurs’ attention and so many local business owners competing for consumers’ attention, it’s essential for all of us to establish our own personal brands to stand out and succeed. By  Jack Monson

Franchising is a highly competitive and dynamic business environment. With so many brands and concepts vying for entrepreneurs’ attention and so many local business owners competing for consumers’ attention, it’s essential for all of us to establish our own personal brands to stand out and succeed.

Personal branding is the process of creating your unique identity in the context of a business or career. It involves developing a consistent and recognizable voice, style and message that reflects your values and expertise.

I recently had the pleasure of chatting about personal branding with a panel of franchise professionals including Emily George of Franchise Business Review, Danessa Itaya of Bio-One, Ingrid Schneider of Stay In Your Lane and Thomas Scott of Home Run Franchises. We discussed why personal branding is critical and we identified several benefits.

One of the main benefits of personal branding is building trust and credibility with customers. By establishing a strong personal brand, you can demonstrate your expertise and knowledge, which can help reassure potential customers that they are making a wise choice by choosing to work with you.

This attraction for customers also builds longer term loyalty. By developing a unique and recognizable voice in your space, you can create an emotional connection with customers and differentiate yourself from other brands. This differentiation is key in all crowded marketplaces. Your product or service may (or may not!) be superior. What matters is standing out.

Finally, personal branding can support the overall brand. When franchisor executives and franchisees develop their own personal brands, they are essentially becoming ambassadors for the entire brand, helping everyone in the system.

The group also shared several ideas to help you get started, mostly using social media and tactics for sharing. In the influencer age, it’s not your elevator pitch, but the content stream that matters.

  • Map out your plan to share posts, videos, and articles that are on-brand for your personal brand via social media.
  • Let people get to know the real you. What are your interests and values? People want to know who they’re buying from. Being authentic is key here; you can’t fake it ‘til you make it!
  • Stop holding yourself back from sharing something real about yourself. This is the hardest part. Too many of us have built a wall between our personal lives and our professional lives. Tear down that wall.
  • Add a personal story. We’ve spent decades building up a brand story about being bigger, better, the most successful franchise in the market. But no one cares about your stats. They want to hear a story.

Listen to the audio of the full conversation at socialgeekradio.com.

Jack Monson

Jack Monson is the host of Social Geek, home of the No. 1 podcasts in franchising and the CEO of Brand Journalists. He has been working with franchises brands and small businesses in marketing for 15 years.