Personal branding

One of the reasons that people become self employed is that they can no longer stand the rigid control hierarchy of the traditional company. The flipside of this is that they lose the social cohesion of working in a team, sharing ideas, venting frustrations and just gossiping at the coffee machine. Is there a way to maintain a balance between the two? I think so - and I think this is such a powerful and compelling proposition that we can base a successful business on it.

Companies lose many vital skills when people leave to work for themselves, so they hire those skills back in, often in the form of contractors. Agencies spring up to take advantage of this situation, offering a simplified buying interface in return for a cut of the contract rate. In time, the agencies become more prominent than the specialists they represent and that cut gets a lot bigger. Eventually, the contractors now work for the agency and are back where they started. There must be a better way.

A typical way to start this kind of business is to set up a brand as a commercial vehicle. Some people go for the 'XYZ Ltd' option and others for the "Fred Bloggs Ltd" option, depending on how much they like the sound of their own name, or how much they want to create the perception of a corporate entity.

The problem is that, even with XYZ Ltd, the company is still only one person. The company stops working when you stop working, and you can't sell the company because there is no goodwill in it outside of your own personal relationships.

This is an ideal position from which to join excellerate, because you don't have a large investment in the brand, what you really need is a vehicle to enable you to do more of what you love with your clients whilst at the same time being part of a team you enjoy being with.

In order to grow, you need other people committed to your cause. You need to entrust your brand to other people to sell, deliver, etc. You can stave off this problem for a while by offloading work to accountants, virtual PAs, but in order to really grow you have to take the leap of faith and bring in more people to run the core program - whatever that is for you.

To succeed, a company needs to keep on growing. Sooner or later, you have a number of people working in it, and you are either one of the team or the leader of the team. You might want to carry on working with clients, but the team now needs leadership.

For someone in this situation, joining excellerate is probably not the right thing to do. Where there is a sufficient gap between the activities of excellerate and XYZ Ltd, new ideas and opportunities will develop as a result of the two teams collaborating.

Often, where the person starting the business has a real marketing talent or a very strong proposition, the brand quickly outgrows the person, even when no-one else is involved. People in this situation are often stuck on the fence, living up to a perception bigger than 'sole trader' yet not actally stepping into the leadership role and growing the business by bringing in more people. No matter how big the brand looks, it is still only one person.

This is no longer a question of whether to join excellerate or not - it is a question of whether you are ready to commit to the growth of your business or not.

A useful question in this case is "Which is bigger, you or the brand?" If the brand is bigger, maybe it's time to commit to growing the business with a team of your own. If you're bigger, then your clients probably don't notice it anyway, they buy you. In this case, you would probably benefit from being a star player in the excellerate team.