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Question
Agency Identity Crisis: "Dmitry" or "The Company"?
Agency owners (and everyone else), I need your advice with self-identity, branding and self-positioning "me" vs "my company".
I run a small Cloud Consulting agency
#hazelops
where we build/troubleshoot Cloud for small-to-mid startups (Terraform, AWS, EKS, Docker, etc).
I do at least 50% of work myself, and if it's interesting R&D or complex troubleshooting I'm really excited to do 100% of it myself. I plan on doing so going forward as well. Important note that incoming work mostly comes through my network.
It might be myself overthinking, but even so, I think I need some sort of baseline.
Is there any advice you could give or are there any good books on typical patterns? Main dilemmas revolve around:
I run a small Cloud Consulting agency
I do at least 50% of work myself, and if it's interesting R&D or complex troubleshooting I'm really excited to do 100% of it myself. I plan on doing so going forward as well. Important note that incoming work mostly comes through my network.
It might be myself overthinking, but even so, I think I need some sort of baseline.
Is there any advice you could give or are there any good books on typical patterns? Main dilemmas revolve around:
- When I post about some technical achievement (let's say figured out some cool way to simplify some Terraform, or found a cool tool and I've integrated it at a customer). Do I post it as my own achievement or my agency's achievement?
- When I finish a project that I did myself 90-100% (via
- When I work on troubleshooting at a customer, and want to publish interim results (if legally permitted), should it be my own R&D or should it look like the company is doing it?
I'm pretty sure I'm missing some basic truths here, so anyone with a clear opinion is welcome 🤗
(be ready I'll ask more dumb questions in return)
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depends on what type of clients do you want? I had the same dilemma, went with personal branding for everything - I prefer clients I can form personal bonds with and they prefer that too. I was never attracted to agency type work, most of my clients have a "no agency" preference as well. I think that's quite common in the small to medium sized startups area. After thinking about it from this angle, it was a no brainer for me. Personal brands also tend to do better lately than impersonal companie? (when I work with others I just credit them) btw Chris Do is great at breaking this down and he has a lot of resources on this topic
It does resonate with me. Thank you.
Thanks for Cris Do recommendation, I’ll check them out.
I went through this too! Ultimately, I decided to go with a personal brand for several reasons.
my audience (SaaS companies, publishers & authors, and game studios) values personal connection over agencies
it gives me space and permission to be myself (yes, I can talk about SEO content, brand messaging, and narrative writing, but I can include my feral love of Star Trek, books, and games.) There's a fluidity that exists, and it's easier to pivot with a personal brand. For ex: I used to exclusively write for online coaches before I switched.
I can position myself as an expert who's still learning and growing, while with a company there needs to be more surety of "the best."
It felt weird when I talked in the royal "we" when it was mostly just me lol
I realized I DON'T want to build a corporation with lots of employees and have no intention of selling my business.
That last one is actually really important.
Yeah, there are outliers with this (think: Neil Patel, though his company is now NP Digital), but most people who want to build up a big agency build a company brand and a personal brand. Also, if you're planning on selling it in the future, a company with lots of brand equity is highly valuable.
I also second looking up Chris Do. I was in his monthly membership with The Futur before, and it was a good investment at the time.
(He balances his personal brand and company brand really well! Also check out his videos on "two-word brands." It's tricky, but if you master it, it's phenomenal.)
Also check out brand architecture. It's really fascinating and will help clear up a lot.
My architecture looks like a Branded House:
Cat Stickler/Tea & Tachyons (personal brand) at the top with sub-brands (Black Cat Edits, Scale With Words, and Liminal Lore Studio) each as their separate brand underneath the personal brand.
Since they're all similar -- I talk about writing, creativity, and storytelling in all of them, even if it looks different with each one -- there's a common thread and shared core values, so it can work as a Branded House type architecture. And there's potential to cross-promote to my wider audience because people follow mostly for me, not just to get educational content about one thing.
I'd be happy to jam on this with you if you'd like.
It's one of my favorite things to work on with clients because once they unlock this, they realize they don't have to limit themselves to "one thing/niche forever," they don't need to burn down everything to just try something new, and messaging comes VERY easy after we define how everything works together.
Thank you so much for such an elaborate response.
I will start filling in my Brand House and check recommended videos as well.
Makes sense. A chunk of my audience is agencies, and they surely value non-agency working with them.
Makes sense.
That's valuable!
For this one I it doesn't say "we" as there is someone there to help me out with the client. But it totally makes sense.
I definitely don't want to build a corporation for this business as well, so it aligns.
I will have to process everything couple times, but I think I have a one question now.
Question
So if I structure my Brand House to be mostly a personal brand, does it mean I sort of "abandon" or at least "slow down" efforts on the company brand? For instance, all useable expert credit should go to the personal brand?
"So if I structure my Brand House to be mostly a personal brand, does it mean I sort of "abandon" or at least "slow down" efforts on the company brand? For instance, all useable expert credit should go to the personal brand?"
This really depends! What I'd do before changing anything right now is define more of your personal brand and figure out where the distinctions are.
Here's a practical example for content:
Personal brand: thought leadership content, things you're learning/growing in (like the lessons you've learned so far), anything that'd demonstrate your knowledge/authority. All your collaborations and networking should be under your personal brand because people want to connect and collaborate with a person.
Company brand: service-focused content like case studies, client success stories, new projects (related to the agency, of course), etc. You can then leverage your personal brand to amplify the company brand by sharing your expertise in getting these specific results.
Let's talk actual offers because this is where it gets interesting (jk it's all interesting lol):
If you give talks, write a book, create a podcast/YT channel, or send out a newsletter, it'd be under your personal brand.
Full-service agency work (or anything you can fully to another person that doesn't need your voice to create the same impact) would be under the company's brand.
Things like YouTube videos or podcasts: You'd have to film them/be the face in them, but you can delegate the editing, for example. That'd still be you using your voice to create it, so it'd be your personal brand.
You COULD delegate something like a newsletter to another person on your team/a freelancer (I ghostwrite things like this all the time), BUT it's still written in your voice and is still your name, so it'd still be your personal brand.
(I'm going to wager that you're not that busy that you can't take an hour to write a newsletter (and I'll bet you don't have a brand style guide to be able to effectively delegate this), so just do this yourself lol)
What I'd start doing now is differentiating between your personal vs company brand.
Where do they intersect? Where do they differ? What's the ENTIRE scope of your expertise, and where is the agency's focus within that larger subset? What's your personal brand story? What's your company brand story?
These will be very different. Your personal brand story is MUCH bigger and starts way earlier than your company origin story.
(For ex: In my personal brand story, I talk about (TW) how I was trafficked for 5 years, my struggles with suicide & addiction (and how I got through them), and about being a single parent while running 3 businesses. It's the stuff that gets me invited on stages to share my story and grows a connection with people. It's also related to my big pillars, values, and causes I stand for (like mental health is a big one, and I donate 10% of every contract to suicide and sexual abuse-related nonprofits). That's the stuff that I believe in, which means the more I talk about it and take action toward it, the more it strengthens my personal brand.)
That got really deep, but this stuff IS really deep. A personal brand isn't just some cutesy thing. It's the stuff you truly believe in and value as a human being that help you learn and grow.
Which is completely separate from your business, but there SHOULD be some threads tying them together.
(Mine is creativity and storytelling as a way of self-expression, which is not just the services I offer (ghostwriting, editing, etc.) but also an integral part of my personal brand story.)
Find those common threads and talk about what lights you up.
I'm a brand strategist, so I could keep going forever, but I hope this gives you something practical to work with!
More questions are allowed, of course :) And if you want to hop on a 20-minute Zoom, I'm more than confident we could hammer this out quickly.
This is very valuable, thank you.
All makes sense, and I get it 100%.
I’ll just need to structure it, dots dig deeper and then connect the dots!
As soon as all of it settles down into its own buckets I’ll get back to you 🙏
Precisely! I also have a few book recommendations if you're a book person.
Yes, I would really appreciate a book, the one that goes into the basics, so I can build a better "canonical" structure for myself.
I would give credits to whom did the work—be it me, the team or whoever. And would repost it on my product social media, blog, etc.
When the team is involved - for sure, but when it's just me, working on a project that I got through my network, contract signed via the company,who gets the credit,
#atd or 
#hazelops? That's the dilemma.
But given what I've read so far (thanks to answers in this post as well), it would be to try this:
#atd (Dmitry-ish). 
#hazelops.
1. If I choose to promote my personal brand more than the company, then it would be me crediting
2. If I choose to promote my company brand, then it would be "we" and crediting
I think I'm sticking to #1 for now. Maybe I'll post more substantial successes of
#hazelops as a business, like paid invoices or completed projects, but less technical for now.
If "I" works, "we" works too, unless you explicitly want to brand yourself as the face of the company for a long time. This could be for the company or this could be to build your personal brand.
Depends on whether you hire contractors/part-timers or full time staff. If it's the former, they might not even want to be directly associated in name/public with your company. If this is your predominant mode, then "I" works well (and of course "we" too, as mentioned in the first line).
For 1, 2, 3:
This follows above. But, if you credit individuals, you could also consider crediting specific people (other than you) who did that work. Being able to build their brand also makes it easier to get people to work with you.
IMO, unless you want to grow into an agency/consultancy in the short term, using your own name is fine and good. You can always change the name later. By then you would have enough traction and re-branding is not as difficult.
Cool, agree on all, thank you!