My Biggest Business Mistake So Far This Year
Definitely won't do that again.
A few months ago, I decided to combine all of my newsletters into one.
I took the email lists from my healthcare newsletter and my AI newsletter and imported them into my timstodz.com list.
It was a huge mistake.
Today, I will explain why.
LFG. 🔥
Personal Brands Are Personal
If you want to build a personal brand, you need to avoid the trap of “branding yourself.” The reality is that people are weird, nuanced, and complicated. It is incredibly difficult to build a business around a single personal brand topic because your real life story will inevitably bleed through.
For example, I am an expert healthcare marketer. I have generated tens of millions of dollars in this field, both for myself and for my customers.
But I am also:
A fitness enthusiast
A die hard Eagles fan
A Muay Thai practitioner
A husband, dad, and cool dude
Because people are multi-dimensional, it is impractical to pigeonhole who you are into a rigid, one-topic box.
A Business Brand Is A Business
When a brand operates strictly as a business, your strategy becomes straightforward.
For instance, when my healthcare newsletter was its own distinct entity, the purpose behind every single article was clear.
The goal was to grow my reputation in the industry and generate leads for my company.
That was the only reason I published content. This singleness of purpose left zero room for creative expression, nor should there have been any.
My error was assuming that these audiences would overlap and that readers would be interested in everything I wrote. That is simply not the case.
Healthcare professionals want to read about healthcare business. Up and coming entrepreneurs want to read my daily blog to follow my journey, and AI nerds want to read about AI.
Mixing these worlds together diluted the value for everyone.
Your Business Brand Is To Share Your Experience, Your Business Is To Make Money
When you publish content under your personal name, you are better off not trying to monetize it directly.
The funny part is that I already knew this. Years ago, I wrote an article about how writing online acts as a serendipity vehicle, and how the absolute best way to monetize a personal brand is to not try to monetize it at all.
For a moment, I forgot my own advice and tried to take the easy way out.
In doing so, I alienated the subscribers who sought me out specifically for my healthcare insights. Now, I have to earn that trust back from scratch.
If you are thinking about building a platform, do not try to merge your personal identity and your commercial business under the same banner.
Separate the two.
Use your personal brand to share your experience and attract unexpected opportunities. Use your business brand to grow your authority, generate leads, drive sales, and put money in your bank account.
I will never make this mistake again, and going forward I will be sure to share the journey of rebuilding my healthcare media brand.
Love you guys. Talk to you tomorrow.
Tim
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Thanks for sharing - I noticed you combined your newsletters and was curious how that was working. I even thought about copying; I'm facing the same conundrum of how to separate two different topics. Sounds like I shouldn't copy what you did :). Did you stick with Substack for your other two lists? I see they're not on the profile I follow.