Why Launching Multiple Brands Is A Trap

Don't compete with yourself.

I’m often asked how to build and balance a newsletter or blog brand with a personal brand and whether it makes sense to have multiple brands.

It’s a complicated, important question and I’ve had my share of ups and downs tackling it myself.

Here’s what I’ve learned…

It’s EXTREMELY difficult to build one brand and takes a ton of time, effort, and resources to do so.

When launching a brand, clarity and repetition is super important to get people to understand and remember what you do and who it’s for.

When you try to build two brands simultaneously, you don’t just double the challenge — you also introduce confusion.

That makes it even HARDER to build one brand (let alone both).

And even if you choose to build two brands, it’s important to prioritize them because they can’t be of equal importance.

One has to be a higher priority — even if just by a bit — so you know where to focus your efforts and resources.

If you insist on building simultaneous brands, think about it like this:

“I want to be known for THIS thing. And once people discover THIS thing, I’ll introduce them to THAT thing.”

Approach it as a hierachy or linear path.

Here’s how I originally employed that mindset…

Several years ago, I set out to get people to discover my For The Interested newsletter — that brand was my priority.

But once they did, I wanted them to know I was behind it and build my personal brand.

That’s why the newsletter came from my name and not a brand name.

But at some point, my priorities changed and I flipped it.

My personal brand is more my priority now and For The Interested is secondary (in terms of brand).

That’s why my blog posts now live on my personal site and why my paid newsletter is called This Is How I Do It.

By the way…

My original paid newsletter was called For The Interested: All Access because that brand was my priority at the time.

Your prioritization of brands (or lack of it) has far-reaching consequences.

For example…

When I shifted my priority to building my personal brand instead of my For The Interested newsletter brand, I phased out posting on my FTI social accounts.

Instead, I actively post only on my personal accounts.

Why did I shift to my personal brand?

That’s a story for another post, but the short version is I wasn’t interested in building a company and ultimately realized my business and audience revolved around me as an individual.

So it made sense for me to adjust my brand focus accordingly.

The real point of this post isn’t that a personal brand is better/worse than a company, newsletter, or blog brand.

Either can work.

But you need to choose ONE as a PRIORITY.

Otherwise, you’ll make things way harder on yourself because trying to build multiple brands is a trap that creates more work and confusion.

If you go that route, do you have multiple social accounts?

Websites?

Email lists?

It spirals quickly, as I learned the hard way.

Pick one priority brand. Build that.

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