Apparently, Louis XIV never actually uttered the famous phrase “I am the state”! However, even if this is merely a chronicler’s paraphrase, it is exceptionally apt and perfectly encapsulates the formula of one-man rule in France during the age of absolutism. A model in which the court, the army, the economy, and diplomacy – everything revolves around the Sun King, and when the Sun King fades, the entire country fades with him.
Three hundred years later, we no longer wear fancy wigs and we take a bit better care of our hygiene, but there is still no shortage of organizations hanging on the name, face, and charisma of a single person at the helm. Even though, in the long run, this is a disastrous solution for both the organization and the leader himself.
The Bourbons of the LinkedIn Era
The daily reality for many business owners – even those who have achieved financial success – is far from rosy. A meeting with a client at nine. A second one at eleven. A third after lunch, a fourth right after that. In between, two calls from a sales rep apologizing because the client said they “only want to talk to the boss.” In the evening, the founder sits down to check his email and realizes he hasn’t looked at the growth strategy he’s been supposed to be working on for a week.
Nothing new, really, but this way of operating has likely gained even more traction with the rise of social media.
Businesses active on Facebook and LinkedIn quickly noticed a simple correlation: posts from company profiles generally have a smaller organic reach than those from real people. To avoid generalizations: according to an MSLGroup study, content shared by company employees reaches an average of 561% further (!) than the same content published on the company’s official profile. The algorithm clearly prioritizes faces, stories, opinions, and personal reflections over logos and formal messages generated by marketing departments.
„Posts from company profiles generally have a smaller organic reach than those from real, flesh-and-blood people”.
On top of that, there’s the narrative circulating in the industry in the form of clichés like: “you have to show the person, because people sell,” “you have to build authority,” “you have to be credible,” and so on.
Each of these statements is true in a way. The trouble begins when we create a bubble around ourselves, inside which everyone believes that the path to effective sales leads exclusively through a personal brand. This bubble is eagerly inflated by companies engaged in B2B sales. The market is now heavily driven by automated campaigns using personal profiles – on LinkedIn, but also in email marketing, where a message from “Luke from Company X” is opened more readily than one from [email protected].
It’s a self-perpetuating cycle: business owners are bombarded from all sides with messages telling them to build a personal brand. They don’t seek the help of a strategist who could advise them on what’s best for them in the long run, so they resort to the solutions that are right in front of them. Many owners of smaller companies don’t use specialists at all – they seek information on their own, and since we’re inundated with it from all sides, they make decisions based on what’s making the most noise.
And we have to admit: it works. At least to some extent. You can’t say that personal branding is a bluff. On the Polish market, across various industries, there are people who have promoted themselves so effectively that everyone recognizes them. Rafał Brzoska, Michał Sadowski, Paweł Tkaczyk – these are names that boost the ratings of their founders’ subsequent ventures. In every field, you can point to at least one such person.
Who wants to be – and who can be – Rafał Brzoska?
It is impossible to formulate a single, universal rule such as: “In consulting, relying on a personal brand will work, but in manufacturing, it will ruin you.” It depends on a number of factors, and one must look at it from multiple angles.
Undoubtedly, the size of the organization and its stage of development matter. In the SME sector alone, we have a huge range: from a two-person consulting firm to a company with a team of several dozen people that is slowly approaching a higher category. For smaller companies and those just entering the market, the founder building a personal brand seems like a natural and sensible move. The barrier to entry is low. At the outset, an individual’s personal brand helps build authority and trust, facilitates sales, and lowers the cost of customer acquisition. It’s simply easier than building brand recognition for the entire organization from scratch.
Similarly, for obvious reasons, a personal brand will always act as a magnet in industries where the specialization, knowledge, and expertise of a specific individual matter. This category includes all manner of consulting, advisory services, coaching, legal services, and tax consulting. All of these are areas where the client comes in and works with a person face-to-face.
In such industries, founder-led sales are not only acceptable but downright necessary. At least in the beginning, because this is often the most effective method for acquiring and retaining initial clients. Especially when dealing with an innovative product or service – such sales won’t always be possible through other channels.
„For smaller companies and those just entering the market, building a brand through the founder seems like a natural and sensible move”.
The perspective of startup companies, however, may be different. If an organization plans to scale its product – especially to enter foreign markets, where the founder’s personal brand often doesn’t exist anyway – the only foundation worth building on is the product itself. That’s why in the startup world, particularly when working with accelerators, the emphasis on sharpening the product’s value is immense from the very beginning. Yes, there may be recognizable individuals on the team, but on the website, in the presentation, during the pitch – the product’s value is always front and center. Because if we’re only known within our tech bubble, that bubble bursts the moment we enter the broader market.
Don't just fix the symptoms. Start with a diagnosis
The Dark Side of the Sun
But let’s get back to the SME sector. As a company grows over time, if its positioning strategy doesn’t evolve – if it continues to rely solely on the founder’s image – trouble is on the horizon. I identify five main areas of this risk.
- The first is the operational trap. It often happens that a client says bluntly: “I want to work with you, specifically.” There’s nothing wrong with that if various people on the team hear such a statement. However, when most clients come solely because they want to work with that one specific person – usually the founder – and have no intention of giving anyone else a chance, we have a serious problem.
For example, the following situation might arise. You work on several teams, so to balance your responsibilities, you skip some meetings, delegating discussions to other team members. Then you get a call and it turns out the client is turning up their nose. What next? You try to make it to every meeting with every client. You have no time for project work, analysis, or reporting – not all the activities necessary for the company’s further development. The load is getting heavier, and despite having colleagues, you’re still pulling it alone. - The second is a cultural problem. The team remains in the shadows. Consultants, specialists, trainers, advisors – they all become the support staff. They carry the piano for the founder, who always ends up performing a solo concert. They work on solutions but don’t get credit for them. They don’t build their own brand recognition because they have no way to do so. Since they aren’t playing first fiddle, they aren’t recommended by clients either.
This limits their growth, but it also destroys their motivation. We’ve all been there: someone says they did a great job, gets good reviews and praise for it, and you know it was your work. It’s like someone copying your essay in school, getting an A from the teacher, while you barely get a C – even though you were the original author. This is bound to demotivate and lead to burnout, turnover, and, over time, an erosion of the team’s morale. - The third is the sales ceiling. When the founder becomes the sole source of lead generation, we hit a clear ceiling beyond which there is nothing. Now let’s imagine the other side: we bring in a salesperson who has to sell a service based on a specific person – someone they are not. They speak and persuade on someone else’s behalf. If customers are buying a person rather than a product or service, no salesperson will be able to reach their full potential.
- The fourth is the risk of a PR crisis. Accidents at work happen in every industry. An unfortunate remark at a conference, an ambiguous post that got out of hand, a conflict with a customer that ended up on an online forum. When a crisis hits a company with multiple employees, the brand has enough faces that one of them can step aside for a while. However, when the entire company rests on the owner’s name, his or her disgrace automatically becomes a disgrace to the product, the team, the reputation, and sales. Everything.
Putting out the fire is difficult because the flames are eating away at the load-bearing structure, threatening to bring the building down. Even if the company was founded by two partners, the other one doesn’t emerge from the crisis unscathed either – he’s too closely tied to the person who’s just rubbed customers the wrong way. - The fifth and final scenario is the founder’s departure. If the company has several co-founders, there is always a risk that one day one of them will decide to change career paths. At that point, they may take with them not only their know-how, but also their reach, contacts, and brand recognition – leaving the organization without its primary channel for reaching customers.
Relying on the image of one of the partners is a bit like building a house together with a friend, but on his land. As long as the landowner is kind and we’re friends, everything works out just fine. But all it takes is for them to change their mind or decide to move out, and suddenly we’re standing on land that never belonged to us, with a finished house and a million doubts.
„When the founder becomes the sole source of lead generation, we hit a clear ceiling – beyond which there’s nothing”.
How do you turn a soloist into an orchestra?
We’re getting to the heart of the matter. Let’s assume the founder’s personal brand has fulfilled its initial function. It built the company’s authority, trust, and reach, and enabled customer acquisition. The mission has been successfully completed. Now it’s time to take a step forward.
It’s not about suddenly hiding the owner in a closet, but this is the moment when we should gradually bring the team into the narrative.
That’s why the first stage is the moment when the founder’s personal brand begins to highlight and support other team members. The well-known owner communicates that there is a particular specialist on the team, shares their posts, features them on the company profile, invites them to a podcast, and so on. We slowly build awareness among potential clients that the organization has more to offer than just one face. We gradually build trust in our people – using the personal capital we’ve accumulated so far.
It’s worth starting with the very way we phrase our messages. When a founder says, “I’ll help you solve this problem,” the client has every right to take that very literally, expecting a specific person to be involved in the process. However, when we say, “We have a service that our team provides,” we shift the focus of the narrative.
The second stage involves motivating specialists to want to build their own brands. Convincing them that engagement, knowledge-sharing, and recognition will benefit the company, but ultimately them as well.
In industries such as consulting, advisory services, or coaching, where the client–expert relationship is the foundation, it’s hard to find a substitute.
At some point, we reach the final stage. The company ceases to be a “team of specialists” and becomes a “specialist” in its own right. Clients begin to trust the brand itself, knowing that whoever takes them on will be an expert to whom they can entrust their affairs without hesitation. Of course, such a reputation is built over years of consistent, regular, and dedicated effort by the entire team. Nothing of value comes easily.
Stepping Out of the Founder’s Shadow
A good example of a successful transition – from a solo career to founding a great band – is Brand24 and Michał Sadowski. Sadowski built a strong personal brand, but today his product sells itself – through its value and reputation. The company no longer operates solely on the founder’s reputation, though he continues to build his brand behind the scenes. This is exactly the kind of transformation I’m talking about – the personal brand played its part, and then the magic of the product took over.
We at Louder Higher are currently at the stage where we’re bringing a team of specialists into the narrative. Founder-led sales have a ceiling. Even the most energetic owners won’t be able to get involved in every project and every sale. For this to work in the long run, responsibility must be distributed among everyone.
We’ve undergone a rebranding, changed our company profile, and are now consciously working to shift recognition from the founders to the company as a whole. It’s a process, and we’re not pretending it’s already complete.
At Louder Higher, we help companies transition from a soloist model to an orchestra – without losing what they’ve already built. If this text has raised more questions than answers for you, reach out to us.
