#3: Fathom Analytics’s co-founder, Paul Jarvis, who is among the rare few who’ve had the vantage to ponder over the tricky intersection between a personal brand and an enterprise brand, shares his earnest reflections. (Source)
So I started out as a web designer, designing for people who were at the forefront of personal brands, like they were developing personal brands before personal brands were a thing…
I did that for a long time. I worked for myself, for 21-22 years. Then I was like, oh, these folks are all great examples of those who’re doing really well and they have a personal brand. So I’m like, maybe I’ll try that.
And I started to write. And my writing took off a little bit. And I wrote a bunch of books, a newsletter. I think it was for about 8 years that I wrote Sunday dispatches. But then I started to realise, and I’m not smart enough to know I like something, until I do it for a while.
I slowly started to realise over a couple of years. I don’t want to have a public opinion. I don’t want to be a known person. I don’t want to exist in this rat race of people listening to the things I have to say.
I just wasn’t interested in it. I don’t think it’s bad. I think some people do it really, really well. For some people, what their personality type is, it suits them really well. To have a podium with which to speak to masses. That’s not me…So when the opportunity arose, I was like, ‘oh, Fathom is doing well on its own, I don’t need to do this anymore.’
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I think part of what was useful for me was the fact that my audience wasn’t tied to a single idea. So my first book was a vegan cookbook, just nut jokes, the whole 80 pages of it. And then the second book was about building an online business. And the third book was about creativity.
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I think to me enterprise means making money. Brand doesn’t, necessarily. There’s tonnes of broke YouTubers who have huge audiences. One doesn’t always translate into the other. I think it’s important to know.
My favourite YouTubers post videos with two otters. There’s this Japanese couple with two otters and they make the best videos ever. I would never go buy…I don’t even care, I don’t even know if they sell anything. I want to watch their videos.
So it’s one thing to build a brand and be popular. But it’s another thing to build a brand with the intention of, ‘hey, I want to make money from this community that I’m creating/fostering. So what steps can I do to accomplish that.’