Why You Should Build a Personal Reputation Before Starting a Business

If you’re the entrepreneur of a successful business, you’ll automatically build a reputation for yourself. But there are many advantages to cultivating a better professional reputation before you start your business in the first place.

Before you start a business, you should consider building a personal reputation. You might be able to do this naturally by accomplishing noteworthy achievements in your field. But for most people, that means going out of your way to build up a personal brand on social media.

Why is your personal reputation such an important factor for success in entrepreneurship, and what steps should you take to develop it?

The value of developing a reputation early

If you’re the entrepreneur of a successful business, you’ll automatically build a reputation for yourself. But there are many advantages to cultivating a better professional reputation before you start your business in the first place.

For example:

• Time and availability. Managing a business takes a lot of time, with many entrepreneurs working 60 hours a week or more. That doesn’t leave you much time to develop your personal reputation. Starting this process before you launch a business can give you all the time you need to establish yourself.
• Appeal to investors and partners. Having an impressive personal brand will also help you make early appeals to investors and potential partners. Your business idea will seem much more impressive if it’s backed by someone who has tens of thousands of social media followers.
• Early business momentum. With a cult following or a sizable audience, you’ll find it much easier to build early momentum for your business. Once you launch your business, you’ll be able to reach out to new potential clients with a warm introduction. You’ll also carry more clout with your existing audience.
• Long-term permanence. Don’t forget that roughly half of all businesses fail within the first five years. If you have a preexisting professional reputation and your business goes under, you can simply carry your personal brand into your next endeavor.

Elements of an effective reputation

So what exactly does it mean to have a strong professional reputation?

These are some of the most important elements:

• Thought leadership. Part of your reputation depends on your ability to be a thought leader. Thought leadership is a much-buzzed-about concept, but its core idea is easy to understand. You need to propose new ideas and unique thoughts to be seen as an expert, which sometimes means volunteering controversial opinions or deviating from the norm.

Read more: https://www.entrepreneur.com/