Business Name vs Your Own Name: Which is Better for Freelancers?
About this podcast episode…
SHOULD FREELANCERS USE A COMPANY NAME?
It's a question Steve Folland gets asked a lot: as a freelancer, is it better to have a company name or use your own?
In this compilation episode, Steve digs deep into 11 years of the Being Freelance podcast archive - pulling together voices from guests including brand copywriter Mark Grainger, branding expert Bhavini Lakhani, copywriter Graeme Piper, illustrator Dan Bailey, social media consultant Alison Battisby, marketing agency founder Ross Simmonds, and more - to try and get to the bottom of it once and for all.
Why some freelancers hide behind a business name - and why that's not necessarily a bad thing
How a company name can shift your mindset and make you feel like a proper business
The practical reasons to avoid trading under your own name: spelling, pronunciation, searchability, and standing out in a scrollable world
When a business name helps you work with bigger clients, organisations, and even government
Why your business name should be future-proof - what happens when you pivot away from the service it describes?
The case for using your own name, and why Ross Simmonds says don't underestimate the power of your personal brand
Why in an age of AI, being a visible human is more valuable than ever
How some freelancers make the best of both worlds - with names like Jessi Illustrates, By Hollie Arnett, and Letters By Julia
Of course, there's no single right answer - but Steve rounds things up with his own take on when each approach makes sense.
Read a full transcript & get Links in the tabs.
HEAR THE FREELANCERS IN FULL
You can hear the full freelance stories of these guests by checking out their original episodes.
Simply try these links to open in your podcast app:
- Rebecca Shipham
- Mark Grainger
- Bhavini Lakhani
- Graeme Piper
- Joel Klettke
- Col Skinner
- Dan Bailey
- Alison Battisby
- Mary Cameron
- Louisa Heinrich
- Hollie Arnett
- Ross Simmonds
More from Steve Folland
Transcript of the Being Freelance podcast with Steve Folland - Business Name vs Your Own Name: Which is Better for Freelancers?
[Steve Folland]
Hey, I'm Steve Folland. Welcome to another one. Now, here's a question I get asked a lot. As a freelancer, is it better to have a company name or use your own name? It's a good question. So in this compilation episode, I'm digging back through 11 years of the Being Freelance podcast archive to try and figure it out once and for all. Let's start with one of my earliest guests on the podcast, and for that matter, one of my favourite company names, from Rebecca Shipham, who's an exhibition designer based in Hull.
[Rebecca Shipham]
The thing about Hull, for anyone that hasn't been, or the north of England in general, you don't really play your own trumpet because people will think that you're conceited, shall we say.
[Rebecca Shipham]
So, I didn't want to sort of go out there and say Rebecca Shipham Designs or Rebecca Shipham Creative because it's so self-centered. It was my name. So I thought, I'm going to twist it and call myself Ships & Pigs, which is the ships and the pigs from the ham of my surname.
[Steve Folland]
Ships & Pigs. I still love it. Nothing to do with exhibitions, but fun and memorable and linked to her name.
[Rebecca Shipham]
So that it was me, but it wasn't, as well. I could write about what I did in the third person, so it wasn't saying, "I'm Rebecca, and I can do this, this, this, this, and that, and aren't I fantastic?"
[Steve Folland]
Rebecca wouldn't be the last guest I'd speak to who would almost hide behind a business name. As Mark Grainger put it earlier this year...
[Mark Grainger]
It was possibly a self-confidence thing. It was possibly that I was working with people who didn't value the work. So I then set up the idea of a company to hide behind to a degree, quite a large degree.
[Steve Folland]
But it's not just a front for confidence. For many, it's a key step for any freelancer in treating themselves like a business. Removing their name seems to do that. It made a difference for Rebecca.
[Rebecca Shipham]
I could start to refer to myself as a business. And actually, it was good because then I started to feel like a business rather than me sat in my living room doing designs. It sort of felt a little bit like I was playing at it. But when I gave myself a business name, it had a different mindset in me. I sort of thought, oh, well, okay, now I've got that name. Maybe I am a business.
[Steve Folland]
Yes, because you totally are a business. Here's Bhavini Lakhani, a branding expert who goes by the name...
[Bhavini Lakhani]
B81 Designs. I guess I just felt like it made me seem a little bit more professional rather than just my name at the time.
[Steve Folland]
And also...
[Bhavini Lakhani]
Mainly because people couldn't say my name.
[Bhavini Lakhani]
People couldn't say my name, and it just kind of seemed a little bit more easier, I guess, to have something that people could say that wasn't so hard to pronounce.
[Steve Folland]
But it's not just about pronouncing. It's about spelling, isn't it? We live in a world of searching and URLs. And whilst Bhavini worried people couldn't say her name, copywriter Graeme Piper chose to trade as Drop Cap Copy because...
[Graeme Piper]
Quite simply, I don't like my name as a business name. I'm not that keen on my name anyway, actually. But to use it as-
[Steve Folland]
Oh, Graeme. You're breaking my heart. It's a lovely name.
[Graeme Piper]
I know. I think it's probably a personal thing. Some people love their name. Other people hate their name. I don't hate my name, but it didn't suit me to be Graeme Piper Copywriting, or it didn't-
[Steve Folland]
Mm-hmm
[Graeme Piper]
... just didn't work. It didn't have a ring to it. So that's when I quickly thought, right, I need a name, a business name. I don't know, just to make me feel like I was actually doing something proper, and it wasn't just me, even though it is, of course. But it made it a bit more rounded, if that makes sense.
[Steve Folland]
It does make sense. Yet again, business mindset. Being 'proper'.
[Steve Folland]
Here's another freelancer who worried people wouldn't be able to say or spell his name.
[Joel Klettke]
When I started out, I kind of looked at the landscape of copywriters and realized, like, nobody knows my name. Nobody is going to be able to pronounce my surname.
[Steve Folland]
This is Joel Klettke. See? Did pronounce it. Might not be able to spell it, mind you.
[Joel Klettke]
I can put myself out there as Joel Klettke, but that sounds very small, and unless I've got credibility behind it, the only people that are going to hire me are people who come off referral. When you have a personal name for your freelancing, you feel very small. By changing that to Business Casual, it gave me a brand I could play with. It gave me a persona I could play with. It gave me the ability to scale in time, so if I added writers, I could keep the same name. So I mean, there's no correct way to do it, but for me, having a branded company made the most sense.
[Steve Folland]
Col Skinner is another person I've spoken to who wanted to be a brand, to have fun with building a brand.
[Col Skinner]
I've never been one of those people who wanted to kind of make a name for myself in terms of a self-named brand or something like that, doing the networking and trying to get people to remember my name. Straight from the offset, I wanted a brand name that I could work under. I figured if I get an office and get a brand name and get a website and things, not only will I take it seriously, but also I have a brand that can move with what I want to offer.
[Steve Folland]
Ah, okay. So again, a business name helping with business mindset. But Col chose a name, Profoundry, that didn't necessarily mean one particular thing, so it could change over time. And Col wanted to get his teeth into creating his own brand, too.
[Col Skinner]
Yeah, it just never appealed to me being Col Skinner Incorporated, or... I really enjoy the process of creating a brand and the logo and things. I didn't want to miss out on that.
[Steve Folland]
10 years on, and I checked. Profoundry still exists. Col's grown a small team of PPC consultants under the name Profoundry. For Louisa Heinrich, there's a few reasons why she called her company Superhuman.
[Louisa Heinrich]
So part of it is actually for my own benefit, to remind me of why I'm doing this and keep my head on straight. The company's called Superhuman, not because I fancy myself superhuman, because that would be pretentious and horrible. But rather because I genuinely think that technology could give us all superpowers, but only if we apply it correctly, and we do that by putting people first and not the technology first and not the money first. I think that people are the heart of the system, and that's where our focus needs to be.
[Steve Folland]
Side note, I wish the tech world would listen to that message. Is there a way we can get this to them?
[Louisa Heinrich]
So part of it is a statement on what I believe in and a philosophy, and that helps me, as I say, keep my own head on straight. But it also kind of gives me a platform for communicating to prospective clients.
[Steve Folland]
Interesting. So the name itself is a statement, a mission or philosophy that guides her, but also signals to potential clients.
[Louisa Heinrich]
So I walk in the door with an opinion. I walk in the door with a way of doing things or a way of going about things.
[Steve Folland]
And actually, that doesn't have to be totally highbrow like this sounds, but maybe it's easier for a brand to have that kind of messaging than a name and a face. So for Louisa, the company brand allows her to be more focused when approaching clients.
[Louisa Heinrich]
And that does help me, I suppose, market myself or distribute information on who we are and what we do. And it also helps to make decisions about what to engage with and what to leave aside. From the other perspective, it also helps clients to differentiate between me and whoever else is out there. It does sort of convey a philosophy and a way of doing things more readily than just a person with a CV, no matter how great that CV is.
[Steve Folland]
There's also another benefit to having a business name as far as some guests of the podcast are concerned. As Joel pointed out, having a solo name-
[Joel Klettke]
That sounds very small
[Steve Folland]
... whereas a company name can make it genuinely easier to work with bigger organizations and institutions.
[Louisa Heinrich]
Yes, it's true. I suppose some kinds of work, some kinds of engagements are easier to enter into as a company than as an individual, especially with some of my projects at the moment involve trying to go out for government funding, et cetera, which is virtually impossible to get as a freelance.
[Steve Folland]
And once more, Louisa is another guest who has used the brand name in order to bring onboard other collaborators. Not necessarily grow a business full of employees, but not just to do all the work by herself.
[Steve Folland]
But just because you have a company name doesn't mean you have to build a big company. Bhavini and Graeme are pretty clear about that.
[Bhavini Lakhani]
At the end of the day, it's still me that people are working with, and I make it very clear that it is just me. It's not a big business with 10 employees or anything like that. I'm very clear about the fact that it is just little old me.
[Dan Bailey]
Everyone knows it's me anyway. My website says it's me. It's just me, me, myself, and I.
[Steve Folland]
Whilst Bhavini and Joel worry that people wouldn't be able to say or spell their names, and Graeme didn't like his name, Dan Bailey, AKA Rubber Penguin, realized that, well, just too many people had his name.
[Dan Bailey]
Because my name is so common, like here in the States, there's a famous American footballer called Dan Bailey.
[Dan Bailey]
Over here in the UK, there's so many designers, there's web designers, graphic designers, there's DJs, there's builders, there's everyone. There's so many Dan Baileys, I couldn't really stand out.
[Steve Folland]
So yeah, if you have a name which is quite a, and I don't like to use the word common, but there are lots of people who have the same name, then it makes sense. Why not lean into something else?
[Dan Bailey]
I just got that on Twitter as a way to actually have a bit more of a unique handle. So I hadn't actually thought about it in using it for my business. But in time, I had all the handles to the likes of Instagram, Twitter, Behance, and got the .com to it as well.
[Steve Folland]
It's important whatever you call yourself, be it your own name or a company name, can people find you? Do you have all of the places that name appears on the internet? As time went on, Dan realized it was having a real benefit for his business.
[Dan Bailey]
I could see that it was adding more character, and people knew me for Rubber Penguin more than obviously Dan Bailey.
[Steve Folland]
Although funnily enough, just because Dan is now famous for being Rubber Penguin...
[Dan Bailey]
People sometimes just mistake it for my name. The amount of places I've gone in and people think my name is Robert, as in Robert Penguin.
[Steve Folland]
As Rubber Penguin, Dan had great success. And just like Louisa found it became a statement to show the world what she was about, Dan had that, too. It spoke of the character work that he wanted to do and became a specialist in.
[Dan Bailey]
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I think it's probably given me a kind of a bigger client base because of that because people have seen it and are attracted to it and probably investigate what I do because of it. It's not just Dan Bailey because you can skim through past someone who's just Dan Bailey with a picture of myself, whereas this is disruptive. It stops people, makes them wonder who on earth this guy is and why does he think he's a penguin? And, yeah, and it just gets that kind of client base in, and I feel the work I do now, especially on the illustration side of it, and with my design to a point, is I try to make things full of character. That is my mantra. I want to bring character into the world. So it just all kind of ties in.
[Steve Folland]
So there you go. It stands out. And here's another person who stands out, because who can scroll past somebody online called The Wrinkly Writer? When Mary Cameron started her business, she was known as Four Words.
[Mary Cameron]
Well, I'd been Four Words and tonking along okay with Four Words for quite a while, and then the inimitable Kate Toon, I belong to her Clever Copywriting School group, and when we were doing a session on branding, Kate said to me, "I've got something for you. You're either going to be deeply offended or you're going to love it." She said, "I think you should rebrand as The Wrinkly Writer." And I loved it. It was perfect. It was just absolutely who I am. Quirky, not born yesterday, loads of experience. So it was just so right, and so I did a rebrand as The Wrinkly Writer, and it's working quite well.
[Steve Folland]
The Wrinkly Writer. It's amazing. It's so memorable, and I have to say, more memorable than just the name Mary Cameron, right? The Wrinkly Writer. It sticks in your mind. It makes you smile. You know exactly what she's like, the kind of personality what it's like. Those three words are doing a lot of work, aren't they? The Wrinkly Writer. So the reasons and benefits of doing it are stacking up. Alison Battisby is another one who chose a business name.
[Alison Battisby]
Actually made the decision in 2014 to become a limited company and trade as Avocado Social. And the reason I did that was I've started to do a lot more speaking events. So I will now speak at conferences, networking groups, I do mentoring, I speak at private members clubs in London. And to do that as Alison Battisby was fine, but I found that people were beginning to know me as 'Alison the freelancer', and I wanted to create a bit more of a brand around Avocado Social, around what I was doing.
[Steve Folland]
Creating a brand once more, and for that matter, not just being by herself potentially.
[Alison Battisby]
And also I wanted to expand the team. So I wanted people to be able to email clients on behalf of me, and I thought the best way of doing that would be to become Avocado Social.
[Steve Folland]
And you might be thinking, "Well, this doesn't make sense. If she's going to be speaking on stage, why would she want to be a company and not her own personal brand?" Yeah, I asked her that too.
[Alison Battisby]
When I was speaking on the lineup with other people, it was very much they had their logo up on the slides. They spoke about their work that they did as a company, whereas I'd sort of tootle on stage and just be like, "Hi, I'm Alison the freelancer." So I think it was just giving the business a bit more credibility, and it's worked really well because people remember the name Avocado Social. People love the brand. And I've now got three subcontractors, so for them to be able to have conversations with my clients under the umbrella of Avocado Social just works so much better.
[Steve Folland]
So can a brand name give us credibility? I think it's worth pointing out that I have also spoken to loads of very highly valued and highly paid consultants who just use their personal brand. And anyway, maybe it's possible to have both. Here's Ross Simmonds, who started out life as a freelancer building his own personal brand and then started a marketing agency with its own company name. And yet I noticed he still continues to show up online as Ross Simmonds, building and pushing his own personal brand with his own website separate from the company. And he thinks that's key for all of us.
[Ross Simmonds]
It is 100%. So especially in the service side, at least in my experience, especially in the early days of growth, people buy from people. And because they are able to see and connect with me as a human, they're more likely to buy. So I think I made the right decision in terms of building up the Ross Simmonds brand, if you want to call it that, at the same time, developing the Foundation brand. Now we're going into an interesting period where we are trying to elevate the brand of Foundation because, again, not every client is going to work with Ross, and not every client is going to have an interaction with me. Maybe at the beginning for a short period of time, but I'm not going to be the person they work with long-term or consistently. And the only way that we can grow is to make that a reality.
[Ross Simmonds]
So I think the key for any freelancer who is listening is don't underestimate the power of your own name and your reputation. Even if you do have the ambitions of someday creating an agency or creating a bigger brand and business around it, your name is still going to be extremely powerful and important.
[Steve Folland]
Did you hear that?
[Ross Simmonds]
Having your name associated with your business, or at least associated with the thought leadership within your space, is so important. If you're a designer, be on Dribbble and have your name as the person on Dribbble. If you are a videographer, have your content on Vimeo with your name on it. If you are a photographer, have an Instagram account with your name on it, and make sure that you're plugging your name.
[Steve Folland]
And yes, even if you think you have a common name, it is possible to claim it back for yourself.
[Ross Simmonds]
I remember the first time I typed in Ross Simmonds on Google, and I started to see pictures of Rick Ross, and I started to see Richard Simmonds, and some random dude named Ross. And I was like, "This is horrible. Nobody's going to ever know who I am." So I started to create content with Ross Simmonds and talked about marketing, talked about business. That way, there was no mistake when somebody went to the internet and looked for me that they would find the person who was interested in marketing. And then along that journey, they would eventually find Foundation Marketing, the avenue in which I could sell to them and work with them.
[Steve Folland]
Yeah. Over the years, I've ended up being the only Steve Folland who really turns up in Google. I feel sorry for all the other Steve Follands, particularly this world championship winning mountain biker from the late '90s, early noughties. I'm so sorry for all of your efforts. It's been ruined by me.
[Steve Folland]
But just because your company has a name doesn't mean you can't ever change that name, or for that matter, revert back to your own. Remember, Mark Grainger hid, as he put it, behind a brand name for some time.
[Mark Grainger]
Operating as a limited company, and it was called Blossomtree Copy. And I had that for about five or six years.
[Steve Folland]
But more recently, he noticed a shift.
[Mark Grainger]
I just came to the realization that a lot of the people who I was looking at who were doing well or that I respected were using their own names. And that's what I'd set up to make myself look bigger when I was a bit younger so that people weren't taking advantage of the little sole trader Mark, was kind of being a barrier now. And it was like, well, do you want them to find you, or do you find the company and then you find the one actual person who's there? Or do you just say, "This is who I am"? So I changed that to Mark Granger, Brand Copywriter because that's where my focus is rather than anything else.
[Steve Folland]
Yep. He's now reverted to his name and added on what he does. Mark Grainger, Brand Copywriter. When Hollie Arnett started out freelancing, she decided to give her hand lettering business a name.
[Hollie Arnett]
I launched my business as Black & White Studios. Now, the most terrible name of all time. It was really bad. It served its purpose, and my hand lettering work was mostly black and white. But it became a problem because I was just coming up in results for black and white photography. People were saying they worked at my company because there were so many other companies called Black and White something, like on LinkedIn. And when I stopped doing hand lettering or focusing on hand lettering, it just didn't really make sense anymore.
[Steve Folland]
See, it feels like two important things in here. One, will your chosen business name stand out, or will it clash with other similar businesses? Two, if your business name is based on what you do, what happens if you pivot away from that service? These days, Hollie has two business names for the two strands of her work, coaching on the one hand and designing as a service on the other.
[Hollie Arnett]
I changed to Maker & Moxie, which is what my brand coaching business is called now. The brand design work that I do is now under what I call By Hollie Arnett. So it's just my name.
[Steve Folland]
Except it's not quite 'just' her name, is it? It's-
[Hollie Arnett]
By Hollie Arnett
[Steve Folland]
... which is a great choice for future-proofing because let's face it, anything could be by Hollie. A really nice compromise is when people take their name and then add what they do, like last week's guest, Jessi Illustrates, or past guests like Ben the Illustrator or Letters by Julia. All of those have that same sentiment, don't they? Just like Superhuman earlier on, of expressing something more than just a name can. But look at Jessi Illustrates online, and you will see her face front and centre. You are still very much working with Jessica Hartshorn.
[Steve Folland]
Ross truly believes that even if you have a company name, you should still keep your personal brand alive. And in a time of AI, our human sides, the fact that-
[Ross Simmonds]
People buy from people
[Steve Folland]
... seems more important than ever.
[Ross Simmonds]
It's important to try to find a way to make both work. Again, if you do have the ambition of just staying a solo entrepreneur with no other team, and you want to just have it be The Ross Simmonds Show, then that's okay. You can do that. And I think owning your name at least is still something that you should embrace and lean into. But yeah, I think there's a lot of different ways to go about it, but I think there's a lot of value in having both if you are trying to build up a team and an agency, so to speak.
[Steve Folland]
Exactly. There are, as with pretty much everything in freelance business life, a lot of different ways to go about it. And as Joel said-
[Joel Klettke]
There's no correct way to do it
[Steve Folland]
No, there isn't. But if you were to ask me, I would say if you want a company name, if it's going to help you build up that business mindset, if it's going to give you the confidence, if you think it's going to be memorable whereas your name perhaps isn't, if you think it's going to be spellable, if you think you can really stand out in a scrollable world to stop people scrolling, then why not? If you think it's going to help express the sentiment of what your company is or maybe help you work with bigger companies or organizations, even governments, then why not? If you're going to have fun branding it up, if you want to build a company someday and maybe have employees, then absolutely why not go for a company name?
[Steve Folland]
But if you do any of those things, still don't forget who you are. People buy from people. And like I said, in this AI world, being human is becoming increasingly precious. Companies are trying to show a human side. You actually are human. Whether it's a company brand name or a personal brand name, realize that business is personal.
[Steve Folland]
If you've enjoyed this episode, please think about leaving a comment or review. I'd love to know what you've found your experience has been. Talking about business names and mindset comes up very early on in the Being Freelance course. If you're in your first year or new to freelancing, do check it out at beingfreelance.com. And of course, remember, you are not alone being freelance. It would be amazing to see you in the community where there are plenty of faces and real names, whether the person behind them has a business name or not, including many of the voices that have appeared in this here episode. I'll be back with another one of these very soon indeed, but in the meantime, you have a great week being freelance!