Build Your Personal Brand Without Conflicting With Your Company (Ask Jeb)

Here's a question that keeps salespeople up at night: How do you build a powerful personal brand without stepping on your company's toes? That's the question Taylor Deadrick asked me during a recent live event. Taylor works for Insperity (a fantastic company that handles all our HR and payroll at Sales Gravy, by the way), and she wanted to know how to establish her own brand while staying aligned with her employer. If you've ever felt this tension, you're not alone. The fear of conflicting with your company's brand holds too many salespeople back from building the authority they need to win more deals. Let me show you how to build a personal brand that actually amplifies your company's message instead of competing with it. The Only Real Conflict You Need to Worry About Here's the brutal truth: The only way you'll conflict with your company's brand is if you assert that your own opinion is that of your employer, or what you're posting, saying, or writing conflicts with their core values, their marketing message, or the way they go to market. That's it. That's the line. If you start trying to speak for your company or post things that contradict their values, you've got a problem. But if everything you do supports those core values, you're going to be just fine. Think about it this way: Your company hired you because you aligned with their mission. Now your job is to amplify that mission through your own authentic voice and expertise. The mistake most salespeople make is thinking their personal brand needs to be separate from or independent of their company. Wrong. Your personal brand should be the human face of your company's value proposition. Your Personal Brand Is Bigger Than Your Logo Your personal brand isn't just what you post on LinkedIn. It's not your profile picture or your witty headline. Your personal brand is the confidence you show when you hop on a microphone and ask a tough question. It's your smile and the way you treat people. It's whether you're kind, whether you invest in yourself, whether you show up with expertise that actually helps people solve problems. Your personal brand is the human being who walks into businesses every day and shows up for those businesses. That's the most important part of your brand, and that's the part that builds trust and causes people to buy you. Everything else (your LinkedIn posts, your content, your online presence) is just an extension of that core identity. Authority: The Secret Weapon of Personal Branding When I think about building a personal brand, I think about one word: authority. Authority is your expertise. It's what you know that helps other people win. And here's the beautiful thing: When you build authority in your space, you're not competing with your company's brand. You're reinforcing it. Let's use Taylor's situation as an example. She works with small and medium-sized businesses, helping them grow by taking HR and payroll off their plate so they can focus on what matters. That's exactly why we came to Insperity in the first place. If Taylor builds her authority around understanding the problems small business owners face, if she becomes known for helping companies break through growth barriers, if she consistently shares insights about the challenges her buyers deal with every single day, that authority doesn't conflict with Insperity. It amplifies everything they stand for. When you focus on your expertise and how you help people, your personal brand becomes a magnet. You create leads. When prospects research you before a meeting, they see someone they actually want to talk to. You're building trust before you ever shake hands. The Five S Framework for Building Authority In my book The LinkedIn Edge, I walk through what I call the Five S's for building your personal brand, especially on LinkedIn. This framework keeps you aligned with your company while establishing your unique authority. The key is sending the right message to the marketplace about the expertise you bring, your authority in solving specific problems, and how you can help people win. When you focus there, everything else falls into place. Your content should showcase the patterns you're seeing with your buyers, the problems you solve consistently, and simple frameworks they can use right away. That's what creates familiarity. That's what warms up the room before you ever make a call. Think of LinkedIn as your familiarity engine. When you show up consistently with practical insights, every outreach gets easier and every conversation becomes more productive. Know Your Company's Social Media Policy Inside and Out Before you post a single piece of content, take a hard look at your company's social media policy. Understand what they allow you to say and what they don't. Know those boundaries cold. This isn't about limiting yourself. It's about operating with confidence. When you know exactly where the guardrails are, you can create boldly within them. Most companies have ...