Season 5 Episode 5

Episode Transcription

Hey everybody what's up. So this episode is coming from a very unusually, snowy and icy arctic conditions, North Texas. So I hope that all my friends across North America and all this horrible Arctic conditions you are home and safe and warm and don't go out there unless you have to. So with that out the way in this episode, I want to talk about how awkward it can be for us as creatives to do what I call brand itself.

Now, what I mean by that is. There's always this difficult problem. We tend to have a lot of projects. A lot of ideas, a lot of side hustles, whatever they may be. And do you choose to brand everything under you. Like in my case, do I brand everything to Peterwitham.com or do I break them out into their own entity, their own brand. Now that answer is going to be different for, you know, many reasons for many of us.

But what I choose to do is I've retained me and my brand as me. And then I have my sub projects. So I have like, for example, graphics media, grfxmedia.com. Which is my photography. And then I have compileswift.com, which is my Swift programming Website, where I put all the articles and everything else there.

But everything comes back under the umbrella of Peterwitham.com. So everything ultimately comes back to the branding of me, right. But there's a certain level that is the branding of the subjects. So the reason I do that is twofold. One, it enables me to keep myself associated directly with the projects.

So for example, I can use them in portfolios. Or in discussions with people, examples of my work all these kinds of things right. But at the same time, let's say one of them becomes if I'm really lucky, successful or hugely successful. Let's say like compile Swift. For example, compileswift.com has a podcast, which I'm just blown away how successful that's been so far.

And continues to head in the right direction. So, if that becomes something that I want to spin off. Into kind of a money-making project, then I have that option, right? Because the main brand is the Compileswift brand. And then I'm kind of the sub brand of that, right? So I'm known for both and some people don't, know me for one, some people know me for the other and that's fine.

Yes, it can get complicated when you have to start managing all these things. You gotta manage the websites, the domains, and whatever else may be associated with it. But this is very much a personal call you have to make every time you do something. Because, if you just put everything out there as you being the brand, you have another problem.

And their problem is. If you get well known for a particular thing, and then you want to do something else or you want to expand upon that project? So again, let's use me as an example. If all of my programming was under Peterwitham.com. It would make it difficult for me to put the photography under that because there are folks that would only be interested in my programming posts or videos, podcasts, whatever it may be. And so for them, They're going to be getting all this other stuff, photography, creative, whatever it may be that they're not going to be interested in. So I'm sort of alienating them in a way and hurting my own brand. Right.

But at the same time, I'd become pocketed . You know, branded as programming. So it's very difficult and that's why I choose to break them out into sort of separate projects. And separate entities and brands. But that may be different for you. So let's just something I want you to put out there that I really think you need to think about it, because the funny part is if you do something and it becomes successful it's too late to think about it, right? Because at that point, if whatever your success has been, that's now your brand. So try and think about it a little bit ahead of time. Try and plan a little bit for it as well. That's it it's just a short episode this week because it's just so darn cold here in North Texas, but I wanted to get this one out.

And it was something I really wanted to talk about. So let me know what you think. You can go Peterwitham.com/contact and fill in a form there. With that take care of yourselves i will speak to you next time.