Why Personal Brands Suck
Updated on September 10, 2025
Transcript
Welcome back to another episode of the Opportunity Podcast. I'm your host, Greg Alfring, the head of marketing over here at Empire Flippers. Today, we’re going solo again—just Greg's thoughts. I believe this is the second solo episode; it was supposed to be the first, but I messed up the audio, so I have to talk about it again.
In this episode, I thought it would be fun to discuss something I think about a lot, but a lot of people don’t: why personal brands suck. I believe the way people think about personal brands—when they even think about it—actually makes their business a lot weaker. And this topic coincides perfectly with timing, since we’re about a week or two after the Alex Hormozi webinar launch. So, it’s a great time to discuss this.
I see a lot of my friends in the B2B world pour energy into personal brands. Honestly, I think it keeps their businesses small and makes them more stressful. And I think Mr. Hormozi would probably agree with me. As you probably figured out from the title, the key topic today is: why personal brands suck.
Before I go into that, let’s recap what just happened over the last couple of weeks. People often say: if you want to make a lot of money, focus on building an audience first and selling to them later. Now, I think this is completely backwards. I used to believe in this. I no longer think this is very good advice for most entrepreneurs. It sounds nice, and it can be a bit deep at the surface level, but once you go a little deeper, it starts breaking down.
Of course, we have Alex Hormozi—arguably the biggest B2B influencer and personal brand in the marketing world, and direct response in general. The guy is an absolute legend when it comes to direct response.
Let’s break down what happened there. Hormozi did a massive webinar funnel. I heard he was spending like $250,000 a day on Facebook ads (don’t know if that’s true, just what I heard through the grapevine). That wouldn’t surprise me, considering he got thousands of people to show up for a webinar—which is very difficult. Then he did a massive book launch, became a Guinness World Record holder for selling a nonfiction business book (I believe he reached that goal).
One way he hit that goal was by positioning an offer: $6,000 to buy 200 books, which you could donate plus get a tax write-off. Kind of weird, but it worked well for him. And that wasn't even the high-ticket offer—I believe there was another offer on the back end of his funnel, like $25,000 to join his school, community, and a meetup in Vegas, something like that.
This webinar funnel—everyone is abuzz in the internet marketing world. In my communities, at least, a lot of people are either throwing hate on it or praising him as a genius. When it comes down to it, what Hormozi did was legendary. But he didn’t do anything particularly unique. Alex Becker, another famous internet marketer, posted on Facebook saying it best: Hormozi didn’t do anything particularly original—it was just the fundamentals of direct response webinar funnels done extremely well. He tapped into every fundamental, and did it at an 11 out of 10.
Now, why am I bringing this up? Because you would think after this launch that I’m wrong—that you SHOULD have a personal brand. After all, that's how Alex got people to trust him and attempt this amazing launch. He did, in fact, build an audience first as Alex Hormozi for acquisition.com before really selling anything. When he started, his line was "I’ve got nothing to sell you," and so on. This is his moment—his jab, jab, right hook, in Gary V’s language—where he cashes in all that goodwill.
But—the webinar funnel is what I would call a SLO. In marketing, that’s a self-liquidating offer. You have something on the front end used to monetize and break even on marketing costs, because you have something on the back end you really want to sell, but it takes a long time before you can do that. I’ll get into what I mean by that. But, ironically, despite all this, I think Alex would agree with a lot of what I’m about to say about personal brands.
So, I want to share another story here and get into why personal brands kind of suck in a lot of ways, and when you should actually use them. Again, I think Hormozi would likely agree with me, because I feel like he’s done everything I’m about to say.
First off, a few months ago—actually, about a year and a half, maybe two years ago—I was in Cyprus giving my usual speech about buying and selling businesses. At the end, me and the other speakers got up for a panel Q&A, and the audience asked us questions. I got asked about personal brands—how can I make one like yours, Greg? I laughed, because I really don’t think I have much of a personal brand. I don’t actively try to build one; I just do this content at Empire Flippers because I think I’m one of the better ones to do it. I’m also trying to get our CEO to do more, because he’s great, too. I’m a big fan of a brand not being beholden to a single face.
Anyways, I got the question and responded, "Well, that depends—do you want a big business, or do you want a small business? What are your goals?" The person said, "I want a massive business." I told him, "Well, you shouldn’t focus on a personal brand at all—it’s a waste of time." Another speaker had just given a whole speech on building a personal brand for your agency, so they weren’t exactly thrilled with what I said (I wasn’t trying to refute their entire speech—I thought it was really good and valuable).
But for this person’s goals, a personal brand didn’t make sense. I told him, "Think about it—Who's the personal brand of IBM? Chewy’s? Microsoft? Walmart? Who's the personal brand behind David Ogilvy's agency—which is arguably the largest marketing agency in the world?" No one. That is a business named after a guy, but it doesn’t have a personal brand.
This is what I mean: if you want to go big—really big—personal brands are a trap, keeping you small. But before I talk about the trap, let’s discuss when you SHOULD use a personal brand. I’m not saying personal brands are 100% bad.
As a bit of foreshadowing, at Empire Flippers we’ve sold over 2,400 businesses at this point, making at least 90 people millionaires at exit (the real number is over 100, because we don’t count businesses sold at $900K, for example). Out of all those businesses—literally thousands—I can only name maybe two off the top of my head that came with any kind of personal brand at all. Those were very hard to sell; the sellers likely aren’t thrilled with the kind of multiple and valuation they got.
So, I have broad experience with non-personal-brand businesses, and I do think they are largely superior. But let’s get into when you SHOULD use a personal brand.
What are we trying to do with a personal brand? Usually, build some kind of trust. A face—a personal brand—builds a lot more trust on average than a corporate logo. That’s just human nature: humans trust humans, not brands. Over time, people can come to trust corporate brands and even have an emotional connection with them, but that takes longer, more resources, and more time. Personal brands can shortcut all of this.
So, one area where personal brands work really well is service-based businesses where there’s often more of a one-to-one sales process. Not always, but often. Another area: info products, consulting, coaching—anything like that makes sense. A marketing agency is a good example. Most agency owners try to develop a personal brand. So, this makes sense for businesses with a long sales cycle where trust is needed; personal brands shortcut that.
Now, when you’re just starting out, I think that’s the best time to use a personal brand. When you’re starting out, you need revenue and profit to keep the lights on. The best way to do that is to speedrun your way to trust—use your face, voice, insights, and connections. You’re doing what doesn’t scale so you can put yourself in a position to scale later. Personal brands are great at the start because the first people you should reach out to for almost any new business—especially service-based—are people you already know, who already know, like, and trust you. That’s using your personal brand to get revenue.
Also, when you first start, being in the content, on the web page, in the marketing funnel—all that makes sense, because you need to speedrun trust to acquire testimonials and case studies that allow you to scale.
Most personal brands are suitable for B2B. There are a few niche cases where B2C makes sense, but it’s very rare—rarely seen in ecommerce, for instance. Again, this goes back to my belief from Cyprus: Who’s the personal brand of Chewy’s? Home Depot? They don’t really have one. Some ecommerce companies do have a personal brand—my buddy Kevin Espiritu over at Epic Gardening comes to mind—but his business has grown far beyond that personal brand.
Most personal brands are in B2B or in special B2C niches, like dating, health, and fitness, where there’s a low amount of trust in that niche and you need to overcome it using a personal brand.
So, after all this, you might wonder—what about Hormozi? He’s not starting out, yet he’s spending $250K a day on webinars with him and his wife. Clearly, they’re investing heavily in their personal brand.
Doesn’t that contradict everything I’ve said? Actually, I’d say no—what he’s doing is the second scenario where I recommend using a personal brand.
When you’re starting out, a personal brand is amazing for getting profit and customers in the door. People are more willing to bet on a person than a logo. But later, after you’ve "made it"—become a made man or woman—personal branding makes sense again. Now you have an exceptional story that gives you exceptional leverage, which allows you to do something even bigger and more exceptional.
It doesn’t always make sense, but in Hormozi’s case, it absolutely did. He was in his second act, leveraging his story.
Let me sum this up with another story. I’m in a marketing mastermind that people pay a few hundred dollars a month for—basically a chat with weekly calls and lots of great marketers. Some guy posted, "Hey, I’m making as much content as Hormozi, but lower production value. I’m just not getting any results. What am I doing wrong?"
I replied, "Have you sold a $50 million business?"
He said, "Of course not."
"There you go," I told him. That’s why his results are different from Hormozi’s. Hormozi has a story—an exceptional outcome—which gives him an exceptional level of attention. He leverages that story, especially his early "splash on the scene" stuff: "$50 million man," "hundred million dollar leads," etc.
But this marketer killing himself with 20–30 hours a week of content grinding doesn’t have an exceptional story. Yes, he has a profitable agency, but it’s a grind—organic personal brand content isn’t getting much attention. He’d have been better off spending those hours and that money on client acquisition ads.
In fact, I have a buddy who started his marketing agency with all organic personal brand stuff, trying to get "free" leads. But organic isn’t free—it takes time, effort, and sometimes money to make content look good, even at low production value. We pay editors to fix things when Greg makes a mistake, right? So it’s not free, and you might get leads, or not—it’s hard to know with organic.
My buddy switched all his organic efforts to just a paid acquisition funnel. His business went from maybe seven figures to now likely exiting for $7.5–8 million, all in a couple of years after he stopped being a personal brand and focused on growth.
So, to recap: Personal brands are fantastic when you first start out—you need profit. They’re awful when you’re trying to scale. But they become great again once you have a great story, because then you can command big attention. If you’re just another agency owner making decent money but with no great story, there are lots of you out there.
What makes you exceptional enough for me to stop my scroll on Instagram or Facebook for you? Not much, unless you have an exceptional story.
Personal branding works best at the start, and then again if you have an exceptional story and want to do something even bigger. Most businesses don't require that.
Look at Hormozi: with gym launch, when he started out, he was the personal brand, DMing everyone to get going. Later, he didn’t focus so much on organic content. His main driver was advertising—that’s where he cut his teeth. Not personal branding, not content. All that came later. He was once quoted saying he didn’t like organic content; he saw it as a waste of time compared to the leverage of running ads.
He scaled gym launch on the back of paid media, not a personal brand. Yes, he was in those ads initially, but closer to his exit, he replaced himself. His second-in-command became the person in those ads, so there was no personal brand when it came time to sell.
Later, he built acquisition.com—his second rodeo as a personal brand. He started with a personal brand, grew it, sold the business, and now he has an exceptional story that commands attention, which he can leverage even more.
So, Hormozi is doing what I’m saying: personal brands don't matter as much as you think, unless you’re trying to get to an even greater level with an exceptional story to leverage.
About Alex Hormozi’s webinar funnel: as I mentioned, it’s a SLO (Self-Liquidating Offer). At its core: sell an eBook via Facebook ads for $20. That $20 covers or nearly covers ad costs, effectively making the ads free; then, upsell what you really want to sell.
In this case, what does Hormozi really want? He wants people to sell their businesses with him. Selling a business takes a lot of trust—years, sometimes, of building relationships before people are ready. He speeds this up with his personal brand, fast-tracking trust.
He builds a webinar funnel and SLO, knowing his sales cycle is a long time—maybe a couple of years before a deal bubbles up. So, he needs a lot of shots to go fast, but that costs a crazy amount of money. It's not unreasonable to spend $10,000 just to get one business for sale, not knowing if you'll sell it. That’s a lot to spend every week when your sales cycle is two years.
So what does he do? He uses his personal brand to speedrun trust AND creates a SLO. The SLO is the book, then the $6,000 offer, then the $25,000 offer. I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone who bought the $25K package is flagged in his CRM as a Tier A Marketing Qualified Lead—a real sales convo for acquisition.
From an M&A perspective: buyers get much better deals if they’re already known, liked, and trusted. Hormozi gives away all his frameworks and playbooks—Content Marketing 101. If I want to sell you a complex service, the first thing is to give all the details away for free (“how to sell your business” guides, etc). Psychologically, the reader thinks, “Greg, this is awesome! Can you just do it for me?” That’s the nature of selling more complicated services: overwhelm with content, then get hired to do it.
So, with Hormozi’s SLO, not only is he making a profit, but when he gets on these calls—I’ve listened to people who’ve been on calls with him—he’s built so much trust through his content marketing that those who have entered his funnel really trust him. He can acquire companies for little to no money down, or using little of his own capital. He can bake growth into the deal structure and negotiate amazing deals, because people trust him.
Anyone else with his deal terms would raise red flags, but Hormozi has speedrun trust, gets people in through SLOs and yes-ladders, and—boom—has personal brand leverage for making good deals.
So again, you might think, “Well, personal brands sound awesome!” And yes, they are—for what he is doing. But, think about this: In Hormozi’s portfolio, which as of a couple of years ago was at least eight companies (and likely many more now), most of his companies make him far more money than what he does as a personal brand. That portfolio will create far more wealth for him than any SLO or acquisition.com initiative. Those businesses have way more leverage than his personal brand ever could.
He’s done a great job—probably one of the best, along with Gary Vaynerchuk—but the other companies are his true wealth engines.
And here’s the key: where is the personal brand of those companies? Hormozi doesn’t use his personal brand for almost any of his portfolio companies, except maybe Skool, where the synergy makes sense. For the rest, he wants them to grow on their own. He doesn’t want to cash in his personal brand equity on some unrelated company. That’s smart.
If you build a business that’s scaled on a personal brand, that business is inherently weak. You cannot exit easily. It’s hard to transition out of it. You are the business; you are the linchpin.
When it comes to M&A and valuations, I always joke: you want to be the most useless person on your team. If you are totally useless, buyers will pay a premium price for your business because it’s a machine of leverage. Buyers want machines of leverage. They’ll make you a millionaire many times over if that’s what you’ve built.
Hormozi is using his personal brand to speedrun trust and deal flow for acquisition.com, but the rest of his businesses aren’t really driven by his brand at all.
Let’s bring this home: why personal brands are pretty bad when you start scaling them up.
First, way lower leverage. You can’t be everywhere 24/7. Sure, AI can float a crappier version of you all the time—I’ve experimented with this—but you still can’t be everywhere. Constant content, being on the road, speaking, masterminds… it's a lot. ROI is often unclear, and direct attribution is tough. People hear you here, there, everywhere, over years. For example: I did a podcast a few weeks ago, and two people reached out leading to $7 million in opportunity pipeline for Empire Flippers. But those people had followed my content for years. Was it that podcast, or something else? Hard to tell—it’s just time in the game, as my buddy Eric Siu says.
But again, I’m just one person—I can’t be everywhere. I have other things to do besides content. So, very low leverage. That’s why personal brands struggle once you move from the startup phase to the scaling phase. What got you to the mid-phase won’t get you to the next phase. You need to reevaluate your systems, because growing a true, powerful personal brand is hard and takes lots of work.
To really stand out, you need an exceptional story to get exceptional attention. With ads—paid media or SEO—you don’t need an exceptional story. You just need to rank, or have an ad that converts. You still need marketing, but you don’t need a guru background to sell seven figures worth of dog food; you just need to know your avatar and tell a story. No personal brand required.
In summary, there are better, easier ways to scale than relying on a personal brand—which comes with a lot of caveats. When it comes to selling a business, personal brands make it absolutely miserable.
Let’s talk about that. If your face is the business—say, you have a fitness coaching program doing $100K/mo profit—it’s a seven-figure business. But when you try to sell, the buyer is NOT a ripped 25-year-old dude with a six-pack, but a 65-year-old investor with a beer belly. They can’t replicate you. You’re irreplaceable. The business relies on YOU.
So, your business isn’t unsellable, but you will get a fantastically low offer and a very small amount of cash on top of that low multiple. You’re devaluing your own business. Building a business isn’t just about today’s profit; it’s about the wealth created in two, three, four years.
I have a friend who sold a business for $14 million a few years ago—super chill guy, now with other businesses. He couldn’t have sold if his business were a personal brand. The business would have suited the "personal brand at the start" model, but by not making himself the face, he set himself up for a huge exit.
Any time you make your face THE business, you devalue it.
Now you might think, "Greg, aren’t you doing this yourself for Empire Flippers?" Well, the difference: I’m just a cog, an employee—not the owner of Empire Flippers. Me doing content is a value add to the actual owners, because it’s not their faces as the brand. If an investor or acquirer bought Empire Flippers, I’d still be here, but usually when you sell, the owner isn’t coming with the business.
So, if your goal is to build a business you can sell for a life-changing amount of money—personal brands are bad news bears. Don’t do it.
Now as we wrap up, let’s talk about that quote I mentioned at the very start: "Build an audience first, then sell to them"—and why I think this is wrong.
Usually, this advice is bundled with personal branding. I used to believe it. Now, I think it’s bad advice. Let’s wrap up with a story.
One of my buddies is ripped—he used to be obese, made an amazing transformation. He wants to start a YouTube channel about fitness so he can sell a fitness course or app. His plan was to build an audience first through organic content. I told him not to do that—it’ll waste a lot of time.
What works in organic doesn’t always translate to paid media, and to stand out organically, you often have to do content that’s distant from your end product or goal. So when you finally launch your product, you won’t reach those subscribers. Most subscribers will never even see your offer.
What’s better—and what I told him to do—is to take $500–$2000, throw it into Meta ads, build a landing page, and see if anyone joins your waitlist or even "buys" (and then refund if you’re not ready). This way, you’ll know if there’s real demand. Once you know strangers are willing to buy, you have a winner. Now you can build content around a proven offer.
This approach means you get profit immediately. You also build an audience of customers—not just subscribers—who are way more engaged. They’ve spent money, so they actually like and trust you more.
Organic content to paid ads often doesn’t translate well. Paid ads to content does. Start at the bottom of the funnel: get ads to convert, then build content around the proven offer and angles. Seed your content with those paying customers, accelerate the organic flywheel, and you’ll have profit right away.
If you’re really into building a personal brand, start with ads and an offer first. If you can get strangers to buy from you without a personal brand, it will only work better WITH a personal brand.
So, to wrap up: personal brands can be great for business. If we want to follow the Hormozi strategy, most of his wealth—at least before acquisition.com—was created without a personal brand. That’s the way most entrepreneurs should see it, too.
Personal brands are great at the start, and great again when you have an exceptional story and want to do something even bigger. But most businesses don’t require this. The number one plumber or roofer in your city probably has no personal brand. Out of the 2,400 businesses we’ve sold at Empire Flippers, I can only name two with a personal brand.
Some of those 90 millionaires we’ve created do have personal brands, but their personal brands are totally unrelated to their businesses—just like Hormozi doesn’t use his personal brand to promote most of his portfolio companies. My guess is most of his portfolio is B2C, where his personal brand wouldn’t make sense.
So, the TL;DR of Greg’s rant: If you want to build something big, personal brands are great to start with, but don’t get stuck in the personal brand trap. It’s usually better to get strangers to buy from you through advertising than to try to build an audience first and then sell to them. You end up with an audience of customers, not just subscribers—and an audience of customers is infinitely more valuable than an audience of subscribers.
If you can do it without a personal brand, you’ll make a life-changing amount of money when Empire Flippers or someone like us helps you exit. That’s my rant. Hopefully you enjoyed it, props off to Hormozi and his team—amazing launch to watch from the sidelines.
I’ve always been a fan of the "dark lords" of marketing and Hormozi is the apotheosis of direct response copywriting legends all combined into one super-jacked dude. If you enjoyed this, leave a comment! We’re posting this on YouTube as well. If you saw this and thought, "Wait, he has a podcast?"—yeah, I do. It’s called The Opportunity Show, where I typically interview a variety of entrepreneurs. For example, we recently had a guy on who spends $300,000+ a year on his AI stack—trying to build a $20M ARR company with three co-founders and no employees because the AI is the employee. That episode is pretty recent, go check it out!
If you’ve never listened to our podcast, come over to empireflippers.com, go to the podcast section, and check out The Opportunity. If you’re listening on the podcast and didn’t know about our YouTube channels, yeah, we have two: one for the podcast, and the other for more talking head videos (with higher production value).
So, come give me a subscribe on YouTube, an email opt-in on the podcast, and maybe become our customer by buying or selling a business with us. Who knows, maybe you’ll be millionaire #91!
Talk to you soon. There you have it. I hope you enjoyed it, and that it got you inspired about all the different things happening in this industry. Of course, if you just want to buy a highly profitable business, you can always go to empireflippers.com/marketplace. Or maybe you want to make an exit from your highly profitable business—go to empireflippers.com/sell-your-site.
I’ve been your host, Greg. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you leave a review, give us a like or follow, and share it across social media. Talk to you all soon. See you on the next episode.
