Episode 99 – Personal Brand vs Business Brand: Gillian Smith on Leading With Her Own Name
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Most coaches building a practice eventually hit the same fork in the road: should you put your own name on your business, or build a separate brand?
It sounds like a naming decision. It isn't.
For Gillian Smith, founder of Connect Lead Coach and a leadership coach with over 20 years of HR experience across companies like ABB, Ventia, Shepherd Group, and Hayes Specialist Recruitment, that decision took years to get right, and the real barrier wasn't strategy. It was confidence.
Gillian shared her journey in this episode of The Jane Anderson Show (listen above), covering everything from surviving corporate burnout twice, to building a client network from scratch in a new country, to finally getting comfortable in front of a camera. Her story is a useful case study for any coach or solo professional wondering why growth has stalled, and whether positioning is the real issue.
Who Is Gillian Smith?
Gillian is the founder of Connect Lead Coach, a leadership development practice built around what she calls "the connected leader", leading with head and heart in equal measure to create workplaces where people feel safe, seen, and able to do their best work.
Before starting her own practice, Gillian spent over two decades in corporate HR, most recently leading the HR function for a division of a large global engineering business going through a divestment. She holds a Master's in coaching practice accredited by the International Coaching Federation, the largest independent credentialing body for professional coaches, and has worked with FTSE 100, ASX-listed, and privately owned companies.
She's also a two-time survivor of what the World Health Organization classifies as occupational burnout, a syndrome resulting from chronic, unmanaged workplace stress. That experience directly shaped both her decision to leave corporate life and the focus of her coaching work today.
From Corporate Burnout to Building a Coaching Practice
The Decision That Wasn't Really a Choice
Gillian didn't leave corporate life with a clear plan. She left because she had to.
After experiencing severe burnout for the second time while leading HR through a major organisational divestment, she reached a point where stepping away felt like the only option left. It wasn't a calculated career move, it was survival.
Looking back, though, she describes it as one of the best things that happened to her, even while acknowledging how difficult and disorienting that period was to live through.
What She Did Differently the Second Time
Before deciding what to do next, Gillian took time to reflect on what had actually given her energy throughout her career. The answer was consistent: she'd always loved delivering leadership training and developing people, from entry-level through to senior leadership.
That reflection led her to complete an ICF-accredited Master's in coaching practice. Once she finished, the natural next step was building her own business around it.
She and her husband had relocated to Australia in 2013 for his job. Gillian built her corporate HR career there before eventually starting Connect Lead Coach roughly three years ago, with the first year being a gradual build and the last two years growing significantly faster.
Personal Brand vs. Business Brand, Why It's Not Just a Naming Decision
Why She Chose "Connect Lead Coach" Over Her Own Name
When Gillian set up her business, personal branding wasn't even on her radar. She simply registered a business name and got to work.
It wasn't until she began working with Jane Anderson around 18 months into running her practice that the conversation about personal brand versus business brand came up seriously. At that point, Gillian made a deliberate choice to stick with Connect Lead Coach rather than shift to her own name.
The Real Blocker Was Confidence, Not Strategy
Reflecting on that decision now, Gillian is candid about why she didn't choose her own name at the time: she didn't yet have the confidence to be "Jillian Smith" as a brand.
In her words, the business name gave her something to shelter behind, not because she wasn't doing the work or showing up publicly, but because putting her actual name on everything felt like too much exposure at that stage.
This is a distinction worth sitting with. The decision often gets framed as a branding or marketing question. In Gillian's case, and likely in many others, it's actually a readiness question.
When to Revisit the Decision
By the middle of 2025, roughly two and a half years into running her practice, Gillian felt a shift. With more time to reflect on her positioning, she started to feel that aligning her personal name more closely with her thought leadership was the right next step, not because the business brand had failed her, but because her own confidence and visibility had grown to match it.
This tracks with a broader positioning principle Jane Anderson raises in the conversation: for coaches and consultants who want to be booked as the expert, for speaking, media, or book deals, meeting planners and organisers tend to book a person, not a brand. A business name doesn't have to be abandoned, but at a certain stage, the individual's name often needs to carry more weight.
If you're facing this same fork, it's worth asking: is the barrier a genuine business reason, or is it confidence? Those two problems need very different solutions.
Building Visibility Without a Local Network
Networking as an "Outsider" in a New Country
One challenge Gillian doesn't talk about as often, but that shaped her early practice significantly, was starting a business in a country where she hadn't grown up. She didn't have a university network or the informal job connections most people build over decades of living somewhere.
Her network was global, built through her international corporate career, rather than local. Even though she'd led a division within Australia and had plenty of industry contacts, building the kind of local, referral-based network a solo practice depends on took deliberate, ongoing effort, through events, direct outreach, and consistently putting herself in front of new people.
What Actually Moved the Needle
Gillian is direct about which tactics delivered results and which didn't. Business development activity like cold emails, phone calls, and LinkedIn outreach didn't generate anywhere near the return that came from nurturing her existing network and staying visible within it.
That insight matters for any coach evaluating where to spend limited time: outbound activity has its place, but for Gillian, relationship depth and consistent visibility outperformed volume-based outreach.
Overcoming the Fear of Being Seen
The Book That Changed Her Mindset
Recording videos and appearing in a professional photoshoot were, by Gillian's own admission, nowhere near her list of favourite things to do. Breaking through that discomfort took repetition, she describes needing roughly 50 takes to get comfortable filming her first video.
The mindset shift came from reading The Courage to Be Disliked, specifically its concept of "separation of task." The idea: her task is to show up as the best version of herself and share that as effectively as possible. How someone else responds to that is their task, not hers. Worrying about others' reactions means interfering in a task that was never hers to control.
That reframe gave her permission to keep showing up on video, regardless of how any individual piece of content landed.
Using Conversation Cards to Remove Decision Fatigue
Rather than starting from a blank page each week, Gillian built her early content around physical prompt tools. Her first series used Diary of a CEO conversation cards, she'd pull one card a week, answer the question on video, and invite her community to share their own answers, turning it into a two-way exchange rather than a broadcast.
When that deck was exhausted, she picked up a set of Nudge coaching cards at a leadership conference and continued the format. She already has an idea for a third series.
This is a practical, repeatable system worth borrowing: a structured prompt removes the "what do I post about" decision every week, which is often the real reason content consistency breaks down. It's also the exact problem Jane Anderson's content creation events are built to solve, Gillian has attended multiple rounds herself.
What the Results Looked Like
Gillian has noticed a clear pattern in the year-plus since she started posting consistently on LinkedIn: increased impressions, more engagement in the form of comments and reactions, and, over time, a noticeable impact on business growth and revenue. She attributes this to people simply seeing her and how she works, rather than any single viral moment.
That lines up with broader industry research: LinkedIn and Edelman's B2B Thought Leadership Impact study found that the large majority of decision-makers are more receptive to a company or individual once they've consistently seen credible, high-quality thought leadership from them, reinforcing that Gillian's slow-building results are typical, not unusual.
Scaling With Support, When to Bring in a Virtual Assistant
In the early days, Gillian ran everything herself: EA functions, finance, sales, delivery, and design.
About 18 months ago, she brought on virtual assistant support, a decision she describes as a genuine turning point. It didn't just save her time; it freed up more hours specifically for coaching and training, the parts of the business that actually generate revenue and impact, rather than the administrative work that keeps the business running day to day.
For solo coaches wondering when to bring in support, Gillian's experience points to a useful marker: if administrative work is consistently pulling you away from client-facing hours, that's the signal.
Turning Thought Leadership Into IP
Gillian's thought leadership draws directly from her own client work, the pain points, patterns, and challenges she sees repeatedly in leadership conversations, combined with a clear point of view on the kind of environment where people and leaders can thrive.
That thinking now feeds several outputs: a regular newsletter, an upcoming book (working title tied to "the connected leader"), workshop and program content, and, perhaps most significantly, her actual coaching conversations with clients. She notes that much of her programming and coaching direction comes directly out of identifying where resistance shows up for clients and figuring out how to reduce it.
The book itself is targeted for release around Q2 of the next financial year (by end of FY2026), and Gillian is also completing an emotional agility certification in the US later this year, under Professor Susan David, with plans to build a leadership program around that methodology alongside the Emotional Culture Deck she already uses in her practice.
Advice for Coaches Hitting a Growth Wall
When asked what she'd tell a coach who feels stuck or unsure why their practice isn't growing, Gillian points to two things: activity and consistency.
Her advice, in practice, looks like this:
Get specific and honest about what you're actually doing, and how consistently you're doing it.
Be prepared to have a challenging conversation with yourself about the gap between what you say you're doing and what you're really doing.
Recognise that outbound activity (cold outreach, emails, calls) rarely outperforms a well-nurtured existing network.
If you're not already getting outside support or accountability, that's often the fastest way to build momentum.
She's also candid that her own next stage of growth, moving into speaking, is a longer-term goal she's deliberately pacing rather than rushing.
FAQ
Should coaches brand under their own name or a business name? There's no universal answer. Some coaches build strong practices under a business name for years before shifting to their own name once their confidence and visibility have grown. The decision is often less about marketing strategy and more about whether the coach feels ready to put their own name front and centr.
How do you build a coaching network from scratch in a new country? Through consistent, deliberate effort over time, attending events, making direct connections, and staying visible, rather than relying on an existing university or industry network that simply isn't there yet.
What is the "separation of task" concept from The Courage to Be Disliked? It's the idea that your task is to show up and share your work as authentically and effectively as you can. How other people respond to that is their task, not yours. Trying to control or predict others' reactions means overstepping into a task that was never yours to manage.
When should a solo coach hire a virtual assistant? A useful signal is when administrative work, scheduling, admin, finance, delivery logistics, is consistently taking time away from client-facing work like coaching and training, which is where the practice actually generates value and revenue.
How often should coaches post content on LinkedIn to see results? There's no fixed number, but consistency matters more than frequency. Weekly, structured content over an extended period (a year or more) is what generated measurable engagement and business impact in Gillian's experience.
Conclusion
Gillian Smith's path, from corporate burnout, to building a client base with no local network, to finally getting comfortable putting her own name and face forward, isn't a fast or linear story. It's a useful reminder that the barriers holding a lot of coaches back aren't tactical. They're often about readiness, consistency, and confidence.
If you're a coach or solo professional weighing the same decisions Gillian faced, how visible to be, what to name your practice, when to get support, her experience offers a grounded, real-world reference point rather than a generic playbook.
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Working through your own positioning or visibility challenges? Explore 1:1 coaching with Jane Anderson to work through your own personal brand vs. business brand decision.
For more thought leadership and positioning insights, browse Jane Anderson's Insights hub.
