EP065 - How to improve your personal branding with Steven Picanza
About the episode
This episode focuses on branding. More importantly, personal branding for leaders. Steve Picanza shares her insights backed by his decades of experience in this field on branding, improving your personal brand, how to step up as a thought leader, and why it can be super beneficial for your business.
About the guest
As a strategist, Steven has spent over a decade helping brands identify and bring their purpose to life through evocative ideas, award-winning campaigns, and compelling consumer experiences. While he specializes in building, repositioning, and marketing brands, his background is diverse (by design!), with roles in creative brand strategy, brand planning, and experience design. This range has enabled him to bring thoughtful, comprehensive strategic plans to his clients and be an empathetic cross-functional team leader.
Steven has helped brands realize their potential and resonate across categories: CPG, hospitality, retail, health and wellness, food and beverage, travel and tourism, and non-profit/education. Notable clients include Holland America Line, Dude Wipes, Dr Teal's, IDG Media, Pieology Pizza, MGM International, WaFd Bank, and many more.
Some notable and interesting facts about Steven:
- Hosted The Creative Hustler Podcast from 2017-2019 recording 130+ episodes with my wife
- Was a true digital nomad from 2017-2019 traveling across Italy, the EU, and the states (3 cross country road trips)
- Have been managing remote teams for 10 years
- Run a fully distributed branding consultancy with global partners
- Currently waiting on his official dual citizenship (Italy)
- He is an adjunct professor of branding at 2 universities (Drexel in Philly, IED - The European Institute of Design, Milano)
- “Cooking and wine make me happy, and music is my mistress.”
About the host
My name is Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting. My mission is to help and inspire a community of remote leaders who can bring more autonomy, transparency, and leverage to their businesses, ultimately empowering their colleagues to be happier, more independent, and more self-conscious.
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Want to become a guest on the show? Contact me here.
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Welcome everyone. Welcome to the Leadership Anywhere podcast. Today we will discuss an important topic, which is often neglected by founders and entrepreneurs. It's branding, not just personal, but also corporate branding. Why you should take care of your brand and why should you do a little bit of housecleaning in terms of creative branding in your company to discuss. I have Steven Picanza, hope I pronounced it right.
You are in Italy. Peter, I expect you to pronounce Picanza right.
So I did. That's I'm glad.
Bravo.
Bravo. So you have so many titles, man, and I don't want to introduce you. So please tell me how did you end up working remotely? What are you doing right now?
Yeah.
And where are you calling from, by the way?
Thanks for having me on, Peter. I'm calling from New Jersey right outside Philadelphia. Although I'm a New Yorker by birth, I lived 20 years in San Diego prior to working remote. But to answer your question about my titles, I am a brand builder. I'm a podcast host, I'm a content creator, and I have one mission in life, and it's helping small businesses and entrepreneurs win. Because the barrier to entry is to marketing is so low, the barrier to entry to branding is so low that there's a lot of mistakes that are made and there's a lot of snake oil salesmen out there and having been in this field for close to 15 years now. I've seen and done it all. And I want to help people like not make mistakes. I want people to not spend so much fucking money on marketing. That's what it is. That's my guarantee after working with me, you will spend less money. On your marketing, because your brand, you're not taking a guessing game. You're not just throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks. It's going to stick. So I love it. I got started and Peter, I think you and I share some similar backgrounds. 2007, 2008, so we're talking 15 more than 15 years now, unfortunately, dating myself. I started my first agency. It was a design firm in San Diego. And we were working on small businesses and a lot of clubs and bars and discos. And we had a small office in the downtown city center of San Diego, but we were always working from coffee shops. We were always working from bars. We were probably drinking a little too much at the time, which hasn't stopped now.
That's what I wanted to ask. That's what I wanted to ask. I guess you had a really great office culture.
We had a great office. Our office was actually on top of a nightclub and it was such a cool little thing in downtown San Diego. But in 2011 my business partner and I split up and I actually went to go work for agencies. So on the brand side, I went to go work for a couple of small independent shops, but I got to work on some big brands. I got to help with the rebranding of the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. I worked with Sony, I worked with Lacoste. So all these kind of top tier brands, and that's where guess you could say honed my craft where I started understanding from a 50, 000 foot perspective, the implications brand has on culture, on society, on customers, on everything. In the typical agency world one when an agency loses a client, they have to downstaff and I was part of the downstaff. So I got let go and I ended up becoming a consultant. So we're talking 2012 or so, Peter, I just started working remote. That was it. I was done. Of course I went into offices, but I went into offices as a consultant, a day or two here for a workshop a couple hours here. And so I started consulting with agencies while at the same time consulting with startups and with some enterprise brands and just really positioning myself as a true brand advisor for organizations. This led me to taking roles like a fractional CMO. I call it a fractional CBMO now, right? Chief brand and marketing officer, right? We need to be nuanced and have a unique language. And then the story is going to get a little complicated, but it's going to get a little bit more clear. My wife and I started a consultancy called Latin Code. My wife's from Boston. I'm from New York. We met in San Diego. We both got let go from our agencies around the same time because she was in SEO. She's an SEO. She's a digital marketer. She knows content. She knows social really well. And so we started a small consultancy and we were consulting with brands from all over the United States and even into Europe. 2017, we get this wild and crazy idea of let's put all of our shit in storage and let's go travel for a couple months. So what was gonna be three months ended up being a year and a half. We did six months in Europe. And then the rest of the time we did three cross country road trips in the United States. We lived in Sicily for eight weeks. We were in Milan. We were in Rome. We were in Ireland. We were in Germany. And then in the state we're in Boston, Florida, New York city. We were in Colorado. We were in Las Vegas. So we just started going around Airbnbs and we were just live that digital nomad lifestyle. 2019 came around, we needed a place to live and I have another business. I got business partners all over the place. I'm into partnerships. Partnerships, Peter, is what makes the modern day entrepreneur succeed, right? Cause we can't do it all. We need great partners. I had a partner who was living here in New Jersey, so we decided to move to New Jersey. And then a little thing called COVID happened, right? When we got here and we had a baby. Yeah. Then we had a kid, which complicates life, but makes life amazing at the same time. And then I ended up going to work for another agency for a little bit. I was in the McCann family for I was telling you for nine months, not last. And now back as a consultant, but really focused on small to medium size, my size brands and personal brands, because I believe wholeheartedly that the personal brand, whether you're on, whether you're a CEO of a fortune 500 or a startup entrepreneur, it's your personal brand that is going to either get you the investors, attract the customers that you need, or just bring in the business that you need to succeed.
This is an amazing journey, man. I have so many questions, by the way. First, just a comment. I think there were two categories in marriages, by the way did you notice that now during the COVID, the people who got babies and the people who got divorced. I'm so glad that you did the baby.
Yeah, the divorce thing might come later on. No, I'm kidding. We'll see. We'll see. We'll find we can't write the future, but no, yeah, we have a COVID baby. And that's what they're calling that is what this generation of babies that were born between 2020 and 2022. You got a COVID baby. Now he's two years old and he is amazing.
Congratulations. Congratulations.
Thank you.
Your original family, by the way, is from Italy, right? And I guess from Sicily? I'm half Sicilian and then I'm half from Molise. So a small little territory, they call it molise doesn't exist because it's new. It's small, it's mountainous but it's gorgeous. They call me a Tedoni. I'm from the South.
But that's how we ended up in Sicily, during the travels. I think we should totally address the fact that you worked for agencies and also for bigger companies as well, not just for small businesses like myself. I did the same rodeo back then and what's really interesting to see right now is that a lot of, I don't know what's your experience, but you can tell me later, a lot of startup founders and a lot of growing business founders, they usually tell that branding is not important. You can do most of the shit in Canva, you can create your own stuff, just write a little bit better. If you are talking about personal branding, if you're talking about websites there are like plug and play, drag and drop, you can create something really easily. And consistency is pretty much well, non existing. Yet on the other hand, everyone is talking about enterprise brands and enterprise clients. They invest like insane amount of money on creating a consistent brand. That's how they do. All their sales, all their marketing. Is it just a budgetary restraint? Do you think so? Or it's like a thinking restriction?
I think it's an education. I think it's a knowledge problem. Yeah. It's education. I think that the majority, I don't want to burst everyone's bubble here, but I have to burst a bubble, branding is not your logo. Branding is not your design. Branding is not your packaging. It helps, right? It's all part of total branding when you talk about the total branding, but it's not it. So oftentimes executive leaders, founders, entrepreneurs are come to me Steven, I have a branding issue. I need a new logo. And I pat them on the shoulder and I say, yeah, you do need a new logo. But that's the last thing that we're going to talk about. We have to talk about so much foundational stuff that is branding that informs the logo because a brand is not what you say it is. Peter, Marty Neumeyer, my mentor and the great branding guru, an author has written this many times. Branding is not what you say it is. It's what they say it is. They being your audience, so you want to create brand assets that speak to your audience. And oftentimes when I say that, I get the look from whoever I'm talking to on their face. And they're like, Oh shit, I don't know if we necessarily know who our audience is, or they say our audience is everyone. And then I have to tap them on the back again. I said, no, it's not. You do not want to be everything to everyone because then you are nothing to these people. So the education part is understanding what a brand is. A brand is your reason for being a brand is that reason why you get out in the morning. It's that long term plan. It's that long term plan to differentiate from your competitors. Okay. So that's what we want to think of when we think of brand strategy, when we think of branding. So it might be a mission statement, a purpose statement, what's your vision for that aspirational vision that we probably will never achieve, but we want to work towards who are your customers, what do they need? Not just demographics, not just 45 to 55 with a household income. What are their psychographics? What are they consuming online?
How come is this different from marketing, for example? That's the common question that I do usually get. Design is mostly creative in most people thinking that it's like a, it's the logo, it's a sticker, it's a website. They usually pack it in a very structural and they approach it as an infrastructural matter. So they see that they are assets and stuff like that, but they never think of audiences targeting tone of voice. I don't know.
The assets are only as good as the strategy that builds the assets, so like when you're looking at like coming up with a tone of voice isn't as simple as putting it to chat GPT and saying, what's my brand tone of voice? It's a lot more nuanced than that because we live in such a content cluttered world. And there's a lot of competition, like there is no only one brand in the category. There's no category leader per se. Categories are a hodgepodge. And so brands need to differentiate. In order to differentiate, you need to be able to speak intelligently about your core values, about your culture. You need to make sure that it permeates through every touch point that's out there. And as we start peeling back these layers, sure, your logo is really important, but it's also really important to make sure that you're consistent. And the only way that you're going to stay consistent is if you have good brand guidelines, or as I call them, a brand operating system. And the only way to create a brand operating system is to take the time to think about the contents of that operating system and not be so cookie cutter. So this is where the education part comes in, Peter. It's wow, I didn't realize all of this created a brand. I just thought the brand was the logo that's on the packaging, but it's so much more than that. And so that's where Yes, you could design a beautiful logo in Canva, of course, but that logo needs to be informed by something. And that information is really, what is that foundational part of branding.
And it has to be consistent with anything else that you do, obviously say, you use one font on the logo and you use one other font on the website and another font on your print material. You're losing trust.
You're losing trust.
You are just decluttering everything.
And yeah, I heard this great quote. It actually was on Twitter or X or whatever. Client says, I want my own, I want a Nike swoosh, the agency or the brand consultant says, great, come up with a mark and be fucking consistent with it for 45 years. Then you have your Nike swoosh. And I was like, that's fucking amazing. That's exactly right. Nike swoosh means nothing, but it was the consistency and the brand recall that I was able to provide over the course of now going on for. Decades worth that makes Nike Swoosh what it is, right? So that's the power of a great brand, but it's so much more than that these days, you have to have a platform to stand on.
Yes. And maybe that's why thought leaders or startup founders, or even just growing businesses, they don't really invest in consistent branding because they think that it is not. Not that not the best time to do that. It's not, we are not just there yet. We are doing so much stuff. We are doing product. We are doing engineering. We are doing hiring operations everything else. So much stuff. So product market fit, right?
Product market fit is tricky, right? Cause you want the product to fit, but at the same time, you don't want the product to fit. And then all of a sudden have to change everything about the product because you get to a series A. A lot of brands, I get brought into startups, like around series A. Steven, we're going for fundraising. What's our story? Like, how is it that we're going to attract a great investor? And we have a great product market fit, but then we need to take it to the next level. Unfortunately, what often happens is, they were operating under a brand, they were operating under this kind of hodgepodge or band aid approach, and now we have to reinvent the wheel.
And sorry to jump in, and I'm not sure about your experience again with talking with these funders, but like 99 percent of them, when they are going to the Series A, because that's the same time that I also got brought in, that's when they have money to invest in marketing, by the way, just FYI. And they actually, they are expected to do that from their investors, right? Because most of the Series A funding usually going towards scaling. And just again most of the pitch decks and most of the stuff that they did, it's only about the product. They never talk about the story. They never talk about their target audience. There is no strategy. It's a hundred percent product focused.
And what's the note then? And probably the note that they get back from the VC team or wherever they're pitching is what problem are you solving? And that's the biggest thing, don't you gotta solve the problem. So you're not necessarily selling. You're not selling the product, you're selling the solution that you're providing to the problem that your customer has. And I'm going to, I want to burst another bubble, Peter. The brand, I'm sorry to break it to you, you are not the hero in the story. You're not, you were, your customers are the hero. You are the guide. Think about Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. He has a problem and he meets who? Obi Wan and Yoda, and Obi Wan and Yoda give him the plan of action to defeat the force, right? To make whatever happens. So in the case of your brand, you don't want to be the hero. You want to be the guide that the hero keeps coming back to every time. Because when you are the guide, you have built immense trust that let's just face it, you could sell anything to your customers now 'cause they trust you and you are consistent. And to build trust. Peter, I got a formula. I got an epic formula to build trust here. Reliability plus delight plus accountability equals trust. R plus D plus A equals trust. So reliability. Let's take a brown drink in the Starbucks right now. Okay. Now as an Italian, I don't love Starbucks, but it's convenient because it's right downstairs from my studio. But Starbucks is reliable. You could walk into any Starbucks across the United States or perhaps even globally, and it's all going to look the same. It's all going to Yeah, it's going to taste the same. They have the same music playing. The bathrooms are clean and the Wi Fi is stable. You could sit there for hours upon hours, right? They're reliable. You could always go there and you know what you're going to get. Now, if you order the most obnoxious drink ever and here in the United States, it's not just a cafe or a cappuccino. They're ordering a 35 ounce upside down double pump frappuccino yada, yada. Now, if Starbucks makes that for you, and you don't like it, what are they going to do? They're going to remake it for you, right? And they're going to do that every time because the customer is always right. And not only that, but they're going to say it's our fault. Not that your fucking taste buds changed overnight, Mr. Customer, but no, we're going to take the fall. So they're accountable for it over time. Peter being reliable, being consistent and taking accountability means that we will buy anything from Starbucks, breakfast, lunch, dinner, alcohol. I will buy a machine from Starbucks. I used to buy CDs from Starbucks. I would buy new, like anything I've mugs I got, I have an ornament on my Christmas tree from Starbucks and you'll buy anything from Starbucks because they built so much trust. And that is what branding proves to do is to build trust.
Just translated into operational language. This means that you need to invest. Now, branding is also consistently there in customer service in how you create your product. You have to be cautious about the features that you're pulling out. You need to discuss possible new features with your possible new customers as well. So it has to be a dialogue, I think. And that's the most important part that markets are conversations. We know that from the, I don't know, I think cluetrain manifesto or whatever 30 years ago, whatever markets are conversations, meaning that you need to always converse with your audience. That's how you will understand.
To that point. Yeah. No, to that point, Peter, I love to say I'm a philosophy nerd and Zeno, a great philosopher from a couple of thousand years ago has said, we all have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Act accordingly. So as a brand. Ask your audience, talk to your audience, survey them, ask them questions, make them your best friend. Cause they're going to reward you multiple ways. They're going to reward you with their pay, with their loyalty, right? They're going to reward you with telling you what you should create or how you should update your product or whatever it is. And brands that do that can create great product lines and great brand extensions that are aligned with their customers, wants and needs. The worst thing you could do is create as have a brand extension because you think it's cool. Again, branding is not what you say it is. Branding is what they say it is.
Of course. And that's why we always say that it's more like a problem market fit and not product market fit.
Oh, that's nice.
So first you actually need to solve the problems. You need to be focused on the problems of your customers. Then you can create and re translate that into the product as well. So it's like a mindset shift.
It is a mindset shift. And a lot of the founders I work with and we could talk early stage startup series A to I've been working with a shark tank startup that just crossed 150 million revenue mark here in the States. It's the same mindset shift, right? Like you educating both. Now, obviously the 150 million brand has done a really good job at the product market fit or the problem of market fit. But again, that mindset shift on how they think about their brand and how they think about extending and everything we're talking about is the same. Founders are really focused on, I got a product, I'm going to sell the product, I make the product the best. You don't necessarily always think about all the other extremities that are part of the branding or that when done correctly, make the brand larger than life.
But maybe that's because the decision maker is still 100 percent involved in the marketing and the branding situation. So again, we discussed a lot about enterprise marketing, right? In an enterprise marketing you don't have the founder in most cases, you do have a CMO who is responsible for doing their job and whatever CEO might report back, maybe report back to the CMO. These are like people kind of cut off from the actual ownership of the company. Meanwhile, I'm not in all the cases, but yeah, in most cases but in startup world usually the founder is the owner or co founder as well. And there's a lot of emotion there. There's a lot of emotion. It's my baby. It's the worst.
Sometimes Peter, I have to tell you that your baby's ugly.
Yes.
Sometimes I have to throw your baby out of the bathtub. Like it has to happen. You want to grow baby's got to go and we got to put a different version of the bay and that's a tough thing for a lot of founders to, and I get it right. Like putting on my empathetic hat, like it's tough. Like you built this from the ground up. You've done an incredible job as a founder. But in order for the project or the product to, to truly reach mass. Where you want to go, you got to make tough decisions.
I love my logo because it was drawn by my nephew. And how many times I heard that? How many times I heard that? Too many times, too many times. Also one other thing that I also heard, and let's discuss that too. I think most founders usually tell me the same story when they sign up to my services, or at least when they're conversing or talking about something that they got burned before by other marketers. Why is that? And the reason why I'm asking, and this is not just like a generalized question I have the theory that it's not all the time the marketer's fault it when there is a fund funder or a company or a small growing company, whatever that changes marketing, leadership or any kind of leadership by the way in every half a year or a year, it tells a lot about that company and not about the leaders.
That's a good point. I think there's a couple, there's a couple reasons why. The obvious one is the barrier to entry to become a marketer is so low. Anyone who has a social media account can now be a marketer and there's a lot of mediocre work being done by mediocre marketers. And that's unfortunate because you've got professionals like ourselves and professionals who have been around for a while and have the stories. And we know we might be getting undercut by price or we might be getting undercut for many reasons. The unfortunate thing is, yeah, the unfortunate thing is junior marketer is going to make the company spend double the amount, because after the junior marketer is done, they're going to have to redo all the work, because it's probably not right. The sec, so the barrier to entry, and I'm going to blame technology, I'm going to blame generative AI, I'm going to blame all the tools, and I use AI, and I use all these tools when they're used to become a snake oil salesman, where I get a 22 year old kid who thinks that because they can make TikTok video that they're now an expert marketer. That's not going to do the organization any good. I also think, and Peter, you said it.
I had this example, by the way, the reason why I'm laughing, not just because you're in front of it, but because I actually heard that.
Totally. Oh my God. You have a hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube. You need to be my CMO. Like what the fuck?
Like I just go with different things. Please do that. And yeah. And call me when something goes wrong. Call me when they wasted all your money because of a shiny bright new object.
So shiny bright new object syndrome is something I also think it to, to your point, Peter the culture of the organization. And maybe again, this comes down to the founder not being educated on what true marketing mix is and channel strategy and all these things that as a marketer or as a CMO, you need to take into account. So you know they have a cultural problem where they want to hire their friends or they want to hire someone who they want to have beers with. But they don't necessarily have the best interest of the organization. So there's a myriad of reasons why that relationship might fail. I don't, unfortunately, right? Like I don't see an end in sight. I think we're going to get continued to get a lot more mediocre with marketing, a lot more mediocre with creative, a lot more mediocre with messaging. Because people are just going to plug it into chat GPT and DallE or Adobe Firefly or MidSummer and say, make my brand. And it's going to come out like just fucking generic. And that's not going to be good.
Yeah. And what advice would you have just to make it a little bit more tangible for the listeners, what advice would you give to the founders, how to source your marketer or marketing people, what are the clues that you need to look for aside from a huge TikTok follower, exactly.
I helped a colleague of mine and a really good friend start a business 10 years ago called the agency guide, and I'm plugging them right now. And they help brands source and vet and bring on marketing partners for this very reason, Peter, because barrier to entry, because what are you going to do? Type in SEO agency into Google. Like what the fuck? Like you're going to, there's a million different agencies that are going to pop up and everyone is the best thing ever. But who do you, how do you really know that they're good? So a friend of mine started this organization and he match makes brands to agencies all day, big brands, small brands, whatever. He represents about 200 different agencies and consultants. So that's the first place I would start is find a broker or a consultant fiduciary best interest at hand to find the best partner based on whatever challenge you have. I would also make sure that you talk to a couple different people at the same at the same time go through an actual process of if you're looking for a branding agency, number one, call me, but if you're not going to call me number two, fine. Two to three. Or three to four organizations that you would love to work with and have a conversation on what would they do and how would they spend your money and whatever.
Do the same thing that enterprises are doing. Invite multiple agencies to your roundup and all of the agencies pitch with prices, ideas, everything, shit like that. And the ones that you like in terms of pricing and ideas, you will choose. And that's it. It's not that complicated.
But what happens is founders want shiny, bright new objects and they make decisions based on emotions. And then you're like, ah I really liked this person and I'm going to go with them. They may not be the most equipped team, but I really like him. And he told me what I wanted to hear. Now you're going to waste money. Also, a note to founders when investing in your brand. I love the quote the best time to plant a tree, Peter, was 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is today. So let's take that expression and let's flip it around. The best time to invest in your brand was a year ago. The second best time to invest in your brand is today.
Totally. Let's, I think the last thing that we need to discuss, is it really, or is it really clear distinction between corporate or a company like business branding and organization. The brand of your company or the brand of you or founder bank, personal brand.
Yeah, you are the CEO of the brand of you.
You are a CEO or I wouldn't say CEO, like founder of a growing business, 10, 15 people with one product, you're just growing in almost all cases. You are a hundred percent part of that company. You are the face of the company. Yeah. So where is the barrier? No, it's a great.
Of course you have to focus on your company branding, that goes without saying. The personal side of things is interesting. You look at someone like you look at someone like let's just take for example Gary Vaynerchuk, right? Or Richard Branson, he's even a better example. Richard Branson, his personal brand has a lot more followers, a lot more engagement, a lot more everything than the Virgin properties and that just goes to show that people want to connect with people. So it's at the end of the day, building your personal brand is about ensuring that your reputation online or offline doesn't really matter, but ensuring that you put your reputation first, because your reputation is like a magnet. It's going to attract people to attract new customers. It's going to attract investors. It's going to attract talent. If you are a growing company, and not only that, it's going to help you retain talent. So the personal branding, especially for growing companies and startups is essential in this day and age. You knew here, right? I'm sure you hear it too, Peter, like VCs. Yes. They're investing in companies that solve a good product, but like they're investing in. The entrepreneurs that are making that product. Yes. You hear it every day on Shark Tank. You hear it every day on Shark Tank. The Sure. Your product solve a problem.
Sorry. There's a little bet on the jockey, not the horse.
Betting on the jockey, not the horse, right? Yeah. Because the jockey knows how to tame the horse also knows how to say, this horse isn't gonna win the race, we gotta get on a different horse. I'm doing a lot of consulting recently with agency owners, agency founders of small independent shops up to 2, 3, 4, 5 million dollars in annual revenue that just need to show up, right? They want to get their personal brand to a place where the personal brand is attracting clients. Because it's hard, right? You go on LinkedIn, a company page isn't going to show up. But The brand of Peter is going to show up because that's the algorithms favoring you. You're engaging. So it's the same kind of mentality. And so I'm coming in and I'm coaching personal brands to develop the personal branding operating system. What is your vision? What are your goals? Who is your audience? What are your offers? What is the content you're going to make? What's the content cadence? Like all this information that is overwhelming when you start thinking about your personal brands on how to show up. We're gonna, we're gonna work through it. I'm going to give you some challenges to show up on LinkedIn, to spark engagement, and I'm going to help you put together whatever that offer is. In the case of one of my agency founders, they do great work, creative agency. They've worked with Crocs and Lyft and Screwball Whiskey. They've done amazingly great creative work, but he has a hard time showing up on LinkedIn because of paralysis. I don't know what to post. What if I come off as phony, what imposter syndrome is the thing, right? So how can I enable you to be so confident in your personal brand positioning that you can show up wherever you need to show up consistently? What if I don't have time? I don't have time. I'm so busy doing all these things, juggling all the templates with my hands. I just don't have time. Make the time. Make the time. We all have the same 168 hours a week. Make the fucking time. Listen, I'm juggling a couple different businesses, lots of projects. I have a child at home. And I say, one hour a week. Take Friday morning between 8am and 9am and schedule your social media for the week. Schedule it on LinkedIn. Trust me. Like that one hour week. So every Friday morning on my, with my personal brand client, I got a text message out to them. Did you schedule your shit? And then I asked him to grade themselves. What grade would you give your personal brand this past week? I get a lot of D's, right? I got to turn those D's into B's, right? And that is my goal with a lot of personal brands out there. So like bloggers and startup entrepreneurs or whoever it is, you got to do the work. You got to put in the work now and it's going to pay back. Otherwise you're going to constantly be swimming upstream, waiting for the new business of your agency to turn on, but it's never going to turn on. You are a hunter, become a hunter. Or you are doing a hundred percent direct sales, which everyone hates that. That's not good. You want people to actually come to you warm as fuzzy as they can. And it just takes time, Peter. It's consistency.
Yeah. Totally. Cool. When it actually, if someone wants to start with a personal brand or any kind of branding where people can find you.
Yeah. Stevenpicanza. com. I'm sure Peter will have it on in the show notes. I have a newsletter that goes out every week to 7, 500 entrepreneurs and business leaders and marketers where I just help you create better ideas and give you a branding concept a week. So that again, you're not unaware to the implications branding has on growing your business. And then if you want to find me on social media I'm on LinkedIn and that's really, I'm on no other social network because we, yeah, Peter, we don't have a lot of time, right? So I had to limit my own social media. Like I can't be on every platform.
I did the same a couple of weeks ago pretty much closed all my other networks. There is only one tweet which is pinned on my Twitter that, which says find me on LinkedIn. So yeah. Yeah.
So like sometimes we have to make that decision on less is more be really focused. And yeah, so stevenpicanza. com and honestly, there's only one steven Picanza in the world. It's not a very popular name. It comes from one area of Italy. So you could just type in Picanza and it'll, I will come up probably number one on Google.
That's nice. South of Italy, yeah.
Yeah. It's come from one small town in Molise.
It's because it's like picante or something.
No, it actually I heard an interesting story and this is like folklore that we initially came from Piacenza, which is in the north of Italy. Yeah. Yeah. And that we ended up migrating south To the small town called San Giuliano di Puglia, which is in Molise, and that we became Picanza. Whether it's true or not is yet to be verified, but it's a romantic story of renaissance criminals leaving.
It certainly is. Yes. Love it. I hope that this episode won't be too much bubble popping for anyone else. But I hope that we shared a little great of insights and not also being funny and controversial sometimes.
Ah controversy is good.
Of course, it distinguishes you from the mediocre.
And if we're going just real quick, I don't want to harp back on it, but to your point right there, distinguishes you from the mediocre. So I'm not saying your brand, personal, corporate, whatever, needs to be controversial. It needs to be differentiated. And when you can differentiate, then you could have compelling conversations with your audience. If you look like and sound like everyone else, they're going to glaze over you. You're just another commoditized brand that nobody fucking cares about.
And by the way, don't be that because it's so hard. I've worked with a lot of B2B companies. So my focus is exclusively B2B tech companies.
Sure.
They are filled with money to spend on marketing, but they are a hundred percent risk averse on anything that they can do. And they that's the way that. They usually end up with boring content boring topics. So yeah.
And B2B doesn't have to be boring. I had built some incredibly sexy B2B brands in my day that in the sea of sameness, they have stood apart and it. It takes a different mindset, right? Like we were talking about it and it takes a different way of approaching solving the problem. But when you can do that and you make B2B sexy, you're fucking winning left and right. You're winning customers. You're winning revenue. You're winning investors. You're winning talent. You're just winning. And don't you want to win?
It shows up. It's immediately shows up in revenue. Immediately shows up.
So maybe that's what we talk about next. How to build a B2B brand that doesn't suck.
That will be the best episode ever.
Peter, I appreciate you having me on. I love this chat.
