Personal Branding That Builds Trust with Vanessa Errecarte

SPEAKER_1 (0:04)

The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

Stephen Sakach (0:17)

Well, welcome back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach again here with my co-host Tullio Siragusa, and we've got a special guest who we'll introduce in a moment. So Personal Branding has become one of those phrases that can make thoughtful people uncomfortable. For some, it sounds like self-promotion. For others, it brings up images of influences, vanity metrics, algorithm chasing, and the pressure to constantly be visible. But what if Personal Branding is not really about ego? What if it can be about service? So today, we're exploring Personal Branding and how professionals become known for meaningful work, and why visibility matters when it is connected to service.

We're going to jump into it today. So Tullio, introduce our special guest.

Tullio Siragusa (1:15)

It'll be my pleasure. Our guest today is Vanessa Errecarte. She's the CEO of Marketing Simplified, author of Valuable and Visible, and lecturer at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. Vanessa teaches strategic branding, digital marketing, and personal branding. In her book, Valuable and Visible, redefining personal branding by leading with impact over image, was inspired by the lessons she teaches to her students.

Her approach refrains personal branding as service first, a way for students, leaders, entrepreneurs, and professionals to clarify what they know, who they help, and how their ideas can create meaningful impact. Vanessa, welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast today.

Vanessa Errecarte (2:03)

Thank you for having me. It's great to be here and I love your thesis.

It's so fun to listen to the conversations you all have. Happy to be here.

Stephen Sakach (2:14)

Vanessa, so your book, Valuable Invisible, challenged the idea that personal branding is about image, cloud, or becoming famous for being famous. What do you think people have gotten wrong about personal branding?

Vanessa Errecarte (2:29)

Sure. Yeah. So I think they've gotten wrong the definition of a brand. So strategic branding is a course I've taught for a long time. It's corporate branding. I've done that in my own consultancy for over a decade, in my own career for over two decades, right? And the thing that we know when it comes to a brand is that brands exist for the sole purpose of relating to customers. If we did not need brands, we would only have products. Brands are what bring a product to life. They're what help us bring products into that more human sphere, right?

Then we put personal in front of the brand and we think it needs to be all about us.

And no one's told us differently because we look to the influencer. And the influencer is really only like 1% of creators. And influencers are completely fine, but their job is actually to create large audiences so that they can earn money for posts that they make. And you have to be, you know, kind of generalists and entertaining to do that. And you show up over and over again.

And people, you know, they kind of watch to be entertained, right? Now, you know, and that's a media company, in my view. So now, contrast that with the personal brand, where just like a corporate brand, you should absolutely know exactly what a personal brand is going to do for you if you stop and consume content. So in the absence of a product, people have knowledge. But a lot of us think you have to be that executive to be a thought leader. But if you have knowledge, anyone can actually be a thought leader. You just have to present what you know in a more distinctive way and offer people a new point of view and a new way of doing things.

A lot of people think, well, I don't have that. But distinction is actually learned. That's what makes me so passionate about this because I've seen excellent students. UC Davis Graduate School of Management is a top-tier business school. So if you get in there, you are so good. I've seen these excellent students struggle to find their distinction because they're trying to fit themselves into that generalist box. When really, that's what the brand is, it's to tease out the difference of the transformation you can make to others and relate to people more. So that's what I hope that people remember about personal branding. Because then when you think about what you can help others with, which we can get into today, all of a sudden you're not thinking about yourself anymore and it feels a little more comfortable because most of us don't like self-promotion at all.