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EP337 Brand Clarity Beats Polished Marketing. · Profit With A Plan

• 0:12
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Today we're talking about why so many small business brands stay invisible, even when the owner is great at what they do.
• 0:21
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Fear, vagueness, messaging, trying to sound bigger than you are, and quietly working might quietly be working against you. So my guest, Rob Genovesi, has zero patience for jargon, templates, and plain corporate dress-up.
• 0:40
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So today, we're breaking down why, being better than your competitors is a trap.
• 0:45
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: How ego sneaks into branding decisions, and what is actually gonna take you to stand out and build real authority.
• 0:56
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So if clarity beats clever for you, then stay with us on today's Profit with a Plan podcast.
• 1:05
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Hey entrepreneurs, are you working too hard for too little profit? Well, welcome to Profit with a Plan Podcast, where we help you scale smarter, increase profitability, and build a business that's worth more, whether you keep it or you sell it.
• 1:17
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I'm Marcia Reiner, business growth strategist and the profit booster behind Infinite Profit. I've helped countless entrepreneurs to turn their businesses into highly profitable and sale-ready assets, so they enjoy more income now, and a bigger payday later.
• 1:32
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So join me for practical strategies, expert insights, and proven steps to make your business more profitable, more valuable, and built to last.
• 1:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Today's episode is sponsored by Infinite Profit, where we don't just talk profit, we deliver it.
• 1:47
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But before we dive in, I've got something special for you.
• 1:50
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: If you're tired of flat revenue and that marketing that just doesn't seem to pay off, the new Profit Booster Growth Map might be for you.
• 1:58
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: In just a few minutes, it'll show you exactly how to bring in more qualified clients and plug those profit leaks that are eating away at your cash.
• 2:06
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So get your growth map at ProfitBooster.biz, and start turning missed revenue into real money.
• 2:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Alright, let's jump into the show today. I know you're gonna love this guy. So, my guest today is Rob Genovesi. He is a brand strategist and speaker who has absolutely no patience for the corporate crap that keeps businesses, small businesses, invisible.
• 2:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: He's the author of the book, Don't Fear the Brand, and he spends his time helping founders stop hiding behind templates and start building brands that actually attract customers. And not just customers, but the customers you want.
• 2:44
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Rob doesn't do jargon or filler. He's here to give us the blueprint on what it really takes to stand out and build authority in a crowded market. Rob, welcome to Profit with a Plan Podcast!
• 2:55
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Hey, Marci, great to be here.
• 2:57
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah, it's exciting! So, I love, we have just connected, and we speak the same language, you've got the same mindset, and I just love talking with you. I think you add so much interesting value and viewpoints on a topic that might be,
• 3:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: missed by small business owners, I'll say. So, but before we get started, how did you get involved in branding and marketing?
• 3:22
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Yeah, you know, it's…
• 3:24
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: It's a story, for sure, and it is all my book, but the short version is that, you know, I spent 25-plus years in corporate America managing creative teams, and you know, I have a degree in graphic design and advertising, so it served me just fine, until I got really disillusioned with corporate.
• 3:42
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: I wanted more control in my life, I always wanted to own my own business, and I started out just leveraging the one skill I had, which was design, so…
• 3:50
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: what better thing to do than to design websites? Everybody has one or needs a new one. So I started doing that in 2015. Really didn't have a problem getting clients, but hard to be profitable.
• 4:04
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And so, that profitability was the problem. And so, one day, I had a conversation with a prospect, and he threw the word brand in there.
• 4:13
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: So I caught on to that, and so I started studying what that meant for a business, took a completely strategic, strategy-first approach to helping him, then followed up with design, and it just flat-out worked, and from then on out, I was just hooked on the impact that brand makes in a business.
• 4:33
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Well, let's talk about that, because I think branding is something that small business owners think that
• 4:40
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's for big companies. Like, we all know Coca-Cola, and those, and Amazon, and Apple, and those big names, right? But if we're just a little, little company, or even a smaller organization, just getting the momentum of business.
• 4:55
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: What does a brand do, except for it cost a lot of money to pick right colors and a logo, right?
• 5:02
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Yeah, so a lot of small businesses do think that brand is the big companies. Or, with, you know, the rise of social media influencers, who essentially created the whole
• 5:14
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: quote-unquote personal branding category, where it's just a regular person who becomes famous for being themselves, then
• 5:23
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Then they really build a business around themselves, and so there becomes this middle ground of, well, where do I fit in as a small business? And the way they fit in as a small business is to take what is brand strategy, which essentially is this Marcia.
• 5:40
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: You've gotta look at the very specific market you serve.
• 5:45
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: With your unique solution to solve a very unique problem.
• 5:50
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And when you do that, your differentiation comes in the way you solve that problem for that specific market. That's differentiation. And then, you know, all the visuals and the logo that everybody thinks is a brand.
• 6:03
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: They're just triggers. They're triggers for a brand, so when you see the Apple logo, you start getting these ruminations of, oh, the design and the functionality, and it enhances my life.
• 6:16
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: But the Apple itself is nothing more than a trigger. And that's where people need more clarity. They need what really is a brand, not what people think is a brand.
• 6:28
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Interesting. Okay. So… I guess what I'm thinking…
• 6:33
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: you're in a small organization, right? You're striving to that multi-million dollar mark, you know, you're already out the gate, right?
• 6:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You did something, you picked up the phone and you started calling prospects and clients and doing this kind of stuff. At what point do you need to really have that brand in place to be able to differentiate yourself? When really, truly, you're in that growth mode of saying.
• 6:57
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: This is where my time is best spent, right?
• 7:00
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Right, so who really needs a brand, or when do you really need a brand, is a great question.
• 7:06
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: So, and I get that a lot, because I'm the first person to say, you don't need brand strategy, and I have done this before, and I have turned away clients, because, to be honest, I don't do a lot of startups, brand new businesses, because they don't have the answers to the questions I'm gonna ask them.
• 7:24
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Like, you know…
• 7:25
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Basically, we go through mission, vision, core values, your ideal client, the messaging that's gonna attract them, and all that. And if you don't really even know who your ideal client is, if you need to have a year or two under your belt of building the business, and find your way, so you've got some specifics in hand. So, I had a guy call me up one time.
• 7:45
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And Marcie, he was insisting on handing over thousands of dollars for me to help him, because he thought, I need a brand.
• 7:52
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: In actuality…
• 7:53
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Someone told him, right? Some cocktail waitress or, you know…
• 7:56
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Absolutely.
• 7:57
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Somebody non-important told him he needed a brand.
• 8:01
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Well, look, you know, you go online, and whereas back, you know, 30 years ago, you didn't hear the word brand except for Coca-Cola and Pepsi and, you know, all those. But nowadays, everybody who owns a small business says, this is my brand. So you think you have to have one, and yes, you do, but…
• 8:19
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: This guy needed sales first. He didn't even have regular revenue, Marcia. He didn't have a business actually to brand, so I turned… I said, listen, man, I said, go get regular monthly revenue.
• 8:31
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And in about a year, because I think you'll probably be there in a year, call me back, because when you need branding is when you're going.
• 8:40
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And your marketing is not working, and you need to go to the next level, branding can help you absolutely get to a whole nother level, rather than just sell, sell, sell.
• 8:49
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And I think that's what the audience needs to hear, because they do hear that, oh, you need to have a brand before you can do your marketing. And I'm thinking, no, you know, you want to do marketing so you can get the clients, so you can understand what you mean and do, because there's a lot of…
• 9:05
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: fluffy stuff behind the brand, right? Your vision, your mission, oh, what do I feel? What do I want the customer to feel, you know? And… and sometimes the flip side happens, where you're thinking, that's unnecessary stuff, I'm just gonna keep calling people, right?
• 9:24
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Yeah, so, you know, when I talk about mission, vision, values, and, you know, if you talk to 10 different branch strategists, you'll get some nuances, because the truth of the matter is this with branch strategy.
• 9:35
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Brand strategy is science.
• 9:37
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And brand strategy is an art. There's a science part that comes first, and then there's the art of building a strong brand that attracts. I talk about the art because few people are. You've got to connect the two. And where I say mission, vision, values, they're more for internal purposes. They're more for you as the business owner
• 9:56
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: To understand who exactly are you? Who are you in your business? What exactly is your business? Where is it going? That's the vision. You know, what's its purpose? What drives it? That's the mission? What are the core values? What's the culture of how you're conducting yourself in your business? Because if you don't know who you are, how could you ever brand something when you don't even know what it is? So I do that foundational work
• 10:20
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: first.
• 10:21
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And then we get to the stuff that really matters in terms of brand, which is, who are you talking to, your ideal client?
• 10:29
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And how are you talking to them? Because the fact of the matter is, Marcia.
• 10:34
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: When you know who you're talking to, you know how to talk to them, so that you can connect with them and attract them to you.
• 10:42
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly. I bump into this all the time, because I'll go to clients, and I'm building some marketing stuff for them, because I'm a growth agency. Marketing is part of growth.
• 10:53
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And, you know, I'm asking them these questions, and they don't know the answers. They're unclear. And I think to myself now, after hearing you, that that's the perfect time for them to get that clarity so that they can actually dial in their conversation that they have going out.
• 11:11
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But like you said, in early times, I mean, you're better to get the clients and figure out what you're doing first, right? And that sometimes takes a couple of years to get going.
• 11:19
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But once you get that momentum going, and you're trying to strive to that next multi-million dollar mark, maybe you're hitting your first million, or you're hitting your first $500,000, or you're hitting your first $5 million, you know, it's different for different companies, but I think that's the
• 11:36
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Correct me if that's not the time that you're going to want to dial this in.
• 11:40
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Well, yeah, because, like we said, you want to be able to discover who you are first and who you're serving, because, you know, we're talking about, you know, you do infinite profit, you know, profit booster. You're all about the profit, and honestly, that's what I was focused on. I wasn't so much focused on revenue, pure revenue, or how many clients, or how much that client's paying.
• 11:59
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Because, to be honest, when I first started out, I was making…
• 12:04
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: $50 an hour, when, you know, my effective hourly rate. And I was like, man, I… so I would ramp up the fee.
• 12:12
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: But when I ramped up the fee, I didn't just ramp it up, I ramped up the value that I put inside it. And I don't do websites anymore, but back then, when I was doing websites, the profitability was so thin that when I was, you know.
• 12:25
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: I went from charging, like, $400 for a website, and then I was charging, you know, $4,000 for a website.
• 12:31
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You're making less money.
• 12:32
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: an hour!
• 12:34
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: I was making less proud of it because my time input was off the charts, Marcia. So, you know, you've got to figure the business part out, and forget so much about the brand. And look, like I said.
• 12:46
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: When you want to be able to go to the next level, the brand is gonna help you, and here's the takeaway. The takeaway is this.
• 12:54
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And this is my personal experience. I am not even speaking from theory here. My personal experience in building my companies, in building my brand.
• 13:04
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: I…
• 13:05
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Built the business, but then when I understood brand, and I had my brand on lockdown, here's what happens.
• 13:12
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: When you have a true brand.
• 13:15
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: The brand is the lens through which you make all the business decisions, because it will provide a clarity that you didn't have before. So you could effectively move… you can go farther, faster, you can spend less marketing dollars.
• 13:30
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And get more, you know, more revenue, you can get more profit, because you can move swiftly, and you can move with clarity. And the clarity is the key.
• 13:40
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I agree a thousand percent. I think it also does something that I… going through your book and reviewing these kind of things, it also… something triggered me.
• 13:50
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: when… The brand will help you attract the clients you want.
• 13:56
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And it will also repel the clients that you don't want, because it's matching who you are, and what you like to do, and how you do it, right?
• 14:06
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Yeah, so, I mean, this is one of the biggest reasons that I had to write the book. You know, I came from a very fearful place. I mean, I was a frightened adult in my 30s. And when I say frightened, I wasn't just scared of success or scared of failure. I'm not talking about that. I was afraid to talk to people.
• 14:23
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: I was afraid to put myself out there. I was afraid to charge money for what I did. I was afraid of everything. And so the fear that people have is what stops them from the success they would otherwise have.
• 14:36
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: So, when we talk about,
• 14:38
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: you know, building a brand. It requires you to be able to Fear…
• 14:45
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: not having some people like you, to your point. I mean, look, everybody wants all the love, and they want the admiration, and you're awesome. That does not come without the people who go, you're trash, you're lying, you're a hack, you're all this. You're gonna get both sides, and people fear the negativity and the haters, so they never truly
• 15:08
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: put a line in the sand and cross over and go, here's where I stand, here's what I will not tolerate, here's the people I help, and all the rest of you can go…
• 15:16
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Take a look.
• 15:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I'm saying.
• 15:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, I think that that's really important. It's a really important thing, because we know that when you're a younger company, you know, you're shooting pellets at a wall, you're throwing spaghetti up there, you're trying to see what sticks.
• 15:34
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You're… you have this… you come from this fearful space of, I don't want to say the wrong thing because I don't want… I don't want to push someone away.
• 15:42
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I can help everybody with everything, right? And I always use this typical line that I got from a dentist years ago that, hey, if you got teeth, I can help you. You know, and I'm like, no! That's not true, right? I mean, you know, you're being a very generalist, and I think people fear that, so they don't want to take a stand.
• 16:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Or they don't want to take a side, and they don't want to say, oh, I help this person, rather than, oh, I help everybody.
• 16:09
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Right. Well, you know, what people are facing, if you're a small business owner, and you're speaking in general terms, like the dentist.
• 16:17
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: then what you're facing is not competition from the people who do what you do. You're facing competition from inaction, because we have a lot of choice in today's world.
• 16:29
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And especially, you know, I'm from the tri-state area, I live in the suburbs of New York, about 20 minutes outside of Manhattan, so there's a choice for every single person that I need in my life.
• 16:40
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: So, if I look at 6 different people who do the same thing.
• 16:45
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And they all go, I can help you, and they're very general, I don't know who to choose.
• 16:50
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: So the mind needs a way to cut through that and make a decision, and when in doubt, the brain will choose to do nothing, right? It preserves its energy, it preserves its power.
• 17:01
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And so they do nothing, right? Because nothing is the easiest path when indecision is facing us, and there's no discernible solution ahead of you. So what is the solution?
• 17:11
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: It is branding. It is differentiation, because when you can help everybody, then I go, well, I can hire anybody. And that's a pricing game, and that's a whole other talk.
• 17:22
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's exactly… that's the race to who's the lowest price, right? For what I'm gonna get.
• 17:27
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Right, and that's your world. We're talking about profitability here, so if you're just gonna discount your prices so you can get the client, but you're not making money, well, it's pointless. So, if you've got 10 dentists lined up, you know, and they're all like, you've got teeth, I can clean them. Okay, great. But what if one of them's like.
• 17:46
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: I'll give you a smile that will light up the entire room every time you walk in, and people will wonder how you got such beautiful teeth. Something to that nature.
• 17:57
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Sure.
• 17:57
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: speaks to, oh, I'm not just gonna have clean teeth, I'm gonna have a million dollar smile that's gonna help me close deals, because people will look at me differently. You know, it's that kind of differentiation that helps the brain go, the different person is the choice that I want to make.
• 18:14
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, Rob, you're giving me really good insights on this right here, and I think that the thing I want to clarify for the audience, when we're talking brand, we're not talking a shiny logo and a catch tag.
• 18:27
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: We're actually talking about the messaging that you say, and how you say it, and delivering it so that these people can find you and choose you over the guy standing next to you.
• 18:40
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Yeah, and what brand actually is, and to clarify your point about the visuals, look, I'm a formerly trained graphic designer. It's what I went to school to do. It's the thing that I loved.
• 18:52
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: I will tell you, the words come first. The strategy comes first, the design is last, and in fact, you can actually have a brand and not even have a logo. Oh my gosh, what did I just say? Like, people, you know, graphic designers…
• 19:08
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Miner?
• 19:09
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And I'm a designer. Graphic designers sometimes don't like me because I say things like that, but the fact is this. I'm helping them, because they all need to be more strategic with the design so that the logo enhances and… Here's the bottom line, Marcia.
• 19:25
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: When you've strategized your brand, when you've utilized brand strategy, and you have it written down.
• 19:33
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: You follow up with a design. The logo is nothing more than a visual trigger for the thing that you're known for. That's all it is. It's a trigger. Color's a trigger, visuals are a trigger.
• 19:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And I think if you do it properly, and, you know, maybe I'll use myself here a little bit, you know? When I did my Infinite Profit, I mean, this was my third iteration of the company name, you know, and the second… and the most recent one was because someone rolled into a town with a similar name and wouldn't back down.
• 20:06
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Which was very disheartening. But it's like, I… I was trying to think, what's the feeling behind it, right? What are… what is my value? What is the ultimate result?
• 20:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: that my clients get by working with me. And I think I went through something similar, but, you know, obviously not to the extent that I think you take your clients through. But I wanted that name to have that impact of the result, right?
• 20:31
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And then the infinity symbol was fun to play with and have a lot of, you know, angles and directions and things that we could do. Not that mine is, you know, perfection on any level, but that was my intention behind it, was to give them kind of a feeling of what you could do when working with me.
• 20:51
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Right, so… so that trigger… and here's where the… I think the through line that people have to understand, if you're running a business.
• 21:00
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: It's largely a messaging problem.
• 21:03
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And look, even when I started, I was like, what the heck is messaging? Like, I didn't even really know what it was. It sounds like this jargon-ish thing, and I had a hard time comprehending because I'm a very visual person, and it is very much, verbally based, if you will. Words-based. And messaging is this.
• 21:20
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: When you know, like I said, who you're talking to, your ideal client, the messaging is the words, the phrases you use that make them take notice. You get their attention, and they do one thing. They're exposed to it, and they go.
• 21:35
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: They're for me. They get me. And it's through the messaging that they get that feeling. And so, when you have that messaging down pat… now, you should have an overarching message.
• 21:45
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: for your audience. That way, you are properly niched down so they feel like you're speaking to them. And niching is a whole other topic, I realize. But when you talk about infinite profit, and you talk about profit.
• 21:59
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: you know, I'm sure you can help.
• 22:02
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: businesses.
• 22:04
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Just purely do massive revenue.
• 22:09
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: But when you talk about profit, you're very specific in what you're doing for businesses, because there are people who go, our company does $5 million a year.
• 22:19
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But you're probably spending four and a half to get there.
• 22:21
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: $50,000 in profit, right? So what's the flex there? There's no flex. If you're not profitable, you're going out of business, so then you won't have anything to talk about anyway.
• 22:31
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But when you hammer that message, Marcia, so when you hammer profiting.
• 22:35
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Profit. Build profit. Boost profit. Infinite Profit.
• 22:39
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Well, guess what? If somebody's like, man, our company's doing well, but we're not making any money, we gotta call Marcia, we gotta call Infinite Booster, right? So, you become the go-to person in their mind. Why? Because you own the profit space, and businesses need to own a message so that they become
• 22:56
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: A splinter in people's minds when it's time to make a move.
• 23:00
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it. It's… it really does… I mean, thank you for shining on mine, you know? But I think that that's really important, and when you're talking about it, like, I… I consult with people all the time that, you know, they're looking at, you know.
• 23:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I believe that when you build a business from day one, you should know how to… how you're going to exit that business as well, right? So, like, coming up and saying, Marcia and Sons, right? You know, as the name of my company, is something I can't sell at the end. So it's the same thing with that branding.
• 23:33
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: What are you building, and how long will it last, and what are your intentions and goals with this company?
• 23:39
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And I think it all… all comes down to the way that you… the way that you build…
• 23:44
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: the image of the company, right? And the look, the sound, the feel, the results that the audience, your ideal client is going to get, right? And I think that that's super important, and it is all done by branding subconsciously.
• 24:01
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Yeah, so you said something very key there that, unfortunately, most people will never reconcile with.
• 24:07
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Long term.
• 24:09
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Branding is a long game. Now, my experience is, you know, when I… so I had my first company, which, when you talk about, you know.
• 24:18
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Marcia & Sons, or whatever. Naming your company after yourself is, in my opinion.
• 24:23
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Nothing you could do.
• 24:24
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: One of the worst things you could do, right? So, in the beginning, my business had my name in it, and it said something very generic, and I had a business, but I didn't have a brand, and that's when I realized, my gosh.
• 24:36
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: I'm struggling for profitability because I'm so generic, so mainstream, so polished, and it's not really who I am. But when I ran myself through the brand strategy process that I developed, by the way, learning from some of the greats in the world.
• 24:48
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Out the other side came…
• 24:51
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: who I really am, how I really approach it, my thoughts and my philosophy around building a profitable business and a strong brand came out, and I 4X'd my revenue
• 25:03
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: along with my profit, in just a matter of months after launching the real brand that I had, I had to rip everything down. So you can do it fast, but…
• 25:12
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: That being said, that was an early leap that I made. Yeah, but in importance.
• 25:19
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Sure.
• 25:19
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Build your brand over time, so that over time, your brand will build your business for you. And that's the thing, it's a long-term thing, because you were right. You don't want to make short-term decisions that just sound good. They have to make sense in the long run.
• 25:39
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: It's… this is so important, and I love your example of… of how you were able to leap at a certain phase in your business because you did the work, right? You set up the framing, and you made yourself visible
• 25:55
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: A to your ideal client, but then you also said and did the right things that brought them in. So we're not saying, oh, if you just build a brand, they're going to come, right? Wrong. Like, miles wrong.
• 26:08
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But it is part of it that when you're in that… that slew of however many people show up on the Google name, or on the Google list, or… or… God.
• 26:20
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: remember the phone book, right? You used to go back through the phone book and find people, right? You're looking for something that is going to attract you and repel other people, and if you do it right.
• 26:33
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And you rebrand and fix that, which is always possible.
• 26:38
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: then you're attracting the people that want to work with you, and then you're not coming in going, well, I'm the lowest, cheapest, and can do it the fastest for you. I'm maybe the… not quite the highest, but I'm in a higher caliber. I deliver what you're needing, and I deliver it in a way that you want it.
• 26:56
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: They're gonna pay the money!
• 26:59
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Yeah, so if you want to really attract people to you.
• 27:03
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And let's just, you know, assume you've gone through the brand strategy process. What you come out with on the other side as an individual, as the person driving the business, is a clarity and a confidence that allows you to show up in
• 27:16
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Networking events, or wherever, online, doesn't really matter. And get your message across in a clear and confident way.
• 27:24
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: So that people go, man, I like what she has to say. I want to learn more about her, and they enter your world. They, you know, they follow you on LinkedIn, they go to your website, they sign up for your email list.
• 27:38
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And they get your philosophy, your approach, coming at them all the time because they like it, it makes sense to them. And as long as… look, this is all assuming you're good. If you're not good, go get skills, man. You gotta go get the skills, but if you're good.
• 27:52
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Well, and this doesn't always apply to those that are in, like, urgent need, like, I need, like, HVAC, my heater shut off, it's snowing, I need you now, right? They're looking for who can get out there the fastest, right? But for the rest of us in business that don't have immediate buying triggers.
• 28:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: They're shopping, and they're looking, and they're trying to find that connection, like you just brought out.
• 28:16
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Yes, so what you're doing in… so, let's just be clear. So, branding is the strategy. You create the brand. Marketing is the amplification of your brand, so when you see me on LinkedIn, and you see my content and all that, that's the amplification of my brand. I'm not building my brand there. My brand is built…
• 28:34
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: in everything I do, but it's amplified there, so what happens is people follow along for a period of time, because
• 28:41
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Most people don't make knee-jerk decisions regarding business, right? To hire somebody, spend thousands of dollars. So, what they do is they follow along for a while, and here's where branding just absolutely shines. A person who is entering the buying mode, right, because we don't know when people are going to buy. You can't time the stock market, you can't time when somebody's gonna buy.
• 29:03
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You just have to be there when they make the decision, and here's what happens.
• 29:07
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: People wrestle with the pain in their business, the pain in their life, for months on end.
• 29:12
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Until one day, they're laying in bed at 10 o'clock at night, they're with their spouse, and they're about to go to sleep, and they go, I can't take it anymore. I've gotta get this solved.
• 29:22
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: tomorrow morning, I'm calling, and if your name doesn't pop up in their head, you lost. But branding embeds itself, it burns itself in people's brains, so that in the quiets of their mind, when they decide to make a decision, and they're not online, and they're not being pitched.
• 29:39
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Your name comes to the top because you made an impression on them that lasted, and that is the beauty of getting the person to buy when they are ready, and when they come to you, they're already sold.
• 29:52
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That is…
• 29:53
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: fantastic description of how a brand plays and impacts the buying decision, because we all know, years ago, used to be they had to see you 7 or 10 times before they made a decision. Now, with the onslaught of social and marketing and just, like, the phones, and we're hit thousands of times, they need to see you 20 to 30 times.
• 30:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: before that cements into them. That's marketing amplification, as you described, of that brand that you built that is…
• 30:25
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: narrowing you down to just a few. When it comes to that decision, I promise you, you're probably not the only one on their mind, but they're between you and somebody else, right? Don't you want to be in the top 2 or 3?
• 30:37
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Yeah, for sure.
• 30:38
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah!
• 30:40
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Absolutely. So, Rob, this is fantastic. I love this conversation, because it's so important, and it's a fresh way of looking at branding that's not…
• 30:50
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: your logo, and your tagline, and the graphics that you use, and all the stuff that really doesn't matter anymore today, right? It's the meat and potatoes of what's behind the brand, and how it actually impacts
• 31:06
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: the buying decision that your buyers are making, right? And you want to be in that top 2 or 3 when they're making that decision.
• 31:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Where can listeners find out more about you? Go get your book, you know, and just really start looking and making 2026 the time where they're gonna…
• 31:25
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Shift and take off.
• 31:26
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: So, yeah, so for your listeners, I have a gift, so I did, you know, release my book, Don't Fear the Brand, The Art of Building a Strong Brand That Attracts, last year, in December, just a few months ago. And it is available on Amazon, but I'm gonna give it to your listeners for free. If they go to BuildStrongbrands.com…
• 31:44
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: slash free book, all one word, free book. They'll get a digital download of the book.
• 31:50
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: And it's gonna make a big impact, and the reason I wrote it was not just because I wanted to call myself an author, it's my first book, I'm not a… I'm not an author per se, but the message that's in here helped me so much, I felt like I had to share it, because nobody, Marcia, is talking about the fear
• 32:08
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: That is stopping grown people from making decisions that would change their life for the better.
• 32:13
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it, and it's a great book. I have a copy myself sitting right here. It's a great book. It's been… it's really impactful. Yes, it's story-driven, which will help it make it easier to read and be more enjoyable, but I think the…
• 32:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: the thought behind it, and the experiences that you went through, and why these things got in the way, are perfect lessons for someone to read. And it's a quick read. It's an easy read to follow along with, so I encourage listeners to go get that again. And what's the link again, one more time?
• 32:45
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: It's buildstrongbrands.com slash free book, all one word. Awesome. And of course, you could always find me on LinkedIn, that's where I spend every morning. I'm there for a couple of hours in the morning and throughout the day. If you want to DM me or just follow my content, you could always reach… that's where you can communicate and find all my good stuff there.
• 33:02
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Love it. Well, we love LinkedIn. It's been a… it's a really impactful place for businesses, so I like it. Wow. All right, listeners, thanks for tuning in today. I hope you picked up some valuable insights and actionable ideas that'll help you make your business more profitable.
• 33:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And I know that aligning your brand and the way that Rob described the brand, not updating your logo, but
• 33:27
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Really getting that dialed-in messaging and understanding who you are, what you are, and what you deliver, and the results that you deliver is going to make such a headway for you in this year to turn that business direction positive for you, so you can make more profit, right?
• 33:45
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Alright, before you go, if you're ready to bring in more of the right clients and keep more of what you earn, then go grab my free Profit Booster Growth Map. It's a GPT I created, it gives you a really great insight on 3 top moves that will grow your revenue and stop those profit leaks.
• 34:03
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: fast. You can get it for free, there's no sales pitch behind it, it's just a really valuable, report that comes out. You can go get it at ProfitBooster.biz.
• 34:13
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And don't forget to subscribe! You don't want to miss future shows! You can always find Profit with a Plan on any of your favorite podcast players. We're looking forward to more great profitable strategies on next week's show. So until then, make your plans and profit with them. Thank you so much, Rob.
• 34:30
  Rob Genovesi | Brand Builder: Thank you for having me, Marcia.