Personal Branding for People Who Hate Self-Promotion | Vanessa Errecarte

About the Episode

I know many of you job seekers know the importance of branding. (LinkedIn, resume, how we show up to interviews). The concept is there, but the execution is difficult.

My next guest Vanessa Errecarte tells us that self-promotion doesn’t have to be stressful, time-consuming, or inauthentic. In fact, she teaches one of the nation’s only MBA courses on personal branding and her new book, Valuable & Visible: Redefining Personal Branding by Leading With Impact Over Image, rejects legacy definitions of personal branding focused on self-promotion and instead shows how to build a service-based, credible, and authentic digital reputation that can help you achieve your wildest professional goals.

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Personal Branding for People Who Hate Self-Promotion | Vanessa Errecarte [Episode Transcript]

And I know many of you job seekers know the importance of branding. We’ve talked to this podcast about getting our resumes improved and getting our LinkedIns optimized and how we really show up to interviews. The concept is there, the concept is there, but oftentimes it still feels uncomfortable and the execution is difficult. My next guest, Vanessa Ericarte, tells us that self-promotion doesn’t have to be stressful, time-consuming, or inauthentic. In fact, she teaches

One of the nation’s only MBA courses on personal branding, in her new book, Valuable and Visible, Redefining Personal Branding by Leading with Impact Over Image, rejects legacy definitions of personal branding focused on self-promotion. Instead, it shows how to build a service-based, credible, and authentic digital reputation that can help you achieve your wildest professional goals.

So today we’re gonna be talking about personal branding, and this message is for those who might feel uncomfortable, most you might even hate self promotion. I know I always did. And this will help you feel really a sense of comfort when you hop on LinkedIn. So without further ado, this is episode four two of the Career Warrior Podcast. All right, Vanessa, welcome to the show. How you doing?

Vanessa Errecarte (01:44.856)
Thank you so much. I’m doing well. Thank you for having me. I I absolutely love your work. You have been my workout buddy in my ears often. So I am I love being here and and thanks again for having me.

Chris Villanueva (01:52.987)
Nice.

Nice, that means so much. I wanna open up with a hotbed question here. What is the biggest mistake you believe job seekers are making when it comes to personal branding?

Vanessa Errecarte (02:08.929)
Yes. pretty much from the day we enter kindergarten or sooner we are taught to apply to things in life. We’re taught to color inside the lines, all that. And when we do that, we lose our distinction.

We become more of the same. These days in 2026, we talk about AI sameness, right? But this has happened to us as humans for decades. This is not a new issue, and we think that that’s actually a good thing when we go out to apply to a job. And yeah, you don’t want to get too crazy with the resume, right? Some of these documents are intended to be the same, which is what we all complain about. How do we really stand out with this one document, right? So when it comes to building a personal brand, that’s

Your time to be distinctive. So instead of saying going online and in person and saying what you think people want to hear for the job you’re seeking, you need to kind of find that middle ground between yes, show your competence, but take this opportunity of building this personal brand to also show your distinction. Because we all have seen those people side by side where, and sometimes I hate this is actually my pet peeve when you see.

Two people, and they’re like same age, same experience, one might even have more than the other, right? A little bit, or a little more knowledge, or whatever.

Chris Villanueva (03:25.213)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Errecarte (03:32.044)
And you see the one person just going for it, and there seems so distinctive, so interesting, right? This is not magic. Like they learned how to do that just like they potty trained, just like they learned how to talk, just like they learned how to walk, right? We’re not born leaders, we’re not born distinctive, right? We can learn this, and I think some people think some people are special, some people aren’t. So I’m gonna put my head down, work hard, and really show them that I can do everything they need me to do. And I think that is the biggest mistake.

Chris Villanueva (03:45.894)
Right.

Vanessa Errecarte (04:02.027)
we can make in 2026, we will get looked right over.

Chris Villanueva (04:04.945)
That’s so good. Yeah, I’ve I’ve I mentioned it in past episodes. and I’m not I’m not trying to knock AI all the time, but that’s that’s truly one of the risks is by using these tools and relying on them too much, is you’ll get the same sort of language or style or flair that ChatGPT might use and recruiters are seeing kind of the same thing over and over again. I know a lot of people when they look on LinkedIn or when I look on

You know, for example, Instagram and I’m seeing like events being promoted. I’m seeing kind of like the same style. and that it

Vanessa Errecarte (04:41.099)
What do you mean, like short sentence, short sentence, short sentence?

Chris Villanueva (04:44.761)
Exactly. Yeah. Or just the event posters that ha are just like chock full of text and information. So a lot of that sameness that we’re talking about, that’s it’s a serious issue. And job seekers really need it’s it’s tough, but we need to find ways to stand out and and and find that uniqueness. So I think that’s a good point. So we’ll dive into your branding advice. I think that’s gonna be very useful for those who know it’s important.

Vanessa Errecarte (04:50.326)
Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (05:13.527)
Ready?

Chris Villanueva (05:14.791)
But they str they might struggle with doing that. But I want to hear what’s like your favorite branding tip when it comes to people who hate self promotion?

Vanessa Errecarte (05:24.385)
Well, remember what a brand is. Brands so we have products, and if we if that alone sold what we needed to sell as corporate brands, brands wouldn’t exist. So Nike only exists to sell the shoes and the equipment. And if Nike could, like I said, sell that without the brand, it would be a lot cheaper for them. So brands exist for the customer, for the relationship with the customer.

Chris Villanueva (05:50.822)
Yes.

Vanessa Errecarte (05:51.254)
We get wonky when we put personal in front of brand. And I have been in marketing my entire career. I am the type of person where I’m like, put me behind the camera and let me grow other people, right? And so I get it. Like self-promotion is ick. I hate it. I hate it. I want my work to speak for itself. And we’ve been told that, right? Which is also untrue and unfair to tell people. and so when I tell people like about personal branding and when I teach it.

In this course that I’ve developed, I tell people from the start, I tell students, put your shoulders down, you know, take your tongue off your palate, or whatever the gurus say about relaxing, and don’t think about yourself. Picture right in front of you, right now, someone who you could help with something. Who’s someone in your life that’s struggling with something?

Bonus points if it’s related to your profession, but just do this exercise first. Who’s someone that you can help with something? Because that’s what the best corporate brands do. You don’t actually care how the air technology is made in Nike shoe, right? But I’m 44 years old and now and I love running. And now I’m starting to think about, geez, I want to be able to run for a long time. I don’t want to be like the people who are like, man, running used to be great, and now my knees and now this and that. And so for me, I’m like, I want to know that I can rely on the shoe that’s gonna keep me safe from injury.

Chris Villanueva (06:58.333)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Errecarte (07:14.709)
Keep me safe from like those chronic long-term shin splint type things, that kind of stuff, right? And so if a brand can communicate that to me, I kind of don’t care that much about the product, and that’s what a personal brand is, too. Like, I’m a human and I could tell you that, like, I’ve gotten these awards and I have all these degrees, and you know, here’s who here’s who I am in that way, but you don’t actually care, you’re really busy, and I mean it’s not that you’re you know a selfish person or whatever, it’s just that.

Chris Villanueva (07:19.004)
Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (07:44.602)
you have a lot going on in your life and with your loved ones that you want to do better. And so unless I’m signaling that I can help in some way, like the best corporate brands do, you’re gonna scroll on by because I’m talking about my product instead of my offer. So when you talk about the offer, that’s when the relationship’s formed. I mean it’s how we yeah.

Chris Villanueva (08:04.207)
Okay. I I wanna dive into what that might look like for a job seeker and like how that would play out on LinkedIn, for example, because that is so brilliant. I think for me, when I hear that, I think the pressure is off of me to look like a self inflated idiot. ‘Cause I it just like I it feels like that sometimes when we post on LinkedIn, it’s just like, like look how awesome I am and I I don’t want people to get that impression of like ho look how awesome I am.

Vanessa Errecarte (08:14.155)
Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (08:21.345)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Errecarte (08:27.509)
Yes.

Chris Villanueva (08:33.821)
Because the focus is on me in that mistake. You know, I’m thinking about what I can do to look great and attractive when the reality is we need to be focusing on the problem that the other person would be solving. And in this context that would be the hiring manager, correct? Or is that is that different?

Vanessa Errecarte (08:48.715)
Yes.

Vanessa Errecarte (08:53.909)
Th so this is where it gets a little tricky because again, you know, this whole concept of stop applying

Chris Villanueva (08:56.508)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Errecarte (09:00.469)
We think it might be the hiring manager, but I always talk about secondary audiences having their place in personal branding as well. So, an example I give, I always relate things to corporate branding because I think when we do that, we kind of remember the discipline of branding. And that’s important to do because that’s the whole point is using what we know works in branding and marketing to form the best relationships personally too. I think we’ve lost sight of that because we try to copy what other people do on the internet.

Chris Villanueva (09:09.081)
Okay.

Chris Villanueva (09:30.14)
Yes.

Vanessa Errecarte (09:30.336)
What other people do on the internet are exactly as you said. Like I open up LinkedIn and people are so excited to update me about their random certifications, right? And they don’t like it either, and they’re getting exhausted by it. And so Lululemon, for example, never marketed to men for the first several years of the existence of their company. But they had a men’s section and it was small. And now if you walk into any Lululemon store, it’s equal.

Chris Villanueva (09:38.076)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Villanueva (09:41.468)
Right.

Vanessa Errecarte (09:55.156)
But they did that without marketing to men because they knew that that was a powerful secondary audience that the men were finding out from the women in their lives about this brand. And so they invested heavily in who they needed. Isn’t that funny? And so we see brands that do this, right? How many times have you noticed a brand that might not be speaking directly to you, but you’ve noticed the utility of it and you’ve gotten drawn in? Or someone’s told you about it because they’re an ideal audience but they think it works for you too. So your brands are not aspirational.

Chris Villanueva (10:04.616)
I didn’t know that. That’s cool. Yeah.

Chris Villanueva (10:15.901)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Errecarte (10:25.039)
So when you think about who people want to hire, they are not hiring someone who’s excited to learn things. And they are not hiring someone who is sharpening their skills in a certain area, right? They want to hire that person that’s going to help them make the organization better, that has already learned all of these things and already has these skills that are going to make their organization amazing. And so you need to speak to people, you need to help people on your level.

Chris Villanueva (10:39.902)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Errecarte (10:51.679)
When Coke launched, it was a tonic, so they were selling a medicine. They didn’t say someday I’m gonna sell Coke Zero. They didn’t, you know, and it would have meant nothing to people. So

Figure out something you can help with that, and who are you gonna teach? So let’s say you want to move up in sales, how can you teach an aspiring salesperson to make a more natural close? And then that secondary audience that’s going to notice you is that hiring manager. And this is why I tell my students: if you have a personal brand that’s way different than what you do as a profession, but you can relate it in some way, go with the passion. I have so many different case studies of these cool brands that at first you would say,

This is what they’re talking about online most of the time and it doesn’t really have to do with their job, but then they connect it well and it does make them a better leader or it does make them a better product manager and we can get into that later. But the hiring manager, secondary audience, usually.

Chris Villanueva (11:48.063)
Okay. That makes so much sense. And that’s how it would come across as natural. And so you’re telling me that I shouldn’t just be using LinkedIn when I am on the job search and just posting about I need a job, this is me right now like kind of like off and on kind of thing. This should be more natural and more flow more in some sort of way, correct?

Vanessa Errecarte (11:53.377)
Yes.

Vanessa Errecarte (12:11.393)
Yes, I t I am a fan of the long game. And that’s where as far as the job search goes, I think the personal brand, that should just be part of everything you do in 2026. Because w when you think about this week, you know, we all on Sunday evening we’re sifting through the Sunday scaries and we’re thinking about where we need to show up.

what we need to be prepared for in certain meetings, how we’re going to respond to things, maybe what we need to wear on certain days, all of those kinds of things, right?

But we don’t give any thought to how we’re gonna show up online for the week. Yet we’re spending over eight hours a day online. Eight hours, three minutes average a day in the US is what we spend online if we’re professionals. And so then we like eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, you know, get distracted for a little bit, you know, with chores. We’re online more than we’re in person, but we never think about routine ways to show up there when that’s how we plan our in person lives all the time. So I always say I like people to strive for.

least one thought leadership post a week on LinkedIn. And I can talk to you later about the formula of that post. But another thing is you should control your identity online too, because in person right now, like I spoke with you before we got on the show and I’m having a delightful time. Really excited to be here on the show. But if the Davis Police Department texted me right now and said your identity’s been stolen, you to come down and talk to us, I’d be like, peace out Chris. This is the most important thing to me. I gotta go solve this.

Chris Villanueva (13:20.093)
Okay.

Vanessa Errecarte (13:47.15)
online, we do nothing to protect our identity or even claim it. Very few people own their first and last name as a URL. And so once you’re doing like weekly thought leadership posts on LinkedIn, that’s a lot of content for a very simple personal website. And again, professionals just don’t do this or have this, but it elevates you so much and it allows you to own your own brand online.

Chris Villanueva (14:09.436)
Yeah. I wanna talk about the okay, first of all, let me take a side question here, ’cause I know it’s not all about LinkedIn. I know that’s a big focus on on the work, but where your personal brand shows up in terms of a a channel. We think of like marketing channels, like the different ways. where where do we show up with a personal brand beyond just LinkedIn?

Vanessa Errecarte (14:17.868)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Errecarte (14:29.973)
Yes, so I think that it should be very incremental because we don’t wanna give up on it, and I think that’s the biggest challenge, right? We put our personal stuff last.

It’s like accountants put their own taxes last. I know for my consulting business, I put my own marketing last, right? so we want it to be doable. So I always say if you can start with that LinkedIn post a week, a very formulaic thought leadership post, after two months, you have enough to the very next thing I do.

Chris Villanueva (14:49.363)
Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (15:03.871)
Is again have that URL, make a simple website. Simple websites convert better. too much information is distracting, etc. It takes longer to purchase. We know this in corporate branding, so very simple. And those eight thought leadership posts become blog posts. And people say, like blogs, we don’t live in 2005. But here’s the thing we want to train the internet as a whole on who we are. We want to take control of that. And so you have, you know, all the crawlers on.

On the search engines, they’re gonna go look at what’s scrubbable, those APIs that are scrubbable. So they’re not even seeing what you’re writing on LinkedIn. So you’re forming this whole brand on LinkedIn, you’ve got to bring it to the the rest of the internet world as well. And then I say something controversial as well. Take that same post. Okay, take that same post and please jump in. I get very excited, so you need to like jump in whenever and be like, okay, Vanessa, stop, next question, but

Chris Villanueva (15:42.29)
Right.

Chris Villanueva (15:50.642)
This is great. Yeah, keep going. Yeah.

Chris Villanueva (16:01.032)
Keep going.

Vanessa Errecarte (16:01.901)
Also, I say put the same thing on Instagram as well. Because Instagram has become a place where since 2024 you see a lot more thought leadership on there. And a recent survey that was just reported on by social media today has said that over 60% of people go to Instagram to find brands. And so I think that’s also a great place to go. And putting the same thing.

Chris Villanueva (16:07.815)
Okay.

Chris Villanueva (16:26.92)
Would you s have that same advice for senior leaders versus somebody who is a younger generation Gen Z millennials? Do you believe across the board Instagram is a good channel for those job seekers?

Vanessa Errecarte (16:38.305)
Yes, I’m seeing actually so much more of that on Instagram. You see these like it it’s almost more noticeable too because you see these people that you know are in their office and maybe look kind of old school and then they’re they go face to camera for a second, educate you on something, and they become a really cool mentor and friend. So yes, all ages.

Chris Villanueva (17:00.862)
Cool. You’re giving it yeah, that th I just this is advice and like I’ve worked, you know, out of the the the thousands of people that we’ve worked with at Let’s see Graham, I’ll tell you like most of them are not doing the website thing. And I almost wish I did this interview before because it’s such good advice because it

It is so important for how we show up. Like you don’t think people are Googling you or trying to find out information about you and what you know. And I think a website, given the fact that a lot of people are not doing it, is such a good way to distinguish ourselves and our personal brand. And when the job search comes, you’re gonna you’re gonna look great.

Vanessa Errecarte (17:25.205)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Errecarte (17:34.869)
Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (17:38.796)
Well, and did you see that article in the New York Times end of April where it said Tim Cook’s retiring from Apple and John Turnus is the next favored guy for the CEO role? And then they wrote about who John Turnus was, and I felt so bad for him because

Chris Villanueva (17:51.752)
Mm-mm.

Vanessa Errecarte (17:56.47)
John Turnus is actually the guy who my daughter’s 12 and so just got a phone for junior high, right? And you know how we have like most of us have these three dots on the back of our phone for the camera. But John Turnus is the guy at Apple who said, I’m gonna make an iPhone that also has like a lesser camera, like the one dot, right?

Chris Villanueva (18:15.185)
Yep, this one right here. Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (18:16.715)
Yes, so you can’t take a point five selfie. And so my daughter said to me, She goes, Mom, just don’t get me the kid phone. And I’m like, the kid phone? What’s the kid phone? And she’s like, I want the three dots because I want to take the 0.5 selfie. And I’m like, that is so cool. John Turnis, like, created a product suite for the first time out of this iPhone that’s never had a product suite. But then a sentence in the New York Times about John Turnis, when they described his skills, they said, now Apple just needs to decide if they

Chris Villanueva (18:26.183)
Mm.

Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (18:46.719)
another deft manager, which sounds bad, but we know that’s a great manager that can keep the ship sailing, keep the people happy, keep the profit going, like Tim Cook did. But the Senate said, do they want another deft manager or an innovator? But no one ever told John Turnus that they he needed to teach people to say and.

that he needed to position himself on, hey, as this engineer that that worked within Apple, I made this huge shift to a product suite with this one little change. That’s innovative. You know, so it’s like we need to, we need to take charge and train people who we are.

Chris Villanueva (19:21.811)
So this episode is for per people who hate self-promotion, personal branding. and already just listening to this episode so far, we’ve gotten we’ve given you some things, or Vanessa’s given you some really cool things that you can do. One thing that I felt people might be uncomfortable with is the thought leadership post. And I just know that from after giving talks and sometimes people just genuinely don’t know what to say. do you have any advice for people on just how to get started?

Vanessa Errecarte (19:26.551)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Villanueva (19:49.647)
And brainstorming what to say in that thought leadership post.

Vanessa Errecarte (19:53.358)
Yes, absolutely. So first you have to be a thought leader to make a thought leadership post. And so being a thought leader is saying something we haven’t heard before. That’s when we elevate someone to expert, right? If you tell me the sky is blue, I might scroll on by.

Chris Villanueva (20:08.03)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Errecarte (20:08.097)
But if you tell me we’ve gotten it all wrong because we ignore half the time when we say the sky is blue, I’m gonna stop and be like, this is an interesting person with something to say. Tony Robbins says knowledge is not power. Knowledge is potential power, action is power. He’s signaling to us that he’s gonna teach you how to take action with your knowledge. And that if you just think knowledge is power, you’re wrong, and that’s why your life is stagnant, right? He’s Mr. Life Coach, we know this. So, how do we think about that for ourselves? It’s actually embarrassing.

Easy. It’s just that no one teaches this. And I think it needs to be in 2026 an academic discipline for everyone. Because again, it’s not a secret. You can be distinctive too. So first, there’s the T I truth framework. This is what I have people follow. First, there’s the T, and that’s what does everybody think? What are the tropes in your industry or whatever it is you want to talk, you know, do your thought leadership about? So you want to kind of find a theme to your thought leadership each week. We don’t

Chris Villanueva (21:07.857)
Okay. Okay.

Vanessa Errecarte (21:08.001)
it to be all random because again we come back to brands for that specificity.

Chris Villanueva (21:11.871)
And that helps the job search too, of course, because we’re applying for specific jobs.

Vanessa Errecarte (21:16.289)
Yes. And you know, I even had a student once who was a food blogger, but she themed her food blog into how to manage the business better with certain things. So she would talk about ingredients like, hey, you know, the menu’s not expensive because you see they’re using this across all these recipes. So she did had a really neat way of relating it to business and she got a promotion at Comcast to pro project manager, yeah, and and with her food blog, right? So just name it.

Chris Villanueva (21:39.145)
So cool. That’s so cool. The Venn diagram of your your true passion and your career. Like I love that. The intersection. That’s so cool. Yeah. Boom. Love it.

Vanessa Errecarte (21:48.46)
Yes, in fact, that’s chapter two of the book is like personal, professional, personal brand. and so you know, you want to try to relate something, you know, if it is your passion, to the work. But first, what does everybody in this industry think? So everybody thinks personal branding is about you. Okay. R, what’s the real problem? The real problem is when you think personal branding is about you, you’ve lost the definition of a brand. Brands are about the customers or your potential audience.

Three is you, understanding of a better solution. I know that to brand yourself in a way that’s memorable on and off the feed, you have to help someone with a problem they have. And you have to show them a new way to solve it. All of a sudden, then you elevate to someone they trust, right? Whenever someone gives us advice, we do it and it works. They gain trust. Trust is what makes us remember people, repeat people, refer people, right? Corporate brands do this, know this, they do it every day.

Chris Villanueva (22:30.153)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Errecarte (22:47.529)
Then you have your other T, and that is tested reasoning. So if we’re going to say personal branding is not actually about you, I’d better be able to back that up with branding theory and evidence, right? I’d better be able to compare someone that is saying a certification on LinkedIn and someone that’s continually helping people with things and say this is why it works better.

This can be empirical research, it can be observation, it can be outcomes from the past, client work, whatever it is, you just have to have something to prove it. Okay. Proof is not difficult, it’s just often overlooked.

And then finally, you have age. And this is what happens a lot. And I tell my students, please don’t forget this part. Call your people to action. So at the beginning of this podcast, I said, picture that person you could help right now by teaching them a different way to do something or a different way to solve their problem.

Chris Villanueva (23:33.503)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Villanueva (23:37.139)
Yeah.

Chris Villanueva (23:41.991)
Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (23:44.214)
Just then I I made you maybe a little bit more comfortable in how you could make posts. And so maybe you gained some trust for me. But you have to ask people to do something and to succeed, has to be small enough that they can do it and succeed, so that they can gain that trust. So that’s how you form distinction. And then what I like to do is instead of using AI for an answer all the time, which 99.99% of people do, be different. AI gets 2.5 billion.

Queries a day so it knows things, knows lots of secrets. Lots of market research for free. So put your truth framework into AI and say, look at my real problem. Give me 40 other real problems I might be missing about this topic. And then you might find five more ways to look at something differently. And that’s it! All of a sudden you’re the most interesting person in the room.

Chris Villanueva (24:36.403)
Yeah.

That’s like you’re that that was another question I had for you in the future, is like how do you use AI within this process? You’re not using it as a replacement of the tool. You’re using it as a how can I go further and just push this to the next level, which I think is a really cool prompt idea. So yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (24:55.083)
Yeah, because then when you prompt it later, like if you do need help with the writing, like I actually think even especially like say English as your second language or something, AI can be a wonderful helper and an equalizer in ways we’ve never had it before, but its job is to give you that common pattern. And so if you think about the way Gemini works, like now it sucks if you’re the first person on Gemini because you’re sandwiched in that first paragraph that no one clicks on with 40 other websites. So if you’re saying the sky’s blue, you’re sandwiched with 40 people that are saying.

Chris Villanueva (25:05.705)
Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (25:25.037)
That and AI’s done its job because most people read that and they’re fine, they’re satisfied. But if you say most people think the sky’s blue, but you’re missing half the time this incredible part about the sky, all of a sudden AI is like, well, shoot, I’m just a machine, so I can’t fit this into that pattern. I’m not reasoning, right? I’m just looking at patterns.

Even though we like to it likes to try to sound like it’s a human. So now I need to put this website on its own line, right? And often those lines that we see after the first paragraph have one distinct link associated. So that’s how we have a chance at actually getting clicked on these days, or even just noticed as like, well, Vanessa thinks this, right? Here’s this first paragraph where personal branding is all about your credentials, your presence, your values, and showing that every day. That’s what everybody thinks. Here’s the second line where

Vanessa’s acknowledging that that’s what everybody thinks, but she’s saying it’s actually about helping people with their problems. And now I have my own line.

Chris Villanueva (26:27.188)
Guys, this is awesome. And Vanessa, I’m I’m hopefully not gonna embarrass you right now, real quick. But listeners, before this show, even Vanessa was asking, like, to tell more about listeners, more about you all, like what problems are you trying to solve? Like she practices what she preaches. And just to hear you talk about just what really what problem are we trying to solve, just making it less about ourselves. I think that’s that’s gotta be the most powerful thing.

Powerful thing I’ve heard today in terms of how to feel less uncomfortable when it comes to branding and self-promotion. it’s something I have to remind myself over and over again is like who am I trying to reach out to right now? What am I trying to solve with this LinkedIn post? And again, if you make it about yourself, it’s just it’s just not gonna work. so yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (27:17.613)
Yeah, it is. It’s so icky. You wanna feel like you know, I when I went to like kind of design this course, I’m like how can I make my students feel how I would feel when I’m posting for a client versus myself, right? And and that’s almost how you feel, because it’s about the audience, you know.

Chris Villanueva (27:29.14)
Yes Yes.

Vanessa Errecarte (27:35.326)
and so I’ll give you one more little thing. Is here’s a formula for those thought leadership posts so that it feels just easy and again not about you. So we remember stories like 30% more than any other type of content. We know this in research, right? It’s because we release that oxytocin when we hear stories. That’s why our kids start like drooling when we read them books and are mesmerized. It’s like that love hormone, right? Like makes us eat the second potato chip, make out longer, all the

Chris Villanueva (27:47.306)
Tell it.

Vanessa Errecarte (28:05.039)
things. So that’s happening when we see that story, right? and so you know two sentence lead-in of of a middle of a story. The internet’s all about the middle ugly part of life, right? Because that’s what we’re in, right? So the middle of that story.

Chris Villanueva (28:06.352)
Hell yeah. Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (28:20.353)
Two sentences. Then you want to segue. I call this your wait what moment. Here’s the counterintuition of you’re missing a lot if you think the sky’s blue. Everyone’s wrong to say that. You know, you’re missing this whole fun thing you can do at night with the stars or whatever it is. Then be really smart and whatever you’re gonna teach someone, think in three to five step increments. If you have six steps, you have two frameworks, and we’re gonna be doing thought leadership posts every week, right? So put it put a framework on it. I just shared with you my truth framework.

It wasn’t my truth framework when I started it. This is another way to use AI. Write out those three to five steps you’re gonna teach and say, let’s put it make this into a framework after a word or the three C’s or whatever you want it to be, but that automatically elevates something. And people are just MSU, as I say to my students, make and shite up. you know, but it works and it elevates it. So, personal story, segue with the wait what moment into why does this matter, and then framework of what you’re gonna teach.

Chris Villanueva (29:11.945)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Villanueva (29:19.124)
Segue.

Vanessa Errecarte (29:20.267)
Them and then I always say video lead in. Hi, I’m Vanessa, and today I’m gonna teach you a way to do personal branding that doesn’t feel icky because it’s not about you, and so then you already have your visual content, and again, just go face the camera, make it ugly, authenticity, and respect the type with it.

Chris Villanueva (29:36.074)
So this is a LinkedIn post that text with a video as a suggestion. So that’s where you Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (29:40.502)
Yeah, so that’s what I encourage people to do. If you need to use like a stock photo or a still photo, don’t let the video intimidate you. It’s just that as far as like search engines and AI goes, first of all, Google owns YouTube. So when you go to make your own website, you embed that short little lead-in and it’s good for your SEO because you have to use YouTube to embed. And then on social, we know that video goes farther too. And so it’s just easy because your written work is gonna do it for you. A lot of people go to make videos. I actually have

Chris Villanueva (29:54.056)
It’s all about the video. I yeah, you’re right.

Vanessa Errecarte (30:10.415)
People do it during class in selfie mode and they’re trying to tell me their whole post. And I’m like, no, just say hi, my name is blah blah blah, and today I’m gonna teach you more about personal branding. Make it simple at first. So I call that the VABlog, video and blog, because your post, that post is gonna be kind of blog, blog-like. So it could sound something like this. When my son was five days old, I had a client meeting, and my client actually asked me if I even liked my son.

That was when I knew that things had changed and that just trying to be the best at what we do does not necessarily elevate us to the best at who we are and where we can go in business. Ever since then, I’m on a mission to teach people that personal brands are not the enemy. Here are three steps to feel more comfortable. First three steps you can do to feel more comfortable in building your personal brand. And remember the how to act. Try step one and let me know how it goes.

Chris Villanueva (31:06.56)
Cool. And okay s yeah yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (31:08.555)
And then you’re all curious about me too, right? You wanna come back to me and you’re like, what happened? Why did they ask her that? You know, like you wanna hear about that meeting more, right?

Chris Villanueva (31:14.91)
Yeah.

Yeah, y’all, this is not rocket science. This is i it’s it’s something that people just don’t do, they don’t execute, but this is this is something that should not intimidate you. This is something that is being laid out in front of you. And it’s not all about the applicant tracking systems, it’s not all about gaming the system to get noticed. Like you need a good personal brand, you need to be posting because eventually hiring manager is gonna check out your LinkedIn and guess what? They’re gonna see whether or not you are relevant for the job.

So personal branding is so important and it’s something I just people skip over all the time. So thank you so much for breaking that down and making it just interesting for people. I think that’s the the stories, how we look, how we change a perspective is so valuable. Vanessa, I’m ask you Mm. Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (32:04.907)
And if you don’t want to tell the story about you

Tell it about someone you helped once. You know, I have a student who has such he was just in my last personal branding class, and I will never forget him because he he grew up in India and he volunteered at this girls’ school in his rural village. And so, and he had trouble. Like he was like really put not trouble. He was just trying to be very purposeful, I should say, about deciding on his personal brand. So it took him like a lot of iterations to get here. But finally he told me this incredible.

Story about his wai but moment. And he said that part of his job as a volunteer was to help the girls introduce themselves. And he went around to every girl in the school in this one session and said, What do you want to be when you grow up? And he said, The smartest girl that he knew should like go be able to be a doctor in the US or something. He said that she got so bright-eyed when it was her turn, she was ready, she was poised, and she said, I want to be a tailor.

Chris Villanueva (32:55.061)
Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (33:03.659)
And he said at that moment I realized how certain groups can be victims of how they’re raised and where they’re raised. And that now he understands why we need to watch out for that in organizations. Because here was this woman who could do anything. And to her the top thing was being a tailor because that meant she owned a business in her village and was gonna make money the rest of her life.

When he saw all these other things in her. And I’m like, I wanna hire you. I want to hire you, right? Like that relates to anything, you know.

Chris Villanueva (33:29.504)
That’s awesome. Yeah. That is so awesome. so I want to ask you about your book in just one second. but before we transition on over to that, is there anything that you think I’m missing or our listeners just absolutely need to hear when it comes to personal branding?

Vanessa Errecarte (33:50.562)
Yes. I think that everybody is full of baloney and impostors, right? So we all know I mean everyone, right? Like if if we if someone knew it all, if we actually not full of baloney, everyone’s impostors. The people that that are full of baloney that like present themselves as perfect, right, we actually don’t love hanging out with them and we don’t relate to them. Like we’re not gonna linger that much on their posts anyway.

Chris Villanueva (33:58.122)
Okay. Everyone. Cool. Just clarifying.

Chris Villanueva (34:09.076)
Okay.

Vanessa Errecarte (34:20.021)
And it’s and it’s true in the marketing research, right? We may say we prefer the aspirational perfect image, perfect writing, perfect whatever, but we linger on the authentic 20% longer. So our behavior and our intent and our in and our intent are different, but behavior always wins. We know this. I can tell you that I’m a runner, but like last six months I was pregnant with my son back when I wasn’t running. So that marketer better have been looking at my fitness pal data versus what I

I like to do online, right? Okay, behavior versus intent. We are always gonna linger on the imperfect. So don’t worry about feeling like you’re not enough. Because I always say that’s a signal that if you know enough to know what you don’t know, you certainly know enough to be a thought leader, right? I mean, use the truth framework. There are students with no experience and students with decades of experience that this all works for. And so I at 44 years old.

I’m a huge imposter. I feel that way all the time every day. Felt that way before I came on the show, felt that way writing my book, feel that way all the time. I think we all do when we’re like type A, like determined professionals. And so I’m always very open about that because instead of fighting it and thinking of it as a bad thing, I just hope that people can flip that as a signal. Because if you’re using the truth framework and you’re thinking about that counterintuitive point of view, it should feel weird to go out there and say.

Chris Villanueva (35:33.142)
Yeah.

Chris Villanueva (35:47.136)
Yes.

Vanessa Errecarte (35:49.768)
Personal branding is not about you. Who am I to say that? Right? That’s a I’m being brave. And so again, like it’s also a signal though that there might be some people that are like personal branding is ick and are losing opportunities that really need to hear it. So that’s the one thing I want to just say: is like, if you’re feeling that way, just like I don’t think it’s ever gonna go away. Just go with it and do the thing.

Chris Villanueva (36:09.942)
Yes.

Chris Villanueva (36:16.447)
I love that. Listeners, you heard it. You don’t need our permission, but we just gave it to you anyway. Go out there, be your authentic self, post on LinkedIn. Don’t be afraid to feel like you’re just an imposter. Cause I felt it too, absolutely, from putting stuff out there myself. And it always, always ends up being okay. Always. And it it it’s worth it. So

Vanessa Errecarte (36:18.443)
Yeah.

Vanessa Errecarte (36:39.019)
And if you feel like you have a small audience, for example, and that makes you feel like an imposter, that’s awesome. I mean, I love it when like someone says that they have good friends and their mom and their audience. That’s a cool lab. They’re gonna kindly tell you what’s working and what’s not, and as your audience grows, you know that best content. And by the way, if you have an audience of 10 and two people are gonna refer you because they’re close to you and trust you, I like that audience much more than a hundred.

Chris Villanueva (36:45.014)
Yeah.

Chris Villanueva (37:04.961)
True.

Vanessa Errecarte (37:05.245)
with no one referring you. And that’s the difference between a personal brand and an influencer. It’s just that only one percent of people consistently posts online. So we see those influencers and we think, okay, we need to show up every day in this perfect way, or we can’t do this, right? But the influencer, nothing against influencers, but I try to make the distinction. If you’re an influencer, you have a career as a media company. And so it is your literal job to show up every day, and you do need to put general content up there.

That appeals to masses of people so that you get masses of followers, so that companies want to exchange posts for money. That’s different than having the credibility of a personal brand and the right people in your audience so that when it does come time for you to have that consulting opportunity or make that pivot, you are noticed by that hiring manager secondarily or whoever it is that’s going to be the principal of that consulting job.

Chris Villanueva (37:59.916)
Makes so much sense. So you wrote this book, Valuable Invisible. I’ll just repeat the title for listeners. Yeah. Well I’m gonna make you do it though, because it’s my show. No kidding. Valuable Invisible, redefining personal branding by leading with impact over image. You’re so good at storytelling, you just brought the importance of storytelling to this podcast episode, but I want to hear the origin story that no one has heard about.

Vanessa Errecarte (38:05.227)
Yeah, but I don’t like talking about it because I don’t like promoting myself. But go ahead, we’ll do the hard thing.

Chris Villanueva (38:28.779)
how you ended up writing this book. Why did you write this book? What triggered it?

Vanessa Errecarte (38:32.799)
Mm-hmm. So when I told my dean, you know, I really think we need a course in this, and and he gave me the go-ahead, when I first started teaching the course, it was so slide-based of my own stuff because I really struggled to find literature at this area that we talked about today, where it’s like, this is not about you. I’m copying. I also teach corporate branding and digital marketing at the UC Davis Business School. So it’s like,

Chris Villanueva (38:56.736)
Right.

Vanessa Errecarte (39:00.095)
It’s kind of that intersection of the best, most efficient parts that you can do in one to three hours a week of both those things. And so I was frustrated because I could only find like the influencer get rich quick stuff or nothing. And again, nothing against that stuff. It just is different than what I was teaching. And so I ran the class like for a few years, and then two people, one is chapter two case study, one’s chapter twelve, they said, You really need to turn this into a book. We want to pass this on, like to people, and you know, they

Chris Villanueva (39:24.577)
Okay.

Vanessa Errecarte (39:30.039)
said these like change your life words right and I’m like okay at first I was like that’s nice flattered but I couldn’t get it out of my head and so so I did I’m and I’m glad that I just did you know because writing a book is hard but here it is

Chris Villanueva (39:43.714)
Yeah. I don’t want to do it anytime soon. but it’s it’s I think like listeners tuning into this this episode who get the importance of personal branding, who wanna put in the effort, like need to get this book because you’re gonna be going and processing the same same ideas but in a different way with more detail.

I am I am a podcast listener as much as I am a reader. I think you need both ways to process the information. So I get excited just thinking about it. But what’s a key takeaway that you hope people get by the time they get to the last chapter?

Vanessa Errecarte (40:06.733)
Mm-hmm.

Vanessa Errecarte (40:23.543)
Key takeaway is take it in increments. So every chapter I’ve put, how long will it take and recap specific exercises? But remember what I said: start with that LinkedIn post a week and just build in your own time. I hope by the time that you get to the last chapter, though, in your head you’re saying, this is stupidly simple. That I

That is my goal. I want this to feel so simple and accessible to you because I want you to do it. And I think that sometimes we put all these this mystery around marketing, and we we forget that it’s about that memorability and that trust, and then you put the right base in place, and that’s what drives growth. You don’t need growth hacks if people are remembering, repeating, and referring to you, but when you forget that or try to take a shortcut, that’s when it starts seeming hard. corporate branding-wise. So I hope

it feels simple. I really, really do. That’s my goal for the readers.

Chris Villanueva (41:20.545)
Awesome. Well, Vanessa, I’m gonna say your name again. Vanessa Ericarte, everyone. She wrote, Valuable Invisible, redefining personal branding by leading with impact over image. Thank you so much for joining us on the show. Just want to hear any last words of advice you have for people who are really struggling with their job searches right now. I try to reach out to those people with every episode. but wondering if you have anything for those folks.

Vanessa Errecarte (41:45.816)
Yes. So if you’re on the job search right now and really struggling, steal a little bit of the truth framework. So part of the job is the res of the resume is to sound like everybody else and I get it. But if you can list all the steps of of what you’ve done and and make it sound like the job description like we know we need to do, please take the liberty of putting one extra bullet point and saying, in this four-step process, I refine step two to do this, most people do this.

Chris Villanueva (41:50.954)
Okay.

Vanessa Errecarte (42:15.759)
And that actually made step four this much more efficient, right? What happens there? You’ve put that counterintuition. And again, on the AI crawlers with your resume, that’s how you earn your online with your resume. Like we were talking about with search engines, right? So now the resume goes, okay, I approve or the resume, the machine approving the resume goes, I approve this resume, but I can’t quite fit it into the approved bucket because it said this extra thing, so a human needs to read it. So go ahead and just copy all of this counterintuition.

intuition and like answer interview questions that way too. I always tell my students stop and think before you answer any question and do the first three steps. What is what do they think what’s the common answer? What’s the real problem with the common answer? And then how can you tie your understanding of a better solution into sure, that’s a great way to do it. I also do it this way and this is why I want to serve you with that.

Chris Villanueva (43:10.018)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your advice and being on the show. I think like for you, I just really appreciated how you are all about what you talk about. Like you’re asking, you know, what do our listeners care about? you bring a sense of like a very, very fun way of explaining things that make branding less intimidating. So that was the whole point of this episode. So I feel like you hit the nail on the head here. And I really appreciate it, Vanessa. Thank you so much.

Vanessa Errecarte (43:37.943)
Thank you. This was so fun. And again, I I love your work and it’s such a special thing you’re doing for people. So thanks so much for having me today.

Chris Villanueva (43:46.242)
Awesome. And listeners, you know what I do. And whenever you’re not jogging, driving, working out, whatever it is, I will link everything that we discussed in this episode in the show notes, including how to get Vanessa’s book, her website, and I might even put together just just

some structure or some notes that will be helpful to kind of review this information. it’s hard sometimes as we l we’re listening to these podcast episodes to soak in everything. So I encourage you, if this episode meant a lot to you, listen to it again. You know, if you are driving, put it on again. Even if you

use the speed up feature. Post this episode on LinkedIn, tag Vanessa, tag myself, and let us know what you got from this episode. and plus it’s another excuse for you to put something on LinkedIn that isn’t just about you. So get going. I think this is going to be so valuable. So again, listeners, thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode and I’ll see you next time.