Start With A Win - Mastering Personal Branding in 2025 / Paige Velasques Budde

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

⚡️FREE RESOURCE: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘞𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘓𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘱?  ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/myleadershipWant weekly leadership content? Go here ➡︎ https://adamcontos.comIn this powerful episode of Start With a Win, host Adam Contos sits down with marketing trailblazer Paige Velasquez Budde to dive into the evolving world of branding and trust in leadership. As corporate credibility dwindles, the modern CEO must rethink their approach—moving beyond faceless logos to create people-driven brands that resonate on a personal level. Paige, the dynamic CEO of Zilker Media, unveils the secrets behind leveraging authenticity, thought leadership, and visibility to build influence and scale a business. If you're ready to discover how trust has become the ultimate currency in today’s market—and how you can harness it to gain a competitive edge—you won’t want to miss this conversation.Paige Velasquez Budde is Partner and CEO at Zilker Media, an Austin-based agency specializing in people-driven branding. Under her leadership, Zilker Media has been recognized as one of Austin’s Fastest Growing Companies and Best Places to Work. A sought-after speaker, she has led workshops for Ernst & Young, Harvard Medical School, The University of Texas athletics, and more.  She has spearheaded marketing strategies for top thought leaders, including New York Times bestsellers Geoff Colvin and Sally Hogshead, and advised major brands like Russell Stover and a2 Milk. Her expertise has been featured in Inc., Texas CEO Magazine, Business.com, and more.00:00 Intro01:40 Key principle is this…04:50 Transition from the brand to this and why it is important…07:15 Two marketing concepts and leaders need a combination!10:18 Leaders need to understand it is about this so they can win.12:41 This can make or break a business!14:01 More able to story tell, the better: Three areas leaders need!19:10 Influencer, how to become a business influencer?22:20 Smallest things make the biggest impact!25:05 This is where a leader starts.30:06 Best way to Start Your Day with a Win!https://zilkermedia.com/===========================Subscribe and Listen to the Start With a Win Podcast HERE:📱 ===========================YT ➡︎ https://www.youtube.com/@AdamContosCEOApple ➡︎ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/start-with-a-win/id1438598347Spotify ➡︎ https://open.spotify.com/show/4w1qmb90KZOKoisbwj6cqT===========================Connect with Adam:===========================Website ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/Facebook  ➡︎ https://facebook.com/AdamContosCEOTwitter  ➡︎ https://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOInstagram  ➡︎ https://instagram.com/adamcontosceo/#adamcontos #startwithawin #leadershipfactory

because there has been so much distrust when it comes to corporate brands, when it comes to leaders of authority. The modern CEO needs to be out there doing the most important things for that role. That's recruiting talent. That's building relationships on behalf of their business. It's relationships with their investors or stakeholders. and they need to be doing that strategically at scale, which means it has to be more visible than what they traditionally thought. Welcome to Start with a Win, where we unpack leadership, personal growth and development,

and how to build a better business. Let's go. How do you build a personal brand? One that will actually build your business? Today, we talk about that on Start With a Win. Coming to you from Area 15 Ventures and Start With a Win headquarters, it's Adam Kantos with Start With a Win.

Today, we're joined by Paige Velasquez, buddy, the dynamic partner and CEO of Zilker Media, an agency that's rewriting the rules of people-driven branding. Under her leadership, Zilker Media has been named one of Austin's fastest growing companies and best places to work. Twice! Paige has shaped marketing strategies for New York Times bestsellers, Fortune magazine

leaders and global brands like Russell Stover. Whether it's speaking at Harvard Medical School or mentoring organizations like the University of Texas Athletics, Paige is a true trailblazer in marketing and leadership. You won't want to miss your insights. Paige, welcome to Start with a Win. Thank you so much, Adam, for having me on. I'm excited for the conversation. Awesome.

I mean, you're doing a lot to grow businesses, help people build their brands, things like that. And one of the key principles behind what you do and your business does is building people-driven brands. What does that mean? That's what you're an expert on here. We want to unpack this with you today. Help us learn what that means.

That's right. Really, people-driven brands is focused on, how do we take leaders take key opinion leaders from organizations and how do we make them visible alongside their corporate brand? We've seen a big shift, I would say, the past five years or so in terms of how audiences look at companies and how they facilitate trust. We've seen that trust just in institutions, corporate branding across the board has at an all-time low,

and that started in that COVID timeline. Trust started to decline and it's declined ever since. It's exceedingly harder for the everyday business, and I'm talking small to medium sized businesses that entrepreneurs are growing and scaling to be able to go out and compete against big corporations with larger marketing budgets because they can spend, spend, spend all day. But with these small to medium sized businesses, they have to be scrappy and think, how can we differentiate

really clearly? How can we win in this environment where leading with our logo, when we're going to logo to logo with big corporations, we just can't win. And so this idea of people-driven branding is creating that unique differentiation with people, your most unique asset. As entrepreneurs, as we start to build brands alongside our companies, and not in front of, not behind, and that's really important to understand, it's alongside the company, we start to build a competitive advantage that others cannot replicate. And that's this idea with the people driven brands is incorporating that factor, that

unique differentiation that others aren't able to replicate. That's great. I mean, and tell me if I'm wrong in this, but it kind of reminds me of like my tire store. So like if my wife and I need to get the tires changed on our car, I don't say call the tire store. I think, all right, I'm going to call Steven or Russ. That's right.

And because those were my people there. And that seems like, you're right, during COVID, we started seeing businesses fade into the background. And it seems like there were leaders either leading or hiding one or the other. That's right. And if they were leading, we knew their name and we wanted to do business with them

because it was so humanized in this big chaotic world. Why did we revert to, is there some nature or nurture type aspect to this? Why did we revert to wanting to deal with the people again instead of trusting the brand? Because I've always been a big player in the brand space. I ran Remax, which everybody knows the red, white, and blue hot air balloon in real estate.

But they knew their person's name outside of that. So why did we make that transition, and why is that still important? And this transition came alongside mass media as well. The same thing, the same shift has happened. People are increasingly projecting a bias on what they're consuming from a corporate logo they expect to be marketed to and sold to immediately. NAS media, they're realizing, one, we have this bias that we're projecting on typically the traditional outlets, but also we're realizing that it takes an hour of our time to consume a media segment when we're only

looking for five to 10 minutes of what was covered. And that's the rise of the podcast. We can come to your podcast, Adam, and listen to 30, 40 minutes of straight leadership and growth content if that's what we're looking for. And we've started to do that on all sorts of mediums. I would say this past year with the Olympics, I didn't have time to watch it all, but I could go to TikTok and type in Simone Biles and get those quick recaps of it and be able to have conversation about it. It's just been this really interesting shift with that decrease in trust. I will say one thing that I read that just stunned me, but it made a lot of sense after I read it was Edelman, the biggest PR firm in the world.

They do a trust barometer every single year. And the recent one that came out said 74 respondents to this survey said that they trust peers that they see like themselves to the same level that they used to trust scientists, state office holders, leaders of authority. And so there's been this whole shift in dynamic in terms of thought leadership and those that are able to go out and teach and educate and entertain with their content and truly become experts. That has made the, made it a little bit more of a leveling of the playing field when it comes to marketing and branding. So we're talking two marketing concepts here. We have authority, which is expertise and people leading with call it data or knowledge or citations or whatever.

And then we have social proof, which is this interpersonal relationship. So do you, I mean, is it, it's not an either or it's kind of a combination, but it definitely seems like trust leans more into the social proof. Is that correct? Or can we overcome one with the other? Sure. It does need to be a combination. And that's incredibly important that you're balancing that expertise storytelling credibility

alongside the passion, entertainment, getting others to talk about you in a winning way. So it's not all about what you can go out there and project. It's also about who you can involve in your content, whether that's customers that have had an incredible experience with you going out and talking about that and empowering them to do so. And it's also a combination of you being able to put out thought leadership content. So thinking about what's going on in the news that your audience is concerned about? Are there breaking studies that are important for your industry or field? And what are you doing to be on the leading edge of commentary around that and providing analysis and expertise. So there's really a lot of layers

to this. I would say the biggest misconception is you have to be out there promoting yourself and kind of having this personality about you. And really, it should be the complete opposite. Trey Lockerbie So what I'm hearing from you is, you got to be legit, you got to be likable, and you got to be present. That's right. Why aren't businesses doing that? I mean, you guys run a media agency and PR firm. Why aren't we seeing more of that instead of people going,

oh, I'm just going to do some Facebook advertising and throw up my brand? I mean, how do we move from that mindset of I'm afraid to be on, to be me and be on camera or be in my community? How do we get people to cross that line and get a little uncomfortable and start doing this stuff? Absolutely. I'd say that's the biggest thing that we've talked to a lot of leaders and

entrepreneurs about because they come to us saying, hey, my traditional marketing spend isn't working anymore. My ad dollars, my ad spend continues to go up, whether it's Google or Facebook or however they're doing their traditional marketing tactics. And we kind of talk to them and say, absolutely, that's going to continue to rise if that's all you're doing. You're not going to be able to win. You're not going to be able to outspend your competition most of the time if you're a small to medium sized business and you're scaling. And so a lot of it is just making them realize that it's all about this mission-driven thought leadership. It's not about an ego-driven, hey, look at me, building that kind of brand. It's not about putting them as the face of their company.

And that's what has deterred them from doing it. Typically is there, they're very humble leaders. They're all servant leaders. And that's exactly who we love to work with. But there's a misconception that it's helping their company. And the realization is it's actually hurting that you're invisible behind the scenes in this new landscape, the modern CEO needs to be out there doing the most important things for that role. That's recruiting talent, that's building relationship on behalf of their business, it's relationships with their investors or stakeholders. And they need to be doing that

strategically at scale, which means it has to be more visible than what they traditionally thought. I love this. You know, obviously I'm, I'm constantly out there on social media, in podcasting videos on YouTube, things like that, trying to get across some of these key points of leadership development, franchise growth, business development, things like that. And believe it or not, I've actually gotten a call from one of my videos that resulted in a multimillion dollar transaction. And it was because I was present as a leader during,

this was during COVID no less. And people researching our business saw me on YouTube. And I get this phone call, I was actually driving across Kansas in my pickup truck. And the phone rings. And this guy goes, you don't know me, but I watch your videos. And I want to be part of your company.

So I want to bring my company to your company, as a franchise company. That's what you look for is those conversions. So I mean, it actually worked amazingly well, which is why I'm so in love with what you're saying right now, because it works. And for any of our business leaders out there that don't believe it, I encourage you to try it.

You've mentioned a word many times in this conversation so far. That word is trust. It seems like that's the currency that we are playing with in or utilizing, I guess not playing with, but actually utilizing in business now. Why is that something that we always have to keep our eye on? Yeah.

Trust is so important. It can make or break a business internally with your team. It's incredibly important. And trust, from what I have seen, can be so easily broken and it is really hard to gain back. But it's hard to build now on the front end because there has been so much distrust when it comes to corporate brands, when it comes to leaders of authority. You can see just what has happened with the heightened even political landscape,

who do we trust in today's day and age? There's so many people out there, there's so much noise out there, which is why it is more important than ever that you lead with that authenticity, with that passion. If you're out there trying to become someone else, trying to emulate something that you're not, people see through that so quickly and trust is broken. But the more you're able to storytell, do what is natural for you as a leader,

not all leaders are made for videos. Some of them better for writing and some of them better at interview and conversations like this. So don't go out there and do a video where you're reading from a script because that's not going to look authentic. And so just thinking through kind of three areas, what feels authentic to you? What are you passionate about, and then what is your audience going to enjoy? To me, that Venn diagram is where you need to live and spend some time really thinking about what those activities are for you. For a lot of our executives, it's going on interviews like this and having a conversation

or using their platform to feature others and make that a win-win for others around. And that's all relationship building for them, which is incredibly important for their business. But if you're out there trying to fit this mold, again, they're going to see right through that and people are going to become skeptical of what you're saying. Such a great point. Paige, this is an interesting concept because you're talking about the leadership speaking to the audience, whether that audience is customers, consumers, employees, call them entry level employees, all the way up to leadership level. You've got a different voice in leadership level.

You have a different voice to your executive team and your board of directors. I've talked a lot to leaders about what is their voice, who's the target, and what are they saying. How much does that play into building trust? Because it seems like a lot of leaders, if you have a CEO who thinks there's something special and they start talking about governance and succession

planning and things like that, to entry level employees, it's going to go right over their head and they're going to accomplish nothing except probably build distrust in that process. I mean, how do you coach a leader to understand who they're talking to and they'll approach that. That's incredibly important because you want to make sure that you're one, constantly repeating your communication, especially internally with your team, but two, depending on the level of who you're talking to, especially if you have multiple stakeholders in a business, it all comes back to one, understanding your vision at

the end of the day and then being able to convey that to each of those audiences. So a lot of times that starts with you understanding your voice and how to articulate that best. We like to have leaders start with a process called their influence ID. So that's really kind of understanding who they are as a leader, who their voice is. And that's kind of at the very beginning of this process. But throughout that, we have five steps. I think one of the most important things to look at is this step two, which is going to be that 360 look at you as a leader. Getting perspective from each level of your company or each stakeholder that you have and involving them in the process, just give a quick interview with them and ask them about their experiences with you. What has been most impactful in communication with you? What has been most

confusing? Questions like that and having that 360 look will help you translate your communication to each level or each stakeholder of your company. And then from there, of course, you bring it together with some of the goals that you have in mind for the next three to five years. But that 360 approach and making sure you get that feedback, and I love to do this at least once a year, that is really what helps in terms of customizing that communication as a leader. I love that. And for all the listeners, make sure you check out zilkermedia.com pages company here. There are so many resources on your website

that have to do with taking a look at how you're building trust, how you're connecting with people. The blog is really robust, has a lot of great information and guides in it. So I would encourage everybody to check out zilker, Z-I-L-K-E-R, media.com, and which page is the CEO of. Yes. So good information there.

You talked about the influence ID in that last statement. What does it mean to be an influencer? How do we be, you know, you hear the term influencer because you have so many people on like TikTok and things like that. I mean, you could be doing like dances or, you know, saying silly things or pointing at the screen when something's going on and laughing at it.

Who knows? You know, there's influencers in so many different ways. How do we become a business influencer so that people look to us for the solutions that our business provides? Absolutely. I believe this is where the role of a CEO and an entrepreneur is going to this term of becoming a strategic business influencer.

And I love this term because of all the things you just said, you know, it's almost like an oxymoron. It's not about how do you become viral and grow a massive following. It's actually about how do you marry your business strategy with this thought leadership and get the right 500 followers and get in front of the right 500 people that are going to impact your business. And so when we think of a strategic business influencer, it really is a business leader who visibly accelerates trust for their business. And they drive impact through activities like scalable relationship building, thought leadership, intentional branding.

And I've seen this throughout the past decade of our work done with everyday entrepreneurs and businesses. I love the story that you shared about the call that you got. Just to share a quick example, we had a client that's in subflooring manufacturing. So think very, very niche. We had a very targeted PR strategy. And when most leaders think about PR, they think, good morning America, Wall Street Journal, which that is an important side of PR and builds a lot of credibility, but that isn't necessarily what is going to drive results for the everyday business. With the CEO, he had a multimillion dollar company.

We got him a podcast interview opportunity and the listenership was 1,500 people a month. You think of CEO multimillion dollar company spending time, spending an hour out of his day to do this very niche podcast. Most CEOs would say that is not worth my time. But he understood our strategy and how targeted it was, went on and did this interview and also got a similar call where it resulted in the biggest, biggest business development deal of his company to date. And it was because it was the right 1500 people, the decision makers that he was in front of. Same thing with another CEO that we worked with on the talent acquisition side. He's in banking, a very, very tough environment to attract

and acquire high level executive talent. One thing that differentiated him as he was recruiting talent from other larger entities was that he did podcast interviews like this and shared vision mission of what he was building with the company, why it was different. Well, that podcast resulted in a page one search whenever anybody Googled him. Well, this candidate he had been talking to one day actually did that search and clicked on and listened to that interview, 40 minutes of him going on and on about the vision and what they were doing and decided to take that interview and that conversation because of that page one Google search result that had that podcast. And so just thinking through, these are smart strategic ways that the smallest thing makes

the biggest impact. And that's really what strategic business influencers are doing. They're not worried about the millions. They're worried about the right 500. I love that. I mean, it's interesting when you actually divide up influencers between like a social media influencer versus a business influencer. We don't think about that because we just think of the word influencer. But that social media influencer, yeah, they want to go viral. They want to get views. They want to get followers on their social media, but ultimately they're not trying to do a business transaction. That's right. Those business influencers want to be a trusted source for that business transaction. That's where

they make their money. It's not on followers. It's not on likes and reposts and whatever it is. It's on the business transaction, which happens because of the business relationship, which starts because of the business influence. So this is incredibly powerful. I love how you honed in on podcasting. Obviously, we're on a podcast right now. This podcast lives on forever.

And that's the beautiful part of podcasts. It used to be we wanted to hear radio interviews. And if you weren't on during like that 15 or 30 seconds segment listening, and you know, it was drive time. And if you didn't get caught on that, you know, you'd hear from one of your friends, oh, I heard you on the radio. And you go, what'd you think of what I said?

And they're like, I don't know. I just knew it was you. I noticed your voice. So the beauty of podcasts is they're there forever. And then you repurpose your podcast on YouTube with a video. We're taking video right now for everybody. Head on over to Adam Canto, CEO on YouTube,

and you can take a look at the video for this pod. But ultimately, it comes down to this stuff works to increase your search engine optimization, it increases your presence. It's a calling card that a CEO can send out to their customer base saying, hey, I was just on a podcast with Paige today. Take a look at it. It might have some good information for you. I mean, it's an incredible valuable asset. So I love how you pointed that out. Is that the first thing that you start recommending to business leaders is they'll get on some podcasts or is what

do you, when you meet with a business leader for the first time and they're like, I need to build more influence to build more trust with my customers, to increase my transaction count or whatever it is, where do you tell them to start? Yeah. So we actually start with the first impression of the leader. So before we get to do all the fun things like the podcast and social media, whatever it might be, it really starts with what is your first impression. First impressions are no longer happening over the phone. They're no longer happening in person, over email. It's all happening entirely when somebody searches that leader's name on Google. And what is on page

one is their first impression. So it's incredibly important that leaders understand that. I actually get a lot of leaders that I talk to that say, they're proud that, oh, I'm not online or I've never been online. So I don't need that. Well, the reality is, is we do what we call these online brand audits for executives. And we start with that page one Google analysis and a lot of them are incredibly surprised. They are in fact online. They are just doing nothing to have control over that first impression and what their brand says. They're letting everybody else control that. And so we work to do everything we can with what is coming up on page one to control and have the best first impression to accelerate

the audience towards the business. And that's your goal as a leader with that page one is that website needs to be coming up on that first search result. And if it's not, if you are not, if your company website or your personal website, if you have one is not number one, you need

some help with organic SEO. And I've seen so many corporate websites that hide their leaders' or owners' information. That's actually hurting your business rankings. I was talking with an SEO expert last week and he was telling me, Google is doing everything they can to validate a company and having a leader be more visible online actually helps rankings. So those need to come up number one. Typically we also see a LinkedIn profile. Whether you are active on it or not, it typically is coming up number one or number two under leaders names. And oftentimes when we click

there, there is either this big photo at the top that is blank, or it's this beautiful cityscape or mountainscape or beach photo, which is doing nothing to credential you or your business. So looking at what are you putting up there, whether it's a photo of you on stage speaking to an audience, whether it is your company logo next to award logos or media logos that you've been featured in. Your goal there is to accelerate your credibility really quickly with visuals. And then from there provide some really good content with the educating and entertaining and news jacking that we talked about earlier. But just making sure that everything on that page one, whether it's taking down old profiles, taking down that video that

an intern talked you into 10 years ago, that's in horrible lighting and not representing your brand, doing that audit is so important before you go out and start doing podcasts or social media, because people are going to start looking you up more. And you have to make sure that you're doing everything you can to one, accelerate that speed of trust and to accelerate the on-ramp that you're serving directly to your business. I love it. Some huge key points there, everybody. This will make you more money. So listen to what Paige is saying. If Paige touched on a couple of things, you want to look and sound your best, right?

I mean, I think we would all agree with that. Paige and I both have spent time to have lighting, sound, camera angles, things like that on the video if you're watching the video instead of listening to the pod. If you're listening to the pod, sound matters. The majority of people will turn off a podcast if the sound is not clear and crisp. So make sure you're using a good microphone

and you have good editing software, good editor. Always helps if you can't afford the editor or the software, just get a good microphone. That makes a big difference in and of itself. Also, if you want to learn a little bit more about how to look and sound better for podcasts, for Zoom, for any of these different appearances where you're virtual, you can head on over

to my YouTube channel, Adam Kantos, CEO on YouTube, and just search for how to look and sound better for your Zoom calls and podcasts. I have a video out about that. It walks you through step by step how to improve those things. Paige has already nailed all those things on this video and on this podcast.

So great job, Paige. I have a question I ask all the great leaders on our show. And that's, how do you start your day with a win? I love this question. And for me, this past year, it has changed. So this past year, the way I start my day with a win is I go in and wake up our son and just get to see the joy. I typically bring him back to bed

and cuddle him for just a few minutes. But he's almost one, a few weeks from one. And no matter the circles under my eyes from the lack of sleep throughout the night, seeing his face in the morning just of innocence, joy, and just a beautiful, pure bliss to me is the best dose of energy and medicine that you can have to start your day. So looking at those around you and just feeling love, I think is the best way to start your day with a win. Well, those precious moments are definitely a win. So congratulations for that.

Thank you. And the amazing life you have with your awesome family. Make sure you check out Paige of Alaska's buddy on LinkedIn and Twitter. Also go to zilkermedia.com and take some of their quizzes. They have some great resources on there to help you build your brand and help it drive your business. I mean, this is a great concept folks. Paige, thank you so much for all you do. Thanks for being on Start with a Win, and we'll see you next time. Thank you so much, Adam.