Building Trust and Brand Harmony in B2B

Bill Kenney is the CEO of Focus Lab, a branding agency specializing in helping businesses, particularly in the B2B tech industry, develop compelling and cohesive brand identities. With 15 years of experience under his belt, Bill has led Focus Lab from its inception to a well-regarded firm known for working with diverse clients, from small startups to major tech brands. He is also the author of "Conquer Your Rebrand," a book that delves into the branding process to guide businesses through effective rebranding strategies.

Episode Summary:

In this episode of Talking Shizzle - host Taylor Wilson welcomes branding legend Bill Kenney, who shares insights from his 15-year journey with Focus Lab. Their conversation touches on Bill's accidental yet serendipitous meeting with Taylor, the importance of brand identity, and how branding can catalyze growth for businesses. Bill provides a behind-the-scenes look into how Focus Lab crafts the foundational elements that enable businesses to stand out in the competitive B2B tech landscape.

This episode breaks down the difference between branding and marketing, showing why a brand is more than just a logo. Kenney explains how brand identity—through visuals, teamwork, and a personal touch—drives business success. He also highlights why personal branding matters in today’s digital world. It’s full of practical tips for entrepreneurs who want to use branding to grow their business in 2025 and beyond.

Key Takeaways:

• Branding vs. Logo Understanding: Branding extends far beyond a logo; it encompasses the entire customer experience and forms the backbone of how a business operates and presents itself to the world.
• Role of Personal Branding: Cultivating a personal brand alongside corporate branding can establish trust and authenticity, impacting both customer perception and recruitment.
• Importance of Internal Alignment: Achieving alignment within a company about its brand identity and goals can lead to reduced friction, faster progress, and improved external perception.
• Branding in Economic Contexts: Regardless of external economic and political climates, consistent and authentic branding helps businesses navigate changes and maintain momentum.
• Interaction of Brand and Marketing: Brand lays the foundation, setting the stage for effective marketing strategies that drive engagement and growth.

Resources:

• Focus Lab: https://focuslab.agency/ 
• Bill Kenney's Book: "Conquer Your Rebrand" available on Amazon or through conqueryourrebrand.com
• Connect with Bill Kenney on LinkedIn: Bill Kenney
• Exit Five Community: Founded by Dave Gerhart, offering insights into B2B marketing and branding.
• Chili Piper: Featuring Alina Vandenberghe, acknowledged for transparent and effective personal branding strategies.
• Check us out at: creativeshizzle.com

Check it out! Listen to Talking Shizzle to gain valuable insights from a branding experts about building and sustaining an impactful brand identity. Be sure to subscribe for

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Transcript

0:00:03 B: Hey, hey, hey, all you lovely people out there.

0:00:07 Taylor Wilson: I know you’ve got a lot going on in your day and you have big dreams for your brand.

0:00:12 B: Are you ready to talk some shizzle and learn some shizzle from entrepreneurs, leaders, change makers, and overall interesting people who like to shake things up?

0:00:24 Taylor Wilson: I’m your host, Taylor Wilson, founder of.

0:00:27 B: Creative Shizzle, and I’m stoked to bring you a fresh episode of Talking Shizzle today.

0:00:33 Taylor Wilson: This show is all about helping you.

0:00:36 B: Think differently so that you could grow.

0:00:39 Taylor Wilson: Your business or your cause.

0:00:42 B: Check us out on the web at creativeshizzle.com now let’s get into it and talk some shizzle.

0:00:51 Taylor Wilson: All right, folks. Well, I’m here today with Bill Kenney. Bill, you are a legend in branding. And I don’t even think I realized it when I think we DM’d each other before meeting at an event last year. And then we connected, and I started following you on LinkedIn, and I see all the brands you work with and the work that you do, and as a brander myself, I really look up to you, and I’m like, dude, this guy’s like, oh, how can I be his friend?

0:01:24 Bill Kenney: I’ll take it. I’ll take it. I like. I like how maybe our relationship was formed in that way where I’m just a random dude. And then we kind of meet at Exit 5 event in person.

0:01:34 Taylor Wilson: Yeah.

0:01:34 Bill Kenney: And then maybe you come back around and go like, oh, wow. They’re actually, like, doing some real stuff.

0:01:39 Taylor Wilson: They’re like, cool. Yeah. Well, it’s funny too, because we met. We actually, I think, first met in person when we were at. You were at the same restaurant that my team and I were at that night for dinner, and all of a sudden, the fire alarm starts going off and they’re like, everybody has to get.

0:01:59 Bill Kenney: Yeah.

0:01:59 Taylor Wilson: So we were standing there in the street, like, all like, I hope we can go. Everything’s okay. Like, I hope we can go back to dinner. Like, are we gonna pay our bill? Remember, we were like, what about the bill? Yeah.

0:02:11 Bill Kenney: And we just out there chitchatting like, oh, hey, who are you? Yeah, what are you doing?

0:02:15 Taylor Wilson: So, okay, so tell our audience a little bit about you. You’re the CEO of Focus Lab. You have written a book on branding, and just an all around cool guy.

0:02:25 Bill Kenney: Oh, I appreciate it. I appreciate. Yeah. Not to go long on that dinner story, but that me ending up in that restaurant was also totally random because I didn’t know a single person when I came to that event. So I was standing Outside bumped into Joe Ray and. Or actually was also. God, I’m forgetting the other guy’s name, Jeff Porter. And it just turned into like, hey, should we all like go to dinner together? And it was like, yeah, sure. So it was like such a random night. All right, so who. Who am I and what the hell do I do?

0:02:53 Bill Kenney: I am Bill Kenney. Yay. I started focus lab 15 years ago. Now starting to feel quite long. I’m essentially a art school kid that fell in love with then design because that’s how kind of like for me, art transitioned into design, which then meant I was designing more things, which then transitioned into like, let’s call it freelancing and into a business. And now 15 years later, we’re a team of 27, I think technically starting next week. We got a new team member joining next week team of 27, fully remote, working with primarily B2B tech brands. That’s our. Basically our client vertical is B2B tech.

0:03:33 Bill Kenney: And yeah, like you said, we get to work with a lot of cool clients. Some big, some names you never heard of, quite small. I actually posted today on LinkedIn. Two years ago, we worked with this one client. There were 10 people on their team today. I think it was like 160. So we get to see kind of like all walks of life through the lens of brand.

0:03:52 Taylor Wilson: I love that. It’s fun, isn’t it, to work on totally different things.

0:03:57 Bill Kenney: Yes.

0:03:58 Taylor Wilson: And really different perspectives. Yeah.

0:04:01 Bill Kenney: That’s the thing. You know, I’m super biased and I’ve never worked in house anywhere, say at a tech company. Working in house as a designer, I only know the agency side, but that is what I know that I love, which is you get to work with a bunch of different people that have a bunch of different challenges in a bunch of different business. Business is. Even though we’re B2B tech, it’s still like, that’s still wide.

0:04:20 Taylor Wilson: Yeah.

0:04:21 Bill Kenney: So, yeah, it’s cool. I like the diversity.

0:04:24 Taylor Wilson: Okay, so I want to get in and pick your brain a little bit. I’ve got some questions for you about a topic that I love and I want to get your take on it. So a brand is a lot more than a logo.

0:04:37 Bill Kenney: What do you think? Yes. It’s like literally the quintessential branding dilemma. Yeah. So the TLDR is basically for people that don’t know brand in the way that we do. And I’m so deep in it now, it’s actually hard to tunnel back out. You have to remember that the average business owner Thinks of brand as a logo. That’s okay. That doesn’t mean they’re stupid. That’s just their relationship to what that word means. Because it’s this like big gray word for them.

0:05:10 Bill Kenney: That is the thing. But what our job is, you and I, is helping our partners realize. No. Your brand is all the things. It is, yes, partly your logo. It is also the product you serve up in your restaurant. It’s also how your staff treats the customers. It’s all these things. Why do we love any particular company we love? I don’t know. I’ll make things up for bad examples. Why does someone love Starbucks versus Dunkin Donuts or something?

0:05:43 Bill Kenney: It could be they like the more bitter taste of the coffee at Starbucks. But it’s not the logo. It’s never the logo. Right. The logo is just an identifier. The logo helps you say, yes, I’m gonna go there because that’s the place that I love for all these other reasons. Price, product quality, experience, all these things. Maybe I want to be like those people, these types of things. So we, it’s our job, like I said, to remind people that brand is so much more.

0:06:13 Bill Kenney: It is so much that when you really try to put it down to a sentence and you know, people ask like, well, how do you define brand then? And it’s like the entirety of the experience you deliver your customer. And it’s like, what the hell does that mean?

0:06:26 Taylor Wilson: Yeah.

0:06:27 Bill Kenney: So again, for every custom client or business, it’s different from a biz, like a restaurant perspective. I would go back to like, their brain is probably primarily the food. If the food is good, that becomes the staple of the brand, never the logo.

0:06:43 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, absolutely.

0:06:44 Bill Kenney: Here’s the big caveat. You also can’t have like, let’s just call it a shitty logo. No, that could also be the first touch point. That’s the facade. It’s like, it’s like curb appeal in real estate. Right? Like the. It has to look like a door you would want to walk through. So the logo does represent some of that curb appeal. And if it looks like your child made it, but you’re trying to come across as a high end restaurant or a trusted software, those things don’t match. So there’s a misalignment in the brand. And they all have to be in alignment.

0:07:17 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, there’s a lot of it looks like your child made it logos out there floating around.

0:07:23 Bill Kenney: I feel like you’re doing the right business.

0:07:27 Taylor Wilson: There’s good intentions behind each of them. You know, sometimes it’s like, it is a kid down the street that made it. But, yeah, I think you’re absolutely right. It’s absolutely. I was reading something or, like, writing something about this and looking up some statistics about visual communication versus, like, oral and written and how much faster we can process visual communication than reading. And so I think that’s one of the things, too. Like, for me, brand is, like, you have to pair the right words with the right visuals with the right experience, and all of that comes together to create a brand and a vibe, why people want to keep coming back to you.

0:08:10 Taylor Wilson: But the logo is that visual exchange, you know, like the thing that they. In their head, like, it imprints and they remember.

0:08:19 Bill Kenney: Kind of it starts to become that version of the fingerprint. I love what you were saying. It’s, you know, brand is to create harmony across all the touch points. Some businesses only have. I have a lot. But you want to bring all that in harmony.

0:08:34 Taylor Wilson: I like that. In harmony. Yeah. I think of kind of, like a circle. I have this, like, diagram I show people when we’re, like, starting off on a branding project, where I’m like, customer success, product in store, you know, like, how they sign up with you. Like, all of that, like, logo, brand guideline, like, that whole thing. All of that is the brand.

0:08:57 Bill Kenney: So literally all of it. Yeah. Yeah. Apple’s not successful because of its logo. Right. It’s successful because of its product. But now we love the logo. It’s simple and identifiable and all these other things. Right. So there’s the harmony. Right. All things have to be in order.

0:09:11 Taylor Wilson: Do you have a favorite logo? Either one that you’ve designed or just one that you love?

0:09:16 Bill Kenney: I think my answer to this is generally no. But I was just thinking about this a couple days ago. There’s this logo that I see very rarely, and every time I see it, I’m like, I love that logo. And it’s gonna be so random. I actually don’t even know if this is the right name of the company. But there’s this cruise ship. I think it’s Princess of the Sea, and it’s got this woman’s kind of, like, facial profile, and then the hair, but it’s.

0:09:43 Bill Kenney: It’s inverted. Like, she’s. She’s looking backwards, basically. And the hair is, like, coming out like this. And it’s just so. I don’t know. There’s something about it that every time I see it, I’m like, man, I wish I made that. I freaking love that logo. I’m not really like, oh, that’s my favorite visual identity or logo person. I think I do center more around the whole system and is it authentic and is it performing?

0:10:10 Bill Kenney: So because of that, you think of big names like Nike. I do have some version of an affinity to Nike as a brand. I think they can be provocative in their marketing, which I really like. They can take bold stances, but it’s really clean. But they make it edgy in campaigns and that’s like, pretty cool. So I think they do a good job at flexing.

0:10:29 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, I agree. So how you said something that I want to dig into, because this is one of the hardest parts, I think as a brand strategist oftentimes is like, you sort of feel like, like everyone wants to talk about revenue and MQLs and SQLs and blah, blah, blah, the leads. And you’re like, you gotta do brand. And they’re like, what’s it really getting me? So when you talk about like measuring brand, do you have any ways that you found that help you to measure the effectiveness of a brand?

0:11:04 Bill Kenney: So I think the simple answer is like, kind of, but not really. It depends who’s listening. For a founder right now that is listening, that needs to be convinced of exact measurement, my answer will be not great. It will not be sufficient. For people like you and I and marketers, I think the answer is sufficient. So the ways that we think about kind of return or measurement currently with the work that we do is we’re generally helping our clients get to the next stage.

0:11:35 Bill Kenney: So we kind of think about it in stages. And the way we think about it in stages is generally fundraising, acquisitions, IPOs, these things, like these big kind of moments in the life cycle of a company, that’s where we’re generally tapped in. So measurement for us falls there. It’s not necessarily, say, if our job was to overhaul a website to increase conversion up 20%. Right. Like, I do believe that brand helps that.

0:11:59 Bill Kenney: But these aren’t things that we’re talking about in measuring with our clients. So we track our clients, though, from a growth perspective. Anytime there’s a new fundraising round, anytime there’s an acquisition or a merger, and anytime there is an exit, we track all those numbers in a sheet year over year over year over year, and we combine all of that. And I guess my point is like, I know that brand is building the momentum to support those. Not everything.

0:12:27 Bill Kenney: If we work with a company and they go on to raise 20 million, I can’t say, oh, then, then their branding project was worth 20 million, they got the return. But I know it’s a percentage of that. And even a percentage of that is a lot of money, right? So again, it’s the curb appeal. What’s the return on the landscaper and the painter come into your house before you sell it and cutting the grass for 100 or $200 and doing some landscaping work, and then the painter charging, I don’t know.

0:12:56 Bill Kenney: You can’t ask the buyer, did the yard and the paint help on the sale, but you know it did, right? Like, you just. Common sense. Like, you know it did. So again, there’s my answer. Right? And that’s why that the founder that doesn’t believe, but a marketer understands.

0:13:10 Taylor Wilson: Well, I think there’s like, a point of qualitative research, too. I actually really like what you said about, like, stages and, like, funding and tracking, stuff like that. But I also think, like, something that I like to do is after a client has rolled out their brand, just ask them questions about, like, what are. What feedback are you getting? What are people saying? You know, and, like, there’s a.

0:13:36 Taylor Wilson: When it’s good and you’ve nailed it, there’s a buzz where, like, they’ll be like, oh, God, like, we just went to a new trade show, and, like, our booth was slammed, and people were like, whoa, what did you guys do? Like, this is awesome. You know? So, like, that’s when I think there’s that qualitative feedback, too.

0:13:54 Bill Kenney: Yeah, there are, and we hear that. And I’m glad you took me off of, like, that kind of higher theoretical point down to, like, real points. We hear that very specifically, which is now reintroducing themselves into the market, getting that type of feedback, natural response, organic response at, like, a trade show. A lot of our clients are at trade shows. Another one that comes up a lot is recruitment teams are able to recruit at a higher clip because now they either look like they have their act together, they’re more inspiring to want to work for, you know, these types of things. Again, it’s kind of curb appeal, but it’s internal.

0:14:29 Bill Kenney: What you would call, like, cultural internal recruitment curb appeal. I was interviewing one of our past clients. They’re out of Spain, and he very specifically said in the interview that’s on our YouTube, he saved tens of thousands of dollars in recruitment because people were literally applying right off the back of the rebrand because they were seeing the work. They were designers. Maybe they saw it through us. Maybe they found it through them. They’re like, oh, that’s a brand I want to be able to work with. With as a designer. Right. So that’s already.

0:15:04 Bill Kenney: That’s already giving roi. I mean, he literally said in that interview, it’s paid for itself in a year. He said that. Right. So, but again, I think maybe to a point, I said earlier, like, it’s different for every person. What one person wants and cares about from an oral perspective is different maybe than what another person cares about. But I will die on the hill of brand is never a bad investment.

0:15:29 Bill Kenney: It’s not buying a cryptocurrency meme coin. I am a crypto fan. A cryptocurrency meme coin and having it go to zero. That’s not what an investment in brand is. Right. I used this term last week on LinkedIn. Brand is more of a momentum builder. That’s never really going to be a bad thing for you. Getting internal alignment about what your company’s mission and vision should be and then starting to create a visual and verbal identity around that is never bad.

0:15:56 Bill Kenney: It’s literally never bad. So, yeah, you can see I get on my soapbox fast.

0:16:01 Taylor Wilson: I can. I’m also now curious about, like, what meme coins you invested in, because I’ve got some.

0:16:07 Bill Kenney: I try to keep it to a very small amount of the portfolio. I mean, dogecoin’s a staple, right? You have to be in Doge.

0:16:15 Taylor Wilson: You have to be in Doge. And Brett, too, is a big one for me, but it’s not doing well right now.

0:16:20 Bill Kenney: But I’m.

0:16:21 Taylor Wilson: I’m holding.

0:16:23 Bill Kenney: That’s okay.

0:16:24 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, yeah. Everything’s trash right now. So. It’ll come back. It’ll come back. It’s how it’s the game. Okay, let’s get into the fine line between branding and marketing. And, like, I really want to hear your definition of what’s the difference between branding and marketing? Where does brand blend into marketing? And, you know, where are there, like, hard edges?

0:16:49 Bill Kenney: This one can be quite the dilemma. And I tried to do my best in the book to even speak to this a decent bit for us. We’re building. When we think about brand, we’re building, like, the foundation of the house and the structure of the house, the shape of the house. Okay, we’re going to go farmhouse. And because of that, we’re going to make these decisions and build that way. Once you start to get beyond the foundation of the house. God, I keep using a lot of real estate examples in this talk.

0:17:18 Bill Kenney: We don’t then transition to marketing, which might be the real estate example is not good. We’re not going to then say, oh, and there’s a campaign coming up. Oh, and here’s like, the. You know, six months after this, here’s some new ads for you. Like, marketing is like the push. That’s the. Like, we’ve given you the toolbox and the assets and how to speak and what to look like. Now go do all that now. Basically, go out and do now the daily work again. So then brand is at that foundation without knowing that, you can’t really market well. Right. Because you could certainly ask, you know, there’s positioning questions, too, like, well, who do we market to? But you need that to do brand as well.

0:18:01 Bill Kenney: But then what rules are in place again to what to look like, how to present yourself to the world, what to speak. You can’t do that. Marketing is what you do after the brand is done. So I didn’t give you a fine line fully, but that’s how we kind of like, that’s where we stop. Is basically a style guide.

0:18:20 Taylor Wilson: Okay, interesting. So it’s all. You know, this just came to me because you’re talking about real estate, and I’m gonna go in a different direction, but it still has to do with, like, something on a piece of land. So it’s almost like. Think about it this way. Maybe it’s like you build the football stadium, and that’s the brand, and that’s the foundation. Everyone’s gonna go for the experience. And then you throw the team and the cheerleaders in the room to make all the noise. And, like, that’s the market now.

0:18:51 Bill Kenney: You gotta get people in there right now. You have to get people in there. Yeah. One needs the other. They both need each other. They are both important.

0:18:58 Taylor Wilson: Yeah. Yes.

0:18:59 Bill Kenney: You built the stadium, what it stands for, the type of sport it’s gonna be all this stuff. And now it’s like, okay, now go get people in here. That’s the marketing activity.

0:19:07 Taylor Wilson: Yeah. Now we need, like, fans to show up every Friday night. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cool. That just. That just came. I like how sometimes things just come out.

0:19:19 Bill Kenney: Yeah. What happens in the yard? Okay. You put up a shed. How you do your landscaping. I’m like, no, that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work.

0:19:29 Taylor Wilson: But the house. The house. The house analogies are good ones, too. Okay, so let’s talk a little bit about. I don’t know what I want to hear. Your, like, hot take on a brand that you think is doing a really good job right now on building trust.

0:19:47 Bill Kenney: Oh, snap.

0:19:48 Taylor Wilson: I mean, I totally just like, threw that slapped you with that one.

0:19:52 Bill Kenney: Well, the easiest path for me is going to be what brands do I trust.

0:19:57 Taylor Wilson: Okay, that’s good. Yeah.

0:19:59 Bill Kenney: Right, like, because if I just say names that I know we’re working with and what they’re trying to achieve, nobody will know those, so it won’t even be relatable. I can tell you. Brands I don’t trust. Maybe let’s go backwards.

0:20:09 Taylor Wilson: Let’s do that. Yeah.

0:20:10 Bill Kenney: I don’t generally trust big service providers of any sort. And I’m not a dis. I’m painting myself strangely right now. But if I think about like the electric company and cable providers and cell phone service providers, those don’t feel super trustworthy to me. I think brands that are building trust are doing a really good job at maybe being and feeling more human, more intimate, more relatable. Those are the brands that you’re going to feel, you know, like it’s not big, corporate doesn’t care.

0:20:55 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, yeah.

0:20:56 Bill Kenney: So if I’m, I’m continuing to whittle that down, then like again, what brands around me do I trust?

0:21:03 Taylor Wilson: Like any in the SaaS space right now that you’re seeing maybe that you don’t work with, that you’re like, oh, they’re interesting.

0:21:12 Bill Kenney: I think trust is the hard word for me. And again, it’s not that I’m distrust worthy. I think brands that are doing well, being themselves and being a brand and that probably equates to trust. Brands like mailchimp, now they’re under intuit. Right. So that kind of goes.

0:21:30 Taylor Wilson: Yeah.

0:21:31 Bill Kenney: What I was saying, right now they’ve got the big thing that they have to battle. But there was a moment in time where that felt like very relational. That brand as the mascot and how they showed up at events, a pretty high energy, fun group giving out really fun swag. It felt different. It didn’t feel like software as a tool, robotic. It felt very human. And therefore I think it becomes more trustworthy whether or not they’re crooked behind the scenes or not. But that’s the brand that’s presented and that’s kind of like, you know, what you have to go off of.

0:22:08 Bill Kenney: I think there are brands that are doing similar things now, which is giving off some of that vibe, you know what? Actually I know where I’m gonna go with it now. Brands that I believe I would trust and feel trustworthy are brands that also have founder forward representation. What’s the woman that runs that SaaS company? Chili pepper? She is.

0:22:30 Taylor Wilson: Oh yeah, yeah.

0:22:32 Bill Kenney: She’s on LinkedIn. She is transparent and vulnerable. As hell. And if she wins an award, there’s a picture of her with her children on the stage.

0:22:42 Taylor Wilson: Yeah.

0:22:43 Bill Kenney: I’ve never looked into that company. I don’t even know exactly what they do or what they sell. That feels trustworthy to me because there’s a face, there’s a Persona, and there’s almost like a what I read as like a moral compass character that I can now pin to the company.

0:22:59 Taylor Wilson: Yes.

0:23:00 Bill Kenney: Hard to put that moral compass on a company, but you can put it on a human in the way she interacts, in the way she speaks on there. And I’m like, wow, what a leader that business has. There you go. There’s my. I didn’t see that coming. That was not planned. But shout out to the CEO of Chili Pepper. I really wish I knew your name because it would make it.

0:23:19 Taylor Wilson: I’m gonna. I think it’s Alina. I’m actually going to. That they’re hosting next week, the Chili Palooza event.

0:23:28 Bill Kenney: Okay.

0:23:28 Taylor Wilson: So I don’t quite understand what they do either. I know it’s like rev Ops type stuff, like demand gen, rev Ops type software, I think for making it easier to book meetings and communicate and round robin. That’s what I gather from the website. But I’m excited. I’m going to go learn more about them. And I saw her also speak at an event that I went to earlier in the year. And yes, she was like super raw, real.

0:23:53 Taylor Wilson: Her presentation was to the point. And I. I’m with you on that. I totally appreciate that.

0:24:00 Bill Kenney: There’s just something that, like, that’s the formula. That’s literally the formula. I don’t even think it’s. I would dare to say it’s not rocket science or even hard, like just be out there and you know, maybe to be fair, like that’s really hard for a T mobile or an AT&T to pull off. Maybe. But maybe it’s not. But I think SAS companies, I think that formula is right there in front of them and they can do that.

0:24:23 Bill Kenney: And now she came top of mind. I’ve never even used the product. Right. I have no relationship with the product at all. And I name dropped her. Talk about brand building.

0:24:31 Taylor Wilson: Yeah. Well, I think that forays us into we can talk a little bit about personal brand because I don’t know if you still get people who fight you on this or not. I know you’re a fan of building personal brand alongside company brand just because of what I watch you do on LinkedIn. I think that having leaders like her who will get out there and do that and be authentic is going to become even more. It’s already very important.

0:25:03 Taylor Wilson: I think it will become even more and more important, particularly in the B2B space, to build that trust and that authority.

0:25:13 Bill Kenney: There’s just a gravity about it that’s like a force multiplier. You almost, you can’t. Not that I don’t think, not in today’s world. Because. Because of the world being like, you know, we’re going to spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, right. So like then that’s who’s Chili Peppers competition and now they have to battle against that. They have to rise to that occasion or else they’re. They’re falling behind. In my mind, I mean, I guess I’d be remiss a little bit if we didn’t shout out Dave Gerhart, Exit five. Right. The book Founder Brand, which is very much what we’re saying. Get the founder forward, let them build a brand around themselves.

0:25:49 Bill Kenney: I feel like Exit 5 also feels like a very trusted brand community. Dave is out there and we like Dave and therefore we like Exit 5. Right. It’s again, it’s like, it’s pretty simple. So that’s where, that’s definitely where the world is going. All you have to do is put yourself out there. That’s literally all you have to do. You don’t have to be the smartest, strongest, fastest person in the world. You just need to be you and you will attract your group, whatever that is.

0:26:20 Taylor Wilson: Yeah. And be consistent with it. And so like one of the things to like kind of take it a step further with Dave and Exit 5 that they do so well is he fully empowers his team to do the same thing as him. And so it’s like, you know, so like when you think about that, all these touch points, like, it’s not just Dave, it’s not just founder mode stuff, it’s also they’re brand new marketing managers all over LinkedIn now. Right. Because like, it’s awesome. Think about that. Like some young person probably fresh out of school, they’ve got some new younger people on their team, I think, and like they are empowering them to start doing that early on and now in their careers.

0:27:04 Taylor Wilson: And that’s a part of their brand, I think.

0:27:07 Bill Kenney: Yeah, Yeah, I agree 100%.

0:27:09 Taylor Wilson: So that’s a situation where I think companies should probably do more to empower employees to like have a personal brand. Whereas a lot of times people, I don’t know if you hear this much. I feel like people still feel a little bit like nervous. Well, what’s it going to look like if I work for the company but I’m not doing, you know, this kind of my own thought leadership on LinkedIn. I just think companies need to support their people to all be like personal brand ambassadors if they want to.

0:27:40 Bill Kenney: Sure. Not everyone wanted to, but yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Not everybody wants to. I think the, the culture of the organization will naturally create that, even if it’s spoken or an unspoken, you know, exit five in that example. Again, I think that was just going to be a natural event. Right. Dave was never going to limit the voice of his team on a social platform. He’s built the whole thing off of that. Right. He knows the impact and power.

0:28:08 Bill Kenney: I would say I, I feel and act very similar. I have no qualms with my team being super loud and noisy in whatever regard. They need to be online where other organizations is. Big old school corporate bureaucracy red tape stuff, you know, and they get real weird and nervous. Well, that means you don’t care about the company because you’re over there building. It’s like, well, that both worlds can be true.

0:28:29 Taylor Wilson: Yes. Yeah, exactly. Both worlds can be true. Okay, let’s do one more question I want to talk really quickly about. Let’s just like give your high level tip for 2025. This is a weird year. Okay? So like there’s a lot going on this year. Everyone’s feeling weird and one way or another, whether they lost money on their meme coins like me or something else, with all of the administration changes in this moment in time that we are in, what is one thing every company should be doing to strengthen their brand identity, like relevant to this world that we’re in right now at this time that we’re in in this moment.

0:29:10 Bill Kenney: Yeah. I think regardless of any economic season, administration, kind of government season, regardless of any of that, companies should always be slowing down for a second, no matter what size. They are either slowing down and spending some time asking themselves, who are we now? Who do we want to become in the short term, let’s call it a year or two, and just getting really aligned on that because that will inform any changes that might need to happen or not changes. But the point I’m trying to make is alignment. Alignment.

0:29:44 Bill Kenney: There’s so many projects we go through that you can see, let’s say the founders and the project team and we spend a week or two just discussing things and trying to get alignment on where to take the brand and how like empowering and like revitalizing that is. And then I’ll go and I’ll tell them like, yeah, you’re not paying us for visuals. You’re actually paying us for alignment. You’re not paying us for words.

0:30:07 Bill Kenney: That’s the outcome of the alignment. Teams can do that. They can do that in a little three hour window if they want. They can do that in a multi day executive leadership team kind of event. But always be hunting for alignment. Because where brands fail and companies fail is when they get all spread out all over the place. We’re building this for this person. We’re building that for this person. We say these things over here, we say these things over there. That’s just friction that like slows the whole machine down.

0:30:35 Bill Kenney: If you can get alignment, whatever that means for your company. Right now you’re like, you’re speeding up, you’re moving faster. That’s friction.

0:30:43 Taylor Wilson: I love that. All right, Bill, my friend, how can people find you if they’re not yet like following some random guy on LinkedIn like I was? How can they find you and how can people read your book?

0:30:55 Bill Kenney: All right, so the book, I’ll just, we’ll go to the book first. Yes, wrote the book. Conquer your rebrand dot com. If you want to find it there, you can find it on Amazon. It’s basically me discussing our entire process. Start to finish talking about brand. A lot of things we talked about here. You can find me online. LinkedIn is my number one spot. Just search Bill Kenney, Focus Lab. Surely my bald head is going to show up in that search somewhere.

0:31:20 Bill Kenney: I do hang out on Twitter, X and Instagram. Not often though, really. LinkedIn’s My Digital Home, so that’s where you all should find.

0:31:31 Taylor Wilson: Okay, really quick question about the book. It’s conquer your rebrand, not conquer your brand. Why? Rebrand.

0:31:38 Bill Kenney: Yeah, yeah. Most of our projects are rebranding projects. They are generally a company that is at the stage now where they haven’t taken brand seriously. They’re big enough to be dangerous as a company and they need to take it serious. So we’re taking their old brand out and the new brand on. There was a lot of back and forth I had with myself on what that word should be on there. Rebrand also felt like a word we could kind of own more from like a book title search. I want anybody searching brand to find it, but the word.

0:32:11 Bill Kenney: Yeah. So that’s why I’ve literally considered should I be writing another book that’s not just like conquer your brand? That would be a cheat code. But like, something that is the other track. That’s not rebranding.

0:32:24 Taylor Wilson: Yeah. It could just be Bill Kenny, part one.

0:32:28 Bill Kenney: Yeah, it’s part one. Part two. I mean, writing a book is exhausting, but I do think there’s another one in my future.

0:32:35 Taylor Wilson: Yeah. This was your first one.

0:32:37 Bill Kenney: First one. Yeah.

0:32:38 Taylor Wilson: It is exhausting. I literally just. I’m going through the process right now of my first book. I think now my publisher is ready to push it to design. I just emailed them today and was like, what’s the update? Where are we? Because it’s, you know, it’s. It’s a lot. It takes a lot out.

0:32:58 Bill Kenney: It’s a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:33:00 Taylor Wilson: It was a lot. Yeah. Well, congratulations on that because that is a big. A big feat. Bill, this has been awesome. I love your background and I think you’re great, and I’m glad that we know each other now. So thanks for. Thanks for joining us today and sharing your wisdom.

0:33:16 Bill Kenney: Thanks for having me. I appreciate you. I’m happy I ran into you at that strange restaurant outing, and I look forward to seeing you again if you’re going up to Vermont for the next event.

0:33:25 Taylor Wilson: Yeah, I’m on the wait list, like, as long as I can get a ticket. It’s gonna be such a hot commodity.

0:33:31 Bill Kenney: Yeah, I know. We’re gonna have to.

0:33:34 Taylor Wilson: I am. Yeah, we’re like on pins and needles because. No, we want to go again. So I hope to see you there too.

0:33:40 Bill Kenney: Yeah, I’m sure we’ll get in. We’re pretty active in our boxes and online.

0:33:44 Taylor Wilson: We’ll see. I think we’ll get in. I think we’ll knock on some tours if we don’t, you know, we’ll try.

0:33:50 Bill Kenney: We’ll try.

0:33:51 Taylor Wilson: All right, well, hey, folks, I hope this was helpful and gave you some new perspectives on branding that you can take into your business. And until next time, go get all that good shizzle done.

0:34:05 B: Well, hey there. That was fun. I love how much mind blowing and mind opening shizzle our guests bring to us with every single episode. We hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we did. Make sure to hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcast player so that you don’t miss a beat of the Talking Shizzle podcast. And if you’re listening on Apple, be sure to let us know what you thought and leave us a review.

0:34:34 B: We’d love to hear from our listeners so that we can bring you all the good, juicy business growth shizzle that you’d like to hear about. Be sure to get in touch with us and follow along at creativeshizzle.com or shoot us an email at hello@creativeshizzle.com now until next time, we hope you go get your big shizzle done.