Creating a Brand with Alex Sanfilippo
Alex Sanfilippo started his first business at the age of 12, selling used golf balls. From there he went on to a real estate investing and technology startup, which he sold two years later, for the past decade. He went into aerospace and worked way up from a part-time employee all the way to a senior executive in a large publicly traded organization. During his time in corporate America, he stayed active with his side hustles which mainly consisted of conference speaking in business coaching. He is also the founder of the lean SaaS startup, PodMatch.com
He got into productivity and business startup coaching which lead him to the launch of the Creating a Brand Podcast so that he could serve his audience in a more direct way. His lifetime goal is to help others succeed in life and business and he devotes all of his time to the service of others.
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Brett:
I’m excited about our next guest. He’s out of the great state of Florida, and he started his first business at the age of 12, selling used golf balls. From there he went on to a real estate investing and technology startup, which he sold two years later, for the past decade. He has been an executive in the aerospace industry. During his time in corporate America, he stayed active with his side hustles which mainly consisted of conference speaking in business coaching, please welcome the show with me, Alex Sanfilippo. Hi, Alex. How are you doing?
Alex:
Hey, Brett, I’m doing really great. First off, thank you for that great introduction. I appreciate it. You can talk fast, man. I love that straight to the point.
Brett:
Yeah, absolutely. Well, glad to have you on the show. Excited to get going here. For our listeners to get to know for the first time would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Alex:
Yeah, sure thing. So I’ve been a businessman my entire life, I should say a business kit at one point because you alluded to me selling used golf balls as a kid, it’s probably not gonna get that full story. But just so y’all know, when I was a kid, I wasn’t really great at sports. I wasn’t good at school. And I wasn’t good at video games, which is like a really awkward place for a 10 to 12-year-old kid to be right. But I realized really quickly The first time I held a golf ball and a golfer asked if he could buy it from me that I actually really liked business. I didn’t necessarily care about the money, but I cared about the art of making something work. So yes, the from between the ages of 10 to 12. I was selling used golf balls with other friends in the neighborhood, things like that. And that kind of just gave me this mind of man, I really like a business. So I moved into multiple things throughout my career, and maybe will fill in those gaps, and maybe not. But the important point is that I just realized at a young age, I love being an entrepreneur, I love helping people, build businesses and create wealth for themselves through those avenues. And I’ve done that in many different ways over my life. And today where I’m at it I’m actually full-time in the podcasting world. So, Brett, I know you can appreciate podcasting, of course, and I thoroughly enjoy serving people in podcasting, both with my show, but also with my startup as well. It’s facing and helping people that have their own shows as well. So something I just really love doing
Brett:
Amazing, Alex, and we’re going to be diving into creating your brand and leveling up your online brand here with Alex in a minute. The top secrets to that. By the way, if you’re curious about learning and getting connected with Alex, right now you go to creatingabrand.com, before we go there, Alex, I believe we’ve all been given certain gifts and the gifts have been given to us to be a blessing and help to others. Some people call them superpowers, some people call them strengths, I want you to go back to your high school days. And I want you to think about that one or two gifts that you believe you were given. And how did those help how you help and bless people today?
Alex:
Yeah, I love this question. First, I want to mention that for me, personally, I feel like my gifts came from God, I believe I was born with them. And I’ve done my best to be able to grow in those things. And the first of which I mentioned is strategy. I’m really great at getting myself in front of a whiteboard or in front of a group of people and being able to really strategize something and come up with a system and a plan for execution. And that’s probably been my number one thing. The second thing I’ll mention is I’m just a curious individual, I’ve devoted myself to being a lifelong learner. So learning I’d say is the other really natural God-given talent that I have is I’m able to really listen be that student and implement really fast as I’m learning. And that’s always been a skill of mine that didn’t translate well in school. But after school, I’ve really been able to further develop that skill in business, and in my personal life as well.
Brett:
Love it, coming up with systems and strategy. And then and then the second one, he said I missed it.
Alex:
Learning.
Brett:
Yeah, it’s a Lifetime Learning to be willing to learn and execute things. Cool. Alright, so now let’s dive right into the number one secret to creating, creating a brand, or leveling up your brand. Go
Alex:
Yeah, so I mean, there’s a lot of things that people can tell you about this, a lot of people were the first time that my company’s called creating a brand. So people assume that I’m going to get into like the logos, the copy, like all the design elements, right? Like, that’s usually the assumption Brett when people want to talk about this stuff, and like, Okay, I need all those things to really develop a great brand. But the truth is, it really starts with you as an individual. And it starts with you really knowing who you are and who you serve. Now what I mean by that is it’s gonna take the self-reflection First off, like what am I good at? What is it that I’m doing? So for me, I mentioned you had me mentioned those gifts that I have naturally the things I’m good at. So I’m good at strategy. I’m good at learning. Can I share those things? Can I also teach people these things? So can I teach you to be more strategic with their businesses, I teach people how to learn better. And that’s exactly what I decided to do when I launched my podcast. And as I launched it, I said, You know what, I’m going to give back and help and serve. And the point of all this is, now that I’m using my skills to help somebody else can’t Is there a way to monetize that as well, right, like, that’s how you build a business around is the ability to actually monetize that thing. And doing that, I believe Leave is really, it can be difficult, but it’s not as hard as people think. Cuz again, everyone goes to like the logo the brand behind. But the truth is, I care about these people in the podcasting space. That’s where I feel God has placed me. So I do my best to solve the problems that they have. And I think if there’s ever anything that really is like the art of creating a brand, the whole act of it is solving problems for the people that you care about, instead of just trying to come up with ideas, and that’s what many of us get stuck doing.
Brett:
Would you say we’re not in the business of podcasting, or building brands? or doing logos and designs, but we’re in the business of solving problems? Is that a fair summary?
Alex:
Yes, 100%. Yes.
Brett:
Excellent and then using those gifts in a particular area of passion, to go do that, I think that’s a key thing to always know, I think, I wonder what you think about this, you know, I feel like the fulfillment formula, I’ve compiled this from many smart leaders, but it’s your unique gift that you’ve been given right plus or times is actually a better part of this times the amount of energy and effort that you use to maximize that gift times, the number of people you’re impacting. And then the bigger overall view of this is the bigger vision, like, for me, it’s my faith. And then we’ve been given these gifts are going to be a blessing to others, that there’s a bigger purpose for these things, right. And that equals fulfillment. And by the way, you can apply that to business, you can also apply it to your marriage, also play it and play it to your pet your you know, being a parent, right, we’ve all been given these certain gifts. So how do we maximize the potential how are we impacting others? Any thoughts on that?
Alex:
I think that you’ve really got that point, right? I think that people can understand that and like, actually learn how to apply it their lives, like there’d be a lot more happy people around probably, because I think a lot of us, we just struggle with that whole idea, what you just said is something that’s I’ve even found to be far easier said than done, right? Like, understand and have that level of self-reflection, and being able to serve others like, it sounds easy. But the culture that many of us live in, for me being in the United States up in the United States as well. It’s one of those things where like, our culture is not designed that way at all. So it gets it comes very difficult. And you even have to be somewhat counterculture to implement these things. And I just refer to that as living a life that’s proactive instead of reactive. If we’re constantly reacting to everything that’s happening. We’re just going to live in this flow. That’s the opposite of what you just shared. But we’re proactive and going against the grain, we can get into a more fulfilled life. But I mean, I completely agree with you. She said it’s definitely a lot of work to get there, though.
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