This is what I notice. Entrepreneurs and executives seek efficiencies, for scale, for output. They don’t stop to call people on the phone, and they forget that the people on the other side of every trade, every negotiation, every partnership are still running on the same social hardware they always were. Trust is built slowly. It is lost very quickly. And no algorithm has changed that.
I have spent twenty years advising leaders in financial institutions, government ministries, and early-stage companies. What have I learned: the people who perform best under pressure are not always the smartest in the room. They are the ones who know how to show up, and they are the most liked.
Italians have a phrase for it. La bella figura. It is usually translated as “making a good impression,” which misses the point entirely. La bella figura is not about appearance. It is image discipline. It is the combination of how you dress, how you carry yourself, how you listen, and how you treat the people around you. Every detail matters. And in business, signals compound over time.
In the trading world, and in Silicon Valley this matters more than people are willing to admit. Institutional relationships, investors trust, the willingness of a client to pick up the phone when things go wrong rather than after. None of that is built on a business school bootcamp. It is built in the room, at the table, in the thirty seconds before the coffee ritual before the real meeting starts.
I call this the handshake economy. It is the layer of commerce that runs underneath the visible one. Your network is your real net worth. And that network is maintained not through newsletters or LinkedIn posts but through the intentional, ongoing practice of making people feel that you care for them and that you see them.
There is a second Italian concept that belongs in every market professional’s toolkit. I call it going Sicilian. It is the discipline of silence. In a world that rewards those who speak fastest and loudest, the ability to pause, and keep your mouth shut, to let the other person fill the silence, is a form of leverage. In negotiations, silence creates triggers. Triggers produces disclosure. The person who speaks last often controls the outcome. And also when things are tense…just go Sicilian and use silence to your advantage.
None of this is soft. It is precisely as strategic as a risk model or an investment strategy. The difference is that most professionals are too busy to learn it.
That is why I am launching a course called The Art of Presence. Four pillars: likability, intentional dress, manners as strategy, and authentic presence. Built for entrepreneurs and executives. Delivered through live workshops with dinner and a curated online curriculum through The Italian Advantage platform.
The market rewards those who can read a room as well as a chart. Italy has been teaching that for centuries.