On Becoming an Influencer

Isaac Mashman0:40

Man, I got a few different things going on. First and foremost, Shannon, thank you for inviting me on. I run a public relations firm that specializes in personal branding. I am an author, I wrote my first book last year, I'm a podcast host, fellow podcaster, and content creator, and a variety of other things. But I love starting out with that question, actually, because it's something I always talk about with clients, on virtually every podcast I do.

Isaac Mashman1:42

Oh, I had my first show in 2018, the very beginning, and it was horrible. But I've had Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman since 2019. So June 10th will mark three years of my one show. I just celebrated a hundred [episodes].

Isaac Mashman2:16

Jeez. Well, here's the thing though. The interesting thing is I started it out and it was called something entirely different. Then I did a pivot with my personal brand, did a pivot with what I was pursuing professionally. Then I decided to rebrand the podcast and change it to a different name. So the first 20 episodes are under a different title. I introduced it differently. But it was really a challenge being consistent with it, because it takes so much time. Not even the editing and the uploading, that's easy. But what's complicated is taking the time of your day to record it and to find the inspiration and kind of be in that energy of recording something that's high quality.

My show isn't always interviews either. Sometimes it's monologues, but how do I keep a 15 or 20 minute monologue going and talk about a subject that, at that moment, I feel like I'm able to talk about for an extensive amount of time? But no, it was good. It was good. It's been a lot of fun, and I'm looking to see what, I don't know, I do for the next hundred. It's actually a question, like how do you determine when a podcast is something that you should stop doing, or if you want to continue growing? That's something I've been thinking about lately.

Isaac Mashman3:45

Well, a podcast too, it definitely benefits you from a credibility standpoint. Being able to say that you have a podcast positions you to where you can network with those people that are normally out of reach too. That's something I've done.

Isaac Mashman4:13

It's cool because it allows you to have a platform that you're delivering to somebody else. But I think the fun of it too is seeing how big you can get it. That's, for me, the satisfaction of knowing that the sky's the limit, in the sense that there isn't anybody telling me I have to do this. So it's also a level of self-commitment and a way of growing and sharing and telling the world, and telling your business, your fellow colleagues, your clients, that you're committed to something. I think that that is another benefit of a podcast. There are benefits that I could talk about for literally hours on end.

Isaac Mashman5:08

Yeah. That's something too that I think a lot of people spend an immense amount of time on early on, and they strive for this level of perfection. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but having that striving for perfection stand in the way of you publishing a piece of content can also be detrimental. Because my first dozen episodes, I remember obsessing over every little detail. If you go back, well, you can't even go back because I scrubbed the internet clean on my first podcast, but you would hear dogs barking, birds chirping and everything else. I would say, [um], and I would breathe and then I would edit that out and I'd be like, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.

But Shannon, the one thing I realized is that the only person who was paying attention to those little things was me. I was the only person paying attention to those details, but it does help you become a more effective speaker.

Isaac Mashman6:26

This is true, this is true. It affects your authority, I think. I just published an article on this the other day about how you can become a more effective speaker. I was like, there's a time for, and see I just said like right there, but there is a time for using those filler words, and a lot of times we won't catch it, but when it comes to maintaining educated conversation and eliminating those filler words, then you're able to express your point better in a more authoritative way, in a way that commands attention or respect. That's in my business, personal branding. I don't run a public relations firm that specializes in the corporation and the consumer, but more so the follower and the public figures.

So for example, the person listening to the podcast, or let's say you have a celebrity and the person who is following as a fan of the celebrity. A lot of it boils down to how you're positioning yourself as the individual and being able to maintain that conversation and speak from a point of, I am the authority, or I am the person of credibility. I know what I'm talking about. It gets people to listen. Whereas speaking from that, or, like, and it's one thing to say it every couple of minutes, but it's another thing. I remember back in high school, when certain people would present in front of the class, they would say like every other sentence as if it was a comma.

I'm thinking to myself, oh my gosh, when is this going to be over? That's something that takes time to work on, but what is this [eh] you're speaking of?

Isaac Mashman8:53

So is that true? Let's have a conversation about that. Is it true every Canadian says eh, like it's a comma as well?

Isaac Mashman9:15

Are you bilingual? Can you speak French? No, I... That's not a [thing].

Isaac Mashman10:34

It absolutely is. When I went to France back in 2019, it was such a weird, it was a culture shock for me from multiple, multiple perspectives. But I'm so used to speaking Spanish because I studied Spanish in school and I continued to learn, to where I have, like, that elementary school proficiency, to where if I'm in an Uber, I'm trying to catch a ride, I can communicate and say, [buenos días, qué tal, and the like], or I can speak enough to get me around and to order a sandwich. But when it comes to the pronunciation and the enunciation of E's, for example, in Spanish you say E as in grande, but in French the E is a lot of times almost like the U or the O sound, or it's silent. Like, mentally, it's messing with my brain. So French is one of those languages [I can't do] at all.

Isaac Mashman13:04

[It's about] who they are ultimately, and that boils down to not just the profession of what they do. So for example, you could say, yeah, I'm running a public relations firm, I specialize in personal branding, but in conversation, I don't want people to just think of me for that. I want them to think of Isaac Mashman, my character, who I am, my trustworthiness, am I credible, am I funny, can I have a conversation? Those sorts of things. It's almost like going back to school and you have the class clown, or you have a friend group, and you have one friend that is more likely to go and cause trouble than the rest of the group.

That is a part of their personal brand, it's part of their character. So when it comes to working with clients, I don't want them to just express the professional side of things. That's where a lot of people go wrong today, is they only talk about, I run funnels, I run marketing, I do this. There's no longevity in that because 10 years from now, let's say you pivot, you change, that no longer interests you. The people who are connecting with you previously for what you did are no longer going to get value, and hence, [they stop] following you, forget about you, disconnect. Or there are a lot of different brand accounts that you might subscribe to on YouTube.

But if I was to ask you to name any of the co-hosts or any of the hosts, you wouldn't be able to, because you're only thinking about the brand, you're not thinking about the person behind it, which means that the brand goes up in smoke, and the person goes up in smoke because they're forgotten. I always start with that. I want people to be known for who they are, not just for what they do, but what they do, the professional side, has a time and a place because it adds credibility to their character. It adds a, this is a person who I can learn from and trust in this specific field, but that all boils down to positioning.

That's where I start. Then I can get into the technical side of things of, well, are you competing with anybody else that has your name? Are you competing with another person? What have you done in the past that is going to build you and contribute to your credibility? Then how can you voice that to the public's viewpoint? The things that they might have overlooked. I had one client who I started working with who was a Canadian out of Toronto, about 20 minutes away, and come to find out she was mentioned in magazines and she's spoken at a conference [in front of] 500, 600 different [people].

She didn't even tell me about it until like two months into our work together. I'm talking to her, Christina, why did you never tell me about this? She's like, just, I don't know. I'm thinking to myself that right there is a perfect example of a way that we could position you and say, Hey, she has spoken in front of hundreds of people before, she's been featured in an HR magazine. That right there is a way that you can position yourself as somebody of authority, as that public figure. Most people are afraid of putting the focus on themselves because they were raised to say don't seek attention or don't talk to strangers or don't talk about yourself when that's the one thing you should be doing. By extension, you're going to be able to provide value and help other people in the process.

Isaac Mashman16:19

A lot of times this answer [might] brush people the wrong way, but every single person I work with, I always have them positioned as the public figure. You have to be the person that you are seeking the attention of. You are the person that people are coming and paying to see speak, rather than the person who is paying to see other people speak. That would be a perfect example of what I do, and that can make a person uncomfortable because now they're saying, oh, so not only just building out my personal brand, but you want me to actually be the person that everybody pays attention to?

Absolutely, because you have to in order to get a massive amount of attention that translates into something. Anybody can replace a minimum wage income or a six figure income by building up their personal brand to a certain degree, at a certain level. You're known in the right network. You're known in your city. You're known locally. If you want to become well known to where you can accomplish the goals that you keep telling me of, making millions of dollars or having millions of followers, then there is no other option than positioning yourself as that public figure. That boils down, on a case to case basis, to, well, if you're the dentist, then you are the number one dentist that everybody wants to follow and learn from that shares the facts.

But you're also the father, you're also the friend, you're also the teacher, you're also the person who people can follow and connect with. If you're the doctor, if you're the underwater basket weaver, stupid as it might sound, you can position yourself as the number one underwater basket weaver. Share your story as to how you got started. I can only think about the models that are well-known now because they look physically attractive on the public side. They have the physique. They look the part. But a decade from now, how many of them are still going to be relevant once the figure starts to not be as it was a decade ago?

Now, the way that you stay, and you [present] yourself as somebody that they're still going to follow, and build out a fan [base], imagine if a model shares their story and shares how they got into modeling. Then they start to share about their passion, or maybe a nonprofit, or they share about, you know, their childhood. Now you have people who are connecting with them for who they are, not just for what they do professionally.

Isaac Mashman18:47

In a lot of cases, absolutely. It's also made agencies and talent and all this other thing, not necessarily obsolete, but not as needed, because anybody can build up their own personal brand and go viral and create content or get into the press, and they don't necessarily need representation for it. But it definitely helps. It can definitely benefit and expedite your growth. I can think of somebody who is close to me as a model, and he has an agent. He doesn't need the agent, but in order to get the results quicker while he's working a full time job and doing everything else, having somebody else rooting for you is the same thing as having a team behind you in building a business.

You can build a business by yourself, but having a team of other people who are also sharing the same vision or the same goal and wanting to accomplish the same things can help you tremendously. Anybody today can become a celebrity, which is a wild thought because 50 years ago in Hollywood or television, you needed to have those connections because you couldn't just pick up the phone, go to LinkedIn, type in the owner of BET or the owner of [an entertainment company] or anything like that, or the publicist, and send them an email and send them a connection request. You couldn't do that 50 years ago.

If you sent them a piece of mail, it would go in the trash and it wouldn't even get past the secretary. So it's like today that barrier to entry is so low.

Isaac Mashman20:57

Yeah, 100%. That's where word of mouth also comes in too, which I think is an underrated piece in today's world. [People] don't realize that every single time somebody shares your post, that's a form of word of mouth. They might not be necessarily going to somebody and saying, you need to pick up this magazine, or handing over a physical magazine, but sharing an Instagram post is a way of saying, hey, watch this video, I watched it, you should watch it too. That is a form of word of mouth. That is so important.

Isaac Mashman22:22

That's a [good] question. Well, the other thing is, I want to make it known that your personal brand, whatever it is, you've had it from the day you were born. We could go back to the time when Jesus walked the earth, or even [preceding] that, to Nebuchadnezzar and all the kings of the old days in Mesopotamia. It's like I mentioned this in my book, Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence, about how personal branding goes way back, way prior to globalization, and Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, when he talks about personal branding, it goes way back when to where you had certain kings or chieftains that were more feared than others, certain ones that were more revered, kings stayed in power because of the divine right for hundreds of years, through generation to generation to generation, because of personal branding.

So your personal brand isn't something that you create yourself, your parents actually created it. But you being aware of your personal brand and the power it holds, now you're able to direct and influence it. But it's a misconception that people have whenever they say, I have to create a new personal brand. No, you just have to direct the one that you've already had. You might evolve it. You might have an iteration of it. For example, my podcast, as I mentioned earlier, it was something different, then it evolved into something new. I didn't create a new podcast. I did that in the past, but I knew I didn't need to.

I just needed to evolve it and change it, make it something a little bit different. That's, I think, the point too, because you think about Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, he started out doing football. Then he did WWE, but now he's doing acting, and then he bought the XFL, and then he did X, Y, and Z. But you don't know him for what he does, you know him for who he is. That's the perfect example that I could give as well.

Isaac Mashman25:06

I was working my entire time to go to college, to go and pursue a degree. In my senior year, I said, sorry, mom, I'm not doing it. I told my professor, I told my guidance counselor and I was like, I'm not doing college. I'm not doing it. It's funny because this year would actually mark the four [years], it would mark my graduation. Right now, where I'm at, I've been thinking about this a lot lately of, am I ahead or am I behind? What would have been different if I chose to go down that path, just as that fun, rhetorical question in my mind.

Isaac Mashman25:48

Well, the education I've gotten has been free, which is interesting. I think too, I use the example of, throw me in a room with anybody else who went to school for public relations. They might be able to answer some of the technical laws and such a little bit more from a university standpoint, and might be able to provide the correct definition, but when it comes to an experience standpoint, I have the time advantage on them. But it's also, I didn't want to measure where I was going based off of where everybody else was. That's also what's kind of kept me going, to where I might be moving faster and faster and faster than everybody else, because I'm aware that I might be ahead.

But I'm also aware that I'm behind somebody else, and that always gives you kind of a metric and an understanding of where you want to go.

Isaac Mashman27:21

I think that's something too that stands the same across the world, interestingly enough, speaking about languages and barriers and such of, I'm sure that it's the same in Canada. Colleges probably teach pretty much the same. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. [Brands are the same] anywhere else, in the UK. It's going to be the same, following orders for somebody. Yeah. The capitulation of people. But no, interesting conversation. But it also boils down to having an understanding of marketing and having an understanding of human behavior. A lot of personal branding has to do with psychology and understanding how a human would potentially react, then predicting the outcome of a post or predicting the outcome of a change to the brand or a change of the name, what is the perception?

You have to be able to predict that. It's something that, when I was younger, I used to pay attention to brands without even realizing it. Reading the Lysol bottle or reading the bottle and what the ingredients are and what the brand looked like or what they included on the bottle of Coca-Cola. Then [I realized] the reason they made that look a certain way or chose that brand color was because of the psychological implication. Now I'm in the position to where [I notice] every single minor detail, whether it could be a spelling error in the bio or an extra space or the photo doesn't show their face or something like that.

All of those little details add up. Most people today don't care. They don't care about those small details, but the small details can actually turn somebody off to where you no longer look like the person of authority. You look like just everybody else. Yeah, fascinating conversation.

Isaac Mashman30:28

There's this indistinguishable line though that isn't firm. It's a blurry line, because there's no "this is it" of taking that example too far, towards, like, too "dude," to where it's just goofy, towards a gimmick, versus how it's something that can still be perceived [as authentic]. Or too professional, to where you're leaning into, it's just white collar lawyer, or it's professional but still personable. That's also our job, to kind of determine where is that balance of professional but personable. Where is that balance of goofy but serious? Where is the line of, I am your friend, but I am also a teacher? So there are those different lines.

Every single thing you mentioned, the brand funnel earlier, I think of the chemistry of your personal brand. You have all these different pieces of the puzzle that fit together to make you, or to make your brand, or to make a company's brand. You ask somebody what the brand is, they would think about the name and the logo, they would very rarely answer that question with, oh, what the brand stands for. But they're subconsciously aware of it, they just don't consciously think of mentioning it.

Isaac Mashman32:51

Yet if she did do that post, let's say she just woke up in the morning, her hair is crazy, she really doesn't have any makeup on. She might have last night's makeup on, and she's sipping a cup of coffee, like a photo like that. That would be the one thing though that would absolutely blow up the internet. There again, there are these different cognitive biases, talking about psychology. The halo effect, for example, is the reason celebrities exist. It's saying that because of one trait, because of maybe the followers, that person is somehow above us. Celebrities, because of their fame, are somehow better than the average person, when that's simply not true, they're just another person that has a lot of attention or a lot of success.

But if she was to do that post, the media would completely tear it up because it's atypical of what she normally does. It's the same thing as if a lawyer, they definitely have a presentation to uphold and to maintain. It's also, there's a time for your company brand, and then there's a time for your personal brand. They're two separate entities. So that lawyer, they might be representing the company and holding that persona. But personally, they might make a post and show they're out camping, or with their family at a nice dinner, and that wouldn't be going against their brand because it's a part of it.

So interesting topic though, mentioning Kim K, because now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through and look at her Instagram and say, can I see her smiling in any of these? Well, I can actually [find any] smile.

Isaac Mashman34:17

But I get the point, yeah. I get the point and people have told me like smile, Isaac, smile, and I'm like, no, I'm good. Like I'll do a smirk and stuff, but I very rarely actually do a full-grin smile. But at the same time, it's like those are the unique things.

Isaac Mashman35:04

But even then, if you had, let's say, a high profile lawyer that you would think to be suit and tie, there's a time to where they could throw in something personable. That would completely give people a different perspective of them. If anything, those personal posts would actually drive somebody to want to work with them all the more, because they're able to establish more rapport. They're able to establish more trust, a deeper relationship and understanding with [them]. That's why I love this, because I have to think to myself, how would somebody perceive you? How would somebody perceive this action? It's reputation management, being aware of your reputation and how it is being managed, and influencing and directing it. It's a lot of fun.

Isaac Mashman36:46

Well, clients, yes, personally, yes. It's one of those things to where you don't let it get to you and actually you embrace it because you realize that you're being seen. As long as you're not doing something that is deserving of being trolled. And sometimes there's a time and a place to do that too, and to pull a PR stunt or be more gimmicky, to where you can do something kind of really gimmicky out of the blue to catch attention as a hook. But there's a difference between doing that and actually being a gimmick yourself as a brand. I think about a couple years ago, there was a platform that preceded Instagram's Reels called Lasso, and I was one of the star creators on it, and my videos were picked up and I was putting out these motivational clips.

This person recorded a video and he ripped my channel apart. He ripped the platform apart, he ripped me apart, and it was a 20 minute video and he got like 300,000 views on that video or something like that, and I'm like, that's the most exposure I think I've ever gotten. I'll take it. I'm giving myself the high five because I got noticed by this YouTuber, and I'm like, all right, cool. I'm not against that. But then you also have negative cases too. You have to be careful as it can also take a toll on somebody mentally and emotionally. I can understand that because now you have a thousand people saying, oh, you look ugly, or oh, you gained weight, or oh, you look like this.

So that's a lot of attention, to where you have to make sure that you're not letting it impact you on a deep level. If anything, drive you forward in a positive way. So yeah, that's just one of the things that comes with it.

Isaac Mashman38:32

Did you know that there is not one PR firm in the world that is worth a billion dollars? Fun fact, out of all these industries with billion dollar industries and even trillion dollars, there is not one billion dollar public relations firm. Edelman is the number one PR firm in the world and they're worth about 900 million in revenue. Now influencer marketing is increasingly affecting our everyday behavior and it scares me, which is funny. I'm saying that it scares me and it's something that I'm almost concerned about while I'm in the industry, and this is my bread and butter, what puts food on the table.

Isaac Mashman39:16

That's happening to us on an everyday basis. That's why you see Shaquille O'Neal on a printer commercial. There's a printer commercial for Epson with Shaquille O'Neal. That is a form of influencer marketing. Now it would be celebrity marketing, but celebrities are influencers. Not all influencers are celebrities. So it is going to be growing. It's already, I believe, an $8 billion industry, but it's going to be growing to 10 billion, 50 billion, 100 billion. As more percentages of the world are getting acclimated to the internet, we're going to see more influencers on an international level, such as Africa. Africa is being globalized right now and industrialized.

That means that there are going to be more influencers on an international level that are influencing Western culture and Eastern culture and vice versa. I'm curious to see how it's going to affect people and kids. A decade [ago], 20 years ago, 30 years ago, you asked a kid, what do you want to be? A football star, movie actress, a model, blah, blah, blah. Today, [it's], I want to be a YouTuber. I want to do what Mr. Beast does. So it's influencing our behavior. But then again, our behavior has always been influenced by Hollywood, but not to this level. We had kids a decade, two decades ago that would go outside and play.

When I was growing up, I would go outside and I'd be entertained by dirt. I was somebody who even then, if my mom or grandparents were more technologically inclined, pro-technology, I still could have been behind the computer 24/7. But now a decade from now, or next year even, you have these kids that are being born around this technology. So influencer marketing is affecting them as infants. But there's also a lot of opportunity to make money and to be a nano influencer or micro influencer or to understand how you can monetize that attention to where you could run an advertisement for a podcast or make money from selling a book. There are literally hundreds of ways of monetization today, thousands.

Isaac Mashman41:42

What's the resume? It's your personal brand. It's, yep, it's a representation of who you are and why somebody would care. Yeah. I've enjoyed this conversation, Shannon, I [didn't] know what to expect, but we were able to have a technical conversation that oftentimes I don't get into, [because] it's surface level, but this is a deeper conversation.

Isaac Mashman42:07

You can find me literally everywhere at Isaac Mashman, ISAAC, M-A-S-H-M-A-N. I have a podcast as well called Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman, and I published my first book, Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence, last year. It became the number one new release in public relations on Amazon. You can find it on Amazon or by going to my website.

Isaac Mashman42:32

Well, Shannon, thank you for having me on.