Build Your Digital Presence and Personal Brand with Isaac Mashman

Isaac Mashman0:27

Alicia, thank you so much for the invitation.

Isaac Mashman0:35

Yeah. Well, I run a consulting firm based out of Little Rock, Arkansas, and I specialize in personal branding. We work with emerging and established public figures to optimize and scale their personal brands, whether that be a business owner who is successful offline but doesn't know the first thing about the digital space. We've worked with podcasters, authors, creatives, models, audio engineers, really a wide range of different professions. I believe it's so important that everybody starts to really understand the power that the personal brand has, and then the steps that they can consciously take in order to achieve a particular goal. That's my primary business. That's my baby. That's the big thing over the next decade for me.

Isaac Mashman1:30

Really, you could summarize my entire journey from getting started in 2017 as the pursuit of clarity, finding clarity in what I was doing and what I was offering. I started out in the network marketing space. Now, I was a great student. I think it's important to note that I'm not like a Gary Vaynerchuk D or F student. I graduated top 10 of my class. I had the opportunity to go to college. I was one SAT test away from the [full ride] scholarship to UCF or FSU. I had like a 1230, and I needed a 1240. So I could have easily gotten that and gone that traditional route of going and getting a marketing degree. But I had this question in my mind my senior year of, why would I do that? What's the point?

Isaac Mashman2:18

I saw that there were these young guys who I thought were making good money at the time, and they were slightly older than me. So, seeking that sort of male role model, I dove into that industry, went through three companies four different times, had some great experiences, learned a lot, had dinner with the vice president of the company one time, and from there went into a bunch of different businesses, from trying to figure out drop shipping, to podcast management, to the music industry, wanting to be the Scooter Braun, the Isaac Mashman Scooter Braun sort of figure, because I'm not musically inclined myself, but I love music.

But I realized in doing so that there really aren't many ways that you can monetize the music industry that are ethical or reasonable. One is you have to go to scale. So an artist needs to go and tour. They need to get millions of streams. Even then you're not making good money, or you need to take aggressive deals and do a 360 deal, and I didn't like that. So the pandemic started to roll around, and we had to cancel one of the concerts because we didn't know if it was the common cold or if it was going to kill everybody. So we canceled that concert.

The artist lost his passion, and then I was kind of lost, because [I was] thinking, well, what's next for me? So, understanding I didn't want to do another traditional SMMA business, and I [didn't] want to work with businesses, per se, in the done for you fashion, I kind of stumbled into the consulting space and public relations, built a firm for a few years, and then, most notably, this year launched my new business, Mashman Consulting Group, which is a lot of fun. I'm really grateful for the opportunities I've had working with my clients, and here I am.

Isaac Mashman4:06

Well, it's really important to note that your personal brand expands outside of the digital space as well. It's not solely limited to Facebook or Instagram. You could go offline and be off the grid, and you can still connect with people on your local city level, go to the Chamber of Commerce and grow your business that way, and vicariously grow your personal brand. But I believe that social media and the internet and the digitization of everything is a really effective tool and a marketing vehicle to get in front of more people and to build your credibility and authority. So whenever somebody comes to me and they have a problem with their personal brand, I always ask them, what are you looking to get from it?

There are three overarching reasons. Vanity, so you want to do it just because it makes you feel good, and you see that a lot in the entertainment space. Mission, so you want to push a cause forward. And number three is money. That's where most people fall. They want to generate some sort of revenue, whether that be through programs, courses, trainings, consulting, coaching, or they want to grow their business, whether that be an HVAC business, a landscaping business, or an agency itself. I'm actually bringing on a new client in the next week, and he's a social media agency owner. He has a SaaS startup. So now let's position you.

But then that question of positioning begs another question, which is, well, what do you want to be known for long-term? What do you want to be known for? Then from there, we can position them as that top authority, not necessarily the number one, because then you're trying to convince people. But if you can position yourself as, hey, I'm the top podcaster, I'm the top agency coach, I'm the top consultant or business owner, whatever that might be, or the top model, you can start looking for strategies that can, number one, increase your credibility and authority, such as getting press, getting on podcasts for interviews, or optimizing your current strategy with your social media.

Minor tweaks, even, such as changing your handle to be your name. You'd be amazed at how many people have a social media handle that is something other than their name, or they have "the" or "official" in front of it, and that affects the algorithm and how they appear in search. So really taking that macroscopic approach to who they are and what they're looking to accomplish, and finding the steps for their personal brand, can ultimately generate those results for them.

Isaac Mashman6:35

Really, a lack of direction, more times than not, because you have this boatload of information that you have access to. You can study 25 different mentors and look at all these different strategies and paths, but then that creates a lot of confusion and lack of clarity, because you don't know which ones you should take. So my job and my role is to consolidate all of that information and give them a firm direction about what they need to do in order to generate results, and explain to them why they need to do these things and what they're looking to get from taking that particular step. [Say you're] changing over your profile picture from a photo of you with your family to a photo of just you.

You might wonder, okay, well, why would I do that? Well, you're the center of attention with your personal brand, not your family, not anybody else. So it's really going and being intensive with the explanation process and giving them that peace of mind, knowing that they're going to be getting results in time. I would also say the second big issue is managing and setting expectations, because anybody can say that they want to become famous overnight or they want to get featured in Forbes. Well, that might take you some time. It took me five, six years to get my first feature in Forbes, but this year alone, I've landed two.

I think that's really significant because it shows the power of compounding. So your personal brand is that investment that will pay off long term if you are consistent enough to stick with it and continue doing things that are pushing your image and pushing your reputation forward. Yeah.

Isaac Mashman8:38

Well, I think that [they] understand, whether it's me consulting them or somebody else at the firm as [we] scale the consultant team moving into next year, that this is a partnership.

Isaac Mashman9:00

They could land that Forbes feature 10 years from now, and they wouldn't have even landed that if they didn't take that time and make that investment to work with me. I think that that is one of the most powerful things, and one of the best selling points as well, because if they have a problem, they can come to me. We might do a consultation three months from now, and they're like, hey, I want to do this, or I want to launch a book, or I want to launch a podcast. I understand that we consulted a few months ago and talked about social media, but now I want to do a podcast and I don't know what I'm doing.

So that leads into the next conversation and the next consultation, and really having that relationship-oriented approach is really significant. That makes me extremely proud, because we also are very ethical in what we're doing. It's really easy to say, oh, we're the most [straight-laced] firm or business owner. But let me give you a little bit of context here. A lot of times in the public relations space, and I especially saw this, [there are] the pay-to-win strategies, like paying for Forbes or paying for Entrepreneur, or paying $200 to get 200 article placements, and all that was was a newswire. Let alone, the Forbes feature tactic is, number one, against the terms of use for Forbes.

So do you really anticipate them ever accepting an article on you in the future if you've broken their usage rules? On top of that, it's illegal in the eyes of the FTC, because it's technically an advertisement that is undisclosed. So really there's a lot of ignorance, and it's not the fault of the person, because they're putting their faith in somebody else who they think they can generate results from. So being able to say, hey, and again, going back to setting expectations, it might take you a couple of years to get a feature, or you might start out with a low-level blog. But then you can use that as a stepping stone to get a higher caliber placement, so you might write for an article column in your industry.

That might not generate a ton of results for you, but that can also be your foot in the door to a higher caliber column, such as Business Insider or Entrepreneur or Yahoo Finance. So I really pride myself on that fact, and on helping change the education in the space, because there isn't some firm certification program. It's not some, you go to college for this. That means that anybody can technically be a practitioner in the personal branding space, but that doesn't mean that everybody should, or is your ideal person that you should work with.

Isaac Mashman11:26

The majority of my business, ironically, comes from Facebook, the platform that people don't spend time on, because if you think about the dynamic of social media, Instagram is the most out of touch. It's the highlight reel. But on Facebook, you can connect with these high caliber business owners and executives and CEOs, or business mentors and people that you look up to, and you can send them a friend request. They're much more likely to accept your friend request, and now you're one message away from them getting a notification on their phone, compared to being on Instagram, where they're getting smothered with messages and requests. I think it's important also to note that whenever you're approaching a client or approaching a mentor, you don't come across as a fan, you don't come across as desperate.

You come across as somebody who's their equal, somebody who has something to offer, and you build that relationship with them, even if it's saying, hey, I saw that you don't own your own website, you don't own your domain. I just searched up your name on GoDaddy or IONOS, and I see that you don't own it. Well, you need to go out and consider buying that and spending the 20 bucks to buy your domain. So Facebook is a tremendous magnet. On top of that, ironically, a lot of the podcast interviews that I do result in some sort of referral partnership, or they result in business where I'm working with the podcaster, because a lot of the people who have podcasts set this stage.

They're clearly trying to build a personal brand, but then therein lies the problem that they're facing, and I can come in kind of as their knight in shining armor and say, well, here's a solution.

Isaac Mashman13:32

Well, ultimately, over the next 10 years [we] will be the number one personal brand consultancy worldwide. We'll have a team of 500 consultants [who'll consult] figures, and we will set the stage and the certification in place to where if you're associated with MCG, Mashman Consulting Group, you are undeniably, undoubtedly the best of the best. We look at consulting firms like McKinsey or Boston Consulting Group that are in the management space, and they consult some of the most notable entities, from governments to massive Fortune 500 companies. Earlier this year, I published a paper called Identity Positioning™: A Macroscopic View on Personal Branding. It's about eight pages long, and it highlights my own unique proprietary strategy to personal branding that combines the personal identity, so you have that personal hook, and you combine that with your professional punchline, what you want to be known for professionally.

Having that personal and professional association can help build rapport and really help you stand out, because you don't follow your business mentors just because they're providing tactical, strategic advice for you. You're connecting with them for the individual: the person, the family member, the person who has been married to their high school sweetheart. I'm thinking about Ed Mylett, who has multiple children and is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. You don't just connect for the strategic advice, you connect for the person. So really building Mashman Consulting Group into that number one firm is an obsession of mine. I see such a clear path forward to achieve that.

Isaac Mashman15:13

Definitely. You can go to my company website, MashmanCG.com. We have this really cool AI chatbot called [KPI]. It'll take you through some different questions and lead you to an overview presentation we have published that explains a lot about how we operate as a business. I would also recommend that you go to Amazon and pick up a copy of my book, Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence. The second edition of this is coming out next year. It's going to be quadruple the size and so much more in depth, but this is a really great starting point. And just connect with me on social media.

I'm accessible everywhere, especially Facebook. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, Reddit, YouTube, literally. You can't be in the personal branding space and not be diverse.