Personal Branding ft. Isaac Mashman

Isaac Mashman0:12

Thank you for inviting me on, and jumping right to it, I love that. Personal branding is misunderstood. That's the one thing that I would say; that's my take on it. A lot of people only focus on what they do whenever they're building out their personal brand, yet they fail to realize that the thing that makes them unique, the thing that makes them stand out, the thing that establishes their longevity, is that people are following them for who they are. But if you're able to take your personality, position yourself, and also take what you're doing professionally, you get this amazing synergy, to where you're able to direct the audience that's following you to help you grow a business, help you grow your career.

It's powerful. It's oftentimes misunderstood. It goes back way before the 1930s, when people think that Napoleon Hill coined the phrase. It goes back to the earliest man. How do you think Pharaohs stayed in power for hundreds of years and generations, how kings in England stayed in power, and people who changed the world? So that's a very short take on personal branding, not to jump too far into it.

Isaac Mashman1:34

Really exceptional questions, just super early on. I've got to give you a pat on the back for that. Well, and here's the thing, though: if you think about your favorite celebrity, the person that you're following right now, you don't know them for what they do; you know them for who they are. If we think back to some of the greatest leaders of mankind, Martin Luther King, presidents, political figures, a lot of times we don't know them just as the politician but for the way they hold themselves. Are they a family-oriented individual? Do they have children? What are their core beliefs? It's not just the fact that they're a politician or a celebrity; it's who they are or what's interesting about them.

So let's say you're somebody who's interested in venture capital. You're somebody who wants to get involved with venture capital as an investor, or maybe you have a startup that you want to pitch to a venture capital firm. Obviously you're going to talk about your startup and what you're doing. So let's say you're providing a specific solution: talk about that solution and talk about that. But then personally, give the venture capitalists a reason to believe in you as the founder, somebody who is cautious about their reputation, somebody who's cautious about what they're doing. Right now I'm super aggressive on short-form vertical content such as Reels, YouTube Shorts, TikTok videos.

The algorithms are your friends. They're not your enemy. A lot of people believe that algorithms are your enemy, but they want to keep people on the platform. They're pro-creator and kind of anti-consumer, because they're keeping consumers addicted. But definitely short-form vertical video. What I would say on the personal aspects, if I was to give a couple examples: if you're taking a trip, highlight your trip. If you're going out for a nice dinner, highlight that dinner. If you're waking up and drinking a cup of coffee... I've sold clients off of the fact that I drink my coffee a specific way, and people know me for that.

The moment that you veer into that and show some of your personality, people have additional layers of connectivity with you, additional layers of rapport.

Isaac Mashman3:52

Well, TikTok, I grew a lot of that audience over the past couple of years, and one of the biggest things was collaboration and creative content. Now, as a businessman, or somebody who is an entrepreneur or has an interest in finance or economics, it's not as sexy, and it doesn't have as much of an appeal as, let's say, an entertainer. It's much easier to grow as an entertainer, but if you can merge the two, if you can somehow find how to provide somebody with something that's educational or informative while also being entertaining, that's a great tactic. So one of the examples of a video that everybody loves, and I haven't done enough of lately, is Buy My Service, Bro.

I would take the worst sales pitches that I would ever get, and I would react to them. I would just break down the sales pitch. I'd be like, on this episode of Buy My Service, Bro, we've got this dude over here who doesn't know the first thing about this, or this is an automated response. But that was really creative. It merged the educational aspect, and it also tied in with the entertaining aspect. So get creative with it. I would say take and write down an entire list of ideas of pieces of content or topics that you could talk about. It doesn't have to be some super highly polished video.

I've talked to so many people lately, and it's like they're afraid of putting out content because of the quality. They think that it has to have every single subtitle, it has to be perfect, but at the end of the day, the content that is the least polished a lot of times performs better than the content that is polished.

Isaac Mashman5:43

One more thing to add to the previous conversation: with a highly polished video, the better the camera quality, the better the microphone, the better. But if you don't have that right now, don't think that you're unable to create something that educates, entertains, or inspires and motivates somebody. So when it comes to personal branding today, in 2022, in May at the time that we're recording this, leveraging your personal brand to grow your business really boils down to talking to as many people as possible about what you have going on. Your goal should be to be known by every single possible person. There's no such thing as being an introvert and growing your personal brand.

Even if you wanted to be an artist that only drops on occasion and you don't go out, it's like you're rolling the dice and you're taking risks. But if you're in a business, you can't afford to be introverted, and you can't afford not to grow out your personal brand, because that's how you're going to survive past your current business. Let's say you want to pivot a decade from now from the business that you're doing, and you're not known as the founder. How do you expect to get the same success with your next venture? You can't. It's going to take you just as much [effort]. But if you connect with people, and now they're following you for you as the man or the woman, the person, that means that they're going to follow you no matter the business, no matter the model.

And it boils down to marketing: letting people know what you've got going on, and not being afraid of promoting yourself, and promoting that offer, promoting that business, promoting the article that you wrote or the article that you're featured in. Take it seriously and treat it like a business.

Isaac Mashman7:41

Well, audience building is a form of networking. It's just, the thing is, people will know you and you might not always know about them, because at the end of the day, that's your goal. I hate to break it down and say it that way, but it's the honest truth. Your goal is to get so big to become so well known that you can't possibly know every single person that knows you. But you'll have all of these people who know about you, who follow you, who support you. Then, come time, maybe you run into them in person, or they reach out and say, hey, you've helped me in X, Y, and Z ways, and you're like, wow, the person gets on your radar.

Now, when it comes to networking, you have to have an intention with what you're doing. But every person you come in contact with... I was recently in Washington, D.C., for an event with Meta, and I had the opportunity of meeting and networking with 500 other business owners. Although I knew that I wouldn't be able to work with every single person that I came in contact with, and maybe they wouldn't be qualified or there wouldn't be a great synergy, I knew that they would either be able to support me by buying my book, or maybe they know somebody who also needs what I have, what I offer.

At the end of the day, that word of mouth travels far. That's how you can also build out your audience, through the form of networking and through building out a referral offer. I have a very simple strategy called the power of three, where you send out and you connect with three new people every single day. If you connect with three people every day for a year, you've connected with over 1,000 individuals. Then that number begins to compound, because those 1,000 remember you and start to share what you have going on.

Isaac Mashman9:28

For LinkedIn, for example, whenever you're connecting with somebody, let's say a mentor or somebody who's successful in business, or somebody that you view as a mentor, a virtual mentor, approach them as their equal. Fill out your profiles, fill out your social media pages, and show the world what you have going on. It's a first impression kind of thing. But if you're sending them a message and a connection request, don't say, oh my God, I'm your biggest fan. Say, hey, it would be an honor to connect with you, love what you have going on, cheers to massive success this year, period. Twitter, for example: the way that we got connected, you and I, is I made a simple tweet that said, whose podcast should I be on?

You saw that, and you're like, hey, let's do it. Then you sent out a message, or I said, [send me a] DM, we got a date set up, and here we go. Now this is the beginning of a great working relationship, a friendship. So that's as simple as it can be. It doesn't have to be complicated. It does require you to get out of your comfort zone at times and to find and have those conversations, but be more interested in the next person. What you'll notice is the more interest you show and the more questions you ask about the next guy, the more they're going to start asking you.

Isaac Mashman10:56

Yes, 100%, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to kind of highlight that. So I wrote my first book, which came out last year on November 1st, called Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence, and that reached number one new release and a top 10 bestseller in public relations on Amazon. Super grateful for every single person who's bought a copy of it. The best way I could summarize it is I talk about the what and why of personal branding. What is your personal brand? Why is it important? Then I start talking about how you can start building it out. It's a short read, less than 100 pages, taking an hour and a half.

But I focus on principles. I focus on things that will last, even surpassing and going past the days of social media. There are so many books out there now that focus on specific platforms, specific techniques, and half of these platforms that they talk about, and what worked yesterday, might not work today. In this book, I talk about things that will work regardless of platform, regardless of media outlet, regardless of that. It's available on Amazon, and it's available on my website by going to isaacmashman.com forward slash book. Yeah, it's been a great experience. I'm looking forward to kind of expanding on it in the future.

Isaac Mashman12:13

It boils down to positioning. Are you positioning yourself as everybody else, somebody who looks like everybody else, or are you positioning yourself as a public figure, as a thought leader, as an authority? It's going to take some time to get your first pitch out, but let's say you're somebody who has a podcast. So now, whenever you're creating and formulating a pitch, you put a sentence together saying that I am the host of X, Y, and Z podcast, which has charted in X, Y, and Z country, or that I started in this year and have produced dozens of episodes, or something like that. You make an attractive and appealing sentence that positions you.

It highlights what you have going on. If you have a business, highlight the previous awards. It doesn't need to be anything too crazy. But then you pitch yourself. There are a lot of great resources out there. But the other thing is, journalists today, people are constantly looking for new sources. The best networks, the right networks, they're never going to ask you to pay for a placement. I have to tell you that if somebody approaches you and says, hey, I can get you into X, Y, and Z source, look in the opposite direction and realize that that's not true. Or if they are saying that you have to pay, the source isn't worth your time.

I've secured literally 38 placements since the beginning of 2021, and I haven't paid for one of them out of pocket. The reason I was able to do that is I positioned myself. So put together a media kit, put together a series of information about you, put together photos. Like in this episode, in the booking process, I provided my media kit to help you with promotion, to help you understand what I've got going on, and to highlight some of the things that I think are worth talking about. From there, we've been able to have an excellent interview and an excellent conversation. But don't be afraid to talk about yourself, because if you can't talk about yourself, how do you ever expect somebody else to feel...

Isaac Mashman14:45

We're doing this in a master class format. I'm going to have to take this podcast and turn this into a webinar. So when it comes to podcasting, like I said, it's a great way to establish your credibility, and you were talking about this a little bit before we started the interview. But let me go ahead and cover sourcing guests right now. Validate people, and validate their success, validate their claims. It's easy to just say, hey, I've done X, Y, and Z, but actually do some research on them. Are they who they say they are? Do they have a positive reputation? Have they done something that's worthwhile or worth talking about?

Even if you're not in business, let's say you're running an entertainment-based podcast, find people who are entertaining and people that you think you could have a great conversation with, because if there isn't any chemistry between you and the guest, it's just going to be one awkward conversation. There have been times in the past where I've interviewed somebody and I have not published the interview, because I didn't feel like it was something that I really felt strongly about. There are platforms out there where you can find guests and have guests pitch you, such as PodMatch.com, MatchMaker.fm, and Guestio with Travis Chappell. So there are different resources that way, but you're going to get pitched by 100 different people.

So it's also important to kind of define what your show is about and what you've got going on. Content-wise, be consistent with it. If you're going to do an episode... and this is one of the biggest challenges I've been facing, and I've faced over the past several years of having my own show, is being consistent with the content. It's best to schedule it out ahead if you can, to where you record your episodes on a Sunday, you publish them on a Monday and a Friday, and you have it scheduled out. I would say that when it comes to promoting it on social media, having a separate link on your website or creating a website for your show, using, let's say, Podpage, or creating a simple website through Wix or Weebly, is going to help you a lot more than not promoting your show at all.

It boils down to promotion, and go into it with a long-term mindset, because the average podcast never surpasses 20 listeners per show and never surpasses 20 episodes. So the fact that you've even recorded 30, and are going on 40 and 50 and 60, means that you've already beaten the statistics. So go into it with a long-term mindset, be committed to it, treat it like a business, and tell every single person that you know about it, because you're doing the show for a reason.

Isaac Mashman17:32

I'm going to take the time to talk about Mashman Ventures, my public relations firm. We're expanding the team. We're providing and creating a ton of different resources right now for our clients, and I'm going to be rolling out a group training program later this summer. A lot of really wonderful ways to help people with their personal brand. We say that we help create, maintain, and scale unrivaled personal brands. A lot of people have the ideas, they have the energy, but they don't have the knowledge of how to execute. They don't know the how. That's the biggest question. How do I do this? How do I get out there?

You've been asking all of the how questions, not the what or the hypotheticals, but you're asking, how do I do this? I think that that's excellent. That goes and shows the preparation that you did. But I'm going to be scaling out Mashman Ventures, bringing on some more consultants there, as well as buying some new properties and focusing a little bit on my other two businesses that I have, Mashman Investments and Mashman Properties, looking to get some things moving very, very quickly. I'm kind of getting impatient in certain areas.