Personal Branding; Fact or Myth?
Host: Isaac Mashman · September 1, 2021 · Episode 77 · 10 minutes
Transcribed from the episode audio and edited for names and terms. Wording can differ slightly from what was said; the episode itself is the record.
Yo yo yo yo what is going on everybody? Isaac Mashman here welcome back for another episode of Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman the show that is all about helping you become a more capable individual therefore getting better results in your own individual lives businesses and careers. Now today I'm doing an episode on a Wednesday right so we had an episode 76 keep up or get left behind that came out on Monday episode today in the Friday interview coming up as well with Tristan Roberts which I'm super excited for and I decided to record an episode midweek because partly I think I need to go harder with the podcast and this is me being vulnerable with you.
I believe that in order to continue this momentum to reach more people, to share more messages, I gotta put in more work and then I have to make more content for you guys to enjoy, listen, entertain and ultimately share, right? Get value from because After all, that is the only fee that I'm ever going to ask you to pay up and that is to pay it forward, right?
If I'm providing you with value, share that value with a friend, a business partner, a family member, somebody in your life who you know can also get the value. So today I'm going to be talking about personal branding, right? A topic that I absolutely love talking about because, well, I got into the business of personal branding. I might hear to sell you in this episode though, but I am here to discuss the concept of building your personal brand. Is it truly something that exists or is personal branding more so a myth? Is it something that is made up? Is it something that is fabricated? I made a post today on Facebook as I do pretty much once every couple of weeks I'll do a post that says, hey, what do you need help with with your personal brand?
And the purpose of this post is to get insights into what people are, you know, struggling with, what I could touch on, what points I could discuss, and then to also see if, hey, if anybody who's making a comment could potentially need work with Mashman Ventures, right? If I can help them, if we could help them get results. And so somebody, and he was the first person to comment on the post, I'm not disclosing his name. If you go to the post, you could find out who it is. He seems like a great guy. But he says that personal branding is a myth. It's something that doesn't exist and is done out of a place of ego.
And I had a rebuttal and I said that, well, why is there this conception that if you're building out your personal brand, is not authentic and if you're building it out of a place of ego, like why do you have to becoming from that place, right? You have the ego, the super ego and the id, right? Going back to, you know, English studies, right? If you ever took that course in high school or college, you know, they talked about the super ego and the ego and the id, you know, what one is doing it for you, what one's doing it for other people, and then what one is, you know, basing things off of logic.
And I just, I started thinking about it. And then he commented back and he's like you're not being authentic if you're purposely building your personal brand and what he was getting at is if you're going to be building your personal brand around somebody or making it out to be better than you actually are then you could be in a sense being in authentic and yes I have to agree with that however if you're building yourself into that character and you're actually doing action steps every single day that are the equivalent of what you're posting about online, then that means that that is your highest self.
That means that that is your highest level of authenticity because you're actually taking the steps to talk about the things that you're actively pursuing and doing every single day. And then I said, if it was only a concept, then how was fair, how were pharaohs able to stay in control of ancient Egypt for hundreds of years for generations, right? be able to build pyramids and sphinxes and propagate the Nile and build out a fertile civilization. One of the greatest civilizations that we're still unpiling and discovering new things about each and every year. Christianity was built off of the back of Jesus' personal brand. Now, I'm not saying this in a sacrilegious way, but if you look at what has kept the gospel and Christianity going, it is Jesus' personal brand.
This idea that Jesus was a perfect human being. He was half man, he was half God. Therefore, he had a very strong personal brand and people followed him for who he was in his direct relationship with God. Now, I'm not here to say that, hey, choose this religion, choose this, that religion. But Christianity is, I believe the largest religion in the world with over a billion people practicing it. Islam had a lot to do when it comes to Muhammad, you know, the prophet Muhammad's personal brand. And then we talk about the monarchs in ancient Britain and the, you know, the old days in Scotland and the Nordic countries, these people maintained control because they made it out to be their personal brand, right?
They were direct descendants of God and that means that they had holy blood and they had to keep that blood pure, which is why they married other kings and queens and they married within rather than marrying outwardly. Now, if the people understood what the kings and queens were doing and the monarchs were doing and understanding that they are normal people, then they could have easily overthrew the governments, and that's why cus happened over the past thousands of years, because ultimately you get sick and tired of being controlled and told what to do, the taxes are too high, and the rules don't make any sense.
But because of the halo effect, the people perceived them as these god-rollers, these figures of authority that were greater than that. I discussed the halo effect, and I believe episode 44, it was, you know, is everybody equal because that effect has continued over the past, you know, 10, 20 years. It's something that has continued since practically the beginning of civilization. And if personal branding was a myth, then that means that presidents, that would mean that senators, congressmen, and all of the people we look up to, celebrities and people in Hollywood, aren't true. That means that they aren't people. That means that their personal brand has no weight.
That even though Michael Jordan could sign any piece of memorabilia in his house and sell it for hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars, then that means that personal branding just it's not there.
It's not there. And I couldn't disagree with that idea and that claim anymore. Like that is one of the things that I disagree with more than ever now. Personal branding is a concept. It is not some firm thing written on pen and paper that, you know, it's not an object. It is a concept. It is a series of beliefs. It is a psychological effect that takes place. You are building your personal brand to be this public figure, to be this celebrity figure or this authoritative expert that have people following you. So it is a concept, but it is by no means a myth. If you're talking about a myth, you think about things that do not exist, that were stories passed down orally for hundreds of years. Greek mythology, Nordic mythology, the Loch Ness Monster, these different stories that were told in the ancient world.
And there's a show called Mythbusters, right? Hey, is this real or is this fake? And then they would disprove if this myth was real, and then if it was plausible and if it was actually just myth. personal branding I can assure you is more than just a myth. It is a concept that when understood and when properly leveraged and directed has the ability to direct nations, it has the ability to change the entire landscape of the world and of the earth. Or it also has the ability to obtain riches and wealth and have massive influence and point people and civilizations towards movements and causes that you believe in and that you think matter.
Personal branding is something that is at the center of our civilization. We elect presidents, we elect politicians, we have business people, we have CEOs of companies and corporations that people elect and bring in on purpose because of their personal brand.
Just because you're building out your personal branding, making the cautious decisions every single day to do so does not mean that you're inauthentic. And I believe that if you were to say that personal branding is not in existence and if it's fake and if it is a myth like you claim, you are leaving a lot on the table and you're shooting yourself in the foot and you're preventing yourself from really recognizing its true potential and attracting more of the things to you and to your life through your personal brand, through the means of organic and attraction marketing, which means that you are not going to be getting to your goals as quickly as you potentially could.
means that you are going to be in your own way. Building your personal brand has very few cons and to say that it does not exist in 2021 and the age of influencers and society and all this other stuff is to basically be lying to yourself in the mirror.