Promotion, Promotion, Promotion
Host: Isaac Mashman · April 12, 2022 · Episode 98 · 22 minutes
Transcribed from the episode audio and edited to read cleanly: names and terms corrected, grammar fixed, filler words and false starts removed, punctuation added. Words in [brackets] could not be made out with certainty. Wording can differ slightly from what was said; the episode itself is the record.
[You're listening] to Chase the Vision with Isaac [Mashman]. Yo, yo, yo, what is going on, everybody? Isaac Mashman here, and welcome back to another episode of your favorite podcast, Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman, the show that is all about helping you become a more capable individual through me sharing my experiences and knowledge in business, life, and personal growth. Look, at the center of all achievement is personal growth. You go to college to grow as an individual, to learn more. You go and start a profession, and through experience and through mentorship, you get better at that profession. So why can't that be the same when it comes to business and life?
I'm here to teach you and share the things that I know in business, and also talk about the different things that I have learned in my time on this earth, and the conversations I've had, and the relationships I've had, and the friendships I've had, and, well, the things that I've done.
So with that being said, if you get any ounce of value from this podcast, anything at all, any one thing that stood out in your mind, I ask that you share this with a friend, a business partner, somebody that you know in your life that you believe will get just as much value from this episode and from this podcast as you did yourself. That is the way that we grow, that is the way that we chart, that is the way we help more people, and that is the way that the podcast stays in momentum. Super grateful for you. I'm not here to run advertisements. I'm here to get straight to the point, which leads me into my next point, which is promotion. I'm literally just going to title this episode Promotion, Promotion, Promotion, because all I'm going to be talking about today is promotion.
A lot of times, people think that they can just make one piece of content and that content will do everything, and it will just take off and become this viral sensation. I'm sure that you guys have heard this from many, many people in the past who are like, create content, create content. They're talking more so about the branding, and they're talking less about the marketing. Yes, content markets itself to a degree, but it is up to you to put that content into motion, to spread the word about what you have going on. Just creating a piece of content isn't always going to guarantee somebody is watching it.
I talk about this in my book, Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence. I say that a lot of times, if you have an exceptional brand, you have this great brand messaging, and you don't have a strong marketing strategy or marketing tactic, then what is the point?
You're going to have this great brand, but nobody's going to know about it. Yes, your brand is going to speak for itself, and people are automatically going to tell their friends and family, yeah, to a degree, but that isn't always going to be guaranteed. A lot of times there's this idea that a great product or a great service is automatically going to market itself. That really is an ignorant thing to say, because there are so many different factors and variables that come into play with that statement, such as the kind of consumer. Some of these consumers might want to keep it to themselves. Some of these consumers might be more introverted, and they don't really have conversations, and they're not going to want to share it. Based off of the product, it could be something that they don't want to let other people know about.
For whatever reason, that is. It is up to you as the founder, the CEO, the person who is behind it, the visionary, to ensure that not only do you have a great brand, but you have a great marketing strategy as well. Here's the thing: you can have a great marketing strategy, but if your brand sucks, the conversions are going to be very low, because people aren't going to take you, your product, or your service seriously. That is why there has to be this mesh between your brand and your marketing message. How you build your brand will determine how you market what it is you are offering. You don't see Rolls-Royce running advertisements during the Super Bowl, but you see Bud Light and Budweiser run advertisements during the Super Bowl.
But you don't see Bud Light and Budweiser run advertisements at the Masters, or at a tennis tournament. Your brand will influence and help you understand how you're going to be marketing, because of the target. You do not see luxury brands marketing to just everybody. It's the same thing: you don't see lower-quality brands or the everyday working [man's] thing be marketed at these high-caliber, high-ticket events or situations. There's a reason for that. It should be in the back of your head as you're building out your own brand and as you're building out your own business. You don't have to be an entrepreneur to get value from the things I'm talking about today, because the biggest takeaway I want you to get is the very simple word of promotion. Promotion.
The definition of promoting is to, well, spread the word about something, to talk about something, to talk about what you have going on, and to be the promoter. I'm thinking about different podcast interviews I've heard in the past from some of the greatest people and entrepreneurs of our day, and who they started out as. I'm thinking of one, Scooter Braun. He started out promoting events at a club before he was managing musical talent. He would promote it, and he would get people to sign up, and he was just going to be talking to everybody. He was making himself known, and he had this really crappy brand name.
I think it was something pertaining to Superman, like [Trip the Night] Promotions or something, if my memory is serving me well. Although the brand wasn't great, it was converting, because he was making sure that every single person knew about it.
There was no way that you could avoid his conversation and him going and putting a flyer in your hands. But if he wasn't going out and having and engaging in those conversations, and actively hunting and seeking out these people and these individuals to go to these clubs, do you think anybody would have shown up? Yeah, maybe one or two or three, but to have it packed out or sold out, that's another story. You see, you have to do the hunting so you can start reaping the benefits of your harvest in the future. This doesn't mean that you're going to be reaping the benefits and all of a sudden stop hunting yourself.
No. To expand further on this analogy, I want you to think about whenever you plant a seed, if you've ever grown anything in the house. Personally, I'm blessed to have a green thumb.
My great-grandmother was a great gardener. My grandmother was always great at keeping plants alive. My mom didn't quite get that skill, didn't get that same green thumb. But for me, I absolutely love growing things. Looking right now, I [have] a bonsai in my office. I have some other plants. I'm growing an avocado. This avocado that I put in the water, it was a store-bought avocado. I took the seed, I dried the seed, I put it in a dish of water, and it took, I believe, a month for the root to sprout at the bottom. It took almost another month for the sapling to start to bud and to grow up out of the top. It took time, and I had to have faith, and I had to know that it was going to eventually sprout.
Now I have to wait another month for it to grow and get bigger and stronger and develop roots before I can plant it in some soil. But the thing is, I understand that the future outcome is going to happen, but it will take time in order to get there. It's the same thing with building out your personal brand, your product, your service. Every single interview you do, every single podcast conversation you have, every single piece of content that you create or interaction that you have, where you are focusing now on what you are doing and talking about it, is going to lead to a potential outcome in the future.
But that outcome might not be able to be measured right now. That is an example of planting the fruit today so you can reap the benefits tomorrow. Over the past week, I had two different people, well, two different entities rather, reach out to interview me. One of them was a follow-up interview from last year, and the other one was from an entirely unique and different organization. Two different places reached out to me in a matter of seven days. I didn't have to reach out to them, but that comes off of the back of me sending out emails and having conversations, working on my personal brand for years, and getting it into momentum over the past 24 months.
That is an example of those seeds that I've planted way before, to where now my personal brand is reaping the harvest without me having to necessarily work as hard to get those benefits. But that does not mean I am not sending out pitches, I am not having conversations, I am not growing, I am not creating content. I am still hunting while I am harvesting. But if I was not promoting myself and letting people know about my vision, letting people know about what I have going on, well, number one, you [wouldn't] even be listening to this podcast. Whether this is a direct referral, whether this is a promotion off of social media, or whether this is an organic situation where you found my podcast through an algorithm and a podcast directory, I purposely got my podcast on that directory, or did that thing, in order for this to grow, in order for you to listen to this show.
That is not by happenstance. You have to be intentional with your marketing efforts, just like you have to be intentional with how you are building out your brand. But if you are not actively promoting yourself, how do you expect people to know about you? I know many people who automatically assume that people are going to be talking about what they have going on just because they're friends. But it's funny, because your friends are going to be the people who promote you the least, and the strangers will be the ones that promote you. It's interesting, and I would love to do psychological studies on this in the future.
But there's almost this bias, to where friends feel so close to you and so attached to you that they don't promote you as much, because they feel this innate, subconscious lack of necessity to.
But a stranger is like, wow, now they're working, and they have a little bit of a lesser bias. They don't have as much bias towards you, less of a connection. So by promoting your content, they feel more engaged and closer to you. I think that that's quite an interesting, paradoxical phenomenon. But regardless, in order for people to care about you, you have to show that you care about what you have going on, and one of the best ways to show your care, your concern, your vision, your passion, if you want to call it that, is by promoting what you have going on. Creating content can only do so much.
Having a great caption or a great title, a great searchable title, can only do so much. But now imagine if you went and promoted it just a little bit more to get it into momentum.
Yes, I speak about the algorithms all the time, and I say that, hey, algorithms are here to serve. But imagine if you boosted that algorithm, to where now the algorithm knows that what you are doing is going to convert and keep people on the platform. To explain that, I would say imagine you post a YouTube video and you promote it to your other audiences on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, wherever else you're building an audience and wherever your people are at. Even if you text your mom and say, hey, can you leave a like and watch this video? Now, rather than having a couple views or no views, you get your first 10 or 20 views based off of this promotion.
Now the algorithm says, wow, okay, I'm noticing that there is an increase in viewership, an increase in watch time, and an increase in engagement and comments.
That means that people are liking this. Let's boost it. So now, in a sense, you are ethically and morally boosting the algorithm. You're not buying fake followers or streams, but you're getting people engaged. Now these people that you're talking to, they're going to actually sit down and watch the YouTube video. It's the same thing with other social platforms. But at the end of the day, [what happens] if you're not talking about it and letting people know? I think that one of the big things that holds people back from promoting themselves and what they have going on is a lack of confidence in self, or in what they have going on.
When I was in my network marketing companies, I was freaking horrible at promoting what I was doing, and it was not because I was horrible at promoting.
It was because I didn't quite believe in the thing that I was promoting. So I didn't feel the same level of conviction. I didn't feel the same level of trust. But once you develop faith in you, your business, your service, your product, whatever it is, now you know that people are going to be missing out by not working with you, not buying from you, not following you. That is an extremely important and great point to be at.
… A personal passage is left out for privacy …
… A personal passage is left out for privacy …
I know, and I have a conviction in, what I am offering through my public relations firm, Mashman Ventures. If you are offering health supplements or personal training, you have this level of conviction, knowing that if somebody was to tell you no, and then you watch their health and it isn't improving, that they are missing out, and by not working with you, they're going to be holding themselves back and doing themselves a massive disservice. Let's say you have a software that is a booking software for calendar events, and somebody says no, and then you go and you pay attention to what they have going on. They're promoting something, and rather than having everything automated, they're collecting event information by hand and they're having people fill out a Google form.
You're like, seriously? You now know that if they didn't work with you, they would be struggling like this, and well, your anticipation paid off, because you're seeing that now they are struggling. But you had faith in what you were doing, and faith in the service or the product that you were providing as that business owner. Even as a person. Or I can think of a great [example of] anticipation, which would be politicians. Politicians create this anticipation that they are going to be providing a solution to the public, that they are doing something. I would imagine that the best, most effective politicians that have ever existed were the ones that had the most conviction in their policies, the most conviction in what they are doing and what they are providing, to where they knew that if the people did not vote them in, the policies in the world would not be going in the correct direction.
It is all about conviction and all about confidence. If you do not have that confidence and that conviction in yourself, or your product, or your business, or your personal brand, which goes and ties in with self, you're not going to be having as many conversations as you need to. So how do you develop that confidence? By doing more of it, and by reminding yourself of what you bring to the table. I talked about this previously, about testimonials. I do not have testimonials for other people.
I have testimonials for myself, because if there are ever any moments of doubt, I remind myself of those five or six dozen testimonials and people who said, hey, Isaac Mashman did this. Hey, Mashman Ventures did this. Hey, this book helped me in X, Y, and Z way. Yes, it's great from a credibility standpoint. But by doing these things, you are now eliminating the doubt in your head, and the more you do it, the more comfortable you will be doing it. And I think about my book, Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence. It's been several, several months since I promoted it. Well, not promoted it, but since it was published back in November of 2021.
I'm actually going to reread it here soon to maintain that same level of conviction that I had for the book when I first wrote it and was coming off of that high.
It is normal for our energy to fluctuate based off of time and the relativeness, the relative closeness, or how close we are to the event of something. Think about going to a conference, and next thing you know, you're on this emotional high, and you're like, man, I feel like I could kill it and crush my business and do everything right, and that I'm doing great. Then you get home and somebody says no, or then you get distracted and you trip, and then the dog bites you, and you're like, what is going on? It might be an exaggeration, but all of a sudden that emotional high that you were at starts to drop, because now you got thrown back into the midst of things, and the struggles happened, and the struggles kept getting worse and worse.
April and March, these past two months have been full of struggle in my life, personally and professionally. But I understood that, hey, the emotional low that I might have been at is not going to be the low that I'm staying at. I'm going to continue working towards getting myself built back up, or doing things that I know are going to propel me forward. That requires a level of dedication, a level of stubbornness. [Go back to episode] 97 to [hear me] talk about staying stubborn. But I understood that these things were going to pass, because just like there are emotional highs, there are emotional lows. So how do I stay in the middle, and how do I maintain this level of growth?
How do I maintain and stay on this course of growth, on this growth curve? Understand that, hey, yeah, you're going to be at an emotional high, and then you're going to fall down a little bit. That means that after you come back from that conference, or after you publish that book, or after you do that podcast, or after you close that client, you're either going to be chasing the next thing, or you're going to be living in the past, thinking about what was rather than what can be and what will be.
That's something that I've had to really embrace lately, because it's been a while, maybe it was like a year, since I took a flight, and then I took a flight. I'm like, you know what, I need to look forward to the next flight. I need to look forward to the next thing. I need to go ahead and keep my eyes focused on what I am doing next, rather than living in the past. To use the analogy of people discussing their high school years and talking about what they did: talk about what you're doing. Talk about the new events that you can have. Or being in a relationship, and you're looking forward to the future, and looking forward to the things you're doing, and you're going on dates, you're going and doing these things.
Well, why did that stop? Why did you guys no longer continue growing together? Where is that passion? It dissipates, and that's the same thing, because the emotions start to subside, and you have to maintain that emotion at a very high level. Tony Robbins is an example of somebody who just let confidence drive him forward, and looked forward to the next thing, to where now he's been able to stay relevant for decades on end. But that didn't come without promotion. Now, there's this relationship between the amount of confidence you have and the amount of promoting you do, and the more promoting you do, the higher your confidence grows, because the higher your numbers grow, the more awareness grows, the more results grow. So there's a relationship that goes both ways. There's this interesting dynamic between confidence and promotion, and promotion and confidence.
But the way that you get that started is, well, by starting, and starting to promote. Don't listen to somebody who tells you that creating that piece of content is going to be it, and that you shouldn't be paying attention to the numbers. It's the same thing as saying, oh, you shouldn't pay attention to the number in your bank account, but that is the one way that you measure your financial success. You might be able to measure certain other things in your life, such as the health of a relationship or the health of a nonprofit, off of other things, such as awareness, or how many conversations you're having, or how the conversations are flowing.
But at the end of the day, promotion matters extremely. [Keep] looking forward to the next thing and keeping your eyes set on that target, and going and creating and setting a target that's farther away and more out of reach, so you can work to get back and get into reach of that for the future.
Promotion is the one way that you grow your business, your awareness, your life. And I could go ahead and talk about the other side of promotion, which is promoting yourself to a higher level, promoting yourself to a higher frequency, promoting yourself to a higher tax bracket. Now, I'm not even going to get into that conversation, but promotion is everything in life. The way you brand yourself will determine how you promote yourself, and how you want to promote yourself will determine how you build the brand around yourself, or around what you have going on. You can build wealth by being known and by a lot of people knowing about you.
You can also build wealth by being relatively unknown in the public's eye, but I would highly suggest you don't do that. It would be much better, in my opinion, in my eyes, and in what I've seen and researched and studied over these past several years, to say that it is always going to be better to be well known than to build wealth in obscurity.
That's all I have for you today. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode of Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman. Like I told you at the very, very beginning, if you've got any value from the things that I talked about today, make sure to share this with a friend, share this with a business partner, share this with somebody else. I would greatly appreciate it. Be on the lookout for episode 100, which is coming this upcoming Friday, if you're listening to this on the date of publication, which is April 11th, [hope I got] the date right. But episode 100, the special, is coming out, and I'm super excited to be celebrating episode 100.
Then episode 101 is going to be kicking off season four of Chase the Vision with Isaac [Mashman]. So, that being said, much love, and be on the lookout for the next episode.