Personal Branding as a Tool for Connection

Isaac Mashman1:27

Richard, thank you for inviting me on, honored to be here.

Isaac Mashman1:42

So I think, to preface that before I actually go into what my personal elevator pitch is, I know that you're kind of smiling and laughing. It's because I don't like knowing the questions ahead of time. So you're actually hitting me with the heat as soon as we get started. I love that. An elevator pitch is basically how you would sum up what you have going on in 30 seconds or two minutes whenever you're meeting somebody for the very first time. Let's say you're in an elevator going up to the top of a building and you have somebody in there next to you. So if I was to come up to you, I would normally approach you and say, hey, what's going on?

What's your name? Then you'd respond with Richard, and I'd be like, Richard, that's great. Then I would actually proceed to go and talk to you about what you have going on and spark that interest. Because whenever you have that conversation, you don't want to just start off and be like, oh, I'm your local real estate agent. Are you selling your home? You have no rapport, you have no connection, no connectivity. This is perfect for Excuses to Connect because that connection is not about you, it's about them, what you can do for them. So whenever I would go and spark that conversation, I ask about you and be like, no way, that's awesome.

I also have a podcast. I'd say, I have a podcast called Chase the Vision. I've been doing that for a couple of years and using that to grow my business, my public relations for Mashman Ventures. So I don't have one specific elevator pitch because you pivot based off of the person and that level of rapport. If you're a business owner, a fellow business owner, I'd be like, that's awesome. How long have you been doing your business for? Oh, 2019. That's awesome. I launched my company in 2020 actually. What do you do? Then I would play back and forth off of that. That's really the most difficult part of making any initial relationship, starting and making it about that other person and not about yourself.

Isaac Mashman3:57

Your personal brand is you. It's who you are. What about you makes you unique? Not only professionally, but also personally. That's one of the biggest misconceptions today, that people build out their personal brand and they think that they have to create it out of thin air, and you don't create your personal brand. You've already had your personal brand from the moment you were born. Your parents gave you your name. They determined where you grew up, the religion you were raised in, the political viewpoints you have, all of these different things. Your personal brand is ultimately what people think of whenever they think of your name and have conversations about you whenever you're not in the room. Your personal brand, in its simplest form, is your reputation. Your reputation transcends you.

Isaac Mashman4:59

I think you touched on authenticity, and I think that's a word that people throw around without quite knowing what it means. I think by focusing on your authenticity, you actually lose your authentic self because now you're wondering if what you're doing is actually authentic to you. Then now you're going to be kind of creating this conversation, this psychotic conversation in your head of, is this me or is this not really me? I think that if you have that level of confusion, I would say just straight up be yourself. Then from there, understand what you want other people to look at you as, what you want other people to think of, whenever they think Richard Lee-Thai, or whenever they think Isaac Mashman or Eric Chow.

So asking yourself that and directing that conversation, it's a very simple and elementary form of public relations, of what is my relationship with the general public. What are other people thinking of me? I think having that awareness of what that conversation is about you is how you can leverage it to your benefit.

Isaac Mashman6:27

That really boils down to letting people in to know you emotionally. I think a lot of people online, especially today, it's like we are able to make it a highlight reel. We're able to only focus on one specific thing. I see a lot of these branding experts online today only talking about branding, only talking about their business, only talking about their career, and having these flashy posts where you go to their profile and it might look great. It looks aesthetically pleasing with all the right colors and you could tell they know branding, but they don't know personal branding because they don't show their personality. They don't show it at all.

That boils down to showing your personality to a potential audience member. Whenever you establish that relationship, again, going back to the elevator pitch, you're not just talking about your business, you're talking about you. It's funny because one of the things that you can connect with somebody on, this was mentioned in Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, if I'm not mistaken, is you find these equal levels of interest, rapport, or connectivity, such as, are you from Jacksonville, Florida? If I've met you and you're like, I'm from Jacksonville, Florida, I'd be like, no way, I'm from Jacksonville too. Then from there, I would be able to connect and have that one layer of rapport that builds up off of one another.

Social media can be this great tool to use when you're talking about things of interest. So today I made a post on my story of coffee. People who know me know I drink coffee and it's actually an ongoing joke sometimes whenever I enter a call, because eight times out of 10, I have a cup of coffee next to me. Now this one, I know, because I've already had so much caffeine today, I'm like, overload. But what I will say is I made a post about a coffee maker. The coffee was coming through and I'm like, this is great. That right there allows me to connect with somebody else who also drinks coffee. Super simple, but it makes a world of difference.

Isaac Mashman8:36

[That's] why I think showing some of the struggles and having that conversation about, hey, this month for business has been rough, it's not been horrible, it's not my worst month ever, but here's some of the challenges, and maybe mentioning that in a podcast is fine. But there's also a line between vulnerability and talking about a struggle and then complaining about a struggle and complaining about something. I think that's something where a lot of people get this mixed up. They're like, oh, I'm going to be vulnerable, and they come off like they're just complaining about everything. They're complaining about the results. They're complaining about where they're not at.

It's like, you can't come off as that person who's complaining, but rather that person who says, yeah, hey, this is a struggle. I'm human. I'm like you. But then there's this fine balance with building out your personal brand because there has to be this level of [you're special]. I'm saying, in a sense, talking about the halo effect, which I also talk about in my book, and shameless plug, but the halo effect is this cognitive bias about you based off of one personality trait or one trait about you. So celebrities have this amount of fame and we automatically assume things. A great example would be a verification check.

We assume that because somebody is verified, they have money. This is not always the case. There are a lot of people who are verified that are in debt, they have negative net worths. That right there is an example of that cognitive bias where you have to be careful because you don't want to come across as, I'm greater than you. I'm better than you, but you have to have this level of mystery behind you and about you. There's really this fine [line], navigating thin ice.

Isaac Mashman10:42

A lot of times I think it happens naturally, but it also comes with making an intentional effort to build up that relationship. That's one of the biggest difficulties with relationships. You can make that connection initially. It might be uncomfortable introducing yourself to somebody for the first time. It's like making friends when you went to a new school or you went to middle school or high school, as awkward as heck. But afterwards, you had those friends throughout your middle school and high school years. A lot of times if you were to look back at those relationships that were successful, they progressed naturally as you learned more about that person.

I think understanding that, like, hey, I want them to know about me, but I also want to know about them. Ask questions, be engaged in a conversation, be actively listening. That can be difficult, especially with social media, with all these different distractions. We can get so caught up in our phone and checking notifications. We don't realize that we have another person that we could talk to face to face. That right there is a massive issue I see.

Isaac Mashman11:48

Yeah, I can think about, in California, whenever I was in Bakersfield, California, originally from Jacksonville, Florida, there [was a time] where I took a one-way flight. I actually had a round trip flight booked. I was flown out to LA and I didn't fly back. This actually isn't a particular example about me, but about a friend that I actually made a connection for. I went over to his house and he's an artist out in Bakersfield called Noble. At the time, he was under a different pseudonym, a different artist name. He was dropping me back off at the house where I was staying. He put on this guy named [Ness Julius] in the car.

I'm like, this guy's good. I was like, you know him personally? He's like, no, but he's local to Bakersfield. He's one of the most talented guys here. I'm like, you ever meet him? He's like, no. What do you mean? You're from the city and you've never met this guy that you're talking about, and you're playing his music in the car? Yeah. Then I'm like, that makes no sense, so I found the guy on Instagram later that night. A week later, I invited him over to the house where I was staying. I established that relationship, [did] a podcast with him, got a photo with him. Then I introduced him to Noble, and fast forward a year and a half to two years later, it's actually going on two and a half, he's been managed by Noble and his record label for over a year.

I made that simple connection from, somebody making, actually it was like a third degree connection, and I just took the action step to reach out, establish the relationship, and then make that introduction. I think that's an essential part of building a business or building your personal brand, being willing to go out of your comfort zone and meet somebody new, and be willing to go out and actually introduce other people to your network. I mean, we're a perfect example of that. You started working with Mashman Ventures through Eric Chow, who's the chief consultant of the firm, and then from there, now you were connected to my network and here we are doing this podcast. Yeah, that's my jam.

Isaac Mashman14:16

Oh man, well, I think number one, don't pitch them in the first [message]. I'm looking at my phone because I'm going to see if I can find the very first message I sent to [Ness Julius] whenever I didn't know him at all, and yeah, so what I did is I actually took a video of Noble playing his music in the car ride home. I don't know if you're going to be doing an audio, but I actually posted it in the story and I tagged him, and he responded back and said, I appreciate you. So I showed love and I opened up my audience and gave him a platform and introduced him to potentially, you know, a thousand people, 2000 people.

Then I just said, much love. Then I said that Noble put me onto your music. He's like, hey, that's dope. Then from there, I just started asking questions. I was like, you're from Bakersfield, correct? I knew the answer. But sometimes you have to ask those questions that you already know to show that you're interested. Then from there, I just made the introduction and had him come over. The relationship was built from there. It's like, you don't want to come across as a salesperson on the first approach.

Isaac Mashman15:45

Yeah, I can think of a lot of people that I've had a message with, like I've maybe done an introductory call, a connection call, and I forget that they exist. Then two years later, they swipe up on one of my stories and I'm like, wow, I not only unfollowed you, but I forgot that you existed until you responded to one of my stories or you have this conversation. It's not that I don't care about you. It's just I have a thousand other people that I'm talking to, or other clients. I have things that I'm doing and other people that I'm meeting and it works both ways.

But at the same time, you have to realize that in order for a relationship to grow from a stranger to an acquaintance to a friend to a best friend, you have to build it. That goes back to what we were talking about earlier, finding those common grounds, because it's like a plant. I have a bonsai tree back there, which I wanted ever since I watched The Karate Kid when I was like 12, and I'm like, now I have one. Like, cool. But the thing is, if I don't water the tree, if I don't give it the sunlight that it needs, if I don't take care and cut off the dead limbs, it's going to die.

It's not going to be able to continue thriving. That's kind of how a relationship is. If you don't continue watering that relationship and giving it those aspects of, like, even sending a New Year's message or a Merry Christmas text or something like that, or checking up with them, or another thing, a great exercise is a gratitude exercise. Send three people every day a text that says, hey, I'm grateful for you. That right there shows that you're still thinking of that person and that is going to put you in their sphere, in their kind of level of sight, and allow you guys to continue building up that relationship actively.

Isaac Mashman18:06

Well, this year, it's honestly just understanding the areas of weakness that I have. One would be getting into the gym and working out. Working out and going to the gym, personal growth, you're actually tearing your body down and rebuilding it. Actively reading. I'm currently reading Dan Bilzerian's book right now and I'm going to be finished with that in the next couple of days, and I don't condone his lifestyle. But at the same time, I understood that he had something about fame and influence in social media and celebrity that I could learn from, especially being in the PR world. So I want to read 24 books this year.

I just placed an order for a couple of new ones earlier today, and really having more relationships. This is actually ironic, but I don't have any physical mentors. I don't have any mentor that I'm actually talking to actively, but back in my network marketing days, I had some mentors that I looked up to more, but all of my mentors are online. I don't have any that I've actually shook hands with and had conversations with, but by learning and being a student of YouTube University and reading a book, you can get all of this different information and save time. So I've recently developed an interest in personal, not personal development, but real estate.

So what I did is I found some guys on YouTube that are credible, that have made millions and millions of dollars and own a lot of real estate. Just yesterday, I learned more in that 45 minute section of watching three different videos than I probably would have learned going to college for an entire year. I was able to understand the real world application of it. It was broken down in an elementary way to where even an elementary schooler could understand it. But that right there is understanding, hey, I need to grow in this area. Let me seek out that information. If you don't seek it out, how do you expect to find it?

Isaac Mashman20:06

Going back to how do you keep a relationship being built, how do you grow it? You don't have to grow every relationship. Every single person you talk to, you don't have to actively build. Sometimes those people are going to support you and you're not willing to support them. That's just the truth of the matter. You might be going in a different direction, and they might be doing the same thing they've been doing and seeing you thrive. They might be happy with that. They might even hate you for what you're doing, but that's not your concern. Your concern is what I'm doing right now with my own business, my own brand, my own career, whatever you're pursuing, and then having those relationships with the right people.

Looking at what they do behind the scenes, would you be okay leaving them in the same room as your significant other? Would you be okay going out into the middle of the woods and taking a hike with them? I know that's kind of a strange example, but I have a best friend, Kevin, that I haven't seen in over a year. I'm going back home to Jacksonville later this month, and I'm going to go hang out with him, and after a year, I'm still going to feel like we just left off. I think really understanding how somebody behaves is essential because I've had those people in my life that I thought were friends, that I thought, because they were entrepreneurial, were people that I wanted around me, but our visions didn't line up.

If you can't see yourself having them in the same room as you five years from now and you're just trying to convince yourself that they'll be there next to you, you probably shouldn't be actively building up that relationship. Focus on the people that are serious about what they have going on. If you want to make it your goal to party and screw around, find people that party and screw around. But that's not where I'm going and that's not where you should be going either.

Isaac Mashman21:57

It's really all been unexpected, and a lot of these connections have been birthed from chaos and not even knowing quite what I was getting myself into, but just putting myself out there to begin with. I can think about building out my Twitter audience. It was in the early days where I was just connecting with everybody, and I'm actually going to be getting back into that mode of really actively growing and marketing myself. Because you go through periods where you're building up the brand, you're not really marketing too much, and now I'm like, I need to start getting the numbers higher. You start connecting with more people, getting a viral aspect, but I connected with some people and I made a tweet, and this was the first time I ever went out to Bakersfield, before Mashman Ventures, before all of this.

I remember sitting on a tweet and saying, hey, I'm in, you know, California or whatnot, and somebody messaged me and we were friends for like two years. I cut myself off from the entire friend group, but at the time it was essential that I made that connection because I needed a place to stay. I needed to connect with people out there. It led up to my second and third flight out to Bakersfield. He's like, hey, I'm in [Cali], what part of California? I'm like, Bakersfield. He's like, no way, because Bakersfield, if you've ever been there, isn't a great place. It's not like 10 out of 10, it's not like LA, and even then LA's not 10 out of 10.

But we ended up meeting, we had coffee, and then he introduced me to his friend group, and from there now I'm planted and I have connections, I have a seed in California. Then from there I had all these different relationships, including Noble, who was in that friend group, and Noble is a friend today, fast forward three, four years. That right there is a perfect example of putting yourself out there and creating these situations that open yourself up for [opportunities in the] future.

Isaac Mashman24:01

It sounds cheesy, but it's true. It's one of those clichés. It's like, all right, seriously, use that again. But then if you look at the deeper meaning, it is legitimate, like what you should be following in living life.

Isaac Mashman24:22

Well, there's this buzzword of patience, going back to authenticity, and patience is an excuse for you to procrastinate, in my opinion. So I adopt aggressive patience, saying that, hey, I understand it's going to take time, but I'm going to do everything in my power to hit at it and [bring] the goal closer, get there quicker, save time. That's a big reason why I'm so big on personal development, because I'm able to cut timeframes and learn decades' worth of different things in a matter of a year and a matter of six months. So going back to the analogy of growing a plant, you can do things to speed up that growth process.

What soil are you planting in? Are you planting it in sand or in something that's rich? Then from there, are you watering the plant? Then yeah, it could take six months to sprout, or you could add fertilizer sticks that make it grow even faster. That would be an example of aggressive patience. What can I do to speed up this process? It's not that you're trying to rush or that you're impatient. It's very simply, you have this goal, you have this vision. So why not get there as quick as possible? That's really what I try to live by because I don't want to be 40 years old and just now hit success with my business.

I want to be 25 doing what I want to do or 30 doing what I want to do. I don't see the whole appeal of play it slow, live fulfilled. You can live fulfilled while also rushing, in my opinion.

Isaac Mashman26:03

For me, it is going to boil down to living up to my potential. What is my why? That's a question that is asked a lot. I came to the realization, my why is why not? Why wouldn't I do this? It's kind of counterintuitive.

Isaac Mashman26:20

But at the end of the day, you have one life to live. I want to live up to my potential. Why are you doing that? Well, why not? Why wouldn't I want to? That's going to come down to me being able to do what I want, whenever I want to do it. Taking a private flight, having the nicest views, eating the nicest food, being in the best shape possible, being the happiest possible, educating myself, being able to speak multiple languages, that sort of thing boils down to living up to your potential. I think that by living up to your potential as an individual, as a man, as a person, you are now going to be able to help the people around you just naturally because of the frequency you'll be on, because of the energy that you'll be vibrating off.

That energy is contagious and that is going to rub off on another person. That's why I think that focusing on yourself, there's nothing wrong with that. Not in the least.

Isaac Mashman27:34

I don't think about legacy. I used to. I actually went as far, and Eric was in this Facebook group, I did a Facebook group called Team Legacy. Looking back, I'm like, I think I want to puke. What I will say is legacy is something that if you focus on it while you're alive, you're [detracting] and taking away from the time that you have today to do something that you want to do. I think that your legacy is going to be decided after your death. It's not something that's going to be decided when you're alive. Now, I think a good indicator of that would be how many people show up to your funeral, but why would I care about how many people show up to my funeral?

I'm going to be dead. It's not really the answer you were looking for, but just being known as Isaac Mashman, someone who did something that's never been done before, somebody who broke generational curses, I think that if I had to focus on something, that would be it. You know the generational curses that I broke. You know the things that I did different compared to my parents and my ancestors. You know, being the person to where it's like you don't know about Andrew Carnegie's father. You don't know about John D. Rockefeller's father. You know about Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller. The people prior to them who had the curses, who came over and were broke, you don't know the first thing. But you know about the son. You know about the grandson. You know about the great-grandson.

Isaac Mashman29:07

Yeah, you know, obviously our relationship extends deeper than somebody who I just met for the first time, and you're extremely thorough and I can tell you studied this like the book, down to a T, which is what I wanted people to do, and I'm really grateful that you're giving me an opportunity to expand on some of the topics that I talked about. My upbringing wasn't the worst in the world. It wasn't like I was born in the projects or something like that, but it wasn't the greatest in the world. As a kid, I always knew that I was kind of in that [lack and] limitation.

I just didn't quite know how or what it was to be anywhere different. Single parent home, I never met my biological father to this day. He actually fled the country about a year and a half, two years after I was born, after losing me in the custody battle as I was a baby. I don't remember any of this, but he fled to Brazil. I have a half brother in Brazil that I've never met and I probably never will. But growing up, my mom, a brilliant lady with a degree in education, settled for a fast food job. She settled, later on, for a grocery store job, and she went back to working full time, later remarried to my stepfather, and she went to school full time too and got her master's in business, but she never really applied that.

I love her to death, but when you have something and you don't apply it and you don't use it, it's useless. It's the same thing as learning a language and never using that language in conversation or practicing it. You're going to forget it. It's not going to be useful to you. That was a lot of my childhood. My grandfather was a carpenter. I remember waking up with my grandmother before school because my mom would come home late. My grandmother would take care of me and drop me off at school, but first we would drop my grandfather off, [five or six] o'clock in the morning, at the cabinet shop.

Grandmother would drop me at school. After school, she'd pick me up. We'd go get my grandfather. He would have a lunch box in hand and he'd be coming home from the cabinet shop. Probably smelling sweaty. But that was kind of my early upbringing. Then I was an exceptional student. But again, my senior year of high school, I was like, what's the point of this? My mom has a degree. She hasn't put it to any use. An act of rebellion in spite, because I was going through stuff at home, I said, I might [not] want to go to college. Looking back, I did some very ballsy things my senior year and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm actually looking to do some more of those things. So yeah, man, here I am, fast forward three years, four years, and I published a book and got some things going on.

Isaac Mashman31:44

I look up to you. You've given a speech at TEDx, like twice, I think. Not by your choice maybe, but you've done that twice. I look up to you for that. So I mean, don't shortcut yourself either, man. I think what you've done is awesome. Yes, for sure.

Isaac Mashman32:30

Yeah, thank you for that opportunity, Richard, for being able to get into an in-depth conversation about my book, Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence. You can find me literally everywhere at Isaac Mashman, I S A A C M A S H M A N, like mashed potatoes, like Mashman. You can find me everywhere, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. Go to my website, IsaacMashman.com. If you have an interest in personal branding, feel free to reach [out].

Isaac Mashman33:04

Yeah, well, I think you spoiled what I was actually probably going to say at the end. At the center of all achievement is personal growth. That's something that I always leave off on because, if you need help with sales, seek out sales advice, seek out sales experience, read a sales book. You need help with personal branding? Well, read Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence, or reach out to Mashman Ventures, or find somebody who can teach you about personal branding. Need help in business, or you have an interest in real estate? Find somebody that you can learn from. That's how you save time. That's how you get to your vision quicker. I have the podcast named Chase the Vision for a reason because you are actively pursuing something.