Leveraging PR to Grow Influence and Scale Your Business

Isaac Mashman4:22

and great to connect with you. You know, it's one of those examples of the people that you're connected with on Facebook and it's like you might see their face around, you might see their name around, and then you get to know them and you're like, man, this is an awesome freaking individual. And so man, I'm really grateful and blessed to be on the show and you blew that bio out of the water. That's phenomenal. So thank you, man. Kind introduction.

Isaac Mashman5:18

I'm trying to be well-known. I'm trying to live a great life. I'm trying to live a great lifestyle. And I could start from the very beginning. I'll kind of jam through it really, really quick for the sake of time because you could talk about your own journey for hours on end. But from Jacksonville, Florida, a single mom, she was single up until the time she was remarried when I was about eight or nine. But really, it's a lady, but I watched her struggle most my life. And she's still struggling today and that's part of the reason why I'm on the journey I am. You know, she went to school, got a bachelor's degree, you know, and then she ended up getting stuck into working at, you know, places that she didn't want to work at.

And, you know, seeing that lack of money was a huge issue for me, you know, going to school with Walmart shoes, going to school and with thrift store clothes, you know, that kind of thing, you know, there's nothing wrong with it per se, but at the same time when it hits your confidence, it causes pain. And I, you know, I saw a lot of people in my life have a lot of issues and I recognized early on that a lot of those issues were caused because of the lack thereof. Money could literally solve most of these issues and money isn't the root of everything, it's not happiness but it makes the world go around.

That's the one thing that keeps society in shape, keeps society sane. Yeah, man, so I was raised with the mentality of go to school, get good grades, get a job, go to college. college. And that's exactly what I was going to do. You know, I'm not one of those entrepreneurs who I can say that I was a D.R.F. student. Like I was a straight A student. I had one C in my entire life. And that was like the end of the freaking world. Like I had to go to tutoring so I could get that C up. Other than that, man, you know, my senior in high school was going through a lot of issues.

And I was always that rebellious kid. This is something I really touched on. But for me and that straight A student, I also had that like rebellious like go against everything mentality. And I had a couple entrepreneurial ventures like doing a lawn mower business, like lawn mowing business. I had a trailer attached to the back of my bike. I covered an entire neighborhood one time with flyers. That kind of thing, but not like, I didn't know what it was. I didn't know the actual title behind it. And my senior year of high school had some family issues going on. And I was really struggling, really stressed out.

And it was when I was supposed to go off to college. And everybody's looking for colleges to go to. And I was like, like, okay, well, I'm gonna go to college, but for what? I bounced around from wanting to do engineering to NCIS because I absolutely love the show, the crime investigative service of the Navy, the TV show. And then I was like, I'm gonna go to college for marketing. And then I'm like, and then what? There is this question that we're raised to go to college, but at the same time, we have no guidance as to what happens after college. They just expect us to just have this golden thing of go to college, wind up in debt, and okay, what next, you know.

And, you know, to no blame, like a lot of times our parents don't know what they're doing themselves. And, CMN, I got involved with the industry of network marketing through Chanson on social media. I was introduced to some people. I saw some entrepreneurs really succeeding. You know, 21 year old kids making $10,000 a month. I'm like, man, that's more than my mom makes. It's more than anybody my family has ever made. So, why don't I do that? And then, you know, over the span of the past three years, I was back in 2017 going into 2018 and graduated then. I just got into network marketing, I got out of it, got back involved with it, had some really phenomenal mentorship and experiences and tried a bunch of different businesses.

But what I was doing all along, I never got far in any of the businesses. The current business I'm in is the business that I'm the farthest along in. But I recognized that I enjoyed building up brands, personal brands. And although I didn't necessarily know what I was doing, I knew that I was an entrepreneur, put entrepreneur in the bio, but I was figuring myself out. I was figuring out my passions. I was figuring out my strengths, my weaknesses, and experiencing life. I come from that strict household, strict conservative household. So go into adulthood. I was lost and confused. And so yeah, man, and then at the beginning of this year, I was like, man, I'm going to make personal branding and going along the lines of working with people to build up their online presence, my full-time gig. And in October, to find my Mashman Ventures as a public relations company. and Yemen all lies forward.

Isaac Mashman9:41

I'm from Jacksonville, Florida. And then I ended up networking with some people out in Bakersfield, California. And, you know, I was on and off in Bakersfield. It was a crazy experience, a crazy story. I'm going to highlight that in the future in my book. So I don't have to explain it every single time. But yeah, you know, I was in Bakersfield for about 10 months away from everybody away from family, all my families on the East Coast. I flew all the way to the West Coast and said, man, I'm a figure it out. And crazy story is I took a one way flight out there.

It was actually a round trip. I was flown out to Los Angeles for VidCon. And I left a note underneath my pillow at the time because I was looking at my grandparents and, you know, just trying to figure things out. out and I left a note underneath saying, hey, I'm not coming back. I love you guys. I hope that you respect what I did and my grandparents were supportive of it but it was a crazy time and I was sleeping on the floor in Bakersfield and I flew back. I took a trip to France, flew back to Jaximale defeated. I flew to France for a girl too.

That's the craziest thing and I came back home and then I flew back out to Bakersfield and then I met a girl on Twitter and this was the time that it actually worked. And we were connected for about a year and a half on and off on Twitter. You know, never really had too many conversations like I saw her supporting me, you know, and I would see an occasional post here and there. And we started talking around the end of March beginning of April. And, you know, we had a really good chemistry, a really good connection. And the next thing I know, I'm like, well, you know, I'm about to leave Bakersfield anyway.

So why don't we get a place together? And that's pretty much what happened, man. In August, I flew over to Arkansas, Little Rock, met up with her, stayed at her apartment for a couple of weeks and then ended up moving in together

Isaac Mashman12:55

steps just to get started? Absolutely, a phenomenal question, man. And thank you for doing your research and taking the time to read all of that. And I start every single training with two different subjects. I normally work with my clients and do four separate calls. That's the biggest thing that a market that's the biggest thing I work with them on. And it's four trainings to where I have an initial call, right? And that's where I educate them. That's where I make sure that their mindset is correct. Those are the two biggest principles. And so to define personal branding is something that's very important because most people get personal branding mixed up, they get it confused and they have a horrible definition of it that has no grounds.

Personal branding at the course, who you are, right? You're the only Erin Griffin that was born to your parents on the specific day at that specific time who has lived your specific life. And most people think that a personal brand is something that you have to create when actuality is something that you have always had. The moment that you were born, you had a personal brand. It's just now we're putting a name to it. It's like the people who were involved with business before they knew the entrepreneur was who they were. It's kind of the same thing. And personal branding now in 2021, moving forward with social media is something that's extremely, extremely important because more and more people are trying to become well known.

They're trying to build a business online. there. You know, we saw the coronavirus, everything's moved online. How are you supposed to get attention with 3 billion plus people on social media and on the internet if you don't have a personal brand? And so working with a client and working with people, I like to establish that they're, it's a 50-50 approach. Most people want to become well-known solely for what they do and for who they are, for what they do, right? My approach is I want to make you well-known for who you are, take the celebrity influencer approach. And I also want you to be well known for what you do.

That's how you lay the foundation. That's how you have longevity. Because oftentimes, think about a dentist on Instagram, right? Let's say a dentist becomes well known because he posts viral content that is of dental work, right? People are satisfied by saying teeth being cleaned and fixed. And so a couple years down the road, the dentist has a million followers or a couple hundred thousand on Instagram. And that's his biggest platform of choice. But he chooses to get out of a dental work, what is he going to do now? Are people following him just for the content he creates or for who that man is, for who that doctor is?

And that's kind of my methodology or methodology, excuse me, and my approach with working with clients where they have a celebrity brand, but they also have an expert brand or right where they position themselves. I like being on one platform, like there's nothing wrong with that. But the only issue that comes about is if you have one audience on one platform and that's where you're putting out all your content, let's say that platform disappears. Let's say you're an obvious, you know, if you're on Facebook or Instagram, it's pretty crazy to think that they just up and disappear overnight. But it's possible, right? Parler, which is a super right-wing conservative app, which literally just removed from all the stores within the past 48 hours, right?

The people who are only building a brand there are screwed because they don't have their brands anywhere else. And to give you an example, real like example, I was talking this model, she has 300,000 plus on Instagram. She achieved virality with her content, right? The sex appeal side of things, you know, a lot of people wanted to see more of her. And she ended up growing an audience over the course of about four years to 300,000. And she was verified. But the issue was, she was nowhere else. She was nowhere else to where if you were to go to her Facebook, you were to go to Twitter, you were to go to Pinterest or these different social media platforms, you couldn't find her.

So you're lacking that celebrity brand. The people who have the results that I truly want and that my clients wanted that I imagine you want are on multiple platforms. Now their audiences are bigger on one platform. Kim Kardashian has more followers on Instagram than she does Twitter or Facebook, but at the same time she has that presence there. And from a credibility standpoint, what pops up when you're Googled? And that's, you know, you can only take up so many search results if you're only on one page. I love it. I love it. What's the what are some things that

Isaac Mashman17:25

When I can, which is pretty much on every single social media platform and bio, right? Different platforms have different character limits on bios, but to use Facebook, you have, I think, 101 characters for bio. So you have very little space to put a lot of information. I always start with the who, what, where, and why. If you can try to cover that in a very short amount of time and a very like one or two sentence phrase, then that's where you go. So you cover your personality, right? So to give you an example, are you an actress? Okay, well, if you're an actress, what are some of the things that you enjoy doing?

I was working with this one client, her name is Donna De Gorgorio, and she's been in a couple of films. And I was like, okay, so in your bio, right? And you're not just an actress, you're Donna De Gorgorio. So you need to appeal to the emotional side, right? So you're a mother, you love coffee, you love going to the beach. You know, you have a sense of humor. So you put that in the bio and then you say that you're an actress. And so I start with that, if you can cover the who, what, when, where, and why. It's basic, just like you're writing a paper for college or something like that.

Like if you can cover those basis and give that understanding, the other thing is professionalism. You know, I'm not saying that you have to be some suit and tie dressed up and have a super professional, you know, profile picture. I'm in a t-shirt right now on a backwards hat, you know, like I'm not dressed up in a suit and tie. Now, that's part of my image. But just by being professional, but also being personable, that's like the biggest thing. The other thing that goes into the marketing aspect is do people even know what you do? When I was in a transition of my business and figuring out, okay, do I wanna do a public relations firm or a media agency, it was very confusing to figure out what I did and why you would wanna work with me.

And then that's why I recognized, I was like, I have to define my company, my specialty and my expertise, so it can be easy for people to understand what I do. And if I am someone who can help them achieve their goals in life, and so you also have to make it convenient and efficient, Like every single time someone has to do more research on you, they're less interested.

Isaac Mashman19:40

Yeah. You look like everybody else, right? People get the assumption that because there are so many people that we're connected with online that are doing big things that are other business owners that every single person is a business owner and we fail to recognize that Social media is an echo chamber for people like us for the constant. We'd like to consume for what we do The majority of people 99% of people are normal people who are not business owners Right they're living their own life and so we have to make sure that we are doing what we can to stand out We're not just an average Joe who's working in nine to five and there's nothing wrong with working in nine to five Don't get me wrong or there's nothing wrong with having the name Joe But at the same time you have to stand out if you want to get that attention And if you're if you're choosing to not take a couple minutes of your time to fill a space out that you could fill out You're viewing it with wrong with the wrong perspective. I

Isaac Mashman20:57

Absolutely. There are. Can you go through those? Absolutely. Yeah. Well, the thing is, man, a lot of people focus only on the follower account, they don't focus on the relationships. Business is 100% about relationships. People got it so screwed up with you know online and with seeing the follower count and this person who has a K next to their you know image and and don't get me wrong having higher numbers is important having a good engagement is important but the way that you grow that core following and have that long I see I'm going into this with a long-term vision with long-term success on my mind I want to lay down a foundation that is in concrete not in sand that's why it's taken me I say that it's taken me longer than it and it should have taken me, and I've only been doing this for three years.

But I view it from the attitude of man like, I should have already been farther ahead, but then I remind myself, Isaac, I was laying down the foundation to build up off of. So I have no issue with that. And a lot of times people engage with somebody or people create content only looking to receive something in return. They're not giving. And relationships aren't built that way. They're two-sided, they're reciprocal. And so to drive revenue effectively and to actually make money, you have to have relationships with a person. Otherwise, it's the same thing in sales. You have a cold lead, a warm lead, and a hot lead.

I don't wanna have to take all of my time trying to take you from cold to hot. The entire purpose of building your personal brand and creating content and building a following is to take people from cold to warm. So when you've been on a call with them, you're taking them from warm to hot. That's the entire point. It's to save you time, cut time frames, and to be more efficient to where you can have a higher close rate, right? Like, that's the other thing. personal branding allows for higher closing rates because people already trust you. That's why I got my online business, a public relations firm on the Better Business Bureau.

I'll use that example. Most people don't think about getting their business on the Better Business Bureau. When in actuality, it's free to get on. This is literally like value right here. It's free to get listed on the Better Business Bureau for your business. It's making you stand out and you have a level of trust. I would much rather work with the company who has verification or accreditation or 105 star reviews than the company that I can't find, or the person who I can't find, for that matter, or no testimonials.

Isaac Mashman23:43

Yeah. Absolutely. I think it's thinking outside of the box. People just don't do it. People think that, you know, oftentimes I've been approached and I almost find it insulting at times, but it shows why this is a good industry to be in a good business model to be in. You know, people are like, so you do personal branding, so you only focus on social medias. You do like Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. I'm like, man, I am insulted at that. Because there's more to it than just social media. It's like, are you getting on podcast? Podcasting is a fantastic way to get free market share for yourself.

It pops up on Google. It's SEO strong. Just doing this interview, right? Doing this interview with you, Aaron, is going to put my name on 100 new directories that I wasn't on before because it's now going to be associated with the Get After it podcast and Aaron Griffin. That's why it's important to write forwards in books or testimonials, right? you read a book, you pick up a book, you see testimonials from Forbes, Wall Street Journal, you know, other important and notable people in public figures. And thinking outside of the box is the one thing that will completely change the game for business or for your personal brand.

And when it comes to adding an extension of your product or service that's outside of, you know, just a separate company, you have to determine are you trying to connect yourself to this company and be the lifeblood? Are there some drawbacks to building up a company that's built around your your personal brand, you won't be able to sell it in the future as easy. I'm not going to be able to sell Mashman Ventures to somebody who's named John Doe. I'm not going to be able to because it's attached to me. So it's like, are you going into this with a commitment or are you going into this trying to get out in a couple of years?

Those are a couple of things. Now, if you can start a business that is separate from your personal brand and entirely, it's named something entirely different, but you use your personal brand to drive traffic to that service or to that product, then that's effective.

Isaac Mashman25:47

Local, physical, people forget that relationship that the internet, you know, a lot of times people who are building an online business only stay online. And they don't go offline. If you can go offline, get involved with rotary, get involved with the Rotorat Club for younger people. You can make connections with city council members with local leaders with local business leaders local community leaders. You're going to be able to establish real one on one relationship with people, right? but are not, I'm still gonna shake your hand. Like, and that handshake is going to help me determine if I can trust you, if I wanna work with you, or if I can't not work with you.

I'm that old, I might be 20, but I'm that old fashioned. Like, I wanna shake your hand and look you in the eye so I know who I'm dealing with. So personal branding is not just online, it's also offline. So if you can go and get your name out there in your local community, right? I haven't been doing that too much here because I'm only staying in Arkansas temporarily. Like it's like a 12 month plan and that we're moving to Miami. That's the goal, that's the plan. But as soon as I touch down to Miami, and maybe even over the next couple of months, I'm gonna start making those connections and those relationships with people who are in my surrounding areas.

And then those people, because they're friends with you in real life, and I say real life, but face to face, you've shook their hand before, they're more likely to support you and make introductions and make referrals, and you can become well known as that expert, not just online, but also offline in your local community.

Isaac Mashman28:21

and that's more so in the area of marketplace positioning, right? Are you worth listening to? And if you are not showing people why they should listen to you by providing them with value and solutions to their problems, people will not take you seriously. By being on this podcast, I'm able to answer your questions and somebody listening to this might have a question about their bio on Facebook. Now they have an answer. So they're going to view me as an authority, right? Because they got value from me and I solved one of their issues. I answered one of their questions. That's leadership. That's marketplace positioning. And if you're not, see leadership, the best way to grow leaders and to exhibit leadership is by helping other people become leaders themselves, right?

That's the thing. When you're in a business and especially a service-based business with like something you're doing, you're working with people to help their launches with their books, those different things, you're helping them become leaders in their own right and their own niche in their own field to where they can become that individual who has a book that is respected. And then outside of that, okay, so they have a book, but why should someone read the book? You know, it's like, I want to learn from people who have the results that I want. And if you can exhibit those results and you can exhibit your experience and your knowledge, then you're exhibiting that you are a leader, right?

We're leaders no matter what, right? You're a leader in your household and your family. You know, I remember when I was in Boy Scouts, man, like I was in Boy Scouts for most of my childhood and you know, I was holding leadership positions and my entire goal was to help other people become leaders and even in the workforce or even building up as a business owner, right? You need to train your people to be leaders themselves and that's going to save you time, that's going to make the organization run better and that's just going to make the world go around in a much better way.

The world needs more leaders. And I've talked about that before, you know, I think that was literally a podcast episode before I was like, you know, we need more leaders. Because leaders ultimately lead themselves. They look to others to learn from, to be mentored by, but leaders lead themselves.

Isaac Mashman31:22

That's always been my biggest problem. And the way that I solve that, right? For every problem, there's a solution. Was just trial and error. So before I did Mashman Ventures, I was acting and did a sole proprietorship called Mashman Media, a Mashman coaching house focusing on social media. I got high low-passed the 67 steps program, you know, and a whole bunch of these other things. And then I was like, you know what, I'm not really enjoying this. And then I had to frame my friends and, you know, the people around me, they were needing help in personal branding and basic branding stuff. And so I became the go-to person for the brand and my friend group.

And then from there, I was like, you know what, I've been doing this for myself and I results, I have success and like success to an arguable point. And then I kind of recognize that more and more people need what I, you know, could offer, you know, what I did for myself. Other people could use. And to me, man, you know, once you learn to a certain point, it becomes like second nature. It's unconscious competence. You literally don't even think about it. You just do it naturally to where you fail to realize and remember that other people don't know what you know. It's the same thing with speaking a language, right?

You expect everybody to know your language and then you go across seas and you realize that nobody speaks your language. or very few. And so my biggest hurdle was figuring out what I wanted to do. And then afterwards, I recognized how much opportunity there was and then how do I stand out, right? I'm 20 years old. I have to position myself as that person who knows what he's talking about regardless of age. That was another challenge, a challenge that I really haven't talked about too much publicly. But all these people and all these other young kids flashing in front of Lambert-Gienes that they rented, that they come from a household that their parents were wealthy and now those kids are acting wealthy as well.

And like they have it all, you know, they give real entrepreneurs a bad rep, right? It's the flashy glitz and glamour. And so I was like, how do I position myself to where I'm not like that douchebag online? So where I can actually like be someone who's a real dude who people can follow and learn from who's building a real business. That was another big challenge. Hmm.

Isaac Mashman33:24

I'll list off four of them. One, $250,000. It's a very specific number. I have a four year plan. I want $250 this year, a million next year, a million in one month in 2023, and then a million a month by 2024. I wanna launch my book. It's gonna be part one of my autobiography, launching that on the third shoot. I just, okay, I'm just gonna say it. I'll lay it out. I'm going to be launching my first autobiography, which is going to be basically be from birth to where I'm at in 2020, the end of 2020. That's going to be launched in the third year anniversary of my graduation date.

And then I want to speak in front of stage on front of a thousand people, Lord willing by the end of this year, we can go back to normal and go back to doing events and eating at restaurants and that kind of thing. And then the final goal is, currently with my business model working with clientele, I I have to take a lot of one-on-one time. In the entire point of running a business is to save you time. I'm going to be working on a very, very intensive course, actual training program that's like legit, that's going to cover value, not one of those Shopify courses that's going to teach you how to make a million dollars.

All you have to do is buy my course. But I'm going to be working on a course and publishing that by the end of the year as well, and I'm marketing that. A lot of big ones.

Isaac Mashman35:04

Absolutely love that. And mentorship is not something that I really had too much in my own life. You know, like when I was in Boy Scouts, I looked up to my scout leaders and all those people. And at the time, I didn't realize that that was actually mentorship, but it was. But getting involved with business and, you know, getting, you know, into this next stage and chapter of my life, network marketing was the one thing that really pointed my eyes towards mentorship and defined what it was. And even then, I was very picky with who I listened to. In order for me to find a mentor or to listen to a mentor and actually digest what they say and what they tell me, they have to have the results in the area that they're teaching me on.

And I was never that guy who listened to the person making a couple thousand dollars a month. I was that cocky guy who was like, I want to learn from the person making five hundred thousand dollars a month because what you don't realize is all the information that we're sharing, or that mentors teach you, is regurgitated. They learned it from somebody who learned it from somebody who learned it from somebody. It's like you play that game telephone, right? You start off with the message and by the end the message is entirely different. I want to go up the line as quickly as possible or as far up as possible, rather it's where I know the person who's telling me something knows what they're talking about.

They have the experience. You know, I've gotten 99% of my mentorship online through YouTube, through books. You know, I have books over there. Recently, I just took the books out of my office, but you know, I have 10x roll by Grant Cardone. I have Getting to Yes, which is a book on negotiations. I have, you know, 475 tax deductions. Like, I'm learning from these different people who have the results that I want. And people don't have to go and find somebody locally or reach out to somebody online to learn from them. Like there's a lot of free content online that these mentors that we would otherwise want to work with have produced that we can learn from.

And the beautiful thing is, man, you're I'm big on self-development and that's the core of my podcast. It's growing as an individual. It's personal growth because if I'm able to save time, then I'm able to live my life in a more efficient in a better manner. And that's the entire point I think of fighting mentors. You know, I don't want to take the same 20 years to learn something that I could learn in 30 minutes. Oh, that's a great line.

Isaac Mashman37:55

Aaron, my man, thank you again. It's an absolute honor and thank you guys for tune it in live. I appreciate that because just like I'm volunteering time and you're volunteering time, you're also volunteering time watching this. So thank you. You can find me literally everywhere. @isaacmashman.com is a good place to start. You know, and if you're interested in personal development, I actually have a document up there for free that you can download highlighting all the personal development choices that I got. You can follow me Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook at send me a friend request. And yeah, you can find me everywhere. If you want to work with me and learn a little bit more what I can do to help you, shoot me a message.

send me a text. My phone number is all over the web, make it very easy to get access to me and appreciate the opportunity Aaron most definitely.