Building a Personal Brand

Isaac Mashman0:00

Well, I think one, if you're thinking about authenticity, you're being inauthentic because you're trying to manipulate what you are or you aren't putting out. So don't focus on authenticity. Everybody says be authentic and nobody explains what that means.

Isaac Mashman1:50

poverty and misfortune I suppose you could say.

Isaac Mashman2:06

Thankfully today, I have a great relationship with him. One of the situations where mom and dad, just they were on two different wavelengths and my mom had me when she was young and she was 21. And he eventually moved down to Brazil moved down to Brazil and started a new family down there. I have two half brothers I've never met yet. But I was raised in large part by my grandparents. My grandmother pretty much stayed at home taking care of me. My mom would help support some of the bills and she'd raise me and drop me off at school. Grandfather was a carpenter. Used to build cabinets.

So I remember getting up at 5 o'clock and taking him across the river with my grandmother to drop him off at the cabinet shop and pick him up after school. Eventually my mom remarried and just a bunch of different things and experiences growing up that I realized something could have been better. Now, I'm very grateful for the way that I was raised. It taught me that there's something else out there. This is what I don't like. I love sloppy joes, but that doesn't mean I want to eat sloppy joes as an adult and feed it to my kids when they're later down the road. But I'm also not one of those DRF students, Paul.

I'm not one of those entrepreneurs. It's like I started because I sucked at school. No, I excelled at school. I was a top 10 high GPA AP classes, one SAT test away from a four-eyed scholarship to FSU where UCF got accepted into both of those. Screwed the Florida Gators, they didn't accept me. But all at all, it was really a surprise when going into my senior year, I was going through this teenage crisis where I was fighting my stepdad, I was fighting my mom, I was fighting religious figures in my life at the time. was just getting all my nerves and I never felt like anybody understood me.

And so I'm thinking to myself, why would I go to college and get a marketing degree? And my mom has a master's and hasn't put it to use yet. And I'm thinking to myself, that just doesn't make sense. And so I started a clothing line. And I had these entrepreneurial facets that, you know, I didn't know it was entrepreneurial spirited. I mean, my stepdad and step brother encouraged me to do like lawn care one summer. And I did lane it a law firm and did work for Boy Scouts and things of that nature.

Isaac Mashman4:16

they missed? Yeah, I think it was how much, you know, I'm not here to talk negatively about family, but I think that going in as a teenager, it's kind of like, I hate you, mom, I hate you, dad, but there was actual things going on when I was younger where like my stepdad had that narcissistic personality that ultimately, whatever you said would be manipulated and into adulthood, I think my mom started to realize that it just created this rift between me and him and my mom to wear arguments, nonstop. And I don't really share this often. But I figure if this is a podcast from misfits, it's like, I think entrepreneurs stem from struggle and stem from bullshit and stem from things that are just rust.

And that was that. And so I was that rebel, you know, going into high school and middle school, I wanted freedom and I, and all of the issues were caused because I didn't have freedom growing up. And it's not that I wanted to go out and party with a bunch of college students. It was just I wanted to have the ability to think for myself and I wasn't given that. And so it makes sense why entrepreneurship had an appealing structure to me because a lack of structure I suppose because I could go out and build something that was my own. And so long so I short, I got involved with the network marketing industry.

That was a phenomenal experience. Three different companies four different times first business trip, all that good stuff. over the span of several years, I got out of that industry and into a bunch of others, and it eventually led me to what I'm doing now, which is personal brand consulting and working with public figures, which is quite exciting. I enjoy it quite a bit.

Isaac Mashman5:54

Well, I mean, I did work two jobs. I worked two jobs in my life. One was at a public grocery store as an overnight stock, stock boy for about three months, and I would blast Andy, Andy Ferssell as MFCEO project in my ear. I used to hit the boss off because I'd always have something in my ear listening to him and he'd be talking to me and I'm like, huh? You know, like, because I was focused on personal value and why not get the most of it. I'm not going to listen to the same playlist of 2000s hits over and over again at night. Like, no, I worked at a barbecue joint, but after I got out of network marketing, I tried my hand and, you know, drop shipping and wanting to do some social media work and some podcast management and my first thousand dollars was podcast management.

And that was really a big shocking moment to me because I'm thinking to myself, well, I just kept going to pay a thousand bucks. Like I was getting paid $300 for 30 hours of work at the grocery store a week and I just made a thousand dollars and it'll take me 10 hours, maybe, of my time to do this. Like, and, and all of these different experiences kind of shifted things, but it

Isaac Mashman6:57

Yeah. And I was in California at the time because I pretty much graduated and there was a moment where I was flown out to California for VidCon by Facebook in 2019. Everybody knows about Facebook reels, but they don't know about the precursor to reels. It was called Lasso, like the Lasso-e-Rope and it was an app that was short videos, you know, under a minute. I think it was under 30 seconds. And I've worked my way into one of the star creators and I was flown out to LA for VidCon in 2019 and rather than flying home, I stayed in California and I spent the summer in Bakersfield with people that I met the year before when I was out there.

But those risks were, I suppose the big thing in my mind was, what's the worst that could happen? What's the worst that could happen? Why not? And yeah, man, I could go into a million different directions there.

Isaac Mashman8:15

I made a great employee, which is the ironic part, just like I was a three-day student, I was an excellent employee. And I know that, you know, whatever, if I was to choose a marketing career, choose to work a business or a nine to five, I would have excelled at it. And I found that building a business is more challenging, though, simply because you lack that structure and you need that discipline to do to yourself. And that's been like the biggest moving into this next stage of having the discipline to get up when I need to get up and do the things that I need to do, because it's not like you have a boss who's saying, or this sense of, you know, in school, I performed very well and I remember in PE, I was thinking about this in ninth grade, I was the fat chubby kid.

And I remember my grades being paralleled by how fast I could run the mile. And when I started the year, it was like 11 minutes, it was horrible. And by the end of the year, I've worked it down to eight minutes and 20 seconds, it got an A in the class. But I realized looking back in retrospect that the reason I was able to do that was I had a milestone and this expectation that if I didn't meet, I would get a B on my report card and why am I going to be a straight A student in every class and then have a B and P E, like that's pathetic.

And moving into my jobs that I did work, I mean my first job at Sunny's barbecue, I was hired for $8.50. And then I was there as a dishwasher for like three days and the boss moved me into the back to work with food prep. He's like, you're overqualified, get back here. Like literally, and I didn't have a choice. I mean, I was like, okay, sure. And that's why my story and why I don't talk about these things is it's a typical to what most entrepreneurs talk about in their own journeys and their own progressions. Yeah.

Isaac Mashman10:06

That would have to be the podcast management because when I was building all these different side hustles and endeavors. What I was doing was building out my personal brand because I understood early on while that obscurity is the enemy of success. Like I have to make sure that people know me. And so, some of the people that have been connected with me the longest have seen me go through five different pivots and they've seen, okay, after six months, let's change this up. After six months, let's change this up. And it always pissed me off when I did that because I'm like, man, I smell this time.

But at the same point, I feel like there's something else. And it was this pursuit of clarity almost. Like I was, I was seeking something that I could naturally be good at, but when I was in California and I had the friend group that I had at the time, I had a lot of them coming to me asking for help with their social media, with their pages, with their business pages. And I realized that there was this wide open opportunity to work with the personal brands rather than the businesses. Cause everybody works with the business to run leads and run ads. But what about the business owner?

What about the entertainer? And so that was in 2019 when the seed was planted. And that's when I moved into the music industry a little bit, managed musical talent because branding and marketing tied great in to music management and positioning at artists and eventually got out of that.

Isaac Mashman11:42

but I would say reverse engineering everything. Like that's the big secret. I mean, if people think about how they can build a brand or build a business or run a successful ad, I mean, there are people online that charge thousands of dollars for reverse engineering, click funnels and reverse engineering a funnel page. It's like, right, you're seeing what works and adopting it. And that's what I did. So what I would do is when I was in high school, I remember sitting behind by desk during my free period, my senior year and watching Gary Vaynerchuk's videos and editing my podcast and everything else. I'm not a fan of Gary today in a large part.

I mean, I don't have anything bad to say about the guys. Just I feel like you graduate from Gary V and go into like high level, tactical stuff. I feel like he's the introductory course until like the gourmet meal. But I reverse engineered, you know what Gary did, what Tai Lopez did, how Grant Cardone position himself because he went from being this obscure sales trainer to being well known in the matter of a decade. And so I would look and I'd run Google searches and I would see what blogs they got on, how they built their podcast, where the podcast was distributed, what those little details were, how their social media looked.

For example, if I'm going to want to do public speaking, how do I get on the bureaus that they're listed on? And I just looked for all of those different avenues that I could go down. And eventually I figured out, okay, this works, this doesn't work. Let me go ahead and do this. And then this is also duplicatable for clients. And that's where I started to really pinpoint the strategy into I could take anybody, because look at what they've done, look at what they're wanting to do and position them to where they could be that public figure and get in front of, you know, whatever audience they want

Isaac Mashman13:48

Because it's everything. I mean, you regardless of you being on social media or not, you have a personal brand. all this is one of the biggest misconceptions people have. They think that their personal brand only exists on Instagram or because they're creating a new website, they're creating a new personal brand or they're pivoting, they have to create a new one. No, you are working with the same personal brand you have had from the moment your mom pushed you out all those years ago. That's the thing that people need to understand. And as you go through, just like I was the straight A student, I have friends from my past that know me or that I forgot about me.

I know people from my past that I have perceptions about. We all have perceptions as children and then we go and get older and you go to college and you land a career. How do you land a career with a resume and what is a resume or reflection of your personal brand? And so I realized that there's this philosophical approach in 2024 that needs to be preached more than ever because if the internet disappeared tomorrow, you can still go outside and shake hands and people will know you in your local community. You're still know and your mother, your son, your daughter, your aunts, your uncles, your friends, they still know you. And that is your personal brand. It is you. And that's something very

Isaac Mashman15:01

It's not just one thing. It's a spiderweb of everything. So just like your reputation is not your personal brand, it is separate. It is something that is an aspect of your personal brand, whether that's good or for bad. Your book is an aspect of your personal brand. your interests and hobbies are an aspect of your personal brand. There is literally nothing that I could say that isn't a part of your personal brand aside from your actual company brand. Your company is an extension of you, but it is not you. And this is something small business owners really screw up with. They use their business pages as their personal pages.

They, you know, use I instead of we or our first person versus third person. That's not your personal brand. But every every single thing, just like you have Superman in the background and whole comic books on your wall, which I see, your interest in Marvel or DC is a part of your personal brand, just like me drinking coffee is a part of it. This hyper fixation on only showing the professional side is hurting people because it's not allowing them to get connected to on an emotional basis and have rapport established.

Isaac Mashman16:38

personal brands and pretty much every other small micro reason falls underneath these three. You have the ability to make money and generate revenue. You have vanity and ego and then you have to drive awareness to a cost. Those are the three biggest reasons and everything else you can fall underneath. Those are like the umbrella reasons. And so you building out your personal brand and being positioned as an expert, you're able to grow your company's brand. You're able to say, oh no, I'm associated with this or you know, I would automatically choose you over the next designer because I've seen your work And I've connected with you as a person people who business with who they know like and trust this isn't new Now you can also build your personal brand because maybe you just like the attention and I think that there's nothing innately wrong with that I'm not here to dispute the morals or the ethical ramifications of being famous but Having that desire to be well known is I mean all entertainers have that narcissist I mean, you think about entertainers, the reason they grow is not just for money, it's for vanity.

And then you have the alternative side, which is like a mission. You want to drive awareness to a cause. Maybe you have something that you care about or, you know, something that is close to your heart, whether that's, you know, how to improve businesses, cyber security, because you hacked into a system 20 years ago, which is, I had a conversation with a prospect the other day, he hacked into the system 14 years ago and is now able to do white label security service and basically help people and help lawyers and businesses with their MSP and their network security because he did that. You know, and so it's like there are those are like the main reasons why you build your personal brand and from there, you know, people will follow you for those interests and for

Isaac Mashman18:46

That's a really great question. And I love that question too, because we can look at what I did and I can tell you what not to do. What I mean by that is all of my businesses are named after me for the most part. Mashman Consulting Group, Mashman Ventures, Mashman Investments, Mashman Properties. That is what you should not do unless you are looking to never sell it. I am built on my businesses to go back to the old Americana way of passing it on to my son and saying you're into the daddy's business. That's what I'm building this for, where this is a generational thing.

Not everybody wants to do that. A lot of people want to build a business to exit the business. Now, whether that's good or that's bad, I'm not here to talk about that either. But what I can say is you have to start building a team, building a culture, building it as an extension of you to where if you were to step away, the business can still function. And this is something like Andy Fursella talks about in depth and he says that it's his own microorganist. Like, and that's how you could really tell if a business is good. So with Mashman Consulting Group, I'm building a consultants team to where even if I'm not doing any consultations, I still have a team of people who can go out and land their own clients and are self-sustaining to where they could grow the business.

And if they have a question, they could go to Eric or they could go to anybody else that is in that position to say, Hey, what should we be doing? Well, Isaac's not here. That is a business, right? Versus having a side hustle or a business that you're only starting it and you're like a one man shop. It's very difficult to differentiate the two because if you're working as solo and there's no other capabilities where I can function without you, you're pretty much being a sole proprietor, not a business owner. And that's like a massive jump that it's not set in a disrespectful way. Some people want to only be that one-man freelance shop, but that's different than building a business with the culture and having 25 people working for you or having a thousand people work for you.

But you can go and do podcasts and interviews, just like I'm doing, and talk about your business and your expertise on shows, But you should also make sure that you're building your own company's email list, your own company's social media, creating posts and not making yourself necessarily the face of it. Like, Terramana Tequila by Dwayne The Rock Johnson, I know that Dwayne's behind the company, but it's still functioning with or without Dwayne. I know that like, aviation gin, I'm thinking about liquors because all celebrities do is start a liquor company. The variation gin was I believe sold by Ryan Reynolds. Yeah. But I'm still going to be buying it because I like the products.

But he was the introductory taste. Right. And so you have to make sure that the business is able to withstand itself even if you're out

Isaac Mashman22:14

Yeah, there shouldn't really be a fear because, I mean, I suppose most of all of this, the same thing with putting yourself out there, I mean, a lot of people like their privacy and a lot of people also don't do it, not because of privacy. And they say that privacy is the reason, but the real reason is they just don't feel confident in being able to put themselves out there because they feel like they look stupid. I think developing your confidence and your own abilities and going basically baptism by fire is the best way that you can start seeing what works and what doesn't work because well, what's the worst that's gonna happen?

You might look stupid on a show for a couple of minutes or you might look and maybe make a simple mistake. It's not like you can't come back from these little mistakes. And your personal brand, the only way that you can ruin yourself forever is if you do something so egregious, I doubt anybody listening to the show, whatever do. Otherwise, you can pivot Jordan Belfort, Wolf of Wall Street scammed so many people, how to move you've made about him after you wrote the book and it's now getting paid the same amount of money he was getting paid back then, doing training. So if you can say that you're afraid of hurting your personal brand and not being able to come back and look at Jordan Belfer and what he's been able to do over the past decade, it's like, come on now, it's not making excuses.

Isaac Mashman24:03

are the people who have the authority offline that haven't done it, it's seeing online. Because what you're really asking about is what can I do to build my personal brand online, not build my personal brand offline? That's the real question. Yeah. And so let's take a lawyer, for example, who's been practicing law for 20 years, has a big law of practice is well known in the city and they're the local hero. Let's take, I remember growing up and there was Farron Farrah, Morgan and Morgan, Harold and Harold, the big lawyers that I saw their commercials after school every day, those people could easily go on social media and be like, let's say your name is Todd Smith.

Todd Smith lawyer, right? So you go on social media, you grab your handle for all of your social media platforms. So it'd be Todd Smith that would be taken. So you would do Todd Smith Reel or Todd Smith official. You'd grab that handle on every single social media platform, update your profile picture, update your name, update your header image with a photo of you doing something. And then you would put a marketing message together based off of what you're looking to get from your personal brand. So again, do you want to make money? Are you building your business? Are you driving awareness towards like, let's say, you know, some of the clients you represent or underrepresented?

Okay. Do you want to drive awareness to that? Or do you want to just go and become famous and send out law tips, right? So you put together a marketing strategy. So I help, let's say, I help people recover damages after automotive accidents. And then you put in the front of that, you put something personable. So let's say you're a lawyer that is known for going and doing crazy events or crazy stunts in order to get promotion locally. So you would do your skydiving lawyer. And then I help people after automotive accidents get the money they deserve. And then you start creating content that reflects that.

And you might show a skydiving stunt. You might show you bungee jumping or doing an event where like Richard Branson is a perfect example of this. Like he did all of these different stunts to build the virgin brand. And he was known for that, but he was also known as the founder and as somebody who was a respectable business magnet. And then you could create content about law and about some of the craziest cases and about some of the things that you've seen over the years. And you start doing that and then you naturally get people to follow you. But how do you start from zero with your social media?

Well, you start by the people that you already know. So you reach out to your friends or your colleagues. You'd probably be on LinkedIn. So get your people who you're connected with on LinkedIn to follow you on Facebook, to follow you on Instagram. you start creating the spider web and that's your personal brand online that you're able to do things to eventually strengthen and gain more exposure and then get in front of more people which is ultimately the game. I think eyeballs and attention is like the main reason why you do these things.

Isaac Mashman27:10

Well, I could talk for hours about some of the mistakes I've seen, whether like I mentioned using the business page for the personal page or creating a content with another person's quote. That's something I've seen so many people do. It's so dumb. It is the dumbest thing I've ever seen somebody do. And it's like, why would you use a photo of yourself with a quote from John New Rockefeller? That'd be like me going and using Dwayne the John Dwayne, you know, the rock Johnson's quote next to a photo of me. Yeah. That's not doing anything. And as a matter of fact, that's harming our versatile bread.

Yeah. I've seen people purchasing followers. We could get into the dark side of this, right? Purchasing followers paying for Forbes features, paying for news wires, paying for, you know, all these things to get their audience up. And all they're doing is they're catering to a bunch of bots and accounts that don't exist. That's not building your personal bread. That is harming your personal bread. Right.

Isaac Mashman29:25

Well, let me answer or go back to the previous question really quick and I'll answer that one.

Isaac Mashman29:34

That's something people really need to understand. So there are certain podcasts that charge appearance fees and they're like $3,500 plus. And if somebody, if I see somebody's been on that show, I respect them less because I know that all they did to get on, yeah, they might only be a couple guests per month, but they've bought their way into that. If I see them on certain outlets and I know that they're paid outlets, I don't respect them as much. But Paul, I've been able to land Forbes features and entrepreneur features and I haven't paid for either of them. I've done dozens of interviews and 100 plus press interviews and stuff and quotes and mentions and I haven't paid for any of them Yeah, so it's like if you were to compare The best press ultimately I'm getting merchandise made about this later this year actually I've been thinking about it I'm gonna get a hoodie that says the best press is free press That's why I have my signature has gonna be on my front because this is seriously something that I'm so passionate about and I don't use passion lightly I've really never stopped say that because there's just so much slimy crap online That's part of the reason why I got out of the PR and I was like, let me launch a consulting firm rather than a public relations firm.

So I didn't have so many labels. Now, in terms of somebody who is looking to build their personal brand and what was the second question

Isaac Mashman30:50

Okay. That's what I was thinking. So let's take politics and religion, for example.

Isaac Mashman30:59

Because we all have political beliefs. We all have really different. Right. And when I was younger and when I was early on in this, I used to say you never talk about these subjects at all. Never talk about this. Because it's going to split your audience. But then I realized the converse is true, that if somebody was to have enough open mind in this and we need to get back to the time to where we could have a disagreement on beliefs and still have a conversation. So as long as you're not being so forth, right, and disrespectful, you can announce a political belief every now and again, or comment, or say that I disagree with income tax, for example.

And even if somebody disagrees with you, there should be an active conversation where I've made posts in the past year that have been divisive and some people have unfriended me and blocked me, but I've had others gain a massive amount of respect for me or have had a conversation and say, I don't necessarily agree with you and gotten into really intellectual conversations and debates, that's how it should function. And the people who are just going to hit the block button or they unfollow are people that are doing business with you anyway. You know, it's not intellectual behavior. But then talking about like religion, you could go the one route.

So for example, there's a magician friend of mine I just did a vlog with Giancarlo Bernini. And he's been performing at a Christian camp over the summer. But his main thing is doing corporate events, okay? And so he does corporate magic shows and things of that nature. He gets paid to come out. But he doesn't want to be noticed. Christian magician, that's a little bit of an oxymoron in of itself. So it's not like he's going on on his social media. He's being like your Christian magician. Yeah. And this is also you shouldn't be that kind of guy that's like, are you a Christian business owner and you're struggling to run advertisements?

That's not how you cater to your audience. That's not what you should be doing. But what you can do is talk about faith and talk about the importance and talk about how faith has helped you with business or how a certain political belief has affected your business or a certain political decision has cost, you know, your business to go up. So I think that over the next couple of years, I was asked this question earlier about what are some trends I see and I see Paul this necessity and desire for more strategic advice, for more detailed advice, things that like in my pod in this podcast, you could reverse engineer or listen to what I'm saying and you have a step by step playbook on what you need to do.

Right. talk about be authentic, be on social media, do these things. But what value is that? There's a difference between value and strategic value. Right. And if you want to grow your personal brand and be the authority, that's what you do. Just like before we started talking, you said, by name, thinking about doing the dollar a day strategy for my podcast, like Dennis, you. Yeah. That is a successful personal brand. Yeah.

Isaac Mashman35:31

Well, I can think of several brand accounts that I might be subscribed to on YouTube. And I don't even know the host's name. That means that as soon as my feed and the algorithm promotes another channel that is in the same niche. Okay, I'm gonna subscribe to them because I have no loyalty to the other. And so, you know, there's this idea of building a brand account, building your personal brand, and then building a business account. They're all three different things, but I'm thinking of the unboxed review shows or unbox therapy or something like that. The guy who reviews all the Apple products. I know the guy's name.

I know the channel. but I know his name, said this tomorrow, if I got recommended another person, like I never go out and look for him by name, but the mentors I follow, the experts I follow, the people, the celebrities I follow, I search for by name, not by brand. So that is a massive thing that people need to think about whenever they're building, wanting to build like a separate brand. No, like that brand might be, there's a difference between building like some cool products or a podcast name, but having a podcast name, the head smack podcast is not the same as Paul Pavolny. Like there's a difference there, right?

Yeah, yeah. And so that's one of the biggest mistakes. And then I would also say, limiting themselves to one platform, I think that there are a lot of people who say that, oh, you only need to be on one platform, but there's been so much talk about TikTok being banned. And if these people have built 10 million follower pages and audiences on TikTok and it disappears to MRO, and they haven't diversified, they're out of luck and they have to start over. So I think that the determination of a strong personal brand is being omnipresent and being everywhere all the time. And having it to where if you were to Google yourself or somebody was to Google you from a different location, no matter where they're at in the world, you're able to pop up. You're able to show up in their feeds.

Isaac Mashman38:31

Yeah. When I think to being willing to follow the same people on

Isaac Mashman38:45

Instagram and I'll see if you want, you're on Twitter and whatever else. And that establishes the law of familiarity. And I'm talking about this in the second edition of my book. And Just like Napoleon Hill did the first practical philosophy of success, I want to do the first practical philosophy of personal branding. That's my ambition to really define. And I have something called the law familiarity because just like you were the new kid on school in day one, by the end of the school year, you knew everybody that anxiety went away showing up. You didn't have any worries. Your position was secured. You were familiar with your teachers, with your environment, with your students, your classmates.

You were familiar. And just like that new kid on the block building out your personal brand online You have to get people familiar with you to where their anxieties their concerns their questions go away And to where they automatically think of you and a con conversation Such as the other day I was sent a referral and she was having a conversation with a prospect and He's like I wanted to publish a book and she's like Isaac Mashman immediately masked over a furrow new client and And so it's like when you're doing these things, you need to be familiar. You need to get people familiar with you.

Isaac Mashman40:19

Well, which is the most impactful use you calling yourself an expert and as somebody. Oh, you can trust me versus Somebody else saying that you can trust this person. Yeah, I vouch for him Which one which person are you going to trust the most the one that has third-party edification? Right, right ability is trust. That is the simplest term. It is trust It is a sense of faith that whatever this person does is going to meet my expectations So if you weren't building yourself up as this expert and as this person who can deliver a client that works with you There's a lower action threshold where they're automatically going to pull out their wallets or say alright I have one question, but I'm ready to work with you You don't have to fight as hard to close them But you still have to fight to make make sure that you're delivering up to their expectations Right, so when you're building fit or when you're doing things to where other people are able to talk about you like doing a podcast interview you invited me on the show.

That is a form of edification because you were telling your audience that, hey, you can trust this person. And if by the end of the show, you felt like I didn't do what I needed to do, you would delete the episode and act like it never happened. Yeah. Being on interviews such as press articles or vlogs or blogs or collaborating or just different things where people are able to introduce you. If you're going to a networking event get introduced as the number one plumber, the number one graphic designer. There is a degree of trust that is automatically established off of the personal brand of the other person who's edifying you.

That is credibility. And so every single thing that you could do, whether that's collecting video testimonials or any of the things I just mentioned to where another person can say, you can trust this person, you can build out your credibility. And that is also the biggest step to being a public figure. is now you have people talking about you rather than you're talking about yourself.

Isaac Mashman43:08

terrible person. Well, here's a really good conversation. We could go down for a minute that I don't think I've ever had on a show, which is what can you do to fix that? Yeah. Like, what can you do to fix that? If you're what you're saying, the expectations that you're talking about for yourself are not necessarily what other people are saying about you. So like, let's say you're getting some negative reviews for your business, right? Maybe you have a Google My Business listing or Trust Pilot age, your reviews are like one to three stars. What can you start to do to change that? Well, you have two options.

You can address the review, and I would say you need to do both of these steps. Address the reviews, make up for it, ask what can be done to solve that, and to make that, you know, salvageable if possible. And the second is to flood it with positive reviews, but this requires you to live up to your word, and to actually deliver so you can collect those positive testimonials. So you fix it, salvage it if possible, and you flood it, and you basically overpower it with more positive feedback and more positive words. And then you could do what a lot of people do on crisis management and get ahead of it and say that, hey, and be honest, you get a report.

Like think about, and this probably wouldn't be the best example to give, but liver came, right? The steroid guy eats liver, right? Right. When it came out that he was doing those, He's like, man, I lied. I fucked up. And he did that apology. And at one point, it almost didn't more damage than it did help. He got ahead of it by admitting that he's a liar. And he could have just kept doing what he was doing and not even addressed the claims. That probably would have been a better way of handling it versus no, I'm a liar. But what you could do is if your work is not performing up to your standards or up to other people's standards, do something, make a post and be like, hey, I've messed up.

No, make excuses, be like, I had things so a couple of years ago, I had a client who I took on, and sorry, my voice has been going out over the past couple of weeks. I mean, so many of these things, man. I lost my grandmother around the same time that I took her on as a client. And I went MIA. I mean, I would respond, but I wasn't there for her, right? And she's like, hey, this is rough. And I was like, you know what? Let's call her Ashley, right? I was like, Ashley, you're absolutely right. I'm sorry. I messed up and I made up, boy, I was like anything that I could do, I'm not gonna charge you anymore.

This is what happened and in realize that the person at the other end of the phone is human and they will understand if you communicate with them. And a lot of these issues can be solved with communication.

Isaac Mashman47:40

Well, I think a tree takes, an oak tree can take a hundred years to build and I could cut that thing down in an hour with a chainsaw. your reputation is effectively that. And there are a lot of these things that you don't, you don't actively, when you're building out your personal brand, unless you're going to a high level, you don't think about what is my reputation? That's not a question that you're asking in the front of your mind. You're thinking, how can I get more followers? That's the God honest truth, that's okay. But as you scale and as you get more exposure and more people talking about you to where the biggest indicator, one of the other, I've said the biggest indicator, there are several indicators that you have entered into that public figure status is, you have more people who know you that you do not know yourself.

Yeah. So I've had several people recently that have reached out to me and be like, hey, I've been following you for five years and I'm like, I feel bad because I don't know you. Yeah, yeah. It's the same reason why you could go and approach a celebrity that you've been following for 10 years and be like, oh my God, I know everything about you. I know your daughter's name. I know where you went to school. I know where you were born. I know your birthday. And they don't know who you are. Right? And so I think understanding that this takes time and all of those contributing factors do add up over time.

And once you get to the point where more people know about you and who you are than you know them, that's a good indicator. And that's like a moment where you needed this. I mean, I had one of those earlier this year. And it was one of the biggest just aha moments, I think of my entire career of my entire life, frankly, that I haven't spoken about too much in depth which was I had a conversation with a friend who I've been connected with for several years. She was in the network marketing industry, a veteran, and she's building her own company. And I approached her last year about taking a relationship professionally and working with her and working for like three months for like three grand, right?

No, no biggie. And I was planning on doing consulting with her. And I was like, why, you know, let's call her Jasmine. I was like, Jasmine, why haven't you worked with me? Like what's going on? like you just paid $1,500 to go to this stupid podcast convention. And it's like, you're going for VIP access, you're paying for flight and gas and whatever else. It's like, why don't you just pay the money and work with me? Like I've done this, I have a podcast that's still charting. It's like, I could help you. And she's like, Isaac, based off of our conversation, and when I see it's like, I thought I needed to get established first before I could work with you.

I've officially done what I wanted to do five years ago go into where I get pitched every day to invest in companies. I got pitched to invest in a script. I've gotten hundreds of hundred, probably thousands of emails at this point, every day, not every day, but like over the span of the past year, you know, with all these people reaching out to me because they found my profile, because they found me somewhere. Yeah. And that was an aha head-spack moment where I'm like, damn, I have the knowledge panel. I show up on Google. I've done these things. I've traveled. I know what I'm talking about and people know that I know what I'm talking about.

And that I think is a big moment that people need to make too, especially business owners or anybody trying to do something. It's like taking a step back and thinking, holy crap, I've done it. I might not feel like I'm where I want to be 100%, but it's like, no, like it's, it's there. Yeah. And that's a crazy, crazy thing to experience.

Isaac Mashman51:32

And these questions always stummy. I never get stumped by their questions, but these questions always throw me off. And I would have to go along the lines of when it's faking it till you make it. Okay. This is something that a lot of people do online. They get in front of the labor guinea. They get in front of the Rolls Royce. get in front of whatever the mansion for the Airbnb. And they're like, nah, try to be Tai Lopez rip-offs. That's unethical. It's unethical, it's immoral. But is there a degree of acceptability for faking it, so you make it? When I was a young entrepreneur, I didn't make it seem like I was rich or some ultra-successful person, but I still exuded confidence and made sure that I was building my ability in whatever business I was doing to where I knew that I wasn't de-essing the person on the other end of the phone.

And then eventually I became that person to where no, like he legitimately knows what he's doing. There's no question about it. And I think that business owners are afraid of being fraudulent. And I think that's a good fear. I think that's a really healthy fear. And I think when you're building your personal brand, don't feel like you're a fraud for putting yourself out there. That's probably the best thing I could say right now. Don't feel like a fraud for putting yourself out there, maybe even early, because all these great people had to put themselves early and had to shoot their shot in order to make their first couple of baskets.

Isaac Mashman55:16

Well, I think one, if you're thinking about authenticity, you're being inauthentic because you're trying to manipulate what you are or not putting what you are or you aren't putting out. So don't focus on authenticity. That's bullshit that everybody says be authentic and nobody explains what that means. That means for being inauthentic. That's just the God honest truth, there's no way if ends your butts that you can get around that question. Yeah. The second thing is, I would start telling people to screw off. And that's the truth, because 50 years ago, 25 years ago, before my time, I almost wish I was alive during this time, if you told, if you trash talk somebody, you'd get your butt beat.

Yeah. Nowadays, you have these keyboard warriors or some mom who, you know, has a horrible relationship, spend divorced 10 times commenting on a healthy relationship about kids on a video on Facebook, like the Facebook comments, especially, man. And it's like, oh, you did this wrong. And it's like, Karen, how miserable are you? Yeah. How miserable are you? And I think that really just telling people to screw off, whether you do or you don't say that outright is your decision, I'm getting to the point where I'm just telling people to screw off if they're like really that bad. Yeah. I think you should do that. Right.

And I think that that will develop either a newfound respect for you or they'll be like, wow, he's an ass. And you know you're not. You know you're building something. Right. such a respect for yourself, you're willing to bulldoze your way through. And that unshakable, unstoppable tenacity is what it requires. And eventually that cockiness turns into confidence.

Isaac Mashman57:50

And it's like that that's a part of building a business. And that's part of scaling up. of it's like, and starting to do things that make your process better, more efficient, safer, secure, higher quality, all these things are ultimately, I think, the pursuit of clarity. Like I mentioned earlier today about why I went into different businesses and why I went through these changes is the pursuit of clarity. And if I'm clear that I'm making money or doing this because I'm looking to provide for my family or build the vehicle that will build the skyscraper I want to build, well, I don't necessarily care if you don't think that you don't like how I talk or you don't like a certain thing that I said, or you disagree with me.

But there's a difference between I think understanding if somebody's giving you genuine advice versus somebody who is genuinely hating. And at the same point, I think asking for advice or asking for opinions is important and underrated. I mean, if we think about one of the most criticized works, which is Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, he talks about how the king, the prince that is going to remain in power, always actively seeks out the advice of the people he trusts. Yeah. But he disregards any advice that isn't given without being asked. Yeah. And I think that's a good philosophy to live by. You don't want to listen to somebody who's just saying, hey, you need to do this. But if you ask somebody a mentor, a coach, somebody, a brotherly figure, what do you think about this?

Isaac Mashman1:00:30

And they probably have books that are lead magnet PDFs or whatever that are 30, 40, 50, 60 pages long. Have you ever considered publishing that as a physical copy of an actual book, getting an ISBN, investing in it, and having an actual paperback that you can give out to people. And you mentioned briefly about the Amazon author thing of, you know, are you an Amazon best-selling author in some niche category? And I think that there is no less pride that you can take in being the best-selling author in a certain category. So for example, my manifesto wasn't the best seller on Amazon, but my manifesto was the number one new release public relations on Amazon.

It was a top 10 bestseller in public relations on Amazon. And I provide that clarification and people respect me more for it. And so I think that the details matter is very important when building out your personal brands, the whole as seen in CBS, Fox News kind of thing. No, you sent on a press release that was picked up by CBS 42 out of Nebraska or The Fox News, you know, Wilmington, Washington, whatever. Be honest, be truthful, have integrity, have a moral compass, a moral code, and your personal brand will thank you for it, the people in your network will thank you for it, and trust your own ability and start building that confidence. And Paul, it's been a phenomenal conversation, man. Very tactical, things that I haven't talked about before. I really enjoyed it. Thanks, man.

Isaac Mashman1:02:00

do that? You can find me literally everywhere at Isaac Mashman on every social media platform. You could go to @isaacmashman.com or Mashman.org. Pretty cool domain I picked up. And you can find all my information there and you can grab a physical copy of my manifesto, personal branding and Manifesto on Fame and Influence. I'm currently in the process of writing the second edition coming out later this year.