Isaac Mashman Talks Personal Branding's New Volume and Entrepreneurship

Isaac Mashman1:19

Jacob, you should be an announcer for WWE, man. Don't mind me, [I'm] chugging my coffee. Exciting.

Isaac Mashman1:52

Yeah. Well, if I was to look at my entrepreneurial journey, I usually talk about 2017 being the big start, which was when I was in high school and had a clothing line and saw network marketing as an opportunity I pursued for a couple of years. But it actually goes back farther than that. When I was in high school, I would say 15 or 16, I started with a lawn business. Over the summer, I posted the entire neighborhood with flyers. I had a trailer that hooked up to my bike that I was able to put my lawn mower and weed whacker on, and I just went around door to door.

That was my first, I suppose, professional entrance. But I had that entrepreneurial spirit and always had that knack for creative inventions, even in middle school. But it was in my senior year when I thought that I could do something as a full-blown career. That was a transitionary period from, let me go to college and take the traditional path that I was pursuing, to, let me take this atypical path and jump in. That's when I ultimately got involved with the industry of network marketing, with three different companies, four different times. Then over the past five years, I went from business to business until I eventually figured out what I was good at and what I could see myself scaling and building, which is what I'm doing now.

Isaac Mashman3:19

When I have [kids], I don't know if I'll put my future kid in Scouts or not, but it's one of those things where I feel like in order to work for something, you have to deserve it. I don't feel like I worked enough during my senior year, right before I had a bunch of personal issues. [Whether I put] my future kid in Scouts or not, it's one of those things where I feel like in order to work for something, you have to deserve it. I don't feel like I worked enough during my senior year, right before I had a bunch of personal issues. I attribute a lot to Boy Scouts, though. That really made me the man I am today.

Isaac Mashman5:06

My business role models are actually old-world models. There are a lot of great mentors and people that I follow online that I attribute a lot of what I've learned to. Some of those were in the industry of network marketing, but Andy Frisella is one of my biggest guys. [He has] a huge company in Missouri, St. Louis specifically, 1st Phorm. I've learned so much from him, from the MFCEO days to his new show. But I also have a really deep love for old-world New Thought material from the early days, like Napoleon Hill, Earl Nightingale, Bob Proctor. I'm of the belief that information gets lost as time goes on.

The farther away from the source you go, unless you're talking about some really crazy situations like the Koran, you're going to lose information. I want to go as far back as possible. So even from Napoleon Hill, there are other New Thought authors that are older than him. Andrew Carnegie is a great example. He wrote many essays when he was alive. He is the great American industrialist. He has a collection of essays that were compiled into a book called The Empire of Business. It's fascinating to see how many of those essays that were written over 100 years ago apply to us today. [He built] really the industrial infrastructure of America. I just love collecting those old texts and those old materials, because I feel like I have a piece of history with me.

Isaac Mashman6:46

Yeah, John Maxwell is a legend in the industry. He's been around for longer than we've been alive, which is fascinating to think, that you can have a career spanning that many [years]. I don't even know how many books he's published.

Isaac Mashman7:27

Yes, but you have entered into, in my opinion, professionally the top 1% of what you're doing. Most people, when they launch a podcast, only do 20 episodes, and they get 20 monthly listeners, and they're like, all right, I'm done. That's why, whenever I'm working with a client... I had somebody today who was telling me, I'm considering launching my own show. I told him, Jose, you need to wait. If you're going to do that, make sure you're going into it where this is an over-a-year commitment. This is not something that you're going to do for a couple of weeks or a couple of months and call it a day. You need to go into it with the end in mind of, hey, this is a continual thing that you're working on.

Isaac Mashman8:20

The cool thing that you've probably never even thought of in this perspective (my job is personal branding, and a lot of that is reputation management, public relations, it's all kind of underneath that umbrella) is that by being in association with those people, your individual credibility goes up, because you can land other guests that are of a higher caliber by saying, hey, come on the same show that Howie Mandel was on. You can leverage those names by association to boost your own credibility, and that's the wonderful platform known as podcasting. So the people that are normally out of reach for us common folk are actually within reach by just saying, hey, I have a stage. I would love to have a conversation.

Isaac Mashman9:28

Well, I [had one] for quite a long time. It was from 2019, and I ended in 2022, crossing over 100 episodes. I viewed it in the sense of, number one, this is a good platform to reach new people. Number two, it's a great way to approach guests that would typically be out of reach, that I can now have a conversation with. It was one of those things where it was cool to have a vehicle that I could get people latched onto and committed to coming back every single time that week, [like], hey, I have something that I'm sharing. [I] have something of value, and people see that whenever you have a podcast and [are] building up that committed following.

That's why now, two years after the end of my last show, I'm launching a new show before the end of this year, which I'm ramping up for, and I'm going to be getting that studio set up. [It's] called Call It Excessive with Isaac Mashman. [That name has since changed: the show is Executive Status with Isaac Mashman.] The perspective with this show is, in order to be a successful blogger or podcaster or business person, you have to take a lot of risks and take a lot of jumps that would be arguably excessive. [People] would call it excessive too, oh, you're making all those sacrifices, but I believe that that [excessiveness] is actually a requirement. So, really excited about working on that.

Isaac Mashman10:47

It was this pursuit of clarity. I always talk about me going from business to business as a pursuit of clarity. I was looking for something better. I was looking, and I'm not saying I was looking for something better as in I couldn't commit to one thing, but I knew that those things that I tried were not my vehicles long term. So with my show Chase the Vision, it was cliche. It was that entrepreneur, hustle bro, hustle culture crap that I've ultimately moved on from. Now I wanted to end that and lead into something more mature. It took me some time to figure out what that would look like. But now in 2024, I'm ready to come and hit the ground running, man.

Isaac Mashman11:49

[I'd] say [it] would be figuring out your offering, whether you're doing a product-based business, where you're selling lotions, potions, or coffee mugs, or you're doing software as a service, like a subscription-based business model. I had a call today, and we're trying to figure out the pricing point. Or it could be, in my case, consulting. But even just in the consulting realm, you have three different ways you could charge. You can charge per retainer, you could charge for your time, or you could charge per session. I tried all three of those until I finally landed on charging per session, not per hour. You don't have the answers right off the bat.

But as you go through, let's say you try the retainer model, you see some challenges, you see some things that come up with that, some problems. For example, the customer being able to fulfill their end of the deal and do their homework: well, if they're having a problem with that, maybe you need to gap out the time, and so a retainer wouldn't be a good model. But I also knew that I didn't want to do some hourly rate and be like a lawyer. So, well, why don't I offer per session instead? That's also easier to scale up and have other consultants adopt that same framework.

That was a process that took me two, three years to really figure out. You don't have those answers as soon as you start out in a business. But you try things, and you see what sticks, you see what you like, you see what's efficient, you see what problems come up, and you're able to address them and ultimately evolve.

Isaac Mashman15:06

Huge role. That makes sense. The cool thing about TikTok, though, is it's an application where the older generations are actually the fastest growing demographic. It's not that dancing app like it was a couple years ago. Yes, those videos do extremely well. But if we think about what the purpose of content is, a piece of content can entertain, it can educate, it can connect, and it can inspire or motivate somebody. As business owners and as podcasters, we tread that line of education, but we oftentimes don't tread that line of entertainment. That's the challenge that a lot of people face: how they can make a podcast, for example, engaging, to where somebody would listen to it not just for personal development, but for their entertainment.

Now, that's where having good, high-quality conversations, taking clips from the show, and maybe asking engaging questions or specific questions you ask every guest come in, to where now you can go and walk those paths simultaneously.

Isaac Mashman16:55

Definitely. Well, I have a copy of my book right here. I'm working on the second edition. This is a relatively short read, 55 pages, published in 2021. The second edition is going to be well over 200 pages and really explain not only the what and why of personal branding, but my new philosophy on personal branding, which is called Identity Positioning™. Now, what is Identity Positioning™? Well, Jacob, where a lot of people go wrong online is they only focus on the brand, and they don't focus on the person. They talk about their profession. Hi, how are you? Oh, work's stressing me out. How many times has that happened?

They don't even talk about how their personal life is. They talk about their business, because they make that their identity. I want to bring people down a notch, to where that personal side of you is what will connect people with you and build rapport, which is trust, and build those long-term relationships. So the second edition of my book is going to talk about not only the what and why of personal branding, but also dive into reputation management and thinking about your personal brand as a business of its own as well, one that can be monetized, that can be built, that can be grown. The cool thing about my book and about the second edition is it's not based off of strategies that work today.

So it's not talking about Instagram growth hacking or Facebook hacking or anything of that sort, because there are so many social media books that are out there, and they don't work anymore. They don't apply, because the algorithms change, because the consumer market has changed. But I want to talk about the philosophical and psychological strategies that still apply. So for example, a really easy technique that people can use and adopt that I wrote about in my book is called the Power of Three. That is where you connect with three new people every single day, consistently, for a year. By the end of the year, you'll have a thousand new relationships built, just by taking a couple minutes of your time every day to send out a new message.

Super easy strategy. I'm really grateful for my book, because I was able to get it as the number one new release on Amazon in public relations, [and a] top 10 bestseller in the same category, and the second edition will be so much...

Isaac Mashman19:13

Well, it's interesting, because when I published the first edition, I didn't think it would be a series of books. I didn't think it would be a series of editions, like a textbook. The writing process was not difficult, but coming up with the name and the first sentence was. So one day I was walking, and the best ideas usually happen when you're the most peaceful and you're not stressed out, you're not thinking about much. I was walking, and I had this phrase in my mind, what if I told you, or what if there was something so powerful? I was like, man, that's like the first [line], the first sentence.

What if there was something so powerful that you could get nations to do your bidding, people to wake up and ask what they can do to support you? I was like, man, as soon as I had that first sentence, I could write the rest of the book and formulate it. My process of writing is I like to format the book and have the infrastructure laid out, just like you're building a house, and then I can worry about filling in the gaps and filling in everything else. So for the second edition, I have all of the chapters laid out, what I want to discuss, what I want to cover.

From there, I just go chapter by chapter, and I do voice to text. So I'll sit down, I'll have Google Docs open, and I'll do voice to text and knock out two pages at a time. Then from there, [I] go and edit it for grammar. Writing a book is a tremendous feat, but it's something that is so achievable today, because the barriers to entry are really low. You don't have to go through a publishing house to get a book published anymore. You can use Amazon KDP or Draft2Digital or Barnes and Noble Press and all of these other tools to get your book out there into the world.

Isaac Mashman21:07

The best clients that I've ever worked with are the people who have built tremendous success offline but have really done nothing online. So think about the lawyer who's been practicing law for 15 years and has a law firm, or a doctor, or a business owner who is building a great company offline, but now wants to get onto the digital space and talk about their career, grow their business, or [exit] their business, or [start] another business, or even go into the field of mentorship. Those are usually the best clients in terms of revenue and being able to delegate tasks and giving me the flexibility to come in and lay the groundwork.

Because, Jacob, one of the worst things but the best things I can hear as a consultant is, Isaac, I wish I would have done this a couple of years ago. So working with the people who are now getting onto that space and not knowing where to go, I'm able to come in and be their superhero. Whether they're working with me or another consultant of MCG, it gives them that runway to take off.

Isaac Mashman22:23

I love that corporate question. I absolutely adore that. It's one of those things where I want people who have their own ambitions. I want the person who can align and attach their success with the firm's success, because we're not going to necessarily hold your hand and give you clients. I want you to go out and land your own clients, somebody who wants to build their own personal brand, somebody who wants to maybe write their own book or do their own public speeches. Those are the people who I can train up and say, hey, this is our methodology, this is Identity Positioning™. You can approach people, go out into your own network, go out into your own world, and find people who also want to grow their personal brands.

It's one of those beautiful things where if they're making money, the firm's making money. We have all of the resources and the training and the backbone and the structure and the credibility that can give them that boost, rather than going out and being their own coach. I think that a lot of people today are doing personal brand coaching and consulting, and they lack that macroscopic view that it's more than your Instagram page. No, it's everything about you. That is your personal brand.

Isaac Mashman23:37

The number one performing piece of content right now is short-form vertical video. This has dominated for the past five years. Gary Vaynerchuk was talking about this in 2018, when I was first starting out. It has continued to grow and progress. TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, all of these platforms have short-form vertical video. That's what triggers the algorithm. That's also what connects people on more than just the auditory sense, because now they're able to see you, they're able to feel your emotions, your body language. That kind of content allows you to really get started without any barrier. You can take 60 seconds and record the video and use an artificial intelligence, like Captions AI, which is what I use, and get a video that looks high quality in a couple of minutes.

Isaac Mashman24:46

Loaded question. I would say the best thing you can do is run a quick Google search on my name. Go to Google, type in Isaac Mashman. You can see all of my information there. How can I be in the personal branding space [if] I don't have the ability to say that? All right. So you can also connect with me by going to my website, IsaacMashman.com forward slash book. That's where you can purchase my manifesto, or on Amazon. You can also, to learn more information about maybe becoming a consultant of MCG, go to MashmanCG.com or connect with us on LinkedIn.

Isaac Mashman26:01

I really appreciate it. Jacob, the pleasure was all mine. Can't wait for a second conversation.