Developing and Sustaining Unrivaled Personal Brands

Isaac Mashman4:51

Yes, well, I was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida. I never met my biological father. I didn't connect with him until much later in life. So I kind of had the stereotypical entrepreneur story, some kind of hardship story. The more I share that story, the less power I think it has, because I realize that pretty much everybody can take a negative story and turn it into a positive. But growing up, I saw my mom, a brilliant woman, working a lot of lower wage jobs. She had her own degrees. In large part, I was raised by my grandparents. I used to get up early in the morning, five o'clock, with my grandmother and my grandfather, drive across town, and drop my grandfather off at the carpentry shop where he was a woodworker.

He used to build cabinets. Thinking back, at a young age, my grandmother instilled [this] in me. She said, "Hey, you need to use your brains. You don't have to use your back." Looking around me, I saw a lot of people that were doing the opposite. They were using their back but not using their brain. So what I decided to do is go through school, and I was an excellent student, but my senior year of high school, I'm thinking to myself, okay, I see my mom with a master's degree not using it. I say this out of respect. Is college really the route that I want to go?

I was introduced to network marketing at the time, and there were some really ambitious kids that were only a couple years older than me. I saw that, and I saw the idea of a mentor. I saw the idea of somebody living an alternative life, and so rather than going to college and taking the SAT one more time and getting a full ride, I decided to go first into business. Over the past six years, I've had plenty of trials and tribulations and plenty of different endeavors and pivots. But now I've finally found the one business that is my vehicle for future investments and such, and that's my consulting group.

Isaac Mashman7:10

Yes, well, I think that we need to draw a big, distinguished line in the sand, so to speak. There's a massive difference between talking about a business brand and talking about a personal brand. So what I do is I work with people to build out their personal brand. Now, what is a personal brand? Well, Kevin McShan, that is your personal brand. You are you. You are the one who's lived your entire life. You're the one who has your connections, your relationships, your story, your pain points, a lot of these facts that you don't let hold you back, which I was delving into a little bit about you, and I think it's amazing what you're doing today.

Setting a tone, you took something that other people would think of as such a disadvantage and turned it into a strategic advantage to propel you forward. I'm Isaac Mashman. I'm the only Isaac Mashman who's ever walked [the earth]. So living my experience and living my story, I developed these unique attributes, these unique connections, these unique advantages, and that all comes together to make up my personal brand, who I am. Now, if we're talking about a business, yeah, you give that business an identity. You are going to define it, you're going to come up with the logo and the marketing colors and all of that good stuff, and the description and the name and the socials.

But you as an owner, you as an entrepreneur, can leverage your personal brand, those unique connections that you have and those unique characteristics, to grow your business. And you can leverage your business brand, the business that you're running, to give you credibility and get you into more doors and more rooms.

Isaac Mashman8:53

Personal brand, I would like to speak to personal branding specifically here. I think part of that is not obsessing. I say that because when I first launched my first podcast way back in 2017-18, I would obsess over every hum, every breath, every small little detail, I thought. I would try to edit those out while I was sitting behind my desk in high school. As I've gotten older, I realize that the only person that's really obsessing over those small details and those small aspects is myself. People who are looking in and listening and watching are here for you and here for the value that you can bring to them.

So I think that developing confidence is also developing your own abilities, because comparing where I am today to where I was back then, I was coming from a place of arrogant confidence versus actual confidence, which is "I know what I know." Again, we could even call that arrogant confidence cockiness. But you have to start somewhere, and eventually you develop those skills to where you know what you need to do and spend less time on the tasks that used to take you a ton of time before. The other thing that I'll mention really quick is that building confidence in your brand is about establishing credibility. So this is external.

I just talked about internal; let's talk about external. External confidence would be having credibility and having results that you can show other people. So if you were to get approached by somebody and they said, "Hey, why would I work with you?", you pull up a business listing and say, "Oh, I have 55 five-star reviews," or you pull up a playlist on YouTube with all of your video testimonials and you say, "Hey, I've worked with all these people. These are people who took time out of their day to record a conversation." Or speaking on stages, having people who have booked you at events in the past, or having video content of it, that is able to verify that you are who you say you are.

Isaac Mashman11:20

Well, people get too big to do the little things, and they wonder why they don't have the big results. So let's say creating content on social media. If you create content on social media, you reach 100 people, then eventually a thousand and then 10,000, and then you just stop creating content, that momentum is going to die out. So there are moments when you just have to be extremely consistent. I don't usually like saying "consistent" because I feel like it just gets talked about a lot. But it truly boils down to this: if you have momentum, you need to keep that momentum, because it's much easier to keep it than it is to restart it and reestablish it.

So scaling a brand, that can be through interactions such as this. Once you have a social media presence for yourself, then you can start going externally and finding people that have audiences, that have their own connections, that have their own abilities, that have their own networks that you can build off of. So you don't have to do the same thing over and over again for yourself. You're using other people to help you achieve your aim, and you're providing value to their audience, because if you're not providing value... I mean, think about it. If I didn't have anything to talk about, you wouldn't have invited me, right, Kevin? So there's strategic value that can be exchanged.

Isaac Mashman12:53

Value in and of itself can be as simple as motivating somebody. But there's a difference between motivating somebody and actually providing strategic steps on how to get motivated or how to keep it or what they need to do to continue on that pathway. So it's "Get up off the bed. Go out," listening to some audio, versus "Hey, if you want to improve your likelihood of getting up or going out and doing these things, you need to [wake up] earlier and do X, Y, and Z." So one is strategic and one is just a blanket statement, blanket advice. So talking about personal success, not just professional, what I always like to do is reverse engineer the people who have the results that I want.

When I was writing my book, I looked at other authors and I said, okay, what do I need to do to go through this distribution process and this publishing process, et cetera. So if you're looking to lose weight, [like] myself, reverse engineer those people who are fit. If you want to make more money, reverse engineer the people who have the money and see what they did in order to improve their own life. So when you're listening to somebody or you're finding somebody to follow online, [don't] just follow the person who makes you feel good or might get you motivated. Follow the person who gives the pieces and the tactics that you can actually use, that are tangible. We don't need more cliches. We need more strategy. Yeah, absolutely, my friend. One of the strategies.

Isaac Mashman14:31

Well, I think that coffee has an emotional connection for me. It was a rite of passage years ago when I was in Boy Scouts. I remember going, and the only way that you could get coffee was you would have to be a senior patrol leader or you'd have to be a little bit older, and the Scout Masters would brew coffee on camping trips, and it would be the strongest coffee. I mean, a lot of the scout leaders were ex-military, so they had this rough around the edges approach. I remember the moment that I was able to get coffee from the scout leaders, it was like, man, this is a rite of passage.

My grandmother also used to always brew coffee. When I would get back from school, I'd have a cup, or when I'd go visit her, because there would be moments where I would be across town, go to school, and then go to my grandparents the day after. So it has that emotional security. Now, for me personally, I drink my coffee black. Some days I'll add creamer if I really want some sugar high or sugar fix, but nine times out of 10, I would dare say 99% of the time, I drink it straight black, maybe add a couple of ice cubes. I'm a simple man. I like the breakfast blend, and I'm good to go.

Isaac Mashman15:59

Interesting. I think this is timely to ask, because this is something I've been thinking about every time that I'm launching a new business recently. So I had a public relations [firm], Mashman Ventures, which I decided to dissolve to launch my consulting firm out of Little Rock. When I made the decision to dissolve Mashman Ventures and launch Mashman Consulting Group, I had to go through the entire process of reestablishing the brand, building it. I didn't have to go through so many pangs of establishing credibility, because I'd already done that. Once you [have] credibility, you just have to nurture it and make sure you continue keeping it.

But I had to go out and send a lot of messages, and what happens in sales is a lot of times you get told no. So in the end, those times of getting told no or getting objections, would you let that affect your energy and get you discouraged, or are you going to keep powering through? So I think that being energetically resilient is not letting those things keep you down for an extended amount of time, and being able to bounce back, just like if you were to fling a rubber band: you pull it back, and then it launches forward. Or shooting a bow, you pull the arrow back and then it launches forward.

I think that's the same thing. Regardless of what setback you might be experiencing, it's not letting that hold you down for an extended amount of time, because the late Bob Proctor talked about depression being the lowest vibration and the lowest frequency possible. In the moments that you're in that depressed state, you're not moving. You're not moving forward.

Isaac Mashman18:04

[I want] to stop and think about that for a second, because I think there's a conversation between balancing your life and balancing a business and treating a business [like a business]. I think that a lot of entrepreneurs go wrong by treating their business like a side hustle or like a hobby. You have to actually treat it like something you spend time on every single day, regardless. Talking about resiliency with energy, I'm also directly talking about resiliency with business. If you get told something or something isn't working, you're consistently changing. Again, part of the reason why I dissolved my firm and launched something better was I saw a problem within the structure that I could improve, and do something differently and do something better.

So I constantly pivoted. When I talked about my story earlier, Kevin, about after high school and going into network marketing, I went through literally half a dozen plus businesses, from multiple MLM companies to doing a record label and managing music talent, to wanting to do drop shipping, to God knows what else. Every single time I moved on from something, I was pivoting and making a lateral and a vertical change, so I wasn't stuck in something. But then you find something that you're naturally good at. When I was down in Miami a few years ago at a conference, I heard Steve Harvey speak. He said the one thing that you need to do is find your gift.

You need to find something that God has naturally blessed you with, something that you're able to do easily and with less effort. So once I realized that, okay, I don't want to do this, I'm good at this, people come to me for this advice, people are naturally reaching out to me, then I was able to take hold of that idea and build a brand around it and build a business around it. That's where I got into the consulting space, and specifically for personal brands. Because I'm not your business guy when it comes to business branding, but I am your personal brand guy. Yeah, absolutely.

Isaac Mashman20:30

Well, I think it's naturally going to suck. At first launch it's going to be rough, and that's okay, but as you go through, you see, all right, well, maybe I should change this font. Maybe I should update this post. My website could be better with these colors. So initially, I think [it's about] having an idea of what you want it to represent. For example, with my business, I knew that I was going to have a black and white color scheme. I wanted it to be premier and luxurious. I wanted it to be bold but not too corporate. I wanted it to feel like something that you could trust.

With my personal brand, I know that a lot of times I talk about personal branding or business or podcasting or writing a book, but I also have a balance of putting out personal content. So a really simple strategy to maintain consistency is what I call the Skyline strategy. You're building the skyline of your personal brand. So for every two posts that are business related, that would push you forward, help you make money, establish credibility, establish you as a thought leader, you do one post that is personal. This would be about your interests, about what you're spending time doing, that sort of thing. So it's a two to one.

Then when it comes to maintaining that consistent tone, you're not going to treat your social media pages, or what you're doing, like a normal person on Facebook. You're not going to repost every single recipe you see. You're not going to repost all of the events that are local to you. You might be a little bit more reserved. Again, do you want to be a person who's locally known or an international icon? That's something that you need to ask yourself. From there, it's doing things that protect your brand, because it takes literally years, at times hundreds of years, for a tree to grow. Think about the biggest oak tree.

It's hundreds of years. But I could go with a couple of guys with a chainsaw and cut down that tree in less than a day. That's very similar to your reputation and to your brand. You need to make sure that what you're doing has purpose and intent behind it. I don't mean that in some [cliché] way, but every single thing that you're doing can either connect with the audience, entertain them, educate them, or motivate them. So asking yourself those questions and understanding what the purpose of that content is before you post it is going to make sure that you don't do anything that could potentially harm you.

Isaac Mashman23:23

Well, Kevin, if you're thinking about authenticity, you're not being authentic. Because if you're thinking about how you can be more authentic, you're initially trying to manipulate it. You're trying to manipulate and fabricate an image. So being authentic is as simple as putting yourself out there and not overthinking it. Now, again, you do have to ask questions. For example, if you're building a business, you might not want to be as politically active as somebody who's in the political space, because anytime there's a division, something that's divisive, it can become, again, harmful to your brand. Or it can also be helpful. You'll turn off some people, but you'll turn on other people.

But when you're trying to be authentic, not obsessing and not thinking about what you're doing is going to be your best friend, as ironic as that sounds. Because otherwise, it's all just going to be fabricated.

Isaac Mashman24:28

Well, not being too cliché, not being too corporate and not being too impersonal. Here's what I mean by that. Again, talking about personal brands, in my own profiles I say, "Addicted to coffee and standards. I help create, maintain and scale unrivaled personal brands." Now, what did I start with? I started with a fact about me, something that could build rapport with the audience member. When somebody comes to your profile for the first time or is looking you up, they are going to have a bunch of initial impressions. If they see "I'm a coach, I help people make $60,000 in 30 days," that kind of thing, that doesn't tell the person on the other end of the screen anything about that person or why they should work with him.

But if it said "father of five, from homeless to millionaire," now you know that that person is a father, they were homeless, and now they're rich. Okay, it's cliché, and we could fine tune it even more to say "loving father of five," and then we could say "from homeless with a pregnant girlfriend to a millionaire," something like that. You could add and take away details that make your story better, because you've already lived the story. Now you need to leverage it. You could leverage any aspect of your life and turn it into a piece of content. And so your specific marketing message needs to have something personal, a personal hook, and then a well-defined professional outcome.

So: "Addicted to coffee and standards, I help create, maintain and scale unrivaled personal brands." Or in your case, you could say "cerebral palsy advocate," and then you could say an interest, whatever that interest would be, like "I like the outdoors" or something like that. Then you could say "speaker, podcast host and life changing coach." There are so many different things that you could do to position yourself and then market yourself.

Isaac Mashman27:06

I think it's quintessential, and I think that that's a vital part of who you are. I mean, one of the best ways to get booked on more gigs is to have a media kit, to have something that has all the information about you, to make it easy for another person to come to a decision and say, "All right, okay, I had a question about this. What can he speak on, or what are some of his presentation titles?" And you give them a media kit that has all that listed out. That saves you time, saves them time and helps them come to a decision faster. So coming up with, again, a speaker statement or a professional statement is ultimately the same thing as developing your marketing message and developing a pitch.

It's like, yeah, you could just be a speaker, but what are the outcomes for the audience, and why would they choose you? It's quintessential, Kevin.

Isaac Mashman28:56

If I'm going to have a portfolio and I'm going to live this life, I don't want to just have a 401k. I want to get paid by my investments. I want to be able to do things that allow me more freedom, and partly because I think it's fun. I think building this entire thing, for as painful and as funky as it is at times, the overarching theme is building something enjoyable and building something that you could have fun with. If you're pursuing financial freedom, again, you have to define what that looks like for you. Some people might think $100,000 a year is financially free. Other people might define it as a million dollars a month and $12 million a year.

So defining that and then reverse engineering what you need to do to get there is going to be the step that you need to take. For example, over the next decade, I know that I want to have a nine figure business with Mashman Consulting Group. I need to have $100 million in revenue, which isn't out of the question for large consulting firms. The largest ones make billions of dollars every year. Well, I'll need a team of at least a thousand consultants generating a million dollars per head every [year].

Isaac Mashman30:20

I think it's setting the tone and setting the example, because you see these people, these mentors that you follow, and you think, wow, I could be that person. Or you'd be like, wow, how did they get there? I think that being in that position of influence is a blessing, but it's not something I'm intentionally doing. I'm not intentionally trying to be that person who's inspiring you to make a change, because I understand that I'll naturally do that by self-improvement and by progressing [myself]. Through my work professionally, I get a lot of enjoyment because I see a person take their ambitions and turn them into their reality, whether that be launching a podcast, publishing their book or improving their socials, whatever that might be.

The other thing that I'll say on that note is it's similar to legacy. I don't care about building a legacy. I'll be dead. But I know that the things that I do throughout life will naturally contribute to that. The kids I have, the businesses I build, the lives I do change, all of that happens naturally. I think that this obsession with trying to be this perfectly crafted individual can be great, but there are certain things that you just shouldn't think about, like "[How do I] be authentic?" Well, be yourself. Yeah, absolutely, and I'm curious to ask you about [that].

Isaac Mashman31:47

Yeah, I think that it's kind of the same. So let me tell you a story. I recently built a pond. I didn't think I would ever incorporate this into my life, but I built a pond that's on the patio, and I have fish in it, and it's beautiful. Every single day I have to feed those fish or those fish will die. So I created a new responsibility for myself that I have to maintain and I have to keep. Building a business is a lot like a fish pond, because if you don't feed them, the fish die. If you don't feed your business, the business dies, the business will dry up.

So as you're doing a business or looking to launch something, I mean, even the same thing with launching a podcast, Kevin, you have to be consistent with your show in order for it to grow and for people to come back every single week and listen to your conversations. So it's going into something for the long haul. I mean, literally 80% of podcasts or more do not pass 20 monthly listeners and do not pass 20 episodes. So the fact that you're even past that means that you've beaten the statistics. They say that 95% of businesses fail after five years. Well, be consistent and the business won't fail, as long as you're progressing and applying action and also adapting.

You could apply pressure and apply persistence, but unless you adapt to that change when it comes... And I feel like this overarching conversation is about adapting to evolution and evolving when things come your way. When challenges come your way, you're going to be able to say, all right, well, this isn't working. The sales strategy isn't working. If it's not working for six months, are you going to keep doing the same thing? No, you're going to change and be like, all right, well, why don't I try this instead? That means progress. Progress is a good sign.

Isaac Mashman33:54

I think that it's important if you go into it for the long haul. Otherwise, you can leverage the podcasts of other people or the alternative media of other people. I say leverage not in some Machiavellian way, but other people are looking for high quality guests and other people who can come and provide value to their own audiences that they spent years painstakingly building. So I think launching your own show can definitely be a fantastic thing, because you're able to connect with other professionals. You're able to show that you're an interviewer. You're able to show that you're somebody who can be trusted, and build these relationships every single week.

Isaac Mashman34:53

It allows you to build the relationship, build the trust, and it gives you a marketing tool, because you're able to run sponsorships and you're able to market every episode. It's just an all around really great opportunity. And other forms of media would be, okay, maybe you don't want to do a podcast, but you should write articles and do your own space there, or contribute to high quality media outlets and be a contributor there. All of these things will help you build trust, establish credibility, which are basically synonymous, and have a successful personal brand that gives you results, helps you make money, and helps you promote causes that you care about.

Isaac Mashman35:52

Let's think about [a vehicle]. Every time a car comes out, it gets a safety rating. Toyota and Subaru are consistently at the top when it comes to the safety rating, so who would they market to and appeal to? They would appeal to people and families that are conscientious about the safety of their families, so they'd purchase that. That is a form of brand trust. [Personal] brand trust would be if you're hosting an event and you have a list of 10 speakers and they all cost the same. Let's say all the speakers just ironically cost the same amount to book, or one could even cost more, but the one that costs more has done a dozen more speaking engagements.

They have been in the business longer. They have more results, more testimonials. That means that the company that's looking to pay for a speaker is likely going to go to the person who has the most experience, because they have trust. Because [it's about] trust, professionally speaking and even in relationships. If you ask your friend for help, you trust that your friend is going to show up. That's trust on a personal level, and then on a professional level, you trust that a service is going to be rendered. The moment that that service isn't rendered and that trust is broken, your reputation just took a hit, which impacts everything across the board.

Isaac Mashman39:46

Kevin, you have done an extensive amount of research. You remind me of Nardwuar, who interviews musicians. I wouldn't be surprised if you knew my family name and everything. So I have "Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence." This is the first edition, which I published in 2021. With the main philosophy of it, well, I wanted to establish the philosophy of personal branding and actually break down what it is and why you should be building it. It's less strategic and more philosophical. So in the second edition, I'm going to expand on all of the same details and say, all right, well, what is your personal brand?

Why should you be building it? How can you brand yourself, and then how can you get there? Now, it doesn't dive into social media techniques or using Instagram or Facebook, because I feel like there are a lot of books that were written even a decade ago that were phased out because the algorithm changed. So I want to talk about how relationships work, how branding works, how credibility works, how leverage works and all of these other details. So somebody can say, all right, well, it doesn't matter what marketing vehicle I'm using or what is in front of me. I know that I need to establish rapport and connection.

I need to build trust. I need to leave a lasting impression. [Of course,] I need to ask for a testimonial. And they have all these things that they can implement regardless of what technology comes out [and evolves]. So that's coming out in fall of 2024, and my other book is available at isaacmashman.com/book.

Isaac Mashman42:02

Yeah, it's fascinating. This is something coming into this, because when I first booked it, I didn't realize that you had cerebral palsy. I didn't realize that. But then the more I was looking into your story, I'm like, wow, what could I do to actually provide even more value for him and his audience right now?

Isaac Mashman42:56

I think in workplaces, AI in and of itself is displacing a lot of people. But the people that will not be displaced are the people who can use artificial intelligence. So I think that as companies become more conscientious about how they can make their workplaces inclusive while using AI, and having people with disabilities who might not be able to do physical labor, for example, digging a post hole, well, you could still use AI to create results for the company. Then you still can be the expert. You can read all of the books. You're there. I think that when it comes to a business, it's finding ways that they can adapt, even as simple as having a website that has multiple contrast modes or has alternative text.

Isaac Mashman44:36

[Giving] without expectation, I think that that's a big thing. So sometimes I'll give advice for free. I'll give somebody advice and I'm not necessarily looking for anything in response to that, but I want to see them win. I understand that I have all this knowledge. It's not costing me anything, so to speak, to help somebody out if they have a question, and I think that relationships without expectations are really great. Obviously, you have a standard in place. I'm not talking about not having standards. You need to have standards of who you're talking to and who you're spending time with. But I'm talking about, hey, if my best friend needed help doing manual labor for an entire day, I wouldn't think twice.

I would go out and help. I think that old Americana feel of giving your neighbors a pie, that kind of thing, or housewarming gifts, we need to make a resurgence of that, because those little acts and those little gestures are what really show somebody that you care.

Isaac Mashman45:51

Absolutely, and Kevin, it's been an absolute pleasure to be on and have this conversation with you. You can find me across all social media at Isaac Mashman, as well as by going to my website, isaacmashman.com, and that has everything there. For my companies, you could go to Mashman.org.

Isaac Mashman46:35

Absolutely, Kevin, and anything you ever need, reach out.