Stop Watching and Start Doing in Business

Isaac Mashman1:41

Honored to be amongst these wonderful guests. My name is Isaac Mashman. I'm based out of Little Rock, Arkansas, and I run a consulting firm specializing in personal branding and individual reputation management, Mashman Consulting Group. Yeah, it's a really quick overview.

Isaac Mashman8:45

Yeah, I would have to say the poverty mindset, the idea that the existence that you were raised with is the existence that you have to live with as an adult, coming from that working class family, single parent household, my grandfather a carpenter. Growing up, I might have been eating [dirty rice] and sloppy joes and such, and I love those things. But that doesn't mean that as an adult, and in the future with my kids, I necessarily want to feed them the same, or I want to do the same, or have to worry about the roof leaking. That was a huge, huge shift when I first got started in business, associating with people that were making money, seeing that there were better cars to drive, better houses to live in, better things to do.

Money is ultimately a reflection of you. So if you're naturally a bad person, money's going to exacerbate that, compared to if you're a good person, money gives you more ability to do good with it. Getting involved with business, I started setting higher standards, higher expectations for what I'm pursuing and what I'm building, because ultimately the more value you provide, the more revenue you make. So there's a direct correlation between doing things ethically [and what you make]. As you mentioned before we even started, I have a background in the public relations space, and I saw so many people doing the fake rented Rolls Royce, rented Lamborghini, buy-my-course kind of crap.

That was always just quick thinking and not having that long-term vision of, I can actually build something that could be a legacy business I pass down to my children. That was a massive shift, and as soon as I made it, everything started to click.

Isaac Mashman17:50

Yeah, I could chime in for a second. I believe the recurring theme for the conversation already is self-awareness and understanding where you are currently versus where you want to be, so obviously setting goals and expectations for yourself. It's fascinating, because I suppose I'm the outlier of the outliers, because the thing that I adopted very early on was I would reverse engineer everybody's success. So coming into the personal branding space in my own business, what I did is I looked at these ultra successful people, or what I believed were ultra successful, and then later found out, oh no, all right, maybe this guy isn't as truthful.

But I took those strategies that worked for them, and I figured if it worked for them, I could duplicate it for myself. That led me down the road of, why don't I do podcast interviews or podcast panels such as this? I wouldn't be open to this if I didn't see somebody else, a previous mentor of mine, also doing that, or see the strategies that work. I believe that's how we ultimately improve and get better [in shorter] time frames, because otherwise you have to spend all of that time making those mistakes time and time and time again, versus, let me look and see what has worked.

So I believe it's a little bit less about minding your business and [more about] finding what works in other people's business and adopting that in your own, so that you can get results faster. But ultimately it's understanding where you want to be and where you want to wind up, I think.

Isaac Mashman20:07

Yeah, well, Niiamah, there are absolutely hundreds, if not thousands, of different strategies to grow a business, to grow your personal brand, and some are more effective than others. I can't say that I struck a balance; that didn't happen. I would spend [months] of time obsessing over one particular thing until I got really good at it. So for example, understanding social media marketing and understanding video content. Then once I understood it, okay, let me go out and create a video, this is how I can do it effectively, let me move on to the next thing. Then that led me to press, and then that led me to podcasting, and not necessarily in that order, but it was understanding these things and getting a good [working knowledge].

I'm not an expert in those things in and of themselves. I can do videos, I can edit videos, I can build my website, but that doesn't mean I am doing that as a business myself. So having that [trait] where you're not necessarily a master of any of those things, but you're good at them, will also help you in hiring decisions, because you can see other people's expertise and ultimately be able to make better decisions.

Isaac Mashman21:25

There's a difference between copying somebody and being influenced by them. What we see today is a lot of people copying other people, like, oh, this person recorded this video, let me basically say the same exact thing and post the same, or using their own photos with a different person's quote. It's like, absolutely not. I do believe that you could take the strategies at face value for how they work and what results they achieve. But that doesn't mean you should copy every single thing about them. You should put your own personal spin [on it].

Isaac Mashman27:51

Right. Sounds like a bad network marketing company.

Isaac Mashman39:49

To Corinne's point, and just a recurring theme again about us as business owners, we're coming from a position of leverage, because we are the people who are providing a solution to another person's problem. A lot of times we let our clients or our prospects take leverage over us by saying no, or choosing to go with somebody else, or making demands when they're not necessarily in a position to make demands. I say that humbly and with humility, not as, oh, we are better than you, but, no, we have something that is tactical, something that is strategic, something that we can help you with. I believe it's really important for us to understand that, because again, we do not have to work with every single person, and it's about understanding the level that you want to play at.

Do you want to work with everybody? Do you want to be mid-market? Do you want to be upper echelon and work with multi-millionaires and gated communities? You have to make these decisions and set the tone for your brand from a high-value branding standpoint. Do you want to be a luxury service? Do you want to be a small business service? Do you want to be mid-market? These are the things that you have to think about that we usually don't have conversations about. So I just wanted to make that point really quick, because that has driven me insane in the past, working with somebody who was a [flaming] red flag, and that resulted in a huge fiasco.

And again, now you understand, all right, I don't want to work with that kind of person. I would rather work with these kinds of individuals. Setting the standard and the tone for you and your business will help you attract those higher quality clients long term, because you won't be appealing to [the wrong ones]. But through social media content, through free training, through resources, whatever you're producing, you can still provide value to those people that wouldn't be ideal clients but could be clients down the road. So it's really that long-term vision and perspective. Now, in terms of what I'm working on, I'm scaling Mashman Consulting Group.

I'm bringing on more personal brand consultants, which I'm really excited about, people who can go out and land clients of their own and help them with their personal brands. A requirement is that if you want to work with me, you have to be building your own personal brand to a high level yourself, because I believe you have to practice what you preach. If we're building a consulting, service-based business, we need people who take action, and we need clients who take action too. Aside from that, I am on the speaking circuit, so I have an event coming up in about two weeks in front of 100-plus contractors in Denver, Colorado.

I'm a little stressed out about that, in all the best ways possible. But it's really good. Again, it's setting your sights on something and then working to achieve that end goal.

Isaac Mashman42:25

How can they best do that? I am really easy to find. You could probably find every piece of information about my life story online. You could just run a quick Google search for Isaac Mashman, connect with me on social media, or go to my website, IsaacMashman.com. Awesome.