Isaac Mashman Explains Using HARO to Market a Podcast

Isaac Mashman0:41

Little bit about who you are and what you do? Yeah, Ashley. Number one, thank you so much for inviting me on. What I got going on right now? What do I do on public relations, professional or run up public relations for Mashman Ventures, I launched that in 2020. But we're as normal public relations for focus on corporations bridging the gap between the consumer and the corporation, I specialize in emphasized personal brand working with people who are building out their personal brands, becoming a person of credibility. So it's been really, really great over the past couple of years doing that. Also, I've a podcast recently published a book and really just a lot of different things in motion.

Isaac Mashman1:31

Yes, wow, you did your research. Nobody has actually mentioned that before and in a question, but I did start doing it for musicians. I managed an artist for about six months and then I decided and this was Ryan Middle's pandemic. Honestly, I think if the pandemic didn't happen, I might have continued to pursue it because we actually had to cancel two concerts because of it. Then from there, that sent the artist kind of into this depressive state because he's working been so hard. He's trying to sell out these venues. I was going to fly out. We later on parted ways and then that kind of triggered me getting involved with the average individual or the entrepreneur or the business owner and really branching out into other fields, other niches, other industries.

So yeah, music has always been a massive part of my life. From early age, I always look to music kind of as my therapy as a way for me to escape. Then it only made sense for me to get involved with music. But after realizing how shady the industry is, that there was no real effective way for a record label to win and an artist to win without being 100% independent. I was like, you know what, this isn't for me later.

Isaac Mashman2:51

Of it, in my early years in business, I was trying every single thing that I could possibly truck. Like I would do drop shipping, I did network marketing, three different companies for it for times. I wanted to go ahead and run a media agency, not a public relations for but like a solo media agency doing social media management, managing an artist, wanting to do record able. But you know, every single time I did one of these aspects and one of these new ventures, I learned about it. I learned how it works. I also was able to gauge how long it would take me to actually see revenue because you can decide what your price is, what you're charging.

But at the end of the day, too, you have to take into consideration competitors who have taken into consideration how long other people have taken to get to the place where they're at. For a record label, for example, it would take me probably five to 10 years to really start making any decent revenue from the company as well as having enough to give to the artist that was managing in it. It's very reliant on one or two people. So it just didn't have that scalability that I really desired.

Isaac Mashman4:04

Yeah. Well, I am 21. I normally don't start off with the age because unfortunately, you, you say your age to somebody, they're going to automatically discredit you as somebody who's ignorant or you don't have experience here. Don't know what you're talking about, which isn't the case with me, but I am young, but I got started in business in 2017. Tell me a little bit about that. So you started basically in high school. Yeah. Well, funny enough that we're doing a show for podcasts. Like RSS, like that's awesome. One of my first ever ventures was having a podcast. When I was this kid, I was going through some issues at home.

I don't come from money. I came from a single-parent household. I'd watch my mom work really obnoxious shifts at Taco Bell. She would come home at night. It was great getting free Taco Bell at the end of the day, but it's like I can barely see her. So I was raised by my grandmother. It worked a lot in my early years. She later on got remarried. Whatever you bring in another adult, another father figure, that can oftentimes lead to animosity, chaos, hard feelings, tension, stress, et cetera. That's exactly what happened with me. Amidst those troubled times, I fell in love with the idea of entrepreneurship, like finding a business because up until that point, I was a great student.

Straight A's I had one scene in my life. The moment I got that report card that said C plus or C minus, it was like into the world that had to go to school to get a tutor. Like I had to say after and I never got to see in my life again. But at the end of the day, my mom said go to school to get good grades, to get a scholarship. I was one SAT test away from that. But I saw her not using her own degree because she later on got her master's in business and I'm like you're not even using it so and I love her to death I'm not speaking down about her.

But I saw that combined with these young 20 22 year old kids making ten thousand dollars a month traveling doing things that nobody in my life and my family had ever done before. I saw that as a way to you know jump in and do something different do something new and so my senior year of high school I took some of those entrepreneurial tendencies that I had I was a kid who had the idea of running my own pin company. I had a lawn business, a couple of different things when I was younger. It wasn't until 2017 when I finally was able to define what exactly I was and what exactly I did.

Isaac Mashman7:00

My first ever podcast was called The Isaac Mashman Show. I scrubbed the internet clean of it. You can only find one episode of it right now. That was when I re-released it with my current podcast, Chase of Vision with Isaac Mashman. But I launched it. I don't even know quite why I launched it. That was during the period where I was spotting these other entrepreneurs who had strong personal brands and starting to reverse engineer what they did. Some of the people that I started following, they got on Twitter first. So I started a Twitter account. I started building Twitter. I saw that they had a podcast.

I'm like, well, they did it, so why can't I do it? Now the production sucked. It was a very rocky beginning, but I would be in computer class editing my audio is on a free audacity down there. Until this day, I still use audacity because why not? Or I have my head of audio edit the episodes, but it started out sharing it with my friends at school. I remember getting screenshots from my friends at the time listening to my podcast in the car. I'm like, this is kind of cool. Then from there, I kind of latched on to that emotional feeling of, okay, I'm doing something and other people are engaging with it.

This is kind of cool. Is this scalable? Then from there, that's when I started to build up my personal brand online outside of just my free group and, started to connect on LinkedIn with more people and Twitter and build out my audience and continue that content creation.

Isaac Mashman8:22

So Chase the Vision with eyes of Mashman actually was watched in 2019 an entire year, almost before I launched Mashman Ventures and I've incorporated that. Now Mashman Ventures is a public relations firm, but it had a couple different iterations actually. Prior to getting incorporated, it went from big Mashman media and then I was like, Mashman coaching. I was like, Mash for Ventures, because I wanted to do something that I was going through this evolutionary process of, I wanted to do something that is scalable and also something that has not been done before or isn't easily duplicatable. Because I see a lot of these other entrepreneurs that focus on a couple of different services, couple of business models, and I'm like, I don't want to put myself in a box.

I don't want to put myself in the only field of media. I don't want to put myself only as coach because I'm not a coach. So actually, if you go to my Twitter account for Mashman Ventures, you'll see that it was launched and created in 2018, probably way before two years before my company, because the handle at the time was at Mashford Media. So it's been a really, really fun process. I know it sounds a little bit all over the place. But I think that sometimes when you're doing something that's never been done before, you don't have that fur path, that fur direction, that blueprint, so to speak, or that mentorship, it is going to be chaotic. Then from there, that chaos is going to bring about something that's great. I think that's what happened.

Isaac Mashman10:12

Yeah, well, Harrell Helperrecorded.com is an exceptional way to get in contact with people that are normally out of reach or not easily accessible because they want to be private. As a journalist, I could only imagine what the journalists for Good Morning America get hit with every single day when it comes to, hey, feature my story. I want to be on the show, I want to be on the show, et cetera. I'm sure Michael Strathan gets messages every single day from people trying to slide in the DMs into the show network. But Harrell, I found by accident. I was researching ways to get into the press for free because that's a big part of my personal branding strategy, my marketing tactic with Master of Vintruses.

Hey, I haven't spent any money on paid press out of pocket. I think that's exceptional compared to a lot of the other pay to win strategies that happened today. So when it comes to K-Road, whenever I see a story that has to do with a podcaster or a podcast or a niche or anything that is relatable to me, I'm going to put myself out there and include that. I'm a podcast host in the pitch. So it doesn't matter if the query is podcast related or not, but the person reading it, they're likely to check out my podcast because I included the direct link. I've been able to get into, I would say dozen articles over the past year using Harrow and it's really an underrated tool. It just takes time and its commitment.

Isaac Mashman11:42

Well, it's super simple. You can set up the notifications per day of, okay, this is the specific industry or this is the topic that I want to receive queries on. Then you get an email multiple times. I have it set to where I get one in the morning, one in the afternoon, but one at night. So I mean, I get blasted with Harrow every single day of the week, but it's cool. It's Monday through Friday. Then from there, I see, hey, how to get on guests or how to get guests or how to get high level people. For example, your query was, what are some tips for a broadcaster?

I was like, well, a lot of people go about finding guests for their show the wrong way and approach them as fans rather than as their equals. Then from there, you just see those queries, you respond to them with a catchy subject line. Then what in your actual pitch, that's when you get specific and you say, Hey, this is me. This is my pitch. This is why you should listen to me. But he always lead with your pitch first and you don't need to send two pages, you need to get, do, do, you're nodding your head because you know what I'm talking about. Yeah. You can tell themselves all too much.

But the entire point of building out your personal brand is to sell yourself to where somebody could Google your name or Google your business or Google your podcast. They don't need to ask you additional questions because they can find the information about you because your personal brand or your company's brand are doing the speaking.

Isaac Mashman13:06

Brand? 1 million percent. I think a podcast in 2021, 2022, moving forward for I would say the next decade is going to be a really great way to establish credibility. I've had opportunities come to me because of my podcast, I.e. Us getting connected and doing this podcast interview right here, connecting with my audience, connecting with your audience, etc. I've been able to become an early beta user for different applications. I've been able to do audio courses for companies and create a residual stream of income because of my podcast. So it's a way for you to connect with the people who are already following you or connect with new people, new prospective fans and followers, and actually share unique things about you that they want to get through a simple picture or story post or something like that.

You're able to share unique stories about a life experience or something of the matter or land to talk about things that you specialize in. It's really cool.

Isaac Mashman14:19

So if I'm somebody who doesn't do any sponsorships on the ad or on my show, rather, excuse me, actually every single episode, I'll say, hey, I would appreciate if you shared the show, you left a review, you liked it, you sent it to a friend, if you got any value from it, I'm not running advertisements, taking up your time. Just because I know personally, and my listener habits and behaviors are, if I hear an ad, I'm going to skip it, even if I'm out for a walker, I'm going, I'm going to skip 15 seconds, 15 seconds, 15 seconds, oh, went a little bit too far back, 15 seconds because I'm not one to sit through and listen to ads.

I'm the kind of guy to where if I see a sponsored thing, I'm not going to click on it. I just avoid sponsor, I avoid ad. I think the reason I'm like that is because I'm doing it from a business standpoint. So I'm like, I'm not I'm fine. I don't care. The revenue that I generate was from the opportunities that came my way because of my podcast where they reached out to me using the RSS feed email that I have for Chase division and also from the people who were clients or who were previously guests actually excuse me. So for example, actually, if you and I were to start working together, that would be a direct reason because of my podcast.

My podcast is the reason that we would be working together because that's how we connect it on a deeper level. I have a prospect called tomorrow with somebody who I interviewed on my podcast. So and that'll be for a mid-range it's fine to go. So it's really serving multiple purposes. There isn't just one inclusive reason to have a podcast. It's an entire umbrella of reasons why and benefits and throws and virtually no cons, which is awesome and not easy to come up.

Isaac Mashman16:04

So I would immediately look at what you want to do in your goals. The reason I say that you need to start with your goals, and this isn't some clear cliche, motivational, poor-rod type of thing is you need to understand how big you want to play it. Do you want to play it to where you're trying to become a celebrity or maybe have a million followers or 10 million followers or take your business to nine figures? Or do you want to simply become well-known on a local level? That will also determine your actual strategy moving for social media and going out on public to network.

So myself personally, I want to take it as big as I can get. I'm going to I want to look to my potential. I really want to take this to the highest degree possible. So I know that my strategies aren't going to be limited to my city, to my local neighbors, to my neighborhood, to my business on a local level. Like my business is remote. It's international, not national and not low. So always start with your goals and understand where you want to go with it. Then understand what you want to be known as. Now, your personal brand is who you are, not just for what you do.

A lot of people only build out their personal brands for what they specialize in, but if they ever want to pivot in the future, what ends up happening is the people who are following them for the value in a specific field. You do a pivot, they're going to unfollow you because you're no longer providing value to them and serving their best interests. But if you were to build out your personal brand for who you are, connect on the fact that you drink your coffee black without sugar, connect on the fact that you're a huge word of the ring span or connect on the fact that you love to travel and here are some of the places you've been and somebody else is like, I've been there too.

I've been in that, I've been in that diner, that coffee shop, I too drink my coffee black that connects somebody and makes them become an acquaintance, even though you've never met them, they become your acquaintance and then they become your friend. Then because of your social media content, they eventually become your best friend and you might not even know they exist. But because of your content, that rapport is built. So that is going to be what establishes longevity in the long term. So always start with your roles and then start putting yourself out there. Those are some of the initial tips that I'll give. But again, like, I could go into a million directions with that as well because there's so many important things and steps that come into personal branding and.

Isaac Mashman18:22

I would say immediately. That should be one of the first things you do. If anything, it's going to take time to build up momentum for your podcast. It took me a year and a half of my podcast. They meet getting consistent and starting to get people to listen and promote and get every single time I went out, every person I taught to, Hey, did you know I have a podcast? No, I didn't. Well, here's the link. Something like that. So I would say getting started early on is going to give you an advantage considering 4 billion people are going to be on social media by 2025.

That's a massive amount of noise that you're going to have to cut through. So why not take the advantage today and get started because otherwise what will happen Ashley do you know this is you're going to say I'll start the podcast win. I'll start it when my business is at x point or when I'm at this point and then you'll get there. You'll be like yeah I got all these other things going because you're naturally going to get more things on your plates and then you're not going to do it. So I would say start now cut through the excuses and you know, it's going to suck initially.

That's hot. Right? Like it's going to suck. That's the beautiful thing, because that allows for growth. That allows you to understand the, areas of improvement. Then from there, you could eventually get bigger guests, more numbers.

Isaac Mashman19:51

Want to tell us a little bit about that? Yes, well, hey, I'm honored that you brought that up actually and I'm not sure if this is going to be on video, but I have a copy right here to my to my rights. But personal branding A Manifesto on Fame and Influence. Now, what I'm holding is an obvious copy, not for resale, but I launched this book on November 1st, 2021. The premise of this book is to focus on the what and the why. What is personal branding? Why is it important? Why you should be building it? It's not so much emphasizing the hat. Now, I do touch on branding.

I do touch on marketing strategies, but I really want people to understand why they need to be building out their personal brand. What their personal branded state. There are a lot of misconceptions people oftentimes think that a company brand is the equivalent to your personal brand. I go to entirely separate entities. They think that you're starting a personal brand. No, you've had your personal brand. So I break down some of those things in an untypical way and from there people can start to understand why it's important and then some of the next steps that they should take it.

Isaac Mashman20:54

Yeah, well, thank you again, Ashley. You can find me literally everywhere at Isaac Mashman. If you like podcasts, Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman and you can have a copy of my book, Personal Branding and Manifesto and payment Influence on Amazon, of you books and my own website at isagmashm.com forward slash book.

Isaac Mashman21:17

That's it's an interesting question that I'm never going to ask before. Again, you're coming with the heat today, actually, 11, whatever we have, a conversation, it's always going to be good. They're blessed to have them here. I really can't think of anything, but if I could close with something, I would say at the center of all achievement is person of growth. The reason that's important is because of my age, I am relatively young, but I've been able to shave off decades of my life in a positive way. Not shave off in a sense of I have less than. But I have more experience, more knowledge, and more, I guess you could say livelihood, like I have more potential because of personal development and because of learning from other people who have already made the mistakes.