A PR Focused Conversation with Isaac Mashman
Guest: Isaac Mashman · February 22, 2023 · 23 minutes
Transcribed from the episode audio and edited for names and terms. Speaker labels are assigned automatically and can occasionally place a line with the wrong speaker; the episode itself is the record.
Host
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So his operation runs smoothly, no matter the shift. Call 1-800-GRANGER. Click granger.com or just stop by. Granger for the ones who get it done. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon. Paul and Drigo here real estate podcast show.com. Today is another really exciting episode. And it's basically because of one of the wonderful things that happens online in this case. It was Twitter having a conversation with this gentleman that led to sort of the idea of us doing a podcast. And we're here at the point where we're doing a podcast. I'm in between appointments today. So you might hear some city noises in the background, but that's what keeps it real.
And I want to welcome this gentleman to the show. He's going to tell you his name and a little bit about him. Lupal, how are you doing today, man?
Isaac Mashman
Thanks for the invitation on. Doing great, Isaac. Yeah, thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for your time. So yeah, I guess do a little bit of an insult let people know who you are and what you do. Yeah, absolutely. My name is Isaac Mashman. I'm originally from Jacksonville, Florida here in the United States and I'm currently living in a state that probably most people who aren't from the United States forget about and that is Little Rock Arkansas. I've been here for about three years now, I've met my girlfriend online, moved here,
Host
and poof, never thought I'd be here. Oh my god, that's an amazing story and I do know of Arkansas from music references and of course from one of your past
Isaac Mashman
presidents. Yeah, and you know, Bill Clinton is from I believe he I don't think he's from Little Rock specifically, but he is from Arkansas and the airport here is actually named that. And a little bit about me professionally, I run a public relations firm called Mashman Ventures. And I specialized in personal branding. This is an aspect that is growing in our current culture. If you think about social media, you think about what you're doing online, you think about how you can grow a business, personal branding is at the center of that. Every single time you're on a social media platform, ultimately you are doing something to grow your personal brand.
And a couple years ago, I pretty much straight out of high school, I jumped into the world of business rather than taking the traditional route to go to college. And it was a trial and error process of trying to find what I wanted to do, what I could see myself sticking with and what was scalable for the foreseeable future. Looking for that vehicle, we could talk about having that primary vehicle to allow you to make other investments, because real estate is not something that is my primary focus, but it's something that definitely have a keen interest in and looking to learn more about over the following couple of years.
But the thing is, I didn't want that to be my career, but I wanted a vehicle to allow me to make those investments and do those things. And so a lot of what I'm doing today is helping other people grow their personal brands in a consultancy fashion and really just highlighting and pinpointing what they could do to improve their online presence, what they could do to grow their local reputation, what they could do to strengthen what they have going on. And that's kind of a 30,000 foot overview. Yeah, that's a great and that's a great start, Isaac. And the
Host
reason why I think that this kind of falls into the and I'm a record store guy. I've collected vinyl records pretty much before it was cool. I still have my 1980s vinyl records. I like going to the record store and looking at the uncategorized stuff and seeing what people put in those categories. So this podcast I think is going to be a bit of branding, a bit of marketing and possibly some you know, connection to people. Again, in my business, even though it's not what you do, but it is what I do, and we talked about it in the preamble about how it might be important for people to have someone like you, helping them with proper branding, because there are surprises and things like that that can happen in life.
And you kind of want to know, you kind of want people to know what it is you do as much as possible without necessarily, you know, turning, you know, family members off as we were talking about in the beginning of the, the beginning of the lead up to the podcast.
Isaac Mashman
Yeah, well, you know, and I feel like we should, not simply mention that really quick to kind of give the listeners insight into what we were talking about, but I use the example of the real estate agents who has obviously every single person has family, you know, pretty much for the most part. And they're the realtor of the family, yet nobody in the family uses them because they forget that, oh, cousin Susan is a real estate agent. So when it comes time to buy or sell a house, rather than going and using their family member and helping them benefit and helping them, you know, grow their business, grow their income, they use an external party, right?
They use somebody outside of the family and, you know, not to sound too mafia-ish, you know, mafia-like, you know, using somebody out the family. but you know, think about who you want to give your business to, who you want to support. I want to see the people who are close to me that I know like and trust and that I'm even related to, you know, benefit. I want to make sure that I'm able to help that. And so one of the big things is if you're in real estate or if you're in any business, really talking and having the confidence to let other people in on what you're doing and kind of express that, hey, I can help solve this problem. I have the answer to your problem. And that's something that a lot of people fail to do.
Host
You are, again, the reason you're hitting this nail, you're hitting this nail on the head in a bigger way than you know, is that take a wild guess at what, 20, not 20, probably like 100,000 realtors are talking about at this exact moment on all the Facebook groups that I belong to, take a wild guess. It's exactly what we're talking about here where, oh my God, my cousin so and so just sold their house and they decided to go with another agent. It's happened to me many times when I was starting out just because of the fact that I didn't know the politics of this process and it's different with each person by the way.
It's not even one way. It's for some people that they don't anybody know in their business, for somebody else, they might have known this other person for so many years that they already had the job. So there's so many variables outside of it. So the fact that you're addressing it, you literally could have a real estate TED talk, which is what this might be, without you even knowing that it is. It's that big of a problem. Well, I can think of a limiting belief that probably many people have that I
Isaac Mashman
I would have in my own business working with people to build out their personal brands and any other business for that matter, trying to sell any family member, anything. You would think, oh, I'm introducing money into the equation. It can affect the relationship. It can affect the dynamic.
Host
Money makes it messy. That's the way I say it. That's so true. It can definitely change the dynamic.
Isaac Mashman
But when you're talking about selling a house, a house that you've probably went over and I don't want to spend too much time on this specific thing, but imagine. No, no, no, we don't have to. You've gone to. You've had dinner at, you've had Thanksgiving at, and then you're the person who also has an emotional connection and can relate to them. I would think that you would have their best interest, more than anybody else and more than an external party, but then the fear of not changing that dynamic of the relationship could to actually harm the relationship more, because then you would go into the Facebook group and say, wow, my brother used somebody other than me.
And now not saying that every single person would have that, but imagine the animosity that you might have towards that person of just knowing like, man, you could have used me. Now you paid somebody else $5,000 or $10,000, you know, in closing fees, and it's like, I could have used that. And those are the little dynamics and those little drama pieces that a lot of people probably have to play with. And, you know, I like to say that personal branding is ultimately how you build your credibility. It's how you establish your reputation. It's how you really become well known because you're going to have a personal brand regardless.
You've had your personal brand from the moment you were born, but then you get into your career, you grow up and then you start determining what you want to be known for, what you want to be known as. And then you could start kind of manipulating that narrative and growing that narrative and from there reaping the benefit. But if you're not telling the people and the people that you're the most comfortable around, which would be your family members and your friends about what you do, how can you possibly expect to be comfortable talking to complete strangers about what you do?
Host
You know what, you're definitely, you again, you hit the nail on the head in terms of the real estate part. But like you said, let's open this up and let's maybe even bring in a discussion about maybe a recent situation that or a recent client that maybe you've worked with no names, nothing like that if you don't feel like it. But just in your experience, what would you be telling someone who again wanted to reach out to you after this podcast to see? This guy knows what he's talking about. I want to find out more about it. What sort of a relatable story might you have about a local business or someone maybe in your own state of Arkansas?
Isaac Mashman
Yeah, and a lot of my business is actually online. I would say that 99.8% of the business is online and I'm actually working to... I'm on this cusp of do I want to go and expand more of my business offline and my local area or do you want to keep that 100% reserved?
Host
You know what, you're absolutely right. You might be busier in New York than you are in your own state because of the fact that the kind of thing you do is, for the most part, universal in that sense where it can apply to anybody, you know, trying to achieve what you're helping.
Isaac Mashman
Definitely and but one of the examples of a client that did come up in my mind is actually a realtor and real estate agent who is in Texas. She's about half an hour outside of Dallas and the Dallas market is going big but she wants to really focus most of her business on kind of one of the the outside towns. So she doesn't have to kind of intrude and go into the city and she wants to be able to, you know, be able to ensure that she's giving whoever's working with her the utmost experience and being able to serve them the best way possible. And so one of the things I was telling her is number one, you need to put your face out there, but you don't want to be a cliche.
And a lot of people in real estate, they're cliches. You know, you think about the business cards that have the face and I'm calling, you know, people out, but it's like they only have the contact number, they have the email, they have the face. face, but they don't even take the time to put their social media handle on the business card because there's this misconception that they need to keep business and personal life separate. Now, from a mental health emotional well-being standpoint, you don't want to be sitting on the couch watching TV or at a ballgame with your kids and doing business on your phone, but to an extent, there is no fine line there to where if you're on social media, you can be marketing yourself and positioning yourself as that real estate agent and as that person and sharing your social media handles.
I think about all the different little pickets that go into the yard that have the for sale, for lease, and here's a phone number, and they have the realtories face on it. They never have the social media handle. If I'm wanting somebody to represent me, I wanna know them personally as well. I wanna be able to connect with them and trust them. And oh, you're a family person too. You have kids as well. My daughter is the same age as your daughter. And so something that is actionable is, I put your social media handles out there. And if you're not using social media for your business and for your real estate business, then you need to start introducing that aspect and say, well, I just did a showing and documenting what you're doing in your day to day.
Host
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And Granger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Granger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly, no matter the shift. Call 1-800-Grange-er, click granger.com, or just stop by, Granger, for the ones who get it done. And yeah, you're bringing up against so many good points, and I'm sorry to have to go back to real estate as a reference, but you kept it there. So the whole idea for me, and I've done research is I think the whole idea of glamour shots, which is what they are. Like in the 1980s, there was these glamour shots studios that took these really terrible pictures of people with these awful backgrounds.
For some reason, I think one night, and it might have happened in Texas actually, I think a bunch of Realtors went into one of those places drunk, decided to take a bunch of those pictures. They started becoming business card photos, and then they ended up on signs. I think that's how it happens because I don't know any other professional service because this is a pretty high stakes business and there's a lot of money on the line. Not too many of them are getting, you know, their photoshop pictures and a lot of those pictures sadly again, sorry Realtors but a lot of those pictures are photoshop pictures from 20 years ago that aren't even accurate and that ends up being the image on the sign which is of course not supposed to be the focus of the house for sale.
The house for sale has its own story that I believe should always take precedence. And for me, it always does. I use QR codes like they're going out of business. So I prefer to send people right in the house, right on the virtual tour, right what I call them storytelling tours. And of course, yeah, email all the social media stuff that I can squeeze on assignment or allowed to. But you're still again, you hit that nail on the head to my friends.
Isaac Mashman
Yeah. And you know, one of the other things that I was telling her to is don't just focus on the business. And this, I need to kind of go into detail about that because that would be enough to make me turn off any podcast. Like don't focus on the business. Let me clarify that before you decide to cut off. One of the things that I was telling her is don't just focus on growing the to real estate business, but also focus on growing your personal brand outside of the business and being known as who you are, right? Who she is. And her name is Promise Roads.
I mean, she has no quarrels or qualms with me mentioning her name, but I was like, you need to be known as Promise Roads, the quirky and true military, like the person that instills confidence in your buying and selling a decision, right? I'm the realtor that instills confidence. That is, you know, the marketing message and such. But then I told her, I was like, something that you could think about is getting into the press, getting into the media, getting these placements, showing and really demonstrating that even if you're early on in your process, you still have value to deliver. And every single thing online, every single opportunity, I mean, I found you, Paul, you know, through searching on Twitter and I came across your page and then reached out and had a conversation.
And that's as simple as it can be. Like, if you think about it, it was a three, four step process that now has established this new budding friendship and this acquaintance. And that is the same thing with building your business and building your personal brand
Host
online. And again, you're you're saying something that again, a lot of people are scared to do which is talking to strangers. You know, aren't we conditioned growing up as kids? Oh, you shouldn't talk to strangers, you don't have conversations. And I would say now the opposite is more true than the other, which is basically say, talk to strangers because of the fact that, you know, even if we just have a quick little back and forth, and this is the beauty of old age, and I'm not that old, but I'm heading into my 50s. So I've seen enough stuff. I've met enough people where I can actually tell within a few exchanges of digital information, whether or not this is someone I'm going to have a beer with.
And I may have even mentioned this on the on the on Twitter, but that's my criteria. What I have a beer with this person. That's it. Can I be in the room with this person for 10 minutes? And can we have like we're having now we just we totally both invested, you know, an after, you know, a couple, you know, whatever, half an hour of an afternoon into this, not knowing if we're gonna have anything to talk about. And obviously, you know, we've got stuff to talk about. So same thing goes with the realtor. Same thing goes with, like, any brand based business, I believe, is having those conversations, but making them, as you said, making them real, making them about, you know, actual people and voices, hopefully eventually, you know, maybe helping each other on a business level.
But that also doesn't, you know, like, I also have a zero expectations policy, I'm really thinking that if I just sit here with someone and that's the end of it, that's a pretty good 10 bucks invested for me.
Isaac Mashman
But and another thing is, they're afraid of talking about themselves and that's that's a big problem people have because they feel like if they're talking about themselves will be perceived negatively or they'll be perceived in the wrong way or what if I say everything in our minds have this Keen little trait where we all of a sudden pinpoint every single thing that could go wrong and we never focus on what could go right in a situation and that's survival instincts, you know, if we're thinking about, oh, if we set up camp here, what if a tiger comes through or what if this tree limb falls over or like what if there's a single that opens up underneath us like it's what makes us human but at the same time,
Host
time. Didn't that just happen? Didn't that just didn't all that just happen this week in the news though? weren't we attacked by like 12 UFOs and 16 hot air balloons? So yeah we could talk about that for hours. That's that's exactly my point. All of those things are going to happen anyways and then you just sort of go on with your day and you still do the podcast even though the aliens were watching. Yeah yeah well.
Isaac Mashman
Now, what I would also say though, a quick kind of a plaction item, right, something that they could do is if you don't like talking about yourself initially, right, making the conversation about you, I have found that if you make the conversation about the other person, more times than not, you're going to realize that you can introduce what you do in a healthy way to where you're not coming across as, hey, I'm the realtor, you need to work with me, like you're looking desperate. But let's say you're meeting somebody for the first time in the mall or at a coffee shop and you're like, hey, like, like, for example, you see the name Jack on the cup, right?
And just say like, yeah, Jack, that's my grandfather's name. And then you get into a conversation with this random guy who's picking up coffee on a Sunday morning or a Monday morning and mixing, you know, you get into a conversation and you know, you're just asking questions about Jack and trying to find out Jack is looking to sell his house. And now all of a sudden, and this is in a perfect world, every single scenario goes right. But it can be a conversation that is as simple as no way. I know that person too, or hey, I could do that. Or I've seen that happen before.
And you just, you asked questions about that person, and you find layers of rapport, right? You start finding ways that you can connect with that person and establish some common ground. And with time that common ground and open up those opportunities to work together or to be that you know superman who supes in and is like hey I have the I have the solution. Isaac you know what
Host
I know the fact that we could go on on this and this is the sign of a great podcast in my opinion I know there's going to be a part two uh Stallone Stallone perfected the sequels but I like doing it in on a podcast level. So I can tell that we've already got again, probably 10 more topics to cover. But as far as today's podcast, I just wanted to say thank you for your time today. Thanks for sharing some of these great insights. And I know for a fact that people listening are going to want to reach out and ask you for more, because that's the whole point of this thing is to start a conversation preferably for you that ends up becoming something, you know, perhaps more, more lucrative, more, again, more of an introduction for you to what you do to the people listening. So once again, Isaac, I just wanted to say thanks for joining me for the podcast today. Paul, thank you again for the invitation.
Isaac Mashman
I know that you're in between some client meetings too, so I know you got to get running, but I appreciate it again. And if anybody wants to kind of reach out to me, I can be found everywhere online just by by Googling Isaac Mashman or all my social media handles
Host
or Isaac Mashman as well. Excellent, I appreciate it. I was gonna say if you didn't leave your contact details, I'll definitely make sure that I add them into the podcast liner notes and just send me all the various ways people can reach you. And again, any offers that you might have to help them, that doesn't hurt to add to the story as well. So thanks again, Isaac. appreciate your time today. Absolutely, and Paul, you have a great day as well. You too, my friend. Take care.