Start by Branding Your Name

Isaac Mashman1:42

[Glad to be] on today, man. How you doing? Man, Kenny, I appreciate the opportunity and the offer. I'm feeling blessed, fired up, and overall phenomenal, man. 2021 is already off to a great start. Hit the ground running and, yeah, man, super stoked.

Isaac Mashman2:26

I've never been just one way or the other. I can get up when I need to get up. I can go to bed when I need to go to bed. But I definitely prefer staying up, man. There's just something nice about everybody being asleep, the world being calm. The night has a different energy about it, where I can really be super productive. But getting up early definitely has its benefits.

Isaac Mashman2:55

Recently, no. What ends up happening is I'll go and work until maybe three or four in the morning and then I'll sleep. I might not get a full six or eight hours of sleep, but I'll get a couple hours and then I'll get back up and go back at it. I once was in that mentality of hustle nonstop, the stereotypical 18 hour days, six hour nights. Then I recognized something I've started to understand from other mentors and other people who have the results I want, which is that that's just what people throw around to make themselves feel better when it comes to their ego. Sleep is very important and at the center of everything, man.

If you do not feel good when you're awake and when you're up, you're not going to be productive, you're not going to get results, you're not going to be able to get the things done that you need to get done. So I've taken a step back, put a little bit more emphasis on it, and given myself permission to rest.

Isaac Mashman4:17

I love it, and this is actually giving me an opportunity to dive in on some things that I really haven't talked about too much. Man, growing up, I come from, like I said, a lower middle class family.

Isaac Mashman5:14

That's the route I went on. I got pretty much straight A's. I had one C in my entire life. When I had the C, it was like the end of the freaking world. Like I had to go to tutoring to get the C up to an A. My senior year of high school, brother, I was just lost. I found entrepreneurship and I fell in love. But if you were to talk to that kid, that young Isaac Mashman, man, I always had those leadership traits, I always thought a little bit different.

Isaac Mashman6:32

Yeah, man, I was also a leader in a lot of regards, no matter what struggles I was being faced with. I was a part of Boy Scouts for most of my young adult life. I was in Cub Scouts, a [Webelos 2] or whatever, when I was about 10 or 11. Then I crossed over into Boy Scouts and went through that for about seven years. That was where I really learned a lot about leadership, learned a lot about structure, I guess, respect, life skills, first aid, things that I think are vital for men. You have a bunch of kids yourself, we've talked before about that. I think that's something that really serves me well today, having that knowledge and understanding. But that leadership, I didn't recognize that it would help me as much as it did until a couple of years later, looking back.

Isaac Mashman8:46

I don't think it was ever just one aha light bulb moment, but it was a series of different things and different influences in my life. I was always that chubby kid, like I mentioned, in middle school, and it wasn't until high school when I started to really get into shape. My senior year was when I lost all the weight and hit the gym super, super heavy. I went and did a weightlifting class. That was also, ironically, the time that I was really getting heavy into entrepreneurship, and I saw network marketing. I saw this opportunity to scale and to live a life, and I saw these 22 year old kids making $10,000 a month.

I'm over here like, I'm going to go to college, but for what degree, and then what comes after college and graduation? I recognize that being that shy kid who wasn't the center of attention would not get me the results I wanted to in life. I'm not doing all of this just for money or just for reputation or fame, but rather those things add up to my purpose. They basically add up to allowing me to live the desired life that I want to live in the future. So recognizing that fact, I just took the first step, man. This is something where a lot of people overthink themselves out of action, and that's something that I've been through and battled even in recent months and recent times.

But I remember the first time I ever went live on Twitter. I was outside, I was shaking, I was sweating, I was awkward. The first time I ever did a podcast, man, I did a podcast before my current podcast, and it was lesser known. It was called The Isaac Mashman Show, man.

Isaac Mashman10:30

Now, man, I recorded that podcast, it was four minutes long, and I didn't know what I was doing. I hated the sound of my voice. I would rerecord episodes simply because I didn't like the way my voice sounded. It wasn't just being self-conscious about my body. It was being self-conscious with my identity, with who I was, with my name, with being Isaac Mashman. So I eventually just started and then over time it got easier, it got better. There are still times today where I'll be [on a] podcast and I'll feel a little awkward, I'll feel a little uncomfortable. But at the same time, when you're in uncomfortable situations, those are the times and the situations that are going to allow you to grow more than any other.

Isaac Mashman12:03

Right, well, man, to circle this back to a sales conversation for any of you who are in sales, which technically everyone is. You're selling yourself, you're selling your product, you're selling your service, your company, your business, whatever it might be. You had to sell yourself on why I should take time to be on the podcast. Now, I have a low threshold to take action when it comes to this kind of stuff. I love podcasts. I love the opportunity to talk to other great people and network and make new connections.

Isaac Mashman12:52

You build this identity. You build up your personal brand. You build up this person in your mind of who you're striving to become, who you're working towards becoming, what goals you have and how you want to look: what clothes you want to wear, how you want to talk, what shape you're in, how you're speaking. Having that conscious and intentional vision is how you really scale up. Then it becomes easier to close people when it comes to sales. If you're not confident in yourself, you won't be able to close a sale, even if you're confident in the product or the company that you're working for.

Isaac Mashman15:26

Yeah, absolutely, Kenny, and another fantastic question, brother. Ultimately, it was me looking at the people who were giving me advice and then looking at their results. I was drawing parallels and comparisons. So I'll give you an example. Back in 2019 or 2020, the past couple of years have flown by, I'm trying to keep things tracked. But it was still early on in the process, man. I wasn't even in business for two years. It was before I launched my company. I was figuring things out. I was still in and out of network marketing, trying to get my footing in the world and understand what I was really doing.

Isaac Mashman16:24

The thing that people do not realize is you will not become this person overnight. You have to make consistent effort in order to become that individual. That same person who you are desiring to become, that I mentioned earlier on in this episode or this podcast, is the same exact person who you're going to be making consistent effort towards becoming every day. You could have the vision, you could have all that, but without action, it's nothing. Right? Executable action is the thing that is going to get you to that point to where you become the individual. Right? I'm not in the shape that I want to be in right now.

So I'm making a dedicated effort to get into that shape. I'm working towards becoming that individual. So my word of advice to anybody out there would be to get cocky. I know you're probably going to hear everybody telling you be humble, be empathetic. Yes, be humble, be empathetic, be selfless. But at the same time, if you're spending all of your time being concerned with what everybody else is telling you about who you are, they're trying to tell you who you are when they do not even know who they are themselves.

Isaac Mashman17:38

That was a recognizable point in my journey to where I was like, you know what, I'm going to be a little bit more, I guess you could say, strict and concerned with who I pay attention to. If you do not have the results that I want in life in the area that you're giving me advice in, I will not pay attention to you. It's not that I don't respect you for who you are and it's not that I don't think your advice is valuable. But very simply, I only have so much time on this earth. Right now, it's easy to say as a 20 year old, but at the same time, I want to make sure that I'm making the most of the time that I do have.

I'm not making mistakes, and I don't want to listen to a person tell me something, and then I listen to it and do it, and it doesn't work out. Then I have all of this hate towards that individual because they told me something that they had no basis to talk about, no basis to give advice on. It's difficult, it's not easy. You can be called a narcissist, you can be called egotistical. But at the end of the day, what I'm doing this for, yes, it's for me. But it's also for all the other people who are in my circles, the people who have believed in me along this path, the people who were day one, my friends.

I remember my good old buddy, Kevin McDonald, man, he's the reason I got into shape. We were accountability partners and he supported every single thing that I went and did. I have a couple other friends along the line that were very supportive. I'm like, these people are going to be the ones that I look to and make sure are well set when I become that person who they believed I could become, even in the times that I didn't believe in myself. At the end of the day, if you cannot provide for yourself or if you are not happy and content with who you are and what you're doing and where you're at in life, how do you expect to help the people you care about?

What position are you in? That's at the core. That's what I'm all about. That's the reason why I'm doing this. I want to be able to live up to my potential and live a damn good life.

Isaac Mashman20:28

Honestly, building my business is what reminds me of who I am because you're consciously doing something. You're doing intentional living. Brendon Burchard talks about intentional living. What is the intention behind this podcast episode? What is the intention behind building your business? What is the intention behind that phone call? I'm not really huge on affirmations. I'm not going to lie. That's something I'm big on when it comes to listening to affirmations at bedtime. You put affirmations on saying, I am successful, I am wealthy. That's what I would do, because it would reprogram your subconscious mind. But during the day, it was always difficult for me to actually believe and state these things, because I felt like it was always cliche, and it works for some people.

But for me, I would rather let my subconscious mind do the work at night when I'm listening to affirmations or sleep hypnosis. There's some really good videos on YouTube that you can go and check out. But during the day, man, I would say consciously building my business reminds me of who I am, reminding myself why I'm doing what I'm doing, reminding myself of my purpose, of my goals, of what I am working towards. Those things keep me on track more than affirmations ever could. Now, this is a whole nother topic, but I'm absolutely huge when it comes to personal development. I believe that at the center of all success is personal growth.

That's the topic behind my own podcast. That's the topic behind the content that I produce. Ultimately, at the end of the day, even if you go to college, you're going to college with the intention of growing your resume. You're growing yourself. You're growing your credentials. You're growing your portfolio. That is going to be attractive to companies. [They're] going to see that portfolio or see that degree and say, wow, okay, so they've done this level of personal growth to where they raised how much they are worth to me. Now, I don't know how many companies still look at resumes, in the sense of education. Moving forward, less and less companies are doing so.

But if you're not growing as an individual, man, you're not growing in any other area. A lot of people want to have the million dollars, but they don't recognize that the most important thing about that million dollars is the person who you're becoming. Are you worth that million dollars?

Isaac Mashman24:17

Right, 100% man. So before I answer that question, I want to take it back to the resume. So you said that you really can't tell who these people are. If you're hiring someone based off of the resume that they have, a piece of paper with some lines and some text, you can go out of your way to make that resume look very good. But at the same time, you're basing your judgment off of not even meeting the person.

Isaac Mashman24:42

It's ink and paper. So I like to say that personal branding is the resume of the 21st century. There is a study done that states that 70% of all employers, when they're hiring now, look at social media profiles. What pops up when their prospective employee is Googled. They leverage social media, your Twitter accounts, your Instagram, what you're posting, to determine if you're a good fit for them or not. They're not wanting to hire somebody who's listing off racial slurs on Twitter or talking about stuff that is just not going to represent the company in a good fashion. So I like to say that personal branding is the resume of the future.

Personal branding at the core is who you are. People think that it's something that you have to create, when in actuality it's something that you have always had. You're the only Kenny Parry that was born on that particular day to your particular parents in your particular city. Every single thing that you did in life, every single relationship that you've ever built, even with your teachers in elementary school, with the people you met at church, the people you met during sports, right, the coaches that you talked to in baseball, football, and other athletes, they were all people who contributed to your personal brand, because whenever they think of Kenny Parry, they think about something specific to you.

They think about you. If you're building up a name for yourself in the solar industry or doing door to door, are people viewing you as Kenny Parry, or are they viewing you as the solar guy? We've had this conversation in private on Clubhouse before, like, you don't want to be known as just the solar guy, you want to be known as Kenny Parry, but something that you do do is solar, but at the core, it's who you are. So what I do is I work with people who have the desire to be followed, in demand, and respected, but that's the marketing phrase, so what does that mean?

To answer that question, I'll go ahead and discuss how I got started with this. Over the past couple of years, right, I got into business. I tried a bunch of different ideas and I never got far in any of them. I went through a spree to where I managed an artist for six months. I wanted to do a record label. I wanted to do drop shipping. I started a clothing line. I did network marketing with multiple companies, on and off, or literally a year straight. Didn't really have too much success. I got a lot of mentorship but not a lot of success. Then I recognized that what I really enjoyed was building up my brand more than I enjoyed building up my business.

I was building up a name as Isaac Mashman that entire time. I just put myself out there as Isaac Mashman, this young ambitious kid who was wanting to do something with his life, and people caught onto that. People started to connect with me. People started to follow me. Once I saw that I had success and I had results in certain areas that other people were lacking, I became the person who all my friends would talk to if they needed help with their branding, even on businesses. So in April of 2020, I launched my public relations [firm,] Mashman Ventures. What I really do is I help people position themselves in the marketplace.

I help them build up a brand for themselves where they're well known. Personal branding is huge when it comes to sales. A part of being able to close somebody in a sales process is they have to believe in your products and your service, they have to trust the company and they have to trust and believe in the individual. What I do with personal branding, I lower that threshold by [people] working with me, or, you know, not trying to sell myself, but ultimately I'm selling myself. You're ultimately always selling. Shameless plug, get it? Yeah, man. What I go for, I mean, I make it easier to close.

Whenever you google yourself, what pops up? I would much rather work with the person who I'm able to find and do research on or read an article on or see on a YouTube video. Like, let's say you're going to hire somebody. They submitted their resume, but then you see their Instagram. You see on their Instagram that they already are talking about solar panels, they already are talking about sales. You go to their YouTube, and they have YouTube videos on the sales process. They're selling themselves to you through their content and through their personal brand that they've been building online. It lowers the threshold that you would normally have to overcome to hire them. That's pretty much what I do, to put it in a little bit of a long drawn-out way, man.

Isaac Mashman29:23

Ultimately, brother, personal branding is not just your social media accounts. I talk to some people and they're like, so you just work with people on their Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn? Exactly what I thought. No, no. I'm glad that you asked that question because this gives me room to clarify. That's only one aspect of your brand. You're putting yourself out there by creating the social media profiles and getting at Kenny Parry on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on Twitter. How easy is it for people to find you? But on top of that, you can establish and layer the foundation of your brand and your personal brand.

Isaac Mashman29:57

That's where I work with clients. Okay, so what ways are there in the marketplace for you to get your name out there and be viewed as an expert? Clubhouse is a fantastic platform to position yourself in a room to where you're the focus and center of attention, giving value and delivering value. So by you being on the panel, people are automatically going to view you as somebody who is worth listening to and knows what they're talking about. Is your company on the Better Business Bureau? This is something that I've been preaching a lot lately, man. I have a digital internet company. It's a public relations firm, but at the core, it's online.

It's an internet company, but I have my company on the Better Business Bureau because it will help my company gain credibility and a reputation, since it's automatically trusted. How do we position you to where you're not just on Instagram and Twitter, but you can be found on various websites? Are you giving value? Are you creating content to show that you even know what you're talking about? If you're not showing and demonstrating your expertise, it doesn't matter who you are or how much you know, if other people don't believe you, or if other people do not even know what you do to begin with. You could put entrepreneur in the bio.

You could put sales expert in your Instagram and make it look nice, just like you would do on a resume. But outside of that, how do you actually come across as the person who's worth listening to?

Isaac Mashman31:47

Right, well, before I do any of that, with any client that I've ever worked with, I always start off with the foundation, and the foundation is education and mindset. Now that might sound a little cliche, but it goes back to me defining personal branding at the beginning of this podcast episode, man. A lot of people think that it's something you create, when in actuality it's something you've always had. I'll always start with that. I'll go over any misconceptions that they've had when it comes to personal branding. I'll go into the mindset of things. Are you talking about your nine to five career or are you talking about your passion project business that you're building on the side?

There's a difference. If I go up to meet you and you immediately tell me about your nine to five, that first impression is going to make me think that you're only working a nine to five and you don't have anything else going on. But if I was to meet you and shake your hand and you say, no, I'm not, man, I'm actually working. I'm a sales coach or a sales trainer, I'm going to associate sales trainer with Kenny Parry rather than your nine to five. So I'll cover the mindset. A lot of people too have limiting beliefs.

Isaac Mashman33:05

A lot of people have the limiting beliefs of their mother, their brother. They told them that they can never make a career out of their music. They can never go off on their own and start a business. So I would always start with the education and mindset. But when it comes to platforms, define your social media handle. This is very basic stuff, but you'd be amazed at how many people you could talk to who have, let's say, at Kenny Parry on Instagram, and then they have Kenny John 62 on a different platform. On a different platform, man. I like to say that you should build an omnipresent brand where it's easy to find you, you're everywhere, and people are able to tell who you are.

In your bios, you should always cover who, what, when, where, and why. That's a little nugget right there. If you can condense all of those things into a couple sentences, you're making first impressions online, just like you have first impressions in real life, shaking a person's hand. You have first impressions online. I was able to make an impression on you on Clubhouse when we first started talking. Then we established a relationship. If I was to screw up that first impression, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now. I gave a good enough impression to where you're like, hey, Isaac, I'm looking for people to be on the podcast, come on.

You gave me a good enough first impression to where, if I'm curious to know a little bit more about parenting, I know that you have a bunch of kids, that you're a very respectable man in that regard, I might come to you for advice someday because you gave me that good first impression. You're somebody who I've had my sights on, somebody who I know I can trust, that reputation. But outside of just the social media platforms, you need to start establishing relationships with people. People get so caught up on the numbers. The numbers are important. Don't get me wrong. It's very satisfying to see your numbers grow, to meet more people, to see a K next to the thousand.

You go from 9,999 followers to 10,000 and you see a K. It's just, it's subconsciously satisfying. Meet somebody in public for the first time, you get their Instagram, you see that they have 100,000 or a million followers, you might view them a little bit differently because it shows that they're somebody who's done something to get to that number. But start establishing more relationships. A strategy that I give all my clients is the power of three. Send out three new messages every day and connect with three new people. That means by the end of the month, you're going to be able to have 90 new people who know who you are.

You're establishing this rapport, this level of care, this level of trust. You do that for 90 days. That's 270 new people who know about you, who know about your passion, who know about your business or product, who know about your product or your podcast rather, excuse me. Then from there, you're going to be building up momentum. This is something that I've seen, man. It starts off with one podcast. I did a podcast back in 2018, and then I did another podcast and then another one, and then it got easier. Then I had more people asking for me to be on the show. I started my business from the ground up.

Nobody knew what I did. Now I have people coming to me because I've established myself, because I've established those relationships. That's also how you build up a referral-based business. I'm more likely to share a friend of mine than a stranger. Oftentimes you'll hear that strangers will support your business more than your actual friends. That's because you have the wrong friends. You should be surrounding yourself with the friends who are actually going to share your business and share what you do and start making sure that they have your best interest in mind. I want to see everybody grow, man. If I know somebody who needs solar in your area, I'm going to refer them to you. I would hope that you would do the same for me.

Isaac Mashman37:12

I viewed it as a challenge. I viewed it as a good challenge. It lit it, excuse me, it lit a fire underneath my butt. It kind of scooted me forward a little bit, because I was like, you know what? This is all the more reason why I need to build up my company, in case something like this, God forbid, happens again. But from a scientific standpoint, it probably will happen again. I hate to be honest, but that's the truth. I need to be prepared. It's the same thing back in 2008. Now I was in elementary school when that recession happened, but if you read Grant Cardone's The 10X Rule, he talks about how during that recession, he recognized that his company was not at a point where it could survive.

So he scaled his company to where now, when COVID hit, his company's still going strong, man. So it lit a fire under my butt. It reinforced the idea of scaling. It reinforced the idea of actually making some of the things that I was talking about into my reality. It's really easy to overthink things. Easy to think but not do.

Isaac Mashman40:12

I absolutely love that question because I've actually been thinking about this a lot lately, and how can I work with not only individuals but how could I scale and work with organizations and companies? Right, if you're looking for the dollar amount, the people who are able to pay you, or the Fortune 500 companies, or companies and organizations that have more funding than just one individual who's a one man team. I was thinking about how does this really tie in? How does personal branding tie in with the company? You have basic public relations, which goes into branding, which goes into the color scheme, the logo behind the company, the message that they're trying to portray, causes that they care about.

It also covers news articles. People think that public relations is only the surface level stuff. You see a lot of these Instagram public relations experts who are like, get featured on Yahoo Finance, you know, [ZV.com]. Yeah, and that's one avenue of PR, but that is not the only thing that it revolves around. Then you have media coverage, which is also talked about by a lot of these agents, but at the core, it's like you're wasting all of this time, money and resources on getting articles when your brand needs help. If your brand is not optimized, if your brand does not look good, and you're spending all of this money and time on these resources, you will not get the conversions that you could be potentially getting.

I like to say, build up a good brand, then you market yourself. I do things a little bit backwards. A lot of people will tell you to just start and market yourself. But if you take two weeks to get your brand right, to take the action, to get on new websites, to get Google's algorithm starting to index your name to where you can pop up on more searches, that kind of thing, then you start marketing. You're going to be seeing much better conversions than if you just have a weak brand and you just hammer the marketing. Grant Cardone has a strong brand, but he's also a very, very strong marketer.

You'll see his ads on Facebook, you'll see his ads on Instagram, you see his face everywhere, but at the same time, it took him a while to get to that point. Now, to circle back to the conversation about personal branding and companies, you have to think about what makes up a company: the employees. Without the employees, the company fails to exist. So if I'm working for a company that has 500 employees, if you lose half of the force, you lose half of the company. Or you start up an organization and you're in a partnership with another person, your 50/50 equity, and that partner leaves, you just lost a business partner.

You lost a part of that company, what made that company unique. So this is what I see happening moving forward in 2021, 2022, 2023. Companies are going to be enforcing [it with] their employees, well, they're not going to like necessarily be enforcing it, but they're going to be reinforcing the beliefs of their company, of why you would want to work for their company. Their employees are the greatest salesmen. Even if they are not directly selling a product or service, they're going to be telling their friends and family about who they work for, the experience that they're having at the company, why they would want to work at the company.

Would they refer a friend to work at their same organization? They're going to want to start having their employees post about their work experience. Are they tagging, let's say you're working at an insurance company, are you tagging the insurance company that you work for in your bio? Are you making it known that you work for them? They're representing, they're representatives of that company, and sorry if I'm a little scatterbrained when it comes to this, because it's something that nobody's ever asked me before publicly. It's something where I'm trying to take all these different things and ideas that I've had in my mind and make them into a public message.

But I just, I don't know, man, I see a lot of companies really reinforcing the ideas of their company culture, and where their employees are going to go out and tell the world about what an amazing organization [it is].

Isaac Mashman45:06

Yeah, I actually have 10,000 followers on TikTok. Something that, a little known thing about me, is I actually have a lot of influencer connections. I'm not saying this in a brag way, or Braggadocious way, but during one of the most difficult times in my life, I was posting these videos on this application that was Facebook's competitor to TikTok, called Lasso. I was just creating content, man, and I eventually was able to become one of the verified creators on the platform, and through that I was able to network with a lot of other amazing people. You know, I saw creators go from zero to a couple million followers, and one of my connections, his name is Jalen Hanley, and I was out in Los Angeles.

Because I moved from Jacksonville, Florida to [Burbank], California, and I was there for a time. That was when I was managing an artist of mine, his name is Diggy Durk. I was managing him and we were out in LA. I did a video with Jalen, and it was a comedy video, it was a prank video. It ended up getting some traction to where I went from a couple hundred followers on TikTok to a couple thousand. Then from there, I was like, you know what, I'm going to get out of my comfort zone. Then I started making some comedy videos. I recognized that that kind of took off.

But it's a platform that I haven't put a lot of emphasis on in probably six months. It's something that I've been considering, but at the same time, what kind of content do I want to create? Do I want to go down the comedy prank avenue that really doesn't correlate with my brand? It correlates with who I am. I can be a humorous, jokeful guy, but at the same time, what could I do that would be appealing to the algorithm and also appealing to the audience, that [would just] be something that's done? So I definitely think it's here to stick around. I know that TikTok was facing a ban and that was a big worry and a big concern, but when it comes to putting out content, that's not where my focus is, but I do think that it is an undervalued asset.

There's a mobile application I've been working with called [Entre], and they had a video reach a million views. That's how they've been getting a lot of traction to their application, simply by getting the users of TikTok to join their platform.

Isaac Mashman47:54

Right, no, absolutely, man, and great, great question. Before I answer that, I will say that when it comes to working for a company and being an active representative of that company in your bio, let's say you say that you work for this organization, you tag their Instagram in your bio, saying, you need to represent who you work for. You need to be proud of the company you work for. If you're not proud of representing it, you should change companies. It's as simple as that. But by doing that, you're going to be reinforcing the idea that you work for that company with the people who are already following you, who are engaging with you.

So if they know you work for an insurance company, they're more likely to do business with you because they already know, like, and trust you. You have that level of trust. They're not a cold lead. You're already friends with them, or they've seen your profile around. Then aside from that, there's absolutely nothing wrong. I would suggest doing this: start building up a name and a reputation just for yourself. You don't want to be known as the guy who works for that company, but you do want to be known for who you are in your individual name. So you could post things about your family, post things about your travels, you could step away from that and maybe start producing content based around the company that you work for, without giving away trade secrets, obviously.

But if you're in the solar industry, you could tag the company that you work for in your bio. Then you could create content based around solar, you could create content based around your life, about lessons that you've learned, and that's how you establish this level of credibility. You get more attention. You get more traction to your name, and then ultimately your company is going to see that you're taking this extra effort to become well-known and to become somebody who is working on number one themselves, and they're going to reward you most likely. If you're representing the company in a positive way, if you're working for a good company, they're going to see that and view that, and there's nothing wrong with doing it that way.

But to answer your question about different softwares and things, I am tech savvy, but I'm not the most savvy guy there is. I'm not really big on email marketing. I have an email list of roughly 100 people. It's not something that I'm really actively asking people to go subscribe to. I don't have a lead magnet right now, none of that stuff. Those are all things that I'm working on by the end of this year. But I built my website through wix.com. It's not the best out there. It's not the greatest out there, but it's easy. It's convenient. They have decent SEO. It's up. Right. Exactly.

Back in ninth grade, I took, this is one of the classes I've used more than any other in my adult life, a web design class. It was teaching me the basics of HTML. Moving forward to where I created my first website with Shopify a couple of years ago, outside of that class, I was able to go in and edit the code and actually understand a little bit of HTML, what to edit, what the structure should look like, that kind of thing. Then for my Wix website, there have been a couple of times where I've had to go in and, you know, address the search engine optimization.

Yesterday I was adding meta tags to the website. So I'm not like the savviest person, but when it comes to certain things, I have more experience than most. You also have to have an understanding of algorithms and how social media works and how Google works and how SEO works to do the work that I'm doing. Right? The goal is to get it to where you search up your name, you pop up. What websites are ranking higher in Google? What websites are indexed? How do you position yourself with specific keywords to where Google is able to pick up that you're a notable public figure, right, and create a knowledge panel?

There's a lot that goes into it. You don't have to spend a lot of money on a whole bunch of different services, man. If you don't want to pay money for a website, Wix has a free plan. There's a website called UCraft that has a free landing page that allows you to connect to a custom domain. You can even use Linktree. Linktree allows you to put all of your links in one place. I would definitely recommend investing in these different platforms, right? You need to be able to invest money into your business and into yourself in order to get a greater ROI in the long run.

But don't be afraid of being resourceful, being thrifty in the early days. I don't pay for my email, but I have a custom email, right? So I told you to email bookings@isaacmashman.com, and I don't go through G Suite. Even though G Suite is $5, I go through a separate provider called Zoho, ZOHO. I get those emails for free. I get up to five emails. It's a fantastic software that I've been using. What's the point of adding an additional cost when there's no need for it? The only exception I would say to make would be if it's a friend of yours who has a service that you could otherwise do for free, but you want to support them.

Other than that, man, Zoho, Wix.com. I'm a big believer in social media platforms. Obviously Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn. Don't spend all of your time on every single platform. Create a profile, optimize your profile, determine what profile you really want to put your attention towards. Then, yeah, man, just actively build up relationships.

Isaac Mashman53:27

You've obviously... You feel a little scatterbrained sometimes though.

Isaac Mashman54:09

But at the end of the day, brother, no matter what level of success I have in the future, because I'm starting out with this intention of becoming successful, I'm still going to be the same dude. I'll be able to listen to this interview a couple of years from now and be like, man, I'm still the same way, I have more expertise, I have more knowledge, I have more success. But I never want to be one of those big wigs who people think are just assholes, because in a conversation they think that they're better than you. Now, if you're a jerk to me first, then there's a chance I might be a jerk back.

I know who I am, I'm confident in myself, but man, I want to be able to have that relationship and conversation with everybody, no matter where I'm at, who you are, where you're from, what color you are, what religion you're from. All those things don't matter. I just like meeting new people and making the most of this human experience, man. We got one life to live, so why not make it the very best?

Isaac Mashman55:38

One, this is a sales podcast, and I don't think that we've really touched on sales. We touch on a lot of the mindset that goes into how you can sell yourself, but Way of the Wolf by Jordan Belfort completely changed my life when it comes to selling. I remember the first time I was trying to sell the network marketing company's product, and I would send three paragraph messages trying to get people to get on a call. I didn't know what I was doing at all. I read that book, I listened to him, I studied him, and that changed my life, you know, the Straight Line sales system.

The second one would have to be Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. You don't have to be a firm believer in the law of attraction, but the basic principles in that book, talking about desire, talking about organized planning, how you can present your skills. He was talking about personal branding before it was even coined, before it was even a word. There's a chapter, organized planning, where they talk about presenting a paper resume, but outside of just your portfolio or your experience, what are some projects of yours that you have done. Then you present them to your prospective employer and you could get hired at a higher salary and a higher position.

So Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich, I think, is great. Then the third book, hmm, oftentimes I list off those two because those were the most impactful. I would have to say Rich Dad Poor Dad. Like Robert Kiyosaki and the Cashflow Quadrant, those are good. But to be honest, man, I have not read as much as I would have liked to say that I've read. I've spent more time listening to audios and multitasking. There's some really great audios that are done by Bob Proctor, done by Napoleon Hill and Earl Nightingale that are super good. I have a list of podcasts that I check on daily, the Ed Mylett Show, Jordan Belfort's podcast, Wolf's Den, and I listen to some of Tai Lopez.

But at the end of the day, man, with every mentor and every book you read, you have to ask yourself, why am I listening to this person? Does this person have the results I want in the specific area? What am I looking to get out of this? You need to have that basic understanding of what you're trying to learn. Sometimes your subconscious mind will pick up on the nuggets without you even trying. You'll use that saying or that quote or that strategy down the line. You'll be like, wow, I completely forgot about that. That's what I learned like two years ago listening to that podcast.

But personal development, like I said, center of all success. I actually have a personal development document on my website for free to download that has my top mentors, my top books, my top podcasts. I want other people to recognize that if they really want to scale and achieve success, they need to take the time and invest in themselves first.

Isaac Mashman59:15

So [sales is] 80% emotion, so it's the same thing. Dude, bring it. Frickin' love it. Let's go ahead and spend a couple minutes, though, talking about sales. So for the people who are listening specifically for sales outside of personal development, ask me a sales question, man.

Isaac Mashman1:00:06

Yeah, I do. There are a couple different methods that you could use. The one that I use more often than not is, I don't allow them to tell me their [objection] until I let them tell me their objection. Like that's just the honest truth. Like I will not let them tell me why they will not work with me until I ask them. So during the sales process, right, I'll build up the rapport, I'll lead them through, I'll tell them what I'm able to do for them, why they should trust me, depending on who they are. Every single sale is a little bit different. Every single person and prospect is a little bit different.

You have to appeal to that and have a self awareness to be able to pivot in whatever direction you need to pivot to on that call or in that meeting. But at the very end, I'll ask them, so on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being, Isaac, I see the value you're providing. I see what you can do for my personal brand. I'm ready to take action right now. Then one being, Isaac, [screw you]. I don't want to talk to you ever again. It's useless. Where are you right now on that level of one to 10? Then I'll let them answer that question.

So oftentimes, it's around seven or eight and they'll say, I'm a seven, I want to do this, and I'm like, okay, well, Kenny, man, that's fantastic. I can work with sevens or eights. I can't really work with fives or sixes, but you're at a seven or eight. So what can I do to take you from that seven to an absolute 10? Then from there, I'll have them list off the objection, to where, let's say, they say, I don't have the money right now. Then from there, you can employ another strategy and say, okay, you can use the dream car analogy.

Isaac Mashman1:01:49

According to you, you say that you have these dreams of building up a personal brand, you want to become well known and respected, you want to get your music heard in front of millions of people or you want to sell more solar panels, yet you've been getting the same results for the past couple of years. Here I am coming in as the person who wants to help you get these results, solve your issues, solve your problems, and you're telling me that this investment is too much. If I had the keys to your dream car, like, okay, Kenny, what's your dream car? Tell me. '67 Camaro.

'67 Camaro. Okay, Kenny, perfect, what color is that '67 Camaro? Orange. Bright orange? Bright orange. What color interior do you want? Leather, suede, what? I'll take vegan leather. Okay, perfect. Drop top or hard top? Drop top. Okay, okay.

Isaac Mashman1:02:51

You want that car, well, build up your personal brand, you'll be able to achieve that. Then from there, you just go back and forth in conversation, you guide the conversation, and then you start getting them to see that any objection that they give you is BS. They say, I'll think about it, yet they never think about it. All they're doing is postponing the close. That's what they're doing. They're going to say, let me think about it, we'll talk another time, and you'll be like, okay, so you're saying that you just want me to wait two weeks and then follow up with you. So we'll go ahead and go through this process again. The true professionals don't go through that.

Isaac Mashman1:04:31

Definitely, well, it's not coaching. I don't like the word coach or consultant. I feel like it's just overused and it doesn't really mean anything. There's no substance. What I do is I train. I'm a trainer. I'm here to actually teach you and not to be viewed as just some [rah-rah] coach, like, you can do this. Like that's not it. Like I'm an educator more than a coach. What I've been doing is working with people over the span of about four weeks, or I could even work with you over the span of 12 weeks or an entire year, depending on what you need. I'll teach you the basics.

I'll go from the very basics of what is personal branding, what is the mindset behind it. Then I'll teach you about your brand. I'll have a discussion with you. What does your brand look like? What could we do to be creative with it? How do we write up your bio? Can we do it to get your name out there? What websites should you be on? How do you market yourself? Are there ways and methodologies to market yourself for free? Who should you connect with? Who should you look to connect with? That's what I do. I work with my clients to basically take them, depending on where they're at with their knowledge.

You have some people who are knowledgeable on social media, but even then there's always something to learn. You find the small little details that could be optimized.

Isaac Mashman1:05:41

If I see a period where there shouldn't be a period, I'm going to point that out because the small details matter. Oftentimes people get way too big, they think that they're too big, rather, to do the small things, and they wonder why they never get the big results. That's kind of my whole method and principle of business. Like I'm all about thinking outside of the box and doing the small things, and that adds up over time. My results have been achieved through thinking outside of the box. So that's what I do. I'm working with people from all different industries. I don't want to niche down.

I feel like that's too boring. I enjoy the challenge of working with people from different industries because at the core, what I do and how I train is applicable in every industry. I've done work with models and actors, actresses, artists and rappers. I've done work with business owners, podcast hosts, a whole bunch of different niches, a whole bunch of different industries, a whole bunch of different fields. But regarding how you can find me, on whatever platform is most convenient, you can add me on every platform if you want to. I'm not that difficult to get in contact with, and if you want to learn more, the simplest thing is [to shoot] me a DM, you know I'm accessible.

I try to get back to my messages as soon as possible, but sometimes it can be difficult, and so I don't want you to think that's personal if I take a day or two to respond.

Isaac Mashman1:07:27

Hmm, I'm talking as if I'm in Europe, [liquor].

Isaac Mashman1:07:51

Ugh, neither. Nice. All right. Dude, I've done all of my stuff organically. I've spent zero dollars on advertising and zero dollars on press. There is no need for you to get ClickFunnels right out the gate, in my opinion.

Isaac Mashman1:08:58

It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you again, guys. Take care. Make the most of 2021. Let's get it.