One SAT Score Away from a Full Ride, and the Life Detour

Isaac Mashman1:27

100%, Corey, thank you for having me on, man. It is an absolute pleasure. So yeah, guys, I'm 20 years old, like he said. I've been in business for about three years on and off, just an experience of trial and error. But to share a little bit about my background, this is something that I would normally not share, but being that the nature of the show is being vulnerable, talking about subjects that are real and authentic, things that are not just the highs, but also the struggles and what you can do to come up from those struggles, I'll be a little bit more vulnerable than I have been in the past.

So I come from a single-parent home. I never met my biological father, and my mom was a brilliant lady. She is a brilliant lady. The one thing that she was doing was just working her life away. Growing up, I saw her struggle. I continued to see her struggle, and she's still struggling today, which is a big reason why I'm doing what I'm doing, to really be able to give back and to live a life that was never normal, I guess you could say, for what I was experiencing growing up. Then later on, she got remarried. My stepfather, [I] never really had a healthy relationship with him, because my mom was always working.

She was gone. I was raised with the mentality of go to school, get good grades, get a good job, and that's exactly what I was going to do. I had one C in my life, and it was in algebra in seventh grade. The one C that I had was like the end of the world. I had to go to tutoring to get that C up and all this other craziness. Going into my senior year of high school, I was just confused. I didn't have a direction. I was one SAT test away from having a full-ride scholarship to Florida State or University of Central Florida. I basically said, screw college, I'm not going to do it, simply because with all the struggles and the pain points that I was experiencing throughout that time, I didn't see the point of going.

I didn't have this one firm idea of, I'm going to go to college for this particular career, I'm going to go to college to become a nurse or a firefighter. Some people have that, and some people have always felt driven to go into a specific field. I never was one of those people. I was like, I'm going to go for marketing. And everybody kind of tells you to go to college, but they never tell you what happens afterwards. I got involved with a bunch of different businesses. I was 17 at the time. I launched my first podcast. I got involved with the industry of network marketing, got out of network marketing.

There was a time where I managed an artist for six months, wanted to pursue a record label, did a clothing line, wanted to do drop shipping, and throughout all of this time and doing all these different businesses, I never got far into any of them. At the beginning of 2020, I decided to launch my company, Mashman Ventures, which is a public relations firm that specializes in personal branding. The reason I even launched that is, one, I wanted to do something that was different. Two, I wanted to do something that was scalable and that was going to have long-term potential for growth. And three, I wanted to do something that I enjoy.

I know that sounds cliche. A lot of people talk about it, but the older I get and the more experience I get, the more I recognize that if you hate what you're doing, you're not going to be good at it. You're going to be miserable. I decided to pursue personal branding because over the span of a couple of years, I was still building up a name as Isaac Mashman. Here I am today, talking to an amazing man on the other end of the phone, Corey. I just wanted to say, before we go into anything else, man, huge respect for what you and JoJo are doing outside of just the podcast, being foster parents and adopting children. Man, I love it.

Isaac Mashman7:07

Man, I could go in so many different directions with that question, and it was such a dark time, my senior year. I don't like talking about a lot of this, because I never want to be perceived as a victim. That's the one thing I don't want. But at the same time, a part of my story is this time of darkness and the stuff that I did go through and the things that I've experienced. That's ultimately what made me the man I am today, and I know [it's] a large part of why I decided to pursue independence and freedom and entrepreneurship and impact. Like you said, you're a huge believer in impact.

I believe that if I'm able to do something as respectable as a man, as Isaac Mashman, I'll be able to impact everybody else around me as well in a positive way. I don't have to worry about being a bad person. Money expands your character. It amplifies who you are to the world, and I have firm faith in who I am. But when I first said that I'm not going to college, I remember the look on my guidance counselor's face. He was like, what do you mean? I went to a charter school that had a wide variety of multicultural counselors and people, a lot of Turkish people, so I was able to really get deep into the culture.

He just looked at me. He really didn't say a whole lot. But [here was] this kid who's going and taking AP classes and dual enrollment classes and honors and [blah, blah]. I believe I literally graduated in the top 10 of my class. Everybody else was going to college. Everybody else was going and pursuing that. Everybody else also had the support of their family. Even if I didn't pursue entrepreneurship and I still pursued business, because of how difficult and how tense my relationship was with my mom at the time, I don't think that I really would have had a lot of support in that regard either, because I was still an independent thinker.

I don't like talking about my relationship with my stepdad too often, because I don't even know how to phrase it. This is the first time I've ever really talked about it and touched on it. It's very horrible. Let's just say that. It's the kind of relationship where if you're in the same room, your blood pressure rises and you feel uncomfortable. That really affected my relationship with my mom, and it continues to. I'll be honest, I don't have a firm, healthy relationship with her, partly because she's still working her life away. There's a point of understanding that I'm going down my path, you have your path.

I want to see you do well, but there's still no support today. I think that a large part of that is simply because it's difficult to see your son, or see your child... I'm not a parent. I'm not going to be a parent for a couple more years. Fingers crossed. It's difficult to [see] that your child is going down the wrong path, in their opinion. She's doing that out of a point of love. But you work your life away so your son can go to college and get that higher education. She has a bachelor's degree in education, she has a master's degree in business. So she's gone through the education realm herself, but she never really applied that education, and that was painful for me to see.

But for me, not doing that, I could understand how she could perceive it as a slap in the face. So I had to find that independence and find that support in myself and in people around me, connecting with other entrepreneurs who maybe had a similar backstory or had similar dreams and aspirations. Network marketing was the first business that I really got deep into. The one thing I loved about that was accountability, latching onto mentors, and looking back, I could see that I viewed a lot of the mentors who I was associated with as either older brother figures or as father figures. So because I lacked that growing up, I was very impressionable with who I was studying and who I was learning from.

Even to this day, just finding support in myself, I'm not good when it comes to receiving appreciation. I'm not good when it comes to receiving someone commending me or commending my accomplishments or my achievements. It's not something I'm good at, simply because I've found that support in myself so much. Now, I'm not here to say that's a healthy thing or that's not a healthy thing, but at the same time, the journey that I've been on has made me who I am.

Isaac Mashman14:00

That's exactly what I've done. I've built a lot of self-encouragement, and I've been continuously building myself up. I spent forever trying to figure out and define my purpose. I eventually defined it as something as simple as to live up to my potential, because I believe that is going to have a positive influence on everybody around me as well. Although those relationships in my life were very depressing, or they're not really strong as of now, that has taught me so much, because I don't want to stay on that low level. I don't want to stay on that low point of just, this is it, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But those experiences in that turmoil also taught me a great deal about the man I want to become, the man I am becoming, the father I want to be, the husband I want to be in the future, the kind of boyfriend or man, how I approach and talk to other people, how I teach other people, what kind of mentor I'm going to be. I was also in Boy Scouts, and Boy Scouts taught me a great deal about leadership. So I saw leadership in other places, and all those different aspects added to this man who I am becoming and working towards. So it's a continuous process, it's a continuous chase, it's a continuous journey.

But at the same time, I have no doubt that once I get into certain relationships in the future, I'll be able to live up to that person who I wanted to become. We could talk about my present relationship, the only long-term relationship I've honestly ever been in, but I've been able to understand, okay, this is the kind of man [I'm going to be and how] I'm going to treat my girlfriend. I know what to do, I know what not to do, I know how to act, I know how not to act. It's as simple as that, having the understanding, the self-awareness, that just because you come from a single-parent home or a home with a stepparent, or it has tension, it has pain, it has struggle, does not mean that you have to create that same exact environment and ecosystem for your future family or your future kids.

Aside from that, I can add on and say that I've built up a tremendous support system and relationships with good friends, with people who are going to bring me up, and people who are on a similar path and a similar process and a similar journey, who are going to say, hey, Isaac, I love what you're doing, let's catch up. Do you need help with anything? Finding mentors online, finding people who have the results I want, who have the relationships that I want, right there is a super powerful thing. Find people who have the results you want. If it's the case of a healthy marriage and a healthy relationship, like, Corey, I imagine that you and JoJo have interviewed so many people who have an amazing household, an amazing marriage.

Study that. Study the relationship and the parallel between Corey and JoJo and [yours]. Let's say your marriage is in a difficult time, or let's say your relationship is in turmoil. Figure out what works. Figure out what you can do to improve it. Relationships are not one-sided. It's a two-way street, but at the same time, you can't go about trying to mend and heal a relationship at the expense of all of your energy and the expense of your happiness and the expense of your well-being. That's something that I had to learn, because I spent a long time trying to convince (this would be a good segue point), I spent so much time trying to convince the people around me of my entrepreneurial passions, of my journey, and that was still met with no support.

It took a while, it took a lot of pain, to finally understand that, you know what, I have to support my own journey and surround myself with people who will support me, even if I cannot get that from the people who I want to get it from the most. That was a really difficult time and a difficult thing to understand, but at the center, it's still growth.

Isaac Mashman20:37

Yeah, it was actually something I never anticipated, and I don't think I ever realized I wanted it, because I come from that household where I never saw marriages and relationships that were really healthy, that were really something that brought good results. So I never really looked for that. Even in high school, middle school, I was never that kid who was super interested in dating, and given my parents were super strict in that aspect, a strong Christian conservative household, it was not something that I was going to pursue. Getting involved with entrepreneurship and business, I have to say there was a time last year where I actually flew overseas to see this girl, and we had been talking for six months or so.

For her privacy, I won't say her name, but I flew over there and I was like, you know what, I'm going to see what happens. It didn't work out. I flew home defeated. It was a difficult time and a dark time in my life. So much has happened just from the end of 2019, the beginning of 2020, to where I am today. I didn't anticipate getting into a relationship at all, and I never had really long-term relationships. I was talking to this girl, her name is Hannah. I met her originally through Twitter, like a year and a half prior, through my personal brand, through my business, and through building a name for myself online.

I saw her face, I recognized her, like I saw her a few times online. It wasn't until we started talking that we really came to realize that, one, we had a lot of parallels in our story, and we had a really good energy. We were talking for months and months and got into a relationship, long distance, without ever meeting one another. Literally, we were committed to one another in that regard. I flew out toward August and stayed with her for two weeks. I was living in Bakersfield, California at the time. I'm from Jacksonville. This is a story for another time, crazy story. But I was living in Bakersfield, literally sleeping on the floor of a friend's house where he was staying with a couple other roommates, trying to figure things out, trying to figure myself out, trying to figure my business out.

Two weeks went by, and I was like, you know what, I'm moving in with her. That's something we were talking about. I ended up flying back home to my grandmother. I guess I'll share it. I ended up losing my grandfather in 2020. I've never talked about this, but I was with my grandmother for about a week and a half. That was a time of deep reflection, and [I] flew back with Hannah, got an apartment together in October. Here we are. She's entrepreneurial in a different aspect. She's not an all-in entrepreneur. She works at an insurance firm right now, but she's very business savvy, economics degree, like a brilliant, brilliant woman, and it's something that I never recognized I wanted, but now that I have it, I'm glad, grateful.

Isaac Mashman23:29

It's definitely had its impact, simply because it's about balance. When you're in this mentality of, I'm building a business, or you're an independent solo dude, you're like, I'm going to stay up until three o'clock in the morning, sleep in until four o'clock in the afternoon or whatever, work whenever. Now that you're living with another person, sleeping in the same bed as another person, you're like, I can't stay up all night while she's sleeping and then sleep all day when she's awake. I've had to figure that out. That was a difficult task. I'm just trying to get my sleep schedule readjusted and get on a similar [schedule].

The other thing is, sometimes I have to work longer than she works herself. She's a super hard worker, don't get me wrong. But at the same time, if I need to stay up until nine o'clock or I have a meeting at a crazy time, I still have to commit to that. So it's trying to find a balance of, hey, we still have to find time for one another, whether that's even watching a movie together or going for a walk in the park. That's something we've adopted, where Sunday is the day that we spend time together. It's different, because to me, every single day of the week is the same.

Monday through Sunday is a day. It's something where I wake up and I have independence. I don't have somebody telling me what time to wake up or to go work a job or that I'm off on Saturday or Sunday. I'm in control of that. So it's been a lot of just trying to see what works in our dynamic.

Isaac Mashman30:43

Yeah, 100%, Corey, it was an absolute pleasure to be on. If I could add one more thing before we close, it's that communication is something that is underrated and undervalued, I believe, especially in the time of instant messaging and social media. That's the only thing that I ever knew growing up. I was raised in the internet era, but at the same time, communication in the household, something you're talking about with family councils, is [important]. I'm communicating with her. Just tonight, I told her, I was like, I have an interview with Corey at 6 p.m. She's like, okay, I'm hungry, I'm going to get food going.

I think it's communication, understanding what needs to be done, what she wants to get done versus what I need to get done and what I want to get done. And that communication is not only in that relationship, but in any relationship. If you're interested in building up your personal brand, if that's something that you really want, you can reach me literally everywhere at Isaac Mashman, or you can go to my website, isaacmashman.com. I actually do have a podcast as well called Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman, where I just talk about anything and all the experiences and knowledge I've gained in life. I will say it is explicit.

If you are Christian, depending on your viewpoints or different things, you might want to go into that with caution, maybe not listen to certain episodes, or [not] around the kids. Just giving that disclaimer out there. It's something that's authentically me, but at the same time, there's a balance to how authentic you should be.