Isaac Mashman of Mashman Ventures

Isaac Mashman0:39

Jonah, man, honored to be here. Thank you for the invitation, man. Great to be talking this Tuesday evening.

Isaac Mashman1:01

Yeah, we're jumping right into the thing that I usually don't lead with, but I'm fine with that. It's 100% good, and you're like, all right, let's get the questions out of the way. Yeah, man, I mean, I started my businesses, my business ventures so to speak, out of the curiosity of business, the curiosity of what is out there. In 2017, I was actually a senior in high school at that time. So going into my senior year of high school, I was lost. I was confused. I was a great student, an excellent student. I've said this many times before, and I will continue saying it. It's like, I'm not one of those entrepreneurs.

I [wasn't] a [D or F] student. I was straight A's, man. I got one C in my life and had to get tutoring to bring it up. So I was on track to go to college, got accepted to Florida State, University of Central Florida, 10 SAT points away from a [full-ride] scholarship. I said, I'm not taking the SAT test again. I do not care, [and the same] on my AP exams. Here we are. A fun fact, I was in network marketing in my senior year. I actually joined, well, I was getting ready to join the company. During my tests, rather than filling out and taking the AP literature test, my teacher was probably like, Isaac, why did you score a one?

I was writing out how I was going to build out my team. I literally was sketching the entire time. I didn't care about the test because I'm like, I'm not going to college. It doesn't mean anything. So that's how focused I was on business. But since then, man, since graduating (May 29th was the four year anniversary mark of me walking the stage and getting that shit chapter over in my life), it's been great, man. A lot of challenges, a lot of ups and downs, launched my current business, my vehicle, smack dab at the very beginning of the pandemic. So yeah, it's been good. So what business is that?

That's Mashman Ventures. That is the number one focus that I have. That is a public relations firm. I have two other businesses I'm working on building, but the kind of businesses that they are rely heavily on cash flow and capital. How do you get capital and cash flow without raising external money and getting investors and all that stuff? Because then you give up pieces of your company or pieces of the deal. I'd rather own what I'm getting invested in. So Mashman Ventures, my public relations firm, is my vehicle for more and future investments.

Isaac Mashman3:18

Yeah, so a typical public relations firm focuses on bridging the gap between the corporation, like let's take Pepsi or Coca-Cola, and the person walking the aisle at Walmart, going and buying the Coca-Cola or the Pepsi. If they have a choice, Pepsi or Coca-Cola, based off of perception in their mind or preference, they're going to go with either soda. But my public relations firm, and where we specialize, is we focus on personal branding solely. If I were to define, what is personal branding really quick, it would be, it is you, it is who you are. So I focus on working with business people, creators, authors, really anybody who wants to become well known for something, well known as an individual or as a celebrity, to establish their personal brand online and also locally in person.

I could go into a lot of different details about how we operate, but it's a done-with-you model. We offer consultations and actual strategizing calls to where we're sitting down saying, hey, this is what you need to do. These are the next steps. This is how you get into the press. This is how you build out your credibility. This is how you position yourself. It's been a lot of fun, man. Worked with some really, really amazing people over the past couple of years, including some new clients recently.

Isaac Mashman4:35

A big one was network marketing. I've been involved in six, seven, eight different businesses. Honestly, I haven't sat down [to count]. I've been, like, one, two, three, four. I could count them on my hand, but I've had dozens of interests. My first one was a clothing line. I actually have the hoodies hanging up in my office closet right now. It was called Success Before Rest Apparel. If that isn't cliche, I don't know what else is. But I had my first hoodie, man. I made my first couple bucks online, sold $5, $10, $20, and I think in total I made less than 100. But the fact of the matter is I made money from people that I never knew, never talked to, never shook their hands.

I think that was a really eye-opening experience. Then, like I said earlier, I got involved in the industry of network marketing, three companies, four times. That was the eye-opening experience because I saw these 20, 21, 22, 23, 24-year-old kids making $10,000 a month. I'm thinking, wow, you made three months' worth of what my mom makes, or two months' worth, in one month, [residually], passively, holy shit. That kind of opened up my eyes, and then from there I managed musical talent for six months, [and started] a new record label. The interesting thing though is what I was doing at that same time simultaneously was building out my personal brand as this young entrepreneur, this young businessman in the making, somebody who wanted more out of life.

Isaac Mashman6:07

Not necessarily, and it's funny, I think you're like the third or fourth person I've talked to in the past two days that I've had to tell this. Fun fact, you're [one of the] first people to know, but I'm actually ending my podcast and I'm launching a new one later this year. I've had my show for three years, but I'm ending Chase the Vision. But a podcast to speak about personal branding is vital for building out your personal brand. It's a great tool, a great tactic to connect with people, like we are talking about, the reason why you have the show, man, and just the relationships that you're building.

The knowledge that you're soaking up is worth every single investment, from the microphone you're using to the headphones you're wearing to the computer you bought for this. It's like that is a worthwhile investment, and so I'm going to be relaunching, and not relaunching but launching, a brand new show come the end of July.

Isaac Mashman6:56

I have absolutely no idea what the name is. This is one of the instances where I'm going to have to find the name when I least expect it. I've been through dozens, dozens, dozens, dozens of different names. I was very picky about my other show, but I feel like Chase the Vision was treading the line of cliche. So I'm like, it didn't really speak to me anymore to use that term. So this new show is going to be a little bit more focused around me and my life and my personality, because it's really easy to get so focused on the educational aspect that you lose the entertaining side.

You lose the, let's go ahead and share a story from your own life that can also be educational in a sense but is still entertaining. So I want to talk more about that, and also I wanted to invoke a feeling of maturity, a feeling of, hey, this is somebody who, you know, you saw his first episode, you saw him grow, you saw him pivot, you did all of these different things. But now with this new show, it's like I've grown into that man, I've grown into that figure, I've grown into that businessman, to where all of my momentum, a lot of it's been established in the past 18 months.

So if I can keep that going and show that with my podcast, from the point where I'm at today to the point where I'm making a million a month, it's like that is how I'm taking people along that process while also sharing what I'm talking about. But I'm not convincing another person that this is a podcast worth listening to. I feel like Chase the Vision, because of the name, because of the premise, was almost like I was convincing somebody to listen to it. But now I want people to subscribe and come back every single week because they're attached to me, engage with what we're talking about, and engage in the quality.

Isaac Mashman8:35

So I had another podcast. My very first podcast was recorded February of 2018. So I remember being in my old room at my mom's house and had my shitty Android phone, 80 bucks, and I recorded on my Android. It sounded awful. So I had my podcast, I've written articles before, and writing articles is another fantastic tactic to build an authority or talk about something that's interesting, take up search results. There are other things. You could argue and say that content creation is a form of media. So I've been creating content from the time that I got started with all this, but over the years it's progressed, gotten better, gotten easier and gotten more results. All right.

Isaac Mashman9:46

[Not a] stupid question at all. Even in the way that you were going to phrase it previously, it was not stupid. Leave that in the recording. I don't want to hear that edited out. So here's the thing, a YouTube channel is one aspect of your personal brand. So for example, you'd create the YouTube channel based around Jonah. That is your personal brand, you as Jonah, not as Blue Collar [Enlightenment] or Empowerment or anything. It's like, it is you. So when it comes to the YouTube channel, that's one facet of building a strong digital personal brand. You have Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, you have all these different tools and social media platforms.

You have the podcast, which is a form of something that strengthens your personal brand. So when it comes to going about getting clients, I typically work with a lot of business owners, but I have worked with creators, models before, like literally, like, chiseled, Greek god looking dudes with flowing hair and a six pack. Like I've worked with that. Those kind of people, and he's actually a close friend of mine. Authors especially. Actually my most recent client that I took on this past week is a psychologist of 20 years with a doctorate. So I'm like, but that's the thing, every single person, no matter if you're a nine-to-fiver or if you're an entrepreneur or a creator, can benefit from growing out their personal brand.

What's an intrapreneur? Who works in the business close to the owner, but is not the owner. So a great example would be Eric Chow. He's the chief consultant of my firm and he is an intrapreneur. He's working close to me. He is my right-hand man, but he's not the one who is having to worry about the same shit I'm worrying about. The contracts, the refunds, dealing with all that kind of stuff. But being an intrapreneur can also benefit you tremendously. Me, I don't like taking orders, or I don't like being that kind of team player, so to speak, and I'm more of that entrepreneur, do-it-myself kind of guy.

But intrapreneurship is something that's lesser known but is lesser talked about but can be really good for certain people who might not want to be out and [about].

Isaac Mashman12:11

Yeah, well, when it comes to talking about Mashman Investments, there are certain tax benefits from a short-term hold versus a long-term hold when it comes to investment. Like the tax rate is a lot higher if you're going to sell it quickly. So part of the reason I wanted to launch Mashman Investments was to get that tax break, to just kind of make and invest in financial contracts like stocks, forget about it and hold on to it, hold my position. But the other side is to also invest in companies and people and ideas. There are a lot of different things right now. You could go and invest in a crowdfunding platform such as Wefunder and invest in startups that way.

Or I know a lot of people personally who have companies or startups that they're working on, SaaS products, plugins even, that I could invest maybe $1,000 in and might have 10% of the company as a silent partner, whereas somebody who's like there but not really doing anything. So that's the focus of Mashman Investments, and Mashman Properties is going to be for buying real estate. But the thing is I'm never going to sell any of the real estate I buy.

Isaac Mashman14:04

Well, and if you're doing, let's say, a rental that's near a large city, then you're able to go and actually Airbnb it rather than rent it, to where now you have people who are staying for a day or two. That's another strategy. I know some people who are making near six figures a month Airbnbing different properties. Let's say you get one property that's near an airport. People don't want to stay at a hotel. Maybe the hotels are booked up. You have business people that want more privacy, people who maybe want to kick their feet up, whatever. Imagine going and charging $120, $150 a night, on top of fees and such per day.

Per month, you get booked up 20 days of the month, making more than double, in an idealistic world, what you would be getting for rent. Now, given rent is going up all around the United States right now, for what I'm paying here, we could very well just get a mortgage [instead of] paying for an apartment. So that's something that you have to consider, but personally real estate is one of those assets, and a lot of people focus on the digital side of things. But I'm like, I want something I could stick a shovel in and be like, this is my dirt. Pitch a tent, sleep in the tent, go and build a house.

I could build a house, put a trailer, rent off the trailer, whatever it is. It's land. Something that is tangible. Something that I can feel. I think that's one of the things that more and more people are failing to realize. But America was built off of people and land, people going and saying, this is my territory. This is my ranch. This is my farm. I think that that aspect of American nature and what we were built upon as a nation needs to come back and make a resurgence, rather than all of these bigger corporations buying up all the property. Like a timber company, for example, owns 2.2 million acres.

One company owns 2.2 million acres of land. 2.2 million. That is gigantic. That's one company, one corporation. But could you imagine you have 2 million people who own one acre or two acres or three?

Isaac Mashman16:20

Yep, an RV park, if you buy it, let's say especially you're in Oklahoma. Correct. Imagine a lot of people are touristy, wanting to mark off Oklahoma, or going for, you know, basketball games or whatever. Let's say you do an RV park. Now, it would cost money to get it set up and get it to where it's industrialized. But you get 12 plots, you charge by the day or charge by the week, now you have land making money and people are coming and going. There's so many different ways of monetizing land and also monetizing just real estate in general. Even if somebody was to buy it, buy not necessarily the land, but lease the rights to it, you can make money off of being the landowner.

For example, a lot of these guys who own the shopping malls that you see around, they don't own the building. They own the land underneath the building. So now they're getting paid for the land and they don't have anything to worry about when it comes to the upkeep of the actual building. They don't have to worry about the roof, but they worry about maintaining the land. So they're getting paid. That's the other thing, man. A lot of times we get so single-focused on what we're doing or what everybody else is doing. We fail to realize, hey, there are some other ways that we could go about this.

Isaac Mashman17:53

So that's a double-edged sword, because I have one side of the sword that's purely ego-based, to say, I want to own as much land as I possibly can. Even though I'm not doing anything for it, even though I might not be making anything off of the land, if you own properties, you only pay a hundred bucks in property taxes a year, less than that for a piece of land. It's like, cool. I can own that, build my portfolio, build my credibility. Then the other side is looking to get land or make investments and buy houses or apartment buildings or go on deals. Something that I'm considering, in a tourist area that we're moving to, Hot Springs, Arkansas, is to go and buy land and put a tiny home on it.

Then Airbnb that. That's another thing, because a lot of people don't want to stay in it. They're not about to Airbnb a trailer, but they would Airbnb potentially a tiny home in a tourist town. So that's going to be one of the things. Scaling that to as big as possible, man, owning hotels, owning shopping malls, owning everything. Because I want to play Monopoly in real life. That's one of the reasons why I want to become wealthy, because I am wanting that ability to do whatever I want, whenever I want to. Or if I'm walking down and I'm seeing a building and I'm like, that's a distressed building, or I see opportunity in it, let me buy it.

From there, the opportunities are endless, man. I think that that's essential when it comes to anybody who has any sense of more out of life, you've got to see opportunities when everybody else thinks that, oh, it's [not worth it].

Isaac Mashman19:27

I'd say do research. I didn't pay for any coaching or anything of the sorts. I could have, and I know some great people who I might still take up on an offer in the future. But for where I'm at right now, I'm not in some position to where I own millions of dollars in land or anything. [As for] my first two properties earlier, I was surprised at how easy the process was, truthfully. Now, given it takes time to get papers processed and stuff, look for properties that are [up for auction]. They have tax liens on them. That's something that I was able to get two pieces of property for less than a thousand bucks.

One is a 0.09 acre and another is 0.13. Now that might not seem like shit, but that'd be enough to put a house on. That'd be enough to put a trailer on. That'd be enough to do something, and be aware of where you're buying that property. So one of the properties I got was right next to a graveyard. Now I'm not trying to become rich off of dead people, but eventually the graveyard is going to need to expand. So what will I do? I will sell that land. Now, even then, because I said I'm never going to sell my land willingly, you have the city who's like, I'm going to take it anyway.

So then I'd be forced to sell it. But being strategic with where you're at, in tourist areas, but looking for properties that are up for auction. So what that means is owners default on paying their property taxes. After so many years, the state comes in and they say, you didn't pay us anything. It's going back up to public domain. So we're going to auction it off, and you can go in and maybe get land for dirt cheap. Now given you're going to have competition with these people who are buying land wholesale. But you pay off, let's say, 20, 30, 40, 50 bucks in previous property taxes owed, or a couple hundred bucks, and you could have an asset that's worth thousands.

Then I really can't speak from a place of buying hotels or anything like that yet, two, three, four years from now I will. But I would say having that long-term vision of, hey, this is a game you're playing, and [at] steady levels, it's going to increase in [value].

Isaac Mashman21:47

To a degree, but at the same time, it's like a lot of it's speculation. It's funny, I was recently reading, it's called The Empire of Business by Andrew Carnegie, and it's a collection of essays. Andrew Carnegie was a major Scottish American industrialist who was worth billions of dollars in today's [dollars]. I think it's $11 billion. So that might not seem like a lot, but pre-internet, pre-inflation, pre-everything. One of the things he talked about in one of the essays was never to speculate. That actually translates directly to playing in the stock market. He said that people who bet their entire fortune, they could become millionaires one day and become bankrupt the next.

I'm like, man, that's crazy. So it's like the stock market has its perks, being able to be an investor in something, have ownership in something is cool. But it's the same reason why I got out of network marketing, I realized that I wasn't actually building my own company. Just like you're a stock owner, you're not necessarily doing shit for the company except making the company valued more. Given you might have perks, but unless you're owning a significant portion, you don't have a say in many things at all. But it is a way to make money, get dividends. Dividends, you can get significant money. If you throw a hundred thousand bucks into a dividend-paying stock, you can get a few thousand dollars a year potentially.

But I would rather build a business and have that steady growth and say, maybe if I want to diversify and make some investments, then cool. But that's not where I'm putting all of my focus.

Isaac Mashman23:18

I'd say probably four or five, truthfully. I probably got it from my grandparents. I come from a blue collar home. I do. I don't come from money. I don't come from middle class. I come from, maybe I could argue, low or middle class, but treading the line of poverty to where, you know, never had dental insurance, never had health insurance, never had any of that shit. And my grandfather was a cabinet maker. He'd go, and I remember going with my grandmother early in the morning, man, to the cabinet shop across town over the bridge every morning, smelling the coffee from Maxwell House [in Jacksonville], the factory, smelling that coffee every single morning, and man, something I haven't thought about in a very long time.

And so I was that hard worker that was like digging in the dirt with a shovel, like in the yard helping my grandparents with stuff, helping my grandfather in the shop. So I imagine I probably got paid then, but then, you know, when I got a little bit older in middle school, I had ideas. I had ideas of what I could do, what I could sell, and then Boy Scouts was heavily influential, but I'd say very young. From there, mowing lawns, like at 11, 12, 13, mowing lawns, getting 20 bucks, getting 10 bucks, getting 5 bucks. I don't think I ever got five bucks for a long [time], maybe 10.

But even then that taught me to value money, but it's interesting now because a phenomenon I've noticed is that same principle of money no longer applies to the business I am doing online. There's this interesting phenomenon that occurs to where I could charge $3,000 for three months or 12 grand for a year and only do two consultations with somebody and provide them with an infinite amount of ROI, an infinite amount of value. That same 3000 that I might make from a quarterly payment can go so far. Everybody complains about inflation, but that three grand compared to what I was making mowing a lawn for an hour's worth of work, that $10, I'm like, there's no comparing that.

That's where it's like making your money work for you to where you can save time. For example, whenever I bought land and created content off of that, I went and visited the properties. [Without editing it myself], I had somebody put together the vlog. I'm like, hey, Thomas (he's on my team), can you do a vlog out of this? So I filmed it, he edited it, I had it, and it saved me time. That's just one very, very simple example of how you can take the money that you make and put it to work for you, to where it saves time, to where now you're getting that time back because you don't have to be that do-it-all, da Vinci man to where you have to do every single thing.

I come from the upbringing to where, if something was broken around the house, you don't pay a plumber. You do it. You fix it yourself. If something was going on, you did it yourself. If you needed to add a loft or something, you did it yourself. Needed the lawn cut, you do it yourself. So, but growing up, I realized that was a poor man's mindset. Nothing wrong with going out and being able to get your hands dirty and being willing to, but the moment that you realize you don't have to is the moment that you now get control. Now you realize that your time can be [given] back to you, where now you can spend your time doing something more important, more pressing.

Isaac Mashman26:32

Exactly. Then you're able to be a mentor to him without even realizing it.

Isaac Mashman26:48

I don't see many people of any age with that, and that might sound egotistical, but I don't share my actual goals with people. Typically, I don't, and there have actually been many books that I've read, and one of them was by Genevieve Behrend from the 1920s. She said that the moment that you share your goals with another human being, it gives it less energy, because you speak to get problems off your chest. You don't speak to create. That was a paraphrase of it, but my actual goals would make most people uncomfortable. They make me uncomfortable to a degree. But I'm also that psychotic dude who's like, I don't want to aim for the million.

I want to aim for the billion. But it's like, I also realized I've got time on my side, which is a blessing not everybody who's older might have. Now, given you could be 40 and still become very wealthy. Jeff Bezos, I believe, was in his 30s when he started Amazon. But people my age, man, it's sad because we have this very politically correct, weak-minded culture to where, and given some political correctness is great, but if you were to take and put a shovel in their hand or put a hammer in their hands, they wouldn't know what the fuck to do with it. I've noticed that in my own life, and I cannot imagine being like that.

Now given if you come from money, you never had to, but I think that's the fault of the parent. Even if you come from money, your parents should still teach you the bare basics of making a dollar or working for something. To me, that's scary. To me, that's sad. And it's also interesting because it puts me in a place where now maybe I could be that light for somebody who is younger, looking up [to me]. Oh, one of the best experiences I had this year was going back home to Jacksonville. I went on a camping trip with my buddies, we built a hell of a campfire, and I was breaking wood.

I'm taking the axe, I'm swinging the axe, I'm like, man, I missed this. Because I'm sitting behind my desk all day, that's my business. But people my age and even older, I think that it's just this ignorance. It's a blind ignorance that isn't their fault. It's the fault of the parent. I think that a lot of it can be attributed to the lack of culture. Because America has no culture. It doesn't. Every other country does. America has been made off of the cultures of other nations. [Might sound] a little bit left [field] to say, but it's true. Pizza, Italian. It's like we could look from our cuisines and the food we eat to the buildings that we build.

A lot of them are influenced by other places. You go to Arizona, you go to New Mexico, you'll see architecture that was influenced by Mexico and South America. So it's like seeing that, and just this lack of pride, has led to this sense of, I deserve all of this without having any sense of [earning] it. This lack of understanding of the economy, for example, a lot of the people who wanted $15 an hour and now the people bitching about gas. So it's like there are a lot of different things that we could have a conversation about, a lot of different issues. I think it's important to also focus on maybe the push and the need for personal development and marketing, or not marketing but finance courses, being prerequisites for graduation.

It's like those are different things that need to be encouraged, and kind of this understanding of security in self rather than security in the government, security in things around you. These are some conversations I was not anticipating having, but I'm glad we're having.

Isaac Mashman30:46

Fascinating. So I've recently gone through and made some different changes in my own life. So I set accomplishments. I don't set goals. That's another thing. I use goals because it's a common term, but they're actually accomplishments. I write them as if they're already accomplished. Something my mentor Bob Proctor always taught. It's like, write them as if they are already completed. So I do that with my goals. It might sound, oh, you're ignorant, you're stupid for doing that. No, it's like, why not act as if they already happened? So when they happen, I won't be surprised. Cause I'm like, I already saw this. This is fine.

I do set them incrementally. I do, per day. So I have micro goals, I have short-term goals, I have medium-term and long-term and lifetime. So it's like micro would be like per day or per week. Short term would be a month, medium would be a year, long term would be three years, lifetime would be lifetime. I set them in three-year increments though because after that three-year mark, everything that's been done in my journey has happened in a matter of four years, with most of my moments in the past year and a half. So how can I possibly understand and put a perspective on where I'll be three years from now?

I can't. So I set my, kind of, the idea of where I want to be three years from now. So by 2024, my accomplishment is making a million dollars per month, $12 million a year. Right? So I have that three years out, but I don't have the four-year goal or the five-year goal. But now my lifetime, I do understand how big I want to take this from a lifetime [standpoint].

Isaac Mashman33:45

I appreciate that. Yeah, it's looking for that next target. Yeah, you're right. That's what a goal is. It is a goalpost. A target you're getting to. Think about a football field. You have the five-yard line, the 10-yard, the end goal. So it's like, those are different marks. Whenever you're playing a football game, yeah, you want to do the Hail Mary, but at the same point, you also want to get to the first down. Where is the first down? That is your target. That is your target. That is your target. Return kick. OK, that is my target. So when it comes to just the day to day, it's funny, because a lot of my progress has been birthed in chaos, because that's how I've always operated.

I've always operated in a chaotic family, a chaotic background, chaotic, just everything. Everything has been chaotic and I've learned how to thrive to an extent in that chaos, but I do find comfort in setting, kind of having an idea, having a direction that I need to go in the midst of that chaos. I think being used to chaos is also a blessing in today's world, because everything's chaotic. So it's like whenever something happens, being able to control your energy in a situation. Let's say something's going wrong, maybe on the work site, you stub your toe. You're wearing steel-toe boots. So let's say you jam your finger or something.

You could either get pissy and let that mess up your day, or you could say, that hurt, and cuss a few minutes and then move on with the rest of your day. But you're not going to, for the next hour, complain, oh, I hit my thumb, I hit my thumb. Then everybody's going to make fun of you. No, it's like you're on to the next thing. I think that's also important with life. I've had some things over the past three months that have been quite disrupting. I've had to really practice not focusing on those disruptions so I could stay focused on getting the positive results and continuing to move forward and make that progress that I need.

Isaac Mashman36:37

Oh, there were some moments like that though. There were some moments about that, but I chose not to stay in them. A lot of people choose to stay. That's where they go wrong, right? I don't think that there's anything innately wrong with dabbling into certain things to get that off your chest, kind of thing. But at the same point, when you stay there, that's where people go wrong, because now all of a sudden they make it a habit. Habits turn into a lifestyle. A lifestyle is much more difficult to break. Lifestyles are much more difficult to break than you would think, and a lifestyle is also much more difficult to reestablish than you would think.

Isaac Mashman37:38

That'd be great. I actually lost, if I'm being quite personal, I don't think I've ever talked about this. I actually lost my grandfather young. He was 63 when he died two years ago. He smoked from the age of, like, nine, literally from the age of nine up until the day that he died. Then he was overweight, and that led to one heart issue, led to one issue, to another, to another, to another. There becomes a point where you feel so broken, so beaten, so defeated that you fail to recover because of all this mental thing, and you don't know any better and you think that it's hopeless.

I've seen that happen so many different times, and even with people and family, with things that are more dangerous than cigarettes. It's like having that addiction, and I have a very addictive personality. That can be problematic in different areas, but I've also seen alcoholism on a different side of the family. I've seen these different things, and there's never a time to where you just have this conversation. But I've also seen that, which has made me aware, if I'm going to drink alcohol, there's a limit. I'm not going to cross that limit. Whenever I have a situation where maybe I cross that threshold, let me not do that again.

Let me not do that again. There was a time where I was hanging out with those kids and they were entrepreneurial and they were hustlers, and come to find out, it wasn't, he wasn't entrepreneurial. That's called a drug dealer. I'm like, shit. I was ignorant because I come from a very conservative background. I come from a very, like, overly protective background where I didn't know any better. But then I realized that I'm not staying in that situation. I'm going to get out of that. I see your movements are like, holy, where did we just go there?

Isaac Mashman39:31

Okay. Well, she walked in at a crazy point in the conversation, but again, it's like choosing to stay there is where you go wrong. Right.

Isaac Mashman41:43

We could do that, we could definitely do that. So I wrote my very first book, which came out last year, November 1st, 2021, called Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence. So I wrote the book. It's a short read. It'll take the average reader an hour and a half or less. It's a book of philosophies, a book of strategies that will extend past social media. A lot of times authors write books that apply today. They apply with how the algorithms are. They apply with what is hot in the media. Podcasts might not be around a decade from now. But if somebody wrote a book on podcasts, its shelf life is a decade.

Past that, it's no longer worth picking up and reading. So I wanted to write a book that would stand the test of time, number one. Number two would kind of help people understand what personal branding means. Because most people don't understand the first thing about it. They have misconceptions about it, myths about it. So I wanted to cover the what and why of personal branding and why you should build it. I wrote it, and it became the number one new release and a top 10 bestseller in public relations on Amazon, hundreds of copies. It's been really, really great, man, for my first book. I will eventually do a second edition of that a couple years down the road and expand on it. It was good and it's something I wanted to do for quite some time.

Isaac Mashman43:02

Honestly, only a couple of months. It wasn't like I was sitting down eight hours a day. Now given if I was, it might have been [faster], less than 100 pages. However, I don't know if the quality would have been there. I will say that the writing process wasn't time consuming. Getting up to the point where I had the idea for it and the first sentence of it was [time consuming]. Because I just like, man, my businesses, I went through half a dozen or more businesses. I went through half a dozen or more titles and ideas for a book, concepts, topics. As soon as I settled on the idea of personal branding, I started going through names of it, then I started to go, and I had one moment, and I was out for a walk.

I was walking out on the path and I had the idea, what if I told you that there was something so powerful, and that was like the first line. I'm like, hang on now. Then I put that in my notes, and then a couple weeks later, I wrote the second or third sentence, and it kind of started to flow from there. I think finding the first sentence, the way to start, is the most difficult part. Having the idea of it is also difficult. Then writing is, in my opinion, the easy part, the easy idea.

Isaac Mashman45:00

Music. What [did I] do in the music industry? I was in the industry for about half a year. I wanted to do a record label, manage three artists at one point. One of them I stuck with longer than the others. It was before the pandemic. We started to work together and we ended up stopping working together afterwards because he was throwing a concert and I was going to fly out. I was living in Bakersfield, California. I was going to fly out to Fort Wayne, Indiana, and have the concert. He sold it out. You know, it was going to be a small, you know, couple hundred people event.

With the pandemic going on, we're like, well, I don't know if this would be a good idea. This was when nobody knew anything, if it was like the zombies, the end of the world, or if it was like the common cold. So we decided to, you know, kind of take a little bit of a break. Then I got out of the industry, and honestly I think that if it wasn't for the pandemic, I wouldn't have gotten into personal branding and launching Mashman Ventures, because I probably would have stayed in the music industry. But part of the reason I moved out of it and didn't stay and stick through it is I knew that it would take a long time to make any sort of money, [and that it wouldn't] be the proper vehicle.

It's more of those, the thing that you do after you have the fame, after you have the influence, after you have the money, because of the amount of investments that it takes to get going, especially from a marketing standpoint. It was a lot of fun, but you know, music is a big part of my life because to focus, I listen to music. To work out, a lot of times I listen to music or listen to a podcast. I was, like, you know, a chubby white kid in sixth grade in computer class blasting Rick Ross and listening to Lil Wayne in my headphones because I couldn't listen to it at home.

So I'm like, any chance that I got, I'm listening to secular music. I like music because of the feeling, and it was a form of visualization. It still is a form of visualization because you have somebody who's talking about something that aligns with your own interests to a degree, to where it's saying, hey, I like this as well. It creates a feeling, it's a sense of memory. There are certain songs that might make you tear up because it reminds you of somebody. So the music industry, man, it was a lot of fun, but not a business that I would have wanted to stay in long term.

Isaac Mashman47:15

For a long time it used to be Lil Wayne and Drake, any of the songs that they did together. "Right Above It" is a classic. "Trophies" is great. But then it evolved. I do have a vast taste for music. I'll go from hard rock, alternative rock, to rap, to literally Three Six Mafia, to Paul Wall, to listening to jazz, to listening to just music that has no lyrics. A little-known fact is I also absolutely love Suicide Boys. I like the underground rap sound. I like that kind of treading the line of emo, dark kind of stuff. So it's like sometimes if I'm particularly pissed off or I need to get super focused and charged, I'll listen to the lowest vibrational energy possible, which is that depressed rap, but for some reason that creates that feeling of, like, all right, let me go get something done.

So you stumped me on that question, man, because I have so many different tastes and so many different, like, it depends on the mood.

Isaac Mashman48:33

No, because when I'm working out, I typically listen to podcasts. I don't listen to music. I used to only listen to music, but then I realized that I could focus better on what I'm doing listening to a podcast, because I'm able to hear my breathing still. I'm able to still take in, and I like listening to podcasts while I'm doing these things, because it makes me feel like a complete badass. I'm getting two things done rather than just one thing done. So I'm doing it with a purpose, with an intent. So I do have some great podcast recommendations I'd give people. So when it comes to specific things though, it varies on my mood.

It's not like I have to listen to the same thing. I'm far too complicated for that. So what's your favorite podcast? My favorite podcast would have to be, I bounce between a few different ones. I'd have to say my favorite of all time would have to be the Ed Mylett Show, my all-time favorite, followed up by probably The Cardone Zone with Grant Cardone. He has a lot of great conversations, and my third would be treading the line of, it would vary between Jordan Belfort's podcast, [The Way of the Wolf], or Lewis Howes, The School of Greatness. Those are some really, really great podcasts that I would recommend everybody listen to.

Isaac Mashman49:57

I will also say, guys, you need to make sure you hit that subscribe button to this podcast right here. Make sure that you're listening to this, and you rate, review, and subscribe. Leave a five-star. Otherwise, Jonah's going to track me down, find me, come to my house and tie me up. So make sure that you rate, review, and subscribe to the show ASAP.

Isaac Mashman50:45

Man, I did an interview this morning. He was asking some really great questions, and lately I've been getting some really great guests. [You're] just asking me some questions that have stumped me, and that doesn't happen often. Most enlightening moment was when I traveled overseas. Number one enlightening moment, I was the first person in my immediate family to ever cross the pond, go to a different country. I went to France one summer, crazy story that I'm not going to get into. But it changed my eyes, and I was there for a month and a half, [seeing] the different cultural differences, the history. You could walk down the same path that the Romans walked down once upon a time.

So I'd say that moment also opened up my eyes to say, hey, I don't have to live in America. Might piss some people off, but honestly, that would be a real thing that I would consider, dual citizenship somewhere. Because there's this entire world that's out there to be discovered with different foods, different cuisines, different cultures, different beliefs, different benefits, different views, different skies, different sunsets, different nights. There was a moment where I was walking and I'm looking up at the sky and I'm like, you, it was so clear you could see the satellites flashing. I'm thinking, whoa. Like eating grapes off of the vine in a vineyard and eating olive spread.

I'm like, I almost wish I never left, but then again, I'd never be on the path and never have my girlfriend, never have the people in my life that I have today if I never did so. Again, that was probably one of the most enlightening, eye-opening experiences ever.

Isaac Mashman52:35

No, I've had some others that are very eye-opening too in different ways, business-wise, financially, things of that nature. But that's the thing, you're consistently growing, you're having those new experiences.

Isaac Mashman53:14

[Love you], man. Jonah, it's been great. I appreciate you inviting me on once again.