Personal Branding for Contractors with Isaac Mashman

Isaac Mashman2:22

All right, man. Thank you for the invitation. Based off that introduction and the hat you're wearing, I'm getting the gist that you might be a fan of Andy Frisella. Am I wrong? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There we go. The personal excellence bit. Absolutely love that.

Isaac Mashman3:40

It's weird. Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned that because I listened way back with the MFCEO Project around 2018, 2019. I don't remember laughing nearly as much as I used to. I always got entertainment from it whenever he had Vaughn on, and it was just a really good time. Then when he did the pivot to Real AF, I almost took a break from listening to the show because I wasn't as politically involved as I am now. I'm a little bit older. You kind of lose sight of that and you're like, no, maybe I should pay attention to this stuff. I started listening again. Now that you mentioned it, it does feel like I'm laughing every single episode because it feels like I'm just having a conversation with the guys that you would have on any other random day of the week with some good buds.

So yeah, we could talk about that pivot right there, changing his brand. It was a little bit of a big jump, but an important one, I think. So yeah, let's do it. Yeah, cool.

Isaac Mashman6:05

Well, actually, if you didn't follow up the initial statement that you made with, like, the backstory, I would have actually agreed with him that you need to be Eric Triplett. But I think, if we're jumping right into it, the conversation is that there's a big difference between your personal brand and your business brand. So I'm Isaac Mashman, but my public relations firm is Mashman Ventures. I'm Isaac Mashman, but any Mashman branded business is a separate business that I'm building up off of the back of my individual reputation and my own personal brand. So you could be the owner of a plumbing company or an electricity company or whatever it might be.

You'll always be the owner of it and you'll have your own separate persona, your own separate personal brand, but that will also be the business. So you are Eric Triplett, and then you have the Pond Digger brand that is synchronized with what you're doing with your personal brand and with your business. I think that being able to synergize the two to where, when I'm meeting you, I'm not thinking about the Pond Digger, I'm thinking about Eric. I know Eric for X, Y, and Z reasons. We have similar values. We have similar aspirations and goals or whatever. I like him because he's a family guy. Then that is going to kind of influence my personal decision to maybe work with you professionally and support your business.

Same with Andy. We started out talking about Andy Frisella, man. I remember when I was listening to the podcast initially, I didn't have a dollar that I could spend towards 1st Phorm, but the first order that I spent with 1st Phorm was like 400, 500 bucks. I had no issue spending that money because it was associated with Andy Frisella. So I knew that I was supporting him. So I think that it's cool to see how it's progressed though for you over the past 25 years from that change. How do you feel like that line is between your personal brand and the Pond Digger? Like are there days that you wake up and you look in the mirror and you're like, I'm not even Eric, [I'm] the Pond Digger. Like is there like a pep talk in the morning?

Isaac Mashman8:47

So I'm really blessed by that. Yeah, man, I bet. From a decision standpoint, if you were going into it thinking like, oh, I want to build this into a legacy business, you could call it [Triplett Aquascapes]. You could have made that decision back then. I think that with all my businesses, I named them after myself. That was a really ballsy thing to do because I knew that if I'm starting a business that has Mashman attached to it, I'm going to have to go into it with a commitment for the next five decades of my life or whenever I want to shut it down. But I'm not going to be able to sell Mashman Ventures at any point to some other public relations firm.

But if I was to call it something else, like Reputation Positive public relations firm, it's like, which one would you be able to sell easier, the one that isn't associated with a person? So I think contractors, a lot of times, man, especially like mom and pop contractors or people who are starting out, they'll name it after themselves. But if you do that, you're not going to be able to sell it nearly as easily from a branding perspective. Yeah, and I think that's interesting too.

Isaac Mashman10:09

I can see it in your eyes. Yeah, I'll be judging you a little bit.

Isaac Mashman11:05

Well, we're building, and I'm not a big focus guy on legacy. I really don't care about legacy. I actually believe the more time you're spending thinking about your legacy, the less time you have for everything else you could be doing that's actually contributing to it. But I'm reading The Law of Success by Napoleon Hill. Everybody knows Think and Grow Rich, but did you know that Think and Grow Rich was published nearly a decade after this huge thousand page manuscript called The Law of Success? In his writing style, love him or hate him, he always refers to examples at the time, and he mentions the Armour meat packing company.

He mentions Henry Ford. He mentions John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie. But you think about a lot of these different people. The businesses that we're using on a day to day basis, like Lamborghini or Ferrari, or Armour Meats when you buy Vienna sausages. It's like that was named after a guy whose last name was Armour. Then you go to different arenas, or Carnegie Hall. All of these businesses like Chase Bank, Charles Schwab, JP Morgan, these are companies and enterprises, but they started out with one ambitious guy or gal who ultimately grew that business. Then at a certain point it split away from this being just the person to, no, this is a business, and that business means something.

I think that getting to that point is really a testament of success because people create pride within a company, but creating this sense of, you mention a name and somebody thinks, man, that's a solid guy or that's a really good business. Like you're at a really good point to where you have that third party edification. I would want you to be judging me because as somebody who's been in the business world for decades, and as a younger guy in the business world, it's like that edification or that criticism can be taken in so many different ways, man.

Isaac Mashman14:14

I actually went to an elementary school in Jacksonville called Stonewall Jackson Elementary School, which was named after Stonewall Jackson, one of the Confederate generals [of the Civil War]. I see what you're saying there, and I think that whenever you're coming up with the name of a business, you have to determine the brand. Anybody can get an LLC and call it a business, but to actually give it the characteristic traits and determine the brand. When you're doing branding, it's more than just the logo and the name. You have to go really deep on it, but just at the surface level, it needs to be cohesive. It needs to have this seamless look about it when talking purely about a business.

So if it's called Stonewall Creek and you're doing aquatic [landscaping] jobs, but then you have the logo is something entirely different. Like I heard Stonewall Creek and I'm thinking of a ranch. I'm thinking of like, oh, you're raising cattle or something like that. So you have to be kind of aware of what you're doing and how every single decision you're factoring in is going to influence somebody, whether or not they know what you're doing or if they have to ask questions, because the more hoops you have to jump through to educate the person, the more challenges you're going to have. If you're creating more questions than you are answers, it's like you're doing something [wrong].

Isaac Mashman16:45

Let me answer that because there's actually a few questions in there. So the first is I want to make kind of a distinction between the Pond Digger and Eric Triplett, because the Pond Digger is the business brand. The personal brand is you. From the moment you were born, you've had a personal brand. There's this massive misconception, and this is part of the reason why I wrote my manifesto and why I'm working on the second edition: I want to focus on the philosophical side of things as well, not just the strategy, because social media is ever evolving. Marketing is relatively easy, and what is working today might not work tomorrow and it's fluctuating.

The philosophy stays the same, and so your personal brand, you've had from the moment you were born, even before you were [out of] the womb, your mom's telling all of her friends, telling the family members about little baby Eric, or, if she was expecting a girl, little baby Susan is going to be born. You get born, you go to school, start out in elementary school, you're the teacher's pet, you're the easy student. You're the trouble child. You've got middle school, high school, and then you go to college. You've been building out your personal brand every single step of the way. Now as an adult, when you started to make the decision of where I want to build a business, or I wanted to do X, Y, and Z, then you're making these conscious decisions that are contributing to a positive reputation and association with your personal brand, or a negative one.

Every person knows you for something. So that is your personal brand. The Pond Digger is the business. I think that a lot of times people get that misconception about, oh no, like, my personal brand is my business and vice versa. No, they're two entirely different entities. If you take the phrase personal brand and you draw a line down the middle, you have personal on the left side and you have brand on the right. I think you need to kind of pinpoint that. The second thing, about the "the," I actually hate it. I hate when somebody says "the," especially inside of a handle. Now from a business standpoint, it's arguably a little bit better than for a handle, but like the [Bradley].

You have to think about how the social media platforms operate and how the algorithms work. Are people typing "the" in front of a name or are they searching up Bradley? Let's look at consumer behavior here. People are going to be searching up the person's name and not "the" or "official" Bradley or "official" Pond Digger or anything else. So if you were to do something along those lines, and let's say your name isn't as unique, Isaac Mashman, I didn't have to fight with anybody for it. But at the same point, I would not do "the Isaac Mashman." I did Isaac Mashman. If you cannot get your handle, the same goes for your business.

Let's say the Pond Digger wasn't available, you would do "official" at the end or "real" at the end. So Bradley would actually have been better off doing Bradley official than "the Bradley," because the algorithm is not going to show his profile as high, because people aren't searching up "the" in front of it. They're searching up his name. So we could go into the technical. You have to think about how these platforms and things work. Same with Google, it is a very similar beast.

Isaac Mashman20:02

Yeah, so it's called Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence. This is a relatively short read. The first edition is 55 pages, but the reason why I wanted to publish one was, well, number one, I've always wanted to write a book. I think that it's a really good testament of effort. Also you can't BS a book. If you're BSing, people are going to be able to sniff it out, same with the podcast. If I can't speak on a podcast, people are going to be able to say, oh, he doesn't know what he's talking about. But in the manifesto, I cover the philosophy. So I basically cover the who, what, when, where, and why of what personal branding is in very simple terms.

What is personal branding? Where did it originate? I don't talk anything about the strategy behind it, aside from some of the branding aspects of building out your name, being a public figure, positioning yourself, delivering lasting impressions [et cetera]. I published that in November of 2021. As soon as I published it, I kept thinking to myself, man, I wish I would have changed it. I think that just like the artist finishes a painting and they're like, man, this isn't done. I could have added this here. I could have made this color a lighter shade. I realized that this wasn't going to be a one and done deal. That's why I'm working on the second edition, which should be coming out later on this year as well.

Isaac Mashman21:16

Yeah. I start talking about, like, why would you be building out your personal brand? I plan on going into depth a lot about that with the second edition, but the format of the book is really simple. You start out with the mindset. What is the mindset you need to have? I go into the education, where I explain what personal branding is, and then I go into branding and marketing. In the next edition, I'm going to be going into reputation management, some more of the PR technical side of things. But if you think about how you're positioning yourself, what do you want to be known as?

Then what do people think of whenever your name is mentioned? Can they trust you? Can they not trust you? There's so many different things that I could talk about there. Yeah.

Isaac Mashman22:44

Well, every single employee has a personal brand. Every single individual that works for that business. This is something that not many people talk about, but there's a term called internal marketing. I've been reading a systematic review that was published by the University of the Netherlands. They're talking about how every single employee that works for a company is able to take some of the features and characteristics from the business that they're working with and contribute to the success of the organization internally, as well as communicate that message to other people that they're coming in contact with. So let's say you have a team of 100 people.

Are those employees going to be going to their friends and family being like, man, I'm overworked and underpaid? People aren't thinking about this when they're building a business. But if they're going to all their friends and family and trash talking the business, or they're known for never being home with their families, or that they're underpaid or the boss cut their bonus, they're not going to have a positive view of the company, versus the employee that goes to their friends and family and they're like, man, I love this company that I'm working for. Every single person under the sun, every person we know at church needs to be going with this company.

That is going to spread word of mouth like wildfire and help grow the business just by having natural conversations. Now, a business could effectively take a CEO or an executive or somebody who's higher up the ladder and make them the face of the business. That's not always going to be the case. Obviously, back behind the scenes, you're going to be the person on phone calls. But if you want to be the public face, you could absolutely do that and talk about how you started the business, talking about the founder specifically, or how you grew the company. The individual can be positioned as the expert in that field.

So let's say somebody was making a post on Facebook and says, I'm looking to interview people that have a specialty in aquatic landscapes or ponds or whatever it might be. I'd be thinking to myself, okay, Eric, and then by you getting on that podcast, now you're talking about your business, you're establishing yourself as a public figure, as an authority, as somebody who can be trusted. Then people are going to be curious about your business, and it'll naturally kind of tie over. So there are some nuances here. Not every business has a founder or an executive team that is out in the public's eye, but it is becoming a lot [more common].

Isaac Mashman26:21

So I think the fact that the business is named after them basically answers the question. If it was named after something else, or just like I gave the example earlier of any other name under the sun for the company, you could have other entrepreneurs representing it and doing a podcast. But even then you're never going to expect somebody else to convey or communicate the message of your business like you could. Yeah, you could have people that might be more effective communicators, but they're not the people who were there at the very beginning stages going through the debt, going through the pain, going through the struggles, going through the vision.

Like you as the owner, I think that especially the son, it sounds like the parents are probably a little bit older. They're not so much interested anymore. But if you have a son, he could easily come out of the woodworks and be like, hey, I'm the second generation owner of the business. Let me talk to you about my parents' vision, what we're doing. I'm thinking, man, I love cigars. So sometimes I'll get a Padrón cigar or a Perdomo. I'm thinking about all of those cigar brands that I really love, they're named after a family name, and it was passed down. It would be like Nick Perdomo, Perdomo cigars, having a random factory worker, who might be great, might be a good representation, talking about the cigar.

It's just not [going to work]. But then Nick gets on a podcast and he says, like, I remember going to the factories with my father in Nicaragua. Then I was able to see the workers and do everything. Like, there's an emotional connection that I think just isn't going to exist if an entrepreneur or somebody else is trying to speak on their behalf. Yeah, you can get [plenty of] results, you can get streams and views and sales and stuff from that podcast. But I think it would 100x if you actually had the son come out and say, no, this is the vision, and this is who I am, and this is what we're building. I think that's a massive opportunity, man.

Isaac Mashman28:36

I never lead with my age. Never. That was a mistake I used to make.

Isaac Mashman31:14

Interesting that you mentioned that. I have a few different ideas coming through my brain right now. Number one, you said Helix, and I absolutely was like, [ew], because I think about Helix, you know, DNA helix. Anybody says it, it sounds like a health product, like Helix this, Helix health, like whatever. It sounds good, but just because something sounds good doesn't necessarily mean you need to make that your brand or a package. For example, if you're doing a package, not so much for contract work, but if you're building a business, it's like you have three specific categories of services you could build upon, that's 50 foot or 100 foot or 150 foot.

You have bronze, platinum, and diamond, or whatever it might be. It's like that might not be the best decision for you just because you can call it that, the tier subscription kind of thing. But I'm also thinking about Flex Seal. The commercials, and it's like, Flex Seal. On anything, put this on the aquarium, put this on this, put this on that. I think that they've built the entire brand around Flex Seal to where it even has shifted into memes and stuff. You'll be on Twitter and you'll be able to see a meme. Yeah, and they're like, just put Flex Seal on it. It's like, it's recognizable.

Interestingly enough, the man behind it, his name is eluding me, he has more followers on Instagram than the actual Flex Seal company account. But it doesn't really surprise me, and this was last I checked, because people are going to recognize the person [more] than they'll recognize the brand. So with you naming it Helix, you effectively helped yourself into possibly selling it, because it's going to be a lot easier to sell it, Helix, versus the attachment to the Pond Digger brand. If you were to go that route and named it the Pond Digger skimmer, yeah, you could have sold that to the company. But then they would have been like, well, now we need to give you royalty because it's associated with your brand name, or go by the patent.

Then you don't have the brand, you don't have any recognizability, no recognizable real estate, so to speak. So I think that it's not a, you made a mistake or you didn't make a mistake, but based off of your decision, you're helping yourself effectively exit it. But you're harming yourself with the idea that you could have had this for two decades or three decades. It's like, because it's associated with the Pond Digger and the brand that you've built, it'll automatically be a person's number one choice. They don't need to think about going somewhere else for a different skimmer for their pond or for, I'm not really an expert in aquatic landscapes or anything, so I'm dropping the ball a little bit there.

But I think that that recognizability would have been able to help you sell even more versus selling out to a company. A little bit of a long-winded answer. But I don't think you made such a big mistake like you think you did.

Isaac Mashman34:26

Time will tell. License the deal out. If we're talking Shark Tank, you could license out the technology and get paid a percentage and whatever else. You can make anything work, and this is interesting in business, that you can make any business work if you really want to make it work. It doesn't matter what it is, it can work. Whether that's the most niche thing, we used to make the joke in Boy Scouts of underwater basket weaving being a merit badge. It's like if you wanted to do that for a career, I'm sure somewhere along the lines you'd be able to sell underwater basket weaving classes or baskets, but it's not going to be as big as the next company that you could start, that could be Apple's competitor. So it's all relative.

Isaac Mashman37:25

Yeah, well, every single thing about you, your interests, the fact that you and I both started the podcast with a cup of coffee. Now, my mug of coffee is empty, sitting to the right of me, but all those little details, your interests, the movies you like to watch, the music you listen to, the kind of friend you are, if you're more extroverted versus introverted, if you're the person that somebody goes to when there's a problem, or the class clown, the most likely to succeed, all of those different titles and different bits effectively make up an individual. It's not just, this is who you are and this is your personal brand.

It's ever fluid, and basically every time you're growing, you're changing your personal brand. That doesn't mean that somebody might not still think of you as the class clown. Let's say that friend that you know, well, after graduation, he [grew up] and changed his personality around, you might have seen that, but the other people that you went to school with, they'd still think of him as the class clown in their brain, even though he's nothing like he used to be. So I think that as you grow and as you make changes, you mature, and especially for younger people out there, you have to make sure that you're keeping up with that reputation that is surrounding you, whether or not you need to kind of manipulate it or update it.

Thinking about it from a contractor sense, I think that there is a really big opportunity for contractors or any blue collar worker for that matter to really make a huge name for themselves. I can't help but think about Mike Rowe. He's been on my mind quite a bit lately, from Dirty Jobs. The reason I mentioned him is, number one, he's the most well-known guy. Dirty Jobs was really, it was created after an accident. They didn't think it was going to be anything. But all of a sudden, for some reason, people liked watching him go in the sewer and rummage around and all this other crap.

Like it appealed to people, and now there's less people and less guys, especially, not as many guys are going to college, girls. Like that's just a statistic. I think like 40% of young men are going to college, 60% of women are. They're looking for alternative paths that don't rely on a degree, but they could go to trade school. They could go and work [trade] jobs that might not break their back, but might give them some really good lives without relying on the degree. So if you were to take all of this information and let's say you are an HVAC guy, you were to get on Instagram and talk about how you got started in HVAC, showcase your personality, you don't want to be some zombie, you could get on a video and start it off with confidence and say, hey, I got started in HVAC X, Y, and Z years ago.

This is the process. These are the challenges. And you do videos on occasion talking about it, you can start building out your personal brand as, hey, this is Paul Wesby. He's the HVAC guy, but he's also into X, Y, and Z interests or whatever else. Then people are going to think, wow, number one, if I need my HVAC fixed, I'm going to call Paul. But also, you're setting the example for everybody else. You might be interested in getting involved with HVAC or be entertained by it. So there are a lot of different paths that you can go down to build out your personal reputation and a ton of different results too, whether that's money, attention towards your business, awareness towards a cause, let's say it's a nonprofit you're interested in.

It's like, let's say you're concerned with the environment, I mean, doing aquatic landscapes and digging ponds and stuff, I'm sure that you're probably aware of the Everglades. They're overrun with pythons and things like that, so you could talk about those different pieces of information. And think about Shaq on the Old Spice commercial or with General Life or General Auto Insurance. By him being associated with those businesses or with those brands, there's a degree of trust that transmutes over. I know that was a very long-winded answer. I hope that I explained that effectively.

Isaac Mashman42:38

All aspects of your personal brand, too. All aspects. All of those things make up who you are.

Isaac Mashman44:36

Great [question]. I see the question that you're asking without explicitly asking a question. I think that over the next couple of years you are going to be moving farther and farther away from the Pond Digger and leaning more into Eric Triplett. You are Eric Triplett, and you might be Eric, quote, the Pond Digger, Triplett. But you're going to be showcasing your personality, showcasing your interests, showcasing your life, showcasing these things so much more, because 20 years from now you might not be doing the Pond Digger anymore. You might be on to a different project or doing something entirely different. You don't know where 20 years is going to lead you.

So I think that, if you have that YouTube channel, for example, you only need two Instagram pages, you only need two Facebook pages, two YouTube pages. You need one for your personal self and one for your business. Now, obviously, you can go above and beyond, and if you have multiple businesses, you'll have multiple pages, but you don't need to create a new page for every podcast or for every endeavor. That's just not necessary. But you could have the Pond Digger YouTube channel and then Eric Triplett's YouTube channel as well, and there's naturally going to be, sometimes you might post the super niche content on your business page.

Because your business is the niche, you're building a business that is in one specific area. Eric Triplett is an N1 niche. So if I'm talking about a very specific subject about, let's say, public relations, how to submit a press release. Very specific detail, which, I mean, a contractor could submit a press release too. I would not post that training on my personal page, but I might post that on the Mashman Ventures page and Mashman Ventures YouTube channel, because it is so niche, it's very technical, it's very detailed. But if I was to talk about some, I don't know, strategy you can use to get free press, I might do that on my personal page and not my business page.

Not as niche, but it still falls in line with what my specialization and what my focus is. So I think you moving away and maybe pushing out some personal content on your YouTube channel that is surrounding you, some of your interests or a day in the life. There was a massive YouTuber who recently passed away. I cannot pronounce his last name for the life of me, but he died of cancer a couple months ago. Brian, his YouTube channel is still going, and it's named after himself, and his son is creating videos for him. His [niche] was reptiles and animals. [Brian W], it's [almost crazy].

Isaac Mashman47:08

In a boxing match. You know exactly who I'm talking about. Great guy, lovely energy, man. It made me sad, and I wasn't even a huge fan of him, but he's a very simple [example], where when he was alive, he was doing a bunch of these different things that were all relating to animals. Now that he's gone, his name is living on through his aquarium that he was working on, or the reptarium, or the reptile room that he was doing. Yeah, at any moment he could talk about those specific things. It's like, let's say you want a different kind of client, let's say you're doing a lot of plumbing work, if you're doing plumbing, you might not want to do residential plumbing anymore or you might want to lay off on that and focus on some businesses.

So you will stop promoting to all the homeowners and you'll start promoting to the businesses. That doesn't mean you're pivoting your business per se. You could go at any moment and get homeowners again. You're pivoting your marketing strategy that you're using for that specific moment. So I think understanding you can change and create content at different points that might lean heavily into an individual direction. You have [the] freedom to do so. I think that this idea of perfection we're creating for ourselves in our mind of, like, it has to be this way, it has to be rigid, is starting to kind of get less and less.

I think understanding that you're the main focus point grants you a lot of freedom and a lot of permission. So maybe showcase that side of you that you wouldn't have showcased in the past. For the longest time, people didn't know I smoked cigars or that I would do whatever it might be. Then I started incorporating those things, realizing that those individual traits would build the rapport that we would have with the person on the other end of the phone.

Isaac Mashman51:00

I think what you should be doing moving forward, because I saw the channel before when I was doing a little bit of research on you, is changing that channel from the Pond Digger and turning it into Eric Triplett. Then from there, you still talk about Pond Digger related subjects. You create a separate YouTube channel and you can put a tab there for the Pond Digger or whatever. Like I said, those super niche things, and you could do those, like maybe the more professional things, on the Pond Digger page. I think one of your biggest issues over the past decade probably has been this gray, blurred line between Eric Triplett and the Pond Digger, and you're not realizing that the Pond Digger is a separate business that lives on past you.

It's like, people might refer to you as the Pond Digger, but you aren't the Pond Digger. That's your business. I think that that's something that, like, if you were a client of mine, I would have to kind of reinforce with you and be like, that is like a persona, sure, when you're doing business or something, but when you're sitting around the table at night talking about life, it's like you're Dad, you're Eric. But I would pivot the YouTube channel and I would make an announcement saying, Hey, I'm Eric Triplett. You're following and subscribed to this channel. It's previously called the Pond Digger. That is my business.

But I've been getting a lot of requests to showcase me and to go into trainings on things. So you'll see a little bit of a diversification of content where it might not just be about ponds or trainings. But you're also going to see me in my bonsai garden, where you're going to see me at this event or doing this or giving you some training and some sales stuff. You don't want to have to create a different page for training with Triplett, which I think is very creative, by the way. I love that name because now you're going to be able to access this huge organic audience that you've built up that are automatically subscribed with you and get that channel active again and be able to reach so many more people.

You could just have different segments, you don't have to create a separate podcast, you could have a different segment to where you don't even make the announcement, you're just being like, today we're going to be talking to a contractor, this is the focus point. Even if you're not interested in this, I think you're going to get value, you should stick around. That gives you the control, and now you're stepping away from this energy of almost like you might not want to stick around, this might not be your interest, and be like, no, you're going to want to stick around because it's Eric. It might sound egotistical and narcissistic, but people are following you for a reason. I think that that's important to lean into because you're the trusted expert, man.

Isaac Mashman53:48

I'm not going to tell you what you want to hear, but what I think is the genuine answer. It's like, 20 years ago.

Isaac Mashman53:58

Holy shit. Well, obviously we would also need to search up, because right now I'm pretty sure there are other people [with your name]. You did something good though, because when I went to Google, I searched up Eric Triplett. You weren't the first person to pop up. There's somebody else, I believe he might be a politician who has your name, but I searched up Eric Triplett and one of the top search results was the Pond Digger. So that's good. There's an association there, but I would say that we might need to think about using your middle name. So what's your middle name, for example? Michael. So we might want to incorporate [Michael between] Eric and Triplett to help dominate Google, if that's something that would be a focus point, because I think that if you're searching somebody up, you want to fight other people for the search results.

But you might be able to dominate underneath Eric M. Triplett or Eric Michael Triplett versus Eric Triplett. So that's just a minor strategy I always walk my clients through, because I've had clients in the past, like one who's done engineering work for Jelly Roll in the past, Tristan Roberts. But you search up Tristan Roberts, you're going to see a politician and a rugby player and a skier and all this other crap. But I was like, what's your middle name? Oh, it's Tyler. So let's call you Tristan T. Robert, or Tristan T. Roberts, excuse me. Now he dominates the entire page of Google and all of his handles are at Tristan T.

Roberts audio or at Tristan T. Roberts. So just a lot of these small different decisions add up and all these strategies to where you can have that omnipresent [brand].

Isaac Mashman56:23

This is such an important piece of advice though. How many contractors and businesses might have a Google business listing and might have the business listing where they send people to give reviews, but they don't even have their own website or they don't have a domain? If you own a company, no matter what the company is, whatever the niche is, you need to own the domain. Just like I have isaacmashman.com, mashmanventures.com, mashmaninvestments.com, anything that I have my name attached to, I own. I've built websites off of the back of them, even if it's a simple landing page. A landing page is better than having no page at all, and that gives you a little bit of social proof.

Then same with your name, you need to be owning your personal domain, and most people don't. Very few people own their actual name. I've thought about that in the past too. It's like, what am I naming my son? Not just because it sounds good, but because it's something that's unique to where he's going to be able to dominate everything. I mean, that's the first time I've talked to somebody where you thought way ahead of that. I don't want to name my son just something that's casual that may fight with other people. It needs to be something unique. He could have all the social media handles.

He could own his domain, he could dominate Google, and he could build up off of the Mashman name. That is a win-win situation. It's like you're talking about setting up a retirement plan or a college fund for your kid. I think what you name your kid is just as important, frankly.

Isaac Mashman58:09

That's a rock song. I was like, [Thunder, Thunder], what is that by? Oh man.

Isaac Mashman58:18

AC/DC is one of my least favorite rock bands, though. I'm more of the 1970s, like Led Zeppelin, Kansas. I love those groups. Never really got into AC/DC or 80s rock.

Isaac Mashman58:43

I think Led Zeppelin, [no doubt], is the best rock band of all time. That is a hill I'll die on for sure.

Isaac Mashman58:55

Man, I wish I was alive during that era to go witness, like, Stairway to Heaven and, like, [Black Dog] or Kashmir or any of those songs.

Isaac Mashman59:34

I'm going to address the business brand first. Again, the difference between the two: this personal brand is outside of the company. He's building it with or without the launch of this new business. So let's think about what are the steps to launching a successful business, not from an operational standpoint, but from a branding standpoint. So number one, are there other businesses that share the same name? So I would go to OpenCorporates.com or every Secretary of State for the United States, every single state, go to their website and see what other businesses might have the name. Now this is good not only from a legal perspective, because if you're competing with another company that has a similar name, the secretary might turn you down and you might have to name it something else.

So think about that. Think about the competition standpoint, or you competing with them for, again, search results, making it confusing from a marketing standpoint. If somebody searches up TNT Marketing and they see three TNTs, which one is yours? So you want to make it as easy as possible to stand out and to make people view you as the only one that they need to go with. So finding a unique name. Now, are you naming it after yourself or something entirely unique? Think about long-term vision. Are you trying to exit the business in the future? How closely do you want it to be relying on your name?

Are you well known in your local town? For example, if your family's been there for six generations, you might have some credibility to your last name. You might want to name it after yourself. Maybe not. It's a decision you're going to have to think of. You're also going to want to purchase your domain. Go to GoDaddy or whatever the domain sites are, I use GoDaddy for all of mine. Search the .com, search the .org. You don't need to go and purchase all of them if you don't want to, but it's never going to hurt. You're also going to want to secure a social media page.

This means Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, or X, pretty much all the major networks, to YouTube. You need to get at TNT Marketing, going off this example, or TNT Construction. Let's call it TNT Construction. You're going to want to get the handles on social media. Just TNTConstruction, no spaces, no periods, no nothing, and get that done. Now if you're doing a local business and let's say TNT Construction isn't available, put your state. So let's say it's in Minnesota, it would be TNT Construction MN or GA or FL, and that will help you stand out and also give you some geographical location benefit there. You're also going to want to set up a Google My Business listing.

This is quintessential. Google takes up 95% of searches, and it is also what a lot of artificial intelligence language models build off of, Google searches and Google results. So you want to get a Google My Business listing, which is going to be what pops up whenever you search up a local Mexican restaurant. You see the Mexican restaurant with all the reviews and information. You need to fill one out for your business and think about getting on other listings that would be applicable, like Angie's List or Yelp, things of that nature. That will basically ensure that you're able to dominate the first page of Google, dominate on social media, if you're going to make social media a part of your strategy.

But more importantly, basically just [establish] the credibility there that you might have. You could think about doing the BBB. A lot of people don't realize this, but you have to pay to be accredited with the Better Business Bureau. So it's like a hit or miss if you want to invest the money. But that's what I would say. Then from there, you could think about, oh, this guy, let's call him Blake Weston, Blake Weston, who is the owner of TNT Construction, and then you could talk about how you started your company, some of the challenges, what your focuses are. Then you could go and start getting on podcasts or contributing to people locally, doing sponsorships, et cetera, and becoming the face of that business, and then driving people towards the business.

But I think, again, too, understanding what activities are contributing to revenues, and there are so many different things that you could do that are not revenue centric, where they might contribute to revenue over the next five years, but not the first six months. If you're starting a business, you need six months, you don't need five years. So I think finding a little bit of a balance to do both is important.

Isaac Mashman1:03:41

It is, but I would recommend somebody listen to that because I just gave you the blueprint towards building a business brand from a very early point. Then determining the brand colors and making sure it all looks the same, getting a good logo, but all those things are relatively easy and you could even use AI to do logo design in 2024. So it's not as difficult as it was 20 years ago.

Isaac Mashman1:04:11

Then you would be the authority figure in construction. But you would need to be a little bit more specific than that, because construction is such a macro view. What kind of construction? So it's like, are you doing residential, commercial? Do you have a specific design characteristic? Like I'm thinking about one of the designers I follow. I think his name is [Danny Wang]. He has a lot of these ultra luxury mansions out in California and the modern contemporary thing. That's what he's known for. I think it's like Danny Wang Design or something along those lines. But I think it's important to distance yourself at the same time too.

That's where I can explain this: when somebody's leaving a review for your business, you don't want them to always refer to you in the review. So let's say they're leaving a review for the Pond Digger and every single review is talking about Eric Triplett. They need to also be talking about other employees that are at the business. So I think that there needs to be some separation there, which I won't get into a whole lot. But being the face of the business, by being on podcasts and talking about it through social media, you have your business page, you have your personal page, you can invite, this is one of the easiest things, if you have a Facebook page for your business, you can go to that page, click on the three dots on your profile, and invite all of your Facebook friends.

So if you're starting out this brand new Facebook page, you could literally invite the 3,000 friends and family that you have on Facebook. They will go to your page, like it, and get it off the ground, and then you can make a massive announcement on your personal page and say, hey, I'm launching TNT Construction. [Go] check it out. I'm serving this location. This is what our focus is, [here's] the portfolio, tntconstructionminnesota.com. Simple as that. That's really all you need at the very surface level at the very beginning to get something off the ground and operational. Okay. Cool. Yeah, you could write a book in the future.

Then as an example, if you're doing TNT Construction, you're building up off of this brand. Now, you could do something like launching an explosive construction business, [which] builds up off of the TNT brand. You can do so many things. You could do, like, a TNT podcast, like all of those different things.

Isaac Mashman1:06:28

Not much. It's more on branding, actually. I would say a significant portion is on branding. The longest chapter in my book is on branding. The largest section, same with my second edition. It's like the branding section is significantly longer. Most of it is on branding. Marketing, it varies based off what the person wants to do. So if they want to be a public speaker, the marketing strategy is outside of social media and getting on podcasts, since those are going to be the same regardless of niche. But if you're a public speaker, now you need to think about, okay, maybe you need to start reaching out to different event venues or getting a publicist or getting onto a speaker bureau, and those are marketing tactics there.

So depending on who I'm working with and what their focus is and what their goals are, then I would focus on changing some of the marketing side. But a lot of it is, how do you create an omnipresent personal brand? How can you either verify that you are credible or more importantly show people that you're credible? Because you could be a doctor offline, but if nobody knows that you're a doctor online, how are they going to trust your advice? So you have to let people know that you're an expert and do things that validate that. So a significant portion is branding, and marketing is something that stays the same, but 60% branding at least.

Isaac Mashman1:08:07

Because, trying to be authentic, you're already fucking up. But you could argue that what I just did was authentic because that's what I would say if I was on a client call or working with somebody. I'd be like, if you're trying to be authentic, you're fucking up. You just need it to actually be you. Now, obviously, you might not go immediately in on the conspiracy theories that you have that might put a tin foil hat on. You might not do that at first glance or talk about your political viewpoints immediately, but introducing those things over a period of time, there's nothing wrong with that as long as you're not doing it to purposely divide people or you're so far out.

But I think mistakes-wise, people are messing up because they're looking like everybody else, because they're treating it like a personal [page]. So social media is a personal endeavor. Your Facebook page, your Instagram page is a personal page, but if you're only posting about what you're eating or family events or taking photos, you're not delivering anything that is tangible. So I think that with every piece of content you're doing, there are four outcomes. A piece of content can connect you with somebody or connect them with you. It can entertain them. You can educate a person, or you can inspire them or motivate them to take action.

So what is that photo of you eating a sandwich doing? What is the photo of your family doing? It's connecting you, but that's pretty much it. But recording a video, talking about something, is going to be much more likely to entertain them or educate them and connect them and motivate them to take action. So let's say you're doing a training video on digging a pond or starting a pond business, you could say, hey, these are some of the mistakes that I made. This is what you can do to avoid it, or you could talk about your craziest experience for the most badass aquarium you built in your career.

Now you're educating, inspiring, motivating, and connecting. You're hitting all four of those targets. So people need to have an intention behind what they're doing on social media and the outcome they're looking to get, which again, could be revenue, driving awareness to a cause, or just because they want to be well known. But if we're all business people here, it's like, we want to build a business, we want to make revenue and do something good.

Isaac Mashman1:10:24

Well, you know, man, I've done dozens of podcasts at this point. My aim is 100 by the end of this year, 100 in 2024. A lot of the podcasts that I was originally on, it was so centered on my story and about the [early] days and about how I got started and all this other stuff. There came a point where I'm like, every person has one of those struggle stories, or single parent, or whatever it is. But I want to also now make sure that I'm telling people exactly what I know and showing that I know. I need to get into strategy, so I'm getting into strategy.

If I'm talking, like, I typically want to work with somebody who's a contractor, but being able to share the advice that I'm giving today, [they're] able to be like, no, this applies to you too, where you could take these things and get results by building your personal brand or by building your business brand in the ways that I'm doing. That's why I'm like, if they need to listen to it a couple of times, by all means, or take notes or do a part two. So I enjoy these kind of things though, because it gives me a chance to shine and also think critically.

Isaac Mashman1:14:05

Well, it's interesting, it might actually be because they're closely aligned with you more than you think, because Dr. Phil, he has actually made a little bit of a pivot with his personal brand and with what he's known for, because you think about it. For the longest time, I would have grouped him with the Jerry Springer category, because everything he did was talking about people who had fucked up upbringings and messed up family situations and all those things. But he's actually moved into the realm of politics and he's been interviewed by Joe Rogan and different people. He's launching his own television network and talking about some of these issues from a more [political angle].

I don't think people realize he was actually a psychologist for years before he did the Dr. Phil show. He had his own practice and everything. So he's talking about things politically. So I'll pick it up and read it and you'd probably be surprised. It's actually probably because that person is aligned with you and they're like, I think you'd probably enjoy this. I don't think it's the same way that you think. But I think again, then, having a balance between what you're posting and the intention behind it. So I have what I call the Skyline Strategy, your personal brand, like you're building your own city skyline, so to speak.

What are you putting in it? What buildings are you building? So for every two posts that are business related, you do one personal post. So you might do one talking about your craziest pond design. You might do one talking about how you got started in the business or some of your early mistakes. You might do a third post that's about family. So it's a two to one ratio, two business posts, one personal. That creates this good balance to where people are still viewing you as an authority, but they're starting to connect with you more. Because some people, man, you go to their page and they have only polished videos that are talking about business or sales or marketing or whatever.

You don't know the first thing about them or their upbringing. If you're thinking about longevity here, all of us want to have long careers, we want to be remembered. Are you going to remember the person who you only know what they do, or do you connect with them for who they are? I'm going to connect with the person who I can relate to and who I know versus the professional. I could go to any other person who does what you do. That's it. Oh, shiny objects, a new thing. This is better. But if I'm like, no, this is Eric. I like him as a man.

I like him for the fact that he is a patriot or whatever. It doesn't matter if there's a different professional out there who does the same thing you do, maybe even better than you. I don't care. I'm still going to go with you. There's loyalty, and I think that getting back to the place of brand loyalty is going to be something more and more people do in the next couple of years. The next decade, I think that brand loyalty is going to come back.

Isaac Mashman1:18:06

Yeah. Or like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. You don't think of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson for just being an actor or for having Teremana Tequila or for being a wrestler or for any of the individual things. You think of him for him. But he has done all of these different things. They all work because of who's associated with it. I think that a lot of times people think that personal branding is only meant for celebrities and for people who are top tier business people. But they don't realize that they could be consciously building up their personal brand on any level. There are levels to this, obviously, there's a hierarchy of personal branding, but every interaction you're having is contributing to it.

So it's like that person you're shaking hands with in the field, they're going to remember you. They're going to talk to their buddies about you. If you do an excellent job or you get a review from them, like, always collect testimonials, like edification. It's so important, being able to be edified by somebody else. It was one of the first things I was taught in network marketing when I was first in the industry, and then I left or whatever, but one of the first things they taught in sales was like, bring on your mentor and talk them up, and your mentor is going to talk highly about you, and so there's a degree of trust here that is established.

It's like collecting those video testimonials and saying, hey, can you record a quick minute talking about what we were able to do for you? Or can you leave a positive review on Google? That's so important. What I will say is it's a common practice, I think, for smaller businesses. You technically cannot offer incentives for positive reviews. So if you're thinking about doing a giveaway for a positive review, leave a review, get a new grill, that's actually technically illegal with the FTC. That's something I came to find out last year.

Isaac Mashman1:19:58

I think the biggest thing that I would tell a contractor, man, right now is, don't think, and I say this because my grandfather was a carpenter, I come from a blue collar upbringing, don't think that just because you're in the contracting world, you can't have a public persona. I know it's especially true that sometimes you want to be more private. I think sacrificing some of that privacy for the public exposure that can result in positive benefits for your business or for yourself is something worth considering. Again, I would look at Mike Rowe and what he's built and use that kind of as the example of what you might want to consider your personal brand being, that he's written a book.

You can write a book about whatever your field is, whatever your business is. You can start a podcast on it, or you could have guests on and have conversations like this. You're in control of what you're putting out there. It might not be perfect at the beginning, but there are so many tools now that make the barrier to entry so low, where you could be putting out some really high quality [content].

Isaac Mashman1:21:13

25? You said 22. I'm 23. Oh, yeah. It sounds so stupid. It sounds so stupid.

Isaac Mashman1:21:50

Yeah. Yeah, I'm everywhere on social media at Isaac Mashman. You can find me there. You can grab a copy of my book, Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence, on Amazon, or wait for the second edition to come out later this year. You can also go to my websites. Go to Mashman.org. That's where I think I'm going to start sending people, because I have all my other sites linked there. Yeah, Eric, man, it's been a pleasure being on. I know this was a heavy episode, but I think playing this back would be [valuable].