Identity Positioning for Connection

Isaac Mashman0:37

Christian, thank you for the invitation to be here.

Isaac Mashman0:44

Yeah, that's a very in-depth story. So I'll trim off some of the fat here and there. But I'm originally from Jacksonville, Florida. I was raised in large part by a single mother. My grandfather worked in a cabinet shop. I remember getting up with my grandmother to go take [him] across town, and we'd pick [him] up after school. Growing up, obviously money wasn't something that we had a lot of, especially being in that single parent household. But as I progressed through school, I was a straight A student, and mom kind of leaned into me and said, you need to go to college, you need to go ahead and get a traditional degree.

That's what I was planning to do. I graduated with a 4.44 weighted GPA. My senior year, I went to my counselor and I said, hey, I'm not doing college. The reason why is I got introduced to the industry of network marketing. I ultimately got out of the industry after joining three companies on four different occasions. But I wanted to have more control over my life, more control over executive decisions, more control over, frankly, the reputation, because we all know the industry has some negative connotations with it. I went from that industry into music management and I wanted to do a record label, but Christian, I realized then that the only way to make money in the music industry is either taking it to a very high level where you're having millions and millions of people listening, going on tours, and selling merchandise, or you do aggressive 360 deals where you take a piece of everything the person owns.

I didn't like that at all. Thinking about what I could do and what I was already kind of versed in, I realized that I was helping these musicians build out their personal brands. I was already building my own personal brand in my own life. It was amazing because every industry that I moved into, every business I pivoted from, people still followed me for me. They followed me for the person. I thought there was a lesson to be learned there, and there was, because now you have the ability to build out your own personal brand and your own reputation for the individual, as well as the professional in terms of the value that you can provide. Now I'm building Mashman Consulting Group, and it's a lot of fun. Here I am.

Isaac Mashman4:18

Like I do. Those aren't really the people that would come to me. The people who come to me are those who already understand the value in it. But I think let's kind of set the foundation here, Christian, to define what personal branding even is, because depending on the professional, depending on the expert you talk to, they're going to give you different definitions. Now the best definition that I've been able to find is your personal brand is quite literally you. It's who you are. Your personal makeup, your professional career, your outlook, your ambition, your characteristics, the fact that you have a beautiful beard that I'm fighting to grow myself, that is a part of your personal brand.

Now the phrase has become so, no, I don't even want to use the term overused, but it's definitely a term that more and more people are latching onto and using in their day-to-day conversations, whether in business conversations with associates or online, saying, hey, this is how you can grow your personal brand on Instagram. But in 1997, a business management consultant by the name of Tom Peters (he's since retired, he's very hard to reach) wrote an article called "The Brand Called You" for Fast Company. In this 1997 article, he used the example of high paid consultants and executives, and how all of these professionals, even in the emails that they receive and who reaches out to them, have a personal brand.

He compared it to Nike, as that is the company brand. But now there's this introduction of personal brands. If we go further [back], even though the phrase wasn't used explicitly, Napoleon Hill, in the chapter "Organized Planning," talked about how somebody could build a portfolio, take that portfolio to their prospective employer, and say, this is all of the valuable things I can contribute, and land a higher paying job that they actually wanted to land. That is an early example of a self-help, New Thought author using that terminology. So today, if you don't want to talk about yourself because you feel like it's narcissistic, because you feel like it's self-promotional, which a lot of people do feel, you have to take a step back and ask yourself why you would be promoting it.

Why would you want to talk about anything you have going on? There are three main reasons. Number one is you want to make money. Especially in the creative space, how can you fight through with all the other videographers, the agency owners, the photographers, the comedians, the influencers, if you are not leveraging every tool at your disposal? So money's the first. The second is mission. So this you see a lot with philanthropic people, people who are philanthropy forward, or billionaires who go and use their money and want to launch a foundation or things like that. Now we could dispute the tax rebate and the tax benefits, if it's actually genuine.

But some of the best public speakers or some of the best advocates are people who have experienced those exact situations that they're talking about, whether that be certain diseases or debilitating conditions, or domestic abuse survivors. [Think about] people like Les Brown, who started out with a stutter, who used that to become his power and his leverage, and built a fantastic career. So you have the mission oriented individuals. Then the third category, which obviously, if you don't feel like you want to self-promote at all, you don't fall underneath, is vanity. You do see that especially in the creative space because the artist wants to have more people seeing their artwork.

Vanity is the reason why celebrities exist and why Hollywood exists. So asking yourself and determining the intention behind building your personal brand will help you develop the strategy to where you're not just saying, hey, look at how good I am, but you also have something that you can deliver to your audience. If you could approach them, just like doing a podcast, and say, hey, by listening to The Profitable Creative, you're going to be able to get educated in how to build a profitable agency. You're going to be entertained by interesting conversations. You're going to feel motivated to take action, and you're going to feel connected not only to me but all of the other people who are experiencing the same issues.

Those are the four outcomes of content. Education, entertainment, motivation, and connection. If you check off those four in the content you're producing, you're not doing it [only] for you. You're definitely getting and reaping the benefits, but it's also the people who are learning from you as the expert, the person who's been in the field for 20, 30, 40 years. I think that's a wonderful thing. So it's a very nuanced conversation around selfishness and selflessness.

Isaac Mashman8:57

Yes, well, I wrote the first edition of the book Personal Branding. I have a copy here, [let me] squeeze all the glare [out]. One of the perks of having a beautiful office in the skies is you have a beautiful view, but I'm trying to pinpoint how I could get the actual glare to be perfect. But I wrote this book in 2021, and it's rather short. I just wanted to get something out there and kind of establish the philosophy of personal branding in reference to a person's education on the subject. I knew as soon as I published it that I wanted to do a second edition.

I didn't want to do a separate book or anything like that. I wanted to expand on the work. Something like Dale Carnegie with How to Win Friends and Influence People. If you were to pick up an edition from 1930 and then pick up an edition from 2024, it's going to be a little bit different. So I wanted to expand on it, and I've been writing over the past couple of years in different bursts and adding more information. But it's coming out in the next, well, next two weeks actually, at the time of recording this. I'm talking about not just what personal branding is, but why you should be leveraging [it], the mindset you need, how to brand yourself.

I'm going into subjects such as audio branding, seamless branding, the colors you use and the colors you wear in the clothing. I'm talking about reputation management, how to deal with defamation, libel, slander, how to deal with crisis. I'm talking about marketing as well. So it's really going to be the holistic, dare I say, Bible in the personal branding space. It's going to clock in at over 60,000 words and over 300 pages. So I'm really excited about it. I poured my heart and soul into it because, Christian, I believe that there's so much information out there, and people need to have that quality information and the right information so they're not just chasing vanity metrics or thinking short-sighted. Yeah, there are enough hucksters out there.

Isaac Mashman11:23

Well, when you have enough people coming to you and asking for advice in a particular subject, that's usually an indicator that you have a natural expertise, you have a natural way of thinking, that would make sense. It was actually, I won't go into the full story, but I was in California, living in Bakersfield, California, sleeping on the floor, and this was right around the time of.

Isaac Mashman11:53

Bakersfield, California, in general, was a low point. But the thing is I needed to take a risk. So I had a round trip flight. I was flown out to VidCon in 2019 by Facebook. The precursor to Facebook Reels and Instagram Reels was an application called Lasso. It ultimately failed, but it evolved and was integrated into what became Reels today. I was flown out as a star creator, had a round trip flight. I was shuttled all around in the Sprinter van. I had the creator pass at VidCon. For most creatives, and I never really identify as a creative myself, [it's] more that strategic mind. But it was that defining moment in my own life where I could have flown back, but then I would have been in the same situation I was trying to leave.

Isaac Mashman12:44

Then the pandemic rolled around. It wasn't something that we knew a lot about. We didn't know if it was going to kill everybody who came in contact with it. We didn't know if it was the common cold. We didn't have any of that information. The artist was planning a concert in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I was going to fly out. He had [canvassed] the area and had all the tickets sold. We decided to cancel that concert, and he eventually lost his passion. I knew that, all right, well, maybe the music industry isn't for me. As much as I love it, and I still love it, and it's given me a lot of insights, I decided to launch a public relations firm.

That was the precursor of Mashman Consulting Group, MCG for short. I was building that for several years. I started in 2020 and then I publicly dissolved it last year. I felt like it came with a lot of labels. I think as creatives, labels are something that we pay attention to because a lot of times there is some truth in it. I was never offering public relations services. It's not like I was helping you get into press, pitching on your behalf or writing press releases for you. Those were subjects that we covered, and, yes, how could you become somebody who is press worthy rather than the person who [tries to pay their way] into Forbes?

It's like, Christian, I've been able to land Forbes placements myself and I haven't paid for one of them. I haven't paid for any of my press. I hold that really close to my heart. I knew it was a change of pace.

Isaac Mashman14:21

It took me another year to dissolve the firm. But I knew that I wanted to have something that I could scale and really attach myself to. That's where Mashman Consulting Group was born, rather than running away from the label of consultant or doing consulting work. I had a mentor tell me, he's like, Isaac, effectively, you're a consultant. I'm like, no, I'm not a consultant. This is a public relations firm. He's like, it's a consultancy. I'm like, all right. Through enough conversations and enough experiences, struggles, I guess you could say, without going into detail about any of them, I decided to dissolve that and launch MCG.

But it was definitely not really a scary moment. I don't feel like I got any pushback because I already had my personal brand developed. I had gone from somebody who had no audience to thousands of people online. I landed press features. I had the experiences. I was flown out places to Washington, DC and to Los Angeles by other companies. Then eventually I was like, you know what, let me just lock in here and commit to it and not worry about the label. [I] view that label as kind of a gift, and here I am.

Isaac Mashman15:29

I didn't feel like I had the expertise. Even though I did, really, if you were to look into it, it was a lot of imposter syndrome. But I mean, Christian, you go online and you see these guys renting fake Lamborghinis, wearing Rolexes that might be from some Chinese bootleg, and launching a program or a course or this high ticket mastermind, and that's never been my intention. It's like, I want to build myself into that legacy, and I don't really care about legacy, but the way that you're perceived, you want to be that legacy business figure, you want to be that celebrity business figure. I didn't want to take that shortcut, and I felt like consultant had that negative connotation with it, and you look at McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group and any of these other high-ticket management companies.

They're getting paid billions of dollars, and they're also the people who are responsible for the opiate crisis. That's kind of a scary thought. So I did run away from that label for the longest time, but then I realized, you know what, there's nothing wrong with that. You clearly have the expertise. People are coming to you for advice. You're at a certain point now to where you're able to go and speak at events. It's like, run with it. Run with it, Isaac. Man, that imposter syndrome and that fear definitely ate away at me for the longest time.

Isaac Mashman18:45

Because [you don't call] yourself an expert, Christian. That's the big indication here. You are not ever going to call yourself an expert. Other people call you an expert and then you live into that title.

Isaac Mashman19:35

Well, let me [say], number one, when it comes to your personal brand, you have it whether you want it or not. Exactly. It's like, the moment you were born, I'd make the argument that you've had your personal brand even farther [back] than you have memory. Your mom named you, your mom and dad determined where you were born. Think about even miscarriages. This is kind of, I've never used this example, but think about a family who has a miscarriage baby. That baby is called an angel baby. They still have a name. They still have a reputation. I would say that they even have a personal brand, because people who are in faith believe that they'll be reunited with that baby in heaven.

I would say that every single person who's walked this earth has had a personal brand. I would also say that you actually don't have a memory of every person you've ever met because you've forgotten about some of them. If you've forgotten about them, that is a failed execution on their part for their own personal brand. Now that doesn't mean that they even care. It's like you're not going to remember every cashier you meet at McDonald's or every person you meet out at a retail store. But the ones who have the greatest impact on you, you definitely will remember. Or the people who you can go back to 10 years, 20 years after your high school graduation, and you're like, hey, how are you doing, Johnny?

Great to see you. The people who you were closest to. I would say in your case, you say that you have more expertise than everybody else, isn't it your obligation to share that with [others]?

Isaac Mashman21:40

Well, I have. But it's more of a strategy that I developed earlier this year because a lot of people, you'll go online and follow their social media, and they only talk about the business. They only talk about what they're doing. They're only talking about how they can make you money, how they make money. It's very one-sided. If another expert came along, another person who had maybe more engaging content, you wouldn't have any loyalty to that one individual because you only know them for the professional, what they could do for you. But if you incorporate that personal aspect and actually realize, hey, they're a father, they love the outdoors, they love to travel, they're an advocate for X, Y, and Z cause, you are going to become more attached to that person because there's more mutual connection, there's more rapport and more trust.

So I wrote an academic paper earlier this year, and the entire paper is going to be at the end of the second edition. It's called Identity Positioning™. Because, in fact, what you're doing is you're positioning your identity for the world to see, for everybody else to see. So what you're really doing is you're publicizing your identity here. Because your identity is not just your career. It's what makes you you, your interests. The fact that you grow a beard, the fact that you're dressed in a black button-up, the fact that you have a trophy and what I assume is probably a sound system in the back, that tells me that you probably like music, you probably have a record player.

Then now we can go into it and have a conversation about records, and maybe there's some shared interest there, some shared musicians that we listen to. These are ways to establish rapport with your audience at scale. So I would say that when looking at this, instead of a tactic for you to try to find some strategy to make money and make it about you, if you feel like that is a big hurdle, we'll make it about the other person and say, you know what, I could create a video right now and talk about where agency owners go wrong. I could talk about how creatives battle with imposter syndrome or some of the similar struggles.

If your clients come to you and say, hey, Christian, I'm struggling with X, Y, and Z. I don't know what to do. That's a common issue, a common pain point, just like me with press. People are like, how can I get into the press? Well, let me record a video and tell you about it. Let me host a webinar and educate multiple people about it. So I think that changing your perspective there from brand about you to maybe the outward deliverables that you're able to give is probably a good thing. It's something that will give you that sense of mission. Not everybody listening to this needs to have some mission of curing polio or making it to where they're the number one creative in their space.

But I will say that positioning yourself as a public figure and as somebody who can stand out and cut through the noise definitely comes with more benefits than it does downsides and drawbacks. That's really the key here. Positioning yourself as a public figure for other people to follow and look to. That's a gift. In Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. I'm not using that exact example in my book, but I talk about how this is a gift. It's an obligation. It's an expectation. Just because you have the power to do something doesn't mean you need to do it. You need to have integrity. You need to have a moral compass.

I would say that the world needs more people who are able to say, hey, I have legitimacy. I can get you legitimate results. I'm here to educate and here to help.

Isaac Mashman26:54

Well, an artist [is] a great example to use because, in fact, you introduced her as an oil painter. Now I know and have this frame of [reference] in my mind, saying, all right, well, she's not dealing with clay. She's not a potter. She isn't somebody who's using charcoal or black and grays. So I'm able to paint an image there. That's a part of her personal brand. Then you think about other artists like Van Gogh or Dalí or H.R. Giger, who influenced the Alien movies. These are individuals who had a particular style, and that's what made them attractive. Some of them after death, but some of them when they were alive.

And today you have these people who are creating artwork, and they're like, hey, [I'm] posting my artwork until it reaches my audience. These are videos that are reaching potentially billions of people, and they're becoming known as an artist in that particular field. That is something unique that they're able to offer. Then what your daughter's doing is she's maintaining and protecting her reputation. She's also making conscious decisions about, all right, well, this gallery isn't going to make sense because they only focus on nature landscapes. I don't paint nature landscapes, but this gallery over here might be more eclectic or be more in line with what I'm trying to do.

Then the other thing to move on to [is] the conversation surrounding niching down. I'm not an advocate for microniching and being like, I only work with public figures in this particular field who are trying to become public speakers. I'm not going to do that. But I am going to know that I'm not going to be for everybody in terms of finances. If you're not qualified to work with me today, guess what? I have an entire slew of content that you can consume to eventually get to that point. So even in your business from a business standpoint, it's also a fantastic lead magnet and a way to generate leads because you're reaching the masses, you're educating people, you're becoming that mentor figure, like one of my earliest figures is Gary Vee, like so many other people in [my generation].

I don't follow him today, but he will forever have a place in my heart and mind because he's kind of the introduction into this entire world of business. If you could be that person who's the first mentor somebody has without even knowing that you're their mentor, now you have a place in their heart and a part in their mind and life and outcome. I think that's a beautiful thing. So hence, I didn't see the conversation flowing this way, but it's definitely an important conversation to have.

Isaac Mashman30:38

Establishing those boundaries is actually making her work more exclusive, which means in the long run she'd probably make more money. So again, you're balancing short-term vision with long-term planning here. She could sell the prints for $20 or $30. But it would be better if she could say, hey, this is not [for] reproduction in any form. So now, yeah, that's going to make her become more sought after. It's kind of like the photographer who only does weddings. In that situation, you can either limit yourself or you can become the number one wedding photographer that celebrities pay and have come out. So it's really like a bunch of business decisions here too.

How you want to build your brand is really, you have to ask yourself, what do I want to be known for long term, who do I want to be working with, how do I want to be perceived, how do I want my clients to be? Then from there it's up to you to kind of fill in the little points of strategy and say, all right, well, now I need to go out and get into the press or I need to have more testimonials. I need to have a better reputation for my business. In the creative space too, a lot of creatives don't feel like they have a separate business.

So there's this gray, blurry area between the person and the business and what they're providing. If you're a photographer and you're not trying to build out a photography business where you have other photographers, it's like you are your photography business. It relies heavily on you. Now, if you decide to scale or you want to bring on more videographers and more photographers and a team behind you, now you're starting to build a separate business and moving away from the sole proprietor into the business owner. It's like for me, with the consulting business, I'm never going to scale to nine figures as an individual consultant. But how I can scale to nine figures over the next decade is by bringing on a team of consultants, delegating roles, and having them go out and get their own clients and expand the reach of the business.

The lawyer who starts out and only practices law and doesn't have any other paralegals or doesn't have any other lawyers or partners underneath their team is going to be very limited. So I would say building out your personal brand will also make it more attractive for you to hire the right people and people who are aligned with you because now, if somebody wanted to become a consultant for me, they'd have to fall underneath a very set and strict list of contingencies here and be able to believe in the philosophy that I'm presenting, be able to believe in the moral compass, the integrity, the ethics that we're setting forth in working with our clients.

So it gives you more power. Yeah, I don't see any drawback. If you were to ask me, the only drawback in building your personal brand to a high level would be a lack of privacy. But we don't have privacy anyway. Anyway, I feel like privacy is such a [myth]. It's like, oh yeah, I want to be a private individual. All right, if you don't want to share that you have kids, if you don't want your kids to be a part of your personal brand, don't publicize it. But the moment you take a photo of your kid and put it on your Instagram, you'll forever be known and people will know you're a parent.

People might become interested in your life and their life. They'll know your kid's name. So it's really a matter of determining the amount of public information you want made available. For example, if you were to go to Google and type in any piece of information about me, like where I was born, my parents, things like that, you'd be able to find a lot of information. I made that decision early on.

Isaac Mashman35:12

That functions without me. That's an entirely different beast. That's something that I've been focused on [at this point]. This year, I'm doing public speaking, I'm getting paid for that, I'm publishing my book. Then now I'm getting ready to bring on a COO, a long-term business partner. He's also the editor for my book and I've known him for years now. It came about because of a podcast interview in 2019. He was in college and he's like, hey, Isaac, I'm doing this podcast. I saw your content online on Twitter. I would love to have a conversation with you. One thing led to another. That's how that relationship got built.

Now I want to bring him on to where he can handle the day to day, where he can bring on more consultants, where we can build this into a structure where I could focus on the things [I'm best at]. Then, while also doing that, I'm scaling my consulting rate, because now, yeah, you might want to work with me. But it's like, what I'm going to be charging is going to be higher than the other consultants on my team. You'd still be able to get great results and great value, and [have] an association. Viewing your business as a living organism, as something that has culture, something that has a brand, something that has a vision, something that has set standards, all of these things are parts of a business that most people very rarely get to.

You look at Robert Kiyosaki, here comes the network marketing side of me. If you look at Robert Kiyosaki's Cashflow Quadrant, the four squares, and it's like 60% are employees, 30% are self-employed, 4% are business owners, and 1% are investors. Most people fall underneath the self-employed category. I have for the longest time. But now it's like bringing on a booking agent, for example, to help me with public speaking is an example of expanding my team and building a team around my personal brand. Now, not everybody will do that. But if you want to take it to a higher level, whatever your mission might be, whatever your purpose might be, these are all requirements.

Yeah, it might take you five years to start compounding results. But once you get that ball rolling and the reputation is set, your reputation is going to be working for you 24/7. In my book, I talk about how having a strong personal brand is like having a promoter, a marketer, a representative working for you even when you're in bed, because how many emails do I get every single night when I'm asleep in my bed that are coming to me, pitching me, asking me? These are all examples of my personal brand speaking for myself. That's how opportunities can start to become attracted to you, because you're, well, you're attractive. It's like, I appreciate, oh, you weren't talking about [me]. I love the beard, though. You got the Greek god Zeus going on.

Isaac Mashman38:09

Don't purchase the first edition, purchase the second one. It'll cost you a couple dollars extra, but it will pay off in dividends when you buy it. February 21st, which is next Friday, it's going to be available on Amazon and pretty much every other distributor I can possibly get it into. So it will probably be available on target.com, walmart.com. Once you do things like this enough times, you learn a few mistakes and a few better ways of going about it, and so with the publication process here, you will not be able to tell that this book was self-published, which is done intentionally. I'm pouring my heart and soul into this thing.

[That's] partly why I feel like my speech and the way I'm telling stories and the podcast is kind of all over the place, because I'm in this author writing mode. I'm like, I have 100 plus sub chapters of information I'm putting down on paper, so my apologies if at any point.

Isaac Mashman39:05

For that, you would go to MashmanCG.com. It's Mashman Consulting Group. We have a really cool AI chatbot that's on the bottom. It's called KPI. You go through that, have a quick conversation, and it'll take you to an overview presentation with an onboarding survey. Or you could reach out to me directly if you want to work with me, have me help you with your personal brand, put a strategy in place, and optimize it and scale it. So Christian, it's been a great conversation.