Positioned for Authority: How to Build a Personal Brand That Sells

Isaac Mashman2:10

Pleasure to be here, Erica. Excited to kick off this, well, heading into the rest of this quarter and quarter four with a massive podcast tour and just getting back out into the field myself, although I'm not out picking up dog poop. I'm scooping in my own way, scooping up clients, scooping up content. Really grateful for this opportunity and for your time. I really like what you said, that you were going through a little bit of an identity crisis because one of my core IPs and core philosophies is called Identity Positioning™ and so I feel like that fits in really, really well. So excited to dive in and provide some value to your people.

Isaac Mashman3:00

Yeah. Well, I feel like whenever we mention branding, we need to be specific and talk about personal branding because personal branding and branding are entirely different. I don't want to jump the gun too quickly, but personal branding is essentially who you are. You're your own personal brand. Whereas with a business, you give it identity, you give it colors, you give it all of the meaning that is associated with your business, just like with your scooping business. So I got started in personal branding kind of by accident. I got started in entrepreneurship back when I was in high school. In 2017, I did the whole landscaping sort of thing over the summer.

Isaac Mashman3:43

I would be biking through the neighborhood with a lawnmower on the back on a trailer, trying to get lawns to cut or do different lawn work and that sort of thing. That was the very beginning, the infancy of my own business journey. I got into network marketing in 2018. That was where I started to learn about personal development because I don't come from that personal development forward background. My mom was a single mom for, not most, but a good portion of my childhood until she later remarried. I was that atypical entrepreneur, that atypical student. I was top 10 in my class when I graduated, had like a 4.44 weighted GPA.

I was set to go to college. I was like one SAT test away, 10 points away from a full ride in Florida. I decided my senior year not to do that. Much to my mom's dismay and disappointment, she was like, seriously? I'm like, yeah, business, entrepreneurship. You know what, Erica, that was on a personal note. I say that whenever you're building your personal brand, there are three motivators. You're motivated by money, vanity, or mission. Early on, I was extremely motivated by money because I didn't like going to school with like the thrifted clothes. I didn't like the thrifted shoes. I didn't like that feeling of wearing the Walmart T-shirts, which ironically is all I buy now because they're comfortable. I wanted to make a lot of money.

Isaac Mashman5:04

That was my start. I'll skip over some of the other parts, but I went from business opportunity to business opportunity and eventually I started to build Mashman Ventures, which was right at the end of the pandemic. I had, I wouldn't say a failed venture, but an [eclipsed vision] venture where I was in the music industry, because from Jacksonville, Florida, I went to Bakersfield, California, where I met people and I spent some summers there.

Isaac Mashman6:14

I got out of that and launched Mashman Ventures, which was where I started to work with persons rather than brands.

Isaac Mashman6:25

At that point, my mind started to navigate towards working with the people rather than businesses. I did some early consultations, not really knowing what my own philosophy stood for. But I knew that while I was going from business to business, from the time I was 18 or 17 to the time I was in my early 20s, that I was building my personal brand, and despite moving between multiple businesses, people would still follow me because they were following me for who I was. They were following me for Isaac. I thought that was really fascinating, because I would have assumed that they would have stopped following me because they would have stopped getting value based off their niche and based off their own interests.

I saw the opposite. That got me thinking about, well, what is this relationship with personal branding, and how can I start connecting with more people? Is there even a blue ocean opportunity for me to move into? There was, and the rest is history. I went from Mashman Ventures, which I defined as a public relations firm, to Mashman Consulting Group in 2024. It's been an awesome experience. It's been a very quiet year due to family issues, which you and I talked about on our personal call last week. But now I'm really excited to set the groundwork, or hit the ground running, so to speak. I've already laid the groundwork, and now I'm really just building this.

Isaac Mashman9:43

Yeah, and you know, there's a symbiotic relationship that occurs between the brand, the business, and then the person, the founder. This is where a lot of people go wrong, they treat their business like it's their personal brand, almost. I see this a lot in small entrepreneurs or startups. They go to their company pages and they use first person pronouns. They're like, I love that. It's like, no, you're a business, you're an entity. That's really important to distinguish because as you scale and make more hires and bring more people on, that company's going to take on a form of its own. Then that's an entirely separate conversation about internal marketing to where every employee that works for you is a representation of your company and that gives you an awesome opportunity to train your team up to be your best promoters.

Because if you're talking to somebody, like my mom, for example, working the kind of dead end jobs that she used to do, she would always talk so bad about her jobs, not intentionally, but she would be overworked. She was underpaid. She knew she was underpaid and undervalued. She would just talk about all these things. That created a negative perception in my brain, and in anybody else that she told about her job, about her employer. As entrepreneurs and business owners, if your employee is not satisfied with what they're [paid], what they're employed at, who they're working for, they're going to talk to other people and their friends and associates and their family members.

That can cast negative representation on your business. Then from the actual entrepreneur standpoint, you're your biggest advocate. Gary Vaynerchuk was one of the pioneers in the whole personal branding space, even though he defines personal branding, I believe, in a much different light. Most people do. I'm one of the only, if not the only person that has defined personal branding in such an intrinsic way that associates personal branding with the human condition. What I mean by that is if you think about the theological story of Adam and Eve, right, in Christianity or even Islam, it's the same exact thing.

Isaac Mashman11:50

Those are personal brands. A lot of times today, people associate personal branding with being on social media, but I believe that your personal brand, and this goes to the law of personal branding, was created the moment you were born, and you can make the argument that your personal brand was created when you were in the womb, when you were conceived, your parents named you. They told their family about you, about this little baby, baby Erica, baby Isaac, that they were so happy and excited to meet and to get to know. Think about, and this might be a little bit more of a sad example, miscarriages, babies that are miscarried.

Their brands still live on in a way. They're still remembered, they're still cherished. They still get tattooed on the mom's arm. They still get celebrated every single year. I know that's a painful example, but it's a real example because personal branding is so much more than just social media content and creating nice podcast episodes and creating nice intellectual property. Personal branding is very personal. It's who you are. That goes into your identity. Then from there, you are able to decide what do you want to be known for? What do you want to market? What do you want to share? What do you want to do for the broader market?

So again, [it all] goes to the motivators, money, mission, and vanity. In thinking about your core motivators, the core things that get you up in the morning, are massive when you're building your brand.

Isaac Mashman14:51

Absolutely, absolutely. I was thinking about this the other day on my walk. What is the primary motivator, more than anything? I would have to say money is probably the primary motivator if we were to run a poll with a thousand different people, like we're doing a political poll, I would imagine most people would be motivated by making money [more than anything]. I know I was. I don't think there's any shame in that, and in my book I had to be very conscious about avoiding biases and making people feel like there was a right or wrong answer because you think about this whole holistic what is your why, being a purpose driven entrepreneur, being a faith based entrepreneur.

It can become very cliche and it can become very repetitive and it can make you feel like there's a right and a wrong, and there's not. I believe that you can be motivated by a combination. I know I am. I'm motivated by money. I'm motivated by vanity because being well-known feels good. I am also motivated by mission because I believe that it is my obligation to spread awareness on what personal branding is. Erica, it's an awesome thing to think about my mom because when I first got started, I mentioned earlier that she was distraught over me choosing business over schooling and education. But the other day she called me and she had this idea about creating content online, making money.

I had this conversation with her and I said, compared to a couple months ago where you had an idea for a nonprofit, the place that you're coming from is different. The nonprofit was something that you were genuinely passionate and mission oriented for. Now you're thinking about creating content or [going] digital and finding ways to make money online. That's coming from a place of money being the primary driver and it just didn't feel right. I told her, I was like, I love you, but it's not like you have a skill set you can market. You can't create a course on something. I went through this entire consultation process with my mom that I would typically take a client through.

Isaac Mashman16:48

Then the next day she sends me a message and she's like I've started to work on the kids book. I've always wanted to write. I hop on a call with her and she tells me about the story. She tells me about all these different things. Now mission and passion is the primary motivator and money is secondary while she goes on and looks for a better job. I think about that as a fantastic example of how someone can evolve. It's really contingent on a person's own current experiences. If you're in debt right now and if you're struggling, money's obviously going to be the primary motivator for you.

Whereas if you see and look at these billionaires like Richard Branson, for example, who started out making a lot of money, he made his billions. He was very successful and now he starts a bunch of these non-profit initiatives. We see this all the time. Yeah, you could argue and say that some of them are done for tax breaks, obviously. But a lot of times it's causes that entrepreneur cares about, that magnate cares about. So yeah, they absolutely evolve. I think that if they evolve, that's perfectly okay. As a matter of fact, in my book, one of the exercises is to reevaluate how you've changed and to think about, okay, has your branding changed, has your marketing evolved, and has the actual intention behind why you're doing this changed? That's normal. That's human.

Isaac Mashman19:05

Well, the one thing that has stayed true since your childhood was that you're Erica. That you're Erica. Now, although you lost your maiden name, you're still the same person. You just have a different title next to Erica. I would suggest this would be a perfect opportunity to write your elevator pitch. So if you're thinking about if you were in an elevator, that's cliche, but it's true. If you're in an elevator and you had 30 seconds to explain yourself, could you articulate what you do? This goes into the core of Identity Positioning™. So to set a little bit of a foundation, back in 2021, I published my first book, which was Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence.

That was the first edition. I didn't like it. I didn't like it. I got praised for it, but I didn't like it. In 2024, I wrote an academic paper which I've self-published called Identity Positioning™: A Macroscopic View on Personal Branding. What this academic paper focused on was a new strategy and a new perspective on personal branding and how you can actually position yourself and position your identity. The definition is kind of in the name. It's positioning your identity, right, for the world to know. I talk about a strategy in that to where whenever you're writing your own marketing message, right, you're on your social media, on your website, you start with a personal hook because the person in personal branding is so oftentimes lost.

If you draw a line down the word, personal brand, you have personal on the left, you have brand on the right. Well, who is the person? Because the brand will change. You will not be scooping 30 years from now. You'll have gone on to something else, most likely. So the person remains kind of the core anchor here. So talk about the fact you're a faith-based entrepreneur, the fact you're a mom, all of these different things that are unique to you, your humor. It's like, for example, when we did our call the other day, one of the things that I told you when I was analyzing who you are as a person, I was like, well, number one, I noticed that you switched out a word.

You used a Christian term to talk about how angry you were. I can't remember the phrase that you said, but you didn't cuss. You're not like, I was pissed off. I was like, okay, so she is definitely someone who tries to control how she speaks because of her faith. I was able to pinpoint that. Why is that important more than anything? That's the big question here. It's because it builds rapport. What is rapport? Rapport is trust. It is this emotional certainty that the person that you're connecting with has your best interest at heart. It's this connection on a deeper human level of, okay, well, I'm also a faith-based entrepreneur.

I'm also a woman. I'm also a mom. I'm also a stepmom. I've also gone through an experience where I was that rebellious young teenager going into young adulthood that made a lot of mistakes. I can relate to that story and that relatability is what builds that relationship whether you know it or not, whether you're aware of it or not. Think about your best friendships. Why are you friends with them? Number one, because of shared experiences, but more so than shared experiences, most likely it's shared values. That is so important. So when you're writing your elevator pitch, having a personal hook and a professional punchline is so ideal.

So for example, if you go to my profiles, I start with addicted to coffee. It's so simple. But it's like, I have a cup of coffee here that I've already drank within the first 15 minutes of the podcast. Then I say, I help emerging and established public figures optimize, position, and scale their personal brands. Then if I was to go deeper than that, I would say emerging and established public figures that want to be in demand and respected. So when you're writing your own message, you could do something along the lines of, what's one of your interests, for example?

Isaac Mashman23:10

Well, let's break this down off of simplicity and off of core things to you. So what you could do for your personal hook is you could say, coffee addicted, faith based mom or I run off of coffee and Jesus. That's like the first thing that comes to my mind, running off of coffee and Jesus. That's your personal hook. When you're talking to people, it really comes down to, okay, well, how much do you want your faith to be aligned with your business and with your networking when you're out and about? I think that's a good question to ask. I don't think that it's a bad question by any means.

Isaac Mashman23:46

Some people would be more comfortable with that than others. Some people want to keep their faith a little undisclosed. I don't think that you should do that, but it's a personal choice. So what I would say is for your personal marketing message, the personal hook, I would say running off of coffee and Jesus. Or I would actually say running off of Jesus and coffee because Jesus comes before coffee. If you're thinking about what does that message mean? You have to think about that. You have to think about your phrasing because that communicates what you prioritize. So I would say running off of Jesus and coffee would be your personal hook.

Then you could say, I scoop dog poop for a living. You could literally use that, which is so simple. It's almost like a backhanded compliment, but it has humor. If you could have a humorous hook, right, thinking about what you're doing, I would say running off of Jesus and coffee, I scoop dog poop for a living. That would immediately like throw somebody for a loop, but it also effectively communicates who you are and what you're doing, communicates the person, and it effectively communicates the brand. Now whenever you're in a situation where you're networking or you're doing a public event and you're speaking or you're in an elevator, you could literally say, hey, who are you?

Then you share a little bit about you. Oh, I'm Erica Krupin. I run off of Jesus and coffee. Don't worry, I'm not going to criticize you. You could throw in some things that make it funny. Then you say, yeah, well, I've been doing dog scooping for 15 years now. That immediately tells somebody who you are, what you do. That also subtly hints that if they ever need your services and say they have dogs, because this would be something that you need to find out when you're talking to people in a sales setting, well, do you have dogs? If you don't have dogs, you're not my client. Duh. There we go. There's your elevator pitch in five minutes.

Isaac Mashman27:22

I think we could also have a deeper conversation here just while we're on the subject. Your personal brand gives you an opportunity to talk about things that your business otherwise would not allow. I think that's really, really important. I would play this segment back because you would not start with your business and you wouldn't say faith-based business, faith-based poop and scoop company. You're not going to do that because then it becomes a crutch. I see these things like, are you a faith-based entrepreneur? I've seen these advertisements before. It's like, have you started a course? And I'm like, you're using faith as a crutch, thinking that it will get you clients.

I hate that. I absolutely hate that because it's done the wrong way. Now, if you were to say that we donate a segment of our profits to a faith-based charity or faith-based nonprofit, then I'd be like, okay, this aligns with their values, but this is not being used as a marketing tool, as a marketing tactic. So your personal branding allows you and gives you the room and the space and the leniency and the opportunity to talk about things that your business otherwise would not. I think that's a really core thing, core tenet to talk about. That allows people to just connect with you on such a deeper level and then vicariously support your business because they inherently know that your business is faith based or because your business is owned by you and they like you. They want to support you. They want to see you succeed. So obviously they would want to work with you and support your business.

Isaac Mashman30:18

Yeah, and that's reputation and just like your business has a reputation.

Isaac Mashman30:51

Thinking about your, what's your favorite celebrity? Let me ask you this rather than trying to share an analogy. Who's your favorite celebrity?

Isaac Mashman31:18

Much like yourself. Much like yourself. Okay. I imagine that whenever she has a new movie coming out, you probably go see it.

Isaac Mashman31:30

Yeah. This is something I talk about in the second edition of my book. My first edition I hated, the second edition I loved. It's worth the read, and I'll toot my own horn on that, which I'm proud to say.

Isaac Mashman31:55

The first edition here is just so small, for people who are watching on video it's very small. It's like 50 pages, 6000 words. It's a little more than an article. The academic paper I published was damn near the length. I have a tremendous amount of respect for it because it laid the foundation. I break down personal branding to where I mentioned how it's part of human nature. I talk about how [I can read it]. I did keep the opening sentence. The opening page is pretty much the same in this one as in the second. I said, what if there was something so powerful that you could get nations to do your bidding, millions of people to follow you and be able to have a direct impact on the world's future landscape? You see, I quite like that.

Isaac Mashman32:47

Personal branding can be used for good and it can also be used for awful, awful, awful circumstances. We think about terrorism, we think about any of the wars that we've studied throughout history, there's usually a central figure that led that war. Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, the emperor, think about the pharaohs in ancient Egypt, like Cleopatra, King Tut. There's so many different examples throughout history of personal branding at work. They were the one person that was able to motivate an entire civilization to do their bidding. That could be done for a massive industrial and healthy purpose. It can also be done for a purpose of destruction.

Just like with faith, you think about Jesus Christ, the prophet Muhammad, Buddha, Siddhartha. You think about Gandhi in India and all these different examples. But the first edition, to go back to the question here, I felt like it was very vague. I felt like I could have done more. I could have done better. I was 21 when I wrote the thing. So I can't beat myself up too much. I published a book at 21. I hit the top 10 bestseller list on public relations on Amazon. I was like, OK, it's cool. But I kept reading it back. I was looking for more information. I was reading it between the lines of my own book.

I think this is worth talking about on a personal note for people who are starting out because the content that you created a couple of years ago, you'll look back and cringe at. I'm sure you do that. I know I do that. I see videos from 2018 and I'm like, what is this garbage? Yeah, literally, you flinch. You have an actual physical reaction to the content that you thought was amazing at the time because of personal growth, because of maturity, because of your own journey that you've gone through and now you know so much. So you can't compare where you are today to where you were a couple years ago.

I think it's the same way to where you can't compare where you are today to somebody who's 10 years down the road in their own journey of business. But the second edition was when I wanted to really take things seriously. So I published the academic paper. This was a two year process where I would be on a bike ride. I'd pull over on the side of the road. I would take out my phone and open up my notepad and I would add a chapter idea. I wouldn't write much about the chapter. Sometimes I did. I would do like a paragraph or two and I would do voice to text.

I would just have this idea of like, okay, what do I want to talk about in this book? That was a good indicator of how much I knew on the subject, because this was all information that I wanted to convey and teach somebody else. That eventually evolved into this behemoth, 376 pages and 60 plus thousand words. So it's more than 10 times the length of the first edition. I feel like this book, if you were to read it, will teach you everything you need to know about personal branding. It comes from a place of a lot of experience. The third edition, which I'll eventually do, will have more of an academic rigor.

I want to do case studies. I want to get interviews with professors. I want to lean into psychology. I want to lean into anthropology and human geography. But this is absolutely a core tenet of what I'm doing moving forward here, because I talk about everything that we talked about in this conversation today. I've talked about it in my book. That has happened in so many different experiences, so many different interviews. I'm like, well, I talk about that in my book, and that tells me that I did something that I can be proud of.

Isaac Mashman36:54

Oh yeah, and a lot longer, most likely. I think about the direction that it gave me because the core structure of the book has remained the same. I start with education and I teach the reader what personal branding is. I obviously go more in depth in the second edition. To put it in context, there's 78 sub-chapters in the second edition. There are eight chapters, 78 sub-chapters. At the end of every sub-chapter, I have a task, application, or question that I want the reader to answer to help them really think through their own process and get the most out of the book. So I encourage the reader to treat it more like a textbook.

But I start with education and then I move to mindset to develop a little bit of the anticipation on what to expect. This happened a lot with earlier clients. I struggled really early on with helping the client manage their expectations. Because I had these people with massive goals that were like, I want to become famous overnight and it's like, that's not going to happen, dude. You need to chill here. You're not going to have your book out in two months. You're not going to have your podcast where you want it within a month. There are steps that you can take to obviously increase and speed up the time frames here, but it's not going to happen.

So it starts with education, moves into mindset, then we get into branding. For example, who are you, Erica? We went through the elevator pitch aspect. Then it gets into marketing, and marketing is really the easiest thing to write about because marketing is ever growing. It's evergreen. The core philosophy of marketing is that you get more people to know about you. Going out to Starbucks and talking to the barista is a form of marketing. Shaking hands with a stranger is a form of marketing. Plastering the neighborhood like I used to do with flyers is a form of marketing. Doing a podcast is a form of marketing.

It just so happens that there's this great relationship between branding and marketing to where how you build the brand influences how you market yourself. You think about the celebrity brands, you think about the luxury brands. Rolls Royce is not going to run an advertisement on the NFL. This is really fascinating to think about what are the sponsors for the NFL compared to the pro golf tournaments. If you think about the NFL, they're sponsored by Budweiser, Bud Light, NASCAR, American brands, Ford, Chevy, et cetera. But you go to the PGA and they're sponsored by Rolex. They're sponsored by luxury brands because the demographic of who consumes that content is different.

The NFL appeals to most all of America and pro golf is going to appeal to people who have the money to play golf or would be interested, at the least. I think we could take lessons from that into our own brand. If you want to become that luxury brand, how are you holding yourself? How are you presenting yourself online? What associations are you making? That's a separate conversation altogether, but it's an interesting one nonetheless.

Isaac Mashman40:53

They both have their pros and cons, but I don't know if I would define either as easier than the other.

Isaac Mashman41:52

In order to work with somebody who's overly confident, you have to come from a position of authority in order for them to trust you. Because the overly confident person is going to be confident in themselves more than they'll be confident in the advice from another person. So you have to be that position of authority to where they know that you know more than them and that humbles them to where now they'll take a step back and slow down a little bit and listen to the expert. Ironically, the overly confident person is typically the person who also wants to hire those people in order to give them the advice that they don't know because, like, success leaves clues.

It's something I learned years ago. It's like success leaves clues. So obviously, I want to work with somebody who already has success in that particular area. Whereas the quiet, more timid person, it's hard to break them out of their shell. It's kind of like the extrovert conversation. The extrovert is much easier to work with because they're comfortable on camera, whereas the introvert, it's like, I almost have to convince them and explain to them why they need to do this thing. That makes them uncomfortable, clearly on camera. They don't like it. They don't like the sound of their voice. So after talking it through, I would say the extrovert and more so the confident person, as long as that confidence doesn't veer into narcissism, is easier to work with, compared to the person that's more timid.

Isaac Mashman43:32

Well, I much prefer, I'll work with anyone as long as they adhere to the same moral, ethical compass here. But I much prefer working with the person who has those big ambitious dreams of like they want to get their book done, they want to do the podcast, they want to do all these things, and ironically, women have always been my best clients because they're usually the ones who execute the best. I don't know why that is, but it's always been the case. I would rather work with that ambitious person because now they have a direction that they're hitting, that they're aiming towards. Whereas the quiet person that just wants to kind of establish their personal brand online, it's like, I don't want to work with just the small local hero.

I want to work with the state representative. I want to work with the person who's leveling up. I use these terms local hero and state representative because I use this in my book, under something I call the hierarchy of personal branding. So you start with the unconscious incompetent, the person who doesn't even know what they don't know. This is a phrase that's used in the personal development space quite a bit. I got to give credit to Bob Proctor, who's a late mentor, virtual mentor of mine that I adore deeply. He says that people don't know what they don't know. Okay? That's the same with personal branding.

Then you move into, right, if we're following this pyramid up, friends and family, people who are only known within their own local sphere of influence. Their family knows that they're a mechanic, their friends know that they're the local, the small-time comedian, they always make [people laugh], but they don't make any money off of it outside of a few bucks.

Isaac Mashman45:07

Then you have the local hero that's well known in their community. They have billboards on the side of the road. They have advertisements on bus stops. They have the advertisements that run on TV when you get home from school. Then you have the state representative, which is known [statewide]. Although I use geographical examples, it's also about the number here. So like the local hero might be known by 1,000 to 10,000 people. Whereas the state representative is known by 100,000. Then you have the national personality, which is known more on a national scale. People know who they are, there's a lot more, there's a higher degree of influence here. They have better press features, they have better numbers in terms of their social media following.

Isaac Mashman45:49

I think understanding where you're trying to hit in terms of the number and in terms of the scale of influence is really important here because if you just want to be the local hero that's just known in your local town, like you don't travel for business, you don't get hired outside of your local community. It's like, we could do that, I could work with you. I can give you advice, I can help you with social media, I could help you on local marketing tactics here, but that's not as much fun. I want to work with clients that challenge me and I want to work with clients that I have fun working with to where I can actually take and publish their book and walk them through that process.

That was one of the biggest things I learned with publishing the first edition. I learned so much about self-publishing. The barrier to entry of publishing your own book is so low today, whether you're in the scooping business or whether you're a pond digger, whether you're a consultant or a dropship B2B salesperson, a car salesman, a realtor, et cetera. It's like anybody could publish a book now for a hundred bucks if they have the time and the willpower to do it. So I learned so much through that process.

Isaac Mashman46:54

You should. Here's the other thing, you're thinking about how you can incorporate your business and your personal brand, because your book isn't going to be on 101 scooping tactics. It's like, how many ways are there to scoop dog poop here? Let's talk this through. You're not going to write a book about poop scooping. But you can write a book about your own journey from the rebellion to the wife, to the business owner, to the leader who's doing public speaking engagements, to doing a hundred plus podcasts, or I believe 200 plus podcast episodes. You could talk about your experience and connect with other faith based women entrepreneurs.

You could use that as a launch pad to get bigger opportunities. Because the book's not going to make you money, but the opportunities that it can open for you, the doors that it can open for you will.

Isaac Mashman49:21

A couple years ago, I would have said, no, no, you need to become bigger. You need to, because why wouldn't you? Because obscurity is the enemy of success. But then I had to stop and realize that not everybody wants to do that. You can't put other people in your shoes. It's like, you can put yourself in another person's shoes, but you can't put the other person in your shoes. Where you want to go, they might not want to go. That's fine. That's perfectly OK. This goes to Earl Nightingale's old radio broadcast and book, The Strangest Secret, which I'm looking over. I have the vinyl over here on my shelf.

He talks about what is the definition of success and it's like, well, finding something that is a worthy ideal to you that you can be proud of doing, essentially. I butchered that rephrasing. But he says, if you're the mom who wants to be a stay-at-home mom, you're a success. If you're the school teacher who wants to teach students and leave your mark on America's next generation, you're a success. If you're the massive entrepreneur that's traveling the world and speaking on stages and stadiums, and that's what you want to do, you're a success. I would say that's the same thing. So the small business owner who wants it and is OK, and is fully, not on the surface level OK with it, but I mean truly, deeply, emotionally OK with being at that level, being at that tier.

They want to make a couple of $100,000 a year. They want to employ a couple of people. They want to stay on a local level. Yeah, you could do that. You could go to your local chamber of commerce. You can go and do the local BBB. You could do local networking events. You could speak at local trainings and business centers. You could get associated with nonprofits. You could do poop scooping at a park, at a city park. There are so many different elements that you can incorporate into your business and into your life to where you're having massive impact on your local community. Who knows, talking about how our motivators evolve and how our motivators change, you could succeed at that level and realize that now you want to expand over state lines, using the geographical example, and eventually become a franchise.

Now you have a poop scooping business in Nevada and you have one in New Mexico and in Arizona. You could always expand, but I would say if you want to start there and you feel like that's where you truly want to go, aim for that, and then reevaluate after a year and see okay, am I okay staying here? Am I okay with being stagnant? I feel like being aware that it would be stagnant is really important here because stagnancy that you're consciously aware of can be peaceful. But stagnancy that you're not even realizing can cause you to bite at yourself and [gnaw at] yourself and realize, no, I'm meant for more. I'm meant for more. But you'll never know unless you get there, unless you try.

Isaac Mashman53:16

What some people would refer to as sustainable, high achievers would refer to as stagnant. That's really important to distinguish. I completely relate. That's where the personality, being threes, really comes into play because I felt the same exact way. Working with people, it requires you to slow yourself down and slow down your brain and really analyze it and be like, okay, and this can be hard to believe, but if they're genuinely okay with that, then that's fine. I support you and I'm all for it. It's like, not everyone's going to be an entrepreneur. I think about my friend who I've known for 12, 13 years, one of my longest childhood friends from school.

He got his doctorate already in his field and I'm like, damn, that's awesome. Is he ever going to be the massive doctorate professor type that's writing books and traveling and doing guest things and building a hundred million dollar practice? No, but he's going to be much better and much farther along than most people and most of his peers. That's perfectly okay, and that's awesome. I think that really comes down to, as long as you're working towards something that you can support and that you can feel confident and comfortable in, that's worth sharing and worth supporting. I think communicating that to your audience, to take this back to personal branding, is really worthwhile because I use the analogy of your personal brand being similar to fire.

Because a fire needs fuel, oxygen, and heat in order to exist. I learned this in Boy Scouts. I was in Boy Scouts for 7 plus years. I use the example where other people are essentially the oxygen, the idea is the fuel, and then you yourself are the heat. You're the heat that keeps the fire growing. If you're telling people that, hey, I'm trying to become the most well-known person in Little Rock for personal branding, because I'm in Little Rock, Arkansas, then damn, tell people about it. They'll make introductions to people that they know in Little Rock. If you attach the geographical center here, or you attach that, hey, I just want to become well-known.

We've been talking a lot again about the geography here, like your local town, your local [township], but thinking about having, hey, I just want a core audience of like 10,000 people that know who I am, that I can help grow, that I can support. I don't need to have 100,000. I don't need to have a million. I don't need to be some mega influencer, but I just want to have a core group of people that I could go and teach, that I could travel to, then cool, that's awesome. I think what this conversation is really covering more than anything, Erica, is being intentional with your personal brand rather than just throwing stuff at the wall and throwing the scoop at the wall and seeing if it sticks.

Now, we're actually being intentional here with where we throw said scoop. I think when people slow down and analyze their personal brand as a separate business from their business, everything will change for them because now they're going to realize that, hey, how I'm creating content, how I'm presenting, how I'm dressing, going into this call with just a simple gray black shirt, which is always what I wear. I wear a lot of blacks and whites. You coming into this interview wearing pink and then your [Krupin's Poopin' Scoopin'] hat with the phone number on front, that was an intentional decision on your part. It was an intentional decision on my part to wear this compared to wearing a hoodie, compared to wearing a turtleneck, whatever else. That intentionality is what helps you stand apart from everybody else, because they're not thinking through these things the same way.

Isaac Mashman57:40

As a Florida boy, I'd be just fine with flip flops. I used to mow the grass in flip flops. I'd be right at home.

Isaac Mashman57:50

All the [mangled] toes. No, well, not only just the functionality of what you're wearing, like the slides versus tennis shoes, it's also the presentation that you're holding yourself in. That has been something I've been thinking about quite a bit because if we're just going up to the local Kroger that's down the road here, two minute drive away, am I going to get all dressed up for that? Or am I okay just wearing slides and some gym shorts, and just going in real quick? That really is something that I don't have the answer to because I've also seen these old men. You think about these old traditional men that always go out in the button up shirt and the braided brown belt and the nice pair of jeans and the nice pair of loafers.

It's like, damn, that guy has class compared to now, when people go out in skimpy shirts and things that show off their fat and everything else. I'm like, man, I wish I had your level of confidence here. I don't. But it also creates that kind of judgment that we as humans are inevitably going to feel towards them. It's kind of like you see the young, healthy person taking the cart in Kroger or Walmart. It's like, bro, you can walk by yourself. Again, I think analyzing how our own judgment is being cast on other people is also an effective tool to use to audit how other people are perceiving us.

If you were to take yourself and take the 30,000 foot overview from the plane, it's like, OK, well, if I'm analyzing other people and being this critical, how are other people analyzing and being critical of me and what I'm doing? That has to be done with nuance because a lot of times people aren't paying attention to the subtle things, the ums, the stutters. They're paying attention to the value. I myself used to criticize the hell out of my early podcast because I would pay attention to how I was breathing. I would pay attention to birds chirping because my first podcast, I recorded on a hand-me-down phone that a friend gave me in school.

I uploaded it to SoundCloud and I was so hyper critical of it. I realized nobody was paying attention to it. They were paying attention to what they were getting. But there is truth to be said. If you're talking a certain way or you look super slouchy and you're talking about, for example, this is how you can be an expert in your field, or these are some things that you can learn, and you're wearing like a tank top or some beat up shirt that has paint stains. It's like people aren't going to perceive you as the authority that you need to be because you think about how are you really going to guarantee that success comes for you and how can you guarantee that your personal brand is acting as your promoter 24 seven?

You have to be positioned as an authority, as an expert. The beautiful thing is, this works in conjunction with the hierarchy of personal branding to where you could become the most well-known expert in your local community for that specific niche, for that specific business. That's where you need to do things that are building your credibility. So that could be creating content online that teaches people about your business, about what you're doing. Let's slow down here and think about why people consume content at its core. People consume content because it connects them with the other person. People consume content because it educates them on something new.

People consume content because it entertains them because it makes them feel something. It makes them feel a certain kind of way. People consume content because it motivates or inspires them. Maybe they're wanting to feel motivated and take the next step towards getting their business launched or get off their butt and go to the gym or go for a walk. So again, educate, motivate, inspire, connect, or entertain. If you think about that when you're creating your content, because in our conversation you were like, man, I don't think about a lot of these things. I just intuitively record. But I think having a little bit more intentionality there will help you build your credibility and build that broader trust in your own audience.

Isaac Mashman1:04:39

It's really interesting, if we were to think about the psychology of public speakers and the psychology of events, the reason the crowd went wild was because of her personal brand, because of anticipation of the speaker. A lot of the people probably bought tickets to that event, not just because it was a company event, because in that MLM space we all go to these events because it's the thing to do. [Raw emotions.] I've been to some myself. My first ever business trip was a [70 hour] trip to Minneapolis from Jacksonville to see the vice president speak. It was an awesome experience that I love sharing and love telling, but the psychology of events and the psychology of speakers is that it's built off of the speaker's personal brand.

People buy tickets to see people that they know, like, and trust, just like in sales. They follow the mentors that they've been talking about in private or on their own content, and the mentor doesn't even know they exist. She knew probably 200 people in that crowd. The rest of them, she didn't know any of them. She could be walking in public and be like, I have no clue who any of these people are. But the people in the audience knew who she was, because she was in a different hierarchy. She had more credibility, she had more success. That success is what created the perception that she was somehow better than them.

It wasn't a narcissistic, you're better than me as a person. It was this, you're better than me because you're more successful than me. That bias is what creates celebrity. It's called the halo effect. The halo effect is where we attach our entire perception on somebody based off of one positive trait. The inverse of that is the horn effect to where we automatically assume something of someone based off of one trait. So in my book, I use the example of, if you had a bald teacher in school that you hated, you probably think of your teacher whenever you see a bald guy in public. That creates and shapes your narratives. You probably had a bald teacher that you didn't like.

Isaac Mashman1:06:48

That's the horn effect. But the halo effect is what creates celebrity. It's one specific thing, one trait, one characteristic. Think about, for example, the follower count on social media, you assume that somebody who has a million followers automatically has money. It's not [always] the case. More often than not, it's the opposite. Regardless, it creates a perception. Based off of your reaction earlier, when we were talking about books and talking about writing my book, you've had a physical reaction to the idea of writing your own book. That tells me that you should probably write it, because you might not do the courses, but you could write your own book and have just as much impact and have that electric feeling, that electricity.

When you have the physical copy in hand, when you're going to a speaking event, like when I was at Atlantic-Oase back in 2024, [it's been two] years back to back, but we were in Denver, and I had all my books and people were coming up and I was signing them and I was like, man, I just delivered an awesome keynote to these guys and they were coming up in a line to get my book. I was like, it felt electric. It felt like a massive milestone, a massive accomplishment here. That was indicative that I was on the right path. So for you, finding things that give you that electric feeling, i.e., writing your book, will probably be a good next step for you.

It also means that you will avoid the cliche of being an internet entrepreneur with a course, which I applaud. I applaud you for not.

Isaac Mashman1:13:31

It's not freedom. It's the idea of having options. That's my perspective on it.

Isaac Mashman1:15:23

When it stops improving your life. Otherwise, I'd say that being critical will always have a place, as long as it's helping you improve your life without being a detriment to your own mental well-being.

Isaac Mashman1:16:13

I'm able to notice and analyze things that others don't. Some of that is pattern recognition. Some of that is just reverse engineering. I've learned most everything, especially early on, by reverse engineering other successful people. I would look at what Gary Vee, what Grant Cardone, what all these people and celebrities and mentors that I would follow, what they did to build their personal brand. Oh, he got on this place. He got on this platform. He had this interview. Can I do the same thing? How do I do that? How do I approach that? How can I increase the odds? I'd get on that.

Isaac Mashman1:16:52

It's really not what I would call an obsession about it, but rather having enough care to pay attention to the details.

Isaac Mashman1:17:42

I love this because it's so simple. Number one, define your name, what you even want to be known for in terms of your name. You'd be like, obviously it's Erica Krupin, obviously it's Isaac Mashman, well not necessarily, because not everybody has a unique name. So me being Isaac Mashman, there's nobody else in it, and to share a really funny story here, I used to hate my last name because I didn't have any emotional connection to my biological father. So I hated Mashman. Then I realized in high school, and when I started kind of going through this entrepreneurship journey and studying and listening to podcasts, that my name was very, very unique.

Isaac isn't really a common first name either. It's not. It's a biblical name, but not a common name. I was like Isaac Mashman. I ran a Google search. Nothing pops up. Ancestry.com pops up. That's fine with me. I can dominate the space. I would say that you need to, number one, run a Google search on your name. What pops up when you search up Erica Krupin? What pops up when you search up Zachariah Brown? Understand your competition here.

Isaac Mashman1:19:28

I would say number one, you need to run a search for your name and see if something pops up. If you're fighting with an immense amount of people, like you see celebrities, you see knowledge panels, which are just the pieces of information that show up for notable public people on Google, I would incorporate your middle name. You can incorporate the full name or you could just do your first initial. It's like my middle name is Samuel Allen. So if I was fighting other people, I'd go by Isaac S. Mashman or Isaac Samuel Mashman, right, which sounds so weird. I don't know why my mom named me that, but here we are.

So once you see your name is available and that you're avoiding some competition, you need to secure all your handles on social media, your big platforms, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter or X. Am I missing any? Snapchat. You could be as intensive as you want. Whatever platforms you plan on building on.

Isaac Mashman1:20:20

I would, yes, the domain is the other part. So making sure that you own ericakrupin.com, isaacmashman.com, etc. Then once you have the foundation built, like the foundation in terms of the technical infrastructure, then that's when I would sit down and define what do you actually want to be known for? Asking yourself that big question of what is my long-term goal here? Going and understanding the hierarchy of personal branding, what is your target? Then writing out your elevator pitch and taking some time. More importantly, grabbing a copy of my book because it will teach you every single thing you need to know in order to get started.

Then from there, just creating content. This is something that really overwhelms people when they get started, because I tell them, get on multiple platforms, and it's like, oh my God, I have to create content for every platform. But the beautiful thing about creating content is once you create it once, you can distribute it many, many, many times, an infinite number of times. A great example of this is Russ, the rapper Russ. He does a lot of the success rap and stuff. He tweeted something years ago, which has stuck with me. He's like, man, if you're an artist, put the damn song out there. Once you have the song out there and you publish it, you could promote it as many times as you want for the rest of your life.

It's not like you just publish your song once and you can't promote it ever again. Your content is the same way, not only in terms of promotion, but also in distribution. So if you do a podcast, you can take this clip and you could upload it to literally dozens of different platforms through the RSS feed for the podcast's reach. Then you could take the video and upload it to YouTube. You could upload it to Dailymotion. You can upload it to any other long-form site. Then you take the video and you clip it into short-form content. Then, talking about artificial intelligence, you upload the entire podcast, you get the transcription from it.

You use AI to turn it into a full-length article on your website and then on Medium. Now you have like six or seven different pieces of content that you got from one sit-down interaction. This is obviously just the example for people with podcasts, but if you're starting out, taking, again, 30 seconds and recording a video, you could use an AI software and have it edit it for you. Then you publish it on Instagram and Facebook as a reel, on YouTube as a short, on TikTok as a short form video. Excuse me. Now that one piece of content is working for you on multiple different platforms, on four different platforms, and it takes you 10 minutes to post.

That also means more than anything that you have four algorithms working for you as well. The algorithm is not your enemy. The algorithm is your friend because the algorithm promotes what content has the highest retention rate. Just like that video that you recorded this week that took you the least amount of time, the algorithm is able to determine that this is what is connecting with people and maintaining retention, so let me promote it more.

Isaac Mashman1:23:57

Yep, create the content, distribute it after. For the most part, the user behavior on every platform is very similar. It's all short form vertical video now. That's the dominant thing. The age of photos being the primary piece of content on Instagram is yesteryear. It's like those days are over.

Isaac Mashman1:24:28

Well, neither of those are true. To me, as Luna Lovegood [said in] Harry Potter, you look extraordinarily ordinary. That is kind of what I'm thinking about but I think this also begs [the question], because we gave kind of the introduction steps to go and create the digital footprint here on social media. But I think it's about understanding that your personal brand is you. You're going to have it regardless of being on social media or not. If social media disappeared tomorrow, you could still go to the local business events and the chamber of commerce. You could still connect with people and go to coffee shops and all this other stuff.

So your personal brand is always going to be there. It's never going to die. The worst thing that happens to your personal brand is it gets forgotten after you die. If you die, it's forgotten but it's not destroyed because whatever IP, whatever property you have will always exist and always be out there. It's just less and less people will know about you. Or in some cases more, think about the artists like [Dalí] that sold one painting when they were alive and all of a sudden became well-known household figures after their death. We could have separate podcast episodes on every single subject that we just talked about today.

But what do you do when you don't have an audience, when you don't have any people following you, or if you have a small little group, but you want to expand it? Well, number one, start with your friends and family. Get connected with them, because then once you're connected with your friends online, your profiles will start getting recommended to people that know your friends, that might also know you or have heard about you. They'll want to follow you, or associates at your work. If you work in a corporate setting or you've gone to networking events, pull out your business cards that you've gotten and just thrown into a drawer and just start adding all of them on social media and reaching out to them.

After you do that, then I would start implementing what I call the power of three. The power of three is where you connect with three new people every single day. These could be random profiles that you find through search and hashtags, videos, comments, whatever. These could be people that are aligned in your field, like other business owners or maybe prospective clients of yours if you're using social media for sales. You just send them over a quick message being like, hey, and not just some AI automated BS. I love what you're doing. I saw this from somebody who's also in the personal branding space. He shot me a message.

He's like, I love what you're doing. Well, dude, what am I doing? Tell me. [Be] specific. Don't be so vague. Hey, I saw that you published your book last year, man. How has that gone for you? How many sales have you made? Just asking something, taking 30 seconds to find a little piece of information that you could use as an opening message. So you send out three messages to three new people every single day. You give them a follow. If you are engaging with them and they respond back, chances are they will probably go ahead and connect with you back and follow you. You do that for an entire year.

Now you have 1,095 people who know about you. A thousand people can fill up a hotel room, like a hotel conference room. That is a significant number of people. I think this is something worth talking about because a lot of times, seeing these people with hundreds of millions of followers, like the Ronaldos and Messis of the world, the Kim K's of the world, we're like, man, I only have a thousand followers. I'm a nobody. No, a thousand people will fill up most hotel conference rooms. It'll fill up a section of a ballpark. It's like, those are a thousand real people, a thousand real lives, with a thousand careers, with a thousand families.

Acknowledge and appreciate that fact. That's where the social media disconnect has really occurred here, to where we disassociate from reality. I think that's very dangerous, if not managed properly. So the power of three is an awesome, awesome strategy that I myself will be implementing moving forward more religiously to get that momentum reestablished.

Isaac Mashman1:29:39

Yep. That's so brilliant. You said you were speaking to the audience, and I can't help but think about my time in network marketing, where it's like, act as if you're already the success. I was taught that, and for network marketing having so many flaws, I believe that there's so many good lessons that you could learn from it. That was the thing, not necessarily to fake it till you make it, because I feel like that's very ego driven. It's more so, I'm not speaking with confidence to convince you. I'm speaking with confidence to convince myself. Right? That is huge because I used to do the same exact thing and it's funny because back in 2019, there was this new platform, prior to Facebook and Instagram introducing Reels.

They tried doing a standalone app called Lasso, which was going to be the TikTok competitor. At the time it was Musical.ly. I hopped on the platform and I secured @hustle as the handle. It wasn't even my name, it was @hustle. I don't know what I was thinking. Clearly, I didn't pay attention to personal branding. I would just create these fiery motivational videos walking down the street in my grandparents' neighborhood, which was by no means great. It was by no means in the suburbs. It wasn't rinky dink. It wasn't trashy, but it was just a normal American street. I continued creating content, [built] one of the largest pages on that platform, which was still a relatively small platform, and I forced myself essentially into their Star Creator, the verified creator program.

That was what led me to getting flown out by Facebook to VidCon in 2019. As a Star Creator, I was getting shuttled around in a van, everything was paid for, had the flights, the hotel, all of it. I was like, I have this nice pass, the creator pass, which I still have here, which I just think is cool to look at. Man, [I haven't got enough hook], I didn't plan this out. But I keep these things next to my desk as a reminder here. It's like, back in 2019, the creator pass. It's like having the confidence to push yourself into rooms without being cocky. There's a big difference between cocky and confident.

Just letting your results essentially speak for themselves. You don't need to convince anybody of anything. You need to let the things that you've done speak for you because your personal brand, I use this analogy in my book, is your 24 seven promoter. It's the thing that's working for you when you're sleeping, when you're cozy, sound asleep, your personal brand is still working for you. Your footprint still exists online. People will see your videos. You'll wake up to a video that's gone viral one day. I think that's an awesome, awesome thing to just appreciate.

Isaac Mashman1:33:15

That's how I define it in my book. It's literally, your personal brand is you. It's who you are, what you do. It's your physical traits, your physical characteristics, your personality, the religion and the God that you pray to, your interests, your passions, your hatreds, your desires, the color of your eyes, the color of your skin, the color of your hair, it's the way you speak, your cadence, your tonality. It's your experiences, it's everything and it's all encompassing.

Isaac Mashman1:33:52

I have to give credit because the term is only 30 years old. The term personal brand was only coined in 1997 by business management consultant Tom Peters. There were earlier mentions of building a portfolio and stuff. Napoleon Hill has a chapter called Organized Planning in Think and Grow Rich where he talks about it. If you read it now, it's like, oh yeah, he was clearly talking about personal branding even though he didn't call it that because the term wasn't ever used. But now it's up to us and it's up to me and Mashman Consulting Group and every consultant that I bring on moving forward and my COO, Eric, and all of us who really help teach people that personal branding is something worth paying attention to and showing the world why that is. I'm really excited because I'm working on some other big, big, big things that will introduce a brand new field of study, essentially.

Isaac Mashman1:35:00

Because black and white is my brand. My websites are black and white. I'm going through a redesign for my personal website, my business websites, all of them, they're all black and white, silver, platinum. I'm dressing black and white. Like I told you, my video intros on YouTube are black and white. I like the simplicity of it. I like the corporate feel of it. I like the merge between entrepreneur startup feel and corporate. I do appreciate that. I like it. I like how clean it is. Really preferential. I don't like a whole bunch of colors. Like I don't wear a bunch of colors. I don't like them.

I just don't like wearing them. I feel like it communicates something. It communicates weight. For me coming back, I told my business partner Eric, I said, Eric, I'm not coming back until I know I'm here to stay. Now that I'm here to stay, I'm like, well, how can I build my brand and build my assets and my IP in such a way that communicates how I've always wanted to be perceived? That's where I'm at now. So very happy. For the first time in my life, I have a media kit I'm actually really proud of.

Isaac Mashman1:36:48

It's subtlety, and it goes back to your website being not only pink, you're mentioning pink, but you're forgetting the secondary green. You think about your own office and your own room that you're recording this in, your studio. You have pink on the walls and you have green paint. So let's think about that. That was intentional when you're like, this is going to be where I record. This is going to be the room that I use for all of my stuff. I want to paint the wall to match my website, to match my branding. You probably had that conversation like, well, what shade of pink or what shade of green do I want to do?

I probably stressed you out even trying to get the perfect one. And I think, Erica, if we could sum up this conversation, this entire podcast interview today, it's really just about being intentional with your personal brand and being intentional with how you're associating both your business and the direction you're going and where you're heading.

Isaac Mashman1:37:49

I'm very easy to find. You can't be in the personal branding space and be difficult to find. You can find me on every platform at Isaac Mashman, my website, isaacmashman.com. If you'd like to grab a copy of my book, Personal Branding: A Manifesto on Fame and Influence, the second edition. The first edition is no longer in print. I took it out. But you can find the second edition on Amazon, Target, Walmart, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, all of their websites.

Isaac Mashman1:38:27

Erica, the pleasure is all mine. Thank you.