How Personal Branding Fuels Small Business Growth

Isaac Mashman0:51

A lot of small business owners usually mess up on this point. They'll use their business page on social media, for example, and they'll interact in first person and talk to their friends and family and comment like the individual. It doesn't matter if you have an organization of one person or five employees or you're starting out, your personal brand is you. It is who you are, what makes you, your personal characteristics, your interests, your hobbies, and then your professional career and certifications and experience. Your business, whenever you file for an LLC and you launch a startup, you're giving that business characteristics. So it is an extension of you, but it is not you.

If you can leverage your personal brand as the founder of a business, just like you introduced me and said founder of Mashman Consulting Group, I am associated with that business. That means that anything I do for my personal brand is a reflection of my company. When you leverage that, it can get you more sales, more exposure and more opportunities.

Isaac Mashman1:49

Well, for me personally, I have named my company after myself, all of my businesses. That's a strategy that I actually don't recommend you do. Because I'm never going to be able to exit any of my businesses. If they're attached to me, think about it. If I'm trying to sell a startup and it's named after the founder, it's not really a good strategy, but I made that decision willingly. But for example, I worked with an influencer a couple years ago who was getting out of the model space into the personal training business. His name is Logan Mandeville. I worked with him to launch Mandeville Fitness. Again, something that he decided to attach his name, but when you have a following of a couple hundred thousand people, people know your name.

So we launched his personal training company, and I'm grateful to say that four years later, he's still building it and working with people all around the United States on getting into better shape.

Isaac Mashman2:43

Yeah, well, I think we need to do an audit of what shows up first. So a really simple step-by-step process would be to run a Google search of your name. How do you show up on Google? Do you have the same social media handles? So to get in depth here, let's go ahead and say that your name is John Doe. Everybody knows John Doe. You would not be able to show up on Google, you would not be able to get your username, you would not be able to buy your own website, your own domain, johndoe.com. That's not going to be available, Shyann. But if your middle name is Zachariah, now you could go by John Z.

Doe and purchase johnzdoe.com or John Zachariah Doe, and that would allow you to start dominating Google. Then from there, leverage social media. Social media is the most powerful tool in the 21st century. So by getting on multiple platforms and creating content about your business, about your industry, you can position yourself and position your personal brand as an authority, as a public figure. That's how you cut through the noise, because face it, there's a lot of competition out there online, like there's no denying that fact.

Isaac Mashman4:00

There is the Skyline Strategy, where you take for every two business posts, you make one personal post. Now that's a personal branding strategy but when it comes to building your business brand you need to be creating content on it every single day or doing things that give your business exposure. I mean having your own email list for your business and your own personal email list. I think that that can get overwhelming because there's a lot to do and when you're starting out, you might not have the bandwidth or the financial resource and means to hire a social media manager. So a lot of time small business owners are using their own tools and using their own time to build out their brand and build out their image.

So start small, schedule out content ahead of time if you can, create templates and a seamless brand. So whenever I'm creating content for Mashman Consulting Group, I have a really simple template where I'm just able to put in the text and I'm good to go. So I'm not reinventing the wheel. I have a brand kit now which allows me me, number one, to create a seamless image where this is company branding. Think about Coca-Cola and the bright red and the cursive font, you see that everywhere and that's how you get memorable. That's how you get respected long-term and you get more exposure.

Isaac Mashman5:08

Well, the first one, as I mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, was using your business page as your personal page. You have a personal brand for a reason. So create a separate Instagram for yourself and a separate one for your business. This isn't as common with medium-sized businesses. Then other mistakes would be falling for pay-to-win tactics and pay-to-win strategies. I absolutely hate that. I would say I almost have a vendetta because there are so many people that have to pay for exposure when they should much rather become press worthy and get their business press. And I believe a huge strategy, Shyann, is going to be using old world traditional forms of media and reaching out to local news networks and having local events and local mixers and building relationships on a community level, even if your startup or small business is digital and 100% remote, you can still leverage the community where you're based.

Isaac Mashman6:10

Well, by association. You have to think about why would somebody work with you versus your competitor? If you have your personal brand that establishes rapport, and what is rapport? Rapport is trust. Your social media and your personal brand is a form of edification saying that, hey, you can connect with me, saying that this is why I am somebody that you should work with or buy from versus the next small business. So it's really about establishing those long-term connections and those long-term relationships rather than just finding the next client. Because that means you'll always be hunting for your food rather than nurturing a crop of clients and people.

Isaac Mashman6:51

I would say managing expectations is so important. [You have to] understand that you're not going to have the biggest business overnight. Your social media page isn't going to blow up. Now chances are, yeah, like 1% of the time or 0.1% of the time, you could have a video that takes off and goes semi-viral or goes mega-viral, that's great. But you shouldn't be chasing those particular moments. You should be thinking about doing things that establish your personal brand for the long haul, having conversations, doing podcast interviews, creating content, and in ways that other people can edify you and build you up. I don't go and call myself a personal brand expert. But when other people do, that's unbiased.