The Power of a Personal Brand

Isaac Mashman1:43

Yeah, Mike. Well, first and foremost, thank you for inviting me on this show. It's an honor. This was about a month in the making, and a brief introduction about me. I run a public relations firm called Mashman Ventures that specializes in personal branding. I have a podcast called Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman. That's all about helping the listeners become more capable individuals. I believe that at the center of all achievement is personal growth, and I'm not really trying to come off as a salesman, but more so [just saying] I've done a lot over the past couple of years. I was a literal straight-A student, and I graduated top 10 in my class and could have taken one more SAT test and gone to any university in Florida I really wanted to under a [Bright Futures] scholarship.

I got accepted at UCF and Florida State University, and I decided that college wasn't the route for me, even though that's what I was working for in my early childhood and later teen years. I fell into entrepreneurship, and in the midst of a bunch of struggles and pain at home, me as an act of rebellion was like, you know what, I'm not going to go to college. I saw this guy in network marketing making $10,000 a month. He's 21, so why don't I go after him. So I got involved with network marketing, three different companies, four different times over a span of a year and a half, and I did my own clothing line at the time.

But what I was doing over the past couple of years was really developing an awareness of branding. I was developing an awareness of personal branding and marketing and paying attention to trends and really being a student of social media and the internet, this entire digital space. And fast forward, I managed an artist for about six months, pursued a record label, got out of it, and in total I've pursued probably seven different businesses, and I didn't get far in any. I became the go-to person for personal branding in my friend group, and I'm continuing to grow out my personal brand just as being Isaac Mashman. So now I'm just looking to scale, connect with awesome people like you, Mike, and help serve as many people as possible too, the right way, with building their personal brands as well as pouring into them with my own knowledge.

Isaac Mashman3:49

I'm actually from Jacksonville, but I'm living in a city called Conway, Arkansas, and I'm moving to Dallas in less than two months.

Isaac Mashman3:57

I love that. It's by a fan, and you could come back in the future. I'm coming back in the future when I can go out and get that penthouse lifestyle.

Isaac Mashman4:54

Man, it was a massive, massive experience. What company were your parents a part of, by the way?

Isaac Mashman5:00

I actually know of a couple of people in the business right now. That's one of the companies that has a track record that is indisputable after that little hiccup they had. But network marketing really served as my first ounce and glimpse into wealth, money, and personal development. My mom is a brilliant lady. She's a brilliant woman, extremely intelligent, but she really never pursued personal development and took her college degrees to benefit her. So I really didn't see too much of personal development. I was raised in the Baptist church. [Lately], I'm not super close to the church. But I had ounces and glimpses of personal development in different ways, in a theological way, in a philosophical way, but not really in a, let me become a better version of myself, kind of way.

And not to sound cheesy, but network marketing introduced me to that, and to seeing people who had more success than I had, more success than my mom had, more success than anybody in my family has ever had. So I saw that as a way for me to latch on and say, I'm going to trust you fully. I don't have any regrets. Some of the mentors that I had there, I still study and I still look up to, because I believe that their philosophies and what they're teaching is great. I learned how to be a speaker. I've managed to have dinner with one of the vice presidents of the company after taking a crazy tour to one of the events.

It's unbelievable because now I'm still young enough to where I have kids that I went to college, or not college, but I went to high school with, who are still in college. They're just now graduating in 2022 because I graduated high school in 2018. So I've [expedited] my entire life. Because of personal development, because of that introduction with network marketing, I shaved off, I would argue, decades of my overall life with the mentality [I] adopted, which is like taking the risk factor. It's been great. It's been great.

Isaac Mashman7:13

Right, well personal development is great to really establish the foundation. But what people do is they become, as Andy Frisella called success zombies. There's zombies for success. They're going to every single event, every single seminar, every single webinar, reading every single book. If you don't have any action that backs up that development, one, you're not actually digesting that information because you're not applying the information. How do you know it actually works? So you have to be a student of application in order to really learn what you need to learn in order to move forward. People get stuck on thinking that, hey, if I read this book, this is going to be the key to my success.

If I study Sam Walton, if I pick up and learn from this mentor, he's going to change my life. I think that it's more so the diet pill mentality. We all know how to get in good shape and get a six pack, but we just don't want to do the work. Understandably so, it's not easy. It takes time. It's rough. You're walking in the blazing sun. But if you really want it, you have to prioritize what you want and then just do the hard work.

Isaac Mashman9:19

Because I went off of my gut instinct most of the time. I would try a bunch of different things, and you know, that's a stereotype that people say, or cliche, like, hey, try and fail. Try and fail. Try all of these different things. Yes, you have the ability to try and fail, but why would you be seeking to fail or seeking to try and not succeed? I would rather seek and try to succeed rather than seek and try and fail. I would get into these different things, then I would realize, one, maybe I'm not doing the work that I need to be doing in order to progress, or maybe I'm not enjoying it.

I really don't know what about personal branding stuck with me, and doing my firm, versus the other business models, because I kind of just became the go-to guy in my friend group. But then I finally found an idea that was really so unique, not many people were doing it. I'm like, I enjoy building my personal brand. This is the interesting thing. I enjoy building out my personal brand more than I do my business. I enjoy building my business, but my personal brand is where I thrive because I'm a numbers guy. I like the [dopamine] hit. I like getting into new articles and connecting with new people and having awesome conversations with people like you.

So it's really just, trust your instinct. If you think that this is not going to work and you don't want to continue pursuing this, you also have to have a logical awareness and say, okay, for example, with my record label, I'm like, the only way that I'm going to make money, and my artist that I'm managing is going to make money, and the record label doesn't go down without me having to take out loans, is, well, there isn't a way, because record labels aren't meant for the artists to win. It's made for them to win. So I was like, with that awareness, I said, I'm not going to pursue it.

Then later down the line, I stopped managing the artists completely because I wasn't making revenue, because it's a long-term investment in them. So you're taking these different aspects and these different facts and looking at them with an unbiased set of lenses rather than the emotional lens that you normally would be looking through.

Isaac Mashman12:03

Quote unquote excuse. The interesting thing about imposter syndrome is I believe that that happens when we're experiencing the most momentum in our lives. That's something that I personally notice. I've had more success in the past eight months of 2021 than I've had in the past four years of trying all these different businesses. But when it comes to building out your personal brand, I think one of the worst connotations that somebody can have is that fame is negative because we look at Hollywood, we look at these celebrities and the lack thereof, when it comes to the privacy aspects and the paparazzi. They're like, oh my God, that would be horrible.

Being famous, you're in a cult if you're famous in Hollywood. So you have all these different beliefs that you really need to take a step back and look at and say, okay, now let me look at the pros of being famous, or maybe not fame, but credible. What are the pros of being credible? The only way that you become credible is one by building your personal brand that drives traffic to your business, or by building your business, and you're naturally building out your personal brand. There's no right or wrong way of doing it, but I found that it's much more efficient. It will save you a lot more time if you build out your personal brand and use your personal brand to build your business rather than doing the alternative, because either way you're building it.

But the thing is, when you're building your business, you're having an intentional focus on your business rather than an intentional focus on your personal brand. That is a massive differentiating factor because your personal brand is you and your personality. People buy from you. There's a reason [I bring up] the guy Phil from Flex Seal. If you've ever seen the commercial, hey, Phil here, this is Flex Seal, slap on the piece of tape. He has more followers on Instagram than the official Flex Seal. His account has over a million, and the company account is less than half a million.

Isaac Mashman13:49

So you just need to go ahead and just jump in.

Isaac Mashman14:43

That's the truth. Hey, I'm going to go ahead and say the same exact success quote that Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, Tai Lopez, and Gary Vee said. I'm going to use the same exact quote. There's a reason why cliches are cliches and so often used, because nine times out of 10, those cliches are actually extremely accurate. But just because it's truthful and they're truthful and accurate doesn't mean that you need to go ahead and jump on that bandwagon of promotion. So people focus on looking like other people, and they only build out their personal brands for what they do. There's a reason why you go to Facebook and you see a lot of these Facebook marketers, six and seven figure funnel guys, with all of this text copy in their header image.

I'm not going to read the text in your header. I'm not. If you cannot get the actual profile down to a T and express what you do in 101 characters, then why am I going to take the time to read even more text? You have less than a second to make a first impression online. So people need to start incorporating their personality into their personal brands and showing it more. People are following you, yes, for what you do, but also for who you are. If you were able to show those aspects of your life, like maybe your favorite food, or [are] you a game nerd, do you enjoy traveling, hiking, camping, those things all contribute to your personality, which allows somebody to follow you for who you are.

Then the expertise you have and that credibility is just the cherry on top that allows you to have that level of trust and direct it towards building your business, if you wish to.

Isaac Mashman16:48

Well, I'll give you a good example. If you're watching this on video, guys, Mike has two posters up behind him. He has The Sopranos and he has The Shawshank Redemption. He has the movie posters. That right there was done intentionally to show that he likes The Sopranos and he likes The Shawshank Redemption. Two fantastic shows and movies. So now if I'm coming on as a guest and I'm a fan of either of those shows or movies, I could go out and make that a topic of conversation. If you're having a client call and for some reason you use the studio for your clients as well, well, they can come on and next thing you know, they are the number one advocate for The Sopranos.

They're going to ask you if they can buy that poster, and next thing you know, you close them because you have an additional layer of rapport. Every single aspect of your personal brand builds rapport with somebody. So for example, are you a coffee drinker? Are you a video gamer? Is your favorite movie series of all time the Lord of the Rings trilogy? You can go ahead and pull these different aspects, and don't show the times where you're in the bathtub crying yourself to sleep because you're just like, man, I lost my client. I didn't get that. I got rejected. We all have moments to where we're literally sitting in the closet, in the dark, with the lights off, like trying to meditate so we don't lose ourselves in this process. I'll admit it, I've been there before multiple times.

Isaac Mashman18:02

Oh, that was actually [changed]. The girl, we've been together for over a year. So that was good. That was good, okay. But again, that's an aspect I showed. I showed my journey to get to Arkansas, highlighting my time in the airport. Then sometimes in [the car], using the stories. Social media gives you so many different tools that you can use to create content, and so you have to have a balance between business content and personality related content. So take some time to write out a list of different unique character traits, things that people could connect with you on. It's like building a building, right? You start out with the foundation.

Then you have, you know, story one, story two, story three, story four. I call that the tower of rapport. You're building rapport on each story, and the next thing you know, you have the Burj Khalifa of rapport with somebody. That's why you have acquaintances, strangers, friends, and best friends. That right there is the answer to creating content. If you're trying to be in the entertainment industry, you might not only talk about business, you're going to talk more about entertainment. If you're trying to be a well-known entrepreneur, you're going to talk about business. But you might talk about sales, you might give a motivational clip, you might go ahead and share your vlog of your, you know, public speaking event, you might share that you're going to watch a movie. There's no right or wrong way. I think that overthinking it is the number one thing.

Isaac Mashman19:46

A lot of the places, I would say almost every single one of them. Snapchat's one of those platforms that I really don't create content on. I don't really use Snapchat at all. That was more my thing that I would do in middle school. Like, you Snapchat to talk with friends, but now it is very good for business, but I don't personally use it. You can touch additional people, maybe cross promote your audience from Snapchat to Instagram to Facebook to LinkedIn. But if you're creating content, you create one piece of content and you post [it on] a variety of different platforms. Then you have one vertical photo or vertical video.

Now you can take that and post on TikTok. You can post it on YouTube Shorts, and you can post on Instagram Reels. So now you're playing three algorithms. So you don't have to create 25,000 different pieces of content. You just need to create a couple pieces of content that you can use across multiple platforms, high quality captions. You take one caption, you take one photo or video. You post the same thing across a variety of places because just because somebody's following you on a couple of different platforms does not necessarily mean that they're always going to be active on those platforms and seeing your content. So you're increasing the likeliness and the likelihood of you being seen.

Isaac Mashman21:03

Every single industry, every single industry. That goes into why you need to build your personal brand to have that personality, because you could be in a business that doesn't really have high viral content. But you could still create aspects of your life that connect with somebody personally. This is the other crazy thing. Yesterday I was having a call with somebody who's actually from my home city of Jacksonville. He runs a highly successful landscaping company, about a dozen people working for him. I'm like, brother, what you need to do is you need to start filming before and after videos of your landscape. Somebody brings you in to turn their yard from looking like a $200,000 yard in a million dollar community.

Next thing you know, your landscaping makes their property value skyrocket by half a million dollars. You need to do a before and after video. That's landscaping. That's greenery. Why would that be viral? It is though, because you have to think that people are going on TikTok and Instagram and stuff to waste time. They're wasting time. They're appealing to their emotional senses by, hey, this is entertaining. This looks cool. I like this. So it doesn't matter what industry you're in, you should definitely be using all platforms and all different verticals. The only platform that I'd say you might not want to use would be LinkedIn if you're a musician or if you're an artist.

There might not be a reason for you to be on there, but there are reasons such as connecting with A&R, connecting with record label executives, that type of thing. So it's really up to the individual.

Isaac Mashman22:55

To your point [about being a] musician, no, you need to mobilize the troops from LinkedIn to follow you on Facebook and Instagram. That's the thing, you have these people who are following and supporting you and that are in your network. So why not encourage them to also connect with you on other platforms? Yes, you're going to innately have a larger audience in one place, but you should also have a stable audience across other places as well. Because imagine LinkedIn disappears tomorrow, Instagram disappears, or Facebook gets banned in the United States for whatever security issue because Congress was like, executive order type of thing, bam, you're screwed.

You lose all credibility if your audience is just in one place. To answer your question or your point about not having the time, yeah, you have the time. You could be in bed at night doing this, you just have to prioritize it. That's why it's important to also understand the return that you're going to get by creating content and building out your personal brand intentionally.

Isaac Mashman24:21

You don't have to sing or do the TikTok dance, but I'm going to give you the answer that you don't want to hear.

Isaac Mashman24:29

Here's the thing, I'll share a personal story. I used to hate being on camera. I hated the sound of my voice. I hated being on camera. I would run away from it. There are yearbooks in high school where I don't have a profile. I don't have a high school picture in certain years. I think like in my freshman and sophomore year, they reused the same photo from my previous year because I didn't show up to take another picture because I didn't want to go. I was in my emo rebellious stage, and I'm like, I hated the way I looked. My teeth aren't like straight and shiny and white like all the other people I'm seeing at school, and I'm not wearing the nicest clothes.

So I was extremely self-conscious, and to a degree, some of those things still impact me. But again, the return on you getting uncomfortable to be on camera outweighs any of your self-consciousness. If you're going to say that I'm self-conscious and you don't get out of your comfort zone, you're just making excuses. I hate to say that and I want to be empathetic, but at the end of the day, if you don't do that and if you don't show your personality behind [the] camera, you're leaving a lot on the table that's going to allow people like me or you, Mike, to go ahead and take up all your market share because you're not connecting with somebody personally.

Isaac Mashman26:35

Well, number one, personal branding has been around since the beginning of civilization. There's a reason why certain chieftains were more feared by others. There's a reason why Vikings liked this king more than the next king, because they had personal brands, believe it or not. Pharaohs remained in power for centuries because of this assumption that they were of the gods. The same thing with the monarchs remaining. I've been talking about this a lot lately because personal branding is not something that is new. It's not a new concept. What is new about it is the awareness. People are now aware of what personal branding is. And going back to the 1930s, Think and Grow Rich, the chapter on organized planning by Napoleon Hill, he highlights your personal brand.

He highlights putting together a portfolio, which is a very intensive resume from the 30s, saying, go ahead, put together a binder, displaying your accolades, displaying what you bring to the table, and this is how you can get into a job. Fast forward 90 years, what he talked about then, if people were to listen to it, they could get any job in any position that they really want to. That's unbelievable, the power that a personal brand has. So what's next is a highly competitive market. We think that it's competitive right now. It isn't. Today, it is easy. The algorithms are in our favor. Regardless of Instagram maybe changing it from chronological to now it's based off of engagement.

Look, by 2025, 4 billion people are going to be on social media. 4 billion. How are we going to fight through all of that noise? Right now, we still have 3.5 billion. It is a lot of noise, but now everybody's looking to make money from home. Everybody's looking to go ahead and become a micro influencer, making $200 for a small business deal. Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. So I think we're about to enter a highly competitive market and then potentially, in the future, [regulation]. I am not a regulation guy. I'm not pro regulation, but I have to look at what's going on in the world today and what could potentially go on depending on the next couple of administrations.

I could see a lot of regulation online. Between cryptocurrency, non-fungible tokens, NFTs, they've been popping up, and also with online businesses. I think we are about to enter a massive state of regulation in the next couple of decades, so that could also impact personal brands, where more and more people are working for jobs [as] this entrepreneurial phase of America dies out. That's the same thing that happened after World War II, and back in the Industrial Revolution, everybody used to be an entrepreneur until we started working in factories. Then after the war, people started building up their own businesses. Next thing you know, they're going for corporations.

Now we're entering almost another cycle to where I'm seeing that more people are going to start working for companies in a very short amount of time.

Isaac Mashman29:56

Because it allows you to connect with somebody through another means of sense. We have five senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, [and hearing]. If you're able to connect with somebody through their sense of hearing, then you're able to get directly in their head. I've noticed artists before who are my best friends. They release an album. The next thing I know, I have my friend's voice in my head for the next two days. I'm like, dude, I can't get your damn voice out of my mind. I hate it because I love you, man. But I don't like hearing you in my head when I'm at home. That's the same thing with your podcast.

So your podcast has so many different benefits. You're able to connect with somebody through an additional means, you're establishing your credibility, and you're providing a platform for other guests to come on and also promote their own audiences. Because, hey, I was on the Start Down podcast with Mike Ficara. So I'm going to promote it to my people because I'm talking about something, sharing my insights. Then you're going to benefit by my audience coming over and listening to your show, which increases your numbers, your credibility, and this happens no matter if a guest is small or if a guest is gigantic. Everybody is looking for a platform to speak on because we are our number one advocate.

That right there is the power of having a podcast. But if you start a podcast, you have to go into it understanding that it is a long-term commitment because most podcasts don't get past episode 20 and do not average more than 20 listens per episode. So you have to go in and you have to be aggressive with marketing. Every single person should know that you have a podcast. You need to make sure that you make investments back into it, getting a microphone or getting a lighting setup or, you know, investing in Zoom Pro if you want to have that. Those are all things that are going to help you in the long run. But if you're afraid of reinvesting, then you're...

Isaac Mashman31:49

Drive, Google Drive. 100% Mac [over] PC. [Next], iPhone or Android? iPhone. I used to be Android, and I converted to the dark side.

Isaac Mashman32:15

[Well, first], let me go ahead and focus on sales, Way of the Wolf by Jordan Belfort. I [may] not agree [with] his lifestyle, but [he's a] fantastic sales guy when it comes to straight line selling and [his] podcast.

Isaac Mashman32:31

[From a business] standpoint though, [it's The Ed Mylett Show]. Go ahead and listen to [The Ed Mylett Show]. [Ed Mylett's] podcast is fantastic. Awesome. Awesome.

Isaac Mashman32:51

You can find me on every single social media platform at @isaacmashman. Go to my website, isaacmashman.com. If you want to learn a little bit more about my company specifically, go to MashmanVentures.com or Mashman Ventures across every single social platform.