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. Um, no, this was a, 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, but not really trying to come off as a salesman, but more so. Um, I've done a lot over the past couple of years. Uh, I was a literal straight A student graduated top 10 in my class and I could have taken one more SAT test and went to any university in Florida I really wanted to under a four-eyed scholarship.

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

Isaac Mashman2:50

But what I was doing over the past couple of years was really developing a awareness of branding. And 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. and that 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 it didn't get far in any. And I became the go-to person

Isaac Mashman3:57

And 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 could go out and get that penthouse lifestyle.

Isaac Mashman4:54

Man, it was a massive, massive experience. And what company were your parents are part of by the way? They were in the way. Anyway, okay, well, that's one of, I actually know of a couple of people in the business right now. And 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. You know, 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. And so I really didn't see too much of personal development.

I mean, I was raised in the Baptist church. And later, I mean, I'm not like super close into 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 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. And so I saw that as a way for me to latch on and say, I'm going to trust you fully.

And I don't have any regrets. I mean, some of the mentors that I had there, I still study and I still look up to, right? Because I believe that their philosophies and what they're teaching is great. I learned how to be a speaker.

Isaac Mashman6:09

of the company after taking a crazy tour to one of the events. And 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. And they're just now graduating in 2022 because I graduated high school in 2018. So I've exited my entire life. I have 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 of adopted, which is like taking the risk factor.

Isaac Mashman7:13

Right, well personal development is great to really establish the foundation. But what people do is they become as Andy Furssella called success zombies, right? There's zombies for success. They're going to every single event, every single seminar, every single webinar, reading every single book. And 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? And so you have to be a student of application in order to really learn what you need to learn in order to move forward. And 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. And I think that it's more so the diet, pill mentality. If we all know how to get in a good shape and get a six pack, we just don't want to do the work. And I mean, 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, you know, 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. And yes, you have the ability to try and fail, but why would you be seeking to fail or seeking try and not succeed? Like I would rather seek and try to succeed rather than seek and try and fail. And I would get into these different things then I would realize, one, maybe I'm not doing the work

Isaac Mashman9:47

So maybe I'm not enjoying it. And 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, I 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. And 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. And I don't, I enjoy building my business, but my personal brand is where I thrive because I'm a numbers guy. I like the dope, I mean, hit.

I like getting into new articles and connecting with new people and having awesome conversations with people like you. And so it's really just a trust your instinct. If you think that this is not going to work and you don't want to continue pursuing this and 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. My artist that I'm managing is going to make money. And the record label, not go ahead and 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. And so I was like, with that awareness, I said, I'm not going to pursue it. And then later down the line, we ended up, you know, I stopped managing the artists completely because I wasn't making it revenue because it's a long term investment in them. And so you're taking these different aspects and these different facts and looking at them with an unbiased, you know, set of lenses rather than the emotional lens that you normally would be looking through.

Isaac Mashman12:03

quote unquote excuse. You know, 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, you know, 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, you know, when it comes to the privacy aspects and the paparazzi's and they're like, oh my God, that would be horrible.

And being famous, you know, you're in a cult if you're famous in Hollywood. And 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, right? What are the pros of being credible? And 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 and 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. And that is a massive differentiating factor Because your personal brand is you and your personality. People buy from you. There's a reason why the guy Phil from Flex Seal, right? If you've ever seen the commercial, hey Phil here, this is Flex Seal, you know, slap on the piece of tape. He has more followers on Instagram than the official Flex Seal or the Flex Seal. The Flex Seal, right? His account has over a million, and the company account is less than half a million.

Isaac Mashman14:43

And that's the truth, you know, hey, I'm gonna go ahead and say the same exact success quote that Tony Robbins, Dean Graziosi, Tai Lopez and Gary Vias said, you know, I'm gonna use the same exact quote. And I mean, 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. And 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 guy with all of this text copy in their header image. And 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. And 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.

And if you were able to show those aspects of your life, like maybe your favorite food or 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. And 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

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 sopranos and he likes the Shawshank Redemption, right? Two fantastic shows and movies. And so now if I'm going coming on as a guest and I'm a fan of either of those shows or movie, 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 and 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. And 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, right? 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. know, I didn't get that I got rejected. You know, we all have moments to where we're literally sitting in the closet dark and with the lights off, like trying to meditate so we don't lose ourselves in this process. Like, I'll admit it, like I've been there before multiple times.

Isaac Mashman18:06

good that was a good, okay. But again, that's an aspect I showed. I showed my journey to get to Arkansas and highlighting my time in the airport and then, you know, sometimes in court 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 a time to write out an enlist of different Unique character traits things that people could connect with you on it It's like building a building right you start out with the foundation and then you have you know The story one story two story three story four and I call that the tower of rapport You're building rapport on each story and the next thing you know you have the burst califa of rapport of the somebody That's why you have acquaintances Strangers friends and best friends and that right there is is the answer to creating content You know how don't if you're trying to be in the entertainment industry You might not only talk about business you're gonna 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. You know, there's no right or wrong way. And I think that overthinking it is the number one thing

Isaac Mashman19:46

Absolutely. You're looking at Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Snapchat, TikTok, you know, and God only knows what else is out there that people aren't looking at. And obviously it's like, okay, So where do I need to be putting content on that? That's always the big question everybody has. Where's the place you should go to put content out there? 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 middle school thing that I would do in middle school, right? 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 a variety of different platforms. And 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, and 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. And 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, right? Like, and this is the other crazy thing. Yesterday I was having a call at somebody who's actually from my home city of Jacksonville. and he runs a highly successful landscaping company is about a dozen people working for him. And I'm like, brother, what you need to do is you need to start filming before and after videos of your landscape, right?

Somebody brings you in to turn their yard from looking like a $200,000 yard in a million dollar community. And 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. And that's landscaping. That's greenery. Why would that be viral? And 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. And 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 wanna use would be LinkedIn if you're a musician or if you're an artist, right? 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 of view of your 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? That's the thing, you should not have, 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, your screwed.

You lose all credibility if your audience is just in one place. And 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. And that's why it's important to also understand the return that you're going to get by creating content

Isaac Mashman24:29

And 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 for 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 are like straight and shiny and white.

Like all the other people I'm seeing at school, you know, I'm not wearing the nicest clothes. And so I was extremely self cautious and to a degree, some of those things still impact me. But you again, the return on you getting uncomfortable to be on camera out weights any of your self-cautiousness. And if you're going to say that I'm self-cautious and you don't get out of your comfort zone, you're just making excuses. And 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 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 Mashman26:37

has been around since beginning of civilization. There's the reason why certain chief tens were more feared by others. There's a reason why Vikings like this king more than the next king, because they had personal brands, believe it or not. Pharaohs remain in power for centuries because of this assumption that they were of the gods. And the same thing with the monarchs remaining. And I've been talking about this a lightly because personal branding is not something that is new. It's not a new concept. That what is new about it is the awareness. People are now aware of what personal branding and going back to 1930s, Think and Grow Rich, the chapter of organized planning by Napoleon Hill.

He highlights your personal brand. He highlights Put 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. And fast for 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. And that's, it'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? And 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. And everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. And so I think we're about to enter a highly competitive market and then potentially in the future. And 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 in 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.

And then after the war, people started building up their own businesses. And next thing you know, they're going for corporations. And now we're entering almost another cycle to where I'm seeing 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, right? We have five senses, you know, sight, smell, taste, touch. And if you're able to connect with somebody through their sense of hearing, then you're able to get directly in their head. Think of, I've, I've, I've noticed artists before who are my best friends. And 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. And I hate it because I love you, man. But I don't like hearing you in my head when I'm at home.

And, you know, that's the same thing with your podcast. And so your podcast has so many different benefits. You're able to connect with somebody through a 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, you know, the, you know, start down podcast with Mike Vakara. So I'm gonna promote it to my people because I'm talking about something sharing my insights and 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. And 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 in episode. And so you have to go in and you have to be aggressive with marketing. Every single person should know that you have a podcast and 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 Mashman32:31

I'm buying standpoint though, the end of my light show. Go ahead and listen to the end of my light