How to Scale Your Business and Brand with Isaac Mashman

Isaac Mashman1:17

Richard, thank you for the invitation. It's amazing to see now that this episode is sponsored. You're moving up in the world as well, just compared to a couple of years ago. We did it when I was building my firm, compared to where we're both at today. It's exciting to share this time with you and this coffee, this good cafe which I'm not sponsored by, but man, it kicks you in the ass.

Isaac Mashman2:12

Yeah, and I can tell that you pay attention because it's not like I'm one of those guys. It's like talking about my problem was 24 seven. So you're paying attention to those minor details of those posts where I provide hints that things aren't the greatest. Resiliency is really being annoying about success. By the term annoying, number one, these problems and these pain points will annoy you and you have to annoy the problem because you have to be persistent about it. So I think about the persistence that I've had to have mentally, emotionally, physically to where entrepreneurship and business and life comes in waves. This is something I've noticed in myself that everybody else knows is that you'll have these cycles where you are super motivated.

That's easy to grow. That's easy to succeed. But the times that you're not motivated or that things aren't working out and you're on this downward trend, right, even if it's temporary, you have to have this resiliency about you to where it doesn't matter. You're still going to press forward or even if you get told no or even if you have to withdraw an offer from a prospect or even if you have somebody who's causing you issues in your business, you have to make sure that you are resilient and persistent and annoying when it comes to your success. You have to be an annoyance to where no matter what, you are popping up and you're doing the things that you need to do. That's a challenge. That's something that is not optional, it's a requirement.

Isaac Mashman4:17

Well, there's a massive difference between a lateral pivot and a vertical pivot. Here's what I mean by that. Every time that I was finding a new business and trying a new endeavor, it was this search for clarity. It was this search for I know that there's something else out there that I might be better at or that I could do, that could be more efficient, better for my skills and better for my gifts. So it's not like personal brand consulting and MCG, Mashman Consulting Group was my first business. It's not like I automatically came out of the gate and had this endeavor. No, I went from network marketing, I went from a clothing line, I went from drop shipping, I went to music management and I did all these different things in a search for clarity, in a search for something that was better.

Those were all vertical pivots because I basically went up and I said, all right, I'm jumping. It's same thing as like if you're finding a new career or finding a new position that is higher up in the hierarchy of a company or in your field, you're making a vertical pivot. So you're changing a little bit and you're going higher. I don't even know if pivot would be the proper word when you're making a vertical jump. It's more of a vertical jump. But in 2020, I launched my public relations firm, which is what I was building for four years. That was also the business that I basically got really, I got my feet wet, heavily, not just in terms of sales and prospecting and how to have conversations and things like that.

But I got my feet wet in the back end, the unsexy kind of things from client refund requests of literal $8,000 to dealing with having all of the legal paperwork and contracts for independent contractors and how do you send out a 1099 and all of these details that people will talk about. That was the business that I was growing until I decided to dissolve that and lead into Mashman Consulting Group. That was an example of a lateral pivot because I wasn't rebranding the business, but I was launching a new business off of the back of my old one, similar business model, similar services, similar provisions.

But I made a little bit of a horizontal, a lateral pivot to where I was like, all right, this little pivot here, launching something new will allow me to literally hit that exponential growth because I have all of the clarity that I was searching for all of these years.

Isaac Mashman7:21

That's a large part about what I've been about and what I would encourage people to do too, because there comes a point to where you have to commit to a business or you have to commit to something. But that doesn't mean that you cannot adapt that business. Because the biggest issue, Richard, people try something for a year and they give up with it. Right? They're like, oh, I did this for 12 months, so I did this for two years and I got to restart over because I, whatever. You go through that, I think, for a few years of your life, I think that's a necessity to try a bunch of things, figure it out, and then you're not going to have everything perfected.

So when I launched my firm or when I launched MCG just a couple months ago, it's not one of these situations where I have the perfection, I have everything down-packed. No, but it is that pursuit knowing that I'm committed to this one business. I'm committed to this endeavor that I'm building. Then it's like the people who go from network marketing company to network marketing company thinking that they can all of a sudden hit it big. They don't realize that. No, you need to stick with the one company and scale it up as long as that's something that has a good quality service, a good backbone, a good products, a good leadership team.

Stick with it. So when you're looking at current trends in the market, it's like, yeah, fidget spinner's aren't going to be the hot commodity anymore and dropshipping might not be the hot commodity anymore, but maybe launching a podcast agency and building that would be something you're good, or maybe if you're doing a dropshipping company, right, e-com, you might not be doing fidget spinner sales anymore. But you might be doing a specific, I'm trying to think of what's hot with the kids. But it's like, you could go into political t-shirts and literally have a good business there if you're not building a brand that is like a Nike or an Adidas kind of brand.

But you're building, you know, shits and giggles, dropshipped items, yeah, that would be fine. But that takes a degree of risk and a risk, a degree of faith in yourself as well to go from one thing to the next and then stick to that one thing. So when I made the decision in my mind let me dissolve this publicly and launch something new, it was, man, I know that I'm setting myself up to do a lot more work but this is the best way forward. Life is about all of these different decisions for you were looking for the best way forward.

Isaac Mashman10:11

Well, what are you going to do? Are you going to go back and delete the post and look stupid? It's like saying that a couple months ago, I put out a post on Facebook and I said, I will be on 100 podcast interviews in 2024. A couple months went by and I'm like, man, I have been so inconsistent the first couple months of 2024 with being on eight shows. Like if I was on eight shows starting in January, I would not have to be on 20 shows in July. But I'm having a makeup for that lost ground and by reestablishing that momentum. I think, vertical momentum, it's like, this is the perfect show to talk about this is once you have momentum, it's so much easier to keep it than it is to restart it and reestablish it.

Now the beautiful thing Richard though and this goes into personal branding, the great thing about building a strong personal brand is you can reestablish momentum easier than you could have if you were starting over. So even though I wasn't really promoting Mashman Ventures in my firm for the past year I launched MCG and all of a sudden that momentum is back to square way. It's back to where it was when I left it off. So when you build this name. It's kind of like the artist who doesn't drop any music for a couple of years. All of a sudden Rihanna comes out with a new album, it hits number one or Eminem, it disappears for a few years and drops a new album and it's number one.

That is the testament of a successful personal brand because you're able to go and basically come back like you never left. When you're building these things and building and putting yourself out there, that honesty is very helpful because it connects people to you and being able to stand on principles. I had a conversation with a mutual friend of ours a couple of days ago, Joseph Graham, Graham, and we talked about, I love you, Joe.

Isaac Mashman12:02

So our conversation is coming out in September around the time this one will come out. We spent the entire time talking about principles and talking about being, open and willing to hold yourself to a higher commitment. You have this personal commitment to yourself. Then you, by putting yourself out there and saying that I'm doing this, you have the public holding you committed to. Just like a politician getting into office, it's like if they need to have their own degree of commitment, but the public is also going to hold them to a standard where if they don't perform, they don't get elected again. It's kind of the same thing with business.

It's like you have to do things to where you are getting elected time and time again as the best operator for your business or the best public figure that you can be?

Isaac Mashman13:59

Well, and you can make these small changes, you're phasing in new aspects of you. Phasing in new aspects of your character. So when you're online and somebody's following you for even five years, there are going to be aspects of your character or aspects of your interests that they might not know about. But over time, there might come a time where it's appropriate to talk about your favorite TV show or it's appropriate to talk about your political beliefs or it's appropriate for you to discuss religion or it's appropriate for you to talk about sailboats. Now all of a sudden Joseph, let's say, and it's the Joseph Graham show, imagine if he goes on a podcast and he has a guest, that is a boat salesman.

Now you can talk about sales, or sales, and you can talk about selling boats. So it's like, it's the best of both worlds. But when you're building out a marketing message and saying, for example, my own addicted to coffee and standards, I help public figures optimize and scale personal brands. Optimize and scale their personal brands. That is consistent across every single platform. If you were to follow me, you know that, I will talk about personal branding. Now I have the flexibility because personal branding gets so broad to where I could talk about podcasting or authorship or speaking or landing gigs or social media optimization algorithms.

I can talk about all these different things and it falls underneath the umbrella. But it's not like I'm going to come out tomorrow and talk about used car sales and be like, hey, if you want to sell more cars, but if I wanted to ever appeal to that kind of audience, I could say here is how used car salesmen can leverage their personal brands to drive more sales. See what I did there. So I can talk about a subject that might not be directly a correlated with me, but I can at any time change my marketing and be able to reach out to those people.

Just like when you're building a business, you don't want to microneach down to where it's like you only work with dentist offices or you only work with doctors or you only work with car salesman, but at any point you could direct your advertisements to reach that kind of audience because you want to attract that kind of client to fill out your books and to fill out your client base and your customer base.

Isaac Mashman17:03

Once again, it's a game. What is the definition of personal branding? This is something that I feel like we should get out of the way. I talked about this the first time we were on, your personal brand is you. I am the only Isaac Mashman that has ever existed and that will ever exist. You were the only Richard Kaufman, regardless of other people possibly sharing your name, you are still the one and only. You're the one who came from your mother, you're the one who shared your experiences, were in the military, have all of your interests, et cetera. So if you're thinking about your personal brand being more than just your career, now all of these things are facets and aspects of your personal brand.

So for example, you mentioned Shaq. I know that if I'm going to Papa John's and they have the Shaq pizza, I'm going to order that because it's associated with Shaq. I know that if I need a certain, I don't know, Cologne, I might do old spice because it's associated with Terry Cruz. It's the same thing as like in the 50s in John Wayne and Marlboro cigarettes. It's like what cigarette brand would you smoke back in the 1950s and 60s? Those exact cigarettes. Why? Because it was an early form of influencer advertising and leveraging a person's personal brand. So thinking about this now, whether you're going and trying to be the next executive the next Alex Hermose or the next entertainer NBA player by building your personal brand and showcasing who you are.

People are going to latch onto that because people will do business with who they know like and trust. This isn't new. This is, frankly, cliche at this point, but it is the God honest truth. When I was in network marketing, one of the things that was emphasized was word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising because of that very fact. That is rapport. That is trust. That is a relationship. If you can have that relationship with your audience and with everybody who's following you, you might not know who they are, but they know who you are. They will want to propel you forward and position you in a way to where they can feel comfortable sending people your way or sharing your content.

Isaac Mashman20:39

Well, every single thing you're talking about is building rapport with somebody. So the fact that we both love coffee, need the caffeine. Or maybe if you're talking about the fact that you like Lord of the Rings or your Star Wars fan or that you were in Boy Scouts or you were a veteran, like, yesterday, I was watching part of the RNC and I've never done that before. But a lot of the members who were running from political office, they started out and saying, I'm a veteran, I'm from here. One of the greatest people, his name is Hong Chao and he's running for office, I think possibly, I don't remember which state.

But he started out talking about communism, talking about how his parents were immigrants, and that was what he experienced. Then he went in to talk about how he was a Navy Seal, and then his story. Now all of a sudden you have all these layers of who this person is. It's really easy when you're building out your social media and creating content or thinking about what you create. You can only talk about maybe your career, but you don't talk about who you are. Because talking about you as a person is more challenging than talking about you was a professional. It is so much more difficult because then you're left with, if I talk about this, does it look stupid?

So again, you have to ask yourself, what is the purpose of this content? There are four main reasons that a piece of content is successful and that somebody would create a piece of content, the outcomes of it, so to speak. So a piece of content can entertain you, it can educate you, it can inspire or motivate you, or it can connect you. If you get a piece of content that can do all four those things that can connect you with the guest or connect you with a with an audience member, it entertains them. It's educational in it motivates them to take action. Now they have all these reasons why they would want to follow you and say, hey, I like this guy quite a bit.

So you're thinking about building out your own audience, ask yourself, what do you want to be known as? What do you want to be known for? So you might not like LeBron compared to Kobe Bryant. But then you're following in the footsteps of Giants and even Andrew Carnegie in his book, the Empire of business said that regardless of your, no, is actually Napoleon Hill in the law of success. If I'm quoting it correctly, and he says that even if you follow in the footsteps of another person, you're still going to be closer to them and having success than if you were to try to pave your own path.

Because you can reverse engineer what is effective, just like Alex or Mozy, you could reverse engineer his content strategy and probably tell that he took inspiration from Gary Vaynerchuk as an example. I feel like this mentioning Gary was inevitable for this show just like the first time we mentioned him. But you could reverse engineer those strategies that work just like you could reverse engineer what I've done to build my own personal brand and you could duplicate the results. If her result is duplicatable, that means that it is successful and that there's a real solid strategy there.

Isaac Mashman24:32

About you? Well, you could talk about how great you are every day of the week 24 seven every single second of the day and say, here's why you need to work with me. Here's why I'm the best. Here's why I'm expert, but experts never call themselves experts. Other people call them experts. So you're thinking about what is this? That is edification. So if you can do things to where other people are edifying you by association, so for example, me coming on your show is a form of edification. Now let's take that another layer. Now I was also on your friend's show, Joseph Graham. So I was on his podcast.

That is a form of edification by two parties in the same network so both of you guys by interviewing me are edifying me. Now have this layer of connection saying we have somebody in our network that we would both refer people to right? That looks tremendous for me and that is a privilege right ultimately that is a privilege to have multiple people in the same network vouching for me and so whether you're trying to get press articles or land that Forbes feature, you're not going to do that by paying your way in. Anybody can land a feature in Forbes or a high quality placement or an interview, etc.

If they have something to talk about that is a value or an opinion. I mean think about what is politics? Politics is a lot of it is opinions. It's not even fact-based or statistics. It is I have a talking point or an opinion that I could talk about talk show hosts. It's like half of the television in the first half of the day. You're talking about Maury or Jerry Springer or the view or any of the it's all talking points. Half the time it's not even about expertise. The thing is though, these are all individuals that have put themselves out there to where now they're in the public side. Okay.

Isaac Mashman27:23

Actively listen. Let's reverse engineer Joe Rogan, the most successful podcaster of all time. He is never an expert on any subject. He's not the expert unless it's the M&An and he's talking specifically about that on those specific MMA shows. He is always asking questions and just having the conversation. So there's no expectation for a guest to come in and think that they're under the spotlight of this microanalysis that Joe Rogan's going to piece them and break them apart and you know is this guy legitimate? No a guest comes on and they have a conversation they have rhetoric for two to three hours or four hours and they just go back and forth and banter.

Then Joe is now one of the most intelligent people because he's had thousands of conversations with no expectation other than let me ask you and let's have a conversation back and forth. Think about that in terms of how powerful that is and so if you're thinking about how to be the best interviewer, well, let's reverse engineer Joe Rogan. Just like David Meltzer left that comment to you, I think that is your job as a podcaster to ask those questions unless it's a super niche show talking about branding or artificial intelligence or talking about plumbing or contracting. But like, unless you're doing a show that you're only appealing to one audience, it is your job to bring interesting people and let them showcase why somebody might listen to that podcast.

Isaac Mashman30:05

Well, why would you wear a billion dollar corporations merchandise and not even support your best friend who's launched a business? This is one of the most common things people talk about. It's like your friends will be the last to support you and strangers will be the first. You think about these companies that are branding themselves. They might wear Nike or Reebok or all of these different merchandise because it looks cool or it's comfortable. But if you really wanted to still wear that brand, what you could do is get custom merchandise that is a Nike based t-shirt that might have the Nike swoop but might have your business logo on it.

There could be some compromise there, but it is always better to wear an unbranded piece of merchandise over wearing your own or overwear. It's better to go unbranded than it is to support one of these big brands because again, then you're edifying that company. You're associating with it. It's not so much important for somebody at a small level, but you think about a celebrity that is seen wearing, let's say, Balenciaga or wearing Louis Vuitton. All of a sudden, there's this big piece around that online. There's this big chatter in conversation. So what you can do is you can take the couple hundred dollars and get custom t-shirts, custom hoodies.

Like I'm waiting on getting some Mashman Consulting Group hoodies, but guess what? This hoodie is unbranded. I don't have a logo. But this could easily look like it's an Oakley sweater or something. No, it's an unbranded sweatshirt, because I know that I'm not going to feel comfortable wearing some brand that basically says, oh, I support this brand. No, I'd rather go unbranded than support a brand. But I'd also rather wear my own brands than no brand at all. So that's like the perfect thing to wear. If you can get merchandise, support your local business in your town, in your city. I think online entrepreneurs need to support local entrepreneurs more than ever, exactly, and that looks good.

You could go to any print shop in your local city and say, hey, I need these made. Can you go ahead and do this? Then when you show up to interviews where you're going out and walking in public, like going into Target a couple weeks ago, I was recognized going into the store, not because of my brand, but because of my face. But now imagine you're going out and about going out to eat, going to events, and you're wearing your logo, you're wearing your social media handle. You never know who you're going to be walking past or who might be following you on social media that you don't even know exists.

That's how you can start becoming that local hero and known on a personal level. Then on a digital aspect as well, you have all these people who are also following you and seeing that brand. That creates this degree of familiarity. I believe that there's Richard, a law familiarity, just like the kid who goes to school on the first day feels all awkward. They don't know who their teachers are, what friends are going to have the same classes or there's a new kid. But by the end of the school year, they don't care. They know everybody because it is familiar. You have to get people familiar with you and what you're doing and your brand and your logo and your name and your social media.

Isaac Mashman34:14

Then you're out the game. Man, I've been compiling a document that has all of the different places that I've been interviewed, and I was going through some of the people my network and my Facebook messages in particular. There were some shows that I forgot I was even on because I haven't heard anything from these people over the past couple of years. Nothing at all. I think about to where now I'm getting re-familiarized with them and what they're doing. I'm like, do I even want to reach back out to them and see about coming back on their show? Maybe not. Relationships are one of those things where it's a two-way street where you're naturally providing value either by being a shoulder that they can cry on or being somebody who can educate them or how you can just share your experiences and have a conversation back and forth.

Again, you find these degrees of similarities or even differences and differences can be just as powerful as similarities because now you can have good conversations and rhetoric back and forth. It does require time and you know, I have a best friend in Jackson when I'm living in little Rock, Arkansas now. I told him his name is Kevin and I told him I was like, man, I'm afraid that by not moving back to Jacksonville, our friendship might dissolve or might not be as strong as it could be. We've been friends for over a decade. He's like, don't stress about that. Something I've learned from my military friends, and this is Kevin speaking, that those relationships require not only the person who might be in the military to maintain that relationship, but also the person on the other end.

Don't worry about that distance, doesn't matter. We're still going to be putting in that effort. Then when we are in person, face to face, it be like, nothing's ever happened. I'm thinking to myself, wow. Yeah. Sometimes it requires you to let go of your ego to be that person who reaches out and follows up. Sometimes you get busy. People aren't thinking about, they have hundreds of people in their life that are asking them for something or, asking for money or asking for advice or trying to talk to you. You have all these different things going on to where who you are you to think that you should have, you should wait for somebody else to reach out to you.

You need to let that ego go and maybe reach out to them first. Then all of a sudden you realize that they've been so busy, but they've been missing you, but they just keep putting it off. Then you can pick up like nothing ever happened.

Isaac Mashman37:58

What can I do for you to better support you? That is like a golden question that I've actually started asking my fiance to, like I tried to every day and say, hey, do you need me to do anything for you today? What can I do? That is a, you think about what place does that come from? It doesn't come from a place of expectation, it comes from a place of service. That place is missing expectation, which means it's genuine and it is something that is emotional. So what can I do to better support you? Then a lot of times it'll be like, there's nothing that you could do, but I appreciate you asking.

They'd be more likely to ask that same thing of you in the future. You're like, hey, what can I do to better support you? So there's this degree of respect that gets built because it's really easy. Think about how many times, man, you get a friend request and you get pitched immediately. Immediately, whether it's a virtual assistant or it's a genuine person, like lately, I've been to the point now to where if somebody pitches me on a service to that, I know that clearly if you were to follow me for any minute or look at my profile, you would know I didn't need. I'd be like, seriously, you can do better than that.

I'll call them out or I'll delete the friend request, like whatever it is. But the people who are genuine about their relationships, and it can be difficult too, especially because if you're thinking about building a business, sometimes you might be tight financially or that you could really use that sale. But then you have this degree of desperation. If you're desperate about things, things are you're forcing your way into success and success does not like to be forced, likes to be nurtured. It's much easier to nurture a relationship.

Isaac Mashman41:11

Well, I'm sitting here thinking about which direction I want to take that conversation. I'm thinking about the merge of old school and new school in terms of online entrepreneurs need to be offline more and offline entrepreneurs need to be online. There's a balance of you should be going out and shaking hands with people next to you in your city. You can leverage your local network and your local, and I've been talking about this all the time, to get a crutch and a level up online. So for example, if you go to your chamber of commerce. You do a speaking event in front of 20 or 30 people, you could film that, leverage that, package it, promote it digitally and land more digital gigs while having a strong local network.

People want to see you win. So that's one example of old school with new school. When you're talking about artificial intelligence and leveraging whether that's chat GPT or image creator or Dolly or even an AI that can help create music, all of these things are not meant to do the heavy lifting. They're meant to be a supplemental spotter for you. If you're thinking about lifting weights on a bench, you need a spotter there to make sure that you're good and to give you a leg up and to help you out if you need it. So if you're thinking about the use cases, for example, building out graphics, rather than trying to take and search hours for a specific graphic I can use, I could go into Bing or go into the image tree and say, hey, I need a geometric background that is black and white that would be used for a social media post for an education based company.

Hit create, it can create an image, I could see, all right, this is good or tweak the prompt. But then I take that graphic and I don't just post that as is, I would use that as a background, adjust the transparency and make a social media post with an image that's entirely unique. Or if I'm writing a press release, I can have chat GPT help me structure that press release, but I'm feeding it the information that it needs in order to write an effective press release. So I can't just say write a press release about Mashman Consulting Group, but no, I'd say I am looking for press release, talking about the launch of a new headquarters location in little Rock, Arkansas for a new business Mashman Consulting Group that provides personal brand consulting for public figures with emphasis on optimization and scaling.

I go into detail, it takes me a couple minutes to write the prompt and then it can take, all right, Isaac's already included a quote. I can insert the quote here. I can provide all this information here. Now I have a fully structured press release that isn't cliche because I'm directing it on where it needs to go. So if I see somebody who has a social media post, it's like, are you feeling stuck in your business? Are you lacking motivation? Get up and change your sleep schedule. Say affirmations in the morning. I'm thinking to myself, what in the world? Richard, the thing that helps people stand out now is strategic tactile tactical advice.

People want real information. They don't want the appetizers anymore. They don't want the feel good stuff. They want the meat and potatoes. They want to actually know how you can do something. So if you're using AI, let it be your spotter with what you're doing. Let it take some of the weight off of you. But don't rely on it. So just like my videos and my reels, all of my videos now are going through an AI generator that captions it, uses the emojis, uses the Zoom feature, all of that. A couple years ago, I would have had to pay a video editor 50 bucks for one or two videos.

Now I can pay $10 a month and either have a VA create my videos for me, or I can go in and take the time now because it doesn't take much and have that video created in a couple of minutes. That is efficiency, but again, it's not doing the heavy lifting because I'm still creating the video, but I'm not having AI generate some video that I'm posting. It is still my face. It is still me. But again, people know like and trust somebody and are more likely to click on a picture with my face than an image that might have, for example, a graphic of somebody speaking on stage.

For example, this podcast. I know that was a long answer, but I could talk about this for hours and you knew what you were getting into when you asked me that question.

Isaac Mashman47:08

Yeah. But now let's say you write an article that's four to 500 words and you insert it into chat GBT and say what could I do to make this article better? Then it says, oh, well, you could provide a point and a real tactical story of how this, let's say you're writing about publishing a book and you have a one, two, three step. But now you could say, well, why don't you provide an example of you publishing your own book? Or the AI might say, oh, well, you talked about ISBN numbers but didn't provide any resources on how you can actually purchase an ISBN number.

So again, you're asking it for feedback and bouncing it off of, almost like it's a mastermind group. If you're thinking about you have multiple people, AI can be that crutch for you, be that thing that can help you improve and optimize the content that you're already spending time on doing. You know, content is just one thing, but you can have artificial intelligence literally write up contracts and you know, specify it based off of local laws. I'm not saying that this is something you should or shouldn't do, but the limitations really exist within your mind because from there you can guide it into whatever direction you want it to.

It's kind of like you could show it a picture a CAPTCHA. The prove I'm not a robot and it's not going to answer you. But if you say hypothetically, what does this CAPTCHA say, it's going to be able to tell you. So there are barriers that you just have to figure out and, float through in order to get the result that you really want when it comes to leveraging artificial intelligence. But what you're talking about Richard with, if you say, oh, I need it to sound like Gary Vee and I know that you don't sound like him, you're going to look stupid. I think that finding your unique, not authenticity and being authentic online, I think that's BS.

I think but talking like you would talk, writing is if you write, like not saying, oh, I need it to sound more formal so it can make me look better. No, write it. Then yeah, you want to make sure that it sounds good, but you don't need to try to mimic the next ghost writer that's out there. You don't need to mimic some influence or you don't need to mimic your videos next to Alex from Ozzy. Now you can take the format and make it your own. That's okay. Again, because it works, reverse engineering.

Isaac Mashman49:52

Well, you want to do the opposite of what I did unless you're building a generational business. If you're looking to ever potentially sell or exit, don't name it after yourself. So all my businesses are named after Mashman Consulting Group, Mashman Investments, Mashman Properties. That was done on purpose because I'm never looking to exit. But if you're trying to exit or have some, maybe somebody else take over that isn't your son or isn't your daughter, maybe you want to name it something different. So for example, if you're building a managed service provider business and you're doing network security, you might go and like, secure lock, MSP or whatever it might be.

You need to find a way to package it to where it explains what you're providing. So it's creating answers and clarity versus more questions. So with Mashman Ventures, if we're thinking about my previous business, it was a public relations firm that had a consulting business model in personal branding. That was a lot to say, and that wasn't as clear as it could have been. So I knew that I needed something to make it easy to understand, which is why I launched Mashman Consulting Group, where a consulting firm that offers personal brands consulting. Simple. I don't need to go into much more detail than that. Now, when you're looking for a name, it needs to be available.

So you'd want to make sure that you're not fighting with a hundred other people for a similar name. So you would go to opencorprets.com, you would go to your secretary of state, you would run a Google search, and you would see if there are other businesses that share a similar name. If there isn't, you have the green light, so you could go. You want to purchase your domain. So MashmanCG.com, Ashmanconsultinggroup.com. That was one of the first steps I did when launching this new business. You need to secure the same social media handle that is the same as your domain. So it's at Mashman CG all across the board.

If you think about why you'd want to do that, you want to create a seamless brand to make it easy to promote, easy to know and easy to remember. So MashmanCG.com, you can follow the firm everywhere at Mashman CG. Then you could get into the nitty gritty that isn't even as important, which would be the logo and the color scheme and all those aspects, but having the name, the direction and the visibility are great. Then you could also thinking about, okay, what do you want the brand to be like? Do you want it to be a luxury service? Do you want to be a mom and pop?

Do you want it to be a boutique? Then you can adjust your branding and how you market your company as such. So if it's a boutique local business, you could make it a little bit more hipster and make it more appealing to Gen Z and younger generations. But if you're building a traditional business, you might want to make it more appealing to middle-aged people. So having traditional calls or things that would instill confidence, such as a logo with, I'm thinking about the woman who during world War II was, we can do it. It's like you might want to do call-backs that would be inspiring strength and inspiring confidence.

The logo from there, do you want it to be a cursive font? Do you want it to be a bold font? Do you want it to be more corporate? There are so many questions that you can ask yourself. It would be wise that you might want to hire somebody to consult with you so you can identify these things ahead of time and maybe spend a couple of weeks building out your brand before you decide to launch. I think that's a smart move. I think that where I really specialize in is the personal side of things and helping with your personal brand. We can have a really great conversation, Richard, about how you can leverage your personal brand.

Isaac Mashman54:48

We could easily go in, and I know like, for example, in a consultation, something right off the bat that I would recommend you do is right now at the top of the screen, it says you can email us at verticalmomentumpodcast.com. Well, why don't we go ahead and get an email set up to where it's podcast at verticalmomentum.com. For example, right, towards a custom email domain. These are all the small tactics and all the small things to where even if you're the only person building out your personal brand. You don't have a videographer or a photographer or anybody working with you, you have to have this presence and this needs to feel like you have a team of a dozen people working for you.

That is how you need to position yourself. Or even if you're the solo prener, your company needs to look like you have a team of a dozen employees in association with your business. Now, is that unethical or are you lying? No, you're not. You are simply positioning yourself and are you saying from your company page, I would love to work with you or we would love to work with you. First person versus third person. There are so many different strategies that you can leverage to have what I consider and what I call an omnipresent personal brand or an omnipresent business. You think about Coca-Cola and Coca-Cola's everywhere across the world and every country practically.

They are omnipresent everywhere all the time. So just like you're getting recognized, you have the makings of an omnipresent personal brand where it doesn't matter if you're in Alberta, Canada or in Miami, Florida or in El Paso, you're going to be able to get recognized. That takes time to work on, and it's not like you have these things overnight, it's taken you hundreds of interviews and hundreds of conversations to get these stepping stones. But then again, that goes back to you have a track record, you have a milestone, just like your credit history. Your credit history sucks, banks aren't going to want to work with you, but if you have a good credit history, you're going to be more available for opportunities.

A measurement that you can use is our opportunity seeking you out or are you having to be the person who always seeks out opportunities? That is the really great measurement of how successful your brand is.

Isaac Mashman58:00

Well, you have to make sure that it has a culture outside of you. You mentioned something that is a real risk to where just like your friend, if he's not there, people aren't stopping by, you need to create the culture to wear, even if you're not there, people know that they're still getting treated just as much as if you're there. Could talk about exclusivity to where they know that if you are there, like they're getting, they're having dinner or lunch with like the founder, the owner, like there's a degree of separation there. But you should also instill confidence in your clients to where I'm not going to be on every single consultation.

But I know that if they were to work with my COO or work with any other consultant that we hire over the next 24 to 144 months, right, that they are still going to get the same quality. That's how you build a brand that extends past you because think about how many people are solo-preneurs versus business owners. That's something to where if you were to think about Robert Kiyosaki's the cash flow quadrant, you have what, 60% of I remember the quadrant correctly, 60% are employees, like 35% are self-employed, or yeah, self-employed, 4% are investors and 1% are business owners. I might have the final two backwards.

But regardless, what's important is the idea of it existing past yourself. So Charles Schwab was named after a man, Charles Schwab. Henry Ford did Ford Motor company. It has well existed past his death. But you think about these major companies. You mentioned Nike and not everybody might know who Phil Knight is, but you think about Amazon or Tesla and everybody knows Jeff Bezos. Everybody knows Elon Musk. Everybody knows Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. Now, if you think about Tesla, you can make the argument that Tesla would not have been successful if it was not for Elon Musk's personal brand because there was a point to where people would purposely go out of their way to buy Tesla, not because it was Tesla, but because it was Elon Musk.

So now, if Elon Musk was to disappear tomorrow, Tesla has a degree of quality and assurance to where now people know what they are getting. They know that what they were purchasing is going to be worth it. So Elon Musk could leave the company and 100% of it tomorrow, but people would still purchase it. Now, yes, it would take a little bit of a hit, but it's still going to be able to exist even though he might be out of the picture. Now you're getting into high level business and thinking about how if a CEO steps down, how culture might be affected, or how hiring a new CEO, you would need to hire somebody who can instill confidence for investors.

So personal branding is a lot more than just the entrepreneur or the podcaster space. It is every single facet of our economy, our politics, our beliefs, our religion, all of it. Personal branding is like, it's more important than a business brand in my opinion.

Isaac Mashman1:02:13

Being a brand and a business owner? Well I used to go under the moniker that if it's going to divide your audience you shouldn't do it or you shouldn't say it. But then I realized that was kind of a weak approach to where yeah you might want to talk about a political stance every now and again. That doesn't mean you do it every single day. You might not talk about your religion every single day, but every now and again, cool. Again, that allows you to make an explanation of faith. It makes, it's an exclamation of belief and that can connect you with somebody. Now thinking about this entire political situation that's happened over the past week, there were so many people that just felt so comfortable saying something so heinous on socials.

They're seeing repercussions from Jack Black if you were to go to that video and read the comments, people are like, wow, my family's never watching another Jack Black video again. Or let's think about Dwayne the Rock Johnson in 2020. He endorsed President Joe Biden, okay? He endorsed it. He took a hit because he explained that I'm endorsing Joe Biden. But four years later, he said that, if I was looking back, I might not have made that endorsement, but his brand has gone forward because it's not like he was like, I'm endorsing Osama bin Laden. It's like he has his own belief and that is okay.

Jack Black posing with Joe Biden would have been okay. But the fact that somebody he was associated with it wasn't even himself who said it, said that, oh, I wish that the president, that bullet was one inch to the right. Now by association, his reputation sunk. Know what we were talking about Richard. We were talking about how association can bring you up for the entire podcast. But now this is an example of how it can bring you down. So Jack Black, what I read was correct. He went back and he said that shouldn't have happened, that that phrase was not good, but too damn late.

Now he's going to spend the next decade trying to repair his reputation. Sometimes nobody will ever be able to look at him the same way. So growing up, it's like he, we Herman, for example, growing up, I had my grandmother and my mom be like, he is a complete pedophile. He is a complete weirdo. So entering into adulthood, I don't even watch anything with him. I don't, I didn't even look into anything about his background, but I have that instilled in my memory to where Pee Wee Herman, oh, he's a weirdo. Same with Michael Jackson. It's like Michael Jackson and kids. It's like, I don't even care anymore because it was just instilled in me.

So you're thinking about every single tactic that you're doing, or every single thing that you're saying, or every post you're making, is either contributing to your reputation in a positive way or destroying it in a negative way. So ask yourself, what am I doing this for? Again, are you educating, motivating, inspiring, connecting, or entertaining somebody? Don't just post to post, don't just shit post to shit post, have a reason for what you're doing. Then realize that, it might take a redwood tree a thousand years to grow, but give me some. But you know, give me some beers and a couple guys with chainsaws, we could cut that tree down in a couple hours, 100 years down the drain.

That is like your reputation. But then again, and I'll shut up. Let's think about Tiger Woods. How many car accidents has he been in? How many drugs has he taken over the past decade? I don't even know. I don't care. He's still the greatest golfer. So there are degrees just like you could make the argument that some sins are worse than other sins towards some things you can come back to. It's like Jordan Belfer has somehow managed to rebuild his entire life after scamming hundreds of millions of dollars. Now all of a sudden he's a public figure, has a movie and it's a glorification. So it's like you can usually come back from most screw ups, but there are some fuck ups that you might not ever be able to come back from.

I would hope that anybody listening here isn't going to go down that path. But just know that if there is something and maybe there's something that is hurting your reputation, you could probably get ahead of it and you could probably solve it.

Isaac Mashman1:08:36

I'm sorry. Yes, and you know, there are so many different facets of this conversation and there are repercussions too for thinking about this is a little bit of a radical. But it's a little bit of a radical perspective and an example to use. But you're thinking about some of these people online that are saying, I wish the bullet didn't miss their teachers, their, leaders in communities, their firefighters and all these things. It's like they're saying these things completely disassociating with human life because Trump or any politician for that matter, they're not positioned as a normal person. It doesn't matter how much they try to get on the common person's ground.

They are not the common folk. So there is already distance there to where it's like, oh, yeah, you could die, whatever, I don't care. You're forgetting, like, imagine if that was your brother. Imagine if that was your father. Imagine if that was your wife or your mom. It's horrible. But now people are getting fired because of their comments. There's a difference between, again, like, and they were entering into like the conversation on a political front of what is free speech versus what is treason. I would say most of these things are probably treasonous. Guess what? Me even making this comment on this post, and I know what your audience is mostly made of.

I'm pretty sure everybody listening, to a large degree probably agrees with me, but me saying that thinking that he should have been shot as treasonous turns off other people. I know that whenever I make that post though, or whenever I make that statement that I am making a conscious decision to where I don't care if you were to unfollow me or anything because I stand in my beliefs. So yeah, Richard, I think that you can come back and the American people and I think anybody, they are forgiving, but they don't like being lied to. So a good example is if you were to be an athlete or I think about liver king who you know is all on the feeds and then he comes out a year ago and he's like, I lied.

I lied, I am on steroids. He was not able to recover his brand because he on multiple occasions said, I am not on steroids. So he was front face lying to everybody who's following him. So it was too late for an apology. Versus if he never lied and said that, I'm not going to answer that. Then comes out with an apology and says, yeah, I am. That's different. So again, like every, and this is why, people who say that, oh, personal branding isn't real this is all concepts. These are all made up. If that's the case, why are there civil suits for hundreds of millions of dollars for defamation?

You think about Amber heard and Johnny Depp, the defamation trial that she lost. She made statements that cost him a lot of opportunities in his career and a lot of negative press. So this goes to a very high level to where statements do in fact matter and do in fact have consequences. You can have freedom of speech, but know that your freedom of speech can have an impact on another other persons while being. This is why managing the reputation or in the case of giving endorsements should be done very consciously because by giving an endorsement you are saying that I am basically vouching for this person so if you were to buy from this individual because I gave this endorsement.

It was fucked up it now falls on me it now falls on you so I would always be in the boat of receive more endorsements than you give. Receive more endorsements than you give. Because you're going and vouching for Celsius or vouching for Audible or Amazon or any other sponsor, you're vouching for that company. That's why doing due diligence is also important. Just like if you were to hire somebody, you want to make sure they have the licenses. You want to make sure they have professional insurance. You want to make sure they have good reviews. You don't want to sit at the one star buffet. You want to sit at the five star diner the five star steakhouse.

Isaac Mashman1:13:32

Well, Richard, I'm doing all of those things over the next 24 months. So I'm already starting to nurture and do look into local television opportunities and things there and again, leveraging local media to grow my digital presence and my digital reputation. But podcasting is not the killer and destroyer of radio. I don't believe so. It's funny because I was listening to a show with Rick Rubin, an interview that he was on with, I believe it was Baedra's Coolian. He was talking about how he actually prefers the radio because it means that he doesn't have to come up with all of the choices for what to play.

I've actually kind of adopted that because sometimes it is stressful to think about what should I listen to? Maybe you just want to turn on the radio and whatever you get. So I've actually started to go back to the radio like an old man. It's interesting, you're the old guy doing the young stuff, young things and I'm the young guy doing the old man things. Yeah. It's weird. But podcasting is a way for you to get exposure in front of new audiences. Again, you're getting edified by every host that you're having a conversation with. A great reason why you'd want to consider doing podcasting is well, a couple of months ago, I was on a show with Eric Triplett, a great guy, great contractor, one of the best guys in the aquascaping business and building koi ponds and just brilliant, brilliant guy.

A field that I would never be in. But he has a podcast and he talks about how general contractors can get more business or improve their businesses. I came on and talked about personal branding for contractors. A couple of week later, he messages him, he says, Isaac, there's somebody who is having a conference later this year in October. He might be interested in having you come out and speak. I wait a couple weeks. I say, perfect. Just let me know. He makes an introduction with the owner of a relatively large company, you as products like home Depot. Next thing you know, I'm going and I'm getting flown out to the conference in Denver, Colorado, October 22nd and 23rd, to speak at Atlantic Oasis conference.

How did I learn that opportunity? A podcast. Why? Because it was an opportunity for me to disclose my expertise. It was an opportunity for me to show my speaking ability, having emotions, talking about my personal story, and also strategically getting in front of potentially hundreds of thousands of people in that individual's audience. See what I'm doing? So podcasting is a fantastic way to establish yourself as a public figure to cut through the noise. That is why I'm going to be on 100 shows by the end of 2024.

Isaac Mashman1:17:56

Yeah, and that's the thing though, once you have a skill set, you can appeal to a wide variety of people in a lot of different like for example personal branding and the. There's skill set that I possess I'm able to help you whether or not you're a model you're a playboy model you're. I probably wouldn't work with one even if I had the opportunity again who you're associating with even as a client you know don't take the money if it hurts your brand. But I could work with entertainers I could work with business owners I could work with dentists lawyers everywhere in between so I've been on in the past couple of months contractor podcasts, a franchise podcast.

I've been on coaches and coaching. I've been on startup founders and corporate CEO, kind of more white collar podcasts. I'm just thinking through things that I have booked out summer sales base. I don't care because I'm able to talk about my expertise in these things. I'm also able to share a little bit more of a personal aspect and a personal side to me, just like, on the Joseph Graham show when I was talking with him, we ended up talking a little bit about my personal beliefs and faith and things of that because it correlated with principles and it showcases other aspects. So yeah, Richard, podcasting I think is a fantastic vehicle.

I think that you shouldn't necessarily start your own show unless you're going into it with the long haul. That is something I would say that might be counter to what some other people would tell you because everybody has a podcast in 2024. We saw this coming, we said this a couple years ago, everybody has a podcast. Well, no, in 2024, literally everybody has a podcast. So you need to go into it with the end in mind and saying, all right, I'm not just going to do 20 episodes and have 20 listeners and be a statistic. I'm in this for the long haul, at least 12 months.

To where I am committed to doing this episode every single week at the same exact time, having interviews or having monologues and promoting it and publishing it. I'm committed to the damn thing. Because otherwise, you might as well just save your money, don't buy the microphone and the fancy headphones, why don't you just go and get on other people's podcasts and share them out. I think starting by going on other people's shows and then seeing if you even like that format would be a good first step before you decide to make that investment and actually start your own.

Isaac Mashman1:20:41

I have been on a lot of podcasts in the past 24 months, especially the past six months. There are very few that I would refer my clients and make introductions for. It's kind of a crazy thing to think about. Why would I promote and make an introduction to one podcaster that I want with the next guy? How they promote their show? Are they also posting it on social media? Are they taking clips of it? See, for example, any episode that we do together, you always clip it, post it, promote it, tag me, all of it. Versus being on a show and they only post it and it's on Apple and Spotify and Amazon.

That's it. What they do, they don't do much in terms of promotion. So a great podcast treats it like a business. They market it, they split it into a bunch of different forms of content. They have distribution on how many channels are you on 35 plus? 35 plus, yeah. Exactly. Versus, let me just go ahead and do what my host provider says. Because most people who have podcasts don't realize that they could also go for international distribution and get on geosavin and Ghana out of India or Ivuz out of South America. They don't realize that they could submit it to Pandora and that they could also be on Audible or TuneIn or whatever other places that it would be.

Having guest profiles, they don't know how to submit that through Apple podcasts. But those are all of the minor techniques that help a show stand out in this entire sea of people with microphones. That's the thing, again, it's competition. The person who's just creating content online is not going to have a successful personal brand when compared to the person who is treating it like an actual business and positioning themselves as a public figure. So those are the main differences between a podcast host and a great one.

Isaac Mashman1:23:01

Well, number one would be finding a unique brand name that you're not competing with somebody. You might not want to call it if you're doing a landscaping business, one, two, three landscaping. That's stupid. But you could have a local appeal. Do you want it to be a local business? Do you want it to be a franchise? Do you want it to be an international chain? Ask yourself those questions. Because from there, you can position it as a local business versus a national business. So there are some companies that, for example, a bank is a perfect example. There are local banks like first community credit Union out of Jacksonville, Florida, and then there's Wells Fargo.

So again, local versus national. Then I would find something that is unique from a name standpoint, just like I talked about earlier, Richard, with having the domain available, having the social media handle available. Then number three would be, are you wanting to be the face of this business? If so, and I would recommend you do this, how are you going to start driving traction towards that company? So let's say you are launching a, let me just think about a company, let's talk about electrical company. Okay. Let's say you're wanting to start your own electrical company. You could go on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and everywhere else and start recording content talking about, what electricians get wrong or what you can do in order to troubleshoot before you call out an electrician.

You could do all of these things that position yourself as an authority in the electrician space. So now people who are following you and they might be in your local area or they might not, they know that you are somebody that you could trust in terms of, their electrical needs. It sounds goofy when you think about that. But a lot of times when we talk about personal branding, we associate it with these internet like media agency companies. When it also applies to the local blue collar businesses, like you can still build out your personal brand. You could have a blue collar business, but also realize like these blue collar businesses are more recession proof than these internet based companies.

Because if it's tough times and there's a recession, the laundry mat is going to always need business and people always need their dirty laundry, fold into washed, but somebody might not need consulting. So it's like having those those traditional companies and traditional tactics might be the way to go. So that's what I would say. I would say ask yourself, is it local, national, international, finding something unique and marketable that you could get and then putting yourself out there as the face of that business and marketing it and driving traffic as the.

Isaac Mashman1:27:06

Well, let me give you an example of somebody in my network. He was a previous client of Mashman Ventures. His name is Alberti Ortiz, and he has a landscaping company around Fort Lauderdale, Sunview landscaping if I remember correctly. His business is not the cheapest. They do a lot of landscaping where they're actually planting and bringing in the palm trees and adding the rocks and adding the liners and the grass and edging it and paving it and all of that stuff. He does before and afters that show. It's like, we're not the cheapest, but we're going to be the best. You know again, it's like anybody can consult per the hour, but not everybody can consult based off of the results and like for myself, I charge a thousand dollars for consulting like if you want to get me on your calendar I'm going to be a thousand dollars for consultation I don't care if that consultation's an hour and a half or four hours you're going to leave with the answer to your question.

We're going to strategize we need to strategize to get you the result with your company and with your personal brand I'm not charging 250 and Richard, you know I've had so many conversations and the people that I charge 250 or 500 always create more stress than the client that has the expectation of higher ticket. It's not that you do it because you are thinking oh my god. I'm worth this much. I'm like I'm the best. It's not coming from this egotistical place it's from this I want to work with the best. I want to be associated with the best I want to provide the best results.

Let me make sure that I'm going where I fit in and so it's not like I came out with $1,000 as my price tag. I started, I remember in 2019, I was doing consultations for $20. $20 for a consultation and charging per hour. No, no, this is not some massage parlor. No, this is a premier consulting service. That takes time for you to develop. Again, without testimonials, without verification, without results, and without you knowing that you can duplicate your results, you're not able to do this. If you cannot duplicate your success, you should not be charging for it.

Isaac Mashman1:29:24

Well, Richard, my main focus right now is taking on more clients of Mashman Consulting Group. I'm working with public figures, whether that's a podcaster, an author, a business owner to optimize and scale their personal brand from the minor tweaks to the high value strategy. You can find me literally everywhere at Isaac Mashman, going to my website, Isaac Mashman.com. Also working on the second edition of my manifesto, which I will be spending a lot of time on over the next 90 days to get this ready for a launch before the end of the year. That's pretty much the gist. I'm launching a new show, but not here to talk about that just yet.

So a lot of really great things and a lot of delegation is going to need to take place for me to make all this happen. But I'm excited about it.

Isaac Mashman1:31:34

All for all these years. Likewise, Richard, and thank you for inviting me back to talk about MCG, and it sounds like you and I need.

Isaac Mashman1:32:11

Gratitude to you brother. Have a great day. Be good.