Personal Branding 101 with Isaac Mashman

Isaac Mashman0:53

My brother, welcome to the show. Richard, honored to be here brother and dive in about this. I have my copy to my left too. Man, it's just so cool to see this come to fruition. So let's hop in.

Isaac Mashman1:24

Of resiliency it's tenacity I would say tenacity and resiliency are the same thing and many meanings of the word from a semantic standpoint. It's about going through periods of struggle and not throwing in the towel. I'm thinking about even as I was writing my book and I thought I had everything perfect and then I went through and read it again and I edited it again. I thought I would have it ready by a certain date and then I had to keep going. I knew that I had that goal in mind and that I had to achieve it. I might have had to push back the deadline.

But I was still resilient enough to say, all right, I'm not going to let that basically in peed on my way of progressing forward and actually bringing this out to the world. Now that I'm done with the book and getting back into consulting. I'm kind of realizing how much obsession I had over the writing process and over the book so I feel like resiliency is just tenacity. It's you know pushing forward despite of challenges and as least of a cliche way as possible.

Isaac Mashman2:49

Well, if I'm speaking openly and honestly, and with full transparency, it's because the first one I wasn't proud of, I thought that I was going to publish that one work and it would say everything I wanted to say. Then I could go about writing other things and continue in life and business and continuing to hone in on my skills from a personal branding standpoint and being able to help clients. But when I got my first copy and I was happy with it, but at the same point, I felt like it could have been better. It wasn't that I was trying to rush it, but I realized with the first edition, I was almost trying to fabricate the length because I didn't have enough to say.

Let's go ahead and talk about this. I published that book when I was 21. It came out in November of 2021. It was still great. It was kind of the first little glimpse into what eventually evolved into my philosophy of personal branding. So it was kind of a statement, but it wasn't really the identity. The second edition of my book is more about establishing the actual identity and bringing the core concepts. You've read both editions. The second one is night and day. It's 10 times the length. It's more than, it's right around 65,000 words. I would say pure text, it's around 64,000 outside of testimonials and all that fine print crap.

But the first edition was less than seven. So it's 10 times the word count, 376 pages. Even if I lowered the font, it still would have been over 300 pages. So it's something that in order to have peace of mind for myself and not think back 10 years from now and be like, what was that piece of crap I published? I'm not saying that it was crap because it did help people, but in my brain and in my mind, I knew that I had more to offer. That's why I sat down and over the past three years I've been working on the second edition and bit by bit pieces from coming up with some ideas of titles.

I was biking a couple years ago over the summer, I would have an idea, I'd stop my bike, I'd pull out my phone and I'd jot down a really quick note. It was at the beginning of last year that I got really serious about actually putting it together, formulating it, and then eventually publishing it this year.

Isaac Mashman5:39

That is what is entirely unique. There were other books that I didn't read any books really all of 2024. As a businessman, as an entrepreneur, that's like a no-go. You always read books. But I purposely ran away from them because I didn't want to be influenced by their text. So I had influenced by Robert Kaldini. I had 48 Laws of power by Robert Greene. I didn't read any of them. I wanted to. They're sitting over here by my chair now because I'm going to start going through them. But there are multiple books that say a lot of what I what I said in terms of building relationships, relationship, capital, the reputation, management side of things.

But what sets my book apart and sets what I'm doing apart, especially with other people in the personal branding space. Like Dory Clark has a wonderful book that's out that I need to pick up. I saw it the other day in a bookstore and it has some similarities there. I'm thinking this is a Harvard professor, that's pretty cool and I've never read it before. So we're on the same train of thought, but where my book stands out is I'm positioning personal branding as a part of human existence. It's really, as I've been talking to several people, I've realized that personal branding is more so a result of intelligence.

It's a result of intelligent life because if there was an alien race that were on par with our level of intelligence, they would have a personal brand. You think about Star Wars and Chewbacca. Chewbacca had a personal brand within the Star Wars universe, but he wasn't human. So I'm really putting it into a field that is so much larger than just social media in the internet. I'm making it a part of our entire civilization and entire being and whether or not you believe even Adam and Eve, if you're religious or not, the first two people, man and woman who got up and walked and, fathered billions of children, they had a personal brand.

So it all started somewhere. Throughout history, different people who we studied today, which I mentioned several in the book, like Hammurabi, Cleopatra, Adolf Hitler, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Gandhi, just to name a few of them, they have all had personal brands and whether they do good or bad or evil, which is up for your interpretation, they achieved that level of success and impact, again, positively or negatively because of their personal brand, because of their character, because of who they were.

Isaac Mashman8:51

Yes, it is those small interactions right there. Or I mentioned going into, let's say Starbucks. I did very good in my book to make sure that it avoided the limitations of our current time, whether Starbucks is around 100 years from now or not, it doesn't matter because the principles of the book are the same. So I didn't mention LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. I didn't mention any of the platforms that we're using and leveraging today once in the entire book. But I did mention how if you were to go into your local coffee shop every morning and have a conversation with the barista, you were engaging in a form of marketing and building that relationship with that barista.

I remember there was a coffee shop here. I used to go into Panera Bread religiously. I had the unlimited SIPS club. I'd go in with my laptop. I'd sit down and get some work done, have unlimited coffee, which was awesome. I knew every single employee by name, and they knew me. I was building my personal brand. Now, what did that relationship translate to? Well, nothing, really. I didn't really take any of those relationships to social media, it's not like they're going to be clients, but that is still a part of building my personal brand. So now, let's say a couple years from now, I decided to go and run for a local political office in little Rock, or I'm putting billboards around the city.

You never know, those people that I used to go sit down and drink coffee and their establishment could see me and be like, wow, I remember he used to come in all the time. So it builds that recognition. So it doesn't matter if you're on social media, you're trying to go famous and have millions of people who follow you, or you just want to be the local hero, as I mentioned in the hierarchy of personal branding, it is all relevant. More importantly, the mindset and the mentality that you developed through thinking about your personal brand in this light is entirely unique from just creating content of being on social media. Okay, now I want to get into.

Isaac Mashman11:11

Yes. I use the analogy of a fire and I say that people are kind of the oxygen to what you're doing. The idea that you have is the fuel and then I say that you are the heat. That influence has heat to the fire, you need all three, you need heat, oxygen and fuel in order to build a fire. I say that if you can leverage your personal brand and develop influence through other people who are actually getting something from you, they're following you for a reason, whether that be education, motivation, connection, or entertainment, you're able to have an impact on their life and influence them to do something, think something, feel something, learn something.

So that story of the influencer that I mentioned in my book. I didn't mention her by name, but a couple years ago, she had over a million followers on Instagram. She launched the apparel line and she wasn't able to sell out. Now if you were to think about a large-scale influential person who had a million followers, like let's say Charlie Kirk on the conservative side or Kim Dessowin's on the conservative side or any of the comedians like Matt Reif, any of them are able to make a post. They will instantly be able to sell out because they have influence. They are delivering something, whereas in the case of the influencer, if you're just posting bikini shots or if you're a male and you're posting pictures of your abs, what are you doing for the audience outside of sexual gratification?

That was a big part of what I wanted to talk about in the book. You can have all of the fame, but if you don't have the influence to actually be able to get a certain result, it is useless. That's why the book's title is A Manifesto on Fame and Influence because there's an economy there. In the law of personal branding that I talk about, I say that you have to have both in order to actually get a positive result. Now if you can have a million followers who know you, I.e. You have fame, and then you have influence over them, now you have a million people who are your advocates who can go out and market for you, who can talk about you, who can share you, who can edify you.

So really Richard, this book is the number one text that covers everything that I've ever learned about in terms of personal branding and just all the different nuances that people don't realize exist when it comes to their individual reputation.

Isaac Mashman14:16

It's vastly important because people don't want to follow perfect people because it gives them the sense that it's unattainable, that the halo effect is there, that it's like they're somehow better than they are. That's simply not the case. They wake up, they have their routines, they're traveling, yes, their career and their successes are contributing to their broader recognition and their accomplishments are going to continue growing because they have that fame and they have that precedence of influence. But that, I suppose honesty, that transparency, I think a better example I could give is the person who's starting out on social media who's not the expert. When I started out, excuse me, in 2017, I didn't know anything about business.

I was arrogant, I was young, I was fueled, I was on fire and I was lost frankly. As I've learned my skills, as I've decided what I wanted to pursue, as I've started to accumulate knowledge and do things like publish my book, people continued to follow me and they saw my evolution. I was very open and I said, hey, this venture didn't work out. I just couldn't see myself doing this long term. I talked about how I've moved from the music industry at time and time again, and went from one business to another business to another business. Eventually Mashman Consulting Group. That perfection is not what people want to see.

They don't want to see the Lamborghinis. But if the person who has the Lamborghini, right, the business guru, and actually talks about how they were able to achieve it, not in a way of boasting, I think that just posting your roles, Royce, your Lamborghini is very one-sided because there's no value outside of motivation. But if you're able to educate people about how you were able to actually achieve it, not bragging, not being some narcissist and saying I'm better than you, you can teach them, you can inspire them, you can connect with them and talk about how you, started from the dirt, you started from, the ground up.

You're able to just fragment and combine and consolidate every single aspect of your journey and of your life and publicize that. Your personal brand, I think, before we even jump into this and go any further, we need to define what your personal brand is. Your personal brand is you. It is who you are, your characteristics, your skin color, the clothes that you wear, your interests, your passions, your hobbies, your interests, which I just said twice, your professional career, everything. Every single thing about you makes up your personal brand. I think that's really a cool thing to think about because most people, they might only talk about their business online and I don't know who you are as a man.

I don't know who you are as a woman. Are you interested in something? Are you a mother? Like what can I do to build rapport with you? I don't know, but if you can set those little rapport pieces in public, you're at a tremendous advantage.

Isaac Mashman18:09

Yeah. So talk about that. That's really about evolution and adapting, and you have the full capacity and free will to change and decide what you want to be known as, what you want to be known for, what you want to believe in, what you choose not to believe in. There are things that even though I might have been raised in more of a conservative household, I tend to be more in the middle and centered right now in terms of my own beliefs. I had an evolution after I graduated high school and after I left home and I saw different points of view and I took everything into consideration.

I've also made the decision on what I want to talk about. I don't talk about politics often. I don't talk about religion often. I'm not agnostic to it. I'm not somebody who will not talk about it. But it's not a huge piece of my personal brand that I would like to discuss. Whereas you being a veteran, you could talk about some of the issues that veterans have coming back home. You can talk about PTSD. You can talk about the lack of camaraderie that people face whenever they leave the military service. They try to find that community once again. So it's really a give and a take, and you have the full capacity to determine, okay, maybe I do want to become a commentator on something or maybe you want to align your business to be, pro America or you want to make posts.

But again, you don't want to do things without purpose. I talk about it in a sub chapter controversy with purpose and about how you can lean on some of the things that are going on right now in society and talk about them. But what is the intention behind it? What is the end goal? A lot of times people just make these blanketed statements and it doesn't do anything positive for their personal brand. So I say that being intentional with what you're posting, what you choose not to post is you know paramount. That also goes to what you want to talk about in you know face-to-face interactions.

But again I think that that is just something that is up to the individual. You can easily pivot time and time again. I do mention that in the book as well underneath to sub-chapter pivoting because some people feel like they're trapped in their career or they're trapped in their business because they're afraid of what people will think of them for or they think that by pivoting into a new business that they actually really want to build that they'll lose all of the support. But a big piece of building your personal brand and actually talking about who you are as an individual is it gives you the flexibility to make those pivots that are strategic for you because people are connected with you for Richard Kaufman or for Isaac Mashman rather than just the professional what they can get from you.

Isaac Mashman22:33

With everybody. I think it's a tremendous advantage. If you can be the person who is able to approach those delicate conversations with nuance and with facts or with certain points of view that are not berating the other person, you can believe and stand for something entirely different than the other person. But they know that they can still talk to you and they can still work with you for your business. They can still support you. It's the line in the sand moments of I am against you that you should absolutely and holistically.

Isaac Mashman23:26

Well, your personal brand is you. Is who you are. Just like I mentioned a couple of minutes ago, and I have my book right here, so let me just pull up real quick the law of success, or not the law of success. My brain is on a thousand different things. I was recording a video on that earlier. 2.4, the law of personal branding. It's going to be on page 79. Let me go ahead and just read this off real quick. I create four different laws in the book. I pinpoint them down. The law familiarity, the law of connection, the law of personal branding, and the law of fame and influence.

So the law of personal branding is a personal brand can only be created with the introduction of new life. A personal brand cannot be destroyed regardless of the death of the person it belongs to. A personal brand can, however, be forgotten. What's really cool about this is it is a really a consolidation of a bunch of different beliefs. This is a perfect representation of personal branding being something that is has always been a part of intelligent man. Every single person who has ever walked the face of this earth has had a personal brand. But the anonymous Mesopotamian farmer from four or 5,000 years ago, they might not have been a social media star because social media wasn't around.

So it's relative to what is available in their times. But I use the story of let's say you used to be a medieval blacksmith or a medieval baker of bread. That's actually how the last name Smith came about. It came from one of the old English words which meant to bake. I say that the baker who used to feed hundreds of people for their local township, they were known as the local baker. Hey, if you needed something, go to that person. But on the other side of that, on the inverse, you had kings of England who rolled off of divine right and saying that they were handed that crown and that position of authority by God.

They leveraged their personal brand to conquer kingdoms and to role in some kings, we look back on history and some of them were fat and greedy and lustful and some kings were great. I talk about the story of even King David and being able to kill Goliath. I talk about how King David's reputation was established the moment that he killed Goliath. Goliath's reputation was tarnished. I think that's such an interesting story and analogy to even break down because a lot of times we look at that. It's a story of resiliency, David, who had no chance to kill this giant who killed thousands of soldiers and thousands of Israelites back in the biblical corpus in the biblical theology.

He had no reason to believe that he was going to be able to kill him, but he did. That is a story that now thousands of years later, we still tell and we talk about is, hey, maybe you're taking on a big insurmountable challenge, but you can still do that. About the story of David and Goliath. I don't think anybody's broken it down from a standpoint of reputation and thinking about what actually went into that and how scared, if David didn't have faith, he would have been because any normal soldier would have ran the opposite direction of Goliath. But Goliath's reputation spoke for him and it did the speaking for him.

Isaac Mashman27:47

Yeah, and it boils down to making that decision and then positioning yourself as that public figure. Then taking those steps via marketing and managing your reputation and being edified and getting on interviews such as your show and your platform, which I'm grateful for, and doing things to where you can expand the awareness that is surrounding your name. Then eventually you'll develop a group of advocates and a group of people who want to recommend you. They want to refer you. They want to send business your way. They want to support whatever you have going on. That is a tremendous competitive advantage in my brain, especially in the modern age in the 21st century where we have all of these businesses and competitors.

How would the small business ever stand against the Amazons of the world? Or how would the small mom and pop restaurant be able to take on the larger chain restaurants? The reason or what they can do is they can build out their personal brand as, hey, this is Mamma Mia's Pizza shop and grandma Ruth started this establishment in the 1920s. Think about growing up and I believe you said New Jersey, think about all of the different local restaurants that were around you and you probably knew the stories of the family. You knew how they got started. They were in the neighborhood for decades. If you can use your personal brand speaking to business owners, now we're entrepreneurs, to grow your business, you're going to be able to have a better chance of succeeding and surviving in the years to come compared to the business that doesn't have a face and that only has a logo.

But now you have a person who can champion it forward and who can be the big voice for it. That doesn't cost you anything. That's another reason why I believe that everybody should, if they have a personal brand and they start as the unconscious incompetent, they don't even know that personal branding exists or it's something to, take advantage of. But if you can move from the unconscious and competent to somebody who actually starts to leverage it and get results from it, you're going to be ahead of the curve. It's not something new, framing it in this light is new, but it's something that Gary Vanterschuck has been talking about social media for years.

I don't follow his content. I know that you've had the opportunity to beat him and he gave you some advice. We talked about that the last time I was on the show. But he's been talking about social media and just putting out a post. But really what is behind that post? That's where the storytelling, the art of storytelling and actually communicating in a tent or getting a result for the other person under other end of the screen, that's when we can break down the complexity of the relationship and how they would view you and why they would want to even view you as a public figure and validating your own claims as being.

Isaac Mashman31:08

You're starting to leverage it. That's a big distinction to make there. If we were to think about the military, I know we're diving deep on subjects today and we're going into, we're taking a very detailed approach, which I really appreciate. If you think about how the military is structured, you do have the ranks. You have lieutenant, sergeant, private, major, generals, right, all of these different ranks, which is not really about status and so much as it is about accomplishments and respect. The reason those people were able to get promoted and move up the ranks is because they were able to accomplish something within their military career.

So they did have a personal brand and because of what they were able to accomplish and achieve for this country or for any country for that matter, if you're thinking about the different militaries throughout the world, it really is a testament of what they were able to do and what vision they were able to forecast, how they were able to bring everybody together. So I think that's really something that we could talk about in detail another time. But thinking about the veteran who is getting out of the military service, realize that you have already had a huge credibility boost, frankly. So whether you want to be a public speaker, whether you want to launch a brand new business, this is when you can use a title to your advantage, which I talk about, how a doctor is able to always get respect because they went to school to become a doctor.

They have the PhD or the lawyer who passed the bar exam. They have a title that they can use to their advantage. Now you as a veteran, you can use the title of veteran to your advantage. This isn't a way of you trying to get results that are not deserved. You serve the country, so why not you actually take advantage and leverage that? If you want to start a local landscaping company, if you want to start a local law firm, if you want to, even start an internet business, you can say veteran owned business. You could talk about how the different experiences from your military career have helped you become a professional in your new business or some of the skills like let's say you were a mechanic in the military.

You worked on the big, the big different vehicles and let's say you want to start a mechanic shop. You can say I used to work on rigs that were a hundred times the size of your car. I'm pretty sure I can help you with your car. So it's like understanding that all of your previous accomplishments are going to be be your advantage today. By taking advantage of the title of veteran or being in the military and serving, that's going to make people want to support you that much more because I do believe that America, we're entering into the next patriotic era and people are going to want to support American businesses.

They're going to want to support veterans. So that's something that I would say. The other thing would be to definitely get on social media depending on what you're trying to accomplish. I think that social media is something that everybody should be online and be trading content, but some people, especially veterans, might not want to be. They might want to just go and have those face-to-face interactions. So if you recognize that maybe you don't want to be on social media, I'm not going to argue that fact for you. My grandfather was a carpenter. He hated people being in his business. He liked his privacy. So I can understand it.

But I think being on social media is something that you should absolutely do. Like you have Richard and you went, got out of the service, you got into your career and now you're online. You're having a podcast with millions of downloads, you made that decision because you realized what good you could do with it, what good you could do with the platform. So creating content online, whether that be a short video and just creating a social media platform for your name. For example, getting your social media handle at Richard Kaufman or at Isaac Mashman is just a really simple tip. I talk about that in the book, creating a seamless brand.

The final thing that I will say just have more conversations and build more relationships. People you'll come to find, especially as a veteran, would be interested in listening to you. That's where that credibility comes into play, because you are going to be somebody that people automatically want to support.

Isaac Mashman35:53

I suggest starting wide but not with the intention of trying to go viral or become famous on every single platform. That's not what I'm encouraging anybody to do. But I would say that if you are creating content. You're taking the time to do that and to record videos, to have conversations, to take photos, to come up with still posts or to write awesome articles, you might as well take advantage of the different platforms and their exposure and their algorithms. So you could be on Facebook, Instagram, Facebook, or Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. What you could do is just take that post and just post it across all of those channels, take advantage of that.

That doesn't mean that you're going to spend same amount of time on every single platform. I spent a tremendous amount of time on Facebook and not so much on Instagram. But I also post every video on Instagram to Alicia show that I'm active and that gives me somewhat of a platform that I can leverage if I choose to, as you said, pivot and put more emphasis on growing that platform. But I would definitely say it's wise to start wide. The reason why is if one of the platforms that you're biggest on disappears tomorrow, think about TikTok and all of the people who are huge John TikTok.

They started having conversations about TikTok getting banned. It still might get banned if it's not purchased. All of these influencers who have millions of people there, they were scrambling around because their source of revenue was going out of the window. But now imagine you have the TikTok star that takes their content. I'm thinking of one, Sean does magic. He built a platform of over 20 million on TikTok. Then he started to take his content and he posted it on YouTube. He grew an audience on YouTube. Then he also took that content and posted on an Instagram. So he took advantage of the content and he took the extra minute or two minutes every day to diversify that content.

The reason we even are talking about social media with so much detail is frankly, because it is one of the biggest and the biggest vehicle from a marketing standpoint that is made available today in 2025. It costs absolutely nothing. So I would say go wide and then you you can narrow down where you want to spend the most time, but you should diversify your content just to give you a little bit more security and peace of mind.

Isaac Mashman39:41

Well, we can talk about that as credibility by association and building yourself up. We can also talk about that by guilty by association from a reputational standpoint. Let's think about every time you take a photo with somebody, and I know this might be a little bit of an aggressive thing to mention, but think about Elon Musk taking a photo with Joslane Maxwell. The associate of Jeffrey Epstein. He still gets flack, even though he's publicly said that he had nothing to do with just a photo that was in passing. That still is affecting his personal brand and how certain people are perceiving him. So that is an example of guilty by association, whether or not he was associated with them at all just because he was in the same photo.

It's also with who you're hanging out with. If you're hanging around somebody who's a known scammer or somebody who bought their following down in Miami and you're living that large life. It comes to be found out that one of the persons or people that you're associating with is less than genuous, how is that going to affect how you are perceived even if you're doing every single thing right. You aren't genuinely a good person with morals and ethics. So hanging around experts, mentors, people that are doing something and have done something notable. That are pushing the civilization forward, one of the biggest things that, one of the biggest lessons that I took when it came to making money was that if you want to make more money, you help more people.

You expand and you get into more people, you have greater impact. That's really about having influence on a day-to-day scale, whether that be the person who is printing my book. They had an impact on me. The business owner there, and now they're the number one business for self-published authors. But I think associating with great people, and I use Richard Branson in my book, I mentioned some of his corporate stunts, I wanted to decil about that a little bit, will tremendously boost your own credibility because it means that you are valuable enough. You've done something noteworthy enough to even be sharing the stage with him. Every other speaker that is also on stage is also going to be contributing to your authority.

Eventually, the inverse is also true to where you could be the person who is helping another person get a leg up because people in your audience will also be curious to know who you're associating with. So you can actually benefit from this and you can help other people benefit from your own success and your own credibility, your own authority. So I think from a reputation standpoint, it's really a wise thing. That's not even talking about the mindset and the connections and the relationships and what you can learn from those people. So it's really just a win-win situation across the board.

Isaac Mashman42:54

It's everything because I could call myself a personal branding expert. I could say that and like you said, shout it from the rooftops, shout it from the balcony of my office for the entire city of little Rock to hear, but that is biased, is it not? Oh, I'm the best, okay? What have you done that validates that claim? But if you can have other people talking about you, talking about how you've been able to impact their life or what they've seen or what they've witnessed, those first-hand accounts are unbiased, and it's edification. What edification is, is another person saying, this is somebody that you should support.

You think about how a salesman operates. Right? You have, and I say in the book, the car salesman who's on the lot trying to sell a car, and let's say their manager comes up and is in passing and says, hey, if you're looking for somebody to help you get into the car of your dreams, this salesman, John, right here, he is the number one person you need to work with. The manager edified the salesperson, therefore giving more confidence to the person who is looking to purchase a car. It gives him confidence. It gives him trust. It gives him peace. There's a reason why in the front of my book, I got different quotes from from different people in my life.

One was my best friend, Kevin. One was the co-founder of my high school and middle school. One was from Tristan T. Roberts, who was the audio engineer behind some of Jelly Roll's earlier works in his gold and platinum certified. I mentioned that. One is from Jeff Weemhoff, the president of Atlantic O'Wasa. One is from my good friend, Adrian Boyzel. Those are all examples of edification. That if somebody was to pick up the book and the first page they see is quotes. This is what you see in every good book, quotes about the person, quotes about the author, and what they've signed, what they think about them, it creates more confidence.

The person who was reading it for the first time, even though they might not know who I am, they could have picked up my book based off a recommendation or being on your show. But that edification gives them that sense in peace of mind. It also will allow more opportunities to come to you because people who are looking for public speakers or looking for veteran speakers or looking for veterans to hire or work with, they want to see positive results. They want to have full faith that they are going to be able to deliver on the promises that they're making. That is where edification comes in. That's where credibility comes in because it shows that you are able to keep your promises from a public point of view.

Isaac Mashman46:06

Yes, yes, absolutely. I'm honored that you even view it in that light, brother. Let's break down the depth of the book. The first edition we already distinguished was night and day compared to this edition. This one is just, it's immeasurably better. But there are eight main chapters that kind of set the backbone, the framework. It's also chronological. You need to start with education before you can get into the four laws of personal branding. Then you need to go and understand those four laws to get into the mindset required to build. Then you need to understand branding and then understanding how you can build your reputation and then how you can market yourself and market your personal brand.

The personal skills needed to increase it and to have more impactful relationships and then how to sustain it, which sustainability is the final chapter and there are 78 sub-chapters. At the end of every sub-chapter, what are there? There are exercises. Then if you've also noticed in the book, there are reference points. So it's almost like a textbook at the same point because I reference, if I mention the power of three, which I believe is 6.3 off the top of my head, I will say in brackets, power of three, 6.3. So you can go back to that exact sub chapter and reference and see how it connects to the sub chapter, which might be towards the end of the book or even at the very beginning.

Those exercises, there are over 75 of them, questions, tasks and applications are meant for you to be very introspective and to reflect because the book at the core is philosophical. The book is about the philosophy of personal branding and then their strategy on top of that. I want people to use my book as the thing that completely changes their perspective on personal branding. Then they could start looking for ways in their day-to-day life that they can leverage their personal brand to achieve those goals or like you said reach 30 million veterans.

Isaac Mashman48:42

Yes, and I do mention in the book several times about how the student who graduates from college is going to want to maybe start creating content about their perspective career. They want to get endorsements from their professors. They want to engage in extracurriculars. They want to do things that would give them credibility, right, and credibility is trust, enabling them to land a better paying job. Even though it's not explicitly mentioned as the term personal branding because the term is relatively new, it was coined in 1997 by a business management consultant Tom Peters in an article you wrote for Fast company. Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich actually talked about how if you were to get and collect a portfolio, a nice leather bound portfolio with all of your accolades and what you can do for a company, you would be much more likely to land the job that you actually want to land and be able to demand a higher salary.

I say demand deliberately a higher salary because there is a promise with hiring you. I think the college student who understands that personal branding is paramount to landing that job, they could go on LinkedIn tomorrow and connect with the CEO of the company they want to get hired at and just send a really quick message and say, hey, it's my hope one day to maybe get hired at your company. Just wanted to reach out, love what you've built. This is all it needs to be. They could get and cut the line in front of potentially thousands of other people and go straight to the decision maker because of their personal brand.

That is where the business owner mentality, the entrepreneurial thinking is hugely impactful for not just the businessman, but the entrepreneur, the employee, the independent contractor who's working for a company, everybody.

Isaac Mashman50:34

I appreciate that brother. I know you're on a little bit of a time schedule. So I'll try to be very quick. You can purchase your copy of personal branding and manifesto and fame and influence. The second edition, I would recommend purchasing it from Amazon. It's also available in hardcover. The hardcover is 3299 and the paperback is 2199. Just make sure if you do order it from Amazon to order it directly through Amazon, a third party that's going to try to upcharge the rate and the cost. It's also available on Barnes & Noble and Walmart if you prefer those platforms as well. I'm working on maybe some local bookstores and maybe a physical Barnes & Noble distribution.

I have to look into that a little bit more. But it's been an absolute pleasure, brother, and as for me and what I'm doing now, I'm jumping back into Mashman Consulting Group and working to build that as the number one personal brand and consultancy by the year 2035. Although I said 500 consultants, I was talking with my up and coming COO and I'm thinking we're going to narrow that a little bit more. Thinking about going wide and narrowing and focus on some really good quality hires in the next couple of years and continuing to spread the philosophy.

Isaac Mashman52:00

You already know I'm game for that. I love a guy. So make sure.

Isaac Mashman52:12

Favorite parts. So yeah, I just have to check out my designer for that Alexander Stevens. He knocked it out of the park, man. I told him, I was like, I want your name on the bat cover of the book. Say that you designed this, you deserve it and he really exceeded my expectations.

Isaac Mashman53:27

Richard, you do the same. Be safe.