How One Press Feature Led to a Huge Opportunity for This Business

Isaac Mashman0:08

Bridget, Lydia, thank you so much. Excited to be here for this conversation.

Isaac Mashman1:02

Sounds good. You can mention them by name. It's perfectly okay. So I'll be coming to next year's conference too, so it's great.

Isaac Mashman1:58

Denver, Colorado, at the Rally Hotel. They're gracious enough to put me up here, and this is where the majority of the conference [is]. So it's been a lot of fun, exhausting, but it's been good.

Isaac Mashman2:14

I booked it. I was like, wait, I'm not going to be home. But I think it's perfect. It really is.

Isaac Mashman3:10

Yeah, that's a great question. To be honest, public relations and getting press features and podcast interviews very rarely will make you money immediately. It's not like you're running a Facebook advertisement or a Google advertisement, where you can measure the click-through rates and how it converts, and they purchase a product or book a call. That's not really the case in terms of public relations. So a lot of the press that you'll get will help you over a period of time, like a press release. You do not submit a press release to make money. You submit a press release to give yourself something to promote that you can send other people.

Every single time you do land a press feature or a quote in Forbes or Entrepreneur or a newspaper or a radio show, that gives you something to promote to your audience. It improves your credibility or authority in the way that they're perceiving you, because they're like, wow, this guy's taken the time out of his life, or this lady's taken the time out of her career, to go and make appearances or get asked to make appearances. It's really a tremendous thing that I think more entrepreneurs and business owners especially need to do in order to stand out on social media and position themselves better. So in terms of my own experience, I've been building out my personal brand consciously for the last six years.

We've had our personal brand our entire life, but I really locked onto the idea that obscurity was the enemy of success in 2017. So I built out my network on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, and just started putting myself out there as I jumped from business to business to business. Well, this year was when things really started to click in terms of the main vehicle that I was building. Not to tell the entire story of my public relations firm and now a consulting firm, but I just put out a call to action on Facebook. I said, I want to be on your podcast. The guy saw it because he had some mutual connections, or I guess it got recommended to him.

He made a comment and said, hey, let's get you on for a show. Come to find out, he had [100,000 plus] subscribers on YouTube, and he was really well connected in the space. One thing led to another. Obviously, if you screw up on a podcast and sound like an idiot, they're not going to invite you to a conference. So I did something right, I think. And a couple months later, here I am.

Isaac Mashman6:16

It was really, the entire team and the process was seamless. It was great. I had a call with the founder or the owner of Atlantic-Oase, which I was totally butchering the name of myself, but it's Oase. I had a conversation with him and he's like, hey, we're not going to necessarily pay you to come speak, but we're going to pay for everything so you don't have to worry about anything while you're here, and I'll have my marketing director and the team handle the flights and the hotel and all that good stuff. Really, the presentation that I was to deliver was 100% up to me. That required me to do an immense amount of research and have conversations with other professionals, because it's in the pond space, the water feature space.

I'm typically consulting business owners, podcasters, authors. So to work with a bunch of guys that build koi ponds and waterfalls and fountains outside, it's like, all right, this is a little niche. But it's cool because it's a luxury industry. It's not a necessity. Think about HVAC or having a roof put on. You always need a roof. You need your air conditioner fixed. You don't always need a koi pond. You don't always need a waterfall. I just had a bunch of conversations, and that helped me put together the presentation. It was really just one step after another, and then show up and do the speech, then build those relationships too, and deliver on exactly what you promised in your actual presentation. That's how you get invited back for another event.

Isaac Mashman7:41

Yeah, you know, it's funny though, I actually had to miss out on the session about koi ponds because it was during my training. So I was like, man, otherwise I would have learned how to make some koi. But you know what's crazy? The most expensive koi that was ever bought was $1.7 million, and it died six months after the auction. I kid you not. I had a conversation last night at the bar about that.

Isaac Mashman8:09

Yeah, that's 20 or 30,000 dollars a day, [or more].

Isaac Mashman8:48

Yeah, ironically, a couple of years ago, when I was in California early on in my career, just trying to figure out the whole business thing and what I wanted out of life, sleeping on the floors with a bunch of California dudes, I did a small engagement in front of like 10, 15 people. I don't really count that as my first speaking engagement. I might as well have been reciting to a class. But this was the first time that I was in front of a group of high caliber people who paid to be at a conference, who were older especially. So it's like, [they're] not thinking about building their personal brand and being on social media.

If you've been in the pond space for 30 or 40 years and you're 50 or 60 years old, why does that matter to you? But you can approach that from a degree of mentorship. And you touched on something good. A lot of times that is not paid, or certain things might not be covered. But I think that's why you build out your personal brand at a high level and position yourself as a public figure in your industry, in your space, because you'll be much more likely to get paid. That's kind of my approach here. So I was perfectly okay not getting paid to actually show up, but now, in terms of my strategy, my personal brand master strategy, I'm going to take this recording.

I'm going to use that to get landed on speaker bureaus. I already have some emails ready to send. You know, Eagles Talent, the Washington Speakers Bureau. I'm just going to send those out with this recording and see about landing speaker bureau placements.

Isaac Mashman10:13

So it's really about building a portfolio, building something that you can be proud of that also gives you something to promote. That's something I was emphasizing to these pond guys. If you do a training about how to care for koi ponds and how to care for your fish, you could send that podcast interview to every single one of your clients as a value add. There are so many different creative marketing messages and marketing strategies. You just got to look for them and then do it.

Isaac Mashman11:27

Well, yeah. What I did is I reverse engineered all of the successful people, all of my mentors. I looked at what they accomplished, and I was like, oh, they did public speaking. Oh, they wrote a book. Oh, they did this press article. They have this podcast interview. It's interesting because earlier this year, there were other personal brand professionals, and I was like, I'm going to do a deep dive into what these people did and what articles they got listed on. I saw one of them and I was like, ASBN.com, America's Small Business Network. I filled out the form on the website, landed an interview literally within a week, and now I'm a contributor for the website.

But I wouldn't have known anything about that unless I reverse engineered another person's strategy. Then when you reverse engineer enough people, you can come up with the most effective strategy and create what I call my master strategy. I published a video on YouTube about that. It's about 30 minutes long. I talk about writing articles, content creation, public speaking, my book, contributor pieces, all of that. I go into depth about it. Really impactful video. But I don't come from a business oriented background. My grandfather was a carpenter. I didn't even get a relationship with my biological father until I was already an adult. So I was raised in large part by my mom and my grandparents, and she always worked those lower paying jobs.

So I didn't have anybody in my ear saying, start a business, go sell this, go do this. In middle school, my stepdad mentioned doing a light landscaping thing, and so I did. But it was in high school, my senior year especially, when I started to get into that whole hustle culture, I suppose you could say. I saw some young guys who also did landscaping and had a clothing line, so I started [a clothing line at the time]. It was just this cliche hustle bro dropship thing. But it gave me the first couple of dollars online. I thought that was cool, because I woke up one morning and checked the dashboard and it was like $5.43.

I'm like, I won't be able to buy anything with this, but this is cool. From there I got involved in the network marketing industry, and got out of that space into podcast management, then the music industry. Every single time I made that pivot, I was still building out my personal brand. People were latching on to me because they were supporting Isaac Mashman as this young, ambitious entrepreneur. Then as soon as I locked onto a profession, people really wanted to support me and start sending referrals to me and working with me and locking arms. I realized again that obscurity was the enemy of success. If people don't know you, they can't follow you, they can't work with you, they don't know how they can refer people to you. It's just, attention is a good thing.

Isaac Mashman15:00

Yeah. I managed a couple of artists. I managed a rapper, and [one] was like an R&B singer. Nothing extremely official, but I [flew] to California, I met with the artist, we went to the studio, walked around Hollywood Boulevard, and it was a really cool experience. I worked with him for a period of time. He started out as a client, and I was like, you know what, man, I love music. I absolutely love music. I always listened to music in school and growing up. It was my outlet, from my depressed Three Days Grace middle school era to my let me listen to Rick Ross and Drake high school era.

It was something I enjoyed, and I thought it would be a lot of fun. So as soon as I made the decision to get involved in that industry, I was like, why don't I do a record label? But then the more I studied and the more I practiced, I was like, I'm managing this artist. I'm trying to help him land [opportunities] and build out his personal brand. I would normally charge for this kind of thing. How the hell am I getting paid? I realized that you can really only make money in the music industry one of two ways. You have to scale it to a very high degree, to where you have millions of streams and hundreds of thousands of sales.

Or the second thing is a 360 deal. And I don't want to do a 360 deal, where I'm getting a piece of the pie out of every single thing the artist makes. So I got out of the industry, but it was a really good experience, because it helped [cement] my love for the personal branding space. With an artist, you're building the personal brand, their personal image, you're handling the reputation, how they appear. It was in 2020 that I decided to stop that. That was right at the pandemic. We had a concert that was scheduled, and I was going to fly out to Fort Wayne, Indiana.

I had no clue how I was going to make that flight, but I was going to figure it out. We decided to cancel that, because we didn't know if COVID was going to kill everybody there or if it was like the common cold.

Isaac Mashman16:43

And the artist lost his fire for music. I realized, hey, why don't I kind of fall into the public relations space a little bit? That's when things really started to take off, and I got really serious about my career.

Isaac Mashman17:01

You know, we're not the anomalies though. It's common. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a specific kind of person.

Isaac Mashman18:18

Yeah, it's interesting. I never stayed in any industry for an extended amount of time outside of public relations consulting, because I was building a public relations firm that I dissolved officially earlier this year, even though I pretty much took last year off. But it was still consulting as the business model, and I committed to personal brand consulting this year and leaned into it. I believe where a lot of people go wrong is they don't spend enough time on one particular thing. So what I did, you're absolutely right, I accumulated a lot of knowledge. But I didn't stay in any industry for more than six months.

Aside from network marketing, where I had a couple of different runs, I never committed to anything. Part of the reason why I didn't commit is I never saw myself really scaling it for the long term. I'm that long term thinker. I want to make sure that I have a plan. So by 2035, Mashman Consulting Group will have 500 consultants working for us, and we'll be the number one personal brand consultancy worldwide. I have that vision set now. In terms of keeping the message seamless and keeping the position, and you're talking about positioning myself as that authority in whatever that space was, truthfully, I think I operated a lot out of arrogance.

But it wasn't that I was trying to be [arrogant]. It was that I have to convince, not necessarily you on the other end of the phone, I have to convince myself that I'm working on this. That's what I did. But what I also did is I respected everybody's time, and I said, hey, if you've been following me, you know that I've been doing X, Y, and Z, and I'm making another pivot. It was so annoying, because I'd spend a couple months doing musical talent and being in the industry, and then I'm like, I'm dissolving this venture and now I'm going into public relations. I'm going to launch Mashman Ventures.

And I didn't even call it a public relations firm at the time. It was like this boutique, some sort of business, and that was a horrible decision on my part, but then I eventually realized it was public relations. So I think it's about letting people know about your transitions, about your pivots, and telling them why, because people want to be educated on these things. So if you can tell them, hey, this is part of the reason why I decided to change industries. It's not because I think the grass is greener on the other side, but there's actually a strategic reason, so people can learn from that and live vicariously through your journey as well.

It can help them make better decisions for themselves in their own life. That helps you get positioned as that public figure that had a huge impact on their entire life's outcome.

Isaac Mashman21:15

That's the other thing, though. You can go and be honest and say, I don't know everything, but I'm working on figuring it out. And if I don't know something, I know people who do. People don't want to follow the Rolex wearing, Lamborghini [renting], fake guru online. They do want to work with the person. And you used the word authentic. I think that in my mind, if you're trying to be authentic, you're being inauthentic, because you're manipulating the output. So you just need to be you and not overthink it. Don't even think about authenticity, just be you. People don't necessarily want to follow just experts. They want to follow people that are going somewhere.

If you can share your vision and make it public, people want to support you every step of the way. People know that I don't have a team of 500 consultants yet, but they know that I'm working for it. They know that by 2035 I'll have that. So now they can be a part of your journey from the ground floor. I've had some people that have followed me since 2017, 2018, and saw me go through three network marketing companies four different times, the podcast management, I don't even know what I was doing in dropshipping, the record label and the music, and then public relations and then consulting.

So they saw that. But eventually, you need to do all of these things and have these experiences, so you can eventually commit to that one vehicle and never change it again. Never change it again. But it'll take you going and trying a bunch of these different things. It's kind of like if you travel and you try new food. You're not going to love all the food you try. But eventually you're going to find that one dish and you're like, man, this is really good. I love this. The key takeaway from your trip to Italy. And I think finding and building a business is very similar.

Isaac Mashman23:48

Yeah, and one other thing, if I could go back. I would say it's kind of similar to finding an artist who only has 10,000 listeners on Spotify. You watch them and you continue listening to their music, and then two years later they have a million or they have 10 million, and they blow up. I'm that emo kid who was listening to Suicideboys back in 2018, and they've like quadrupled in size. So you have that sense of pride because you discovered something before everybody else, and it's the same thing with following your business figures. You can always follow the gurus and follow the mentors, but you can also follow the other people who are starting out or in different stages of their journey. What was the question? Sorry.

Isaac Mashman25:02

Right. Well, starting out with your personal brand, it's coming to the recognition that you've had your personal brand from the moment you were born. This is a really radical but very key piece of my philosophy. A lot of times people think that when you create a new Instagram account or a new website, you're creating a new personal brand. No, you're not. You're evolving it. You're having a marketing vehicle, an extension of your personal brand, so to speak. Your mom and your dad determined your name, where you were born, your political affiliation, the faith and the God you pray to. They determined all those characteristics that are unique to you and nurtured into you, your environment, your nature.

If you think about it from that approach, you go to school and some kids are the class clowns, some kids are the teacher's pet, some kids are the nerds, some kids are the quiet ones. These are all labels and titles and cliques, and effectively representations of their personal brands. Then you go to college, you take courses, you get a degree, you create a resume. What is your resume? What is your portfolio? It is a part of your personal brand. So now, as professionals, and as people who want to, here's the key here, consciously build your personal brand and basically grab the bull by the horns and go direct it somewhere, now you can start positioning yourself as a public figure and doing things where other people can edify you.

Going on podcasts is a form of edification. But before you even go down that road of edification and scaling it, you need to have a good brand image yourself and understand, number one, why are you trying to build your personal brand? I believe there are three big reasons: money, mission and vanity. So you want to make money. Or you are mission oriented, you have some sense of purpose. Then vanity, especially in the entertainment space, you just want to become famous because it feels good. So it's understanding what that goal is and what you're looking to get from it. So like the long-term vision of, do you want to have $100 million?

Do you want to have a hundred million followers? Just understanding those key driving forces is really important, because then you can start creating a seamless marketing message. So earlier this year I created a proprietary personal branding strategy called Identity Positioning™. I wrote an eight page paper, it's available on Academia, called Identity Positioning™: A Macroscopic View on Personal Branding. In this paper, I talk about how a lot of times people overlook and miss out on the personal aspects. There are so many YouTubers that I follow, and I don't even know their first name. So that means that if I find another YouTuber who is in a different niche, I have no loyalty to that other YouTuber, because I don't even know who they are.

So I could switch. But now I want to connect with the actual person. So to use the example that I gave at Atlantic-Oase for this conference, I said, one marketing message is, I build ponds. 10 out of 10, right? That's a phenomenal marketing message. I build ponds. No, but what if you said, avid fisherman and loving father, I build award winning koi ponds you can be proud of. Now you have two pieces of connection, two connection points that will establish some rapport. Then you have not just I build ponds, but you get a little bit more specific in what kind of ponds. Then something that boosts up the authority of that pond, award winning, and then a feeling and an emotional punchline of pride.

So you have a personal hook and a professional punchline. So my own is, addicted to coffee and standards. I came into the interview with a cup of coffee, which I need, because this Denver elevation is getting to me. And then, I help emerging and established public figures optimize and scale their personal brands. So a personal hook that people can latch on to and get to know me a little bit more, and then the professional side, which is, this is what I do and this is how I can serve you.

Isaac Mashman29:02

I look forward to speaking at an event with you guys in the future. I think that there's a lot of seamless energy here.

Isaac Mashman29:40

Of course, I appreciate the invitation. I think it's just such an important subject, in the public relations space especially, and I know that that's a big part of what you guys do. You hinted earlier about even paying to speak. If you're a legitimate public figure, if you're somebody who has legitimate credibility and authority, you should be the one getting paid. You should never pay. So [don't] pay for the Forbes feature, pay for the Entrepreneur feature, pay for the [upcharged] newswire. If somebody says that they can grow your Instagram account by 10,000 followers overnight, it's a Chinese bot farm. If they say they can get you a Google knowledge panel overnight, or get you verified, or get you a Wikipedia page, all of that's BS.

You can't do it. Those things are earned. If somebody says they can get you in a bunch of these different news places, run the other way. I was able to land all of these high quality Forbes features. For example, it took me six years to land my first Forbes feature. I landed that this year. I landed an Entrepreneur quote. Then I landed a quote in a nationally syndicated newspaper. So that's cool. Then before my flight two days ago, I was on a radio show. So it will take time for your personal brand to create momentum. The thing about building your personal brand is it compounds.

So it might take you five years to get some degree of momentum. But now that the ball's rolling, I can do a thousand things with what I've already done and build [off] of that, take the speaking engagement, get more of them, and continue scaling to where this could become a daily part of my lifestyle, which is something I looked at in my mentors early on in the network marketing space. They're catching more flights in one month than my family has ever taken in their entire life. I think it's fun. I think business should be fun, and that's what I'm excited about.

Isaac Mashman31:52

I thank you again for the invitation, both of you. You can find me literally everywhere at Isaac Mashman. You can't be in the personal branding space and have your personal brand not look good, right? So you can go to Google and type in my name. For Mashman Consulting Group, you can go to MashmanCG.com, and we have this really cool AI chatbot named KPI. You can have a conversation with him. If you're interested in working with us in a professional capacity, have a conversation with KPI. We'll send you a link to our overview presentation, which is exclusive on our YouTube channel, and you'll be good to go.