Mastering Personal Branding: Authenticity, Strategy, and Success

Isaac Mashman1:27

Not tomorrow. I feel like I need to just end the interview right there.

Isaac Mashman1:37

Yeah. Well, that was the suggested one. You don't have to go [all the way], but man, you went with it.

Isaac Mashman1:59

Man, give me a couple of shares of that. I'll be content.

Isaac Mashman2:06

Oh, well, it all comes down to position, and how you're positioned with your business, how you're positioned with your personal brand. So I'm super excited to have this conversation. I can already tell that it's going to be, we have some matching energies and synergies right about now.

Isaac Mashman3:40

Oh, that's a funny one right there, huh? I was trying to see how many friends we have in common, but I imagine we probably have several hundred just with our networks and such. I had a conversation with somebody earlier today on this exact subject, [Dimitri Stikeos], and he's a great real estate guy as well. We were talking about how a lot of times people, whenever they're trying to connect with a guru or connect with their mentor or connect with somebody, they approach them as a follower, as a fan, as a, man, I'm your biggest fan. Imagine me going up to, like, Patrick Bet-David. He's also in Fort Lauderdale.

And being like, hey man, biggest fan. Or going up to Grant Cardone and being like, man, I love what you're doing. I love it. I've listened to you every day for the last decade. Is he really going to want to respond to you? No, because he's going to say, I'm going to add this guy in my network, add this kid in my network, and he's going to annoy the hell out of me. Versus saying, hey, Patrick, love what you did with PHP, huge fan of Valuetainment. I'd love to connect with you, sincerely, Isaac. Something like that. Which one are they going to respond to? Your biggest fan or let's do business together?

Hey, let's be in the network together. So it's all about approaching them as your equal rather than some fan where there's this disproportionate leverage between you and the other person. That's where most people get it [wrong].

Isaac Mashman6:07

There was my first ever business trip. I feel like this is worth mentioning because I got my start running a clothing line in high school. Then I got involved with network marketing, and that was really the industry that took me out of the idea of going to college because I was a straight A student. I graduated top 10 in my class. So I'm not one of the D or F [student], Gary Vaynerchuk entrepreneurs. Schooling was my path. My entire childhood was about getting a scholarship so I could go to college. But I saw the network marketing industry, and I ultimately got out of it after going to three different companies four different times.

But my first business trip was up from Jacksonville, Florida to Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was to see the vice president of the company speak. Man, it was a crazy trip. It was 70 plus hours of travel time. [My] first ever flight, I took a 16 hour bus ride from Jacksonville to New York City, got picked up by my downline and a bunch of strangers. But I remember going there and all of these young kids, a little bit older than me at the time, were asking him to take photos of his Rolex. Hey, can I wear the Rolex for this photo? They had the completely opposite idea of what they should have been asking.

I was asking him, hey, what's your advice? What should I learn? Thank you, I appreciate you for doing this. There's a reason why he invited me and the team out for dinner instead of the kids who were flashing the Rolex. I think that the only reason celebrities exist is because of these psychological biases. Without the biases we have, celebrities would be nonexistent because there would be no disparity between us, the common folk, and them, the gods of our time, the Roman gods in a pantheon, so to speak.

Isaac Mashman8:31

It's just, that rallied all the guys, huh? That's the closest to unification, I think, the world's been in a long time.

Isaac Mashman9:19

[It] was right time, right place, and also the personality. Reality stars work not because of their professional skills or their expertise, but because of their personalities. As business owners and as creators of, typically, educational content, it's not like we're going out doing a bunch of pranks [at] Target. It's so much easier for somebody to grow who is an entertainer, whether that's even a rapper, a musician, an artist, a painter, or a comedian, than it is for us as business owners to create and position ourselves as an authority. Now I feel like there's a more strategic approach to what we need to do in order to become well-known compared to the person doing pranks, but people love being entertained.

So that entertainment relies on their personality. At the end of the day, you have the phrase personal brand. On the left, you have personal, which is you, and who you are, your personality, characteristics, or interests, your passions, your upbringing, your political beliefs, your religion. Then on the right side, you have brand, which is what you're doing to make money, your profession, your career, your credibility, your authority. A lot of times we focus so much on this brand side, the professional side, the image, we lose that personal side. So for example, I was working with a client and he's a coach and he was an athlete for pretty much his entire life.

I asked him, I was like, hey, let's call him Jimmy. I said, Jimmy, what are you known for? What is your personality here? His personality was literally just wrapped up in athletics, but it was very challenging for him to see anything other than that. I think that showcasing some of the goofier sides of us or our interests, like for example, I don't have a cup of coffee, I've had probably six cups of coffee today, but addicted to coffee and standards, I have that in every single bio and everybody who knows me knows that I will be drinking coffee, I'll be the one bringing the coffee, I'll be the one offering the coffee.

That's just me. It's like, that's an aspect that builds rapport. Rapport is one of the things I talk about in my manifesto, and I'm excited to talk more about it in the second edition.

Isaac Mashman11:55

Let's look at Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street. Talk about scamming millions and millions of dollars. That guy wrote a book, had a major blockbuster movie with one of the biggest movie stars of all time. Now he's going and doing trainings and getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak, and all of these other situations. So people love a comeback story, and people also love the rebel. So I think that there are layers of trust. You can trust somebody as a friend, as a family member, you can trust somebody as a coach, you can trust somebody as a mentor. But I think now in 2024, with how competitive things are and how many really scumbags there are, I'm just being frank, trust is more important than ever.

Not just trust, but credibility. Trust is credibility. They're basically synonymous. But credibility can be built as an extension of yourself where it speaks for you. So for example, if I was to mention Grant Cardone or Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg, you have these perceptions about each of these people, whether good or bad. As people who are starting out, who might not be a public figure yet, you are not oftentimes thinking about how you're being perceived or how you getting on the podcast for an interview is a form of edification and is improving your personal brand's credibility. Because if I was on a show and I butchered it and I stumbled and I talked out of my ass, you would be able to tell, the audience would be able to tell.

But if I go on a podcast and I deliver, you're essentially edifying me as the guest and saying, hey, I trust this guy enough to bring him in front of my audience. You guys who are listening, we need to do more of that, the legitimate people who want to really build out their personal brand, so they can start getting more attention, more revenue, whatever their purpose for building their personal brand might be.

Isaac Mashman14:34

I can possibly get some credibility because you're plugging, you're promoting my brand. It's other people's personal brands building other personal brands, that is the reason why they can charge a million plus dollars for one post.

Isaac Mashman15:15

Let's say you do get your break [through] criticism and that's your infamy. You can eventually evolve and get out of that, but you need to do it in a way to where it's legitimate because buying the Forbes feature, man, or buying the fake followers isn't going to be the thing that fixes your business or fixes your reputation.

Isaac Mashman16:34

Exactly. The perception there is the reason why people do it.

Isaac Mashman17:16

Again, I would much rather have the 100 real people than the 50,000 fake, because the other thing is people aren't dumb. People were dumb a couple years ago. They didn't understand social media. But now everybody knows it, unless you're getting your grandmother on it. So if you have 100,000 followers and you have 10 likes on a post and one comment, or the worst case, man, I saw a million followers and the guy had less than 20 likes and zero comments. I'm like, man, you forgot to pay the subscription to your bot account again. You need to make sure you get those numbers back up. It makes you look stupid and it makes you look like you're a try hard versus building something that's legitimate, man.

It's like, I've been able to get featured in Forbes and Entrepreneur and dozens of places and do dozens of interviews like this. I haven't paid for any of them. I would much rather continue doing what I'm doing. It laid a groundwork to where I'm successful for the rest of my life, than to try to have five years or two years or two months of fame because I paid the 10,000 for some backdoor employee. Think about how many people used to pay for the verification check on Instagram, and look how well that turned out. Now everybody can get it for 15 a month. There's so many layers to this conversation, and it ultimately comes down to having some backbone and some fucking spine.

I don't know why you brought this side out of me, man. I've had dinner. I've had coffee. I was [out] on errands. I'm good to go today. I'm on.

Isaac Mashman23:12

It's interesting because there are, I feel like, two sects of this entire [guru] culture, like Andy Frisella, personally, he will not do speaking engagements with pretty much anybody. Sure, one time a couple years ago, he mentioned, man, like, I went to a show and it was just a pitch fest the entire time. He said, now I'm never going to do it. I'm pretty sure it was [GrowthCon] and I've been to GrowthCon. It was the first two.

Isaac Mashman23:43

Then boom. I haven't seen them since. Selling through stage or being on stages is very great. I believe that's really where public figures should be. I believe that there's a master key to personal branding. It is to position yourself as a public figure. Not all public figures are celebrities, but celebrities are also public figures. So you can be a public figure in your church, your community, your business. Every single person has a personal brand, whether they would like to admit it or not, it's so much bigger than just your social media account or your website. Like I have your website pulled up to my right on my monitor, but it's not your personal brand.

That is an aspect of your personal brand. But the fact that you were a business owner for 20 years and you got involved with real estate and you went through and had all your experiences and you're the son of Mr. and Mrs. Medrano, all of these things contribute to your personal brand. We have the opportunity to connect with people with our personality and with who we are to help grow our businesses. Me, you mentioned, you made the joke at the beginning about how I love my last name. It's funny because I used to hate it. I had no connection to it because I didn't have my biological father growing up. I'm connected with him as an adult. We have a wonderful relationship.

Isaac Mashman25:02

But then I realized that I could turn that and give it meaning to where now I want to see Mashman up on a skyscraper like Trump. I want Mashman Tower because why not? The show is What If It Did Work? Well, my why in life, what is your why? I determined that is why not. Why wouldn't I? That's kind of the driving force of, man, if I'm going to be here, I know what poverty is like, it sucks. Let's go ahead and find out what the other side is like. Also, while I'm doing that, I can help people the right way, because I was raised with morals and ethics.

If you're raised with morals and ethics, you're not continually thinking to yourself, oh, am I making sure I'm doing ethics? Am I doing this right? No, you're you, and you're able to express all those things. Man, there are so many different, I could go on so many tangents, man, just with our current state and where everything's at. I could go off. But people are going to laugh. I've been following.

Isaac Mashman26:21

Brother. Oh, it's like $7,500 for appearance fees on some big ones. What gets me is those, hey, you want to do a consultation with me? No. Then two weeks later, I see that they're paying the appearance fee for the show. I'm like, see, here's the difference between you and me. I'm working with all my clients to become press worthy, and you're the one trying to be that. There's a difference there, and you know, there are appearance fees. I think that [if] a podcast wants to charge a production fee up front, by all means, if you're going to say, hey, this is a good way for you to get exposure, if you want expedited publishing, or this is like a bit, they're turning it into a business model.

They're upfront about it, cool. But I think that the idea of a show getting to the size to where it gives guest credibility just because they can pay the fee, that's fake credibility, and it's very weak. It's kind of like drywall homes versus a home that's made from brick and stone that's been around for 500 years. A tornado comes, it's going to tear down the paper mache, but it's going to have a tough time breaking down the brick wall or the stone wall. A lot of people right now are building paper mache houses for their personal brands. When it's tough in the economy, it's going to become very competitive.

It's already competitive. I've had this conversation where, it's more difficult to close today than it was a couple years ago because people are holding on to their money more. There's less emphasis on internet marketing. You don't see every person and their brother launching a course. So you have to establish that trust and credibility in order to fight through all this BS and everybody else and all the scammers who are giving us, the legitimate people, [a bad name], maybe.

Isaac Mashman31:14

Then I went to the third one, which was [Marlins] Stadium in Miami, 2000.

Isaac Mashman31:29

It's kind of like Floyd Mayweather, Rick Ross, [Tom Brady].

Isaac Mashman33:30

When you think about lock arms, and this is an issue that I had with clients in the past, the expectation that they have for themselves, like, I want to blow up, I want to blow up. All right, well, you need to do X, Y, and Z. There's no follow through. I need you to do this video. I need you to record this. Three months go by, there's no video. Follow up, follow up, no video. So that requires work. I know. But that's what you need if you're going to do this. You can't just get on Forbes and think that you're some real estate guru. If you're not actually showing people that you know the difference between a fucking warranty deed and a special warranty deed, you can't even record a video talking about the most simple aspects of real estate or your property to access, and you want to be this guru.

I think that understanding that it really is easier than you think it is. I believe wholeheartedly that you can take offline interactions and leverage the hell out of them on the internet. Imagine going to your chamber of commerce, speaking in front of 50 people, recording it, and using that to pitch speaker bureaus. Imagine uploading that to YouTube, and you giving a training in a local conference room or a business networking event and training somebody on things about real estate they didn't think about, or their mindset, or whatever. You take that video, you upload it, you strip it. Now you have 50 people that know you locally and you have 5,000 people that know you on the internet and know that you're actually doing what you're saying.

Because when you're creating, and up until this point a lot of my stuff has been 100% online, now I'm entering into the stage where I want to be known locally and be that local hero as well as an international icon. So I have to be strategic about building my network.

Isaac Mashman35:48

You can leverage a local network to go and become well known on a larger scale. Leverage those offline interactions to gain internet credibility. That's something I've been encouraging. I had a speaker client of mine, his name is [Kiwon Amy].

Isaac Mashman36:03

There's a local roofing company in Arkansas who's been following me for a while and I've seen them pop up but I didn't know who he was, and I made a call to action on my Facebook. I said, hey, who has a company with ten or more employees and wants to have a motivational speaker come and train and speak to their team? No charge. I had Kiwon come out a week later, he did the virtual keynote. We're going to take that keynote, upload it to YouTube, use that to pitch bureaus, and now he has momentum, and now that roofer who owns that company with those employees is going to open up his network to other companies who have similar size organizations.

So it's really about putting your foot in the door and doing those mundane tasks, that yes, Omar, they require work. They require you to record a video, but I'm not asking you to go do some construction, hard labor, pouring concrete, mixing it up. I've done that. It's painful. The stuff that you need to do online to become famous is a tenth of how difficult that is, breaking your back.

Isaac Mashman37:55

It's also short-term thinking as well, because you don't even think about how many ways that HVAC guy or that plumber or that electrician, maybe not electrician, that has more liability. But how these people are monetizing through a viral video on YouTube and now they're getting paid an extra $2,000 to $5,000 for their YouTube channel, which is making them money for the business. Then they're also getting monetized. Maybe they have a lead magnet or they have a book or they have a course or a program, whatever, any industry that has a lead magnet, like it doesn't matter whether you're a plumber or the person who, you know, like Mike Rowe, for example, you know, Dirty Jobs.

He has a podcast now, he has written books, he's gone on to do interviews, to do speaking, to do everything. He's somebody who's promoting blue collar jobs, which you and I both know those are more recession proof than coaching or consulting. When the economy is tough, you're not thinking, let me hire a coach or consultant. You're thinking, well, my AC broke, it's hot as hell in Southern Florida, I need to hire somebody. So it's like, if you want to start a business, those are the ones that I'm telling people you should probably think about going and getting involved with. Like I'm shooting myself in the foot doing consulting.

It's specialized, [I'd say], compared to a lot of things. It's not as fundamental, but I think that you, building your personal brand is something that is complementary to what you're already doing rather than being supplemental, is really the big shift that you need to make because yes, you're recording videos. Yes, you're investing in it. Yes, you're using software to automate things or you're paying for [expensive] advertisements. I haven't even paid for ads. I haven't paid for an ad since 2018 trying to go famous.

Isaac Mashman39:29

Everything else I built from the ground up and scratch. But those are the things that can help you get more business long term. So you can't have the short term thinking that fucks up your personal brand long term. Same reason why people buy their fake [followers].

Isaac Mashman40:20

I'm so glad I'm getting asked about that again because I haven't spoken about it much at all. The power of three is a simple strategy where I actually adopted it from network marketing. I took a spin on it and made it different. The power of three originally in network marketing was you have three legs of the business, you get three people on each leg. Those three get three. Now you have 12 on each leg. So now you have 36 in your organization. I saw that as a way for you to build your personal brand. So instead of having a team of three and getting three and all that crap, I said, why don't you take it simple and reach out to three new people every single day for growing your personal brand?

You send a message on Instagram, you connect with somebody locally. I had two people that I was face to face with in Target. Two out of my three for the day. When you do that every single day and build them, get the follow on your Instagram, get the friend request accepted, have that genuine conversation with them, learn a little bit about what they're doing and have a little bit of information shared about you. By the end of 90 days, you have 270 people who now know you. That's 1,095 by the end of the year. That might not seem like a lot. When you think about it, that's a hotel [ballroom], that's a massive conference center.

Then that thousand starts referring you to other people in their network, sharing your content, engaging, boosting the algorithm that can compound and grow exponentially. So yeah, you might not connect with 100 people every day, but you connect with three, especially high quality events. So let's say you want to get on a bunch of podcasts over a year, land three podcasts a week or three a month. So you can really compartmentalize this and the time frame you want, but you're doing things in the power of three. Well, I mean, in the Bible, what's the Trinity? Father, son, Holy Spirit, that's three. What is the number that's always recurring in the Bible?

Three and seven. So it's like, you see three everywhere. I personally just love the number and I think that it's good, it's simple, it's not too little, it's not too much.

Isaac Mashman42:43

That's why the University of Miami game saw us, the hazing.

Isaac Mashman44:09

Yep. It takes discipline and it takes time. So for example, I was asked the other day about, like, what's your routine? I told him, frankly, on the podcast, I'm like, man, my routine sucks. I only have something in Sony yet. I just mean next year. I was like, but that's something that I'm working towards. Again, being not all, I hate the word authentic. I believe that if you're thinking about being authentic, you're naturally trying to manipulate what you are or are not showing or what you are or are not talking about. I do believe that in order to have a successful personal brand and position yourself as a public figure, you have to treat it like a business.

A business that does not make money is not a successful business. That's a nonprofit. So what you need to do is get to the point where you're making money with your personal brand, taking some of that revenue, reinvesting it into the software, whether that's an AI software for your videos or your website, your web domain, your hosting, whatever it might be. From there, as it scales, you're eventually going to have opportunities seeking you out rather than you having to be the person always seeking out opportunities. We repeat that. You need to get to the point to where opportunities are seeking you out, rather than you being the one who's always seeking them.

That, as it starts to happen, because you have to think about your personal brand. It's working for you 24-7. You can be asleep, but somebody's watching your videos. That's a crazy thought. Imagine if you're being watched while you sleep, somebody standing in the room with you. Effectively, [that's] what's happened with your personal brand, somebody standing in the corner watching you 24-7, like an angel on your shoulder. Well, I guess people are doing that with personal brand. Just the other day, I'm sitting at the office, I'm going through my day, and I get a phone call out of the blue on my company line. It's like, hey, I found you online or whatever, I want to book you for the podcast for X, Y, and Z.

I'm like, oh my God, I didn't even know about this person. Never saw him. Never talked to this [guy] before. Because of my personal brand, I was sought after. Being the person who's sought after, the Grant Cardone type or the Tai Lopez or Andy Frisella or Ed Mylett, whatever. The person who is sought after is always going to be the person who really succeeds long-term because you are very limited about how many opportunities you can always find. Then you can get into delegation and all that good stuff. But again, delegation is a business. You delegate tasks in your company just like you would delegate tasks with your personal brand, whether that's posting video content or outsourcing for VAs or, for your emails, your email list, your copywriting. It's all a part of the equation.

Isaac Mashman46:57

Balance of both. That's my God honest answer. I think that you should honestly be yourself. You should never lie. You should never be trying to convey something that you're not, but the painter sees the painting in their head before the painting is on the canvas. When you're building out your personal brand, seeing yourself, and I never thought I'd come to the point of talking about visualization on the podcast, but here we are, but seeing yourself on stage or going through. I remember one day I was having a fire outside, a little bonfire just by myself. I let the coals die down and I pulled out my phone.

I probably have a recording still. I imagined and gave a full one-hour speech of me talking about the hierarchy of personal branding to an imaginary audience. I gave that speech. I thought to myself, if I was on stage, this is what I would talk about. Guess what? I have a speaking event later this year that was found from a podcast interview I did. All expenses paid. I'm going to be able to go out to Denver, Colorado and speak in front of 120 people. So was I there yet? No. But then I did the action steps that got me there. So it's about, yeah, be yourself, be truthful, be honest, but also set the.

Isaac Mashman48:17

I'm excited. I'm making the announcement next week of the actual conference.

Isaac Mashman49:42

You can order it off of Amazon. Just search that up. You can go to my website, isaacmashman.com/book, and I have a bunch of links there that you can go and visit. Omar, I'm grateful that you took the time to listen to that. The second edition, man, I'm going to be talking about, there's literally an entire subsection on reputation management and going into PR and how to handle a crisis and relationship capital. I have five personal branding laws, which I'll be adopting and implementing. I'm excited for it all through observation. The thing is, I want to make sure that I wrote something that doesn't matter what marketing channel.

I don't explicitly mention a marketing channel that you should or shouldn't take in the book. I say that whatever it is, these are the philosophies that will apply regardless of the channel. That is going to be the same adoption that I use, the same core backbone for the second edition, where it doesn't matter if Instagram disappears tomorrow. I mean, how many books have you bought that you read and it's talking about MySpace or how the Instagram algorithm was five years ago and it's like, today it's obsolete? You might as well just burn it and, you know, use that for fuel for the next fire where you speak in front of an imaginary audience.

But it's like, that would be a better use than reading something that no longer is relevant. I'm grateful for everybody to, you know, check that out, and it's been a good conversation, man. I've really enjoyed it. We've been on fire.

Isaac Mashman51:25

I'd rather give the invitation, man. I looked into [Lightspeed] and it seemed like a solid software and stuff, but I don't like profit shares.

Isaac Mashman52:11

Well, Omar, I'll start off by saying, with a client a couple of weeks ago, I asked him what he thought about the consultation. He's like, Isaac, man, I'm kind of mad because I should have done this a couple of years ago. I'm realizing that now. That's like the best testimonial any guy could get. Any business owner, any service provider, gets: man, I should have done this a couple of years ago. It's really easy to get in contact with me on a professional note. You can go to my website, MashmanCG.com, but I'll tell you what, for listeners of your show, if they reach out to me personally and say, hey, I was listening to your show with Omar from What If It Did Work?, well, I'll be personally working with you because I'm working to build out the consultants team throughout the remainder of this year going into 2025, [and I'll] have the COO. I'll be announcing a bunch of other cool stuff.

Isaac Mashman53:09

I'd love to lock arms with you, offer consultation, solve your highest value personal brand problem, optimize and strategize what you need to do to scale your personal brand.

Isaac Mashman53:45

That's my God honest, 100% advice. If you're not creating, you're consuming, and if you're consuming, you might as well just go to your library and stick to the books. That's what I would say. I would say that every single person, even if you might not have the authority yet, you could always build and get the authority and share your process of how you gained it and what you did to go [step by step from] day one, literally record the video of day one of learning this skill and progress along those lines. Maybe you're somebody who has a bunch of offline authority. This is something I see more people doing: maybe you're a lawyer for 20 years and you've never even built out your LinkedIn profile.

You're locally known and you've won so many cases, but nobody knows you in the digital space. Well, why don't you get some of that offline authority and put it online as a public authority? I would say that that idea about privacy is a sacrifice you have to make. People don't know my bathroom schedule, but they still know about me. When it comes to your personal brand, you don't have to share everything, but you can be vulnerable sometimes, in the fact that, single mom, I didn't know that about you. Guess what? Now all three of us have something in common, me, you, and [A-Rod]. Talk about the trinity. So that right there is an aspect of our stories. Now I know about you and I didn't even know about him.

Isaac Mashman55:56

That you're in Vegas. Yeah, you might not show the exact hotel while you're there, but as you're moving around, yeah, put yourself out there. It's so stupid to think about, man. It's like, your friends and family are not going to be the ones who pay your bills. That's the God honest truth. It's difficult to change. It's more challenging to change those perceptions that these people have than it is to create new first impressions with strangers.

Isaac Mashman58:24

I'm holding myself to an even higher standard for the second edition. So I can't wait.