Catalytic Leadership

Why Building Your Personal Brand Is Worth More Than Your Business with Jeremy Bishop

• Dr. William Attaway • Season 3 • Episode 102

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What happens when the business you’ve built disappears overnight? For Jeremy Bishop, that was the wake-up call that revealed the true value of a personal brand—one that transcends platforms, business models, and offers. In this episode, we dive deep into the mindset and strategy behind building your personal brand as an asset—one that pays dividends long after your latest campaign ends.

If you're a digital agency owner still relying solely on your agency’s name or service list to drive growth, this conversation is a must-listen. Jeremy shares why your personal brand is more than just visibility—it’s your most portable and resilient form of equity as a leader. We discuss why building your personal brand is essential for long-term agency growth, how to avoid burnout from constant content creation, and the leadership shift required to build authentic influence that drives opportunity and revenue.

I’ve watched far too many high-performing agency owners scale to a plateau—not because of their skills, but because they failed to lead themselves first. Jeremy’s insights reinforce the Catalytic Leadership principle that when you build your name with clarity, consistency, and intention, you stop chasing growth and start attracting it.

Books Mentioned:

  • The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone
  • Outwitting the Devil by Napoleon Hill
  • The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
  • The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
  • Your Message Matters by Jonathan Milligan


Connect with Jeremy Bishop:
To learn more about Jeremy’s work helping entrepreneurs build authority through personal branding, visit https://www.influencerclubmedia.com/. You can also connect with him directly on Instagram @jeremybish0p_, where he shares strategies for building influence with purpose.

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

Dr. William Attaway:

It is an honor today to have Jeremy Bishop on the podcast. Jeremy's the founder of Influencer Club and has helped over 200 people build world-class brands. An entrepreneur since age 19, jeremy has over a decade of experience in personal branding and social media monetization and he's worked with Netflix stars, top realtors, artists, authors and many more. He's been on multiple speaking events with Grant Cardone, on David Meltzer's podcast and hundreds of other shows to tell his story and how he built a huge personal brand. Jeremy, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Jeremy Bishop:

Yeah, thank you so much. I appreciate it and I'm looking forward to getting into some good questions here.

Intro/Outro:

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway:

Dr William Attaway, I would love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners. I had a couple of the high points, but I would love to hear about your journey from you, particularly around your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Jeremy Bishop:

Well, 19 years old, I got introduced to my first entrepreneurial journey and I saw someone that was being a leader in this space and I got involved in this company and I had an opportunity to represent a product and build an affiliate network around it, and so there was a lot of focus on personal development in the first early years of entrepreneurship, probably a lot more so than the technical business side.

Jeremy Bishop:

That came many years later, and I had a lot of fun with this company. Um, we ended up, you know, producing millions and millions of dollars for this company and, um, a few years in, they had an internal problem and I get a call one day and it basically shut down overnight, okay, and so I looked back and I was like man, if I could have done one thing more, I would have focused on building my name just as much as any product or service or industry that I am a part of, and so that's sort of what led me down this path in my early 20s to start discovering personal branding, social, yeah. So I hope that gives you a little bit of an overview there. Yeah.

Dr. William Attaway:

So some of the listeners are familiar with this. Some of them are not. Help us understand what you mean by personal brand.

Jeremy Bishop:

Yeah, so personal brand is a term that has existed forever in business, I believe, but has become a very popular phrase as of the past five, 10 years or so. A personal brand is you, an individual that is building reputation, building brand awareness, so just awareness around your name, and this is usually associated with a business or a product or a mission. Okay, nonprofit for profit. A personal brand is something that instead of just looking at the logo, like Apple as the product, we're looking at the person, steve Jobs, as the creator and sort of the face behind the product, any given business or mission.

Dr. William Attaway:

And this is something, then, that you port with you wherever you go. It's not tied to any specific company or business.

Jeremy Bishop:

Right, that's the concept I mean. It certainly becomes, it can become tied to any given business product over many years, especially if you build something extremely helpful and great for the market, then, yes, undoubtedly your name is going to be attached to whatever it is you create. But it's not limited to right, and that's what I think, that's what was an eye opener in my, you know, from 19 to my early 20s is I really put this product and company on the pedestal. But some of my clients have been in a specific space for most of their career and then all of a sudden they transition into real estate many, many, many years later. And so the concept is we carry our name, our reputation, our network, the trust that people have in us. That's the constant, that's something that's going to be there throughout all of your businesses and all of your opportunities. And so if you sort of work on building up your name, building up your network, building up your reputation, then hopefully that can aid in the assistance of any growth of any project that you're a part of.

Dr. William Attaway:

I love that. A lot of the people listening are business owners, entrepreneurs, and they're trying to build something from the ground up. Do you have any advice or thoughts for them? That would be helpful, as they are focusing on that particular aspect of this.

Jeremy Bishop:

Yeah, two things. One, focus more on the business and the foundation of creating your product and your service. Make sure you have something. I always have this phrase that I ask clients. If you were to have 100 people call you right now and want to do business in any fashion, are you ready? Do you have something for them?

Intro/Outro:

Okay.

Jeremy Bishop:

So? So it's always sort of this chicken and the egg right. Which do I do first, you know, do I go build my, my brand and my social media, or do I work on my business first? And there's really no perfect formula for this, Okay, but building something that you have available, a service, your product, a destination for the network that you want to go. And then I would say step two, again one or the other. You know, networking can come before the product and you can be inspired because you met someone. That's sort of how that happened for me at 19 years old. I just took a meeting, I had no idea what was going to come of it and it led me down this life changing path. So networking and searching for something that you can get excited about and build and grow right, so both of these things are really important.

Dr. William Attaway:

So where does social media fit into that? That's a very intimidating thing for a lot of people, because it seems like, no matter how much you feed the beast, there's just another day, it's another day, it's another day, and the content creation machine seems to be one that you've just got to be feeding all the time.

Jeremy Bishop:

Where does that fit in? Yeah, it's terrible, really, like this is the biggest. I would, on one hand, call it a misconception or just a lack of wisdom. At a higher level, you know, I think that when you, when you realize that you do not want to become a slave to the content machine, okay, you want to build something that is so clear and and and great and has a great foundation, and it should become an almost an asset inside of your world, um world, and inside of your business. Not this thing that you have to do because everyone told you you have to, because you feel like you have to. I mean, it's a lot of emotion around social media. What I feel I have to do, I got to get my likes up, my views up. Look, all of that is great, absolutely. But if you get some clarity around this.

Jeremy Bishop:

Number one focus on figuring out the product and service and offering that you want to bring to people, okay. Number two network, network, network, build relationships, build friendships. Every person who likes your stuff connects with you. I mean in my early days. Who likes your stuff connects with you. I mean in my early days and still to this day, 10 years later, we send hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of targeted messages from our social, from my social, and I take phone calls. You never know who you are going to meet. You never know who you're going to meet. You never know who you're going to get connected to. Okay, so that's really, really important. Yeah, but you don't want to get so wrapped up into creating and posting just for the sake of just for the sake of gaining a little bit more of a viewership. In the beginning, I would focus on the actual fundamentals of things that you can take and utilize from social, like new connections, relationships, people.

Dr. William Attaway:

So, thinking about that, let me chase that for just a second. It seems like that could be a full-time job all by itself. Just connecting with people that you're connecting with on social, just sending those messages, just building those relationships that can be an enormous time suck. How do you put a fence around that? What boundaries do you put in place? Even as you're doing that? How do you control it so that that doesn't just absolutely overwhelm your schedule control?

Jeremy Bishop:

it so that that doesn't just absolutely overwhelm your schedule. Well, I think that if anyone is listening and is in the beginning stages between $1 and $100,000 a month in revenue you should absolutely overwhelm your schedule with networking. In fact, most people are still trying to live some sort of perfect lifestyle life balance, work balance in the beginning stages, and they never put enough fuel on the fire to get this thing to really roar. So what I'm telling you is make it a metric that, every day, a hundred messages. It could be a hundred text messages, it could be a hundred emails, it could be a hundred Instagram DMs.

Jeremy Bishop:

You need to have volume of this connectivity and again, I'm not saying to do it just for the sake of doing it. You have to have some sort of purpose and reason connected to your business or the end result that's going to make everything flourish. So, very put it very simply, if you have a coaching business or if you have a client-based business and you need more of those clients to thrive, you should be having hundreds of conversations. Send a hundred messages every day through all of your platforms to connect, to build relationships, to network and soon you should find out more and more who are the people you'd like to talk to, who is going to make the biggest impact on your business? Okay, and sort of dial that in Right, but there really shouldn't be this. You know, tons of balance and and extra time on the calendar in the beginning.

Dr. William Attaway:

I think a lot of people are trying to get the life that they want to achieve, but they want to have it starting day one. They're trying to hit that balance starting at the beginning, instead of putting their head down, putting their shoulder into it and doing the 100 reps a day as you're saying. Do you see that a lot, with people that they're trying to have the thing, the goal that they have, but they're trying to have it from day one?

Jeremy Bishop:

Um, you know, I I'm not sure that I could speak to that. That's a. That would be a pretty blank, blanket statement for me to for me to say um overall, but um, I would say that you should take a self-audit and just decide whether what you want is actually what you want. So I would say more so than if I see someone wanting X but only doing 10%. I wouldn't say that. I would say people choose business models that don't, that they don't actually want you understand, and so and they forget that they have. They have the um. They have the power to not only make the decision and change. Okay, you could try something and change it. You don't have to stick to you, don't? You don't have to want to become some massive influencer to build a brand. That's those two things do not have to be um. You know you don't have to build some massive business if you don't want Um, so you don't have to be a business owner. I know that everyone has to be a founder today and everyone has to be an owner.

Jeremy Bishop:

I remember some of my most successful years in the early days. I was not the owner of the business, I was not the founder, I did not have the responsibilities of payroll, team growth, all things considered Okay. Scheme growth, all things considered, okay. So I would say the question for everyone is what type of business would I like to build if I had it my way? Okay. And so people always say oh, man, jeremy, you're so. You know, that's so awesome, you can run your business from anywhere, et cetera, et cetera. These are things that I just decided on a long time ago and I just said you know, if I want to, if I'm going to build a business, I want to do it in a way where I can be anywhere at any time. I can serve a lot of people, okay. And so those are just a few different things that I'm deciding on early on. Right? So business model creates the structure of your life, right? So, yeah, I hope that gives a little insight there.

Dr. William Attaway:

Yeah, yeah, it does, and I think the rhythms that you decide on you know whether you're the owner or not for your life matter when it comes to building a brand. How do you maintain consistency and authenticity when you're growing a brand on multiple platforms?

Jeremy Bishop:

Well, that's the first mistake. Is that? Why is someone growing a brand on multiple platforms when they haven't grown a brand on a single platform? Okay, so this is a pretty common occurrence in entrepreneurship. A person who is successful goes very, very deep on one project and then creates more from there. Okay, and so that's the same exact. If we help our clients, it's focused on one platform, first going very, very deep, and then they can expand onto the YouTube channel after they've built the Instagram foundation, or vice versa. So pick one platform or two max, use your LinkedIn account and your Instagram, use your LinkedIn and your YouTube and get a real result from it first, and then think about these other platforms.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's really good and it's counterintuitive to what a lot of people are hearing. I think that you've got to be everywhere. You've got to be omnipresent across all the different platforms. I like the intentionality of that, because if you build one, you learn it. You find success there, then you begin to bolt onto that. I love that. That seems sustainable and healthy to me.

Jeremy Bishop:

I mean right, sometimes this stuff is so blatantly obvious that it's kind of sad that we build a business and the perfect advice and everyone knows that you don't try and build five businesses at once, or three or even two. There are the entrepreneurs out there that do five different projects at a very low level. All of them Okay, not one of their businesses performs at any sustainable high level and they love to do a thousand projects. Or the musician that can play five different instruments not very well. So, look, that's totally fine if that's the life that you want to live. Again, if that's the balance you like doing 10 different projects, you don't really care that one never gets to some significant number. You add them all up at the end of the day and you earned a decent amount as a total. Okay, great.

Jeremy Bishop:

But if you are looking for okay, how do I get my coaching business, ex coaching business, client business info product to you know 5, 10, 15, 20, 50, a hundred thousand a month, a million, uh, you know millions a year? Um, yeah, you're you. You're going to need to go very deep on that business, just like you're going to need to go very deep on your brand and probably one platform first, and then you can have um. Here's what happens. It's like a domino effect.

Jeremy Bishop:

If you go deep on the business, you start to earn revenue and money and then you have resources. You start to earn revenue and money and then you have resources. Okay, then you can choose one or two platforms and you can bring on a team of people to help you go very deep on those one or two platforms, okay, and then you invest, reinvest and build the brand. That's what I did in my early twenties. I started to, I found a mentor, I started to reinvest all of my revenue earnings back into my brand, which grew my name. So I grew a business, I went deep there. I grew a brand. I went deep on Instagram. That was just the platform of choice and then more and more resources come from that, which allows you to then go and expand and do other things.

Dr. William Attaway:

Again, I love the intentionality there. I think that is what it looks like to build in a healthy and sustainable way. Jeremy, let me ask you this your business needs you to lead at a higher level today than it did five years ago, and that same thing is going to be true five years from now. So how do you stay on top of your game?

Jeremy Bishop:

How do you level up with the new leadership skills that your team and your clients are going to need you to have in the years to come? Well, you know, being in any leadership position is never an easy task and it's always a growing and learning and figuring out task. And it's always a growing and learning and figuring out. And, um, you know, I mentioned earlier about the networking aspect, finding mentors, finding people around you, um, you know. So there's there's in my life, there's sort of this give and take equation, um, for the people that I spend time with Right, and so I'm either, you know, finding some of the people in my world to give a lot, and again, that's those are the individuals in my company, people around me, where I'm giving and I'm, you know, maybe, mentoring, giving insight, leading, and then there are others in my, in my life, where they are sharing information, insight and leading, and they're further along in the business world than I am Right, and so when I'm talking to them, of course I'm giving insight. Vice versa, you know, but I'm able to take information, become re-energized, and so you sort of need this balance and those people should continue to teach you things and you should continue to teach others and vice versa. Right, so that's what I talked about earlier.

Jeremy Bishop:

Was that networking aspect, because you know before, before, before you have all of the answers for every part of the, the, the journey it's really great to think about, like, who are your board of directors in your life? Okay, that's what I call it, right? So who? Who are the? There's no number, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 people on. You know that are sitting around your round table and you know they should have, um, skill sets in different areas that you can tap into and uh, and be able to get insight and and hopefully, that you know, of course, let alone the fact that you know, look behind you, you've got, you know, a wealth of knowledge sitting on the bookshelf. So if you can't find a mentor or a person in real life I remember hearing that phrase then you know, go find someone in a book, go find somebody in an audio. Information is more readily available than ever now. So, yeah, that's one way is just staying energized, um, you know, talking, learning from others, hearing what they're doing, how they're dealing with their problems, uh, in the business, or challenges, and and you know next levels, and that's always one way to to to you know, bring you back to center and give you something new to to bring the table for everybody else.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's really good and I agree. I think you know, if you don't have an in-person mentor, the accessibility we have these days to the writing and teaching of people. I have so many mentors from afar, as you referenced. You know, people I've never met but I have learned so much from that have helped me in my journey and helped me to help others. Don't let what you can't do stop you from doing what you can, and everybody has access to information right, more so now than ever before in history. If we were to go back to Jeremy at 19 years old and you were able to say one thing to yourself, give yourself one piece of advice based on what you know now, what would you love to go back and tell yourself?

Jeremy Bishop:

Yeah, that's a difficult question. I would tell myself probably two things I would say. Number one stay close to the people that, in your gut you see, are doing really special things in the world. Stay close to them. Wisdom and insight and some of the greatest insight is really never very far from where you are. You may think that you're a thousand degrees away from the right mentor or the person. I promise you you are really one connection, one relationship, or they're probably somewhere within your family and friend group already. Um, that you could, that you could really tap into, um and uh.

Jeremy Bishop:

Number two, I would say um, I would tell myself to you know, test ideas and and and put things out in the market, try things, test things, um and and again. The reason that I talked about the personal brand being such an eye opener in those early days was we were, you know, we thought this first company we were a part of, that I was a part of, I thought it was going to be a forever project, okay, and so that was my, you know, 19, 20 year old naive mindset around this. And so, yeah, of course it was just part of the journey, but I guess if I could go back I'd tell myself hey, remember, test new ideas, be open to ideas, be open to businesses, so you can get out there and try new things as well.

Dr. William Attaway:

It's so true that that is a part of the journey, right, and I think a lot of people might look at you and say, oh wow, Jeremy man, his journey's just been up and to the right Like he's never had to struggle, he's never faced the challenges that I deal with as an entrepreneur, as a business owner. If somebody's sitting across the table from you and they tell you that, how would you respond?

Jeremy Bishop:

Yeah, you know. So no, right, I guess I would say you know, first off, if you don't like the challenges and they annoy you and piss you off and you're crying every night about them, then this is going to be a really rough road for you. Okay, that's the first thing I'll say. So I can remember the first night investing in that very first company, and I had no prior entrepreneurial experience whatsoever hardly finished high school, no college education, no idea what I could do in business or networking or anything in this regard, or earning income nothing. And I remember sitting there that night telling myself I had just invested $500 to get some product so that I could start this affiliate network sharing this product. And I remember saying to myself you're going to make this work, it's going to be okay. Something's telling you this is the right move. But here's the thing. Here's the thing when I do something, I commit five, 10 years to it.

Intro/Outro:

Okay, so this is what I said about going about going deep.

Jeremy Bishop:

I learned this from mute, from music. I've been a drummer for 15 years at. You know, if you think about something that you've done maybe it's a sport, maybe it's a hobby you have to apply. Well, I had to apply that same mindset of something. If I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it. For many, many, many years, I'm committed to it. So, right away, by default, it already gets rid of the oh gosh ups and downs of anything that could possibly happen. There were days in those early days where, and still today, where you're talking to one person about your big mission and dream and goal and trying to sell one person something to you know a hundred, to having a packed schedule that you said earlier. You know that, the chaotic schedule. And anytime I look at my schedule and it's so absolutely packed, I always remind myself, man, there was a time where you wished that this thing was so jam-packed.

Jeremy Bishop:

Don't complain about it Now you and I are here on Monday, on whatever. Today is Memorial Day. We are doing this podcast right now, right? So I'm sure others canceled and rescheduled and took off. No problem, here we are.

Jeremy Bishop:

I remember the days where I didn't have a podcast interview, I didn't have a good conversation to have something that might, I might get something from you today. So, yeah, that's uh, that's my insight. There is, you're going to have ups and downs. You're going to have a Rocky. It's going to be Rocky Sometimes. It's going to be amazing at times. Um, but yeah, we've. You know, if you've been in business for for for five years, 10 years, and you're still moving forward, then certainly you've gone through, uh, you've gone through something and yeah, those, those stories are really, uh, really important. Of course, we could go in depth on all of those, all the things that have happened in my journey, but you know, in general I would tell someone you know learn to love and enjoy some challenges, because they're going, they will make you better, without a doubt. I love that.

Dr. William Attaway:

You know, a lot of our listeners are continual learners. They're always looking for the next resource that's going to help them to grow a little bit more, to gain insider wisdom. They haven't gotten yet. Is there a book that you've read that you would recommend to the leaders who are listening? Hey, if you haven't read this, this made a difference in my journey.

Jeremy Bishop:

Well, yeah, let's see, there's something as of recently. I mean, there are a lot of the old classics I'll put. The people that I studied in my early 20s were people like Bob Proctor, jim Rohn we were in the network marketing world, had studied, and, uh, grant Cardone in the sales department, to see somebody that you know have this attitude of you. Know, I am going to figure out, you know how I can get someone no matter if they tell me no in the first five seconds uh, and turn that into somebody who is so excited to work with you, right. So there again the board of directors in your life. Okay, uh, that you can have around you.

Jeremy Bishop:

But, as of recently, I've been listening to a book called the Creative Act by Rick Rubin, so I'll just throw that out there as one book to check out something that I'm actively listening to right now. Listening to right now and, uh, it speaks to the process of a lot of artists that are trying to tap into their creative, uh, their, their, their creativity, right, and so you know you asked a lot of good questions about the ups and downs. You know the brand, the business, the journey, and a lot of it is tapping into something that inspires you know the brand, the business, the journey, and a lot of it is tapping into something that inspires you to to go fast, get excited about it and and put it out there Right, and so this book is pretty neat yeah.

Dr. William Attaway:

Well, I'm going to check it out. I haven't read that one. Thanks for that, jeremy. I know that so many of our listeners have gleaned so much from what you've shared today, and I know they're going to want to continue to learn from you and learn more about what you're doing and how they can connect with you. What's the best way for them to do that?

Jeremy Bishop:

Yeah, so hopefully we will have in the description, I'm sure, some links, and so the first thing I would say is, if you want to check out just some other examples of you know my company, influencer Club. We've helped hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of entrepreneurs grow their brand, go through this journey, and so I would love for you to just take a look at some people who have made that decision to do so, and hopefully there will be like just some examples that might inspire you. Or you can look deeper, check out some of the videos and things that they've shared and talked about. And if you, of course, if you want to speak to our team I'm sure there are a bunch of buttons to just click and book a call and have a strategy call with our team We'd be happy to do so. And then, yeah, my Instagram or something. Feel free to connect there as well. But, yeah, hope that helps I love that.

Dr. William Attaway:

We will have all those links in the show notes for sure. Jeremy, thank you for your time and your generosity in sharing so many insights with our listeners today. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

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