Episode 24- Personal Brand with Isaac Mashman

 In this episode of "Small Business, Big Moves,". Thomas Bennett is joined by guest Isaac Mashman to explore creative strategies and innovative approaches that have propelled small businesses to new heights. Discover the power of personal brand for your business.

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Small Business Big Moves is a podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Join Tom Bennett as he explores all things  business growth! From business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses! 

Transcript

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Welcome to Small Business, Big Moves, the podcast where entrepreneurship meets innovation. And I'm your host, Tom Bennett. We'll explore all things business growth from business funding and business tax credits to conversations with leaders who have grown successful and innovative businesses and brands. Welcome to the show. Today's guest will be Isaac Mashman with Mashman Ventures. And Isaac, I'll let you introduce yourself. Yeah, Thomas, number one, thank you for the invitation. And, you know, it's an honor to have this conversation with you today. My name is Isaac Mashman. I run a public relations firm called Mashman Ventures. That's the primary business. And the focus of that firm is to help people, whether that's a business owner, creator, an author, a public speaker, anybody who wants to ultimately get a result from their personal brand, achieve their goals through leveraging something that they already have. Which every single person has a personal brand, but many people are just wandering around life, not really knowing what they can do to consciously leverage it and build it. And so that's the main focus, but I have some other things as well. I mean, I've written a book, I'm working on a second edition. And you know, let's just dive into it. I don't want to take, take 10 minutes for an introduction. Yeah, no, and that's exactly what I wanted to really dive into today really was that personal branding, how powerful that is and leveraging social media, but also wanted to kind of take a quick step back to the beginning. Right. I know you've You've built up a good personal brand and obviously kind of practice what you preach, but wanted to really take it back and have you walk us through where the journey started and how you get into what you're doing today. Yeah, and I think that this is a very timely question, Thomas, and I want to take a little bit of time to go into a little bit more detail about this on a more of an emotional scale. Stage than I normally do on a show. I mean, I can talk about being raised in a single parent household and you know, my grandparents being a, a huge part of my early upbringing and that's really easy to talk about and it's very cliche, I think, I feel like every entrepreneur nowadays has one of those stories. It's like nobody has a perfect childhood, but I was recently going through and looking up. Some old google drive files. I had google drive files back when I was in high school And that's when I started my journey I mean I had those entrepreneurial tendencies, but didn't even know how to spell the word back then you know whether that was mowing a lawn during the summer with the encouragement of my stepdad I don't give him credit for many things. I'll give him credit for that you know and and wanting to do like this pen company in the sixth grade like a bunch of these different goofy things But I remember my senior year of high school I was entering into this phase where I was going to go to college, and I was a straight A student for the most part. I was graduating top 10 of my class, 4. 44 weighted GPA, like I was on set to do the whole route, go to college, and get into Something I didn't know. And I was leaning towards marketing and I thought to myself, man, marketing is such an easy, I feel like this is such an easy degree. And I didn't want to take the athlete route where you go into communications as an athlete, because it's the easiest degree that you never use, but I wanted to do something that would give me more control. And so I didn't do college and rather gotten to network marketing and starting to build up my personal brand. Let me just say, I ended up leaving the industry a couple of years later, never really making much money, but I was starting to try to build out. This reputation for myself, and I didn't know exactly why, but I knew that the more people who knew me would basically allow me to go in whatever direction, and they would still follow me along, and those early years, I mean, most of the people that know me today do not remember my early years, they weren't, weren't here for the journey. But I remember going through like six or seven pivots and just going from one thing to another, from network marketing to a different network marketing company, to doing a record label and managing music talent and watching multiple podcasts, et cetera. And I remember, man, one day when I was in my grandparents house and my grandparents house, the roof was leaking. Like they were about to get kicked out of their house because of how bad the roof was. Like, I don't really talk about this. But I was finding a video in my Google drive that had a link to one of my first podcast interviews I ever did. And I was sitting in my bedroom at the time at my grandparent's house. Cause I basically left my mom's house cause I was at war with her and you could see my bedpost to my right. You could see a poster on the left wall and I was sitting in front of the closet door reporting this interview. And so I go from that place there to having no reputation. Nope. I mean, I obviously had a personal brand, but to where I was, I was Celebrating every single accomplishment that I had, whether that was a podcast interview, whether that was a new follower on social media, whether that was a new interaction or a new close for the business and throughout the years, I've started to develop an understanding for just how powerful personal branding is and why there was this blue ocean market opportunity where most people work with the businesses themselves. But what about the business owner as a great example? And so here I am today. Huge. I love it. Another thing I want to jump into a little bit more about too that's exciting is I know you and I are both both publish authors, right? I know a lot of people can't make that comment. So it's exciting stuff. And I was kind of looking at the Looking at everything that you had going on obviously stumbled upon the book haven't had a chance to check it out yet, but I know that's kind of the basis of what we're going to talk about but yeah same same type of thing if you want to walk us through that where that idea came like hey, I I love what I do. I'm really a trusted advisor and being able to give that free value out. Right. I think that's, that's the main thing about a book. I mean, obviously you get to buy the book, but at the end of the day, you really are giving out free value. So what kind of triggered that as well for you? My book here, personal branding and manifesto and fame and influence. Now this is the first edition I'm working on a second edition copy because I feel like art is one of a perfect example to where an artist can finish a painting. And then as soon as it's hung up on the wall, he's like, I could have added something. I'll try to change something. It could have been different. And that was the same thing with my book. I read it through and I felt, man, like, this is a really good foundation. But I feel like I'm missing some of the, some of the meat that I could go into and get into more strategy. Ultimately, I've wanted to write a book for a very long time. Even as a kid, I got 20 pages into this Lord of the Rings rip off. It was, it's very similar concept, but I got 20 pages in, in elementary school. And, you know, in high school, I always was really great at fiction writing and all that other stuff. But as I started developing and going through all these businesses and going through this process, I wanted to do something that would provide value and not just entertainment. And I figured that if I was getting into the business of personal branding, what better way to establish credibility and authority than publishing a book. And so, especially for small business owners out there, if you have a specific skill, whether that's your, your fixing AC units or your plumbing or your providing insurance or life insurance, you know, a lot of times the ebook practice is very common, but if you have an ebook that's over 25 pages, you might as well publish it as a paperback copy and just be able to have it and hand it out. What better business card? People throw away business cards, but if I handed you a copy of my book, you're just not going to go to the trash can and throw it away. It's going to sit on your coffee table at home. And so in 2021, I started writing this, and the difficult process was coming up with the first sentence. Because I had the text, I had the meat in the middle of it, I knew what I was going to talk about to a large degree, but how do you start something out? And so as soon as I came up with the idea for a walk, what if I told you that there was something so powerful And that was the first sentence. And I was like, there we go. And I'm proud to say that it's become, you know, a top 10 bestseller on Amazon and the public relations category, one of the number one new releases and public relations on Amazon as well. And it's opened up a lot of really great doors because. I talk about the foundation, the philosophical side of personal branding, not just so much the strategy of what you can do because strategies ever fluent strategies evolving, whenever social media makes a change to your algorithm or Google makes a change to the schema markup or the SEO of a webpage, it all is going to evolve. So you could write something that is accurate and good. And then a month later, it'd be obsolete. But philosophy, we're still going to college for philosophy thousands of years later. Definitely. No, that's a huge point, right? I mean, it really is just an ever changing world where yeah, I think we probably have a similar opinion on this as well, but it really is an ever changing with with all these social media platforms changing Google changing. I know me personally, I've had much more success building my organic brand than I have on paid ads or paid content. And I think the I know with what I'm doing, that I would have more success with video content than I would just kind of throw in an ad together, which kind of goes back to that personal brand. So I really wanted you to. dive into that a little more just really how Powerful a personal brand can be especially for that small business owner Yeah, let me let me talk about what your personal brand is to begin with because again a lot of misconceptions Here people think that the social media profile you create is a personal brand, which it's not it's an extension of your personal brand Whether you're online or you're not online thomas You're still going to be known as thomas bennett I'm still going to be known as isaac mashman. I could disappear from the internet tomorrow and every interaction i've ever had with People, they're still going to remember me or forget me for that matter. Or I could go back to the people I go to high, went to high school with. I mean, think about 60 year old reunions of high school. It's like, you remembered that person, you remembered them, that is their personal brand, but the difference here is. The people who leverage their personal brands cautiously are the ones who are going to stand out and those are the people that are Really positioning themselves as a public figure somebody who is a trusted authority So getting on to podcast is one of the easiest ways that might be Scary at first because you're speaking but it's one of the easiest ways to get in front of new audiences Verify that you know what you're talking about because if I was to slip up at any point The member in the audience, if it was a really bad slip up, they would be able to say, wow, Isaac is, is completely BS in me. Like he does not know what he's talking about. And I'm sure I know I have, I've listened to podcasts before and I'm like, this guy sounds like an idiot, you know? And it's like, I lost respect for that person, but doing things that can cautiously improve and influence your reputation is going to ultimately move your business forward. Now, I think that making the distinguish. Difference between this is my personal brand of this is my business brand is very important because your personal brain is you no matter what business you pivot into you will have it and then your business. I mean, think about apple and Steve jobs Steve jobs was the person, the founder and apple was a separate business that has continued to live on. Years after his death. And so if you're building a business, even though it might be named after you, like my public relations firm and my holding companies and everything that I'm working to build, I have a list of companies that I'll launch over the span of my life. Many of them are named after me because I'm building up off of the back of my name. Now there are pros and cons to doing that. I won't always recommend it, but if you're doing wax melts or HVAC, like I mentioned, or plumbing or life insurance or roofing or public adjusting, whatever it is, you can be the face of that business and go to networking events. And then you can leverage the employees that are working for you and leverage employee branding and internal marketing to where they're going to be the best representatives for you and for your business and going out and telling their own networks, and that's how you can get the snowball effect. Absolutely. No, that's huge. And I agree. A hundred percent is really just building up that personal brand. And then like you said, once you have like that culture and you have your employees that are kind of getting behind it, like you said, you could have ABC plumbing, but Mark Smith's the owner. And he's kind of, he's the face of that brand and builds that brand up. And then you have the, have the company building the brand as well. Anything Specific that you'd mention or first steps to really building or establishing that personal brand and kind of hitting the ground running with that. Well, I think that with your personal brand, you have two sides of you have the personal side. So let's look at the word that's the phrase personal brand. It's personal on this side and brand here. Draw a line down the middle. Personal is the unique characteristics and traits to you. For example, I'm drinking coffee. Everybody who follows me knows I'm a coffee addict. It's in my bio. Addicted to coffee and standards. And then I lean into the brand side, which is I help people create, maintain, and scale unrivaled personal brands, author, speaker, podcaster, etc. So, Building out and showcasing your personality because how many times do you get a friend request on Facebook, for example? Because I know that we're connected on Facebook first and foremost. I help coaches make twenty to thirty thousand dollars more each month Okay, cool. Now you look like every other person i've ever seen online. But if somebody's like, I don't know like Strategic Olympic bowler. I don't know, or some crazy thing that might catch my eye. Almost like a hook. Like you're recording a video. I'd be more likely to remember that person. That was a horrible example, but if it was a something strange out of the ordinary or even personal, like even if you're a father or mother, as cliche as that might be, that would make you more memorable than the next guy. And so really what you're doing is positioning yourself to be more memorable, more trusted, more respected, more influential, and to have a stronger reputation. Now, Thomas, your reputation is not your personal brand. Your reputation is an aspect of your personal brand because whether or not you have a good or bad reputation, you're always going to have a personal brand. And so the early strategies that you can start adopting is being on social media, being across the board, not just on Facebook. Imagine if Facebook went down tomorrow and that's your own network or something. That's a very timely subject matter. When this is coming out is Tik TOK. Tik TOK is probably going to get banned. If it does not divest in the next nine months. Really a big issue. And the reason that's a big issue is how many people are on Tik TOK right now that have only built out their brands and their social media following on Tik TOK. But now the people who have a following on YouTube, on Instagram, on Facebook, even LinkedIn. whatever it might be, they're going to have security. And if you can have security off the back of your personal branch, you can last forever. And that's why Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Napoleon Hill, presidents, pharaohs from biblical times, Moses, Noah, all of these people, we remember them for something, even though they're dead. We've been dead. They don't care. They're gone. And that's really legacy. And I think a lot of people have this wrong idea about legacy. They're focusing so much on building the legacy when if they just build their name and build up something great, they're automatically going to get it. Man, I agree 100%. And it's true with like Facebook, right? If I mean, I think it's happened a few times or for just like an hour or so at a time, but where the site shuts down or there's something and I mean, there's plenty of people out there where their business relies on Facebook. There's all these people, like you said, where their personal brand or that like we talked about ties into their business is really focused just on TikTok. Well, like you mentioned, they got they got to hope that some miracle happens and turns around, but I'm with you. I mean, I think that could kill a lot of brands and, Just being able to pivot and be omnipresent, I think is a, is a huge area for a lot of businesses that are probably missing out on kind of focus on that one platform that they're comfortable with. The thing about you can, I'm actually speaking about books specifically and being an author. Imagine if your book was only on Amazon and nowhere else. Yeah. You can send all of your people and have one link and that consolidation is nice'cause you don't have to worry about different links. You don't have to worry about management on different places. You don't have to worry about banking information. But imagine if. All of a sudden Amazon goes down and your book was only being sold on Amazon versus going wide and getting distributed on a bunch of other, other places like Barnes and Noble, getting into target, getting distribution into Walmart or onto the hundred. I mean, I'm thinking about my book on how many places it's on. I don't even know half of them, but it gets sales from them because other people use them. And you have these different sects of people that have maybe some similar users. Some people who use Barnes and Noble also use Amazon, who also shop at Target. But there are people that are very specific to that one place. And so even then that is granting you security with being a book or being you know, with your book And similar to that with your business, if you're only, you know, serving one specific micro niche, you know, I think that there's a lot of people that they micro niche down versus niching down. It's like you only work with dentists in this specific market or this specific area. And it's like you're leaving a lot of opportunity on the table by just, you know, putting yourself in this little box. How can you scale if you're in a box? You can't. that's a great point, right? I know a lot of people have had success kind of niching down. And then like you said, now it's like the micro niche as well. I'm starting to see that as well. And I, I know it works for some people, but like you said, A lot of times I think that may be putting a limitation on a certain brand. I know us personally, we work with, and I know it sounds cliche, but we can really work with any small to medium sized business owners. So why am I going to limit that to just focusing on a company that could benefit from like equipment financing or something when I have. Another doctor or someone or a a chiropractor or whoever that can get a better program. So I, I personally don't niche down. I know, you know, a lot of people do, and I'm, I'm all for that. But like you said, when you get into that micro niche, I think you're really missing out on some opportunity. You can niche down your efforts at any given point. Let's say you have been working with a ton of chiropractors and you're exhausted. You're like, man, I love it. I'm getting them results, but maybe want to switch up my clientele a little bit. Or maybe if you're working in a geographic location, you're creating more competition for your own clients. You know, that's one of my other issues with micro niching specifically is like, you're just creating more competition for each of your clients because you're, you're doing great things for all of them. So now they're all just going to have to fight each other. You know? Yeah. Fair market competition, but at any moment you can pivot your marketing efforts and work with, okay, I've been working with a lot of chiropractors. Let me work with dentists. Let me work with physicians. Let me work with life insurance people. Let me work with whatever it is. And you could do that in intervals of a month or three months, bring on a bunch of clients in that vertical have testimonials that you can leverage and then move on to the next thing and still take on those clients and have at least an entire backlog of. Success stories. You know, it's like I can, I'm not about to say that I help dentists build out their personal brands, but at any point I can market to a dentist specifically and work with them. No, that's huge. And then any other like once they start, you know, obviously you said everyone has a personal brand and a lot of people aren't promoting it or marketing it or putting it out there organically, whatever that might be. What would you say would be the best steps for someone to take to really build that up and get it in front of more people? Well, I think understanding what you want to get from it is important, whether you want to do it for vanity or ego. Because I'm not here to tell you there's anything wrong with that. It's nice to be followed. It's nice to be respected. It's nice to be influential. I mean, think about a lot of the kings throughout history. It wasn't for some ambition other than to be famous or to be well known or to have that legacy, as I mentioned. So whether it's vanity or ego, whether you want to drive attention or awareness to a cause, a non profit, something you care about, Wounded Warriors, you know, whatever it might be, PTSD specific non profit, you know, you could, you could build out your personal brand because you want to. talk about something that's important to you. Maybe you're a victim of something or maybe it's something that, you know, is close to close to your heart. You can also do it to make money and to drive revenue specifically. And so understanding, and maybe it's a combination of all three of those things, one or two. So understanding why. You're starting, I mean, Napoleon Hill and the law of success. He says that, you know, knowledge that isn't applied is useless. But even before you have that knowledge, you need to have a definite chief aim. You need to have something that you're aiming towards. And then you take that definite chief aim, that purpose, you take that knowledge, you organize that knowledge, you apply effort, and then you get power, you get that result, and so understanding what you're looking to get, and then you could start taking and crafting your brand image, which would be, for example, a Addicted to coffee and standards. I helped create, maintain, and scale unrivaled personal brands. Yours could be avid lover of nature. You would obviously use a different adjective because everybody uses that, but then you can say, I help business owners get 25 to 50, 000 of funding. Make it stand out, starting to build out the brand, what you want to be known as, okay, you're an author, you can leverage the fact that you're an author and email pitches, for example, and you'd be amazed at how many doors are opened. But every single action that you're taking is contributing or harming your personal brand and your reputation. And then you can start creating content, which one is one of the easiest ways. I mean, Gary Vee has been talking about this God, since Instagram came out, it seems like with, you know, what you're, what kind of content you're creating and documenting your life. But think again, even with creating content, you can start a podcast. And have people tune into your show, but what is the outcome of that podcast? What are people getting when they're listening? And content can basically be, the outcome of content can be summarized with four things. And it can be, again, a combination of one or more, or all of the above. Content can connect. So this podcast and sharing your story, Thomas, if you're doing monologues, you're connecting with your audience, whether the reel that you're creating on Facebook or Instagram, it's connecting to your people. It can entertain somebody, which is the easiest kind of content to grow, but it's not the content that lasts. It can inspire or motivate. Which is like, get out of bed. Yeah, go take action, or maybe you should start a podcast. There are so many variables of motivation or inspiration, and then it can educate, which is a large part of what we're doing in this specific conversation. And so to the person out there, who's listening to this, if they're trying to grow, don't just create content to create it, but understand that you're trying to do something to the other person. You're trying to make them better and leave a lasting impression of increase at scale. I mean, all of these different strategies I'm talking about are examples of selling from stage. Absolutely. And then another point that I know we've touched on a little bit but now you have the personal brand built up or established actually starting to get in front of people. And really, like you said, utilize that vision, whether it's to Make money, grow the business, focus on a charity or cause just really whatever that why or purpose is that drives you, and then you get into really the social media and leveraging it there what, what would you recommend people do there where they kind of start with now they're really growing it and now they want to get it to the next level. Yeah, well, you, you lay down the foundation when you build a house and it hit me the other day, about a month and a half ago, I was sitting down, I was having a conversation with a client or with a prospective client and also a friend of mine, and I was like, she's paying 1, 000 to go to this podcasting event. She's like, I got booked my ticket, I'm going here, I got the VIP package, and I'm thinking to myself, like, let's just call her. Ashley, right? I'm like, Ashley, why did you spend all this money when you could have just we could have done a consultation? I want you everything you need to know for half the price and money, not even being the object. But like, I could have done that for you. And she's like, well, Isaac, based off of our last conversation, it almost felt like you were out of reach. Like, let me do that first. Let me get my foundation done. And then I'll come to you. And then you can help build it up. And I'm like, geez, yeah. And maybe my foundation is already late with my personal brand. I never really came to that understanding to where, you know, if you Google my name, everything that I've done over the past six years shows up on Google, I'm getting pitched every day to invest in companies through my emails. And previously I was just deleting the emails, being like spam, spam, spam. And then I was like, wait a second, Isaac. This isn't spam. These are genuine people that if I had 50, 000 lying around, I can invest in because they want me to invest in them. I did something. And so I think that having opportunities come to you is a fantastic measurement that you've done something and you don't want to have to do the outreach for all of your clients. You eventually want to be the number one person. Company that shows up the number one person that somebody thinks of when they're not around I mean the ac went out on our house the other day And so I search up ac companies and I see the first result a thousand plus reviews 4. 9 average i'm thinking to myself. I don't even need to look anymore. I don't care what the price is Let's do it. Your personal brand needs to be like that AC company that has a thousand plus positive reviews to where somebody doesn't have to question it. And I know that's a big backstory, Thomas, and let me share some of the strategy. But then, once the foundation is laid, you can look into doing things like writing and publishing a book as a self published author or through a publishing house. You can start a podcast. Or if you don't want to take the time and the resources devoted to starting a show, you could get on interviews with other people. Just being on one interview a month, which doesn't take any time to do, it'll take an hour of your time, and if you're a guest on somebody else's show, you don't have to worry about editing, you don't have to worry about distribution, you don't have to worry about any of that crap, which takes a lot of time. I've done it. So being on shows, publishing a book, you Creating content, collaborating with other people and going at scale, improving the quality you're ultimately building up off of your successes here. Because if you were to take a business, your service might not be a hundred percent high quality when you begin, you might not have the best equipment. But as your business grows, you're able to invest in higher quality equipment that makes your life easier and helps improve the results that you're putting forth through your services. And so every single thing will contribute to that foundation and to ultimately building the skyscraper, which is your personal brand. Absolutely. No, that's spot on. And I know we, I know we threw a lot at them today. Anything specific that you might've left out or think that the listeners may benefit from being left with? Yeah. All right. Well. Number one, I think that this is one of those shows and I know I've spoken very fast and I have a tendency of doing that sometimes this would be a show that I would highly recommend going back through and listening to a couple times, taking notes. If you're at home, you know, studying it because a lot of the strategies I'm telling you, I talk about in my book, but if I was to leave somebody with something, it would be that their personal brain is ultimately going to be as big or as small as they want it to be. You know, there is a degree of unconscious incompetence that Bob Proctor talks about. And the unconscious incompetent doesn't even know that they don't know. And you, by listening to this show is now moving from unconscious incompetent to cautious incompetent. And you can start taking action steps to creating results with your personal brand. Don't just rely on building out your business to get your results. You can start having those one on one interactions. If you're customer facing and. You know, asking for testimonials and third party edification. And I think that that edification is something that I learned very early on in network marketing. Whenever it was a prospect call and you were bringing in a new prospect to the company presentation where you were introducing your upline, you would edify the hell out of that person. You'd be like this, this right here, he's Noah. He is the number one person in this business that I trust and rely on. He's the person who brought me into it. et cetera. Putting out your personal brand is a form of edification because every single person who follows you is essentially edifying you. Because somebody is going to your profile for the first time and they see, oh, my friend already follows this guy. What does he know that I don't know? That creates curiosity. That edification creates curiosity, which leads to action. And so no strategy is too small. No little detail is too small. Take the time to remove the space, to X out the punctuation mark, to remove the comment, whatever it is. And then that over time will start generating the results that you really want. I love it. Yeah, that was great. And that's going to be a wrap for this episode of the small business, big moves. If you enjoyed this episode, what would really help us is if you share this podcast with someone you think would get value out of it and like, and review the podcast. And you can hit up me up on all social media at Thomas Bennett. And I look forward to seeing you all in the next episode.