Cultivating Fame and Attention: Personal Branding for Leaders Driving Growth

Today we discuss the value of personal branding with one of the top 30 influencers on LinkedIn - Justin Oberman, a marketing genius who made a remarkable transition from his family's insurance business to the dynamic world of advertising. Through his journey, Justin offers a unique perspective on the cyclical nature of advertising, where creativity meets performance, and how true branding is rooted in authentic customer experiences rather than static messages. His insights illuminate how both brands and personal identities can thrive through genuine engagement and adaptability, challenging the conventional wisdom on what it means to build a brand.

Ever wondered how to harness the power of personal branding on platforms like LinkedIn?  Justin shares how consistency and authenticity in content can enhance trust and visibility, weaving in personal stories, including a surprising anecdote about using branding techniques to rekindle a lost relationship. This discussion extends to the art of ghostwriting and the significance of collaborative efforts in maintaining the essence of one's brand, demonstrating how strategic rebranding can be transformative.

We also navigate the intriguing world of controversy as a tool for personal branding, drawing lessons from iconic figures like P.T. Barnum and Elon Musk. Justin emphasizes the importance of genuine expression over AI-generated content, advocating for a personal touch that captivates and engages. From lessons in publicity inspired by marketing pioneers Howard Gossage and David Ogilvie, this episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone looking to reshape their personal brand or gain fresh perspectives on the advertising landscape.

Check out Justin's LinkedIn profile to sew his awesome content and how he has build his personal brand.

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Transcript

Eric Eden 0:02

We have an awesome guest today and we have some great topics to talk about. Justin, welcome to the show.

Justin Oberman 0:09

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk. I always just I love talking about marketing advertising.

Eric Eden 0:17

So why don't we start off, give us a minute or two about who you are and what you do?

Justin Oberman 0:25

Sure, my name is Justin Oberman, so I kind of got into advertising and marketing later in life than most people. I work for my family's insurance company, generation one to fourth generation insurance company. At this point I think it's over 100 years old. My brother runs it now. But I think it's an important part of the story where, basically, I grew up fourth generation of three generations above me of insurance sales and if there's anybody who knows how to sell well, it's insurance people.

Justin Oberman 1:05

Granted, there is a difference between selling one-on-one and selling to a group. Right, that's a difference between as close and married as salespeople or marketing people are. That is one of the subtle differences between the two. But I sort of felt myself gravitating towards that. So they said oh, you should be a copywriter. I got trained on sort of the tail end of the Mad Men era Social was just becoming a thing, but print and commercials and TV commercials and all that stuff.

Justin Oberman 1:37

As soon as the digital stuff happened, I immediately recognized the opportunity, thanks to David Ogilvie who pointed out that he actually believed that all copywriters should start in the direct mail department. So I saw immediately that the digital ad stuff was going to become very direct marketing, what they call now performance marketing heavy. So I said, oh, I want to get into that. I actually did some work in direct mail for a while and really just then sort of escalated between the two and I think it turned me into a very versatile copywriter where I could go and I could write a brand campaign and I could also write a direct marketing campaign.

Justin Oberman 2:15

And then I also became sort of obsessed with the history of advertising and pretty much have read anything that you confide on it and pretty much have read it every, anything that you confide on on it. That gave me a sort of perspective that I think a lot of people don't have, because you begin to see the cycles and you begin to see, um, how there's really like sort of nothing new under the sun. The same sort of things keep happening, just with new tools and new technologies. I'm not a prophet or anything, but I I remember in 2020, I said, oh, we're going to enter a creative, revolutionary phase now in advertising. Branding's going to become important again.

Justin Oberman 2:52

Everybody's going to be talking about creativity and there's going to be a new technology that's going to come along that's going to make creativity even easier and lo and behold, and there's going to be unrest in the world and chaos and stuff like that, because it just seems like it goes together and lo and behold, that's what happened. But that's okay, because in 2030, the 2030s are probably going to ricochet back to performance marketing and all that kind of stuff. And that's just the cycle that it goes through, and all that kind of stuff and that's just the cycle that it goes through.

Justin Oberman 3:26

Anyway, I worked in-house, I worked for agencies, I worked freelance for a while. I became sort of known as a creative Marine, so to speak, where actually when ad agencies would get stuck, they would bring me in and I would kind of like come up with crazy ideas and then leave. And it was great because I didn't have to get involved with all the nitty gritty stuff that I sort of hated. And I learned very quickly like that's my special I'm a very good writer, I can write, I can do those things. But when it came to the big stuff, the big ad campaign stuff, that's where I was better suited. But more importantly, at a certain point I started realizing and paying a lot closer attention to how I was even selling myself and what people thought of me and what my brand was. And there was this article Tom Peters wrote about your personal brand and stuff like that. And what's sort of interesting about that article that I think a lot of people forget is that he wasn't saying that you should become a brand, just like target as a brand, or you know, diet is a brand or whatever. He was saying that you should use the principles that companies use for branding in order to improve yourself and make yourself more sellable, because by doing that, you will, you, you, you. That will improve your brand. So he, he, he understood what I think a lot of people in marketing and advertising don't actually realize about branding, which, which is that branding itself is a scam, right, like branding agencies that say, oh, you need to do all your branding ahead of time and you need to get your messaging done first. That's not how brands are built. That's never been happening. You look at the greatest brands that exist right now. I always use these examples of Avis and Tums. And if I have a stomach ache right now, I'm 45 years old. When I have a stomachache it comes to mind it's Alka-Seltzer. It comes why? Because they spend billions of dollars on good advertising. That showed up on the most powerful meeting of the world television. It's just, they have that place in my mind right now. And Avis, we're number two. We try harder. They didn't go to a branding agency and say, okay, what's our messaging? And then they determined that and then that was handed over to DDB. No, the ad was successful, so it created the brand.

Justin Oberman 5:52

Branding is about what you do right and it could be created through in advertising. It could be created through your customer service. It could be created through your product. Apple does all three right, but definitely what it's not. It's not about your brand and what you say. It is right, and I think that people who understand that and then go and bring that knowledge to their personal brand I have a lot more success with their personal brand than people that view branding as a thing in marketing and advertising and then bringing bringing that to your personal life.

Justin Oberman 6:28

It becomes a disaster, because if you think about what the big brands are doing, they're spending billions of dollars to not look like a brand right to be more relatable to people and and to a person. You're already a person, so why the hell would you want to become that kind of like a brand in the wrong sense of the word? You wouldn't. You're already. You have a leg up right, and so it's really about taking those principles and applying it to yourself in order to improve your brand, and some of those are. Some of those involve, yeah, like are you going to? What are you going to wear? What kind of outfits are you going to wear? How are you going to look Are what are you going to wear? What kind of outfits are you going to wear? How are you going to look? How are you going to talk? What are you going to talk about? A hundred percent. But some of that also just says, hey, be a little less lazy, improve your services, become better at something, improve your skills All the other things that go into branding, so to speak.

Justin Oberman 7:20

So I started paying a lot more attention to that, and what happened was is in 2020, I was working in an agency and coronavirus came and I was a creative director and the two accounts that I was creative director for basically said we're calling it. And so, like many other people, I lost my job and my wife said you either are going to start your own agency or you have to find another line of work. So I'm like I don't know what else to do. So I started my own ad agency and I based it on sort of brand response, like combining brand branding and direct response advertising, which I think any good ad does Right and I use nothing but LinkedIn. I just said I'm going to just start posting on LinkedIn every day and see what happens.

Justin Oberman 8:10

And just, I had maybe a thousand followers and in the beginning I for the first three months, four or five, six likes, then 10 likes, 15 likes, 30 likes, 50 likes, a hundred likes post I found a sort of groove. I was talking about advertising, people were enjoying my perspective, and then at some point it just blew up. And then, I think a year later, year later, I wrote a post that went viral by LinkedIn standards and it really just sort of took off from them. But even before that, my continual posting was just getting me work and sometimes in the beginning it was small work, but it was building that momentum. And so it was this consistency right, this sort of building in public, this sort of, you know, just the freedom to talk about who I was. I wasn't working for an agency, I didn't have any of these things, and so within three years I eventually built my agency to some figures and even had a small team.

Justin Oberman 9:09

And then 2023 sort of happened and I kind of burnt out because I am a creative person, I'm not a business person and just the whole thing of managing this agency.

Justin Oberman 9:20

And I kind of saw because I study advertising history, I kind of saw, because I study advertising history, I kind of saw what was going to happen. I was beginning to understand that the ad agency model is really not necessary anymore and it was attracting the wrong type of clients and it was the stuff I was working on was like fun and exciting and I kind of strangled along in 2023 and what started happening was is that people started DMing me on LinkedIn, asking me if I can do for myself what do for them what I did for myself on LinkedIn, if I could just like start writing on LinkedIn. I'd have to be completely honest. At first, I was like no, like, that's not me. I'm an ad guy. I don't want to be that content producer like. I don't want to be like these sleazy people on linkedin that are selling these courses and telling you to get more followers and stuff, because it's all bs like I don't like that's, that's not me.

Justin Oberman 10:19

Then I just didn't want to do the advertising anymore. I found this other company called Lytro, which is kind of like a network of creatives freelance creatives and you basically hire them to work on various projects and they put the teams together for you, and so I basically became an ECD with Lytro and now just all of my ad clients have funneled them through there and that's continue to do, because I still continue to attract advertising clients and so I bring them into Lytro and they're more than happy. They love it like it's. It's a really, really great program. But what happened was is like at some point in the middle of 2023, I read this article about late-in ghostwriters and how they're making $700 an hour and I'm like, oh okay, well, that's serious money, I can probably do that. And so I didn't create a website, I didn't offer webinars, I didn't do any of that bubble crap did was continue to write the post, as I always have about advertising, and said, hey, if you're an ad agency owner or if you're, you know working advertising and you want to write um posts like this, but you don't have the time or you don't know what to write about, or whatever I said, dm me because I'm I'm offering exclusive, you know, executive tailored ghost writing and coach writing services. Um, there's a subtle distinction between the two, you know. You know, for a few people, and I got one sign up to sign up, three sign ups, and the signups that I are then are still with me today.

Justin Oberman 11:56

And then, after a while, this began to form into a business, and so I teamed up with a friend of mine at, aaron Sikowski, who is the original person who told me that I should be doing this and who I rejected his, his, his, plea. I said, hey, you know what this actually turned into a business. So, um, he, he comes from the performance marketing world and is very familiar with using the, the ads and and the networks on. You know, the advertising and performance marketing stuff on LinkedIn. So we teamed up together to form Genius Scouts, which is a little homage to my advertising legend hero, howard Lough Gossage, who, besides his ad agency, had a consultancy called Generalists, where he just kind of helped brands and people solve problems by using creativity, not necessarily advertising, but part of what Generalists also did was this thing called genius scouting, where they went out and they found people who were just like exceptional people, I'll introduce them to the business world. Their first client was Marshman McLuhan, where they helped make famous, and so I said that's what I want to do. I basically want to do that.

Justin Oberman 13:12

So we call ourselves Junior Scouts and that's where the primary focus that I'm in right now which is helping executives, leaders, entrepreneurs particularly in advertising and marketing but our clients are also in finance and in other places the key is that they need to be a sort of dynamic individual. We're not dealing with people who are just, who have nothing going on and are like we know that you know there's going to be too much work that's going to be needed in order to make this person famous. And we use the word famous and we help them establish their personal brand, you know, on social media and using all the the the same things that an ad agency, a big ad agency for big brands, would do, and we take that and apply it to individuals. So we're kind of like an ad agency for people. Which is what? Something that's never existed before.

Personal Branding Strategies for Success

Justin Oberman 14:13

People, executives and and people who you know, famous individuals usually have publicists and pr people which handle their relationship with the media, but what they've often done is somebody or or an organ or a company or people to help them just with that personal brand or just with the messaging or just with establishing who they are and and and using even, you know, plate advertising and paid services to boost, you know, to, to boost that and have a little direct relationship with the consumer. So we work with PR agencies, but that's not. And sometimes we do PR, sometimes we reach out on behalf of our clients, but that's not the main crux of what we do with really doing the advertising side of it. But for people, it's really interesting.

Eric Eden 15:04

I'm curious what kind of results are you able to generate in this model?

Justin Oberman 15:35

a part of it, right, um, uh, which I never did before, um for myself. So I my belief is that it will just accelerate the growth. I view organic linkedin very much as a brand awareness play, more than a direct response play. It really is about that consistency, and so if you can actually pay to have certain posts appear for sure in front of certain people consistently, over and over again, even if they never engage with them, that builds this level of trust they get to to know you, they see you over and over again, just just like advertising is supposed to be. And the results we have even without that, just from the organic posting when our clients listen to us, is astounding. I mean, we have one client, we have the cmo, that just, and we can't mention who they are. But if I did, you'd be like, okay, makes sense, um, uh and um. You know we have alerted several clients that you know um, uh are getting invited, more uh and more podcasts are getting quoted, more in the trade. Presses are definitely seeing an uptick in clients and easier job getting clients. We had one client recently who actually is not in advertising at all. They're actually working the trades. They own company, a large company in the trades and they were at a trade show and he's like people just kept walking up to me and saying, hey, hey, man, I love your content on LinkedIn. I love, like it's such a unique style, it's such a blah, blah, blah. And you know, he reported that back to me and so we're just, we're just seeing that across the level. I mean, granted, there's cheating involved in the sense that we're only working with people that we believe we can help and I think in that sense, we're very honest. We're not taking people's money, and part of that is that we feel like you have to be. I have to see immediately that you're an interesting person, you know that you have stuff going on, that you're dynamic, that you've got energy, because you know, like one of the things we do.

Justin Oberman 17:29

When I say ghostwriting, right. So ghostwriting is just one of our services, but we treat ghostwriting very much like traditional ghostwriting. We're not writing the book for you. I consider people. If someone writes a book for you, that's copywriting right. If somebody's writing content for you, that's copywriting.

Justin Oberman 17:47

Ghostwriting for me is very much like I'm your ghost. We're going to sit, we're going to do this together, we're going to, we're going to talk. I'm going to do the writing, but we're going to work on this post together, and every client has a different relationship of how that happens. But you know, I'm pulling the ideas out of you. If I have no ideas to pull out of you, I'm not going to work with you.

Justin Oberman 18:09

But at the end of the day, I truly believe that those are the only types of people that I can help, um and so not to say that somebody who is boring can't reinvent themselves, and we're working on a course for them, right, how to make yourself more interesting, how to make your, you know, buy for our services, for our white glove services, so to speak. You know, and that's what we we make love services, so to speak. You know, that's what we deal with. I started this a year and a half ago and I have three clients that are still with us after a year and a half and already, word of mouth to other people I mean, that's the hard part is like we can't talk about our friends. We can't, you know. So we rely very heavily on that word of mouth, and myself as an example.

Eric Eden 18:51

So what are the goals of the folks that are hiring you to help with their personal brand? Is it just to raise general awareness? Is it to get more speaking opportunities? Or, like you were saying, like when they come into it and they're like, okay, I want you to do this for me. What is their desired outcome that you work towards with them?

Justin Oberman 19:15

Yeah, that's a really great question. So I'll tell you personally. The first time I ever worked on my personal brand before I even thought about doing this was 13, 14 years ago, when I first got into advertising. I was married to my wife and I had a daughter, and then we got divorced. And then, about two or three years into that divorce, I realized that I made a huge mistake. But I also realized that in order to get my wife back, my ex-wife back, I would have to, it would take a lot of work. So, unconsciously, what I did was is I created a campaign, a rebranding campaign, and I rebranded myself, which which consisted of everything from branding to direct response type marketing, very targeted text messages to her reminding her certain if I've already told her all of this you know whether I manipulated her or not.

Justin Oberman 20:06

We're happy now that it's fine. But the point is is, you know, you know, writing apology letters to the people surrounding her, you know, and then, but then also most importantly, working on myself want and you know, but into a better man, and of doing a lot of research into what that is, and then applying rebranding tactics, but to myself. And so my goal there, and rebranding myself and doing the messaging and working on my personal brand there was to win back my wife and ultimately it worked. And and I did it. I did it. Um, I know people love that story and so, and it's. And then, honestly, when people say, like, prove to me that it works. This is the story that I always tell, because this is the most, uh, useful. And and when you ask me what's the most successful ad campaign you've ever worked on, this is, this is always my answer. I would use this answer, sometimes even strategically, during job interviews what's the most important ad campaign, the best thing? And then they give this answer and I'd get hired Like, because, like, how are you going to? Who's going to top that Right? So, especially since it worked, but you know, so our clients range from for everyone, from increase, increase leads, get more leads.

Justin Oberman 21:35

Now we don't necessarily promise that. I mean we do offer services to help manage that and inbound and stuff like that. But again we remind them that the main point of the personal branding is like this is this is warm, right, this is to warm up people for the leads, because I would notice that I would, I would post. You know I post. I posted every day on LinkedIn for four years and consistently the people who contacted me on LinkedIn to work with me when I would go and I would check, we wouldn't be connected. Some of them wouldn't necessarily even be following me. They would just be consistently seeing my stuff appear from their followers, likes and stuff. Some of them were following me, but 99.9% of them had never liked a post or even commented on it. So likes and comments, I realized very early on, mean nothing in the sense of the direct sale. They're very important because otherwise people are not going to know about you, stuff like that. And then, and for the views and stuff. But I realized very on that advertising and marketing is is not a buy now business. It's very much you need to keep in front of people with whatever it is that you're doing, and so when they're ready to buy, they come to you, and so we just we were running people up there and that you know, if they want to do, if they want increased leave, they're going to have to do some paid ads and they're going to. You know, but we make sure that the paid ends is all around the personal brand. It's like everything is around that person. So some of it's leads.

Justin Oberman 23:12

Other people are in a certain position and they want to move to a higher position or get a job at a different company for more money, and so they're rebranding themselves for that purpose. Other people are just trying to create more leads, make more business for their business, not necessarily for them. So in the first example, I mean it when it's kind of like they're the brand, they're the company, they're the whatever. But then some people are like CEOs of companies, of studios and this and that, and so they're trying to make it, or law firms and whatever, and so they're trying to make it easier to get more business for their business. And some of them are they're like entrepreneurs. They're involved in a lot of different things. They're coming, they're coming. They're actors Ryan Reynolds is not a client yet, but you know I don't think he needs me. But you know they're actors like Ryan Reynolds and they're getting involved in the business world and so they need that kind of introduction into the business world and sort of almost like an agency that helps them do that, that helps them do that academics, actors, musicians as well as executives, and sort of introducing them and giving them greater authority. We rotate around a lot of different words, but we give greater authority, greater influence and becoming more famous to the business world, and we use the word famous on purpose. It's a big word and it's a big promise word and it repels some people, but we truly believe that. Look at the end of the day.

Justin Oberman 24:50

I agree with Bob Hoffman that advertising and marketing the goal that should be, should be to become famous. You should want your advertising and marketing to make you famous, because when you are famous, everything becomes easier and less expensive. Right, when Brad Pitt wants to eat at a certain restaurant that's booked until next year, but he wants to eat there tonight, he's going to get it because he's famous. You know, if he created ads for himself, I'm not saying that he has to his click-through rates and stuff like that his CPMs, all of that will be very low because people already know who he is. So being famous makes everything more easier.

Justin Oberman 25:33

And people say, well, I don't need to be famous like Donald Trump. And I'm like, why not? Why wouldn't you want to be? And I'm saying I'm not promising to get you there, but that should 100% be your goal and there's nothing wrong with that. The universe wants you to be famous. It wants you to have more so that you can do more good things, right? So we're not afraid to use the word fame, but we oscillate between the word fame, relevance, authority, and people want those things for all different sorts of reasons. Some of them are egotistical, some of them are, with you know, egotistical. Some of them are with a certain goal in mind, but it's very clear that, no matter what it is, it will make whatever they're doing now and in the future easier to do.

Eric Eden 26:17

I think that's a great insight and I can also see that a lot of executives that I've worked with at larger companies, that they have a lot to do they probably don't have the time to, on their own, sit down and write for LinkedIn every day. They can collaborate with someone like you, but I just can't see a lot of very successful, extremely busy people carving out the time to do it all on their own. Like it doesn't seem very realistic and it's not a traditional PR sort of task, right Like. I've been at companies where a lot of times they, the executives asked oh can you manage my social media? Can the marketing team manage the social media for the C-suite executives? And what that meant was like every time we put out a press release, we post from their accounts on it.

Eric Eden 27:13

I mean, it wasn't like this thought leadership, you know, building authority thing like you're talking about. It was really more just a very cleansing blow. So I think that this is something that, because of the way the algorithms work and because the time investment takes, I don't know that a lot of people who probably could fit the model that you're talking about. You know I don't think it makes sense for them to do it themselves, right it? Just from a time perspective, it makes sense that they might pay someone something like $700 an hour, because what is their time worth, right? It makes sense to me Is that sort of what you've, what you've seen.

Justin Oberman 27:52

It's a hundred percent. It's really. Those are really good and valid points. It's a hundred percent what I've seen and why we write particular about who we work with. Because, in a way, I want you to be too busy doing things to do this yourself. Because, in a way, actually, I truly believe, actually, that the best content that you can create is not the stuff that you're going to think and write on LinkedIn, but the stuff that you're going to do is going to get talked about. Right, if you look at the best personal brands, right, the people who are doing this, the best, who are not even thinking in terms of like, like, the highest level you can get to is when you're not even actually doing personal branding. I just use it because I have to in order for people to make sense about what I'm talking about. But, like people like Donald Trump, elon Musk, they're not thinking about personal brand. This is just, in a way, who they are. What they understand is how to use the media and how to use social media both the media and social media in order to get attention right. I mean, they're taking a playbook out of the person that I always the only person that you need to really study.

Building Personal Brand Through Controversy

Justin Oberman 29:00

If you want to build your personal brand, which is PT Barnum, which is do whatever you need to do to get attention. As long as what you deliver is higher end than what you did to get the attention, you're going to be fine. Like Kiki Barnum would humble tons of people. He would write I got a Fiji mermaid. And then he would write an op-ed in one paper about how it's fake and then another one in a paper about how it's real no-transcript. He would create all this controversy and people would show up and they'd see it. They'd see that it's obviously fake. They would realize that PT Barham arranged all of this, but they didn't care because they walked into his museum and his museum was awesome. There was so much more to see there, so what he delivered was always greater than the humbug, and so it became like a thing People loved getting humbug by PT Barber.

Justin Oberman 29:51

You see that with Donald Trump and you see that with you know Elon Musk, in a way, people hate and love it at the same time. When Musk does something crazy, like Twitter or, you know, whatever it is, you see that these people, they really understand how to do it and they're not thinking about personal brands. But what else do these people have? Donald Trump and Elon Musk Immense amounts of energy Right, and so I believe that they're actually are heavily involved in this part, and they have people running the other stuff. I think that this is where they realize if they have attention and that they're not doing the things. They're not filming themselves and editing their videos.

Justin Oberman 30:35

There's a video of Donald Trump actually writing, I think, to a woman who's writing her tweets for her during you see those. It's a rare glimpse into how he's not necessarily sitting there tweeting himself. I mean, I'm sure he does sometimes, but you see, he's dictating to somebody. You know people are weighing in a little bit and he and he's listening. But and that's what I mean, the ghost writing he they're somewhat involved in his book. He even put his ghost right around his cover like he didn't care right, like he. He just he very much did that, and so having that energy is is extremely important for um if you want your personal, your brand, to grow.

Justin Oberman 31:16

I always say that there's three types of clients that came to me when I was doing the ghostwriting those who didn't know what to write about, those who didn't have time to write and those who, um, didn't know how to write right and they're right, so you know it, it and we do, we deal with all three. It doesn't really matter. But, but I always tell them this is not going to be a wham bam down for you thing. Like you have to want to be, like this is your personal brand. If you're not a part of it, it's not a personal brand, right, like you are the object, you are the ad, you are like you are the product, and so I can't do anything with you if you're not involved.

Justin Oberman 31:59

And you know, I think, another reason Gary Vaynerchuk right, and Gary Vaynerchuk, definitely, he started this raw by filming. He did it, he was doing it himself, filming the videos for Wine Library and stuff like that. Now he's got a whole team around him, right, but he does still like I think he lives up to it, I think he still does post things like on the whiteboard and you know, and stuff like that. He is still very involved in that process, probably more than the other things that he's doing. Um, because he's the product and he's he's, he's the personal brand, and so how could he not be?

Justin Oberman 32:37

But again, with gary vayershock, what does he have? What's like? That one element. It's the energy. You have to have that energy and by, I think, too, a lot of the people who sell personal branding courses and personal branding services on LinkedIn who are like then selling you a course and saying, hey, you can go do it yourselves. Be very careful about that Because, first of all, it's the easiest thing to sell right Selling LinkedIn, on linkedin, or selling, you know, selling those services, selling copywriting, you know, selling copywriting through copywriting is, psychologically, that can be very tricky, like can trick you very, very well.

Justin Oberman 33:19

But take a very good look at the people who are doing it. You'll notice that they all have something in common. They all have a lot of energy and they all have. They're all very dynamic, they're all very good in front of the camera, they're all very like. They have a personality already that they can use right. There's something about them that's magnetic, and so you have to be very honest with yourself.

Justin Oberman 33:40

If you don't have those things, then you need to find a way to work on those things and build those things and create those things. By the way, ai is not going to help you do that. So if you do cookie cutter AI content, if you buy their service to take your thoughts and have AI churn it out. You're never going to build a personal brand, you're never going to build a unique voice, you're never going to do those things. So I would actually say, if you don't have those things, you have those things you need. You need to never not use ai for an entire year. I mean you need to write your own posts, think for yourself, struggle. Nothing good ever came out from doing things the easier way in the beginning and build a personal brand and then use ai to to leverage that and to scale that right, because ai can mimic, but it can't create you, so it needs something to go off. That's a whole separate point.

Eric Eden 34:33

It's more likely to beige-ify you than to build a great brain, or?

Justin Oberman 34:38

beige-ify you if you're beige, if you're beige if you've got nothing going, if you don't have a unique voice and, by the way, a lot of people say, oh, a lot of my unique voice I had. Most people do not have a unique voice because unique voice is not your word choice or this or that. Writing is about how you think writing is thinking. Somebody asked me what the two things are. I've had two things to help build a personal brand get. When you're getting started, the only thing that you need to figure out in the beginning is what you stand for and what you stand against, and then use those two things to then write all of your content. A piece can be about what you stand against and it can be about what you stand for, and just make sure that those things are damn interesting and don't be afraid to be opinionated and do not be afraid that people will disagree with you, because that is where you get the engagement, that is where you get the views, that is where you get all of these things.

Justin Oberman 35:37

I say stupid things all the time. If the key is is that if you say something stupid or wrong or whatever and somebody corrects you, then go and be like oh my God, you're right, I never thought of it that way. Thank you so much. And that's going to shock the hell out of people, because very few people actually admit that they're wrong online, ever right If you. But if you believe you're right, hold your grab, get into an argument, invite them onto a a part, uh, onto a chat recording that everything becomes content at that point, right, and and you just you know it takes energy, right to do that. So again it would be.

Eric Eden 36:11

We keep coming back to that really excellent point that you, that you made I love that advice find out what you stand for and what you stand against. I think that's really great. To defining a unique view. Let me you on this journey you've been on for developing your own personal brand and helping others do it. What's the most valuable thing that you've learned on this journey?

Justin Oberman 36:39

Well, I think the most valuable thing that I've learned is that overthinking is your worst enemy. I have clients in the beginning, you know, they're always like they go over every single post as if it's in a beat, like a Superbowl ad. You know, do I really want to say that? Do I really want to say that right now, that I really want right? And they really overthink things. They forget about how they read other people's posts, how they read like they think that everyone's gonna sit there with a magnifying glass and obsess over their like. And that's not. That's not it at all. It's like a last thing. I have no illusions. I don't think people are obsessed with me. For example and this is, this is always my approach with my clients is very unstructured, right, it's. We speak once, once a week or twice a week, depending on the package I and say what are we talking about this week? Because the way people average people use social media, they don't plan their content. My mom doesn't plan her content. She's like well, next week I'm going to, you know, so-and-so's wedding, so I got to make sure to post three pictures and this and that no, right, and? But that's the content. That's what you're competing against.

Justin Oberman 37:55

So Howard Gossett has this great thing that I think that I brought down into the personal branding world as well, which is that advertising doesn't. Your ad is not competing with other ads. What is advertising? Advertising is a message that you pay for to appear on somebody else's platform or media, right, as though it was like a TV commercial, or it's an ad on social media or whatever. Right, an organic social media post is not advertising because it's not paid for. Right, but even then, like, in the sense that there's, it has a marketing goal or whatever, for the sake of that purpose, let's call it advertise. Right, those posts are not competing with other posts that are like it. You're not competing with other people trying to sell the same thing as you are. You're competing with the content of that platform.

Justin Oberman 38:51

So, if you're making a TV commercial, you're competing with the television. If you're, if you're creating a print ad, you're competing with the articles. If you're creating social media posts, you're competing with the the normal, organic use of that platform. Right? Um, you're competing against somebody you know well, you're competing against somebody stalking their ex-girlfriend. You're competing against, you know, um, you know somebody's pictures of their vacation. You're, that's what you're, right. And so what howard gossage says? Therefore, your content should match the organic content of that platform as closely as possible and should strive to be better than it, in that sense, was ever tender, than the shows, that they were on right, that they interrupted their, you know, with better storytelling, or that were equally, there are some magazines that were more famous for their ads right Than the articles in it, or, like the New Yorker was famous for having both.

Justin Oberman 39:59

When it comes to social media, and that means that your marketing or advertising kind of needs to be thoughtless, as thoughtless, as unstructured as whatever as a social media post is right. And so, with my clients, we don't use content calendars, we don't plan things out. We just what are we talking about right now? You know when, when the jai war thing came out, I was like, okay, what do we get? What do you want to say? What's your opinion about the jai war thing? Let's post it.

Justin Oberman 40:27

Everybody's talking about it. I don't want to join that conversation. I'm like who the hell do you think you are? People are sitting there waiting for you. You need to say something, right, but let's make it interesting. Let's find something that's like a different angle on it that's going to make people stop and consider you in the noise. So on it. That's going to make people like, stop and consider you in the noise. So that's the. That's the important thing. I want to just mention one other thing because I remember it. You know so, my, my ad legends, our gossage, david ogilvy if you work in advertising, you run an advertising agency. Those are the two, but there's a third people that you should study PT Barham.

Mastering Personal Branding Through Publicity

Justin Oberman 41:07

Pt Barham is a marketing machine. He invented brand campaigns. He invented personal branding. He invented so many of the PR publicity. He invented so many of the things that we do today. He did it all himself. He was just a man. Year in business, after you pay yourself and pay the loans and whatever, you take 100% of your profit and you put it towards what he called publicity, which was the word for marketing Back then. Publicity is like so much show you should put it all in there, to the point where you don't even know where to spend it. And so you start making up, coming up with extravagant ways to do it, and he gives examples of like the weird things that he would do in his book, his autobiography. You study him, you study Howard Gossage, but a really good person studies David Ogilvie. David Ogilvie was the master at using personal branding, personal publicity, so that's somebody who you should study very, very well.

Eric Eden 42:06

Amazing. This has been an awesome discussion on personal branding. I'm going to link to your LinkedIn so people can get in touch if they'd like to learn more, and we really appreciate you sharing all of your insights in these awesome stories with us today. Thank you so much.