On this episode of Investing for Freedom, Mike discusses the importance of building your personal brand. Mike explains why you should start developing your brand no matter who you are or what you do. Enjoy!
“I can’t tell you how many new people I’ve met that I would’ve never met if I hadn’t started building my personal brand and sharing this truth.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 – Intro
3:10 – Mike discusses extraversion and introversion
4:59 – The day and age we live in makes it easier to build your personal brand
7:12 – Mike goes back through his story and explains how he started as a plumber, before starting his own business
12:34 – Mike discusses his company’s growth
14:07 – Matt, a consultant for Mike was telling him that he needs to start working on his brand
15:25 – You can either fight the change or lean into it
16:59 – Mike had an epiphany, and transitioned into the passive investing/real estate world
19:41 – Every business will have a content team within 2-5 years
20:57 – You go to events and conferences because you want to meet people, but you can do that through content
22:17 – 81% of companies use video for marketing, and video consumption is rising
28:45 – Google yourself and see what comes up
29:44 – You can build your personal brand in just 5 hours a week
32:52 – If you’re putting the right stuff out there, it makes you a better candidate if you’re looking to change jobs
37:17 – If you stay true to your voice people will find you
38:04 – Social media has helped Mike go deeper in relationships when he finally meets someone in person
40:29 – If you don’t get started today, you’ll never start working on your personal brand. Getting huge on social media is not going to happen overnight
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Thank you for joining me on the Investing for Freedom podcast. Today’s episode is going to be a little different than what we’re used to, usually I bring a guest on for the Thursday episodes. But today it’s just going to be me. And I guess you could say that today’s guest is the current me and maybe the other guest is the old me, the way that I used to think. What we’re going to talk about today is the power of a personal brand. And I’m really going to bring you back to my journey over the last few years and how I progressed to really figure out that I needed to step into building the podcast, my personal brand, etc., etc. That being said, I think you guys are going to enjoy this podcast. Hopefully it brings value to all of you and at the same time, for those of you that are maybe on the fence or, you know, know that you’re being pulled or led into building a personal brand, launching a podcast you know, getting your Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever platform it is that you feel led, YouTube even hopefully this kind of pushes you over the edge. Because I don’t think there’s ever been a better time to launch our personal brands and really dig into it than now. Of course, yesterday, or two years ago, or three years ago was a better time than today, but, you know, there’s the old saying, when’s the best time to plant a tree? Well, of course, 10 or 20 years ago, but the second-best time is today.
So that being said, the real reason why you know, it’s just me here today in all transparency and being completely honest, a lot of times we’ll batch episodes and we’ve definitely got a backlog of guests and people coming up. But we had a particular guest. We recorded two episodes last week. But for reasons that make a lot of sense, the guest that we were going to drop, when you’re hearing this, we’ve waited to drop in January with again, some good solid reasons. There’s some really exciting things coming that this particular guest is launching in January. And I can’t wait for you guys to hear that episode and, you know, I could have done an audible and, and called somebody up this week, but it’s Thanksgiving. And the reality is as much as I want to bring consistency to you guys and everything else, I think you’ll find a lot of value in this. And rather than bugging somebody over Thanksgiving break, I just decided I’d pop on and share something that I’ve been meaning to share with you guys anyway. And I was planning on doing it on a Monday episode, but also it might go a little long. And I try to keep those Monday episodes short, even though sometimes they push 15 or 20 minutes.
So anyway, the power of a personal brand. So, I’m going to walk you backwards. And again, I’m sharing this with you because I want you guys to understand I was actually on the golf course today with a buddy of mine. And I told him that, I’m somewhat, I’m an extrovert in the sense that I do being around people. I like going out. I like, you know, being with friends, I get energized by being around people, but that being said when it comes to, you know, conventions and big events and I’m as uncomfortable as the next guy. I really, really don’t like being in large crowds and, you know, walking up to groups of people that are already in the middle of a conversation and you kind of, you know, you kind of shoulder in and you’re like, Hey guys, can I join you in. You feel like you interrupted the conversation. You don’t want to be the weird guy that stops somebody from talking. And when, anytime there’s a group of people together, like somebody is always talking and all that’s just uncomfortable. And when I work backwards. So anyway, back to the story on the golf course, I was telling this guy that I’m somewhat of an introvert when it comes to, you know, larger crowds and bigger events. And he’s like, really, I wouldn’t have known that. Just, you know, listening to you on the podcast and hearing your stories and all the investments that you’ve done and, you know, seeing you speak, like, I wouldn’t think that you were an introvert.
And again, I do love people. I love being around people, but it’s really, I’m not that like you know, person that’s really comfortable introducing myself or talking about myself, etc., etc. And it got me just really thinking, I don’t think that many of us are. There’s some people that I think naturally are that way, but I think it’s very few, I think it’s a small percentage. And then I think there’s a group of people that have learned how to do it, learned how to get uncomfortable, learned how to ask good questions you know, conscious questioning as John Bergoff would call it.
But anyway, the day and age that we live in makes it so much easier to build your personal brand and build your story. And I’m telling you right now, the sooner that you can start sharing your truth, whatever that is, you know, maybe it’s a YouTube channel that you’ve been thinking of around cooking or I’ve got this idea that I wanted to do forever, and I wish I would have done it. You know, five
Years ago, I started thinking about this. I even got the domain. I think it’s; I can’t remember what it is. Something around gadget guy type stuff. And I was just thinking, I’m a guy that likes a lot of different hobbies. You know, guns, I’ve learned how to brew beer, fly airplanes. I became a pilot. I love to age beef. There’s so many different things that I love to do. And when I get into something, I test it out, I learned that I love to garden. There’s all these different things. And so, I thought about starting a YouTube channel around just, you know, gadgets, if you will.
And the nice thing about this from a business perspective is you can write off all your gadgets and then what’s even cooler. If you start making traction, like people would start sending you their new gadget, right. And then you can decide if you like it or not.
Anyway, my point is, there’s so many ways to get your brand up and going your YouTube channel. People think about it in those terms, usually though, like this is going to be the way that I make money or that I, you know, like I love man toys. Like I said, guns and CBS for the truck and all that stuff. And so, I was thinking of it as a way to not necessarily make money, but, you know, write off some of the stuff and be able to get stuff like that. But this is so much deeper and so much more powerful. Obviously if you’ve got some kind of gifting or something that you’re really good at, maybe it’s inspiring people, maybe it’s, you know, coaching leadership, maybe it’s teaching people how to knit or crochet. It goes so much deeper than just building your personal brand. It’s adding value back. And I think a lot of times people look at the statistics and they see how much money people are making on YouTube, etc. And they think of it from a business perspective. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But I’m going to break this down. Like if you’ve got some kind of passion, I think it’s super powerful that you get going into it. And let me just dive into why.
So, you may or may not know my story, but I was a plumber by trade. Worked four or five years in the field and actually even a little longer, because I started working for this plumbing company, you know, when I was probably 15 in high school. So, I would work the summers and sometimes after school. But then I didn’t really, I started going to an apprenticeship program after I graduated, I became a journeyman plumber and started running my own jobs. And then, you know, through a series of events and this is part of why I started Investing for Freedom. I’m a big proponent of making sure that what you do with your time is helping you achieve what you really want out of life. And that being said, the company that I was working for, I was working out of town. I was running a job I’m in 23, 24 years old, Kara is pregnant with our third child and I’m missing the entire pregnancy. And so, we decided to go off and start our own business. Well, again, I’m a plumber by trade. We scaled that business very quickly from 2004. Every year, you know, we’re just doubling and growth and we’re doubling our employees and I’m doing everything I can as a young person, finding coaches to keep me aligned. We’re, you know, hiring the best CPAs we can find, the best attorneys we can find, you know, just surrounding ourselves with team members. Whether that’s internal team members, external team members, via coaches, attorneys, CPAs, etc. You can tell when somebody is willing to invest in their team, whether internal team or external team, those are the kind of people that are going to do well. And so, we did that. We started growing. Well, fast forward in 2014, I sold my part of the business to my business partner. And along the way we had, you know, accumulated a lot of real estate together. We had bought mobile home parks. We had bought single family residence, some of that together, some of that separate.
The reason why he bought me out, by the way we were great partners. Actually, you hear me say this all the time. But if two partners have the same strength, one of them is not needed. And he and I were actually great partners. If I would’ve known the book traction and understood the structure, then I was basically a visionary, well, I was a visionary one basically, I was a visionary and he was an integrator. The thing is, I didn’t know that I was a visionary and he didn’t know that he was an integrator. And so, you know, we didn’t flow in those two areas together. Had we known it would’ve probably been a lot more productive, but at the same time, we weren’t bad business partners. We were actually really good for each other. Because we had separate different strengths that really complimented each other. The reason why I decided to sell long story short; Kara and I had some long-term goals that we knew just weren’t going to align. We knew we were going to need to go other directions in order to achieve our long-term goals.
And so, this is the interesting thing. When you figure out what you really want and the reason why I’m constantly talking about adjusting is because you’re going to go through seasons of life. And that was a great season of my life. That was 10 years of my life, but we knew looking, you Know, another 10 years down the road, that the things we wanted that business was no longer going to serve us. That partnership was no longer going to serve us. And so, we got out of the business. Here’s where the power of the personal brand story starts to come together. Although it took me another, probably five years, really six years to figure it out.
So, I often say that was the best and worst day of my life. Because I’m 34 years old. I achieved the American dream. I’m retired at 34 and literally we threw an exit and through the real estate that we had at that point in time. I don’t know that I’ve said this on here. But Kara and I basically have, we had like 45 single family residences that includes duplexes, three Plex, etc. We had three commercial buildings, several land investments. I don’t think I said this, but we basically, we had like five mobile home parks. So, between our real estate and then the buyout with the company, I’m 34 years old and I’m basically retired. The reason why this is the best and worst day of my life is because I realized that my identity was poured into that business, that I had spent 10 years building out with my business partner and Kara, my identity was all in that company. And then I went on this journey kind of, you know, trying to figure out what’s next. And it’s interesting in America and probably the world in general, whenever we start having a conversation with somebody, the question that we ask is always, what do you do? We’ve been so programmed by, you know, go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a job. And what you do in your career, who you decide to become, that’s your identity. That’s who you identify with. I am Mike, the plumber, I am Mike, the real estate guy, I’m Mike, the mobile home park investor. I am Mike, the podcaster. You see what I’m getting at?
So, fast forward I met my partner, Andrew Illinois, through the real estate guys’ mastermind. Really started doing a lot of growth work around the branding. A lot of stuff has shifted in the last 10 years, 20 years since I really got into business, but it was kind of slow shifts. So, from the time that we started our company in 2004, till I exited in 2014, there was probably a growth trajectory of let’s call it 2X. What we used for marketing and branding in 2004 changed, you know, two times. Like it was, believe it or not, we were still using yellow page ads. And, you know, we were starting to move to more online marketing. And of course, there was websites and there was Facebook, but it was still real early in the 2010s and people were figuring it out then, but we weren’t. And there’s certain industries too, that move a lot faster than others. Construction, government. These are some of the slower moving late adopters of technology, if you will. So anyway, I would say that it changed to 2X. But since I exited in 2014, or even the, you know, what we’ve seen change from 2010 to 2020, which I’m coming to you, it’s November 27th, I think 2020. What changed from 2010 to 2020 wasn’t 2X. That was probably, it was probably like 200X. And I would argue that what’s changed in the last few years has been exponential and it’s just going to continue to change more and more and more and faster and faster and faster.
And the way that we did business, I don’t even care, I don’t care if you’ve got a traditional brick and mortar business. The way you did business three years ago, it’s not going to continue to work. The way that we market, the way we get seen, etc., it’s not going to work. And so, coming back to the personal brand story, we have some consultants that we work with. They do a lot of work for us behind the scenes. A lot of our branding, you know, the podcast, a lot of the stuff that we do. We work with a company who does a pretty great job and they also consult with us on the capital raising side. The founder, Matt is just brilliant. He’s been a huge resource to us. But he started telling us you know, a bunch of statistics, he’s just brilliant and really on the front end of the curve, like, he definitely knows what’s going on. And so, he started telling us a while back, like, you guys need to start building your brand. Like we need to get you out in front of the audience. And to me in my mind, like I wasn’t fully comprehending this. In my mind, I’m thinking, he’s telling me that I need to shoot a video that’s going to go on my website and maybe that’s part of it. But what he was really saying is we need to start building our personal brands and our identities, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, you know, Google.
It’s interesting, Kara was just telling me that she belongs in a couple of masterminds that, you know, work around a lot of this stuff. And Google is now linking directly to Instagram, which I don’t even really get my head around what that actually means. Other than, yes, more Instagram, right. We can fight this, or we can lean into it. And there’s industries that are adopting some of this. Obviously big tech is obviously large companies spend billions of dollars researching this every year. But the small, the smaller companies, I would argue are probably not doing it. And the smaller real estate investors, there’s a lot of us that are going to get left behind if we don’t get on this.
So, backing up Matt from this marketing company, which I won’t mention, because he doesn’t just serve. You got to be pretty niche. If you are interested and you think that maybe, you know, you’re in the capital raising business. You’re raising capital around real estate, business, funds and you need some help from a company that’s really great at marketing around that. Just reach out to me, at team@Investingforfreedom.co and just, you know, put in the subject line referral for marketing company. And we can see if it’s a good fit. I want to do them justice and make sure that we filter clients. That’s not even really what this podcast is about, but I also, they’re really good at what they do, and they’ve been a huge help to me. So, if it’s a good fit, I would like to continue to make connections for them and just help them to grow their business. Again, not the point of this podcast.
So, I wake up one day and I literally have this epiphany, and this was probably two years ago, maybe a year and a half. And I realized just looking back to when I exited my first business in 2014, and I say, that’s the best and worst day of my life. I have this epiphany that the reason Why was because I had built my personal brand and identity and everything, my value in and what I felt my worth was, was all tied up in that ten-year project. And what I realized is that, you know, whether it’s park place communities where we buy mobile home parks. We’re currently at 35 communities in 13 States. Whether it’s that business or any other business that we get into, I’m going to exit that business at some point in time, most likely. And
I’m going to go through identity crisis again. I’m going to spend another one year, three years, five years rebuilding my brand again. When I sold that company in 2014, I was the plumber. And so, when I went out, even though I had been pretty successful with Kara and I you know, buying passive real estate. When we decided to go out and make passive real estate investing a business, I teamed up with Andrew and we started you know, really growing the property management company and the construction company and four peaks capital partners. We turned what used to be a passive real estate investing, I guess world to me, we turned it into a business and now we go out and we buy properties and investors invest with us.
So, it’s no longer a passive thing for me. It’s now my active business. And I have investors who invest passively with us, but that being said, it took us a while to really get that brand up and going. And you have to spend a year, two years, three years really getting known as you know, the guy who does real estate investing in the mobile home park space arena. I woke up and I literally text Matt. And I said, listen, I get it. I’m going to wake up someday. And I’m going to exit this real estate business. And then I’m going to have to start working on my personal brand and start building this thing all over again. And he said, well, congratulations. Sometimes we can hear something 10 times, 15 times, 20 times, but until you actually get it until you actually understand it, it doesn’t become real to you. Another thing happened, I heard Gary V probably around the same time say that there was a day coming in the next two to five years, I think is kind of his timeframe where just like every business has an accounting team, a sales team, an operations team. Every single successful business is going to have a content team. You’re going to have a videographer on staff. You’re going to have somebody who’s packaging all your content up for YouTube, Instagram, Facebook. And I know like when I first started hearing that, I’m like, no, you know, certain companies are going to get it. But as I’ve been watching this trend, and this is really why I want to point this out, the power of a personal brand, building your personal brand is no longer, it’s not optional. It’s critical, non-Optional. Just like Gary V said in the next two to five years. And by the way, I believe that COVID accelerated this. COVID brought a lot of things forward that needed to happen or were going to happen anyway. Even if they didn’t need to happen, they’re happening. And COVID just accelerated it. Our reach in the digital online marketing world got accelerated.
If you’re not seen, if you’re not noticed, if you’re not found by means of media, video, online presence, etc., you’re going to get lost. I don’t care what business you’re in. So, when Gary V said that it rang true, then I just kind of had this epiphany. And Matt had been telling me forever, you need to build your personal brand. And here’s the real purpose of this. Let me just narrow this down. So, people do business with people that they know like and trust, right? Well in the old school, we literally would have to go to, you know boys and girls club fundraiser. And we go there because we want to help the boys and girls club, you know, we want to give back and everything else. But we also go to these events or join the chamber of commerce or whatever, go to conferences, networking events, because we want to meet people. We want to build relationships with people. We want to get in front of people so that they can know like and trust us. Well, you can do that through building your personal brand. Again, whether it’s a podcast, whether it’s Instagram, whether it’s Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, I don’t care what it is, get moving.
Here’s some statistics. 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool. And that’s up from 63% over the last year. This is an interesting statistic to me, because I feel like that’s skewed. I don’t feel like 81% of businesses are using video right now, currently. And if they are that’s including, you know, a Facebook video that they put up every once in a while, or something. I don’t think it’s that high, but interesting statistic. What’s interesting to me, whatever their benchmark is on this 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool up from 63% last year. So, it’s almost a 20% increase and whatever demographic or group they’re talking about. 6 out of 10 people would rather watch online videos right now than television. And I see this in our life. It’s funny because even when Kara and I are binge watching a Netflix show or something, half the time we’re not even watching the show. Half the time, she’s looking at something, I’m looking at something it’s just kind of interesting how much this is. And again, social dilemma, you know, we’re consumed by this. We can talk about all the bad things and how this is so negative, but the reality is, it’s not going away. Mobile video consumption rises by a hundred percent every year. By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all consumer traffic to the internet. That’s 15 times higher than it was in 2017. 78% of people watch online videos every week and 55% view online videos every day.
This is crazy.
Facebook executive predicted that their platform will be all video and no texts by 2021. You guys have probably heard this, but YouTube is the second most popular website and search engine after Google. Users view more than a billion hours of video each day on YouTube, 59% of executives say they would rather watch a video than read texts. That’s executives, 59% of executives say they would rather watch a video than read text. 75% of all video plays are on mobile devices. This is interesting. Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in video compared to 10% when reading it in text. I could go on and on. I’ve got a bunch of statistics and everything else that I’m constantly looking at. But The power of a personal brand, if you’re on the fence on this, you got to get moving.
Perfect is the enemy of done. And I know we all struggle, especially when we first started putting videos out. It’s uncomfortable and we’re always going to get better and better at it. But the relationship building in the old days was go to an event and shake hands. That uncomfortable part that I was telling you guys about. The social media realm, Online marketing world, the online world in general allows us to make relationships that we couldn’t have made before. There’s the six degrees of separation. I’ve talked about this in previous episodes. But you know, back in the day, there were six degrees of separation. Somebody knew somebody, you knew somebody that knew somebody that knew somebody that knew somebody that knew somebody that could introduce you to anyone basically. I saw a Microsoft study that was done, I think in 2011. And I saw this probably four or five years ago. And they proved it, it’s down to like four or something like that now. And if you just look at LinkedIn, just think about it. LinkedIn shows you if you’re a first like level connection, the second level, third level. Pretty much in this day and age, if you want to get to somebody the Internet world has collapsed everything for us. It is compressed so much. And again, whether that, you know, you could sit here and argue with me all day long and tell me that that’s, what’s wrong with the world. And this is bad. This is all bad for us. And I’m not going on Facebook and I’m not going on Instagram, my privacy. Fine, I’m okay with that. But I’m telling you the world’s not changing. We’re not going to go backwards on this. It’s only going to get further.
If you don’t adopt this now and you don’t start getting moving, you’re going to miss out on a lot. Business will change. Entire industries will be shut down because they didn’t adapt, and they didn’t adjust. And within entire industries, things are going to get compressed. The haves and the have-nots are going to get compressed. I’m not, I have to be careful that I don’t detour on this, but with everything that’s going on right now, you know, after COVID, and again, COVID, didn’t really do anything but accelerate a lot of things that were happening. But even in the financial world, the haves and the have-nots, it’s getting greater and greater and greater. The gap is widening. Pensions are about to go bankrupt, like entire, the federal government, social security, Medicare. There are so many bankrupt fire and police pensions. There are so many problems. The gap is widening. So, what does that do with the personal brand? Same thing. If you don’t figure out how to adjust and get your personal brand built, that you can flex into any, here’s the thing. Let’s just say that I was still in the HVAC industry, which I’m going back into. I think it’s an amazing industry. It’s essential. I’ve thought this forever. I just needed the right time.
But let’s just say you’re in the HVAC industry and you decide to adjust, or that industry goes South, and you have to move on to something else. Well, if you’re known as the HVAC guy, and that’s the only, you know, yeah, you could call your list of people and be like hey, I’m no longer in HVAC. I am now selling, I don’t know, plywood. You want to buy plywood from me? You know, a big percentage of those people are not going to be your ideal customers. And they’re going to be like, well, what do you know about selling plywood, etc., etc., etc. But if you build a list or an audience of people that know, like, and trust you around your personal brand and who you are, and then yes, you build in what you do. People don’t care. There’s so many sayings around this, but people don’t really know. They don’t really care how much you know; they just want to know how much you care. And so really getting to know people in the online marketing world and building your personal brand is the most powerful thing you can do right now. I know it’s uncomfortable. I know making videos is uncomfortable. I know you don’t want to spend all your time on Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn. I Get all that.
In order to be found in this world, in this day and age, you are going to need to have your name out there, Google yourself. This is an interesting exercise. Google yourself and tell me what comes up. If you don’t figure out how to get yourself found, then people can’t find you. That’s profound, Mike, right? If you don’t figure out how to build your personal brand, and this takes time, this isn’t something that’s going to happen overnight. And I hear everybody telling me right now. Well, Mike, yeah, that’s easy for you. You know, I can’t spend 40 hours a week making content. It’s interesting because I I’ve even had several people ask me and also my partner, Andrew, like, is Mike no longer in the business or what’s going on? Cause they think I’m spending all my time building content. If you do this right. Especially if you learn to leverage and outsource, there are so many people out there that can do a lot of this for you. You can really collapse this down to something that you don’t have to spend more than an hour or two hours. Let’s say even five, let’s say you committed five hours a week. And from that five hours a week, if I took you two years down the road and we could quantify it and you had let’s just say 200 amazing relationships. I’m not talking about just like people that DM you, like great relationships that were built because you started building your personal brand and you invested five hours a week in it. You would take me up on that.
If you had 500 additional customers or, you know, 200, sorry, the number was 200. If you had 200 additional customers or you had, you know, 200 people that were now on your list that are buying a product from you or that you could reach out to if you needed something or that you figured out how to connect with them in your industry, or they helped you know, get acquisitions done. Just think about this. I’m offering a $15,000 finder’s fee to anybody that connects me with an owner of an HVAC company that’s in the $3 million range that wants to sell. If it’s an off-market deal and you connect me and I close on that, I’ll pay you $15,000 once we close. If I don’t have a list of people that get to hear that, that are not listening to my podcast, I can’t get found. The only way that I can tell them that is if we’re having one-on-one conversations at the golf course or while we’re having lunch. But imagine being able to reach a thousand listeners or 10,000 listeners or saying it on an Instagram video or seeing it on a LinkedIn video, or that you see how much the reach has expanded? You might be saying, Mike, this is of no value. I don’t know how to pull this all together for my world or for what I have going on. I’m telling you, if you don’t figure out how to make this happen and figure out how it does bring value to you, you are going to get left behind.
Let me kind of pull this together. So, you know, obviously I knew I needed to start building my personal brand. I knew that we needed, so, you know, for various reasons, not just being found, but also so that people can really get to know what you believe in who you really are. Again, in business, people are going to do business with people they know like and trust. I’ve literally, I’ve had employees who have researched us ahead of time and decided to come to work for us because of the message that we’re putting out into the world, Employees. So, who doesn’t need better employees, who doesn’t need more employees, who doesn’t need more deal flow in their life, whether you’re in real estate or business or whatever. Who doesn’t need more customers? Who doesn’t need more eyeballs watching their stuff? Everybody does. Okay, so maybe you’re a W2 employee, great. You know, are you not looking for more clients in your space? Are you not looking for more you know, potential opportunities for when you do quit and move on, or maybe you just want a better, if you’re a W2 employee, maybe you love your job. Maybe you love your career. Maybe you love what you do, but you’re just looking for a different company to work for. Like, you don’t feel appreciated in the company. Well, if you’re out there and you’re putting the right stuff out into social media land or into the, you know, video online or web or whatever, and recruiters can find you, how much better does that make you as a candidate? And again, this could go both ways. I mean, if you’re out putting, you know, your party life and by the way, I think we should be real on social media. But you got to be a little bit careful because that stuff stays out there forever. So, use this as a tool is what I’m getting at the power of the personal brand. And I don’t, you could argue with me till you’re blue in the face, everybody should be working on their personal brand. And if you don’t, you’re going to get
Left behind.
Let me tell you a couple of things that have happened. So just even back to the conference, the networking thing. I’ve got people who I’ve already knew them. Like, so for gobundance as an example. So, I already know, you know, a bunch of the guys and gobundance, but then you go back to an event which there’s like two events a year. The main events, you go back to an event. And even though you knew a bunch of the guys, like people come up to you and they’re like hey, I’m really loving the content. I really loved this episode. And, you know, because you had this certain guest on, I connected with him and our relationship has done X. Zig Ziglar said, you can have everything you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want. Literally today, I went golfing with a friend that I met through another friend, because we’re all kind of connected. And we all went golfing together and they are out having dinner. And they’re like a great fit. I’m not saying they’re going to be business partners, but they’re a great fit in the business world that they’re both kind of in and even though they do, you know, somewhat different things, they’re both connected and grounded in real estate and they both have called teams. And anyway, it’s a connection. It’s a connection that’s made, that was made one-on-one, but you can make so many of those connections by just building your personal brand and connecting more people and connecting people on social media is so much easier than it is one-on-one. You know, back in the day, if you did get the opportunity to talk about it, you could send referrals. But nowadays, when somebody needs something, you literally can just have your assistant, send them a link to whoever they’re trying to connect.
Kara did a, you know, she does money mindset courses with women and one of the girls that took her course, I just, I was a guest speaker and was just talking about pulling your money out of the market and, you know, with the cares act being able to pull money out, which by the way, the clock is running short on that. I think you have till December 31st. So, if you haven’t taken advantage of that yet, get moving. But anyway, I was able to connect her with a guy who I know again, just through networks. That all happens anyway again with, you know, going to conferences and that kind of stuff. But it makes it so much easier to have conversations. People come up to me and I’m not saying I’m a celebrity. I am telling you if you just started your podcast and just doing whatever I’m doing, this podcast hasn’t even been up for a year and already it’s helping me instead of me having to break in those conversations. My personal brand has people coming to me asking me questions or starting conversations around something that they heard me say. And that to me is the win. And I’m not even talking about doing business with people. I’m just talking about building authentic relationships. That to me is the win, because I don’t have to do the awkward, you know, let’s see if I can meet 10 new people over the course of five days. I guarantee you, if you start building your personal brand and you start getting out there and people start following you and they will, if you speak your truth and they will, if you’re passionate about it and they absolutely will if you approach it from a place of value. Zig Ziglar, once again, he said, you can have everything you want in life. If you just help enough other people get what they want.
So, building the personal brand I don’t know about you, but I feel like the timeframes are condensing. I’m probably not going to be in the same business for 20, 30, 40 years. I want to build a personal brand around any business that I decided to get into, any investment I decided to get into. As long as you cultivate that brand and you stay true to your voice and your passion, and you start putting that out there, people will find you and you will be able to create and nurture a lot more relationships without social media, or then you could without social media by being on it. Now, a lot of people say that, you know, the internet and social media and all this has taken away from the authenticity in relationships, etc., etc. I don’t believe it. I don’t buy it. Not for a minute. I’ve watched Kara in the last year,
You know, joined a bunch of masterminds, but also really dive in and get connected with people through social media. And then once she goes to an event the connection goes deeper. I’ve connected with people on social media that I met later and already having a relationship on social media takes our relationship once we actually meet so much deeper.
So, I don’t fall into the camp of social media is destroying our life. Facebook’s destroying our life. Instagram’s destroying, it can, if you let it consume you, but you can also use it as a tool. A couple more things, and then I’ll close.
I don’t think I ever actually pulled this together if you’re still listening, great, glad you’re with me. You could literally record an hour of video for YouTube around whatever it is you want to talk about once a week and then put the right team together. And you could outsource a lot of this on Upwork. I mean, I get hit up a hundred times a day on Instagram for people that are going to change my Instagram. And they’re going to blow me up. And the world’s full of online marketers that are the experts. So just be careful, but you could literally spend an hour or two hours a week recording some videos and some content, and then get it out to the right people. And then they could strip it down for you, those videos, and turn it into a podcast that launches once a week. And they could turn it into a blog post that goes on your website, and then they can give you a whole bunch of Instagram videos. You could do all that with two hours, maybe even an hour of your time, if you want to start out slower.
And then there’s all the, you know, the gurus that are like oh, you need to post five times a day or whatever times, I post once a day on most platforms. And you know, some not even, but that’s because we’ve built kind of a process and a team. So, here’s the thing. You can outsource all this. You could do a lot of it yourself. You don’t have to post every day and the platforms are all changing. And so, you just kind of have to stay on top of that too. But I’m telling you right now, if you outsourced all this, you could probably outsource all of it for a $1000 a month and do a pretty good job of it. And you could do it for way less too. You don’t have to do everything. But if you’ve got your content out being searched by podcasts, and it’s getting turned into a blog and you’re on Instagram and you’re doing stuff on LinkedIn, you don’t have to turn it into a full-time business is what I’m really getting at. But if you don’t get started today, moving toward building your personal brand, you’re never going to get started.
I don’t know if any of you guys remember this. But when I first started trying to get comfortable on Instagram, you know, just putting up videos, I didn’t even know what to talk about. So, I did this little thing for stories, and I just decided that I was going to clean out my house and I was going to do, you know, 40 days of giveaway or something. I can’t even remember what it was. And that just got me comfortable with video. And so, you know, even if it’s once a week, just get started, just start adding value to the world. The thing is, is nobody’s watching to begin with, there’s going to be a few people watching it. The only way, you know, I had a trainer actually, a physical trainer, and I’m going to give you a little analogy and like parable type thing here. So, I go to the gym and I meet with this trainer, and this was probably 12 years ago. And I look at him, he’s like, well, what’s your goal? And I’m like, well, here’s the thing, I don’t want to be huge. And he’s like, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem for you. And I was like, oh man, that kind of hit me in the heart. But the reality is, you know, we have these, really, they’re not even limiting beliefs, they are freaking excuses. But when I say, I don’t want to be huge, he knows I’m not going to get huge because that takes a high level of commitment.
So, bring this back to social media, really getting huge, takes a very high level of commitment. You’re not going to get huge overnight. And if you do congratulations, but the reality is nobody’s going to be watching at first when you’re uncomfortable and you’re getting started. But if you continue to do it, every day you’re going to show up. It’s going to get a little easier, better, and better and better. And you’re going to add so much value to the world.
The reason why I really wanted to share this with you is I really think that if you don’t really start working on your personal brand and you don’t start sharing your truth with the world, you are going to get left behind. This is the method of communication for businesses. This is the method of communication for peer to peer, brand to brand, peer to brand, brand to peer, B to C; Business to consumer, whatever, you know, however you want to say it. This is quickly, you saw the statistics on how fast everybody’s moving this direction. If you don’t start building your personal brand and you don’t start getting on it, you are going to get left behind. I’m not telling you; you have to do a podcast. I’m not telling you have to, you know, post on every platform. But what I am telling you is that you have got to start getting comfortable, you know, putting videos out, even something as little as this.
One of my recent guest episodes, Rick Hale, we were at his Lake house, me and my son, Dylan. He had a friend who it was his birthday, and it was his son’s birthday. And so, he brought my son Dylan in who does wake surf lessons. Dylan’s a professional wakesurfer. He was on a couple episodes, back to go find it. So anyway, we’re all together and I meet Rick’s best friend, Michael. It was his birthday. And so, we got to spend some time together. And this guy is just high energy, just an amazing guy. That was, I don’t even, I don’t know what that date was. I think it was the end of September. So, my birthday is October 12th. I get this video on my birthday from Michael Molder, just telling me he’s like, hey man, I just want to let you know, I really appreciated our time together. My son was so blessed. I was so blessed. A friend of Rick is a friend of mine. And man, that meant so much to me. And if it had been a text, it wouldn’t have meant as much.
So, there’s a ton of power in video and all of that, the way we consume. I gave you a bunch of statistics. Everything is changing. And if you don’t figure this out and you don’t get on it, you’re going to get left behind. That doesn’t even include, you know, the conversations around how you can monetize this. YouTube, the amount of money that people are making on YouTube, even just early, you know, if you just stay consistent with it and start doing well. For me, the podcast is really just about a meeting, amazing people, sharing my truth. And ultimately, you know, finding investors that are interested in passively investing with us. Yes, I have, you know, reasons why, I mean, I don’t just get on here only to, you know, just talk, but I don’t really, I don’t really plan on using my podcast to, you know, for advertisers to pay me.
What I really look for is number one, I want to give back. I’ve had some amazing mentors in my life, and I want to share that truth, but then also, you know, like Kara and I are launching the couple’s mastermind and we’re taking 10 couples. I would love it, if you know, a percentage of those two, three, four of the couples, five of the couples came from because you have gotten to know me, whether it’s Instagram or Facebook or the podcast. I would love to connect with you that way. I’ve met so many amazing connections. And I know Kara has through her social media and her networks there. So yeah, of course, you know, the whole reason why I’ve been saying this is because you have to build your personal brand if you want to have a successful sustainable business. I don’t care if you’re again, a W2 employee or you’re selling online courses or anything else. This is how people find you. This is how people get to know you. And if you don’t start building your personal brand, you are going to get left behind.
For me personally, I just love people too. And I think probably the most rewarding thing of this whole thing is the conversation starters that I’ve gotten into and the relationships that have deepened further because of being able to share my truth on the podcast. And I can’t tell you how many new people I’ve met that I would’ve never met if I hadn’t started building my personal brand and sharing this truth. So, I encourage you, whatever your truth is, whatever you’ve, you probably already know. You know, you’re probably thinking about this already and if you’re not you better. But I think most of you listening have probably already, just record some videos. I mean, it doesn’t take anything. You can put a, I think you can upload your own podcast for, you know, $90 a month, or maybe even less on certain platforms. Just start getting your truth out there. Get moving. The power of a personal brand is so important and the relationships you’re going to build, the growth that you’re going to have by doing it. You probably, like I said, you probably already know, you know, what it looks like. You’ve probably been thinking about it. This is the direction of the world. Get moving.
