Episode 95: Why You Need To Build A Personal Brand

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What'S going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. If you're new here, there's one thing I gotta tell you. Welcome and thank you. There's so many podcasts you could be listening to right now, and the fact that you chose mine really makes me smile, you know, it just, it makes me happy, gets me going. Because I listen to podcasts myself and, and some of my favorites are group chat by Drama and D. Murthy. We got Andy Frisella's podcast, Logan Paul's podcast. There's so many podcasts that I personally love and I have a huge passion for podcasting because it allows me and you to go in depth on, number one, my stories, my experience, my expertise, and it gives you some insight that you didn't have before and vice versa. Because I learned so much from you by listening and just hearing the feedback from this podcast that overall, I just want to say thank you. If you're listening to the Rise of the Young podcast right now, and like Andy Frisella says, we have one fee here on the show and that is share it with a friend. Every single episode that you listen to, it would mean the world to me. It. If you shared it with a friend, if it resonates with you, whether that's something I talk about today in the sense of personal branding or a story, whatever it is, if there's one thing I could ask of you, it's please share it with a friend. And that being said, let's get into the show because I am super pumped up about what we're about to cover today. And that is why building a personal brand on social media in 2019 is the most valuable thing you can do. So I'm gonna be going over some Bullet points real quick to give you some insights about why a personal brand is so important. And then I'll give you my definition of a personal brand. So number one, a personal brand is the most valuable asset we all have because it gives us credibility of us, of ourselves, it is us on social media, it is the authentic perception of who we are showcased to thousands, if not million of people. And overall, it's the modern day business card. And I cannot tell you, I've gone to so many different networking events and people have asked me, hey, do you have a card? And yes, sometimes I do, but majority of the time I say, no, I do not have a card. But follow me on Instagram, send me a DM and let me get your phone number. And that being said, if someone is in the social media scene and they go on Instagram and they follow me and they check out my content, they see I have over 200,000 followers verified on Instagram. The positioning points that I've created for myself, which I just went over, which is good content, social credibility and being verified, which is something that everyone listening to this podcast should shoot for because it allows you to just have, I would say, a different perspective and positioning angle than other people. And we'll be going over that as well. But overall, it's the modern day business card. Having a personal brand on Instagram and on social media allows you to walk into a room without even having to introduce yourself. If you are known and not known for bad reasons, but good reasons in the sense of good content, in the sense of you're putting out valuable content to your audience and it overall allows you to build instant credibility with someone because it's your social resume. And that's why having a personal brand in 2019 is very important, because it's so funny. I'm gonna tell you a story really quick. Last year when I was in high school, I was a senior and I remember in one of the classes we did an entire presentation on social media and how negative social media is for society. Literally, I'm in high school and the teacher takes an hour to go over the bad things about social media. And I can agree there's a lot of bad things that can happen, whether that's bullying or blackmailing, whatever it is. But you gotta understand, you put out what you want out there content wise, right? And my message to everyone is spreading positivity, it's putting out good content, it's interviewing world class entrepreneurs and giving you my insight as an 18 year old entrepreneur. And overall there's so many great things about social media. And back to the story of when I was in high school, my teachers were literally just telling me in the whole class and, and the whole school, don't use social media, go private on Instagram, just don't connect with people. There's bad people out there trying to get you, blah, blah, blah. And I'm saying this not to diss my teacher, but I'm saying this to diss that mindset because everything is a tool, it depends how you use it, right? People go out to war and they use guns as a tool to defend themselves, but then people use guns to kill people in terrorist attacks, right? There's different tools out there. And I use that example and as an extreme, because the same thing with social media. You have an Instagram account that you can provide value to people on, or you can bully people, you can blackmail people. You determine how you use the tool. And the fact that the modern school system was saying, hey, there's only bad things on social media, it got me irritated. And I remember I was sitting in the classroom, I raised my hand, I'm polite, and I said, hey, because at the time last year, I was building a brand. I was traveling all over the US Interviewing. So like so many world class entrepreneurs, which, if you listen to this podcast, you may have heard a lot of those episodes. And I was skipping school every other week to go to New York to go to la, to go to Vegas, to go to Miami to sit down with people like Grant Cardone or Gary Vee or whoever it was. And I told my teacher, I was like, hey, that's not true. There's so many great things on social media that you can learn from people. You can learn different, I would say, skill sets and you can get a different mindset and you can get inspired and motivated and you can also tell your story and impact people and motivate people. And it was one of those things where I was speaking about personal branding to my teacher, but she didn't understand the value of having a personal brand. She only was a consumer on social media and saw the bad things being posted, saw the bad, negative things about bullying. She wasn't an active producer on social media. And that's what you have to do. You have to switch the mindset, if you haven't already from, hey, I'm consuming content on social media and that's all I do to, all right, let me produce content and be an active producer of content on social media and spread a positive message. Because it's up to us to change that mindset of people saying, hey, social media is a bad thing, don't do it. And I'm sure if you're listening to this, you are on the same mindset as me. There's thousands of people making millions of dollars on social media from advertising, from influencers, from just having a good product, from going viral. You can reach so many people today and it's on social media. It's this network of people which is in the billions. There's literally over a billion people on Instagram. And if that's not valuable to you, or if people or teachers can't see the value in that, it comes down to people like us to put out content, to put out podcasts, to do interviews with people that are utilizing the technology and the platforms we have today. But let's move on. Social media gives you connections to people. It's the most effective way to network, whether that's DMs or going to events, or listening to podcasts, or just getting in touch with people. Literally every single person I've had on this show has came from an Instagram. And I talked about this in the last episode, the little emoji. If you go to my podcast cover, in the bottom left hand corner is the mailbox emoji. But I like to call it the DM Slide emoji. Because my man Drama gave me the nickname the king of the DM slide because I DM'd him, I DM'd his friends, I DM'd everyone and they DM'd me back. But that's how I've been able to communicate with so many world class people. And that's what I want you to understand is you're only one DM away. But here's the catch. If you don't have a personal brand, you don't have some sort of social credibility or positioning that gives you credibility online. That when someone looks at your Instagram page, they say, alright, what does this person do? Oh, they have this business. Or they're doing X, Y or Z, depending on how you position yourself on social media. That's where a personal brand comes in handy. You need to position yourself that when you reach out to someone, they can look at your page, I'm talking about Instagram today. And they can say, hey, this person's doing something cool. I'm curious, let me get back to him. Because it's not a lack of response that you're getting. If you're sending people DMs and not getting a response, it's the lack of positioning. For example, I sat down with Jay Shetty in LA and I interviewed him, and he has over, what is it, like, 3 billion views on social media. And let me say that again. 3 billion views on social media. The fact that he took the time to check his DMs and get back to me and say, yo, I'm down for the podcast, it blew my mind. But here's the catch. At that time, I was verified on Instagram. And if you know this, being verified on Instagram gives you so much leverage. Because if you DM somebody, they automatically have to see it pretty much because you have that little blue check. And if they're scrolling through their DMs, it's instantly going to notify them like, yo, let me check out this dude's page. Because he's verified, he must have something going on, right? But I sat down with him, I did the interview with him, it was amazing. And at the end of it, I asked him privately, I was like, is the only reason you got back to me on Instagram was because I was verified? And he's like, dude, yes. He's like, dude, you're 18 years old. Like, I have a lot of things going on for me. But since you were verified, it caught my attention. I checked you out, I saw you were with some people that I knew, and I said, yes. And the reason I'm telling you that story is not to brag, to say, yo, check me out, I'm verified. Not at all. Literally, being verified is just a code on your Instagram page that appears like a blue tick. People say, and it's nothing crazy, but it comes down to the positioning of it and how you get it that people want to know, and it just gives you leverage. And it comes down to the simple things as well. Whether that's having a following or having good content with good people, they're getting verified. All these little things that you hear me speaking about on this podcast is credibility points, I like to call it. And if you can establish yourself to the point where you send someone a dm, you don't even have to introduce yourself, because if they check out your page, you pretty much introduce yourself. From the content you're putting out, that's valuable. Because every single person I've DMed that gotten back to me, it's led to a real life relationship outside of social media, which is my end goal. And overall, people remember people. I'm gonna say that again. People remember people. And that's why a personal brand is Important, right? You hear all the time companies like Amazon, you hear Jeff Bezos in the news. Tesla, you hear Elon Musk in the news. And it goes down to even smaller companies like Gary V. VaynerMedia. They're so, I would say congruent with you are your company, you are VaynerMedia and VaynerMedia is you. That sort of mentality that if you want people in your company to grow, try growing yourself. Drama talks about this all the time. All the time. He says, dude, I started a podcast because, number one, it allows me to sit down with people and learn something every single week, but it gives my consumer and my buyer relationship with me. Because if you listen to a podcast like this, if you're listening to this show right now, me and you are genuinely having a conversation. You're listening to the way I talk, the way I describe things, and it gives you more context to who I am, and it builds a relationship between us. And Drama says that all the time. And it's been crushing it for him. His podcast, short story long, I absolutely love it, as well as his podcast group chat with Dee Murthy. They literally have the most genuine relationships with so many of their customers because they have a podcast, because they go in depth. And like I said, to the point people remember people and the stories they tell. And in today's business world, people want to know the CEO or founder. And if you're listening to this right now and you have a company, or maybe you're crushing it already, or maybe you're just getting started, it's equally as valuable to both of you to have a personal brand that is wildly known. All right? Because building a personal brand changed my life. And I'm speaking from experience here. And I want you to think about this. Why would someone like Grant Cardone sit down with a 17 year old from Virginia that wants to talk to him for an hour? He's almost a billionaire. He has things going on. He's literally probably one of the most busy people in the world. If you look at it in terms of there's not many people that are billionaires, right? Maybe 2,000, a little over that. But I had a podcast and I had an audience, and that was valuable to Grant because he's building a personal brand. And the one thing I learned from Grant, he always says, I wish I started advertising sooner because he knows the value of a brand, which is Grant Cardone. It's an entire entity. And I've learned so much from that experience by having Grant Cardone on The podcast and doing it in Miami in person with him is because me having an audience of young entrepreneurs is valuable to him because he wants to build his brand. So if you can focus on building your brand to help other people build their brand, meaning build an audience, gain credibility, position yourself as an authority, and then have a podcast and interview people. Because people want to be in your podcast to tell their story and grow their brand as well. Like, it's so much leverage to you. And like I said, in today's business world, people want to know who's behind the company. Whether that's you have a podcast for your company or maybe it's just your personal podcast. Whatever it is, start talking to people. Putting out long content is key and social media is only getting bigger. You need to capitalize right now. Because if you're listening to this podcast, what's the date it is? Friday, April 26, 2019. You're listening to this podcast. If you have not capitalized up to this point of listening, this is your reminder. Start taking social media seriously as a business number one, but as a long term investment into you. Because if the only thing that you're going to die with is you, your name, right, your brand is forever. And I tell people this all the time, before you dive into your brand, understand that it's the long game. You know, for example, myself, Casey Adams, as a brand on Instagram, the content that I'm putting out, the podcast that I'm doing, that will forever be in the universe in terms of on the web, right? Unless the Internet crashes and everything goes crazy and there's no such thing as the Internet, which I don't believe will happen until maybe thousands of years, right? But overall, the content you put out is the representation of you in the digital world. So you have to craft that message. And what I like to tell people about how to craft that message is discover your three brand pillars. And if you heard me speak in an event before, I say this all the time, Defining your three brand pillars is defining your purpose on social media. Because every person I come across, they have three key things that they want people to know about them. And I'm going to bring three people up as an example. Tai Lopez, huge mentor to me. He talks about books, self education and overall materialistic items. That's how he branded himself. It was, hey, here in my garage, new Lamborghini house in the Hollywood Hills. Like it was these, I would say, strategic moves of branding that he did, but it was congruent. Gary Vee, he talks about patience he talks about empathy, he talks about the long game, and those are his pillars. Grant Cardone talks about money, real estate and sales. Right. Myself, I talk about podcasting, networking, traveling. Those are my three things that I always bring up in my content. And if you follow me on Instagram, acyadamsone, you will see that in my content. And it comes down to strategy of. I laid that out a year and a half ago. Two years ago, three years ago, I said, alright, let me build a personal brand and overall I want to network with people that are building empires. And it's happened because I set my mind to it. Right? I went out and I started a podcast. I did 40 interviews in 60 days, went in and I leveraged my brand to do so. And back to where I want this to go is, you need to capitalize now. Because me saying three years ago, if I wouldn't have taken that initiative and started Instagram and started putting out content and overall, just trying to connect with people online, I would not be where I am today. And if you're listening to this right now and you have a hesitation to do it, a hesitation to build a brand, I want you to honestly DM me and let me know, why are you waiting to build a brand? Why have you not fully invested your time, money and effort into building a brand? And I want you to let me know because like I said, there's so many different people that listen to this podcast. It may be someone that has millions of followers that's just listening, or it could be someone that doesn't know what Instagram is. And no matter where you are in between there, we all know personal branding is serious and it's important. And if there's one thing I want you to do from this podcast today, other than share it with a friend, it's send me a DM on Instagram and let me know what you're currently doing to build your brand. To build your personal brand. What are you doing? Are you putting out content? If so, what kind of content? How many times per week, how many times a day? What do you need help with? Like, I truly put out my content so I can help you guys and girls, no matter what age demographic you are in. Let me know how I can help you, no matter what it is. And send me a message, a video message in particular. People always ask me, what's the key to get in touch with people. Send someone a video message. I guarantee if they watch it, they will feel obligated to get back to you because it's like dude, you spent time and effort to put your finger on the record button to send me a video message of yourself saying thank you or whatever it is, but send me a video message and I will send you one back. Because that's how I like to build relationships from the front end. Like step one, if I see your face and I hear your voice, rather than just a message like a, hey, love the podcast. It's a different approach, right? So send me a DM on Instagram and just let me know what you're doing to build your personal brand, because it's important and I want to help you. And last but not least, your personal brand on social media is not how you just position yourself to your friends or your business partners. It's how you position yourself to the world. You should always focus on how you can get more people not following you, but respecting you. Right? Social media is a game of positioning, and if you do it right, you will gain respect from people based on your content. And someone that is a mentor in my life, Dan Fleshman, huge shout out to you. He's taught me a lot of these things. He'll speak at an event and he'll say, hey, instead of coming here and just listening to the speakers, how about you get six videos where you're interviewing the speakers off stage for one minute and you're overall documenting your experience at this event and use that for content to build your brand. I remember that's what I did from the front end. I went to my first event, January 13, 2017. It was called Epic Mastermind Experience in San Diego. My boy Caleb Maddox invited me out to it. And I remember going to that event and sitting in the audience and I saw Caleb Maddox and Gerard Adams and Dan Fleshman and all these guys that I've saw on social media. And at the time, I had no brand whatsoever. Maybe a thousand followers on Instagram. And I got pictures with these people, I got videos with these people, and I tried to network with them. And overall, it was a game of showing up. Meaning I showed up at the event, I showed up in their DMs, I showed up in the comment sections, I showed up in their likes. And overall, over time, we began to build a genuine relationship. Because my whole entire purpose of social media is to take relationships off social media. Because you are only as good as not the people you know, but the people that know you. That's something very important to me. And to wrap this up, I want you to think about that. Who do I know, but who knows me? There's a big difference, because everyone that I've had on my podcast, this is what I do. I try to say, all right, let me get these people, whether that's drama or Grant Cardone, whoever it is, I say, hey, let me get this person on my podcast, sit down with them in person, build with them, get content with them, and then let me see when and where I can have an event, which is a build your empire event. And I want them to speak at my event because I call that the pullback strategy, where you pull your network back to you, you pull them back to build a better relationship. And overall, by having two vehicles, a podcast and an event, I've been able to build so many genuine relationships. And I want you to take this strategy and implement it into your life. A, start a podcast. B, throw an event. This could be the smallest event in the world and five people, or it could be the biggest event with 500,000 people. Whatever it is in between, I've done this for myself. And there's no magic tricks. It just comes down to knowing yourself, knowing what kind of person you are, knowing if this works for you or if it won't work for you, knowing if you want to take this personal brand serious and go all in in 2019, if you. It's all up to you. I'm just giving you my advice and my experience as someone that has taken a personal brand serious and has overall allowed it to lead to multiple opportunities that completely changed my life. And overall, it's about speed and consistency. I always tell people I interviewed 90 world class entrepreneurs in 180 days, but if I would have interviewed 90 entrepreneurs in 90 years, it wouldn't really matter. It wouldn't have the same impact, right? But I did it fast and I did it consistent. And that's what I want you to do. I want you to take what you learned today inside of this podcast and understand that building a personal brand on social media in 2019 is the most valuable thing you can do. For you, for you. Yes, you heard that right. A brand is meant to help you in so many different ways that we talked about today, but overall, it's going to help you impact people, gain more business, get more clients, grow your credibility, and it will open up so many doors to opportunity that you never even saw coming. Trust me, I've learned this from experience. And yeah, that being said, that's all I got for you guys today. I just want you to know that me putting out this podcast is personal branding. You sending me a DM is Personal branding. Everything you do on social media is a digital footprint of you and your personal brand. Whether that's a comment on someone's post. But whatever it is, it's important. And like I said, I just want to say thank you again for tuning in to to the Rise of the Young podcast, for taking the time to listen to what it means to build a personal brand, why it's important and why you should do it. Because a lot of people know it's important and that might be you. You may have already known it's important and you may be doing a little bit of stuff for your brand, but you're not taking it seriously, you're not treating it as a business, as a long term investment. And that's what I want you to do. But like I said, thank you so much for listening to the show today. If there's anything you want, shoot me a DM on Instagram. I will be getting back to you and the people that are truly listening. Send me a video dm. Like I said, literally, go to your Instagram. Right after the show, go to my Instagram CaseyAdams1 and shoot me a DM with a video. Whether that's about the podcast, whether it's about your life, about a question you have for me about what you want me to talk about on the podcast. Whatever it is, shoot me a dm. King of the DM slide is out. I will talk to you guys soon. Tomorrow. Peace.

Legacy of Monsters An Apple Original Series the world is on fire. I decided to do something about it on November 17th.

This place.

It's not ours. Believe me. The most massive event of the year arrives. If you come with me, will know everything. I promise. Monarch Legacy of Monsters streaming November 17th only on Apple TV Plus.