December 27, 2024 • 43 mins
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
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Eric Eden (00:02):
We have an awesome guest today and we have some
great topics to talk about.
Justin, welcome to the show.
Justin Oberman (00:09):
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to talk.
I always just I love talkingabout marketing advertising.
Eric Eden (00:17):
So why don't we start off, give us a minute or two
about who you are and what youdo?
Justin Oberman (00:25):
Sure, my name is Justin Oberman, so I kind of
got into advertising andmarketing later in life than
most people.
I work for my family'sinsurance company, generation
one to fourth generationinsurance company.
At this point I think it's over100 years old.
(00:45):
My brother runs it now.
But I think it's an importantpart of the story where,
basically, I grew up fourthgeneration of three generations
above me of insurance sales andif there's anybody who knows how
to sell well, it's insurancepeople.
Granted, there is a differencebetween selling one-on-one and
(01:08):
selling to a group.
Right, that's a differencebetween as close and married as
salespeople or marketing peopleare.
That is one of the subtledifferences between the two.
But I sort of felt myselfgravitating towards that.
So they said oh, you should bea copywriter.
I got trained on sort of thetail end of the Mad Men era
(01:31):
Social was just becoming a thing, but print and commercials and
TV commercials and all thatstuff.
As soon as the digital stuffhappened, I immediately
recognized the opportunity,thanks to David Ogilvie who
pointed out that he actuallybelieved that all copywriters
should start in the direct maildepartment.
So I saw immediately that thedigital ad stuff was going to
(01:52):
become very direct marketing,what they call now performance
marketing heavy.
So I said, oh, I want to getinto that.
I actually did some work indirect mail for a while and
really just then sort ofescalated between the two and I
think it turned me into a veryversatile copywriter where I
could go and I could write abrand campaign and I could also
(02:13):
write a direct marketingcampaign.
And then I also became sort ofobsessed with the history of
advertising and pretty much haveread anything that you confide
on it and pretty much have readit every, anything that you
confide on on it.
That gave me a sort ofperspective that I think a lot
of people don't have, becauseyou begin to see the cycles and
you begin to see, um, howthere's really like sort of
(02:36):
nothing new under the sun.
The same sort of things keephappening, 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 acreative, revolutionary phase
now in advertising.
Branding's going to becomeimportant again.
Everybody's going to be talkingabout creativity and there's
going to be a new technologythat's going to come along
(02:57):
that's going to make creativityeven easier and lo and behold,
and there's going to be unrestin the world and chaos and stuff
like that, because it justseems like it goes together and
lo and behold, that's whathappened.
But that's okay, because in2030, the 2030s are probably
going to ricochet back toperformance marketing and all
(03:20):
that kind of stuff.
And that's just the cycle thatit goes through, and all that
kind of stuff and that's justthe cycle that it goes through.
Anyway, I worked in-house, Iworked for agencies, I worked
freelance for a while.
I became sort of known as acreative Marine, so to speak,
where actually when ad agencieswould get stuck, they would
bring me in and I would kind oflike come up with crazy ideas
(03:41):
and then leave.
And it was great because Ididn't have to get involved with
all the nitty gritty stuff thatI sort of hated.
And I learned very quickly likethat's my special I'm a very
good writer, I can write, I cando those things.
But when it came to the bigstuff, the big ad campaign stuff
, that's where I was bettersuited.
(04:01):
But more importantly, at acertain point I started
realizing and paying a lotcloser attention to how I was
even selling myself and whatpeople thought of me and what my
brand was.
And there was this article TomPeters wrote about your personal
brand and stuff like that.
And what's sort of interestingabout that article that I think
(04:22):
a lot of people forget is thathe wasn't saying that you should
become a brand, just liketarget as a brand, or you know,
diet is a brand or whatever.
He was saying that you shoulduse the principles that
companies use for branding inorder to improve yourself and
(04:42):
make yourself more sellable,because by doing that, you will,
you, you, you.
That will improve your brand.
So he, he, he understood what Ithink a lot of people in
marketing and advertising don'tactually realize about branding,
which, which is that brandingitself is a scam, right, like
(05:05):
branding agencies that say, oh,you need to do all your branding
ahead of time and you need toget your messaging done first.
That's not how brands are built.
That's never been happening.
You look at the greatest brandsthat exist right now.
I always use these examples ofAvis and Tums.
And if I have a stomach acheright now, I'm 45 years old.
When I have a stomachache itcomes to mind it's Alka-Seltzer.
(05:26):
It comes why?
Because they spend billions ofdollars on good advertising.
That showed up on the mostpowerful meeting of the world
television.
It's just, they have that placein my mind right now.
And Avis, we're number two.
We try harder.
They didn't go to a brandingagency and say, okay, what's our
messaging?
And then they determined thatand then that was handed over to
(05:48):
DDB.
No, the ad was successful, soit created the brand.
Branding is about what you doright and it could be created
through in advertising.
It could be created throughyour customer service.
It could be created throughyour product.
Apple does all three right, butdefinitely what it's not.
It's not about your brand andwhat you say.
(06:09):
It is right, and I think thatpeople who understand that and
then go and bring that knowledgeto their personal brand I have
a lot more success with theirpersonal brand than people that
view branding as a thing inmarketing and advertising and
then bringing bringing that toyour personal life.
It becomes a disaster, becauseif you think about what the big
(06:31):
brands are doing, they'respending billions of dollars to
not look like a brand right tobe more relatable to people and
and to a person.
You're already a person, so whythe hell would you want to
become that kind of like a brandin the wrong sense of the word?
You wouldn't.
You're already.
You have a leg up right, and soit's really about taking those
(06:52):
principles and applying it toyourself in order to improve
your brand, and some of thoseare.
Some of those involve, yeah,like are you going to?
What are you going to wear?
What kind of outfits are yougoing to wear?
How are you going to look Arewhat are you going to wear?
What kind of outfits are yougoing to wear?
How are you going to look?
How are you going to talk?
What are you going to talkabout?
A hundred percent.
But some of that also just says, hey, be a little less lazy,
improve your services, becomebetter at something, improve
(07:14):
your skills All the other thingsthat go into branding, so to
speak.
So I started paying a lot moreattention to that, and what
happened was is in 2020, I wasworking in an agency and
(07:34):
coronavirus came and I was acreative director and the two
accounts that I was creativedirector 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 startyour own agency or you have to
find another line of work.
So I'm like I don't know whatelse to do.
So I started my own ad agencyand I based it on sort of brand
(07:54):
response, like combining brandbranding and direct response
advertising, which I think anygood ad does Right and I use
nothing but LinkedIn.
I just said I'm going to juststart posting on LinkedIn every
day and see what happens.
And just, I had maybe a thousandfollowers and in the beginning
(08:15):
I for the first three months,four or five, six likes, then 10
likes, 15 likes, 30 likes, 50likes, a hundred likes post I
found a sort of groove.
I was talking about advertising, people were enjoying my
perspective, and then at somepoint it just blew up.
And then, I think a year later,year later, I wrote a post that
went viral by LinkedInstandards and it really just
(08:37):
sort of took off from them.
But even before that, mycontinual posting was just
getting me work and sometimes inthe beginning it was small work
, but it was building thatmomentum.
And so it was this consistencyright, 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
(08:58):
things, and so within threeyears I eventually built my
agency to some figures and evenhad a small team.
And then 2023 sort of happenedand I kind of burnt out because
I am a creative person, I'm nota business person and just the
whole thing of managing thisagency.
(09:20):
And I kind of saw because Istudy advertising history, I
kind of saw, because I studyadvertising history, I kind of
saw what was going to happen.
I was beginning to understandthat the ad agency model is
really not necessary anymore andit was attracting the wrong
type of clients and it was thestuff I was working on was like
fun and exciting and I kind ofstrangled along in 2023 and what
(09:47):
started happening was is thatpeople started DMing me on
LinkedIn, asking me if I can dofor 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 completelyhonest.
At first, I was like no, like,that's not me.
I'm an ad guy.
I don't want to be that contentproducer like.
(10:08):
I don't want to be like thesesleazy people on linkedin that
are selling these courses andtelling you to get more
followers and stuff, becauseit's all bs like I don't like
that's, that's not me.
Then I just didn't want to dothe advertising anymore.
I found this other companycalled Lytro, which is kind of
(10:29):
like a network of creativesfreelance creatives and you
basically hire them to work onvarious projects and they put
the teams together for you, andso I basically became an ECD
with Lytro and now just all ofmy ad clients have funneled them
through there and that'scontinue to do, because I still
continue to attract advertisingclients and so I bring them into
(10:51):
Lytro and they're more thanhappy.
They love it like it's.
It's a really, really greatprogram.
But what happened was is likeat some point in the middle of
2023, I read this article aboutlate-in ghostwriters and how
they're making $700 an hour andI'm like, oh okay, well, that's
serious money, I can probably dothat.
(11:13):
And so I didn't create awebsite, I didn't offer webinars
, I didn't do any of that bubblecrap did was continue to write
the post, as I always have aboutadvertising, and said, hey, if
you're an ad agency owner or ifyou're, you know working
advertising and you want towrite um posts like this, but
you don't have the time or youdon't know what to write about,
or whatever I said, dm mebecause I'm I'm offering
(11:38):
exclusive, you know, executivetailored ghost writing and coach
writing services.
Um, there's a subtledistinction between the two, you
know.
You know, for a few people, andI got one sign up to sign up,
three sign ups, and the signupsthat I are then are still with
me today.
And then, after a while, thisbegan to form into a business,
(12:01):
and so I teamed up with a friendof mine at, aaron Sikowski, who
is the original person who toldme that I should be doing this
and who I rejected his, his, his, plea.
I said, hey, you know what thisactually turned into a business
.
So, um, he, he comes from theperformance marketing world and
is very familiar with using the,the ads and and the networks on
(12:23):
.
You know, the advertising andperformance marketing stuff on
LinkedIn.
So we teamed up together toform Genius Scouts, which is a
little homage to my advertisinglegend hero, howard Lough
Gossage, who, besides his adagency, had a consultancy called
(12:45):
Generalists, where he just kindof helped brands and people
solve problems by usingcreativity, not necessarily
advertising, but part of whatGeneralists also did was this
thing called genius scouting,where they went out and they
found people who were just likeexceptional people, I'll
introduce them to the businessworld.
Their first client was MarshmanMcLuhan, where they helped make
(13:07):
famous, and so I said that'swhat I want to do.
I basically want to do that.
So we call ourselves JuniorScouts and that's where the
primary focus that I'm in rightnow which is helping executives,
leaders, entrepreneursparticularly in advertising and
(13:29):
marketing but our clients arealso in finance and in other
places the key is that they needto be a sort of dynamic
individual.
We're not dealing with peoplewho are just, who have nothing
going on and are like we knowthat you know there's going to
be too much work that's going tobe needed in order to make this
person famous.
And we use the word famous andwe help them establish their
(13:52):
personal brand, you know, onsocial media and using all the
the the same things that an adagency, a big ad agency for big
brands, would do, and we takethat and apply it to individuals
.
So we're kind of like an adagency for people.
Which is what?
Something that's never existedbefore.
(14:13):
People, executives and andpeople who you know, famous
individuals usually havepublicists and pr people which
handle their relationship withthe media, but what they've
often done is somebody or or anorgan or a company or people to
help them just with thatpersonal brand or just with the
(14:35):
messaging or just withestablishing 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 theconsumer.
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 notthe main crux of what we do with
(14:58):
really doing the advertisingside of it.
But for people, it's reallyinteresting.
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 willjust accelerate the growth.
I view organic linkedin verymuch as a brand awareness play,
more than a direct response play.
It really is about thatconsistency, and so if you can
actually pay to have certainposts 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
(15:56):
they get to to know you, theysee you over and over again,
just just like advertising issupposed to be.
And the results we have evenwithout that, just from the
organic posting when our clientslisten to us, is astounding.
I mean, we have one client, wehave 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
(16:21):
.
You know we have alertedseveral clients that you know um
, uh are getting invited, moreuh and more podcasts are getting
quoted, more in the trade.
Presses are definitely seeingan uptick in clients and easier
job getting clients.
We had one client recently whoactually is not in advertising
(16:42):
at all.
They're actually working thetrades.
They own company, a largecompany in the trades and they
were at a trade show and he'slike 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 uniquestyle, it's such a blah, blah,
blah.
And you know, he reported thatback to me and so we're just,
(17:03):
we're just seeing that acrossthe level.
I mean, granted, there'scheating involved in the sense
that we're only working withpeople 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 thatyou're an interesting person,
you know that you have stuffgoing on, that you're dynamic,
(17:25):
that you've got energy, becauseyou know, like one of the things
we do.
When I say ghostwriting, right.
So ghostwriting is just one ofour services, but we treat
ghostwriting very much liketraditional ghostwriting.
We're not writing the book foryou.
I consider people.
If someone writes a book foryou, that's copywriting right.
If somebody's writing contentfor you, that's copywriting.
(17:47):
Ghostwriting for me is very muchlike I'm your ghost.
We're going to sit, we're goingto 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 clienthas a different relationship of
how that happens.
But you know, I'm pulling theideas out of you.
If I have no ideas to pull outof you, I'm not going to work
(18:08):
with you.
But at the end of the day, Itruly believe that those are the
only types of people that I canhelp, um and so not to say that
somebody who is boring can'treinvent 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, soto speak.
You know, and that's what we wemake love services, so to speak
(18:30):
.
You know, that's what we dealwith.
I started this a year and ahalf ago and I have three
clients that are still with usafter a year and a half and
already, word of mouth to otherpeople I mean, that's the hard
part is like we can't talk aboutour friends.
We can't, you know.
So we rely very heavily on thatword of mouth, and myself as an
(18:51):
example.
Eric Eden (18:51):
So what are the goals of the folks that are hiring
you to help with their personalbrand?
Is it just to raise generalawareness?
Is it to get more speakingopportunities?
Or, like you were saying, likewhen they come into it and
they're like, okay, I want youto do this for me.
What is their desired outcomethat 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 onmy 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 Ihad a daughter, and then we got
divorced.
And then, about two or threeyears into that divorce, I
(19:36):
realized that I made a hugemistake.
But I also realized that inorder to get my wife back, my
ex-wife back, I would have to,it would take a lot of work.
So, unconsciously, what I didwas is I created a campaign, a
rebranding campaign, and Irebranded myself, which which
consisted of everything frombranding to direct response type
marketing, very targeted textmessages to her reminding her
(20:00):
certain if I've already told herall of this you know whether I
manipulated her or not.
We're happy now that it's fine.
But the point is is, you know,you know, writing apology
(20:32):
letters to the peoplesurrounding her, you know, and
then, but then also mostimportantly, working on myself
want and you know, but into abetter 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, andrebranding myself and doing the
messaging and working on mypersonal brand there was to win
back my wife and ultimately itworked.
And and I did it.
I did it.
Um, I know people love thatstory and so, and it's.
(20:57):
And then, honestly, when peoplesay, like, prove to me that it
works.
This is the story that I alwaystell, because this is the most,
uh, useful.
And and when you ask me what'sthe 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 themost important ad campaign, the
(21:17):
best thing?
And then they give this answerand 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, fromincrease, increase leads, get
more leads.
Now we don't necessarily promisethat.
(21:37):
I mean we do offer services tohelp manage that and inbound and
stuff like that.
But again we remind them thatthe main point of the personal
branding is like this is this iswarm, right, this is to warm up
people for the leads, because Iwould notice that I would, I
would post.
You know I post.
(21:59):
I posted every day on LinkedInfor four years and consistently
the people who contacted me onLinkedIn to work with me when I
would go and I would check, wewouldn't be connected.
Some of them wouldn'tnecessarily even be following me
.
They would just be consistentlyseeing my stuff appear from
their followers, likes and stuff.
Some of them were following me,but 99.9% of them had never
(22:21):
liked a post or even commentedon it.
So likes and comments, Irealized very early on, mean
nothing in the sense of thedirect sale.
They're very important becauseotherwise people are not going
to know about you, stuff likethat.
And then, and for the views andstuff.
But I realized very on thatadvertising and marketing is is
(22:42):
not a buy now business.
It's very much you need to keepin 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 wejust we were running people up
there and that you know, if theywant to do, if they want
increased leave, they're goingto have to do some paid ads and
they're going to.
You know, but we make sure thatthe paid ends is all around the
(23:05):
personal brand.
It's like everything is aroundthat person.
So some of it's leads.
Other people are in a certainposition and they want to move
to a higher position or get ajob at a different company for
more money, and so they'rerebranding themselves for that
purpose.
Other people are just trying tocreate more leads, make more
(23:30):
business for their business, notnecessarily for them.
So in the first example, I meanit when it's kind of like
they're the brand, they're thecompany, they're the whatever.
But then some people are likeCEOs of companies, of studios
and this and that, and sothey're trying to make it, or
law firms and whatever, and sothey're trying to make it easier
to get more business for theirbusiness.
(23:53):
And some of them are they'relike entrepreneurs.
They're involved in a lot ofdifferent things.
They're coming, they're coming.
They're actors Ryan Reynolds isnot a client yet, but you know
I don't think he needs me.
But you know they're actorslike Ryan Reynolds and they're
(24:17):
getting involved in the businessworld and so they need that
kind of introduction into thebusiness world and sort of
almost like an agency that helpsthem do that, that helps them
do that academics, actors,musicians as well as executives,
and sort of introducing themand giving them greater
authority.
We rotate around a lot ofdifferent words, but we give
greater authority, greaterinfluence and becoming more
(24:40):
famous to the business world,and we use the word famous on
purpose.
It's a big word and it's a bigpromise word and it repels some
people, but we truly believethat.
Look at the end of the day.
I agree with Bob Hoffman thatadvertising and marketing the
goal that should be, should beto become famous.
You should want youradvertising and marketing to
make you famous, because whenyou are famous, everything
(25:03):
becomes easier and lessexpensive.
Right, when Brad Pitt wants toeat at a certain restaurant
that's booked until next year,but he wants to eat there
tonight, he's going to get itbecause he's famous.
You know, if he created ads forhimself, I'm not saying that he
has to his click-through ratesand stuff like that his CPMs,
(25:26):
all of that will be very lowbecause people already know who
he is.
So being famous makeseverything more easier.
And people say, well, I don'tneed 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 notpromising to get you there, but
that should 100% be your goaland there's nothing wrong with
that.
(25:46):
The universe wants you to befamous.
It wants you to have more sothat you can do more good things
, right?
So we're not afraid to use theword fame, but we oscillate
between the word fame, relevance, authority, and people want
those things for all differentsorts of reasons.
Some of them are egotistical,some of them are, with you know,
(26:07):
egotistical.
Some of them are with a certaingoal in mind, but it's very
clear that, no matter what it is, it will make whatever they're
doing now and in the futureeasier to do.
Eric Eden (26:17):
I think that's a great insight and I can also see
that a lot of executives thatI've worked with at larger
companies, that they have a lotto do they probably don't have
the time to, on their own, sitdown and write for LinkedIn
every day.
They can collaborate withsomeone like you, but I just
(26:39):
can't see a lot of verysuccessful, extremely busy
people carving out the time todo it all on their own.
Like it doesn't seem veryrealistic and it's not a
traditional PR sort of task,right Like.
I've been at companies where alot of times they, the
(27:00):
executives asked oh can youmanage my social media?
Can the marketing team managethe social media for the C-suite
executives?
And what that meant was likeevery time we put out a press
release, we post from theiraccounts on it.
I mean, it wasn't like thisthought leadership, you know,
building authority thing likeyou're talking about.
It was really more just a verycleansing blow.
(27:22):
So I think that this issomething that, because of the
way the algorithms work andbecause the time investment
takes, I don't know that a lotof people who probably could fit
the model that you're talkingabout.
You know I don't think it makessense for them to do it
themselves, right it?
Just from a time perspective,it makes sense that they might
(27:43):
pay someone something like $700an hour, because what is their
time worth, right?
It makes sense to me Is thatsort 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 validpoints.
It's a hundred percent whatI've seen and why we write
particular about who we workwith.
Because, in a way, I want youto be too busy doing things to
do this yourself.
Because, in a way, actually, Itruly believe, actually, that
the best content that you cancreate is not the stuff that
(28:14):
you're going to think and writeon LinkedIn, but the stuff that
you're going to do is going toget talked about.
Right, if you look at the bestpersonal brands, right, the
people who are doing this, thebest, who are not even thinking
in terms of like, like, thehighest level you can get to is
when you're not even actuallydoing personal branding.
I just use it because I have toin order for people to make
(28:36):
sense about what I'm talkingabout.
But, like people like DonaldTrump, elon Musk, they're not
thinking about personal brand.
This is just, in a way, whothey are.
What they understand is how touse the media and how to use
social media both the media andsocial media in order to get
attention right.
I mean, they're taking aplaybook out of the person that
(28:57):
I always the only person thatyou need to really study.
If you want to build yourpersonal brand, which is PT
Barnum, which is do whatever youneed to do to get attention.
As long as what you deliver ishigher end than what you did to
get the attention, you're goingto be fine.
Like Kiki Barnum would humbletons of people.
(29:17):
He would write I got a Fijimermaid.
And then he would write anop-ed in one paper about how
it's fake and then another onein a paper about how it's real
no-transcript.
He would create all thiscontroversy and people would
show up and they'd see it.
They'd see that it's obviouslyfake.
They would realize that PTBarham arranged all of this, but
they didn't care because theywalked into his museum and his
(29:39):
museum was awesome.
There was so much more to seethere, so what he delivered was
always greater than the humbug,and so it became like a thing
People loved getting humbug byPT Barber.
You see that with Donald Trumpand you see that with you know
Elon Musk, in a way, people hateand love it at the same time.
When Musk does something crazy,like Twitter or, you know,
(30:02):
whatever it is, you see thatthese people, they really
understand how to do it andthey're not thinking about
personal brands.
But what else do these peoplehave?
Donald Trump and Elon MuskImmense amounts of energy Right,
and so I believe that they'reactually are heavily involved in
this part, and they have peoplerunning the other stuff.
(30:25):
I think that this is where theyrealize if they have attention
and that they're not doing thethings.
They're not filming themselvesand editing their videos.
There's a video of Donald Trumpactually writing, I think, to a
woman who's writing her tweetsfor her during you see those.
It's a rare glimpse into howhe's not necessarily sitting
(30:46):
there tweeting himself.
I mean, I'm sure he doessometimes, but you see, he's
dictating to somebody.
You know people are weighing ina little bit and he and he's
listening.
But and that's what I mean, theghost writing he they're
somewhat involved in his book.
He even put his ghost rightaround his cover like he didn't
care right, like he.
He just he very much did that,and so having that energy is is
(31:09):
extremely important for um ifyou want your personal, your
brand, to grow.
I always say that there's threetypes of clients that came to me
when I was doing theghostwriting those who didn't
know what to write about, thosewho didn't have time to write
and those who, um, didn't knowhow to write right and they're
(31:30):
right, so you know it, it and wedo, we deal with all three.
It doesn't really matter.
But, but I always tell themthis 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, youare the ad, you are like you are
(31:53):
the product, and so I can't doanything with you if you're not
involved.
And you know, I think, anotherreason Gary Vaynerchuk right,
and Gary Vaynerchuk, definitely,he started this raw by filming.
He did it, he was doing ithimself, filming the videos for
Wine Library and stuff like that.
Now he's got a whole teamaround him, right, but he does
(32:16):
still like I think he lives upto it, I think he still does
post things like on thewhiteboard and you know, and
stuff like that.
He is still very involved inthat process, probably more than
the other things that he'sdoing.
Um, because he's the productand he's he's, he's the personal
brand, and so how could he notbe?
(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 energyand by, I think, too, a lot of
the people who sell personalbranding courses and personal
branding services on LinkedInwho are like then selling you a
course and saying, hey, you cango do it yourselves.
(32:58):
Be very careful about thatBecause, first of all, it's the
easiest thing to sell rightSelling LinkedIn, on linkedin,
or selling, you know, sellingthose services, selling
copywriting, you know, sellingcopywriting through copywriting
is, psychologically, that can bevery tricky, like can trick you
very, very well.
(33:19):
But take a very good look at thepeople who are doing it.
You'll notice that they allhave something in common.
They all have a lot of energyand they all have.
They're all very dynamic,they're all very good in front
of the camera, they're all verylike.
They have a personality alreadythat they can use right.
There's something about themthat's magnetic, and so you have
(33:39):
to be very honest with yourself.
If you don't have those things,then you need to find a way to
work on those things and buildthose things and create those
things.
By the way, ai is not going tohelp you do that.
So if you do cookie cutter AIcontent, if you buy their
service to take your thoughtsand have AI churn it out.
You're never going to build apersonal brand, you're never
going to build a unique voice,you're never going to do those
things.
So I would actually say, if youdon't have those things, you
(34:10):
have those things you need.
You need to never not use aifor an entire year.
I mean you need to write yourown posts, think for yourself,
struggle.
Nothing good ever came out fromdoing things the easier way in
the beginning and build apersonal brand and then use ai
to to leverage that and to scalethat right, because ai can
mimic, but it can't create you,so it needs something to go off.
(34:31):
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, ifyou don't have a unique voice
and, by the way, a lot of peoplesay, oh, a lot of my unique
voice I had.
Most people do not have aunique voice because unique
voice is not your word choice orthis or that.
Writing is about how you thinkwriting is thinking.
Somebody asked me what the twothings are.
I've had two things to helpbuild a personal brand get.
(35:04):
When you're getting started,the only thing that you need to
figure out in the beginning iswhat you stand for and what you
stand against, and then usethose two things to then write
all of your content.
A piece can be about what youstand against and it can be
about what you stand for, andjust make sure that those things
are damn interesting and don'tbe afraid to be opinionated and
(35:26):
do not be afraid that peoplewill disagree with you, because
that is where you get theengagement, that is where you
get the views, that is where youget all of these things.
I say stupid things all the time.
If the key is is that if yousay something stupid or wrong or
whatever and somebody correctsyou, then go and be like oh my
God, you're right, I neverthought of it that way.
(35:48):
Thank you so much.
And that's going to shock thehell out of people, because very
few people actually admit thatthey'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 apart, uh, onto a chat recording
that everything becomes contentat that point, right, and and
(36:09):
you just you know it takesenergy, 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 lovethat advice find out what you
stand for and what you standagainst.
I think that's really great.
To defining a unique view.
Let me you on this journeyyou've been on for developing
your own personal brand andhelping others do it.
(36:34):
What's the most valuable thingthat you've learned on this
journey?
Justin Oberman (36:39):
Well, I think the most valuable thing that
I've learned is thatoverthinking is your worst enemy
.
I have clients in the beginning, you know, they're always like
they go over every single postas if it's in a beat, like a
Superbowl ad.
You know, do I really want tosay that?
(36:59):
Do I really want to say thatright now, that I really want
right?
And they really overthinkthings.
They forget about how they readother people's posts, how they
read like they think thateveryone's gonna sit there with
a magnifying glass and obsessover 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 areobsessed with me.
(37:20):
For example and this is, thisis always my approach with my
clients is very unstructured,right, it's.
We speak once, once a week ortwice a week, depending on the
package I and say what are wetalking about this week?
Because the way people averagepeople use social media, they
don't plan their content.
My mom doesn't plan her content.
(37:42):
She's like well, next week I'mgoing to, you know, so-and-so's
wedding, so I got to make sureto post three pictures and this
and that no, right, and?
But that's the content.
That's what you're competingagainst.
So Howard Gossett has this greatthing that I think that I
brought down into the personalbranding world as well, which is
(38:02):
that advertising doesn't.
Your ad is not competing withother ads.
What is advertising?
Advertising is a message thatyou pay for to appear on
somebody else's platform ormedia, right, as though it was
like a TV commercial, or it's anad on social media or whatever.
(38:22):
Right, an organic social mediapost is not advertising because
it's not paid for.
Right, but even then, like, inthe sense that there's, it has a
marketing goal or whatever, forthe sake of that purpose, let's
call it advertise.
Right, those posts are notcompeting with other posts that
are like it.
(38:43):
You're not competing with otherpeople trying to sell the same
thing as you are.
You're competing with thecontent of that platform.
So, if you're making a TVcommercial, you're competing
with the television.
If you're, if you're creating aprint ad, you're competing with
the articles.
If you're creating social mediaposts, you're competing with
the the normal, organic use ofthat platform.
(39:07):
Right?
Um, you're competing againstsomebody you know well, you're
competing against somebodystalking their ex-girlfriend.
You're competing against, youknow, 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 shouldmatch the organic content of
(39:32):
that platform as closely aspossible and should strive to be
better than it, in that sense,was ever tender, than the shows,
that they were on right, thatthey interrupted their, you know
, with better storytelling, orthat were equally, there are
some magazines that were morefamous for their ads right Than
(39:53):
the articles in it, or, like theNew Yorker was famous for
having both.
When it comes to social media,and that means that your
marketing or advertising kind ofneeds to be thoughtless, as
thoughtless, as unstructured aswhatever as a social media post
is right.
And so, with my clients, wedon't use content calendars, we
(40:15):
don't plan things out.
We just what are we talkingabout right now?
You know when, when the jai warthing came out, I was like,
okay, what do we get?
What do you want to say?
What's your opinion about thejai war thing?
Let's post it.
Everybody's talking about it.
I don't want to join thatconversation.
I'm like who the hell do youthink you are?
People are sitting therewaiting for you.
You need to say something,right, but let's make it
(40:39):
interesting.
Let's find something that'slike a different angle on it
that's going to make people stopand consider you in the noise.
So on it.
That's going to make peoplelike, stop and consider you in
the noise.
So that's the.
That's the important thing.
I want to just mention oneother thing because I remember
it.
You know so, my, my ad legends,our gossage, david ogilvy if
you work in advertising, you runan advertising agency.
(41:01):
Those are the two, but there'sa third people that you should
study PT Barham.
Pt Barham is a marketing machine.
He invented brand campaigns.
He invented personal branding.
He invented so many of the PRpublicity.
He invented so many of thethings that we do today.
He did it all himself.
He was just a man.
(41:24):
Year in business, after you payyourself and pay the loans and
whatever, you take 100% of yourprofit and you put it towards
what he called publicity, whichwas the word for marketing Back
then.
Publicity is like so much showyou should put it all in there,
to the point where you don'teven know where to spend it.
And so you start making up,coming up with extravagant ways
(41:45):
to do it, and he gives examplesof like the weird things that he
would do in his book, hisautobiography.
You study him, you study HowardGossage, but a really good
person studies David Ogilvie.
David Ogilvie was the master atusing personal branding,
personal publicity, so that'ssomebody who you should study
very, very well.
Eric Eden (42:06):
Amazing.
This has been an awesomediscussion on personal branding.
I'm going to link to yourLinkedIn so people can get in
touch if they'd like to learnmore, and we really appreciate
you sharing all of your insightsin these awesome stories with
us today.
Thank you so much.
We have an awesome guest today and we have some
great topics to talk about.
Justin, welcome to the show.
Justin Oberman (00:09):
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited to talk.
I always just I love talkingabout marketing advertising.
Eric Eden (00:17):
So why don't we start off, give us a minute or two
about who you are and what youdo?
Justin Oberman (00:25):
Sure, my name is Justin Oberman, so I kind of
got into advertising andmarketing later in life than
most people.
I work for my family'sinsurance company, generation
one to fourth generationinsurance company.
At this point I think it's over100 years old.
(00:45):
My brother runs it now.
But I think it's an importantpart of the story where,
basically, I grew up fourthgeneration of three generations
above me of insurance sales andif there's anybody who knows how
to sell well, it's insurancepeople.
Granted, there is a differencebetween selling one-on-one and
(01:08):
selling to a group.
Right, that's a differencebetween as close and married as
salespeople or marketing peopleare.
That is one of the subtledifferences between the two.
But I sort of felt myselfgravitating towards that.
So they said oh, you should bea copywriter.
I got trained on sort of thetail end of the Mad Men era
(01:31):
Social was just becoming a thing, but print and commercials and
TV commercials and all thatstuff.
As soon as the digital stuffhappened, I immediately
recognized the opportunity,thanks to David Ogilvie who
pointed out that he actuallybelieved that all copywriters
should start in the direct maildepartment.
So I saw immediately that thedigital ad stuff was going to
(01:52):
become very direct marketing,what they call now performance
marketing heavy.
So I said, oh, I want to getinto that.
I actually did some work indirect mail for a while and
really just then sort ofescalated between the two and I
think it turned me into a veryversatile copywriter where I
could go and I could write abrand campaign and I could also
(02:13):
write a direct marketingcampaign.
And then I also became sort ofobsessed with the history of
advertising and pretty much haveread anything that you confide
on it and pretty much have readit every, anything that you
confide on on it.
That gave me a sort ofperspective that I think a lot
of people don't have, becauseyou begin to see the cycles and
you begin to see, um, howthere's really like sort of
(02:36):
nothing new under the sun.
The same sort of things keephappening, 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 acreative, revolutionary phase
now in advertising.
Branding's going to becomeimportant again.
Everybody's going to be talkingabout creativity and there's
going to be a new technologythat's going to come along
(02:57):
that's going to make creativityeven easier and lo and behold,
and there's going to be unrestin the world and chaos and stuff
like that, because it justseems like it goes together and
lo and behold, that's whathappened.
But that's okay, because in2030, the 2030s are probably
going to ricochet back toperformance marketing and all
(03:20):
that kind of stuff.
And that's just the cycle thatit goes through, and all that
kind of stuff and that's justthe cycle that it goes through.
Anyway, I worked in-house, Iworked for agencies, I worked
freelance for a while.
I became sort of known as acreative Marine, so to speak,
where actually when ad agencieswould get stuck, they would
bring me in and I would kind oflike come up with crazy ideas
(03:41):
and then leave.
And it was great because Ididn't have to get involved with
all the nitty gritty stuff thatI sort of hated.
And I learned very quickly likethat's my special I'm a very
good writer, I can write, I cando those things.
But when it came to the bigstuff, the big ad campaign stuff
, that's where I was bettersuited.
(04:01):
But more importantly, at acertain point I started
realizing and paying a lotcloser attention to how I was
even selling myself and whatpeople thought of me and what my
brand was.
And there was this article TomPeters wrote about your personal
brand and stuff like that.
And what's sort of interestingabout that article that I think
(04:22):
a lot of people forget is thathe wasn't saying that you should
become a brand, just liketarget as a brand, or you know,
diet is a brand or whatever.
He was saying that you shoulduse the principles that
companies use for branding inorder to improve yourself and
(04:42):
make yourself more sellable,because by doing that, you will,
you, you, you.
That will improve your brand.
So he, he, he understood what Ithink a lot of people in
marketing and advertising don'tactually realize about branding,
which, which is that brandingitself is a scam, right, like
(05:05):
branding agencies that say, oh,you need to do all your branding
ahead of time and you need toget your messaging done first.
That's not how brands are built.
That's never been happening.
You look at the greatest brandsthat exist right now.
I always use these examples ofAvis and Tums.
And if I have a stomach acheright now, I'm 45 years old.
When I have a stomachache itcomes to mind it's Alka-Seltzer.
(05:26):
It comes why?
Because they spend billions ofdollars on good advertising.
That showed up on the mostpowerful meeting of the world
television.
It's just, they have that placein my mind right now.
And Avis, we're number two.
We try harder.
They didn't go to a brandingagency and say, okay, what's our
messaging?
And then they determined thatand then that was handed over to
(05:48):
DDB.
No, the ad was successful, soit created the brand.
Branding is about what you doright and it could be created
through in advertising.
It could be created throughyour customer service.
It could be created throughyour product.
Apple does all three right, butdefinitely what it's not.
It's not about your brand andwhat you say.
(06:09):
It is right, and I think thatpeople who understand that and
then go and bring that knowledgeto their personal brand I have
a lot more success with theirpersonal brand than people that
view branding as a thing inmarketing and advertising and
then bringing bringing that toyour personal life.
It becomes a disaster, becauseif you think about what the big
(06:31):
brands are doing, they'respending billions of dollars to
not look like a brand right tobe more relatable to people and
and to a person.
You're already a person, so whythe hell would you want to
become that kind of like a brandin the wrong sense of the word?
You wouldn't.
You're already.
You have a leg up right, and soit's really about taking those
(06:52):
principles and applying it toyourself in order to improve
your brand, and some of thoseare.
Some of those involve, yeah,like are you going to?
What are you going to wear?
What kind of outfits are yougoing to wear?
How are you going to look Arewhat are you going to wear?
What kind of outfits are yougoing to wear?
How are you going to look?
How are you going to talk?
What are you going to talkabout?
A hundred percent.
But some of that also just says, hey, be a little less lazy,
improve your services, becomebetter at something, improve
(07:14):
your skills All the other thingsthat go into branding, so to
speak.
So I started paying a lot moreattention to that, and what
happened was is in 2020, I wasworking in an agency and
(07:34):
coronavirus came and I was acreative director and the two
accounts that I was creativedirector 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 startyour own agency or you have to
find another line of work.
So I'm like I don't know whatelse to do.
So I started my own ad agencyand I based it on sort of brand
(07:54):
response, like combining brandbranding and direct response
advertising, which I think anygood ad does Right and I use
nothing but LinkedIn.
I just said I'm going to juststart posting on LinkedIn every
day and see what happens.
And just, I had maybe a thousandfollowers and in the beginning
(08:15):
I for the first three months,four or five, six likes, then 10
likes, 15 likes, 30 likes, 50likes, a hundred likes post I
found a sort of groove.
I was talking about advertising, people were enjoying my
perspective, and then at somepoint it just blew up.
And then, I think a year later,year later, I wrote a post that
went viral by LinkedInstandards and it really just
(08:37):
sort of took off from them.
But even before that, mycontinual posting was just
getting me work and sometimes inthe beginning it was small work
, but it was building thatmomentum.
And so it was this consistencyright, 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
(08:58):
things, and so within threeyears I eventually built my
agency to some figures and evenhad a small team.
And then 2023 sort of happenedand I kind of burnt out because
I am a creative person, I'm nota business person and just the
whole thing of managing thisagency.
(09:20):
And I kind of saw because Istudy advertising history, I
kind of saw, because I studyadvertising history, I kind of
saw what was going to happen.
I was beginning to understandthat the ad agency model is
really not necessary anymore andit was attracting the wrong
type of clients and it was thestuff I was working on was like
fun and exciting and I kind ofstrangled along in 2023 and what
(09:47):
started happening was is thatpeople started DMing me on
LinkedIn, asking me if I can dofor 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 completelyhonest.
At first, I was like no, like,that's not me.
I'm an ad guy.
I don't want to be that contentproducer like.
(10:08):
I don't want to be like thesesleazy people on linkedin that
are selling these courses andtelling you to get more
followers and stuff, becauseit's all bs like I don't like
that's, that's not me.
Then I just didn't want to dothe advertising anymore.
I found this other companycalled Lytro, which is kind of
(10:29):
like a network of creativesfreelance creatives and you
basically hire them to work onvarious projects and they put
the teams together for you, andso I basically became an ECD
with Lytro and now just all ofmy ad clients have funneled them
through there and that'scontinue to do, because I still
continue to attract advertisingclients and so I bring them into
(10:51):
Lytro and they're more thanhappy.
They love it like it's.
It's a really, really greatprogram.
But what happened was is likeat some point in the middle of
2023, I read this article aboutlate-in ghostwriters and how
they're making $700 an hour andI'm like, oh okay, well, that's
serious money, I can probably dothat.
(11:13):
And so I didn't create awebsite, I didn't offer webinars
, I didn't do any of that bubblecrap did was continue to write
the post, as I always have aboutadvertising, and said, hey, if
you're an ad agency owner or ifyou're, you know working
advertising and you want towrite um posts like this, but
you don't have the time or youdon't know what to write about,
or whatever I said, dm mebecause I'm I'm offering
(11:38):
exclusive, you know, executivetailored ghost writing and coach
writing services.
Um, there's a subtledistinction between the two, you
know.
You know, for a few people, andI got one sign up to sign up,
three sign ups, and the signupsthat I are then are still with
me today.
And then, after a while, thisbegan to form into a business,
(12:01):
and so I teamed up with a friendof mine at, aaron Sikowski, who
is the original person who toldme that I should be doing this
and who I rejected his, his, his, plea.
I said, hey, you know what thisactually turned into a business
.
So, um, he, he comes from theperformance marketing world and
is very familiar with using the,the ads and and the networks on
(12:23):
.
You know, the advertising andperformance marketing stuff on
LinkedIn.
So we teamed up together toform Genius Scouts, which is a
little homage to my advertisinglegend hero, howard Lough
Gossage, who, besides his adagency, had a consultancy called
(12:45):
Generalists, where he just kindof helped brands and people
solve problems by usingcreativity, not necessarily
advertising, but part of whatGeneralists also did was this
thing called genius scouting,where they went out and they
found people who were just likeexceptional people, I'll
introduce them to the businessworld.
Their first client was MarshmanMcLuhan, where they helped make
(13:07):
famous, and so I said that'swhat I want to do.
I basically want to do that.
So we call ourselves JuniorScouts and that's where the
primary focus that I'm in rightnow which is helping executives,
leaders, entrepreneursparticularly in advertising and
(13:29):
marketing but our clients arealso in finance and in other
places the key is that they needto be a sort of dynamic
individual.
We're not dealing with peoplewho are just, who have nothing
going on and are like we knowthat you know there's going to
be too much work that's going tobe needed in order to make this
person famous.
And we use the word famous andwe help them establish their
(13:52):
personal brand, you know, onsocial media and using all the
the the same things that an adagency, a big ad agency for big
brands, would do, and we takethat and apply it to individuals
.
So we're kind of like an adagency for people.
Which is what?
Something that's never existedbefore.
(14:13):
People, executives and andpeople who you know, famous
individuals usually havepublicists and pr people which
handle their relationship withthe media, but what they've
often done is somebody or or anorgan or a company or people to
help them just with thatpersonal brand or just with the
(14:35):
messaging or just withestablishing 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 theconsumer.
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 notthe main crux of what we do with
(14:58):
really doing the advertisingside of it.
But for people, it's reallyinteresting.
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 willjust accelerate the growth.
I view organic linkedin verymuch as a brand awareness play,
more than a direct response play.
It really is about thatconsistency, and so if you can
actually pay to have certainposts 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
(15:56):
they get to to know you, theysee you over and over again,
just just like advertising issupposed to be.
And the results we have evenwithout that, just from the
organic posting when our clientslisten to us, is astounding.
I mean, we have one client, wehave 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
(16:21):
.
You know we have alertedseveral clients that you know um
, uh are getting invited, moreuh and more podcasts are getting
quoted, more in the trade.
Presses are definitely seeingan uptick in clients and easier
job getting clients.
We had one client recently whoactually is not in advertising
(16:42):
at all.
They're actually working thetrades.
They own company, a largecompany in the trades and they
were at a trade show and he'slike 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 uniquestyle, it's such a blah, blah,
blah.
And you know, he reported thatback to me and so we're just,
(17:03):
we're just seeing that acrossthe level.
I mean, granted, there'scheating involved in the sense
that we're only working withpeople 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 thatyou're an interesting person,
you know that you have stuffgoing on, that you're dynamic,
(17:25):
that you've got energy, becauseyou know, like one of the things
we do.
When I say ghostwriting, right.
So ghostwriting is just one ofour services, but we treat
ghostwriting very much liketraditional ghostwriting.
We're not writing the book foryou.
I consider people.
If someone writes a book foryou, that's copywriting right.
If somebody's writing contentfor you, that's copywriting.
(17:47):
Ghostwriting for me is very muchlike I'm your ghost.
We're going to sit, we're goingto 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 clienthas a different relationship of
how that happens.
But you know, I'm pulling theideas out of you.
If I have no ideas to pull outof you, I'm not going to work
(18:08):
with you.
But at the end of the day, Itruly believe that those are the
only types of people that I canhelp, um and so not to say that
somebody who is boring can'treinvent 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, soto speak.
You know, and that's what we wemake love services, so to speak
(18:30):
.
You know, that's what we dealwith.
I started this a year and ahalf ago and I have three
clients that are still with usafter a year and a half and
already, word of mouth to otherpeople I mean, that's the hard
part is like we can't talk aboutour friends.
We can't, you know.
So we rely very heavily on thatword of mouth, and myself as an
(18:51):
example.
Eric Eden (18:51):
So what are the goals of the folks that are hiring
you to help with their personalbrand?
Is it just to raise generalawareness?
Is it to get more speakingopportunities?
Or, like you were saying, likewhen they come into it and
they're like, okay, I want youto do this for me.
What is their desired outcomethat 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 onmy 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 Ihad a daughter, and then we got
divorced.
And then, about two or threeyears into that divorce, I
(19:36):
realized that I made a hugemistake.
But I also realized that inorder to get my wife back, my
ex-wife back, I would have to,it would take a lot of work.
So, unconsciously, what I didwas is I created a campaign, a
rebranding campaign, and Irebranded myself, which which
consisted of everything frombranding to direct response type
marketing, very targeted textmessages to her reminding her
(20:00):
certain if I've already told herall of this you know whether I
manipulated her or not.
We're happy now that it's fine.
But the point is is, you know,you know, writing apology
(20:32):
letters to the peoplesurrounding her, you know, and
then, but then also mostimportantly, working on myself
want and you know, but into abetter 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, andrebranding myself and doing the
messaging and working on mypersonal brand there was to win
back my wife and ultimately itworked.
And and I did it.
I did it.
Um, I know people love thatstory and so, and it's.
(20:57):
And then, honestly, when peoplesay, like, prove to me that it
works.
This is the story that I alwaystell, because this is the most,
uh, useful.
And and when you ask me what'sthe 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 themost important ad campaign, the
(21:17):
best thing?
And then they give this answerand 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, fromincrease, increase leads, get
more leads.
Now we don't necessarily promisethat.
(21:37):
I mean we do offer services tohelp manage that and inbound and
stuff like that.
But again we remind them thatthe main point of the personal
branding is like this is this iswarm, right, this is to warm up
people for the leads, because Iwould notice that I would, I
would post.
You know I post.
(21:59):
I posted every day on LinkedInfor four years and consistently
the people who contacted me onLinkedIn to work with me when I
would go and I would check, wewouldn't be connected.
Some of them wouldn'tnecessarily even be following me
.
They would just be consistentlyseeing my stuff appear from
their followers, likes and stuff.
Some of them were following me,but 99.9% of them had never
(22:21):
liked a post or even commentedon it.
So likes and comments, Irealized very early on, mean
nothing in the sense of thedirect sale.
They're very important becauseotherwise people are not going
to know about you, stuff likethat.
And then, and for the views andstuff.
But I realized very on thatadvertising and marketing is is
(22:42):
not a buy now business.
It's very much you need to keepin 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 wejust we were running people up
there and that you know, if theywant to do, if they want
increased leave, they're goingto have to do some paid ads and
they're going to.
You know, but we make sure thatthe paid ends is all around the
(23:05):
personal brand.
It's like everything is aroundthat person.
So some of it's leads.
Other people are in a certainposition and they want to move
to a higher position or get ajob at a different company for
more money, and so they'rerebranding themselves for that
purpose.
Other people are just trying tocreate more leads, make more
(23:30):
business for their business, notnecessarily for them.
So in the first example, I meanit when it's kind of like
they're the brand, they're thecompany, they're the whatever.
But then some people are likeCEOs of companies, of studios
and this and that, and sothey're trying to make it, or
law firms and whatever, and sothey're trying to make it easier
to get more business for theirbusiness.
(23:53):
And some of them are they'relike entrepreneurs.
They're involved in a lot ofdifferent things.
They're coming, they're coming.
They're actors Ryan Reynolds isnot a client yet, but you know
I don't think he needs me.
But you know they're actorslike Ryan Reynolds and they're
(24:17):
getting involved in the businessworld and so they need that
kind of introduction into thebusiness world and sort of
almost like an agency that helpsthem do that, that helps them
do that academics, actors,musicians as well as executives,
and sort of introducing themand giving them greater
authority.
We rotate around a lot ofdifferent words, but we give
greater authority, greaterinfluence and becoming more
(24:40):
famous to the business world,and we use the word famous on
purpose.
It's a big word and it's a bigpromise word and it repels some
people, but we truly believethat.
Look at the end of the day.
I agree with Bob Hoffman thatadvertising and marketing the
goal that should be, should beto become famous.
You should want youradvertising and marketing to
make you famous, because whenyou are famous, everything
(25:03):
becomes easier and lessexpensive.
Right, when Brad Pitt wants toeat at a certain restaurant
that's booked until next year,but he wants to eat there
tonight, he's going to get itbecause he's famous.
You know, if he created ads forhimself, I'm not saying that he
has to his click-through ratesand stuff like that his CPMs,
(25:26):
all of that will be very lowbecause people already know who
he is.
So being famous makeseverything more easier.
And people say, well, I don'tneed 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 notpromising to get you there, but
that should 100% be your goaland there's nothing wrong with
that.
(25:46):
The universe wants you to befamous.
It wants you to have more sothat you can do more good things
, right?
So we're not afraid to use theword fame, but we oscillate
between the word fame, relevance, authority, and people want
those things for all differentsorts of reasons.
Some of them are egotistical,some of them are, with you know,
(26:07):
egotistical.
Some of them are with a certaingoal in mind, but it's very
clear that, no matter what it is, it will make whatever they're
doing now and in the futureeasier to do.
Eric Eden (26:17):
I think that's a great insight and I can also see
that a lot of executives thatI've worked with at larger
companies, that they have a lotto do they probably don't have
the time to, on their own, sitdown and write for LinkedIn
every day.
They can collaborate withsomeone like you, but I just
(26:39):
can't see a lot of verysuccessful, extremely busy
people carving out the time todo it all on their own.
Like it doesn't seem veryrealistic and it's not a
traditional PR sort of task,right Like.
I've been at companies where alot of times they, the
(27:00):
executives asked oh can youmanage my social media?
Can the marketing team managethe social media for the C-suite
executives?
And what that meant was likeevery time we put out a press
release, we post from theiraccounts on it.
I mean, it wasn't like thisthought leadership, you know,
building authority thing likeyou're talking about.
It was really more just a verycleansing blow.
(27:22):
So I think that this issomething that, because of the
way the algorithms work andbecause the time investment
takes, I don't know that a lotof people who probably could fit
the model that you're talkingabout.
You know I don't think it makessense for them to do it
themselves, right it?
Just from a time perspective,it makes sense that they might
(27:43):
pay someone something like $700an hour, because what is their
time worth, right?
It makes sense to me Is thatsort 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 validpoints.
It's a hundred percent whatI've seen and why we write
particular about who we workwith.
Because, in a way, I want youto be too busy doing things to
do this yourself.
Because, in a way, actually, Itruly believe, actually, that
the best content that you cancreate is not the stuff that
(28:14):
you're going to think and writeon LinkedIn, but the stuff that
you're going to do is going toget talked about.
Right, if you look at the bestpersonal brands, right, the
people who are doing this, thebest, who are not even thinking
in terms of like, like, thehighest level you can get to is
when you're not even actuallydoing personal branding.
I just use it because I have toin order for people to make
(28:36):
sense about what I'm talkingabout.
But, like people like DonaldTrump, elon Musk, they're not
thinking about personal brand.
This is just, in a way, whothey are.
What they understand is how touse the media and how to use
social media both the media andsocial media in order to get
attention right.
I mean, they're taking aplaybook out of the person that
(28:57):
I always the only person thatyou need to really study.
If you want to build yourpersonal brand, which is PT
Barnum, which is do whatever youneed to do to get attention.
As long as what you deliver ishigher end than what you did to
get the attention, you're goingto be fine.
Like Kiki Barnum would humbletons of people.
(29:17):
He would write I got a Fijimermaid.
And then he would write anop-ed in one paper about how
it's fake and then another onein a paper about how it's real
no-transcript.
He would create all thiscontroversy and people would
show up and they'd see it.
They'd see that it's obviouslyfake.
They would realize that PTBarham arranged all of this, but
they didn't care because theywalked into his museum and his
(29:39):
museum was awesome.
There was so much more to seethere, so what he delivered was
always greater than the humbug,and so it became like a thing
People loved getting humbug byPT Barber.
You see that with Donald Trumpand you see that with you know
Elon Musk, in a way, people hateand love it at the same time.
When Musk does something crazy,like Twitter or, you know,
(30:02):
whatever it is, you see thatthese people, they really
understand how to do it andthey're not thinking about
personal brands.
But what else do these peoplehave?
Donald Trump and Elon MuskImmense amounts of energy Right,
and so I believe that they'reactually are heavily involved in
this part, and they have peoplerunning the other stuff.
(30:25):
I think that this is where theyrealize if they have attention
and that they're not doing thethings.
They're not filming themselvesand editing their videos.
There's a video of Donald Trumpactually writing, I think, to a
woman who's writing her tweetsfor her during you see those.
It's a rare glimpse into howhe's not necessarily sitting
(30:46):
there tweeting himself.
I mean, I'm sure he doessometimes, but you see, he's
dictating to somebody.
You know people are weighing ina little bit and he and he's
listening.
But and that's what I mean, theghost writing he they're
somewhat involved in his book.
He even put his ghost rightaround his cover like he didn't
care right, like he.
He just he very much did that,and so having that energy is is
(31:09):
extremely important for um ifyou want your personal, your
brand, to grow.
I always say that there's threetypes of clients that came to me
when I was doing theghostwriting those who didn't
know what to write about, thosewho didn't have time to write
and those who, um, didn't knowhow to write right and they're
(31:30):
right, so you know it, it and wedo, we deal with all three.
It doesn't really matter.
But, but I always tell themthis 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, youare the ad, you are like you are
(31:53):
the product, and so I can't doanything with you if you're not
involved.
And you know, I think, anotherreason Gary Vaynerchuk right,
and Gary Vaynerchuk, definitely,he started this raw by filming.
He did it, he was doing ithimself, filming the videos for
Wine Library and stuff like that.
Now he's got a whole teamaround him, right, but he does
(32:16):
still like I think he lives upto it, I think he still does
post things like on thewhiteboard and you know, and
stuff like that.
He is still very involved inthat process, probably more than
the other things that he'sdoing.
Um, because he's the productand he's he's, he's the personal
brand, and so how could he notbe?
(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 energyand by, I think, too, a lot of
the people who sell personalbranding courses and personal
branding services on LinkedInwho are like then selling you a
course and saying, hey, you cango do it yourselves.
(32:58):
Be very careful about thatBecause, first of all, it's the
easiest thing to sell rightSelling LinkedIn, on linkedin,
or selling, you know, sellingthose services, selling
copywriting, you know, sellingcopywriting through copywriting
is, psychologically, that can bevery tricky, like can trick you
very, very well.
(33:19):
But take a very good look at thepeople who are doing it.
You'll notice that they allhave something in common.
They all have a lot of energyand they all have.
They're all very dynamic,they're all very good in front
of the camera, they're all verylike.
They have a personality alreadythat they can use right.
There's something about themthat's magnetic, and so you have
(33:39):
to be very honest with yourself.
If you don't have those things,then you need to find a way to
work on those things and buildthose things and create those
things.
By the way, ai is not going tohelp you do that.
So if you do cookie cutter AIcontent, if you buy their
service to take your thoughtsand have AI churn it out.
You're never going to build apersonal brand, you're never
going to build a unique voice,you're never going to do those
things.
So I would actually say, if youdon't have those things, you
(34:10):
have those things you need.
You need to never not use aifor an entire year.
I mean you need to write yourown posts, think for yourself,
struggle.
Nothing good ever came out fromdoing things the easier way in
the beginning and build apersonal brand and then use ai
to to leverage that and to scalethat right, because ai can
mimic, but it can't create you,so it needs something to go off.
(34:31):
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, ifyou don't have a unique voice
and, by the way, a lot of peoplesay, oh, a lot of my unique
voice I had.
Most people do not have aunique voice because unique
voice is not your word choice orthis or that.
Writing is about how you thinkwriting is thinking.
Somebody asked me what the twothings are.
I've had two things to helpbuild a personal brand get.
(35:04):
When you're getting started,the only thing that you need to
figure out in the beginning iswhat you stand for and what you
stand against, and then usethose two things to then write
all of your content.
A piece can be about what youstand against and it can be
about what you stand for, andjust make sure that those things
are damn interesting and don'tbe afraid to be opinionated and
(35:26):
do not be afraid that peoplewill disagree with you, because
that is where you get theengagement, that is where you
get the views, that is where youget all of these things.
I say stupid things all the time.
If the key is is that if yousay something stupid or wrong or
whatever and somebody correctsyou, then go and be like oh my
God, you're right, I neverthought of it that way.
(35:48):
Thank you so much.
And that's going to shock thehell out of people, because very
few people actually admit thatthey'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 apart, uh, onto a chat recording
that everything becomes contentat that point, right, and and
(36:09):
you just you know it takesenergy, 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 lovethat advice find out what you
stand for and what you standagainst.
I think that's really great.
To defining a unique view.
Let me you on this journeyyou've been on for developing
your own personal brand andhelping others do it.
(36:34):
What's the most valuable thingthat you've learned on this
journey?
Justin Oberman (36:39):
Well, I think the most valuable thing that
I've learned is thatoverthinking is your worst enemy
.
I have clients in the beginning, you know, they're always like
they go over every single postas if it's in a beat, like a
Superbowl ad.
You know, do I really want tosay that?
(36:59):
Do I really want to say thatright now, that I really want
right?
And they really overthinkthings.
They forget about how they readother people's posts, how they
read like they think thateveryone's gonna sit there with
a magnifying glass and obsessover 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 areobsessed with me.
(37:20):
For example and this is, thisis always my approach with my
clients is very unstructured,right, it's.
We speak once, once a week ortwice a week, depending on the
package I and say what are wetalking about this week?
Because the way people averagepeople use social media, they
don't plan their content.
My mom doesn't plan her content.
(37:42):
She's like well, next week I'mgoing to, you know, so-and-so's
wedding, so I got to make sureto post three pictures and this
and that no, right, and?
But that's the content.
That's what you're competingagainst.
So Howard Gossett has this greatthing that I think that I
brought down into the personalbranding world as well, which is
(38:02):
that advertising doesn't.
Your ad is not competing withother ads.
What is advertising?
Advertising is a message thatyou pay for to appear on
somebody else's platform ormedia, right, as though it was
like a TV commercial, or it's anad on social media or whatever.
(38:22):
Right, an organic social mediapost is not advertising because
it's not paid for.
Right, but even then, like, inthe sense that there's, it has a
marketing goal or whatever, forthe sake of that purpose, let's
call it advertise.
Right, those posts are notcompeting with other posts that
are like it.
(38:43):
You're not competing with otherpeople trying to sell the same
thing as you are.
You're competing with thecontent of that platform.
So, if you're making a TVcommercial, you're competing
with the television.
If you're, if you're creating aprint ad, you're competing with
the articles.
If you're creating social mediaposts, you're competing with
the the normal, organic use ofthat platform.
(39:07):
Right?
Um, you're competing againstsomebody you know well, you're
competing against somebodystalking their ex-girlfriend.
You're competing against, youknow, 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 shouldmatch the organic content of
(39:32):
that platform as closely aspossible and should strive to be
better than it, in that sense,was ever tender, than the shows,
that they were on right, thatthey interrupted their, you know
, with better storytelling, orthat were equally, there are
some magazines that were morefamous for their ads right Than
(39:53):
the articles in it, or, like theNew Yorker was famous for
having both.
When it comes to social media,and that means that your
marketing or advertising kind ofneeds to be thoughtless, as
thoughtless, as unstructured aswhatever as a social media post
is right.
And so, with my clients, wedon't use content calendars, we
(40:15):
don't plan things out.
We just what are we talkingabout right now?
You know when, when the jai warthing came out, I was like,
okay, what do we get?
What do you want to say?
What's your opinion about thejai war thing?
Let's post it.
Everybody's talking about it.
I don't want to join thatconversation.
I'm like who the hell do youthink you are?
People are sitting therewaiting for you.
You need to say something,right, but let's make it
(40:39):
interesting.
Let's find something that'slike a different angle on it
that's going to make people stopand consider you in the noise.
So on it.
That's going to make peoplelike, stop and consider you in
the noise.
So that's the.
That's the important thing.
I want to just mention oneother thing because I remember
it.
You know so, my, my ad legends,our gossage, david ogilvy if
you work in advertising, you runan advertising agency.
(41:01):
Those are the two, but there'sa third people that you should
study PT Barham.
Pt Barham is a marketing machine.
He invented brand campaigns.
He invented personal branding.
He invented so many of the PRpublicity.
He invented so many of thethings that we do today.
He did it all himself.
He was just a man.
(41:24):
Year in business, after you payyourself and pay the loans and
whatever, you take 100% of yourprofit and you put it towards
what he called publicity, whichwas the word for marketing Back
then.
Publicity is like so much showyou should put it all in there,
to the point where you don'teven know where to spend it.
And so you start making up,coming up with extravagant ways
(41:45):
to do it, and he gives examplesof like the weird things that he
would do in his book, hisautobiography.
You study him, you study HowardGossage, but a really good
person studies David Ogilvie.
David Ogilvie was the master atusing personal branding,
personal publicity, so that'ssomebody who you should study
very, very well.
Eric Eden (42:06):
Amazing.
This has been an awesomediscussion on personal branding.
I'm going to link to yourLinkedIn so people can get in
touch if they'd like to learnmore, and we really appreciate
you sharing all of your insightsin these awesome stories with
us today.
Thank you so much.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com