My Simple Approach To Building A Personal Brand

0:00After I've recorded yesterday's episode and brainstormed how I can improve my website, I Really came to the conclusion that I was kind of doing too many things. I was trying to Reinvent the wheel when I came to Building a website because the thing is is I am my my original My original skill set is building websites That's how I got into this world Way, way, way back in 2000 I mean maybe even before that when I first got my computer and I was in a we were, you know I was in a rock band a original rock band and I Well, we didn't have the money to pay somebody to build a website. This is before social media and so I spent All of my time learning how to Build websites from scratch in HTML and I did this to look

1:04This was a skill set that changed my life We needed it for our band, but it turns out that I was doing it and learning how to build websites Like the you know, not we at the god back then there were no builders there. There was no Things like that you had if you wanted a website if you wanted any sort of web presence you had to build it yourself and Because of this I was able to move up in my current job because I got caught Building a website at work or looking at my own website at work and my boss was like did you build this because at the time again Like not a lot of people build websites and I said yeah He was like well, do you want to build our website? And I said sure and then eventually I got poached. I actually got it. I think it poached I took a job in a website design firm I didn't last very long. I only lasted about six months Because my boss who originally got me to do their website hired me back because he wanted me to work incorporate

2:10Okay, so point is I've had this skill set for so long what I am Ha ha what I am failing Or I should say what I've started to realize is that And I was saying this yesterday when I was recording that episode One was the last time you actually went to a website on your phone like through so far your chrome and looked up like an actual actual website. I'll tell you for me. It's not very often and and Usually it comes in the form of an app or something like that and I think The world has changed not saying for the for the for good or bad. It's just different now So in my head I was like well, I found not building like an e-commerce store if I'm not building a presence of like You know where somebody's going shopping because that's really I mean honestly. It's like shopping or news sites and even news sites like do you even

3:11Go into navigation you probably just look at whatever's on the homepage. You probably just scroll it Like you would scroll social media or You're probably getting your news on social media. Let's be honest. Okay, so As I was thinking about all of this I had this instinct of Yeah, I already have a website. I built it on WordPress. I need to just redo that and I started that process I started changing the money lab WordPress site over to my personal government name Website and I started designing it and I installed tailwind CSS and I was going through like The normal motions of what I do when I build websites But guess what As I was recording that episode and coming up and you know, I kind of rethink everything. I was just like what am I trying to do here? What is the real like if I'm going to build a personal brand do I even need a website like that's like the big question

4:16And you website is maybe a tough word I need a place to collect and build an audience that's really what I'm trying to do So I looked at All right. Well, I This is a perfect opportunity for me because I'm not blogging. I don't wordpress Is blogging is a blogging CMS right? It's made for Content that you publish on a website I'm not planning to create content on a website I'm not and the reason I'm not doing that is because I just don't think that's how people personally I don't consume blog content. I just don't anymore The only thing I really do sometimes is I'll read like short news stories and I always go to the same website but That's really it

5:18And I know I'm not like the classic case of you know, I know I'm not normal in that sense I know people do visit websites and things like that But do people really read blogs? They're probably reading something like mediums sub stack Or a newsletter. So I'm thinking all right, let me start a newsletter And I and I've been wanting to do that. I have a list I wanted to bring that back. I wanted some sort of communication platform between me and my audience Which I'm not getting through this podcast and and for obvious reasons And I said this yesterday. Yeah, like why would you email me? I say my email on the show But like you're in the middle of something when you're listening to this You're not just like I mean maybe you're sitting at your computer Maybe you're sitting on your phone But chances are you're not and even if you are And I say hey email me with like an open-ended thing like question book. We're gonna questions You have what kind of concerns you have you're not like I need to fucking email him right now and you'd like it's

6:20That doesn't work that way now some people do it right but for how big my audience is It's like a fraction a tiny tiny fraction So I don't really get much Communication between me and my audience now. I do through social media I have been communicating a lot through twitter and linkedin and while not really linkedin but threads and twitter for sure And so I was like well you know The thing I consume the most besides youtube is probably newsletters and I want that again and I decide it after yesterday's discussion on building a website. I'm like wait a minute. Do I even need to build a website? Like why do I have to pay for hosting? Why do I have to use WordPress? I'm not gonna publish anything And then also WordPress like you know the way that I do it is I have to like build the front end

7:25Why am I gonna waste all of this time Building a front end of the website only to constantly have to update it And this leads me to this like idea of well Let's just use what's already there And so here's what I came up with here's my simple approach to building a personal brand online And this is I think this is really only for this use case because If you are trying to do to build anything else like if you're trying to build an e-commerce store like yeah, you need to Build a website and you need to post it on Shopify or whatever but like you know people are buying those products through Instagram and Facebook and youtube and things like that so like But you do need to build something like that. I like what we do at swim university for example That needs to be a website it is we are and the few reasons why is we are doing SEO content

8:27And that's what I'm not doing with my personal brand in fact. I've never done that And to we we sell products and we you Shopify and you need a storefront for that And it has to be hosted by yourself So we have that with some university but for For me personally I'm going to exist on platforms. I'm not going to exist as a website I just like when I was researching this I did a little bit of research after this after my conversation yesterday and I thought Does Gary Vee have a website? Like I literally was like I don't even know So I looked at Gary Vee's website. I'm like okay. It's like it's like overly designed and But really basic information like nothing like no calls to action or anything And then I was like well what about the other guy what about her mosey? Does he have a website and it's like yeah, he does but it's not his name

9:33And he does promote it a lot but that but he but the website literally has one objective Which is to like Get you to fill out information so that he can invest in your company And it's really and if you look at that site and it's been a while since I've looked at it but I'm like Are you kidding me? This is like you How much money do you have and this is what your website looks like dude? It's like from the friggin early 2000s It's like shit that I first designed when I started learning how to design And it's like oh, yeah, who cares You know what I mean who cares? He doesn't exist on that site. It's simply a collection plate And so when I sort of thought about that I'm like all right well Then I don't need to host a song WordPress. So where am I gonna host it? Well I Decide it that I was going to use kit as my email marketing

10:35Platform for my personal brand For assuming diversity in case you're wondering I'm using a program called clavio and that's because we integrate very heavily with Shopify and it is like Built for Shopify. It's an email marketing platform built for Shopify and it's crazy expensive I looked at both kit and I looked at beehive I Decide it I started with beehive because I'm thinking I've already used convert kit in the past And at the time you know was it worked fine for some university But I'd need it more complex stuff and and I want it like nicer designed emails And that's not really what they did and This is a long time ago mind you because I had been on I started with aweber move to mail chimp Then to convert kit then to active campaign and now on clavio and for some university clavio has by far been the best one hands down without a question

11:42Expensive but worth it Because because we sell products on Shopify but For my personal email, I'm like well, I hated active campaign the interface sucked mail chimp was very much Leaning towards e-commerce and then they there's new one came out called beehive, which is what I follow callin and samir and they have a newsletter about being a creator And I really like the design of that newsletter and I was like okay That's something but I I never like went on their website and I never experienced That brand outside of email so I really had no context so I tried using beehive and I was just like um This is fine You know it's okay And I ended up like deciding why the hell am I starting a newsletter? I'm not going to focus on that etc And so like now I said you know what Let me try convert kit. It's been so long since I've used it and they have evolved so far

12:49And you know now you could sell digital products They have this whole recommendation engine. They basically have like a spark loop type of Recommendation engine built within it They have email design now where that wasn't a thing when I started when I started it was plain text emails And you had to code your own liquid template In order to have like a nicely designed email in fact bread and done had a whole course on how to do this And he ended up shutting that down because it's convert kid eventually just built it and now they have You know block editors within the email System so for me I started looking at it and I'm like oh This is okay. Yeah. This is where I need to be This is the right platform for me For exactly what I'm trying to do you know It's like all of the people that I follow in this industry are on that platform So when I do recommend other creators or they recommend me we're all using the same thing

13:50It's perfect right And then I was like okay Can I use convert kit to host my website because yesterday when I was talking about What is the main purpose of my website? I basically said that it's to get email addresses That's it and I was like well, yeah, you know the landing page could be I need to get email addresses And I also want to tell people about my podcast And I want to tell people about me a little bit so Yes, I need a Place to store all that information And in convert kid they have what's called a creator profile which you can tie it to a custom domain so I'm like oh well Yeah, I don't get to custom design this thing at all, but Again, everyone's just looking at this on their phone Why do I need to over design things?

14:50It looks good. It serves a purpose. It's built in. It's super fast now I'm able to add my podcast. I'm able to add an about page I'm able to do these things, but it doesn't have to be this like overly designed thing that I'm going to spend Days figuring out When in reality, I can do it in one afternoon So that's so that's what I did. I Built a creator profile use one of their templates Tied my jivinesi.com domain name to that and there you go perfect nailed it Okay So I looked at it and I'm like this works in fact it works so well. I went I went ahead and like update at my Threads account and my ex account and everybody to to point to jivinesi.com Which will take you right to that profile which has a very clear message on it And a very clear call to action for subscribing And then I was like Within a day I got three new email subscribers confirmed email subscribers

15:54Meaning some these three people subscribed And then did a double-opted so I'm like wait a minute That's pretty sweet And I don't have anything set up yet. I haven't sent a single email yet And Then I looked at where I'm hosting my Podcast Which I'm using transistor.fm now meanwhile like It's nice because I know both of the owners of these companies that I'm using kit and um Transistor although I've never met Justin in person Justin Jackson is the one that owns Transistor.fm. I would love to meet him in person one day Justin if you're listening We need to we need to meet up somewhere So anyway, well really I need to get out. That's what I need to do I should probably go to the convert kit conference this year So anyway I Go on to transistor you can have a website with transistor So I'm like, okay, well

16:54Then why not just have jivinesi.com be my main website my collection plate And then for my podcast I can have podcast.jivinesi.com And that's exactly what I did. I set that up and I put my podcast there You can subscribe all the episodes are there. So now I have two domains if I need to point people to I've connected them so they now link back to each other And I'm like oh all right, so I've basically built a website on two different platforms Serving two different purposes. One is to get podcast subscribers The other one is to get email subscribers great I'm done. I did it. I built it done So I'm looking at this and I go okay, well My I kind of like threw together a podcast art for For this you know this podcast is called vision schedule I threw together some artwork to kind of start the new year to change the name

17:56It's an old picture of me the picture on the on the Cover is a black and white picture of me from 10 years ago And so I'm like all right. Why do you an updated picture? I should also maybe try to Create some sort of cohesiveness between my brand and my creator profile. So If you are looking at my creator profile It should be Branded in some way there should be like a solid color that you associate with me. There should be a um You know a Just just a cohesive like the the cover art should sort of sort of match my profile picture And everything should have this cohesive brand which by the way this is my favorite part This is the stuff I love doing. I love Building this foundation of like okay How do I want to represent myself in the public eye and how do I want people to see oh okay This is him as the as a personal brand person and he has a podcast and that all of it sort of matches

19:03That's when I say branding. I just mean you know Yes, what are you what's message are you trying to convey and does it all matched does it all feel cohesive? so I spent the afternoon Taking Look probably 500 pictures of myself Um, so what I do is I have my studio Where I film all of my videos for Sunni diversity and I use a Sony a7s3 which is a photography camera that I use as a cinema camera But I took that camera set it up on a different tripod use the same lights Pull down my blue backdrop and started taking pictures of myself So I thought to myself well, what am I going to be how do I want to represent myself So I'm like okay the the name of the show is business casual So in my head, I'm like well, I kind of have to dress Like that a little bit you know what I mean because just to just to showcase that so I'm like all right I'm going to wear a Hawaiian shirt with this with a sport coat and then I'm wear hat because I'm bald and

20:10I don't look good without a hat So that's kind of my style and I and I chose like a plain white hat Um, it's a it's technically a mission hat, but I'm erasing that so I'm erasing all the branding off my clothing and stuff Uh for these pictures. So I took again 500 pictures some sitting some standing And I'm basically wearing the same thing and I'm going to match Everything together. So my podcast artwork is going to be This one of the photos of me. I have a few photos where One, I'm holding my phone and talking into it, which is exactly what I'm doing right now It's a little confusing because it doesn't look like a podcast right because No one really podcasts this way and I don't think it makes sense. I'm going to try it and see if it does work and then I have pictures of me with headphones on and holding a microphone a podcasting microphone so I don't look like a stand-up

21:12I don't know because I'm not and Yeah, I'm wearing the same outfit and I'm I'm using this blue backdrop and so I'm realizing that like a lot of my old branding was green. It's like neon green and I had this um like almost sort of Yeah, almost sort of exactly like a blue to green gradient But the only thing I think like like color photos of myself Don't really look good on this backdrop because the backdrop is technically fake So I was like, well, why not just use the real backdrop the real backdrop is like this blue color My brand sum university is blue So why not just stick with blue Blue is not my favorite color But it's one of two of my favorite colors. So blue and art. Well, I shouldn't say that blue and orange are my favorite colors Which is why some university is blue and orange

22:12and I love that color combination which happens to be some you know happens to be Polar opposites of each other and it's what everybody strives for in like Cinematography and color grading is it's like blue and orange thing when it comes to skin tones So I'm like just lean into that don't there's no sense in reinventing yourself or trying to like You know, harken back to the money lab logo Your blue that's who you are Your blue and orange So that's what that's what the brand is gonna look like And so here's the plan the plan is I got the the website up It's collecting email addresses. I do need to Change and kind of mess with the headline a little bit. I don't know how I'm planning on doing that um Like how I don't I can't split test it. I don't have enough traffic to split test

23:13I need to maybe workshop it a bit um Right now. I think it says something along the lines of like running a lifestyle business uh work, you know Only working Eight hours a week. I might switch that to 10 hours a week um Or even you know, yeah, so and then I say exactly what I do and I say you know join If you want to learn more about how to do this Which I think is a good message. I'm trying not to what I don't want but doesn't feel me Is the whole Uh Is the whole Make a million dollars and it's like feel like that's such as art. I you know, I know like I Susan reached out to me um and when I had mentioned on this show that I was gonna make this the arc of the the storytelling which I still is

24:18She's like who cares about the money and I'm like I I agree with you and I hate saying it But it does lens I think it lends a little bit of credibility to what I'm doing because There could be somebody who says I only work four hours a week and I have a business and it's like yeah, but Okay, are you full-time? Do you like do you have a family like what do you have another source of income That one that you're not telling us about like cool that you work four hours a week or even eight hours a week that that's great, but like I have no context to whether you're Survived just like barely surviving or you're doing extremely well and so If I just say Okay, my brand my the My company brings in six hundred thousand dollars a year and you're like Okay, that's a lot

25:19But like how much of that is going to your team and how much like how how much Like do you have a family of eight because if that's the case that's not enough money and like there's all these Maybe maybe that's not that's no, I know that's not true, but Like context is important. So I think the the million dollar number is a number that everyone Including myself can go damn That's enough. That's enough for me It's also slightly out of reach for me and for my audience unless you're already there But it's like okay, it feels like a stretch goal kind of and so it's like it gives us all Something to like look toward and That's why the numbers important It's not important and like I want to be a rich person. It's like no, I I want to work

26:20eight hours a week on this thing And here's how much money I make and so it's like it's that much more Of an important goal to reach because you're like damn And it's only eight hours a week. That's pretty sick. That's that that feels like his Mindset is in the right isn't the same place that mine is because not everyone's gonna not everyone wants that right not everyone Wants to work but people like working and but people want to make millions. They want to win the lottery millions I friend of mine the other day, which said he said to me is like when I win powerball I'm gonna buy that house and I'm like my mom says that all the time too First of all you don't even play powerball so like what are we even doing here like hey if you really want to buy that house Let's figure out a goddamn plan to do it Let's go Let's reverse engineer this and let's make it happen like that's the kind of shit I'm into which is exactly what I want to talk about

27:25In my personal brand is like how do you systematize your business so that you That you so that the stuff that you are doing within the business is high leverage and you don't have to work It's hard you can choose to work as much as you want on the business But wouldn't it be cool to work? I don't know just 40 hours a week like a normal person And the business is crushing and you are not stressed And maybe I need to say that too like running a stress-free business And I certainly think that I'm the right person for this message because that is all I think about all I think about is How to do specific tasks in my personal life as well So that I'm not stressed the fuck out We I think about this in terms of like hosting a party. I'm like

28:30All right, I know what it's like to host a party. I know how stressful it can be I'm constantly trying to figure out how do I achieve the same results But by reducing The mental and physical load and therefore reducing stress to present the same thing And I feel very I'm very good at that because I am always thinking about that And I want to be the I want to be the champion of that message whatever that mentions I haven't really figured out That how to brand that yet because there is Uh, there is a framework there that I haven't figured out But that's what I'm going to work on and then I'm just going to double down on that There's a guy that I follow and he has his thing that he doubles down on which is Create once distribute forever Right, and he's just beating the drum of that message over and over again And I'm like I just I want that message

29:33I'm working on that that's going to be my personal brand that's probably going to be my headline So I need to figure that out over time But I'm working on it now I got my pictures taken I have to edit those pictures today And design my new podcast artwork Add those pictures to my new creator profile And then I am sending out my first email Probably Monday, but I may do it on a different day Because today's Friday it's a January 2nd as I'm recording this and Steph left the house And went to go work at a coffee shop And she's like oh everyone's there on their laptops working I go oh okay, I assumed people were going to take off Friday because New Year's Day was a Thursday I assumed people were going to take off Friday Have the weekend and then really start work on Monday, but it turns out they're starting work today

30:36So okay my business Like the other people like the my team I think Steph is working today. I'm working today But the rest of the team is going to start Monday basically So I'm using this opportunity today To just like get my personal brand setup in place I'll probably just send out that email whenever and just get the thing fired up And then start really publishing shit on Monday So I might send out yeah, that's why I would I'll do I'll send out an introductory email which will basically You know probably cut my list in half if not more Because right now I think I got like 3000 subscribers on my list not a ton But I have a feeling More than half of those people don't want to hear from me So I'm just going to give them the out and have them all unsubscribed And then just slowly delete people who are on my list who just are not opening my emails and get that list as cleaned up as humanly possible

31:43and then From there. Yeah, I'm sending an email once a week At minimum So my plan is to publish a new newsletter every Monday The newsletter is probably going to contain a video if not yeah, probably just one video I'll link to a loom video and I'll probably do more than that And it's basically just going to follow the same schedule as my podcast where I am recording and Anytime I'm working on my business the eight to ten hours a week that I work on my business I'm going to record what I'm doing and I'm going to share that and yeah Promote this podcast and then That's it I don't think it's going to be that hard. I get back to doing my tweets again and Setting up systems for it. So it doesn't take me that long if I spend 30 minutes a week on this Like the newsletter I should say in the video like that's that's about it. You know maybe an hour

32:45Again, I know It's like what why are you doing this and it's like I just want to do it I just want to share I don't have a product I don't have anything for sale Again, not saying I won't but I don't know I figure Can't hurt right like I can't hurt building up my personal brand just in case just in case And I kind of want to do it. I like creating content You know, I like to taking pictures today. I like to thinking through and problem solving and making it look good Like I kind of like that stuff. So I just want it. That's what I want to do. That's you know, I learned Last year that like oh Right, my hobby is that this is my hobby. You know brewing beer is a hobby And I'm just you know, I the other day I was like I was I went downstairs and I'm like I'm just kind of bored, you know

33:46and As I told stuff I'm like this is the moment where I wish I had a video game I wish I played video games and I wish I could sit down and just watch or just play a video game And that's when I was like or my video game is this This is a video I'm playing the game This is a game to me. I'm building and so I always say like well video games are great But like it's false productivity like you are making progress within a game, but then once you're done You get the sense of of productivity, but you've actually accomplished nothing and So I just don't I've never been in video games ever But I'm like oh no, I have it's just Different it's it's it's it's it's productivity in building a business or for some people it might be

34:46You know building Doing woodworking or building a something in their house or improving their house in some way like that's a game And so I'm like all right. I get it Anyway, that's my simple approach to building a personal brand Let me know what you think my new email address is matt at jibandec.com Shoot me an email the old one still works My website is jibandec.com And of course if you're not You can subscribe to my email list and start getting emails from me So just go to jibandec.com and I'll talk to you next time