Jake Isham - Creative Minds
On Knowing Who You Are Competing Against For Views: "You're not competing with your competitors anymore. You're not competing with this podcast right here. You're not competing with other entrepreneurial podcasts. You're competing with Netflix. You're competing with Coca-Cola."
Marketing as a business owner is necessary. Jake Isham argues that marketing yourself, essentially as your business, can help your marketing explode. People buy from people they like and they trust. and they need to know you, in order to trust you.
To help entrepreneurs with this marketing need, Jake Isham built his marketing agency, Creative Minds. Drawing from his own experience as a filmmaker and marketer, Jake Isham shares actionable insights on how entrepreneurs can leverage their personal brand to drive revenue, why social proof matters, and the importance of consistency in content creation. Plus, hear why being the “face” of your business isn’t just about fame. It is a strategic move for building lasting trust and relationships.
Listen as Jake explains what tools to use (which you probably already have) to grow your marketing in this world that has the largest opportunity that we have ever seen for a brand to grow so quickly.
Enjoy!
Visit Jake at: https://jakeisham.com
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Podcast Overview:
00:00 Actors and Entrepreneurs: Business Challenges
08:00 "Personal Branding Mindset Shift"
12:18 Accidental Path to Creative Agency
21:13 "PR: Perceived Reality Redefined"
24:41 "Authentic Marketing in TikTok Era"
31:24 Know Your Audience First
37:37 "Roofing Content for Local Needs"
40:23 "Finding Your Core Principles"
46:40 Personal Branding Through Authenticity
52:23 Consistency and Learning in Content
57:56 Consistency Builds Niche Recognition
01:01:22 Overcoming Paralysis Through Action
01:05:46 "Creative Minds Digital Show"
Podcast Transcription:
Jake Isham [00:00:00]:
And it's the same thing, you know, to go back to kind of that conversation that we had at the very beginning about actors is that they know acting. They don't know how to run a business. A buddy of mine who is a very successful entrepreneur gives this speech all the time when he does seminars, which is, you know, you're a car mechanic, you're the top car mechanic at the shop and you see the boss making all the money and you're like, well, screw him. I wanna open up my own car shop until you realize you have to understand HR, accounting, Promotion, sales, marketing, advertising. Like, that's what the boss did. Yeah, there's a couple things to it more than just turning it into all the risk. Yeah.
James Kademan [00:00:39]:
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes can be found in the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie, Calls on Call Extraordinary Answering Service, The Bold Business Book, as well as LiveSwitch. And today we're welcoming/preparing to learn from Jake Eicham of Creative Minds. So Jake, we're talking marketing today, right?
Jake Isham [00:01:10]:
Yes, sir.
James Kademan [00:01:11]:
I am super excited because I don't— I've been in this marketing kick and I was talking actually with a— I'm going to call it a friend of mine who's in the marketing world way deeper than me. And it was interesting, the conversation that we had. So I'm excited to talk marketing more with you. It's just top of mind. So, and all businesses need it. So let's get started. First up, what is Creative Minds?
Jake Isham [00:01:35]:
We're a creative agency based in Los Angeles. We've done over a billion views online, driving millions in revenue for our clients. And we focus on helping build personal brands and really helping that entrepreneur scale their attention so that they, you know, because at the end of the day, attention drives revenue.
James Kademan [00:01:56]:
Interesting. Now you touched on something there and I want to dig into this a little bit because another conversation I had was the, it's kind of like chicken and egg thing or nature nurture. It was personal brand versus company brand. Which one do you push? So you as a marketer, if we were to ask you that question.
Jake Isham [00:02:14]:
It depends a little bit on the industry and the entrepreneur who I'm talking to, but you could say what's gonna beat out in my opinion is personal brand.
James Kademan [00:02:25]:
All right.
Jake Isham [00:02:26]:
Because at the end of the day, most entrepreneurs don't stick with one business, just majority, you know?
James Kademan [00:02:36]:
Yeah, yeah, you're not wrong.
Jake Isham [00:02:37]:
They sell or they give up or they, or whatever, you know, life comes around. And personal brand, you know, I think one of the individuals who's done it the best regardless of politics is Elon Musk. You look at what he's been able to do as a marketer and as an entrepreneur, purely that, right?
James Kademan [00:02:58]:
Right.
Jake Isham [00:02:58]:
This isn't a politics show.
James Kademan [00:03:00]:
Right, right.
Jake Isham [00:03:02]:
Yeah, it reminds me of, uh, have such an ultimate personal brand to be able to do that. Another gentleman who came before him was Steve Jobs. He was the face of Apple. And to be honest, if we look at the era of Steve Jobs Apple versus Tim Cook Apple, it's not as good.
James Kademan [00:03:23]:
Not even close. Yeah.
Jake Isham [00:03:24]:
Not a force to be reckoned with, but because that was a personal brand also, even though it was a company brand. And, you know, and I'm gonna take, I'll go one step further on this, right? People will, you know, bring up the example of sports and Nike. All right, Phil Knight is not a personal brand. Yes, but what he did was really intelligent. He's not a top athlete, but he got the best athletes to be the personal brand of the brand Nike, right? He got MJ, he got Kobe, he got LeBron. Like, he got these top individuals to be the personal brand of Nike, right?
James Kademan [00:04:02]:
It makes sense. Makes sense. It reminds me of, uh, somebody was, uh, there's an article that I was reading, I'm sorry, that was talking about these tribes in way out in Africa, and they had heard of Michael Jackson. Wow. I didn't know anybody else famous, right, that we would relate to. I mean, we're talking the '80s here, but they knew Michael Jackson. Like, it had reached like Coca-Cola and Michael Jackson. It had reached that far.
Jake Isham [00:04:28]:
He, I mean, he is the ultimate persona of you know, the greatest personal brand to ever have done it. He was literally the biggest celebrity on the planet as your example right there.
James Kademan [00:04:41]:
Yeah, surreal. So, let's dig deeper into that. How do you market yourself as a personal brand knowing, and this is the caution that I have, or I should say the concern that I have, is you market yourself as your personal brand. Now, you always have to be on and you always have to be that voice, or you always have to be pumping out content that you can't necessarily farm out to anyone else because they're not you. So you have to give all the presentations and do all the things. So tell me about that.
Jake Isham [00:05:14]:
But that's— I, I have two things. The first overall is that's the, that's the business you're going getting into. If that, that is the roles and responsibilities of a CEO. That is like, all right, then don't be a CEO. Don't be an executive. Like, look, you don't have to do a personal brand. I'm gonna 100%, I know lots of millionaires and a few billionaires who you could not point out in a crowd, who you could never name by, like, you would never know their name, never know anything about them. And they are unbelievably successful.
Jake Isham [00:05:49]:
Okay. 100%. So I'm not saying, oh, you have to or you will never be successful, but if it's just a different path and it's a different— again, it depends on that niche you're in. If you want to be like hyper B2B, you can slightly stay, but you're still going to be known within your industry. Like your personal brand doesn't have to reach the millions of people, right? If you say you service the top 100 law firms in the US, you still have to be the personal brand that is known by those top 100 law firms in the US. Now, Joe in Iowa doesn't need to know you, but you, Better make sure every partner in all those top 100 law firms know you so you can service them. And that's where the personal brand is so important. Like, you know, I mean, as simple as this, you think about like, it's silly, I forgot this example until now.
Jake Isham [00:07:04]:
Some of the biggest brands that we know were all personal brands. Ford. It's a guy's last name. Walt Disney. That's his name. There was a dude named Walt, last name Disney. J.P. Morgan.
Jake Isham [00:07:23]:
These are, these are just people, and they literally built a company based on their name. So That's where it's like, again, personal brand is everything. And you don't have to name the company after your name, but there's an aspect of knowing who's running the company, who's the face of the company, who— where does the buck stop, who's leading it? And I think that's where it's so important. So that's kind of— I know I got off a little bit of a tangent on your question, but—
James Kademan [00:07:57]:
Oh, you're good, you're good. That's the game.
Jake Isham [00:08:00]:
It's a mindset shift that a lot of entrepreneurs get scared. Oh,
