James Dooley: Personal branding isn't just ego, it's for risk management. This is a quote that I got from Dennis Yu and today I'm joined obviously with Dennis with regards to a lot of people think it's an egotistic thing in having a personal brand but can you try to explain why it isn't and why especially now with AI as well it's it's it's almost mandatory with regards to risk management.

Dennis Yu: What carries more weight James? What you say about yourself or what other people say.

James Dooley: Oh, definitely.

Dennis Yu: And so when people think personal branding, Lamborghinis, and that kind of thing, they have it wrong. Instead, it's reputation, word of mouth, all these other words that are a symbol of if you do good work and you're known for that, people will talk about you and you never need to sell yourself, you never need to be a douchebag. So, you know that I've helped dozens of young adults scale their agencies or SAS companies and whatnot and sell to a HubSpot or Google or private equity. And because they have had those exits and they talk about me, that's attracted more young adults that I coach and take a little bit of equity and so it furthers the cycle and I never have to say that. So, I'm going in a week to speak at DealCon, which is Tom Shipley's event on M&A. And because I have done transactions and I've helped other people exit, I can advise on that. And it's based on what all these other people have to say. And so, because we know it's what other people have to say, then it's a function of two things. Well, three things. One is do great work and be known for the thing like maybe your rank and rent, you know, websites or whatever it is that you're, you know, whatever you guys that are watching. What's that one thing that you want to be known for? Do a good job at it. Number two is get people to talk about it and so collect all of it. Put use your AI tools to collect it into a Google Drive and whatnot. And then number three, promote that. So when these guys say great things about me and I'm on their podcast, for example, I spend my money and I put it out there and that builds my reputation, my firm's reputation, the other people I'm associated with. And so my personal brand, I'd sum it up as I'm here to honor all these other people. Like James, you are an absolute legend. You have 1.5 million subs on YouTube. You're super well known. I think you're ranked on SEO Speaker. You know, all these different things that you do and I will spend my money and effort to promote you.

James Dooley: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it makes complete sense. I've got a couple of questions on there though. So, let's say you're multifaceted. So, let's say you've got Dennis, you you are the knowledge panel king. you can go and create knowledge panels and scale them out and help business owners and you have done for so many like HVAC business owners and you've promoted their their personal brand and stuff like that but then you go speaking at let's say M&A M&A events and then you're doing mergers and acquisitions that you're helping businesses with regards to investment and buying and selling. They're kind of two different facets of who you are. How do you manage Dennis, you the branding um expert versus the investment expert or do you just run them in line in parallel with each other and just try and build up both personal brands kind of separately?

Dennis Yu: I view it as none of those three things. I view it as first I am a loyal friend to my friends who run local service businesses and I'll do anything. Friends will fly in to see me in Vegas and I take them out to eat. I will make introductions for them and a lot of them as you know the cliche is they get older and they have health problems they have a lot of money but then they have health problems I'll do every I know I'm well connected in medical right I know some of the top doctors and I'll make those introductions and so whatever it takes so it's not that I'm trying to be a personal brand expert that's just the reflection of doing when you do good things it just sort of reflects back that way it's not that I'm a knowledge panel you know knowledge graph you know PPC optimizer I it's that I want my friends to succeed. And if I can see there's obvious things to fix in their Google Ads account and their meta accounts, then I'll do that. Or I'll introduce other people who I know are better than me in certain areas. Like I Vitzky, I bring him all the time to come in and optimize campaigns that I don't want to optimize that he knows he can do it better than me in certain categories, right? Many categories. So I view it as it's more who you're serving. So, I'm serving these home service businesses that are scaling and I'm also bringing in young adults who help work inside those businesses. And if they need PPC, they need SEO stuff, they need stuff with their health, they need, you know, to publish their stuff as a book. Like my buddy um Cody, he sold his funeral home for eight figures and now he's helping other funeral homes sell. So, we're I I'm flying to Austin in four days and I'm interviewing him for his book on how do you exit at a 10 multiple if you own a funeral home and that's personal branding. That's him showing up to the knowledge graph and reinforcing his entity, his connections with other, you know, funeral homes and all that. And so, because I'm serving him, it I'm it I think it's more James about who you're serving, right? And when you're really clear on that avatar, then it really doesn't matter because you even told me this before we started recording. It's not even about like the the details of, you know, the the citation strength of their knowledge panel, right? Or you have, for example, you have 10 references in your graipedia for James Dooley. Does anyone care? No. They want the result. So, if we're focused on the result and we care more about I hate to say it this way, but like making money or driving real impact instead of arguing about the technical details of SEO, then we'll do whatever it takes, right? I'm not a Facebook ads guy. I'm not an SEO guy. I'm like, whatever it takes to help the people that I've built a reputation with win. And then when like Tommy Mello is winning, I've coached him and I've known him for many years. And then he's friends with Dan Antonelli. He bought Dan's company. I've helped Dan all these other people in the space. I'm friends with them. I'm very My number one focus if you look if you were to open up my skull and look inside James. You would see a few core key relationships and I do anything for these people. Like I will drive through the middle of the night to pick up their kids from the airport when they're stranded because of the snow. I'll I I that's a whole another story. But that that's the reputation that I have built. Right? Think about any great experience you've had. Maybe you you've gone to the Four Seasons. you had a great hotel experience and there was there was always someone went out of their way to try to take care of you and you remember that. Yeah. Not like you know how like what to 98% cacao in the chocolate cake like you don't really care. It was an amazing experience, right?

James Dooley: Yeah. I I I absolutely love what you've said there and I love the idea as well that you like in the SEO community people talk about like different color hats, white hat, black hat and I like the idea that you just said I do whatever works hat. I just do everything and whatever they're missing out on. It could even be health and nothing to do with digital marketing could be anything. You're building actual real core relationships with people and partnerships with people that makes it a lot longterm instead of just chasing monthto-month on are they going to renew this contract and stuff like that. They're going to do because of how much you've overd delivered with them. But anyone who's watching this that is a business owner that doesn't have a personal brand, how important is personal branding now in today's world?

Dennis Yu: I think personal branding means almost nothing, but I would rephrase it as this. Do you can you count on your hand five people that believe in you so much that are not family members that vouch for your business? Can you assemble a list of these customers? not just say like, "Oh, yeah, he's pretty good." But James Dooley is amazing, right? If you can assemble that group, 10, 20, 100 of those customers and you do everything you can to make sure that they are happy, not just because you want five stars on Google and whatever, but you really do mean that, right? And you text them. You go out of your way to take care of them. You incentivize your people to be able to buy gift certificates and do whatever to take care of those customers to so they love you, love you, love you. Then your business will grow and you get a,000. you get 10,000 more customers that are just like those core customers. That's the way I think about personal brand. What do you need to do to get more people talking about you where you're a 10 out of 10?

James Dooley: Yes. So, we're getting on them third party kind of just basically other people building your reputation. Not you saying I'm the best because of this. It's a third party source saying you are the best because of X Y and Zed. But with regards going just going back to the quote, personal branding isn't ego. It's risk management. Can you try just to within a sentence explain what you mean by that quote?

Dennis Yu: Risk management means that there are it's like insurance there. There are bad things that could happen, but if you have enough positive things, enough people talking about you that will override. Think of it like a bank account. You have enough deposits that you that any negative withdrawal won't cause you to, you know, go negative, bounce checks or whatnot. And that's what the way I view it.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean for me on that with regards to the risk management and how you've just explained it, it's like proactive online reputation management. So the personal branding comes that down to instead of waiting until something bad did happen, you're now building the positive. You've got a positive sentiment brand for who you are, what you do, who you serve, lots of other people, lots of case studies, lots of reviews, lots of testimonials. everything's out there in a positive sentiment that if something was to happen that was bad, let's say a company went bankrupt on you and it it caused stress on your cash flow that it's not going to be the highest priority of who you are and what you do. Is there anything else then just to finish off with regards to the personal branding because you talk quite a bit about amplification. So it's that many people I see that are sharing information online and they're getting two likes and it's normally the mum and the nan and the they're going doing all the hard work of sharing images and sharing videos on social media but not really getting that traction and they're saying it's easy for you guys to say just go and build a brand and go and build that reputation and obviously build those relationships but for a business owner that wants to start building up the socials. Can you just explain very briefly? There is going to be a link in the description about the dollar a day kind of amplification strategy.

Dennis Yu: Well, it's take something that's working well and get 10 times more out of it. A lot of people think it's advertising. I'll tell you my number one tip in personal branding. Whenever I meet someone for a podcast or they do something nice or they become a client or whatnot, I send them a pair of socks with their face on them and they cannot believe it. And there's a handwritten note by one of the women that work in our Portland factory, right? It's USA made and USA moms. You can tell it's the bubbly handwriting. And there's something it's it's a one sentence very specific like, "James, thank you so much for, you know, doing this one thing." And just something very specific. And that has meant the world to so many people because they remember that. People tell me that every day. And I consider that personal branding because I'm doing everything to honor them. If I was an ego person, I would send them a pair of socks with my face on it. Like, I spoiled the surprise, James. But you're going to get a pair of socks with your face on it, right? Because I want to honor you. I think it's lit. It's that simple. I spend money to honor you, to promote your content, to send traffic to your site, not to my site, not to talk about me. On podcast, I never talk about myself. I always talk about the people I really admire.

James Dooley: Yeah, that's incredible. And I'm looking forward to my socks as well. Anyone who doesn't know Dennis Yu, then make certain you check out the links in the description. There's so many different links in there. He's an absolute legend when it comes down to building a lot of home services businesses and strengthening up knowledge panels. It understands everything related to investments, M&A, and stuff like that. There's a couple of other links in there as well. One about improving your KGM scores and another one about the dollar a day strategy. Make sure you check it out. Dennis, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Dennis Yu: Thank you, James.