Living The Red Life - How To Learn from Trump's Controversy

Episode Date: November 16, 2023

Are you ready to keep an open mind and learn from one of the greatest personal branding experts alive? Trigger warning! It's Donald Trump. Love him or hate him, if you've watched his documentary or spent any time understanding his journey as an entrepreneur, you'll have to admit that the way he's built his personal brand has been pretty fascinating, from The Apprentice and "You're Fired" all the way to The White House and President of the United States.Having a strong personal brand can open lots of doors for you, from business partnerships to product endorsements, and from podcasts to TV and affiliate deals. So how are you thinking about growing your personal brand so that it can lead to greater business opportunities?For Donald Trump, fixing the ice rink in New York's Central Park wasn't about making money. It was a chance to enhance his reputation with New Yorkers and in turn, Americans. When you have an air of success and ambition about you, good people will be drawn to you and want to work with you. Learn how to create the perfect narrative for your brand in this controversial and coherently argued episode of Living The Red Life that proves yet again why Rudy Mawer's analytical marketing mind is one that we are lucky to have access to. It's the Red Pill, it's Wonderland. It's all here, come and get it!"What will I invest in myself to grow my brand and personal brand, even if it doesn't have a direct ROI?" ~ Rudy MawerIn This Episode:Why you need a personal brandHow Trump reverse engineered his personal brand growth (using controversy)Rudy's personal approach to taking his personal brand to the next levelHow to be intentional about the projects you choose to grow your reputationHow Donald Trump used to leak stories to the pressHow do you create the perfect narrative for your brand?Understanding how to monetize your fame and controversy Being more controversial and polarizing in your messagesThe importance of playing big and going 'all in'Connect with Rudy Mawer:LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/rudymawer/Instagram - www.instagram.com/rudymawerlifeFacebook - www.facebook.com/rudymawerlifeTwitter - www.twitter.com/rudymawer

Imagine if we could start creating controversial stories or unique, exciting stories to create more free press. Free press is a game changer if it's free because it's just endless traffic, it's endless credibility. So if you can build a system where you can start getting repeatable press for your brand, you're going to be in a better place. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast, and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill, join me in Wonderland and change your life. Welcome back to another episode of Living the Red Life. Today we are going to talk about one of the best branding, personal branding experts in the world. Whether you love or hate him, he was one of the OGs and his name is Donald Trump. And yes, I'm sure that triggered a few of you, but I want you to stay unbiased today

and take away some of the expertise he has in personal branding that I'm going to share and break down for you today that you can use in your own business. Whether you love or hate Donald Trump, if you've watched his documentary or studied him or spent any time looking at his career and his journey as an entrepreneur, it's pretty fascinating in some of the ways he's built his personal brand. And why I wanted to film this episode today is personal brands are like the biggest thing nowadays. They're super hot. Everyone wants a personal brand. I often recommend why you should build a personal brand. I believe for a lot of you, it's a smart thing to do. Some of you don't have to become the next biggest influencer in the world, but having a decently strong personal brand is going to help you sell online.

It's going to unlock doors. It's going to unlock relationships, JVs, affiliate deals, podcasts, TV. It's going to unlock a lot of potential for your brand, whether you're a coach, consultant, or whatever. And if you go back and think about personal brands, the Kardashians were a big part of that, some of the biggest influencers on social media. However, if you go back 30, 40 years, I actually think Donald Trump was one of the first people to understand the power of a personal brand. And he was very strategic in how he did that. So I'm excited to

share some of the takeaways today that he kind of reverse engineered 30, 40, 50 years ago. And what's crazy is this was before social media, right? So he was doing these things, understanding how it could lead to bigger deals, how it could get him more prestige, more real estate success. And of course, arguably, he was able to win an election and become the president of the USA because of his personal brand. So if that's not proof enough, I don't know what is. Let's dive into today's episode. So what has he done over the years to grow a personal brand? And by the way, if you enjoyed today's episode, there's a documentary on Netflix that you can go and watch and see some of this in real life, too.

They do a good job summarizing it in the middle about how strategic he was. However, let's start at the start of his journey. Trump was in New York, right? He was trying to get into real estate. And one thing that he figured out pretty quickly was the bigger I go and the more controversial I go, the bigger my brand will get. And this will then lead to the ability to get better employees, the ability to craft better deals, the ability to get more money from the bank. And he reverse engineered 30, 40, 50 years ago that the power of that was going to amplify his success in his main business,

which is real estate. And now we see this in all walks of life in business now because of social media. But what's fascinating is he knew this many, many, many years ago. And what that means is that rule of the personal brand and the power of the personal brand has stayed true for many, many decades. It's not just a now thing. It's been a part of business for many, many years. People want to do business with people they know, like, and trust. People want to do business with people they admire. People want to do business with people that they think are successful, whether they're successful or not. They want to do business with people they think are successful. Contractors, construction workers, they want to

go and work for Donald Trump. They want to build something big. So one of the first takeaways is he reverse engineered the upside of having a personal brand many, many years ago. So what I want you to do first and the first lesson is actually what is the benefit for your business? You're all in different businesses. You'll have different businesses if you're listening to this. But for some of you, there's some major benefits from having a personal brand. There's some major benefits that you can then leverage because growing a personal brand is the start. But when you grow it, you need to leverage it for more success to make more money. And you need to reverse engineer how that looks. What can I use it for? So like Trump, he had a

plan. He had a goal. He had an end plan in mind. He goes, if I can get really big, then I'm going to be able to do all these bigger things. I want you to think about if I can get my brand, my personal brand or my e-commerce brand or whatever brand it is really well known and famous, then I can do all these bigger things. Okay. So that's the first thing. Number two, he did specific, very intentional projects to grow his brand, even if they weren't the best direct business decision. And this is one thing I teach a lot of my members. We talk a lot about ROI, return on investment.

And for many years, I only did something if it had a return on investment. I didn't care so much about the branding side. I go, I just want to make money. So if I put money in, what do I get back? How guaranteed is this? All I cared about. However, now I've become more successful and have a bigger vision for myself. And I've gone past those early stages of making a million and two million, getting to 10 million. And I'm going for the big numbers now, right? The hundreds of millions or billion.

I know I'm okay. And I'm focused on putting some money aside, like a small investment amount into growing my personal brand and my brands, even if that means I don't get a big ROI. I'm okay with doing that, even if I don't get a big ROI from it. Why? Well, for me, I know that over time I will get the ROI. It's just a delayed ROI that is hard to track. So that's the first next thing for the first part of this second section is what will I invest in myself to grow my brand or personal brand, even if it doesn't have a direct ROI? And for a lot of e-commerce store owners, software companies, blah, blah, blah, course creators, all you look at to start is how much can I spend on ads? What can I make back?

How much can I sell of my product? That's great. But over time, treat your brand kind of like real estate. You're going to put or stock trading or investing. You're going to put a small amount to the side and do specific projects just for the brand. Trump did this. He would go and tackle projects that might not make him as much as another boring real estate project, but he knew it would help his brand and make him a more prominent public figure in New York and in turn America. One example of this is in Central Park, they had the ice rink and it was out of use. It was old. It needed a refurb, but they couldn't

get the funding. You know, the local authorities couldn't get the funding to do that. No one was doing it. So he actually took that project on himself. And why did he do that? Well, I don't think it's because he really wanted to go ice skating in Central Park. He did that because it was a monumental piece of New York. It was a piece tourists came to all around the world. It was a piece that all the New Yorkers love to go at Christmas time. So he knew, hey, if I can restore this, it's not going to cost me much money compared to what I'm earning on all my big projects and it's going to help my brand.

So he was intentional in doing that to help his brand and he was smart about how he did it. He negotiated with different contractors, companies, vendors to actually get a great deal because it was kind of for the people, right? So he was very intentional in that. He knew that it wasn't a direct ROI like building a great deal because it was kind of for the people, right? So he was very intentional in that. He knew that it wasn't a direct ROI like building a building and flipping it and selling it, but he knew that it would help him grow his reputation locally and even around America.

So that's the second example for Trump is intentional projects that might not have the most direct ROI, but they can be massive for your brand. So they have a high brand ROI, just they can be massive for your brand. So they have a high brand ROI, just not a high ROI in terms of sales. And I do think it's important over time for longevity to start doing these things to grow your personal brand. Okay. Number three, Trump was amazing at leveraging the press and PR and the media to grow his brand. So one thing that he was amazing at was leaking stuff to the press, creating the narrative with the press and basically upsetting the press a lot. So he was getting stories and he lived by kind of a rule of pretty much good. All press is good press. He was

able to go and trigger and upset the media so much, just like he did during the election and just like he does now on social media and all the platforms. He was just getting endless free press. A lot of us for our brand, of course, we want our brand to have integrity and we want our brand to be positioned well. I'm not saying don't live by those standards. But imagine if we could start creating controversial stories or unique, exciting stories to create more free press. Free press is a game changer if it's free because it's just endless traffic. It's endless credibility. So if you can build a system where you can start getting repeatable press for your brand, you're going to be in a better place.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. Before we go into the rest of this episode, I'm going to interrupt abruptly and just ask you one big favor. I hope you're getting a ton of value, a ton of knowledge. I hope you're getting some breakthroughs from myself and the guests. And I want one thing in return.

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make it awesome. So let's get back into the episode. I appreciate you guys and let's dive back in. Now, one way he does this, which I think is fascinating, and they tell this in the documentary too, is he used to ring up the press and pretend he was like a disgruntled intern or employee at the company, at Trump. So he would leak these stories to the press, pretending it was one of his employees being deceitful, but it was really him creating the ripple effect, creating the controversy to get all of this free press. And he did this over many years and he played a lot of games with the reporters and built relationships with them to get this continued press, continued buzz around his brand. It's one thing I think he was amazing at and I'm fascinated by it. Okay.

And this leads me to number four. So number three is press, right? Leveraging the press and building free press. And number four is creating the perfect narrative for your brand. He does an amazing job at creating the perfect narrative that he wants people to believe for his brand. He even did this during the election, make America great again. He kept saying it because that's the narrative he wanted to create in the minds of the American people, that if he was elected, he would make America great again. Okay. So he's done his whole life. He's been a master of creating

the perfect narrative for him and his brand. So I want you to think about that. Think about how can I create the perfect narrative for my brand? And I talk a lot to my members about this. What is the perfect narrative? All your prospects and potential people need to believe to make a buying decision. And you should reverse engineer that and then create that perfect narrative through your social media, through your story, through your branding, through PR, through referrals, testimonials. All those things can be vehicles to create the perfect narrative for your brand so you can have an easier time selling.

I love how he's done this. I love how he continues to do this. He's done this now for probably 40 years, where he's continually created and worked hard to create the perfect narrative for his brand. He's leveraged social media these days, the press, speeches, podcasts, everything he can to create the perfect narrative for his brand. Number five, monetization. He is a master of taking his brand and monetizing it. He's created all of his real estate success. He had an education, course mastermind business. He was one of the first to do that. Trump University. He created a ton of stuff to monetize his name. Some of the Trump towers

and the hotels you see these days, he doesn't even own still, but he still monetizes his name and monetizes his brand. So think about how can you grow that brand and then monetize it and a lot of the top personal brands are experts they're everywhere look at Shaq the basketball player he has over 50 different brands monetizing his name he's getting constant royalties licenses partnership opportunities equity rev share bonuses he's able to create mass monetization from the name he worked hard to build trump was consistently doing that throughout of his life and i think for a lot of you especially as you start to get popular you've got to open your mind to look at all these possibilities to start monetizing and leveraging the brand you worked hard to build into more cash flow,

into more success, into more deal flow. Number six, we all know this one. He is controversial, okay? Whether you love or hate him, he's able to divide people, okay? And that divide of people allowed him to win an election. That divide of people has allowed him to go super viral across social media. So if you want to be viral, if you want to be that person that ripples, creates ripple effects in your industry, that person that gets on the front page of the news, you want to try and be more controversial, more out there. Why? Well, the sad reality is people don't want to write and listen and read boring stuff. If you're saying stuff that's right in the middle, stuff that's safe, where you're not dividing people, you're not going against a polarizing opinion, you're not saying something a little

outlandish, then you're not going to make the news. You're not going to be PR worthy. And the Instagram algorithm, the Snapchat, the Facebook, the YouTube algorithms, they all play this same game. What happens is if you say something a little out there, a little controversial, where you polarize or you challenge beliefs, you're going to get a lot of comments, love and hate comments. You're going to get a lot of shares because people are going like, what the hell is this guy saying? Look at this BS. Look at this. Can you believe this? Is this true? Oh my God, this person's telling you exactly what I tried to tell you. All those shares from people sharing some more friends hits the algorithm. It creates that virality. That's only possible if you create some sort of controversial message. Most people are afraid to do this. And again, I'm not saying don't be, you know, don't be unauthentic. Don't make stuff up. Don't be unethical by any means. Be true to yourself, but then try and push more to an extreme that creates a little virality.

He's a master at creating that virality. He's a master at that controversy. It's the reason he became so, so, so well known. Okay. And he continues to do it. He's a master of that controversy. It's the reason he became so, so, so well known. Okay. And he continues to do it. He continues to push buttons and challenge belief systems. And I think we can all learn from that. I really encourage you guys to stop being a little more polarizing. I encourage you guys to start playing that game a little more in a safe way where you're not unethical, right? Or you're not hurting your brand like crazy, but just pushing the envelope a little more. Because I promise you, when you start doing that, your content will do better. You'll start to grow a stronger tribe that love you. Look at the Trump supporters. They love him because he hits with

the message. They go, that's my guy, right? So the more you can build a brand where you've got that loyal tribe, the better you'll do. They'll create more referrals, more's my guy, right? So the more you can build a brand where you've got that loyal tribe, the better you'll do. They'll create more referrals, more opportunities for you, okay? They'll be the raving fans that support your business, that give you the testimonials, all of those sort of things. So try and be a little more controversial in your message. Try and polarize and challenge beliefs a little more and be strong in what you believe in. Because guess what?

When you're strong in what you believe in, Because guess what? When you're strong in what you believe in, you're more authentic self, not less. OK, and you're going to push some people away, which is going to create that virality. OK, that's OK. And then you're going to pull a lot of people in that are like, wow, that's my person. That person is speaking exactly what I needed to hear or exactly what I needed to believe, okay? Number six, final one for Trump, okay? He went big. There's no denying he went big in his career. He built the biggest skyscrapers. He built the biggest hotels. He went and created a TV show, okay, that had lines around multiple blocks just to audition. He went big. He wasn't afraid to challenge and push and go bold and go all in and he went bankrupt

sometimes doing this but he still rebounded and came out on top so look how he went all in look how he played big by playing big you separate yourself from the rest of the industry he was doing things no one else was doing that allowed him to create that level of success so he went big he went all in and because he went big, he gained that attention that grew that monster personal brand. So try and go bigger, think bigger, plan bigger, do bigger pieces of content. Try and step out of the normality of your industry and do something a level above it, because that's when you get the attention. That's when you get the momentum, okay? That's when he created the momentum

that got him to run for presidency and won. OK, so try and go big. That is my last lesson from Trump. So I hope you enjoyed some of those lessons. I would love for you to let me know which is your favorite lesson. Come and hit me up on Instagram if you're watching on YouTube. Comment in the comments below. Let me know your favorite lesson from today, a lesson you can apply. And like I say, I challenge you to stay unbiased and whether you love or hate him, take these lessons because you can't deny he's had a lot of experience in business and he's created a very well-known name in America and around the world. Until next time, keep living the red life. I'm excited for you to grow your brand, to impact more lives, to have a stronger business, a more successful business

and create the life of your dreams. I'll see you very soon. Take care. My name's Rudy Moore, host of Living the Red Life podcast and I'm here to change the way you see your life in your earpiece every single week. If you're ready to start living the red life, ditch the blue pill, take the red pill,

join me in Wonderland and change your life.