Sky Stack / Category King of High-Ticket Branding. Personal Branding Expert

Sky Stack, branding expert and creator of the Rare Persona™, reveals why most personal brands fail and how to build a brand that positions you as an industry leader. 

He shares the importance of congruence over authenticity, how to attract the right audience through deep authority, and why copying trends will keep you invisible. 

If you want to stand out, this episode is a must-listen.

5 Key Takeaways

1. Authenticity isn’t enough—your brand needs congruence with your future self
2. Stop branding to your audience—brand to yourself and the right people will follow
3. Deep authority > massive following (engagement and influence matter more)
4. The best brands "show, not tell"—subconscious branding signals create credibility
5. Your personal brand is leadership in public—own it and use it wisely

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Sky Stack is a branding expert, speaker, and co-founder of RESRVD AGENCY, a firm specializing in high-ticket personal branding. Known for developing the Rare Persona™ framework, he helps entrepreneurs, coaches, and thought leaders create brands that are powerful, distinct, and impossible to ignore. His expertise in brand positioning, content marketing, and community-building has made him a sought-after authority in the space. Sky resides in Boise, Idaho, and when he’s not building iconic brands, he enjoys athletic training, studying his vast library, and spending time outdoors.

Link: https://skykstack.com/headsmack

Paul Povolni, the founder of Voppa Creative, has been a creative leader for over 30 years, with clients around the world. He’s led teams in creating award-winning branding and design as well as equipping his clients to lead with Clarity, Creativity and Culture.

Headsmack Website

Transcript

Paul Povolni (04:42.574)
Hey, welcome to the Headsmack podcast. name is Paul Povolni and I'm excited to have another brand misfit with me. Sky Stack is with me and he is hailed as a category king of high ticket branding, is a personal branding expert agency owner and is known for the rare persona. How you doing, Sky?

Sky Stack (05:03.313)
I'm good, how are you, Paul?

Paul Povolni (05:05.118)
I'm doing pretty good, man. Looking forward to this conversation. Always love talking about branding. Always love getting different people's insights, different versions, different perspectives, different level of experience, different focus. And so really looking forward to this discussion, especially about personal branding. And so for anybody that is wondering about personal branding, we have Sky here that's going to give you illumination on the topic. so Sky.

you know, thank you for being on man. And, you know, I want to hear a little bit about your story, a little bit about your backstory, your origin story. so tell me, tell me about sky stack, man.

Sky Stack (05:38.417)
Yeah, for sure.

Sky Stack (05:44.303)
Yeah, pumped pumped to be here. Pumped to be here, Paul. So this all kind of started out for me when I was eight years old, I was really into this video game called Warcraft. And I wanted to create skins. I'm sure you know, if you I don't know if you have children, Paul, or if you have nieces or nephews, or you know how they want to buy fortnight skins or roblox skins or Minecraft skins, right? Well, back when I was that age, you couldn't buy them, you had to download them or make them. And we had this little

an app called Adobe Photoshop version six, not CS six or six. think we're on 28 or something like that right now. And so I started teaching myself how to do Photoshop and I fell in love. And so at age eight, I was doing Photoshop by nine, I was building websites. When I decided to get more into BMX and skateboarding, I just started taking that skill set kind of wherever I went, I

Paul Povolni (06:16.248)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (06:40.295)
would start making t-shirt designs and sticker designs for the local skate shop. And then, where I really started focusing on brand and learning about brands, not just design and, know, the, the first few years when you're getting into design, you're getting into any kind of creative endeavor. Like it takes a while to get good and to get a skill set. And when I actually started discovering how important brand was, was in my later teen years, when I started getting really into music, I was a

played in bands, I was a DJ, and I always volunteered to help the people who were booking me to be like, Hey, I can design your flyer and create your social media banners. could do that. And whenever we did, and they had a very high quality banner or high quality flyers, for some reason, these shows sold out more often. And as I became a motor myself and you know, we put on these, these club events here. I live in Boise, by the way, click funnels is about 10 minutes down the road from me there.

Paul Povolni (07:18.851)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (07:29.228)
Yeah, wow.

Sky Stack (07:38.227)
We've got the beautiful mountains with some fresh snow on them now. these events in Boise that I was throwing, going into my late teen years and my early twenties inside of clubs and venues, what I realized was that the shows that I was doing, the events that I was throwing on, they weren't any different than anybody else. We used the same places everyone else who was doing these kind of DJ nights, we had the same places they were doing.

We didn't really have any different DJs either. We had mainly locals every once in a while we'd have a touring DJ, but it was all the same people. there was really nothing different besides when we came out with a show, it actually looks like something that you wanted to go to because the branding on the Facebook event, the, you know, the positioning, we took a lot of time to figure out, Hey, where are we in the calendar this year? And what would be a good St. Patrick's day? And so think about positioning and brand and different things like that.

Paul Povolni (08:22.37)
Well, yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (08:35.581)
were able to create a huge reputation of throwing these really well put together events and really carved out a little place in the market for myself. And I realized that brand is that thing that allows people to try on a purchase or a product before it actually happens. And with something like events, and I primarily work with coaches, consultants, speakers, authors, of expert types, agency owners, their services are the same way.

Paul Povolni (08:54.712)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (09:04.785)
Which is with an event, there's no trial period. You can't try it on for, you know, 10 minutes or go back. You usually can't get a refund, you know, no refunds on your tickets. You maybe could sell it last minute. And on top of that, you are putting your most expensive resources into it, which is your time. You know, if it's a bad concert or a, you know, a bad event, you can't get those hours of your life back. And so.

Paul Povolni (09:10.668)
Right, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (09:26.508)
Right.

Sky Stack (09:33.787)
I realized that when you put so much brand on the front end of a purchase decision, it actually makes it very, very easy for people to eventually make that decision. Because what it's doing is it's creating that expectation of if the branding is high quality, if the branding speaks to me, if the branding feels like it's something that fits for me and something that I will be rewarded for going to, then that actually goes into the expectations of the product.

Paul Povolni (09:46.445)
Right.

Sky Stack (10:03.687)
both from a purchase standpoint and then also what's crazy is from an actual product standpoint. People, there's studies to show that better branded wine bottles, the wine is reported to taste actually better when it's the same wine inside of a standard bottle. And there's no difference between the actual product besides that the branding actually increases the product. And so I started collecting all these insights. I ran a few agencies.

Paul Povolni (10:18.68)
Yeah, Right.

Sky Stack (10:30.835)
over the years, worked in Med Spa, worked in all sorts of niches, and then really settled into the personal branding space. And before, it's kind of a buzzword, recording this in 2025, it's a buzzword right now, it absolutely is. People who were crypto experts, then before that were real estate experts, you know, now they're becoming personal brand experts, right? But when I look back at the success I had from being able to

Paul Povolni (10:43.884)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (10:48.413)
Hahaha.

Paul Povolni (10:53.624)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (10:59.315)
have a successful events company to getting a reputation in the music industry where I could, as a 21 year old kid, I got to hop on a plane and attend music festivals for free and go to these exclusive clubs and meet with all these crazy people and do all this stuff. None of that necessarily happened because my business had a good brand or had this magnanimous quality about it. What it actually was, and I remember it very clearly as I sat down with one of my mentors,

Paul Povolni (11:09.954)
Well...

Sky Stack (11:29.009)
As I was thinking about getting out of the music industry. And he said, you know, I really don't give an F about your company, but I give infinite Fs about you, Sky. And that's when I realized, man, there's actually so much more power in building the brand around myself, which I had been doing some thought leader things inside the music industry. This is, this is a real power. And so.

Paul Povolni (11:41.526)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (11:54.871)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (11:56.101)
When the opportunity arose and we wound down the MedSpot agency at the end of 2022, and I was looking for, what's going to be the place that I can bring all of these skills to, to not just be personally fulfilled, but also to have a good impact on this world. It's like, well, people who are going out there who are helping people fix their relationships to make more money to, you know, reverse things that have happened in their family, right, to be the first one to

Paul Povolni (12:25.038)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (12:25.895)
be able to start a business in their family or to have good health or be able to break a string of broken families and divorce and have healthy relationships. Those kinds of people, the coaches, the consultants, the experts of the world just became my people and going all in on them is one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Paul Povolni (12:45.93)
Right, right. Wow. That's amazing, man. And a lot, a lot there that you shared, right from the get-go of, you know, the difference between the concerts that you were, branding well and other concerts that were exactly the same was simply the branding well part, you know, and, you know, people feel that if you have invested time in your brand, maybe you've invested time in your skill and your solutions in your offer.

Sky Stack (13:11.591)
Yeah, absolutely.

Paul Povolni (13:13.132)
You know, and if you're kind of haphazard and lazy about it, then it's like, well, I wonder if other parts of their business are also the same way. so when it comes down to, to personal brand, you know, as you mentioned, a lot of people are talking about it, especially with, you know, just the internet and, and, social media and all of that, that gives you access to the world as an individual, as much access as, you know, any other company does.

Sky Stack (13:20.211)
thousand percent.

Paul Povolni (13:40.458)
What, how do you, how do you define personal brand? What is a personal brand and how is that different from a business brand?

Sky Stack (13:45.747)
Yeah.

Great question. So personal brand simply is leadership in public. If you look at behind me here, if you can watch this on video or if you're on YouTube or it says marketing for leaders, it's the name of it's the name of my community and the name of my upcoming podcast. And I chose that name very specifically because personal brands are leadership in public. When we lead inside of our organizations, you know, we're showing up as

you know, people, whether you lead a small team, you know, inside of a creative department or you actually are the CEO, founder, owner of your business, you have people that you work with. There are certain standards, there are certain ways of communication, there are certain responsibilities that you have as that leader to show up for your people internally inside your company. And a personal brand is the same exact way, especially if you're in some kind of an expert driven

Industry where you sell courses you consult with people you do agency services You want to get booked on stage or be on awesome podcasts like this? What everyone on the other side of those transactions? Whether that be a transaction with an event organizer a podcast host or with a low ticket client a high ticket client a retainer client What all of those are looking for is they're looking for someone who can lead them into a new

place or a new space. They're all looking for some kind of a leadership. Would that be a leadership for their audience of as a podcast host or as a, as an organizer? Can you lead who is coming here into a new experience, a better experience or into a new outcome? And then especially if your own customers and clients is, you know, they're looking towards you to lead them to a future. And there's, we kind of have a vacuum right now. If you think about how often

Paul Povolni (15:39.202)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sky Stack (15:45.551)
you scroll through social media and then how often you actually follow somebody each month. you spend, let's say the average person spends five hours a week conservatively, know, bits and pieces of their day scrolling through feeds and probably follows one or two people every month.

Paul Povolni (15:53.74)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (16:05.971)
who are new creators who are say, hey, this is someone who's worth giving my time to. And when we think about it from that perspective, we see how there's a massive leadership vacuum that we actually have on social media where lots of people are making noise. Lots of people are trying to get eyeballs, get attention, trying to do the hooks and the gimmicks and the this and the that. But we actually have very few people who have that leadership capital who are sharing.

And the people who do have that leadership capital, they're either not invested or don't know how to actually invest into getting their brand out there so that there can be more people like the Hermosys, the Dan Martells, the Ed Milets of the world.

Paul Povolni (16:52.792)
So when it comes to your personal brand, you had talked about it works well for coaches, speakers, authors, leaders. And that's good because it's built around your personality and what you do and what you offer and the solution that you put out there. Is there value in personal branding for the roofer, the plumber, the...

You know, somebody that's not necessarily, it's not about them. You know, they offer a service that's not tied directly to them. Um, is there value in building a personal brand around that?

Sky Stack (17:30.707)
Yeah, great question. Great question. If you have an there's always a value to building a personal brand, but that personal brand might look different. Right. And where the things that you might need to consider if you're a local services business owner is number one, are we more of a needs based or we more of an ongoing kind of product or service? Right. People

don't necessarily wake up in the morning and say, what I need is I need a $15,000 roof. They just don't. But when they have storm damage, they absolutely turn to that. And so that's where we see a lot more like intent-based marketing, people running SEO and Google ads and things like that work really well. If you have something that's more ongoing, right? You sell insurance, you sell Med Spa, you sell things that people need to buy pretty year round.

Paul Povolni (18:06.958)
Ryan.

Sky Stack (18:26.031)
It actually benefits you to build a personal brand, but to focus that to be very hyper local. You shouldn't necessarily been thinking about how do I go viral, but a lot of more times, how can I tell stories around my community? How could I maybe have a podcast like this where I only sit down with people in my city. So I get to know people who are, you know, potential referral partners or key stakeholders or who have.

you know, respect and eyeballs so that my name can get out there. there's actually an insurance agent here in Boise who has done a phenomenal job with this, with his own podcast that everybody knows his name because he's had every person who was a leader here in the Boise area on that podcast to discuss their business, their triumphs, their failures, and has created this great network for himself because of that. And so there definitely is the, opportunity. And you just have to think about number one,

where is the opportunity coming from? Is this an intent-based sale or is this something that's a little bit more evergreen in how people can buy from me? And then that second piece being to just make sure that you're focusing where you actually need to focus because yeah, you probably, if you live in a town of 20,000 people and you are a local services business owner and you're trying to get to 100,000 followers on Instagram, that doesn't exactly make sense.

There's not even that's five times the population of your current of your service area. Right. And so just scaling back a little bit. And, you know, if you do have the aspirations one day to become a coach or a consultant or write books or run a mastermind and teach other electricians or plumbers how to do what you did to grow your business, that's fine. And Dandy probably started on the personal brand sooner than later in that way. But just thinking about scale and intent are going to be the two things that you should really focus on if you are more of that local service based business.

Paul Povolni (19:51.575)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (19:56.844)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (20:21.89)
Now, there, is there danger in building a brand around yourself if you're in that industry? Like what would be the negative of building a, brand around yourself? Is there any downside to it?

Sky Stack (20:34.929)
Yeah. So the there's really two downsides to building a personal brand. And those two downsides for the supplies for any any niche, any industry from local to completely online. The the first one is you need to wind down your brand whenever you exit your business, at least divorce your brand from the business so that the business can have some valuation to it. Now,

This isn't as big of a deal as most people make it because any proper exit that you take will take at least 18 to 36 months to properly prep, get your books, your systems, work with your lawyers, everything like that. It'll take a while and I'll give you time. This is what their homo to do with gym launch. When they knew that they were going to sell, they took two years to remove their names, their faces off of all of their products so that they could exit for $50 million. So that's kind of the first thing.

Paul Povolni (21:31.502)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (21:34.341)
The the second thing that comes against you when you have a personal brand is sort of related and it's a double edged sword and both of these are double edged swords because you can grow a lot quicker with a personal brand but it's also a little harder to sell. The second thing is when it comes to attracting talent which is when if you do want to exit or you do want to leave the business then they're probably going to be more of your team who wants to come with you.

Paul Povolni (21:51.139)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (22:04.231)
than wants to stay at the firm that was just acquired or that you just spun off or that you just put a CEO in place with, you know, because they want to work with the person. If Elon Musk was to sell Tesla tomorrow and move on to a new company or maybe go all in on one of his other companies, what percentage of his Tesla employees would want to go where Elon is going versus stay at Tesla? Probably.

Paul Povolni (22:12.3)
Right.

Sky Stack (22:31.195)
a fair amount and you he's a more controversial figure these days and probably plenty of people don't ever want to work for him. But those who maybe admire his entrepreneurial savvy or want to be developed by him or around him or in his orbit, they're going to want to go. And so this is the other thing too, which makes it difficult to be able to

Paul Povolni (22:37.559)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (22:56.999)
have a business that you can sell afterwards is that talent acquisition. And so being able to bolster the business brand as well to be something that is very respectable outside of your own brand. A great example of someone who's done this well is Sarah Blakely and Spanx. Sarah Blakely, huge brand in and of herself. Her husband Jesse Eitzler, huge brand in and of himself. Spanx, also a huge brand in and of itself. They complement each other, but I either could stand on their own if they weren't associated.

Paul Povolni (23:12.96)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Paul Povolni (23:22.444)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (23:26.771)
I don't know, she might've already exited. I'm not quite sure if she has or not.

Paul Povolni (23:30.176)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I think, you know, it's also different between, providing a service like a plumber, a roofer, a electrician or whatever, a gym owner, that's very different to being a coach, a speaker, an author, a, whatever, because one is very closely tied to you as a person and your personality.

Sky Stack (23:56.508)
Right.

Paul Povolni (23:58.298)
the other one is tied to a solution you offer that others might be able to offer equally with, even with your exit. and so, you know, looking at some actual activities, some things that if somebody is trying to build a personal brand, what are some of the first things that they need to consider, around building their personal brand?

Sky Stack (24:19.889)
Yeah, great question. So to build a successful personal brand these days, they need to throw out the entire playbook that has been talked about for the last 10, 15 years. There's been a lot of advice around which is to go copy your competitors, to be authentic, to go really wide.

Paul Povolni (24:43.818)
Copy your competitors and be authentic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Sky Stack (24:46.865)
Yeah, right. Be authentic, but also copy them because they're working so well. And so there's there's a lot of things, you know, make sure that you have lots of followers by your followers if you have to so you can have, you know, that that big presence, right. And if you're getting no engagement, there's so many. Yeah, so many tools these days where you could just copy and paste on Instagram username and get a percentage of how many followers are likely fake. And

Paul Povolni (25:02.624)
Right. Fake, fake proof. Yeah.

Sky Stack (25:15.835)
There's yeah, there's so many things that are wrong with the current, the current stance of personal brand, which is why in my own brand, I use the word personal brand less and less because it comes off with this idea of an attractive character, which is a coin that that Russell Brunson brilliantly termed years and years ago. And I think even maybe even before that he inherited that IP. But the the attractive character

Paul Povolni (25:33.176)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (25:45.765)
is looking to package who you are to be valuable into the eyes of somebody else. And where personal brands are going is that we're entering this era where people are wanting to follow individuals who are a niche of and into themselves. Where

If you're the business coach, your branding is black, white and gold because everyone's branding is black, white and gold. That's not an initiative to himself, but someone like me, if you have seen a lot of my brand, especially the guides and lead magnets, mean, it's a traditional American tattoo and it's all these other influences that are in there that are part of my DNA.

Paul Povolni (26:28.47)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (26:34.119)
but is not gonna be seen as something that's necessarily attractive to everybody and that's okay. The idea that your niche, especially if you're an online business, your niche isn't what you think it is. It's not the total addressable market. know, most will never be able to reach that point and the amount of scale that takes to reach your total addressable market in that niche might not be something that you want to take on with the.

Paul Povolni (26:39.736)
Right, right.

Sky Stack (27:01.061)
headcount and the infrastructure and the cash burn and the profit margin for that takes. But if you are that expert, that coach, that online business owner, or even if you have e-commerce or you know, other other products that can niche down, you want to be working with your people, not the market. And so if you base that brand around not what's attractive to somebody else, but what is congruent to you,

Paul Povolni (27:20.526)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (27:30.961)
Meaning what is true to you consistent over time and especially of who you want to be and where you're going versus authentic because, know, authentically you can be 10 different people inside of a single day. You can wake up super happy and then you get a bad email from a client or you know, you hit traffic on the way into work and you know, you're a completely different person. You're way different than you are with your kids and you are with your spouse than you are with your buddies and that's okay. We are.

Paul Povolni (27:44.343)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (28:00.241)
supposed to have different social contexts and we change as our emotions change. But congruence of being able to be consistent to a higher version of ourselves, a future version ourselves, who we believe we are at our core when there's nothing to hide, nothing to protect. Then if we bring that out into the world and we actually use our own identities to base our brand identity off of, it has this amazing mirror effect.

Paul Povolni (28:05.485)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (28:20.172)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (28:29.373)
where the people who resonate with you, you know, with my brand being leather jackets and motorcycles and music and tattoos, guess what my clients, what they like, they like motorcycles and whiskey and tattoos and they're musicians. And you know, we have these incredibly close bonds because we get to relate to one another off of that point because the brand is what's actually binding us together.

Paul Povolni (28:29.58)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (28:40.366)
Right.

Paul Povolni (28:53.176)
Right.

Paul Povolni (28:58.435)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (28:59.421)
people, only, your audience will only respond to what actually relates to them. And this is both on a big messaging point of making sure that you're talking to their problems, their pains, their desires, et cetera, but also of who they're actually going to relate with. And this who they were going to relate with, if you are in a market that has become more competitive, more busy over the last five years, like the coaching industry definitely has,

Paul Povolni (29:05.506)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (29:18.124)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (29:27.623)
This is more and more and more important because the who is telling me this information when the information is everywhere is almost more important than the information itself and even the results that you have behind you itself. And so there's probably some Christian life coach out there or Christian business coach who is going to be able to give people like Gary V or Alex Hermosy a run for their money in terms of the amount of audience.

Paul Povolni (29:38.829)
Right.

Sky Stack (29:56.627)
influence acquisition that they can do. Because they're speaking to a consumer who would rather buy with someone who aligns with their values and their lifestyle. Even if that person maybe they've only built $20 million business this Christian business coach, but this, you know, Alex Hormozi has built 100 million or 200 million. That doesn't necessarily matter as much as

Paul Povolni (30:08.174)
Right. Right.

Sky Stack (30:21.297)
the values and the lifestyle and the shared way of thinking that people want to buy into these days. And so I know that's a lot to throw out for like what to think about starting with a personal brand. And this is where I start discerning personal brand versus rare persona or attractive character versus rare persona, which is that rare persona is looking at how can I be one of one or one of zero in this marketplace? And how can I?

Paul Povolni (30:27.458)
Right.

Sky Stack (30:48.891)
instead of looking to impress a tribe or to contort myself to be attractive to a tribe, how can I just be the most myself and then have the people who are also like me become my tribe and start gathering around me? And that's a way different way to build a personal brand than what you'll see these catchy acronyms like the five P's or the four S's or all these, because we're all branding people who make these up, right? They're not actual things.

Paul Povolni (31:13.998)
Yeah, yeah, right, right, yeah

Sky Stack (31:18.259)
It's a lot more useful than some of the other things that you might you might see out.

Paul Povolni (31:25.002)
Right. Well, and, I like what you said there and you know, it is true that you attract what you project and, when it comes to your brand, you've got to decide what you want to project and what you want to put out there. because that's what you will attract. And like you mentioned, you're like, you know, rock and roll leather jackets, tattoos and stuff. And that's what you're attracting. You're attracting what you're projecting. And so you've got to first decide who you want to be. Right. You've got to decide like, who, who am I?

Sky Stack (31:48.531)
100%.

Paul Povolni (31:54.12)
And who do I want to serve and who do I want to attract with that version of me? But there is also the discussion of the alter ego. And so, you know, what are your thoughts on, you know, putting an alter ego out there that is not quite you, but is maybe an augmented you.

Sky Stack (32:15.855)
Yeah, great question. Well, I think that most people, when they put out an alter ego, is the person that they wish that they were. Right? Is my alter ego is more confident, it's more bold, it's more loud, it's more XYZ. And I saw this a lot. And a lot of what I learned about personal branding was with working with these touring DJs. And you know, being really involved with

seeing them behind the scenes of these loud obnoxious on social media DJs who are models and bottles partying were just computer nerds who learned how to make music. And when you talk to them behind the scenes in the green room or backstage, they're really awkward and they can't hold a conversation. so, but if you ask them who they wanted to be, or if you went back 10 years when they were in high school, playing around with their computer and making music software or

Paul Povolni (32:54.862)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (33:02.445)
Right, right.

Sky Stack (33:13.437)
working on the music software and things like that, they probably say, well, I want to be like the life of the party. I want to be that person. And so I like branding around the alter ego or, maybe even a future self and making that very public because it does two things. the first thing that it does is it brings those people out who reinforce that in you. Right. it brings that out with the people or brings the people in who reinforce that in you. And the second thing it does is

Paul Povolni (33:18.84)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (33:35.532)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (33:41.467)
It holds you to a standard to be congruent with. There are some days where I don't feel like the sky stack that I am online. And that's okay. That's someone who I live up to, right? That's another level of accountability that I have. When I put out, I am the branding guy. And then we were just talking earlier how I took down my agency website, because it just didn't reflect what we were doing anymore. And I realized, hey, that's a little

Paul Povolni (33:45.633)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (33:49.996)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (33:53.952)
Right. I like that.

Sky Stack (34:09.245)
that's a little missing piece of my integrity to be the branding guy and have my website be down. I should go fix that, right? And so, and so it provides us level of public accountability. And now what comes into play is there's two things that always run inside of an entrepreneur's brand. And it's why I really believe that we can't necessarily do this ourselves. Even I've taken advice on my own brand and have had

Paul Povolni (34:13.646)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (34:38.237)
people double check me. And what comes up inside of the brand is imitation and imposter syndrome. And these are really the flip side of the same coin, like insecurity and pride are really the same thing just on a spectrum. The same is true with imposter syndrome and imitation. And if you are a mindset coach and think you need to be like Tony Robbins, or if you are an agency owner and think you need to be Gary Vee,

Paul Povolni (34:46.445)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (35:05.487)
or you know, you are a fitness coach and you think you need to be Mike Isretel. Well, there's only going to be so far you can go and actually communicating a congruent brand because you are playing off of somebody else's congruence and natural. There's it's called social learning. It's a natural evolved trait that we have to learn from those we look up to, whether they be older siblings or parental figures or other figures in our community. And so

Paul Povolni (35:18.614)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (35:33.959)
You have to kind of walk that backwards. And that's where doing this yourself is something that you can get close, but it'll never be the same as if, or rather it never be the same that if you sat across from somebody who has built brands, who can talk with you, who can hear your stories and kind of call you on your own BS or call you on where you're thinking.

that you aren't the thing you already are. There's so much more power in doing this with a human being. And so when I work with clients, 80 % of our time is really focused on who is that person. And then after that, the branding deliverables are really easy, really simple. And they last a long time versus going to

Paul Povolni (36:04.877)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (36:20.14)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (36:25.661)
you know, a fiber, a fiber freelancer, an upward freelancer, or kind of, you know, piecing this all together and having to redo the brand every six to 18 months, like a lot of people do, because it never just quite quite fits. And so and that'd be the thing too. So if you're looking to build this, definitely build around an alter ego. But I'd encourage you to think about that alter ego as your future self. Who are you in 10 years? And then how can your brand reflect that now? So you can grow into those shoes.

Paul Povolni (36:35.648)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (36:46.466)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (36:52.408)
Right.

Sky Stack (36:54.375)
And then getting somebody who has done this a few times to sit across from you and be able to pull out the parts of that future self, that vision you have that really aren't you. And if they can do that, then you can reach that point of congruence that allows you to love your brand, have confidence and momentum in your brand, be able to bring in the right kinds of people and have it actually fit. Because the level of content that

Paul Povolni (36:58.894)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (37:05.964)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (37:18.957)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (37:22.105)
is required these days to start gaining some influence, With lots of video, especially with video content and things like that. If your brand doesn't fit you, it's like running a marathon with poor fitting shoes. It's like, if your shoes are two sizes too small and you try to run for 26 miles, you're going to hate it and you're going to give up. And most people who burn out on content, they're either

Paul Povolni (37:37.909)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (37:44.47)
Right. Right.

Sky Stack (37:49.199)
not getting the results that they're looking for or more commonly is they just don't like the actual materials that they're working with on a daily basis in terms of their brand, their image, know, the kind of the aesthetic. It doesn't speak to them and it's something that takes away their energy instead of gives their energy. And so they end up giving up on their content.

Paul Povolni (38:06.316)
Right. Yeah. So for the person that, you know, feels they want to build a personal brand, they're a coach, you know, they're the categories that you had mentioned earlier, but they're like, man, I don't want to put my face out there. You know, I don't, I don't like having to make 50 videos a day. Like people are telling me and you know, all of it, you know, all these pros are saying, you you've got to be 50 pieces of content across every single medium and you got to write blogs and you got to, you know, you got to put your face out there.

You know, is there, is there a way to ease into that or do that more effectively that you don't feel burnt out, especially if you are the kind of person that is like, I just don't want to put my face out there all the time. Like, uh, you know, I just don't feel that confident to do that.

Sky Stack (38:48.956)
Right.

Sky Stack (38:52.413)
For sure, for sure. there's.

There's a belief component of this and then there's an actual strategy and tactic component of this. One will challenge you, one will give you a lot of relief. The belief component of it, which is the challenging thing, is that that attitude is very selfish.

If you have the solution, right? If you can help people overcome their disease, you can help people clear their debt. You can help people become millionaires. You can help people lose the weight and keep it forever and love their bodies and pass on a legacy of fitness to their kids.

Paul Povolni (39:37.464)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (39:38.811)
You could literally change someone's life, change their family, their business, their employees lives, their employees families. And you're going to allow the fear, the insecurity, or just the, don't want to do it to get on camera, to get on a podcast like this, to go on stage. You're going to allow that to get in the way of changing someone's life who desperately needs you. How selfish.

Paul Povolni (40:04.62)
I like that, Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (40:07.141)
Even with sales too, hey, I don't want to, when I coached, know, organic marketing and organic sales was the same thing. Cool. You don't want to message your leads. Well, great. That person is depending on you because they have a problem. can't fix themselves. And so are you going to be as arrogant to say that because I don't feel like it, I'm going to leave this person in suffering that is completely optional. Right. And so.

Paul Povolni (40:24.514)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (40:35.426)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (40:36.241)
That's the first challenge you if you're listening to this and you have those beliefs is to realize that a lot of times, especially if you feel like this is a calling that you have, it's not about you. It's not about your comfort necessarily. It's about the experiences, the lessons, the insights, the transformations that you have so you can make this world a better place. And that will require you to be uncomfortable. So that's the first thing.

Paul Povolni (40:49.656)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (40:58.114)
That's awesome. Somebody's seeing stars right now from that head smack. That's good. Yeah. Yeah.

Sky Stack (41:06.403)
And the second thing is that all of the platforms right now, they know that people are creating far more content that is far less quality than it used to be. They see all the AI content rushing in. They see, you know, all the people who are, I'm going to post three reels a day and just to be consistent, quote unquote, which is awful content advice.

just to do something to be consistent, you should do something with a purpose. And a purpose is never to be consistent.

The platforms realize this and they've actually substituted out their algorithms to what I call AI algorithms. And what these AI algorithms are doing is it's like running a chat GPT on your content to figure out who is this person? Who are they talking to? What are they talking about? Is this high quality? And if you can match all of these

Paul Povolni (41:54.636)
Hmm, OK.

Sky Stack (42:12.871)
these things and communicate very clearly to the AIs that are running this algorithm, you can get incredible reach without having to post 50 times per day. And in fact, you probably better off posting once or twice a week than trying to post three times a day on a platform like Instagram, but be very clear and intentional with things. I a client, I don't manage content often for clients. I had a client where we did a

Paul Povolni (42:24.748)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (42:42.803)
short trial run of managing some content and kind of trying out the, these AI algorithms and seeing what we could do with them. And what ended up happening is we deleted their Instagram account that had 700 followers that had been working on for two or three years to get to that point. We rebuilt that profile and designed it for the algorithm and designed it to speak exactly to who their target market was. And the

Paul Povolni (43:10.68)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (43:11.697)
very first reel that we posted on that account was the largest question both their clients had and that the internet, if you look at search volume and things like that, this niche, it was the biggest question that they're asking on a daily basis. And that reel in the first month of running that content, that reel got them to their first thousand followers.

in, I want to say five days, so zero to 1000 in five days. And might have been a little bit longer, actually, it was a little bit longer than I think it ended up taking a couple of weeks. But what ended up happening is, in the first few days, that was a 20,000 view reel. And as they continue to post content, it's now, you somewhere in the 40s, perhaps even, you know, 50,000 by now. And so that's from a brand new account that had never posted before.

Paul Povolni (43:41.228)
Wow, wow, wow.

Paul Povolni (44:02.069)
Wow. Wow.

Sky Stack (44:07.739)
that didn't have any kind of signals or anything else was a completely clean slate. And so if you want to get yourself out there, but you don't want to do the, let me post a hundred times per day kind of a thing, right? You can absolutely do it, but it requires the discipline of number one, having really good quality content. Even from the perspective of,

Paul Povolni (44:33.43)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (44:35.739)
the gear that you use. it or not, Instagram has a algorithm to detect if your camera is grainy or low resolution or if your audio is bad. So they're analyzing, they're giving you a score, know, are you an A plus on video and audio quality or maybe should you go out and buy a new camera and a new microphone to start recording some reels? So if you can do that and you can commit to no random content, every piece of content you put out there has a goal and

Paul Povolni (44:44.738)
Wow. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (44:56.172)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (45:04.91)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (45:05.873)
you commit to a consistent schedule and a consistent targeted message to people who it can very clearly identify who you're trying to talk to, then there are millions of people out there who are looking for that exact kind of content who aren't finding it. To go back to that problem that we talked about earlier of how often do you scroll but actually follow someone new and noteworthy. These platforms know that's their biggest problem right now is that there are so much noise out there and it's so hard to find who's good.

Paul Povolni (45:17.175)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (45:20.814)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (45:27.043)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sky Stack (45:33.745)
And if you can be that person who is good, who is high quality, who is consistent, who is clear. And, know, of course you get, you actually get watch time and engagements of people send and share, and they send those kinds of engagement signals to the algorithm. If you can do that, then you can get away with posting far less than somebody else and getting far more reach, engagement, influence, audience follows interaction. Then, you know, the people who are just burning themselves to the ground, trying to post a hundred times.

Paul Povolni (46:03.574)
Yeah. And for the, for the person that's like, okay, you convinced me, you gave me a head smack right there. I'm seeing stars. My eyes are a little clearer now. I'm going to start posting content. Is there a platform that you've seen that is the most effective for it? Is it all of them? Is it one of them, or are they, you know, divided into specialties of what you actually do?

Sky Stack (46:25.221)
Yeah, it's a great question. So I recommend starting out text based. Always, always, always. Video is great. It takes a lot of your time. It takes a lot of your resources. Most people to edit at the quality that you want to edit. You'll have to hire a video editor and even the AI apps that claim that you can use an app.

You can technically add captions and do things like that, but it's just not the same as having a professional work on it. But what's nice is you could go somewhere and pick your flavor of what works for you. For me, it was Facebook, but Facebook, LinkedIn, X, threads, whatever kind of feels like it might even be your home to consume content and go there and start testing out your messages. It's a lot cheaper to write a text post even with out AI.

And I probably encourage you to write as much as you can without AI because that's your original thought leadership. And as you're learning, as you're learning yourself and you're learning your message, it's going to be more helpful for you to come up with these posts and it will be to outsource it to an LLM. But if you can start there, you can start noticing what actually hits, right? Hey, when I talk about this topic and I say it this way,

Paul Povolni (47:29.155)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (47:50.257)
I a ton of engagement. got a ton of people being like, I never thought of that before. And then you can just start banking those, right? Write them down, copy a note to them. And you can start using that to then base your short form and your long form content off of. You can go to somewhere like YouTube and know that, hey, the reel that we did for that client that got 40,000 views in the first month, that would be something great to take from a one minute reel into a

Paul Povolni (47:52.002)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sky Stack (48:19.251)
15 minute YouTube video, right? Because we have the proof that the market and the market who they want to work with too, by the way, every single person engaging and following and everything like that was right down the middle of who we were looking for to build that tribe around her. And so that to be said, being able to do that, you can start off very, very inexpensively on your time and your own budget on a platform like LinkedIn, Facebook.

Paul Povolni (48:21.046)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sky Stack (48:49.083)
I Twitter X threads start there. And then as you're thinking about more leveraged, places of content, like YouTube, where content typically lives a lot longer, then you can do a lot more. Right. And when you're ready to, I mean, the, the, big advantage of places like Instagram and tick tock, and these different apps is the content is very, very short lived, but it can give you a big boost in audience.

So when you actually have systems in your business and you're ready to take on, hey, if we got 2000 leads overnight, we could actually do something with that. Then definitely start investing in something like Instagram. But in the meantime, start off tech space, move on to YouTube, and then go from there.

Paul Povolni (49:26.414)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (49:34.252)
Yeah, that's awesome, man. So let's talk about the Rare Persona framework a little deeper. I know you've talked about little bits and pieces of it. So tell me what is the Rare Persona framework and how does it help somebody that's trying to build a personal brand?

Sky Stack (49:38.834)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (49:49.981)
For sure, for sure. So when it, you ever get into a niche, let's say, or maybe it's, you know, in a niche that you've touched before, and there's just like one or two people who, yeah, they do the same things that everyone else does, but they just seem to stand ahead in our shoulders above everyone else. In terms of who they are personally, in terms of their influence, in terms of their business outcomes.

it's something that I started noticing as well, which is not all personal brands are created the same. And in looking at what I was doing to help create some of these brands that were doing that, clients of mine who were going on to stages that most would kill to be speaking on, getting JV opportunities, really just promotion inside of their niche in a way that

in one way was very well deserved, but another way was very unusual. And perhaps someone say not deserved for where they were inside of their journey versus the size, the opportunity given to them. And it made me start thinking about what is actually wrong with personal brands right now. And then how do we fix that? And that's where I started seeing the four tenants of the rare persona, which we talked about a little bit as well. But to put them all all in one place is that

The first thing that a rare persona uses is that a rare persona uses congruence instead of authenticity. Authenticity, you can wake up a completely different person than you are after you have your cup of coffee. It does not mean you should be your cranky caffeine needing self inside of your brand. And if you think about when people say I'm just being authentic or I'm just being real, they never use that to excuse or explain good behavior.

Paul Povolni (51:32.365)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (51:43.15)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (51:43.879)
They always use it to explain what they know is poor behavior. so authenticity is a beautiful part about being a human, it's not a part that should be in your brand. But instead is that congruency of picking whether that be an alter ego, a future self, who you believe you were called or created to be. And how do I make that the focal point of the brand that I base everything else around? The second thing,

Paul Povolni (51:48.45)
Right, right.

Paul Povolni (52:08.781)
Yeah.

Well, what are some things that help to find that? Because, you know, some people do do that. They wake up grumpy, they post grumpy, and then by the afternoon they're feeling better. They post better. You know, they've got these different versions of themselves, their social media is kind of all over the place. And also when you're talking to, you know, I don't need my plumber to be authentic. I just need them to, you know, do...

do their thing in the best way possible. So you're right about the authenticity, know, the authentic self when somebody says I'm being real is usually they're being rude, like you said. how do you find that? How do you create the congruency with your personal brand? And what are some things that you have to start dealing with to make that happen?

Sky Stack (53:01.809)
Yeah, definitely. So the best place to start the best way to do it is to sit across from someone else who can find that in you and spot that in you. So there's very old advice that when I was a kid learning marketing, heard Gary V say over and over again, which is ask the three closest people to you, you know, what you're good at, what you're not good at, what your strengths are, what they think your values are, so can get kind of idea of yourself. So, you know, that's that's something to do.

The other way you can get this feedback is in looking at your clients and what your clients say about you versus maybe what they've said about other people like you, right? Hey, I've worked with a million business coaches before. You're not flaky, right? that'll start telling you a little bit of the values that you have. And then the other side of it is what do you actually love creatively or what actually, what are you linked to?

Paul Povolni (53:46.604)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (54:01.349)
in terms of aesthetic, terms of vibe, in terms of energy. So when I work with clients, I often get the feedback that, your onboarding form was the longest onboarding form I've ever, ever taken. Like it took me like three days to finally finish. And in there, I ask for everything about them. What music do you listen to?

Paul Povolni (54:17.548)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (54:27.715)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (54:30.609)
What t-shirt brands do you buy from? What brands would you never buy from? Who do you admire in your niche outside of your niche? Who do you never want to be confused with? And when we get inside of what I have is the, it's a thought leader alchemy session. That's where we really go deep on this is we're also finding things like I have one client right now, for example, who all of his fondest memories were at his grandfather's ranch in South Dakota.

Paul Povolni (54:39.511)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (54:59.013)
And so we're building this entire brand now, a business facing brand, but with this Western plains and rocks and the badlands, we're building with that kind of a feel. so that that's what I would say it would be. It's a little bit of the other people reflect back at you or if you even look at the threat of your life and how you respond to different situations and when you saw yourself at your best, who was that? And then it's going to be

Paul Povolni (55:08.769)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (55:12.685)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (55:25.553)
bringing in your tastes and oftentimes having the boldness to bring in that taste. Right. Because most people, hey, I'm a business coach. It's going to be white, black and gold, or it's going to be white and blue. Even for us branding people, we like to orange and yellow a lot because no one else does. We're like, I'm going to make a brand using orange and yellow. Self included.

Paul Povolni (55:30.326)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (55:38.414)
Yeah, yeah

Paul Povolni (55:45.228)
Yeah. Yeah. I've seen a lot of them using pink too, like a lot of branding people using pink quite a bit.

Sky Stack (55:51.815)
For sure, for sure. And so it's, you know, it's being able to step a little bit outside of that mold and have that guts. That's what actually helps people ascribe and recognize leadership in you.

Paul Povolni (56:04.802)
Good, so congruency is the first one. What's the second thing?

Sky Stack (56:07.859)
Congruency is the first one. The second one is brand to self instead of brand to the audience. Because again, your own branding creates your audience. so this is really for coaches and consultants, it works very well because number one, you're going to be spending a lot of time with your clients. A lot of time with your clients. Even as an agency owner, you are going from call to call to call to call with project updates, with account management calls, with

Onboarding proposals. I mean, you're spending so much time with these people. So they first off should be your people, right? Who you actually genuinely enjoy spending time with. so, you know, if you love working with, let's say you love working with young entrepreneurs, right? Being able to have a brand that shows that side of you that would bring in those people, but repel out anyone else.

Paul Povolni (56:44.001)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (57:06.402)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (57:07.047)
you know, that could be something that is good to have, right? So that's kind of the first thing. The second part of that though is that when you actually brand to yourself, you are only bringing in the kinds of people who have the same expectations that you do, right? You know, with how I talk about branding, it's a very long play.

I very, very much push away. Hey, if you're looking to make 900 K a minute by next week, like don't come work with me. That's not how I roll. But you know, if you want to build long-term influence and you know, want to be able to leave this life knowing that you left the world a much better place than you found it, then let's talk. and, and that to be said, when you brand to yourself in that way, you can kind of get both those factors of bringing in the, the people who

Paul Povolni (57:39.886)
Right, yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (57:52.44)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (58:04.391)
have that value, that lifestyle, they all reflect different facets of you because you built that into your brand. And then you also get the people who you only want to work with because as you said, what you project, you attract. And so by projecting how you live your life, the values that you have, then people will come to you for that. When you're running a rare persona versus like a personal brand, people come to you and that rare persona

Paul Povolni (58:17.218)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (58:33.671)
to be able to cultivate the things you've cultivated in your life for themselves. And so if they recognize that, man, Paul is creative, Paul is out of the box. just, he's able to come up with things and give the head smack and flip paradigms over, right? I want to be more like that. So I'm going to work with Paul or for somebody else because I want to be able to have that insight and that perspective when I look at my own business, my own problems.

Paul Povolni (58:39.148)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (58:58.988)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (59:03.123)
And so that's what people are coming for. And so highlight that up. So that's the second thing is brand to self instead of brand to audience.

Paul Povolni (59:11.948)
Yeah, I love that. And what's the next thing?

Sky Stack (59:14.291)
Cool. So next thing is deep over wide. So we all know the people who have a hundred thousand followers on Instagram, but only 2000 of them are real. I can tell you right now, I have three posts on my Instagram. One is from me to our collaborations from podcasts or stages I've been on. And I think I have 600 followers who mainly followed me over from my Facebook where I'm actually active. Um,

Paul Povolni (59:27.022)
Right.

Paul Povolni (59:42.444)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (59:44.019)
But that to be said, I felt an incredible business for myself. Off of an audience of 6,000 people on Facebook, I get invited onto podcasts like this. I get invited on stages and masterminds because I have deep authority versus wide appeal. And so I have some clients who are also virtual nobodies, people who have 2,000, 3,000 followers on Instagram, who are selling 100K offers to their people.

Paul Povolni (01:00:00.578)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (01:00:14.311)
because they have that much authority over the client and over that journey. And it requires you, number one, to be really good at what you do. You can't be a leader and also not know your stuff. It's just how it goes. But the second thing it requires, and this is what people don't really talk about, is it requires you to be able to own everything that has happened to you.

Paul Povolni (01:00:17.676)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:00:27.446)
Right. Right.

Paul Povolni (01:00:41.175)
Mmm, wow.

Sky Stack (01:00:44.367)
You can only have authority which with that that you bring to the light and that that you use to.

to basically talk to harness for good is the best way, way I can put it. And I haven't, I haven't shared this publicly. So I'm getting the words to, do to share this, but there's someone who needs to hear this. know that there are the things that you want to share the least about yourself publicly are probably the things that would actually change your life and the lives of others the most. But because there's the, the frame of

Paul Povolni (01:01:19.03)
Wow. Wow.

Sky Stack (01:01:24.615)
I need to be perfect. I need to have my highlight reel out there. I need to be the expert. We shy away from these things. the frame when you own your failures, you own your misfortunes, you own your trauma, you can still have power in that frame. And nobody wants to see a victim, especially a leader putting themselves in a victim position. Just look at the

Paul Povolni (01:01:45.57)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:01:49.837)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:01:53.981)
the response to all the crying CEOs on LinkedIn. Do you remember this a couple of years ago? Yeah, like no one wants to see that, right? But if you can either come from a place of ownership of, Hey, this is, this is what I had to do. A place of victory. had to make a really hard decision to lay off these clients or lay off these team members because of it. got the company financially healthy and we're able to hire like a bunch of them back on.

Paul Povolni (01:01:57.07)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Sky Stack (01:02:22.515)
Uh, who still wanted to work with us and now we're cruising towards an exit, you know? Um, or the third frame is just empathy and compassion. Hey, I had to, I had to fire half of my workforce. If you know, you're going through say markets going crazy or there's a downturn inside your industry. If you're going through that, I, I feel for you and I've been in your shoes. I just want to tell you, it's going to be okay. You know, these people.

Paul Povolni (01:02:33.558)
Yeah, I like that.

Sky Stack (01:02:51.475)
they're going to be taken care of. It's not like they're all going to be on the streets because of this. They're going to find other jobs, you know, and you're going to look back at this as a really hard decision, but as you know, one that you're grateful that you made. And so the so many people are missing out and self included of, putting up my own polished story. And when I started my personal brand, I was in a place of extreme. was at rock bottom, essentially. I had

Paul Povolni (01:03:03.875)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:03:20.371)
wound down or virtually lost my agency. All my clients decided to fire me at the same time. We went from 30K a month, recurring billing down to zero. During all the stress of that, our bank ended up switching over the car payment system for our Jeep Wrangler. And of course, I thought that I switched over the payments too until I went outside one day and realized it wasn't there.

Paul Povolni (01:03:29.037)
Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:03:42.844)
wow. wow.

Sky Stack (01:03:45.157)
And so I'm sitting here looking at my dwindling savings with no revenue down. just got our car repossessed. I'm like, what am I going to do?

Paul Povolni (01:03:53.741)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:03:55.087)
And I realized that all of what I'm doing now, I had whispers of doing during that MedSpy agency about 18 months before. It's actually when I came across from Ozzie's content, when he just barely put out a million dollar leads, no one really knew about it and was going through that material and realizing, Hey, this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to do something. I don't know if it's like coaching or like building a gym launch or something, but it's like, it's not.

Paul Povolni (01:04:07.767)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:04:24.955)
making Botox ads and selling lip filler. Like that's not, that's not, we did, we did damn good at it too, by the way. I mean, we, we made millions for our clients, but it's like, I'm supposed to do something with that's a little bit different here. And a lot of times, you know, if, if you feel like you have been betrayed, if you feel like things have happened to you unfairly, but you can look back and realize that, Hey, maybe

Paul Povolni (01:04:26.958)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:04:37.646)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (01:04:53.703)
what I thought was a betrayal is actually a promotion. And if I would have gone the easy way when I first got the idea, when I first had the impression, when I just got the download, hey, this is what I should do. Probably this wouldn't have to happen. But there might be a plan out there for me to be in this position. And I could either go the easy way or I can go the hard way.

Paul Povolni (01:04:56.918)
Wow. Wow.

Paul Povolni (01:05:12.77)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:05:20.167)
And sometimes we're stubborn and we go the hard way. And that was definitely for me, which is I was supposed to be in that position. And because I dragged my feet ended up, you know, causing a lot of damage along the way. But at the same time, being able to talk with an entrepreneur who feels like they've been disqualified from their calling because they've made mistakes. They're afraid to, to launch a business again because of a, you know, a PTSD experience with the client.

Paul Povolni (01:05:20.408)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:05:40.29)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (01:05:49.779)
right? To talk with someone who has, yeah, they've had cars repossessed, they've been in debt, they've had bills and have been, hey, how, how are we going to do this? Right? How are we going to make this work? Had I not had those experiences as well, I wouldn't be able to coach with them. And as someone who himself can have a bit, I have some empathy, but I can also have a bit of pride, it would be very easy to look down at someone in that position of like, oh, you just

Paul Povolni (01:05:50.124)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:06:00.526)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:06:06.678)
Right, right, right.

Paul Povolni (01:06:16.066)
Right, right, right.

Sky Stack (01:06:18.323)
You got your car taken away. That's stupid. You made stupid decisions. It's not always that simple. Yeah. Right. And so, and so that to say, when we can own those stories, right. And be able to own that deep authority, then we actually get the ability to not need the huge platforms. You don't need that the giant followers you don't need. And although funny enough, you'll probably get them.

Paul Povolni (01:06:20.46)
Yeah, you're dumb. You must have done dumb things. Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:06:42.05)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:06:48.045)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (01:06:48.145)
because what is personal, the most personal is the most universal usually. When you try writing something for everybody, no one likes it. When you try writing it for yourself or one person in particular, everyone relates to it. And so that's the, I know that was a little bit of a detour into my own story, but that's the third tenet of the rare persona is to have that deep authority. And yeah, now when my clients,

Paul Povolni (01:06:56.204)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:07:04.642)
I love that.

Paul Povolni (01:07:09.603)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:07:12.715)
even though my, my branding work is largely done for you, there's, are some coaching, there are some interactions that we have, you know, those kinds of problems that I went through come up inside of those sessions and I didn't know about them and they didn't know about mine either, but we were brought together to be able to help them work through that. And if you're not embracing or bring that to light, I could probably be a lot better with sharing my own, my own losses, my own failures, because I've had plenty of them.

Paul Povolni (01:07:28.046)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:07:38.84)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (01:07:40.109)
You do that and that is just sowing hope, is sowing goodwill and is actually giving people normalization to their problems so that they can see a way out if that makes sense.

Paul Povolni (01:07:48.993)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:07:52.3)
Yeah, yeah. Wow, man, that is so good. That is so good. So are there any more tenants to the framework? OK.

Sky Stack (01:07:57.809)
Yeah. So the last tenant to the framework, there's four tenants. The fourth tenant is to show, not tell. there's when it comes to communication like we're having right now, we know that there's two forms, right? We have our verbal communication and our nonverbal communication being the words that we speak and then the actual body language and the tone and everything like that that you have.

Are you married by chance, Yeah?

Paul Povolni (01:08:28.492)
Yeah. Yeah. Celebrating 30 years in May. Yeah. Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:08:31.837)
Congratulations, 30 years, my goodness. So with you and your wife, if there was ever a point where she looked at you and said she was fine, but her body language did not indicate she was fine, which would you believe?

Paul Povolni (01:08:50.082)
Right, I would believe the body language,

Sky Stack (01:08:53.619)
100 % of the time, always, always, always. And the same is true with your brand and with your copy or your marketing messaging. People spend so much time on their copy to tell people why they should buy. Let me tell you why I'm the best. Let me tell you why you should subscribe or listen to me or buy my course or book a call or join my program. Just tell, tell, tell, tell, What they don't actually...

talk about at all or they don't actually do is they don't actually show. Let me show you why I'm an expert. Let me show you why you should listen to me. Let me show you that I know what I'm talking about. And a lot of this comes down to these little principles and little heuristics and little things that operate on a subconscious level that in it's a little bit of my secret sauce that I've coined subconscious authority signals.

Paul Povolni (01:09:24.942)
Hmm. Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:09:51.147)
things like, example, this video, if you're watching this, this isn't actually how necessarily my video looks. There's a color graded filter on top of my video that if I turned it off, you would be able to see not me and my brand colors necessarily, but, and looking a little bit more cohesive, but it would be a little bit more disjointed because that's what's actually the raw camera feed is showing. or for example, this camera is slightly angled upwards at me.

Paul Povolni (01:09:51.264)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:10:15.224)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:10:19.249)
instead of most people have theirs downwards, which if you think about looking up to somebody or looking down on somebody, they have their own connotations. And when a film wants to portray someone like Darth Vader as powerful, the filmmakers will use the subconscious signal to film down low pointing up. Because when we were children, that's how we looked up to adults and our older siblings and things like that. And that

Paul Povolni (01:10:27.969)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:10:41.792)
Right, right.

Sky Stack (01:10:48.217)
circuitry is still active inside of our minds. And so this is where the execution of the brand becomes very important because you can do things like be country Western and have a lot of authority and you can do something like being tattoo inspired and have a lot of authority. You can do something that is completely outside of the box, but if you adhere to the right principles, then it, it gels it all together. And instead of being, wow, that's weird.

Paul Povolni (01:10:51.469)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:11:18.323)
this guy just went on a complete tangent and he made his brand look like a tattoo parlor. That's kind of weird. I think he needs to get some better advice on who's helping this business and this brand. But they're able to see that and be like, wow, I've never seen something like that. That's really cool. Man, I wish I could do something like that. And it only takes one or two. And it only takes one or two. And then others start doing it, and then others start doing it, and then others start doing it. But.

Paul Povolni (01:11:23.95)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:11:37.464)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:11:45.075)
If you use those subconscious authority signals, you have the ability to set that four minute mile for kind of your brand, your niche, your sort of vibe that no one else has done, but still be able to come off credible and as the expert and actually have more authority. Um, then you know, when I, when I work with clients, when the first things, depending on, know, how advanced they are on the journey, it's a lot of time you have to say, stop talking so much about yourself. Start talking more about the prospect.

Paul Povolni (01:11:54.604)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:12:12.431)
talk about their lives, everything like that. And if you can talk 10 times about somebody else for every one time you talk about yourself inside of your content, you're going to crush it. and so, so yeah, so those are the four tenants is it's being congruent instead of authentic. it's being able to brand to yourself instead of brand to other people or the other, the other side this is copycatting as well. Don't, don't copycat. Alex Hermosy has a purple book.

Paul Povolni (01:12:12.61)
Yeah, yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:12:23.724)
Yeah, that's so good.

Sky Stack (01:12:39.953)
and it says $100 million on it. so I'm going to, $100 million brands is going to be my thing. Have I ever made $100 million? No, not yet, but that doesn't matter because people like that, right? Don't stop that stuff. Stop. so, you know, be congruent brand to yourself, be deep, not wide, and then focus on showing, not telling. And if you can figure out or, you know, come on board and we'll work with some subconscious authority signals with you and kind of get those up, in your brand. If you can do those four things pretty consistently.

Paul Povolni (01:12:47.362)
Yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (01:13:09.459)
you're going to have a stature that is larger than the other players inside of your industry. And yeah, good things happen after that.

Paul Povolni (01:13:18.286)
Man, that is so good. So, so good. Hopefully you guys have taken notes from this. So as we, as we begin to wrap this up, what's a head smack that I haven't asked you about or a question I haven't asked you about that you're like.

Sky Stack (01:13:31.334)
Hmm

That's a great question.

Sky Stack (01:13:45.403)
When it comes to your brand.

Most entrepreneurs spend a large amount of time, money, resources, working on mindset and identity, which is the internal function of their calling or their purpose.

Right? How can I understand, you know, even though I've had failed businesses, I've had clients fire me, they all fired me at once got the car taken away, we got, you know, we had credit card debt that we didn't know how to pay taxes, we didn't know how to pay, we had to, we're at zero. And I just decided, hey, how can I still be like, no, I don't have to listen to all of that. And I could still see the light that I have inside and be able to move forward and create a business and create a brand and

be reborn from those ashes. We spend a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of effort into reading books, attending seminars, hiring coaches, going through our religious texts, right? Trying to understand how can we relegate our identity and be able to really hold to the fact that we deserve this, right? That we deserve that part of our cause.

The we spent so much doing this from an internal perspective that we don't actually think about what if there's another side of it.

Paul Povolni (01:15:25.454)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:15:26.279)
which is the external perspective, is funny enough, we call it a brand identity.

Paul Povolni (01:15:31.936)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sky Stack (01:15:33.029)
And I can't tell you how many times clients who have done so much inner work, who have overcame amazing things, who still just couldn't quite take themselves seriously. Couldn't quite see a path. Couldn't quite understand who they are or why they're here or that they belong here. And then there's a brand that's tailored for them that

I get to show them and it changes everything.

Paul Povolni (01:16:03.863)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:16:07.756)
What's the most powerful question then that you ask a client that for them is a head smack?

Sky Stack (01:16:22.215)
I would love to say it's a question. I would love to say that there's, there's one question. One thing that you can do if you're looking for questions is imagine a event that you do for your clients and line out every single detail of what that would be. what kind of car do you pick them up at the airport? What kind of sessions do you do? Where are you staying? That'll, that'll teach you a little bit about the, the things that words can't quite describe because

If you're saying your brand is luxury, does that mean you're picking them up in a Maserati, Bugatti, a Rolls Royce, right? Or just a nice black run of the mill Mercedes or BMW, right? Those are all luxury cars, but Lamborghini luxury is a lot different than Bugatti luxury, which is a lot different than Rolls Royce luxury. They're all different, right? And so, sometimes that helps. But the thing that actually

lips or head smacks or is that that breakthrough for a client is being able to affirm that small whisper that they have inside themselves that hey maybe I'm this way.

Maybe I'm not supposed to be like Tony Robbins, but maybe I'm supposed to be like myself. Maybe I'm not supposed to be like Alex Ramosi or like, you know, like Gary Vee or anyone else. I'm an original like they are too. And then to be able to affirm that and then bring it out and amplify that voice.

Paul Povolni (01:17:48.728)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:18:01.996)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:18:10.483)
until it's all they can hear about themselves. It's all they can see about themselves. It's what their customers see and notice and love. That is the thing that becomes really, really powerful. And there's never a set way to get there either to. When I have these alchemy conversations with my clients, I tell them at the front, this is a two hour conversation where I'm gonna ask you things like what kind of car would you pick up your clients at the airport with? But everything else is completely unstructured.

Paul Povolni (01:18:23.427)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:18:35.47)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:18:40.601)
just to be able to get to that point where I can say, I think I can see who you are. And I don't know if you can quite see that. And so let me know if I'm off here, but if you would allow me to speak into you for a moment, this is who I think you are. And I think maybe who we should build this brand around. And that's where it actually happens. If that makes sense.

Paul Povolni (01:18:47.948)
Yeah. Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:18:59.404)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. Because yeah, finding that authentic self that you feel comfortable living in that skin. you don't feel like you're wearing a costume. don't feel like you're cosplaying it, you know, is definitely a great place to find yourself in. where you feel like this, this is who I'm supposed to be. And this is how I'm supposed to be in this world and exist in this world.

Sky Stack (01:19:25.906)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:19:27.682)
That's amazing, man. Now, you know, we've talked about personal branding, you know, for, a certain demographics and group of people who should not pursue building a personal brand.

Sky Stack (01:19:39.825)
Bad, the joke I often have is that if you are not a high quality human being, you shouldn't pursue a personal brand. So, know, a personal brand, again, this is leadership in a public sphere, right? The people who had personal brands thousands and thousands of years ago are people like Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Socrates, Plato. You want to go there, Jesus, right?

Paul Povolni (01:19:46.414)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:19:56.355)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:20:06.541)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:20:08.947)
These were people, Buddha, mean, just so the influential thinkers and the people who saw life differently and who had, you no one's a perfect person, but you know, had moral character in and of themselves are the people who have had brands in the past and who should continue to have brands in the future. From a, from a business perspective though, of whether or not you should have a brand, depends on where you're looking to go. Right.

Paul Povolni (01:20:09.048)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:20:28.535)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:20:37.145)
If you love being a plumber and you want to die inside of your van and pass away at a ripe old age, you know, at lunch and just sitting in your car, eating your Burger King and go quietly that way, then you might not need a personal brand, right? It might not be the thing for you, but if there's any kind of impact that's on your heart,

Paul Povolni (01:20:45.164)
Yeah.

Paul Povolni (01:20:56.472)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:21:04.691)
If there's any kind of mission that you have, if there's any impetus to hand down the hard fought lessons, the things that were struggle for you to be able to come to, and you just want to make someone else's life easier, or just even, you know, serve and leave this life better than you found it, then a personal brand is great for you. And even if you're in a business where

Yeah, it doesn't quite make sense to build a personal brand right now to dig that well before you're thirsty. Start thinking about some of these things that we've said in this conversation so that when that time comes, you can do better than I did and you can listen to that call and heat it. Right. And not have to go through because it'll happen one way or another, but the amount of chaos that will ensue.

Paul Povolni (01:21:50.743)
Right, right.

Sky Stack (01:22:02.469)
the altitude and the speed of which you will be able to go when you have a window of opportunity that's given to you is going to be depending on how you respond to it. And for me, I was ready, but I didn't have the courage. You know, we were doing great with these these meds balls were paying us great money. How could I how could I bite the hand that's feeding me feeding my family? just didn't make sense. But

Paul Povolni (01:22:10.371)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:22:14.36)
Right.

Paul Povolni (01:22:29.976)
Yeah.

Sky Stack (01:22:32.211)
how could I want anything different? We're getting paid handsomely for it. So much so I didn't know until I started meeting other agency others. I was like, wow. We had whale of clients. But that to say, if you can, if that is something that's on your heart is to have that kind of impact, press undo it. Dig that well a little bit before you're thirsty. Keep it on your mind, keep it on your heart, and you'll be able to walk it out.

Paul Povolni (01:23:00.652)
Man, it's so good. So good. Well, man, this has been an amazing conversation. How do people get ahold of you? People want to kind of, they want to grow their personal brand. They want to go next level. They're attracted to the tattoo vibe and the leather jackets and all of that stuff. That's like, I found my people. How did they get ahold of you?

Sky Stack (01:23:14.259)
Even if not, you found my people, yeah. Yeah, great question. So we actually have a little two part gift for everyone who's listening to this. If you go to my website, skykstack.com forward slash head smack, all one word. We actually have a two part branding process for you that'll show the overall process of, Hey, this is the things that

actually bring the rare persona to life. It's about a 20 minute little mini training you can go through. And we actually have a version of it as well that is specifically for 2025 and beyond talking about all the new technologies, all the different things that you should be thinking about if you're building your brand on 2025 to not just have this nice brand, but be able to drive it and have a grow your business at the same time too.

Paul Povolni (01:24:07.114)
Awesome. And I'll have that link in the show notes as well. And so please take a moment to check that out. I think you're going to be helped in what you're doing and building your personal brand as well as check out the rest of Sky stuff and everything that it has out there. A lot of good content, a lot of resources as well to download from his website as well. Well, man, this has been amazing. Thank you so much.

Sky Stack (01:24:28.007)
Yeah, it's been great. Thank you, Paul. I appreciate it. This has been fun.

Paul Povolni (01:24:31.756)
Yeah, it's been a great conversation. appreciate you coming on and you have an amazing day.

Sky Stack (01:24:36.306)
Hey, you too. Bye.