B Scar TV Podcast
Hi-Quality conversations with your favorite athletes, entertainers, thought leaders, and cultural tastemakers - hosted by NFL Linebacker Brennan Scarlett.
B Scar TV Podcast
Why a Self-Study can Grow your Brand | Hi-Quality Quickie
NFL Veteran and Entrepreneur Brennan Scarlett explores how a self-study can be the key to unlocking your potential and building a strong, unique brand. Discover the power of self-education and how it can set you apart in today's competitive world.
Previously, Brennan Scarlett debunks common misconceptions surrounding brand building and delves into the essential elements of creating authentic relationships with your audience. In this episode, we dive straight into the next steps of building your brand by participating in a self-study.
Full-length video episodes are available on YouTube.
Follow the show on Instagram and TikTok @bscartv.
Created and Produced by Scarlett Creative.
scarlettcreative.co
SUBSCRIBE, LIKE, COMMENT, REVIEW. We love some constructive criticism.
’Til next time... Peace ✌️
This is a high quality quickie by Beast Guard TV, and we're back with another episode of Beast Guard TV and we got another high quality quickie Vote at us. This is part two of our brand development series. On the last episode, we talked about the importance of building a brand and organically engaging with your audience, and we talked about building the foundation to be able to then create that relationship with an audience. You're an entrepreneur, whether you're an actor creative, whether you're a tech company or a nonprofit, or a financial firm or what have you, it doesn't matter. Whenever you're representing yourself to the public, that is building your brand. You know that is your brand right. Whenever you're doing that, it is so important to understand who you are at your core. Understanding who you are at your core will allow you then to build a more organic relationship. Right, and understanding all the different aspects of you, right, your values, your beliefs, your interests, your hobbies, your moral compass, etc. Understanding those at a fundamental level will then start to inform how you might be able to best share those things. Right, because sharing, as we discovered, sharing more aspects of yourself is always a good thing. Right, and there's strategy behind it. Of course, the strategy, but it's really important to understand who you are at your core, and so I am going to be speaking from an athlete's perspective and directly to the, from the standpoint of building a brand as an athlete. That's where my personal experience is, that's where a lot of my expertise is currently, but I do think that building your brand and going through this exercise is important, not just for an athlete but, as I said, for any individual in any company, right, and on the last episode I was calling it a self-assessment.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I'm feeling that, though. I don't know if I'm feeling assessment, because an assessment feels like it's something that once you do it, it's done. Once you do the assessment, it's over with. That is very much not how we come to understand ourselves. Instead, I would like to call it a self-study. It makes it feel like you're able to continuously understand, like when you study something you never fully, you never fully know it, like it's this ongoing process of something that you know is so deep, it's like you'll never get to the bottom, but you're, you're studying right, you're digging, you just keep digging right, and I think for ourselves, we're always in the process of becoming who we're destined to be. Do we ever reach that point? I don't know. I'm still in my process. I'm becoming who Brennan Scarlett is destined to be. An assessment today, it really, honestly, isn't what it's going to be tomorrow. It's definitely not what it's going to be months from now or years from now, right. But studying who I am today, it gives me a better understanding of who I might become tomorrow. And then you know.
Speaker 1:You do the study day by day or not. Obviously, you know you're not going to do this self-study exercise day by day, but the point is that you should always be open to change, whether you're a company, whether you're an individual. Values, beliefs, principles, they evolve, they change and this is a continuous process. Let's begin. So what is a self-study?
Speaker 1:A self-study is answering these three questions who are you? Why are three questions? Who are you? Why are you and how are you?
Speaker 1:When you define who you are, it's literally like you know. How would you define yourself from your roles, from your jobs, from your day-to-day, from your you know your labels. What labels would you give yourself? If you had to do that, how would you define yourself from a literal standpoint? And secondarily, which is directly connected to the primary, why you are who you are. That gets to the deeper level of understanding. Like you know that cliche of what's your why I would label myself as a football player, why I would label myself as you know. Maybe I'm an entrepreneur, why? And so the who always beckons the question of why. And then why sometimes can inform the who, because you could start with the why and say you know what? I want to inspire people by playing football. Maybe I'm accomplishing that. Maybe maybe I'm not. Maybe there's an extra level. Maybe I also want to motivationally speak, maybe I want to step into that arena because that is why, that, that's my why. I feel like that's my purpose, right? So then that can. That can inform who you are.
Speaker 1:If who you are is a developer, a firm that maybe you don't care too much about, and your why is like. You know what I'm looking to to connect, be in social environments consistently Then you know if you're who. If you don't encompass that, then you're why. Now maybe it changes. You know the who, the. If you don't encompass that, then you're why. Now maybe it changes. You know the who, the literal definition, your literal labels and what you're doing from a day to day. And then, moving on from who you are and why you are. You then get to how you are right and how do you, from a day to day standpoint, represent that? Who right? You know, if I am a football player, I'm an athlete. Well, how are you? How are you that? Well, I practice every day, I keep my diet right, I do 25 pushups a night, I'm running my miles, I'm competing in jujitsu, you know, whatever, whatever it is, that's like literally okay. Well, how are are you that?
Speaker 1:So for me, when I was playing in the league, oftentimes in the off season, I would take, I would take some time to do these self-studies. And it's funny because what I found is that oftentimes I would do it when I was in the air, when I'm on planes, I just feel, feel like I'm peaked creatively. It's also just dedicated time. Oftentimes I don't purchase the Wi-Fi and so I'm just there with my thoughts, with a book and with a notebook. And you know, once my book is done and I feel like I've kind of exhausted it and done with it, then you know I can pour into my notebook and I think big picture about you know is who is Brendan Scarlett?
Speaker 1:And so when I would come out of a football season and get into the offseason. You know it's two totally different schedules. In the season it's practice, it's meetings, more meetings and then more meetings, and then you got games, you got walkthroughs, then you got recovery and rehab and this and that I mean it's full days, top to bottom, it's stacked. But then you get into the off season your job shrinks down to stay fit, stay healthy and and get better at your craft, which in the off season I mean that's maybe like four hours of your day craft, which in the off season I mean that's maybe like four hours of your day right, doing all the right things, for four hours of your day of dedicated time. Beyond that, you know you got another eight hours of of of. You know another eight waking hours, and what are you doing with that?
Speaker 1:And so for me, I always wanted to be doing something. You know I'm, I got an active mind and I'm passionate. I want to do different things. I'm curious. So building out a framework to understand what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, you know who I am right. That maybe to make sure it's aligning with you know the why and who I want to be, and then how I'm doing those things.
Speaker 1:That was really important as I had that time I'd bucket my who down into three different aspects. At the top it was Brennan, brennan Scarlett, me. Number two, it was the business right, my business, you know off the field. Number three, it was my brand scar at bscar, right. Those are the three kind of aspects that comprised who I am. That was how I would define it.
Speaker 1:And so, starting at the time, brennan Scarlett, you know it was all about, you know that was that was the person right. That also included, you know, my football career that's where I'd put my football was bucketed in that. And so, making sure that the person was right, I was, I was healthy, you know, physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, you know, really making sure that you know that emotionally, mentally, spiritually, you know, really making sure that you know that's, that's, that's who I was, first, right. And then also my relationships, right, I'm a son, I'm a brother, I'm a boyfriend, I'm a nephew, I'm a grandson, I'm a friend, right. And so you know, in that bucket it was more qualitative, softer side of like, you know, the, the core, the core parts of life, lucky for me and I think lucky for any athlete, physical health and and competing in your sport. You know, it's all it's. It's one in the same. It can be looked upon that way, and that helped me. And then, beyond that, love, friendship, you know, selfless service, my spirit, my traveling, new experiences, all the, all those things it's.
Speaker 1:What I put in in that bucket is something that you know I was that was important to me was to prioritize that, so it's burning scarlet. First, number two, it was business right, and so my business was. It was typically when I would do this self-study, it was a review of my portfolio and how I was allocating assets Right, and so we think about assets. Assets could be a cash, public stocks could be private stocks, could be real estate. It could also be companies you founded. But also your assets are also your time and your energy. The allocation of those assets are so critical, so critical.
Speaker 1:Over the course of my career I founded three companies, one after my rookie year and when I purchased my first property, my first real estate property, so that I built kind of this holding company, a real estate company. So that was number one. Then, after my second year, I started a foundation. You know I've gotten to a place where I was financially stable, you know, felt good about my career and looking back and just how lucky I was and I am, and it's like man, I want to do something for my community. I want to give back to my community. So I started the Big Yard Foundation in 2018. And then, in 2021, officially started Scarlet Creative right, and so I was allocating time to those three businesses and so I was set.
Speaker 1:You know, when I was doing this self-study, I'm setting goals for what I wanted to accomplish in my portfolio. And what I want to accomplish in my portfolio and what I want to cost, is those investments Right, and how much time and energy was I spending in each? You know, thinking about that, like you know, is. You know, do I want to build my real estate portfolio right now or actually do I want to put more time and more energy into Scarlet Creative? Do I want to put more time and energy into Big Yard Right Because you only got so much? You know it's a pie, you know you got to allocate it correctly, right, and so I would make changes and shifts. You know, early in the career, it was more real estate, more investment, and towards the back end of my career, I was thinking man, I'm in this, such this, such a powerful field and have such a powerful platform. You know what? I think? I'm going to start putting more energy, time and resources to building my brand, which leads me to my third aspect, which is the brand B-Scar.
Speaker 1:Also, after my second year, when I visited Complex Networks and I did an externship with Complex for two weeks and man, they put me on completely. I had no idea about the power of content and just the system of it. You know, they were getting ideas into Complex and this is back in the day, they're on the forefront, cutting edge frontier of culture, music, fashion, sports. It was like everything and ideas were coming in. They were chopping them up in video, they put them out on social. It was a factory of content. I was like yo, I love it, I want to do that. And they were like you should. You're an athlete, you're a brand, you should build that, you should use your platform. And so I started Beast Guard TV as, like you know, my off season vlogs.
Speaker 1:And then I was thinking you know about my creative expression, right, and how I'm sharing on social media. And as that has evolved, I thought about my thought leadership, right? You know I care about brand development. And so I'm here sharing with you, right, and wanting to be a leader in that space. And you know, as I was playing, I've always felt like I got dripped from the beginning, always felt like I got drip from the beginning, from the early days. I'm talking with the full boots, shorts, the footlocker, full sweatsuit, the flat bib new era come on. The fitted cap, come on. I felt like I always had drip.
Speaker 1:And then so when I got into the league and we had the tunnel and it was, you know, just just the moment, I was like, yo, this is when I'm going to, I'm going to shine, let my little light shine. So I was walking down those tunnels and I felt like, you know, I want to share that. I'm into fashion, so I'm going to lean into the fashion piece. You know I love to write, so I'm going to be expressive in my captions, my Instagram captions, be poetic. I love indoor plants, I love cigars. You know I like to view myself, as you know, someone of like a Renaissance man, right, and so there was all these kind of these things that I felt like kind of encompassed one aspect of my life, which is my brand, and underneath that was all these creative expressions and and things. So I was putting a lot of time and energy towards that.
Speaker 1:And I think what is interesting for me is I always had kind of seen I mean, as I'm defining now that Brennan Scarlett and B Scar were almost like two sides of the same coin a little bit. I always thought that it was like the dr jackal and mr hyde almost, you know, especially because when you're on the field you know that's when, that's when scar would come out, right when the helmet comes on, that's. You know b scar is taking the scene and so it's. You know, it's like Mufasa and their scar. Right, and I thought about kind of building my brand around that is like having this character, you know, be scarred, but that be scarred character is this renaissance man that I actually am, you know, and I just started thinking about framing it, framing it that way intentionally, intentionally, and obviously it's been, it's become a constant evolution. Right, there's still this now, as you know I'm not playing football, as I, you know, have been transitioning out of the game brennan scarlett and b scar are coming closer and closer together, right, they're, they're, they're making their, their marriage, their integration. You know, the hulk and bruce banner are becoming, are becoming one.
Speaker 1:As I've gotten deeper along my journey from a branding perspective and building a creative agency and kind of playing my stake in the ground as being of this being an industry, I've started to consider defining the brand portion more clearly Right, the brand of of B-Scar and Brennan Scarlet, and you know it's, it's, you know it's, it's distilling down now those three aspects that I listed out Right, the Brennan Scarlet the person, the biz, you know my business. And then the brand that I listed out right, the burning scarlet the person, the biz, you know, my business. And then the brand that I built it's, you know, starting to distill those down into a way that I can share them effectively and communicate them, those things, effectively to other people. And, and for me, it was really important for me to start to understand, especially from a business standpoint, like what was it that was tying all these different things together? Right, because you know, when I was in sports as an athlete, you know that being that was what I am presenting to the public. Right, it was my football. Then it was my interests, you know. And then it was this kind of Beast Guard brand. Right, that was encapsulation of my interest in hobbies, but now, as it got moved a little bit from that, it's like OK, well, there's also this, this business aspect too. You know, I'm still an athlete, right, it's not in the tradition, not not in the way that I was. As far as you know, I'm not playing on Sunday, so so how do now I kind of evolve and change and what is the thread that takes me through now my life now, right, and so I've, you know, started to find, like, from a brand standpoint. You know what is that? What are those threads?
Speaker 1:And for for me, I've landed on community, creativity and capital. I love an alliteration, y'all big. I'm an english guy, I love an alliteration community, creative capital. And that was, that was just from my personal situation. You know, everything that I do some aspect of community it typically also has is creative, right, even the things that are community oriented, the big yard foundation, it's inherently creative. You know, that's something that's important to me and that's it's a part of me, it's inherent in anything that I touch. It's always going to be creative.
Speaker 1:And then capital, you know that's the world we live in. You know it's the driving force of making things continue to build and be sustainable. Right, it's thinking about how they're generating revenue, the income, the expenses, the investment opportunities, etc. Etc. Etc. And you know, I love it, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a business guy, I like, I like, I like business, I like building business, and so it's a, it's all a part of it. So for me that's kind of that's you know where, how my life is bucketed Right.
Speaker 1:So when you move from understanding the who Right, it's like Brennan business and now moving towards the how Right, it's like well, it's community, it's creative, it's capital for the athletes that we work with, we find that it's. It's typically distilled down into three, also three buckets. I think once you start to build beyond three buckets, you start to lose focus a little bit and there's just really no, no need. But for many of the athletes that we work with and and as it was for me a little bit too it's your sport, it's your business and it's your lifestyle, coming up with the representation of who you are. You know, typically you consider those three pillars right and then the next step is trying to figure out well, how do I want to communicate each of those three pillars? Because if we say your sport, business and lifestyle encapsulate, you know 90% of who you are. Then if we can effectively communicate each of those pillars, then you have a great chance of the audience who is seeing you play on Sundays or on Saturdays or on Fridays, that audience will have a much better understanding and appreciation of who you are at your core.
Speaker 1:I want to strike the distinction of those personal kind of self-study right, like how I started. It's like who is Brennan? Who is Brennan, the son you know, for the fathers, the fathers, the, you know the people that, the love, the friendship, the spiritual, all of those things right. It's like you know you want to pick and choose which of those you want to present to the public that who you are and why you are. I think that's communicated through how you are. So for me, through community creativity and capital. You know, kind of my how the who is communicated. Right for athletes you know through their sport, through their lifestyle and through their business, to who they are at their core is communicated.
Speaker 1:And I think that's also important to remember when you're posting on social media or you're recording your videos or you know, and you're sitting in front of a microphone is like with each of these pillars, anytime you're communicating man, do it in your own swag, communicating your own style, your language. You know just overall authenticity, man, like, at the end of the day, that's that's where the people are going to really connect with right. If, like, you're sharing a tunnel, fit you walking in and you're dripped down, you have a coffee in your hand. You know, maybe it's Dunkin Donuts. You rock with Dunkin Donuts and you vibe with them and that's your jam. I think you're crazy. But if that's your jam, don't be embarrassed of that man, flex it Right.
Speaker 1:You know, if you're on an interview and there's an opportunity to you know to share who you really are, what you really care about, you know, really share that Right. Because these themes you know, your sports, your business, your, your lifestyle, these themes of community creative capital, you know, whatever your themes of of content is, they're important. But what's just as important is is communicating these things and how you communicate them. You know any of the, any of your quirks. You know the corny humor, the dad jokes, the slang, the music. If you, if you got a an eccentric taste in music because of that, don't run from those. Actually lean in. Those are the things that make you uniquely, you and your willingness, your openness, your willingness to be vulnerable, to share those and the people will appreciate you that much more. Well, there you go.
Speaker 1:Self-study, I really I encourage you, regardless of if you're building a brand or you're not. You're just. You know you're hanging out and you're, maybe you're in build mode, maybe it's not time to go brand, maybe you're. You know you're doing your thing. You know you're starting to tweak the product. You're tweaking the service, you're tweaking the human being. You know whatever it is. Do a self-study, I encourage you.
Speaker 1:Who are you, why are you and how are you? You know your who and your why, those you know. It's like a game of ping pong, right? You're just hitting them back and forth. Does your who match up with your why? Does your? Why inform your who? Keep on just playing that game.
Speaker 1:And as soon as you gain equilibrium with who you are and who you are in your day to day and in your career and your life as you are as a human being, if that matches up with your why, which, your why is what you care about and your values and your moral compass and those things, if they match up and you're walking in your purpose, good. Now think about how you know, just define it. How am I inspiring people? What is my way? I'm playing football, I'm working with my teammates. I'm constantly picking up the young guys or the young girls and giving them some feedback. That's how I'm inspiring, because that's that is my purpose. So, ok, cool, now you have a great understanding of how you should present yourself to the world is with through that framework, through that lens. So a self-study is always healthy, whether you're building a brand or not. And if you're building a brand, do a self-study and then start thinking about how you present that to the world.
Speaker 1:How are you posting that? How are you capturing that content? What's your content? All that good stuff. So we're not going to get into that now, because you know I like to keep the high quality quickies quick. The quickies got to be quick. So that concludes part two. Next time, in part three, we'll think about how we translate all of this into a brand strategy from a practical standpoint.
Speaker 1:I hope you've enjoyed. I've pulled something from this. If you have any questions, please make sure to leave them in the comments. Also, please smash that subscribe button. We really need your support and any feedback too. Am I off my wheels? Here Is Beast Guard off his rocker. Let me know, man, I'll holler at y'all next time. Peace. This episode of Beast Guard TV has been brought to you by Scarlet Creative. For the full-length video episode and more content, find us on Instagram, youtube and TikTok at Beast Guard TV, and please leave us a review. Drop a comment. What do you want to see? What do you want to hear? Who do you want to hear from? We would love to hear from you. This is your host, with the most Brennan Scarlett signing off. Peace.