Getting Real with Mark Colgan — Speak On Podcasts

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure that it's reliable, cost effective and really well done? I think docsa Talent is the way to go. Here's why. They don't just fill your jobs. They bring integrity, top talent, and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to Docs of Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G Again, that's doxatallent.com Bill G One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G Check it out today. Oh, a big question we get asked a lot in scaling companies is buy or build. Today's conversation is actually probably more like build or borrow. And it comes to one that I get asked about all the time. We're going to talk about podcasts, podcast marketing, like how to use it for your business. Obviously we're on a podcast, so great thing to talk about. But for our audience, scaling up CEOs, people trying to grow their business, there's a lot of conversation about should I create a podcast, should I be on a podcast? We're going to talk all about that, like how to do it and like that kind of thing. Hi everyone, my name is Bill Gallagher. I'm your friendly neighborhood Scaling Coach, host of the Scaling UP business podcast, one of the 200 some scaling up coaches around the world. And I have the privilege and pleasure of hosting our shows every week on the subject of Scaling Up. Today's conversation is a Getting Real episode. And the Getting Real episodes are sponsored by the local chapters of the EO or Entrepreneurs Organization in the Bay Area in the San Francisco Bay Area. We have three chapters here now. Three, three four four three. No, I'm projecting maybe. So we've got chapters all around the Bay Area. We've got lots of members and those members are connected to other members in 65 some countries, 15,000 plus members around the world. It's a member led peer kind of an organization where you connect and support with other entrepreneurs trying to grow and develop themselves and their businesses. It's an extraordinary organization. I've been a member. I first joined about 21 years and I am currently the president of one of the Bay Area chapters, at least for the next year. So I just think it's outstanding. I couldn't say enough about it. We have events, we have forum groups, we have all kinds of things like that. If you're not in a group like that, you'd like to check one out either in the Bay Area or anywhere around the world. Go to eonetwork.org and they'll tell you more about membership. You can apply, you can ask questions, you can attend one of our test drives, either virtual or in person and get more information about the value of being in a peer led organization for entrepreneurs. Eonenetwork.org. All right, I'm joined now by Mark Colgan, who doesn't exactly have a Portuguese accent, but he joins us from Lisbon and he'll talk about he's got an extraordinary agency that we've worked with a lot for booking guests on our show. They've been a great source and so many of the agencies that send us people, they're just not a great fit. They're fine people, I'm sure, entertaining. They love their mom, you know, like that kind of thing. They're good stand up people. But they're not always a great fit for the show. And Mark's company does a great job of sending us some pretty good people. And I thought it'd be great to talk about this subject. People ask me all the time, should they start a podcast and could they be on our podcast, that kind of thing. And I thought, well, we should get Mark on and talk about that. So we'll talk about all that. But we're going to do it against the lens of growing his business. So, Mark, welcome to the show.

Hey Bill, thank you so much for having me. I'm really looking forward to it.

Now, this isn't your first business, right? How did you get into this line of business? What went wrong with your childhood that you decided this was a good idea?

What went wrong in my childhood that I wanted a lifetime of pain as an entrepreneur, Bill? I think that's the question. Yeah, well, how far back do I go? Well, I actually had quite a traditional upbringing, had lived with my parents, went to university and always had the mantra of go to university, work hard, get a good grade and get a good job. A corporate job. Both my parents have been in the corporate world working for some of the largest companies in various positions. And I went to uni with that objective. I was going to go to university, get the job, and that's exactly what I did. And I went straight from university into work. I worked for one of the largest recruitment then when I worked for a huge company called Experian, who you may well know, like equifax in the US and I basically did that for about 10 years of our post uni or maybe eight years. And I got to the age of 30 and I just thought, I haven't taken a break. I went straight into work and I decided to take a gap year. So I had enough savings to put money down on the house and I thought, you know what, I'm just going to go and have fun for a year. So I traveled to South America and Southeast Asia. And whilst I was traveling, I'm telling you the short version, but whilst I was traveling, one of my old bosses contacted me and said, hey, you know that stuff you did for us before, could you do it for a friend of mine's business and just name a price, I'll sort the sales out and if you can be around to implement it, then you get the money. And I put a price that I kind of. I didn't really want to do the work because I wanted to have a year off and have an early retirement. And I ended up getting the project, completing it in about 10 days and I thought, I'm not going back to a 9 to 5. I've got a skill here that is in demand and people will pay well for and I can do that whilst I'm working in a hostel in Santiago, Chile. So that really was the beginning of my kind of entrepreneurial journey. But it took eight or nine years of corporate experience in the making to kind of build up the skills and the experience that, that I then utilized in my entrepreneurial career.

You and Tim Ferriss were like, what can I do? How can I make a living somewhere unusual and all of that.

Absolutely, yeah.

It often doesn't turn out quite like that, but there is something enduring about that, like controlling something more self control, more self determination. The chance to express something right that we hear again and again.

Absolutely.

What do you think has been your luckiest break so far then?

I kind of. I don't really believe in luck, Bill. I believe that you create your own luck. But I do believe in serendipity and in karma. I've spent the best of six or seven years just paying things forward and things have just fallen in my lap without me, without me being intentional about it. So the lucky. I'd say the luckiest thing was I turned around to a guy in London at a meetup, like a networking event. He was an older guy, he was Australian. We got chatting and I said like, hey, what are you doing here? Like what are you working on? And he just sold his previous company and then he had he was working on a new startup in stealth, and I was like, okay, cool. Well, I'm in the world of marketing and sales, so if you want to bounce any ideas off me, more than. Welcome to fast forward four months. I'm in a Techstars accelerator in North Carolina in MetLife Cary, preparing for a demo day with this guy who I've only met four months ago before, and I just happened to turn around to him before we left for the night. And he has the same attitude of me. There's always one more conversation that you can have. So when you're walking out the door or you're walking to the bar, have that last conversation because you never know where it's going to lead to. So I'd say that's probably the. The luckiest person I've spoken to and what the result was.

You know, I just realized before we get into it, talk, tell the listeners, viewers a little bit about what do you do? Like, how does your business work? You know, what's unique about it?

Yeah. So my main focus at the moment is speak on podcasts, and we're a guest booking agency. That's the category that we fall into. But just imagine we're a Talent agency for B2B tech execs who want to speak on podcasts where their ideal audience are listening to. So we do a lot of work around the research. We really work on the topics with our customers. And essentially what we do is reach out to podcast hosts such as yourselves, Bill. And we, as you know, you've been on the receiving end. We make really relevant introductions to guests that we think would make a great guest on the show, and then we manage the full booking process for them. So in reality, all they need to do is turn up, speak, prepare a little bit speak, and then they've created content, and then we also help them repurpose that content as well into multiple pieces for social media and blog posts, too.

Oh, so you do the adjusting of the content and the repurposing out into.

We do, yeah. It's an additional service, so not every customer takes that offer, but those that do, we. We listen out for when the episodes go live or. I mean, you've got a great team behind you that are keeping guests always informed when episodes go live. So when we get those emails in, that goes through our process and we churn out several pieces of content for them.

Really nice. I think that makes a huge difference. That's probably an area that we're grappling with, how to do a better job of that noodling on that for the last little bit. But that taking like you develop some content but then if you don't put enough little posts and teasers and things like that of it, you don't get the maximum mileage for it that you could.

Absolutely, yeah. And we use a company called Sublease but subtitles on and it's great. You just put the video in. You have to pick out the right bit of the interview. That's a really challenging part. But you put the video into subly, it burns the subtitles on. The accuracy is incredible. And then we just export that and it's ready to go. So it's a good, good process that we've got and great tools to help us enable it.

Some of the subtitles on YouTube videos and stuff are pretty bad.

Yeah, they are. They are.

I don't think that's what he said there. Really good. So, you know. Well, let me just share an observation here. A little bit off our standard topic, but I. The. The majority of guest pitches that we get are not particularly on point or on topic. They're only like in the vague vicinity of our show and they have very male merge boilerplate kind of. Because you've got a business podcast. We think this is the perfect guest and they've been great on whatever and they can talk on XYZ ABC123. Like, oh, they could talk about 10 subjects. You know what? I don't want somebody who could talk on 10 subjects. That's probably the biggest reason that we don't accept people. And maybe it works. But on going out, but I'm always interested in what's the one thing that you're going to talk about and then some stories or examples around it. But like what one core idea and that's probably the rarest thing that we don't get focused is one core. I want to lead with this.

Yeah, I think the templated mail merge, it works if you're sending enough numbers, just like outbound sales does. If you send enough emails, you'll eventually get that 3% or 1% conversion rate. The way we look at it is we are the custodians of our customers, brands and their reputation. We definitely don't want to send out volumes and volumes of emails. So we take a lot more time to really understand the audience and the value that they can bring to the audience of the podcast host that we reach out to. And as you mentioned, we suggest usually one topic which is usually related to a previous guest that you may have had or maybe something that we've seen in the description. But we listen to the podcast as well, so I know how to automate things. That was. That was my first business. I set up a marketing automation consultant, essentially. But there are so many things we don't automate because we really know that the value is in human touch and the human context and finding that relevance.

So I think that's really useful. And the. I think being a guest on a podcast is a brilliant thing. And I. And every time I talk to a coach, a consultant, an entrepreneur or whatever about. And they'll talk about, how did you start creating your podcast? We're thinking about creating a podcast. I'm like, you know, there's a million podcasts out there and they're all scrambling for audience and that kind of thing. Don't bother. Go be on a hundred episodes of somebody else and then think about creating your own podcast. Go get your own message out there. A bunch. Most people that you don't want to. Like being a podcast host or a newscaster or whatever isn't your ambition. Want to grow your. Whatever it is, your SaaS business or that kind of thing. So figure out that message and get that out there and how to create value and be compelling and get everyone else's audience. Building your audience is hard work, slow gains, Right?

Yeah.

Yeah. So use other people's audiences, which is. I think the main thing I tell folks is go, go be on a bunch of shows.

Yeah. And that's exactly what we saw as the opportunity with speak on podcasts. And as you're right, it's really hard to build your own audience. And I'm not saying don't build your own podcast, but at least try and speak on other people's podcasts first, because you might find out that you don't enjoy it. We've had customers that we've worked with that at the beginning they felt very nervous and they were a bit hesitant and they weren't too sure how they were going to come across. We give them coaching, so we have a professional speech and presentation coach that we partner up with our customers up with. And usually after about four or five podcasts, they've got into the rhythm of it and they don't tend to overthink it. And I think you just got to remember you're having a conversation, talking about a topic that you really enjoy talking about. So just do that. And.

And probably that you know really well or you wouldn't be doing, you know, you know, your domain, expert in something. Yeah. I think it's really great. Do you also work with them on getting their mic, their camera, their lighting figured out?

We make some recommendations. Yeah. We're noticing that more podcasts are moving to be video podcasts or video recorded as well. So we do share some recommendations. We can't force anybody to buy a particular kit, but we say this is a range of things that you should invest in and if there's one thing you're going to invest in, invest in the microphone. And ironically, I'm not using my microphone right now because the cable is a bit loose. So I need to get a new cable for it.

Shame.

I know.

There are a few things that I think are. So we'll go back to your story in just a second. But, but people should think about like just turn around and put the light on your face. Like if you're in a room, you don't have studio lights like we have here. Just put the window in front of your face, not behind your. Your face. Like the way that you're sitting normally in your office is not the way that you want to be on camera. It's almost always reverse of whatever it is.

Definitely, definitely. It's hard when you're working and you have got the window in front of you. It's not great on your eyes, but for an hour or 40 minutes on a podcast, you're not really looking at the screen. Working hard in spreadsheets. So I've got a huge window here. However, there's too much light and there's a little bit hot. So I've had to shut the window a little bit so it's not too shiny and too bright for the video. So simple, simple tweaks like that make a huge difference.

Getting a good mic is a great thing to do, but they don't need to be that expensive. Like just a dedicated. There are a number of them that are pretty reasonable. Upgrade the sound. What do you got? You got that Yeti?

Yeti, yeah, it's I think a hundred dollars if I remember correctly.

Yeah, there's. I have one, a different one that we use for travel. It's an Audio Technica mic. When I'm on the road somewhere and going to be, I have a little portable kit that I carry with me to set up in a hotel room or somewhere like that. This one is more of $450 kind of. But, but you know, simple thing like that, like just upgrading a little bit can make a big difference. Wearing headphones, I'm wearing little in ear monitors lets you Hear how you sound to yourself and get comfortable with that. I think that makes a big difference.

Yeah. And kid aside, prepare, at least listen to previous episodes. You know, don't be, don't be caught out by the quick fire round at the end where you get asked questions and you weren't prepared for them. The little things can really make or break your podcast interview.

We always tell folks to tell stories, focus on stories, have your go to stories. But I think that's true not just for podcasting, but for like, for everything, right? Have your, your go to stories that you tell that illustrate your thing, bring it to life. Let them be real and alive. Share details. Right? Create a picture.

Bill, as you know, I've lived and worked remotely now for the last four, four and a half years. And I constantly start conversations with have I told you about the time when I. Or have I told you about. And my friend's eyes roll because they're probably going to hear the same story again. But because you meet so many people and it's very transient, you're not too sure which story you've told and to who. So I do catch myself sometimes saying the same stories over and over again.

You know, the another thing. So we talked about audio, we talked about light. You know, isolate yourself, you know, lock the dog in the closet or whatever you need to do. Like, do your best. There have been times when our dogs made a noise and you can hear it in this studio here. Then we've got kind of a little purpose built studio in the home now that used to be in an office. It actually sounds better. It's quieter here. The other one is camera. Today I'm using a very fancy thing that the vast majority of folks are not going to set up. I have a DSLR class camera coming in through a video switcher and I'm looking at my zoom or in this case streamyard in a teleprompter. So your eyes are very nearly the center of camera for me, which always kind of keeps me connected. That's not so easy to do for most people. But here's a, here's a simple hack you can do. Put your camera on a little pogo stick or a selfie stick and suspend it in front of your computer window like, you know, the monitors here. Put the thing on a little stick right in the middle of your monitor and so you're making better eye contact with your guest and the self and the camera. Get those things aligned. You might not want to work all day with a camera sitting right in the Middle of your screen. You could pull it away, put it, it back on top. But what a difference it makes if you can start to get a little bit better eye contact.

Yeah. And Bill, I discovered a new app. It's called My Eyes are Wandering because I'm looking at my phone to get the name of the app. It's called Camo. And what it does, it turns your iPhone into the camera.

Oh yeah.

You plug that in. Yeah, yeah. And I mean the quality is fantastic. I'm in a temporary apartment at the moment, so I'm not in my ideal setup, so I can't fit the, the tripod in. But I've been using that of late and it's been incredible quality camera from, from a modern iPhone or modern Samsung phone.

It's superior, better than most of our desktop and even add on cameras. Yeah, it's better than those to get in there. And you could stick that in the middle of your screen as well and look at that or align differently with it. I think it was a really good, really good tips. You know, the other thing, I have a bad habit of this and that is that I have. So I have my principal like interface and stuff like right here, which is really great for being on camera. But then like my notes, calendar kind of things might sit over on this side and then my slides, if I'm doing slideshow kind of thing are sitting over here. So there's a screen here and a screen there and a center screen where the camera is. So I've got essentially got three screens, but every time I look over here and there, it's a little distracting. Or worse yet, like, you know, look down or something like that. Like trying to stay centered and focused makes a difference for the viewer. I notice on watch on one on playback, when I'm looking at myself, I'm like, oh, I did that again.

Yeah. I'm doing my best to stare at the green light on top of my laptop now as we're talking now. Not, not conscious about it at all. Bill.

There you go. All right, so let, let's, let's get back into kind of your story of growing the business and that kind of thing with our side of tips for the listeners about being a guest on podcast and doing that. I think it's so much more efficient. I didn't start that way. I still think it probably would have been better had I done it. The only reason that I did this is I had a dear friend with a very top ranked podcast shout out to Jordan Harbinger, who was one of my forum mates. And he said, dude, you should get a podcast. You should start one. And. And I listened to it and I did it because I had a background already in radio and tv, so I had done enough of that already. It was, it was kind of easier for me, but I did really commit to and schedule out and figure out how to be consistent. Like, we've done them every week for four years now, you know, so that like, deep commitment early on is something not everyone figures out how to go into production with it.

But Bill, I can tell you from being on the other end. So we met. We work with hundreds of podcast hosts each month across all of our customer campaigns. There are a few that stand out to us that just have their process completely nailed down. And obviously you've got Lucy supporting you as well. And you've got a really, really slick process. You are a pleasure to work with. You'd be so surprised how many podcast hosts are very disorganized on the back end of the podcast as well.

I gotta get that one. Oh, I gotta do this. Oh, I gotta do that.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, a lot of that's like trying to do everything yourself, right? I knew right from the beginning. I'm like, I am not even gonna try. I'm a busy, busy guy. I like doing the show, but all prep, before, during, after, like that kind of thing I like. I'm just gonna do this part.

Yeah, that's smart.

So let's talk about yours. So what would you say has been your biggest challenge so far?

I think the biggest challenge. So a more recent challenge has been hiring the right people at the right time. You know, the. There isn't really. There's not many businesses that we can model ourselves on that do exactly what we do. There's really only a handful that I would respect and say do a good job as well. There's a lot of them out there that don't do a great job. And the mail merge, as you mentioned, but yeah, it's hiring the right person. Do I need an OPS person or do I need a project manager? We've got 20 people now. We need a HR person now. So it's just knowing what to hire and when to hire and then when you're starting out. So we've only been going for one year and we're almost up to 20 full time employees. So that's fast growth. And you're still, you know, at times finding your feet with your positioning and pricing and processes. So it's been a challenge to do everything at Once, I think is the biggest challenge.

Yeah, it's interesting to figure out that, that balance. Right. Find the right people and then have those people continue to scale with you and move with you over time. We have a couple teams under 50 employees we work with deeply now, as in our private coaching work. And they're like, oh, maybe it's time for us to get an HR person. I'm like, yeah, unless we're planning to go to 100, like really quickly, you can outsource that. You can get a contractor consultant type to do the HR work that you've got. And you've got a couple different segments. Right. We've got talent recruitment and retention and talent development and then we have all the administrative and the payroll things and those are all really distinct and different types of things. They don't all have to be with.

The same person, certainly. We've recently started working with a consultant who's helping us just put in more robust processes. Because, you know when you're a five person startup and someone says, can I go on leave next week? You're like, yeah, of course you can. Just, just, just send, just make sure you're out of offices on and have a good time. Whereas now we've got people asking for time off at the same time and what's the policy there? And I don't know, we haven't come across this just yet. So having that external consultant who brings in all that experience at a fraction of the cost of hiring them full time is the smart thing to do.

Yeah. One of our dear friends helping to identify and train people like clarify process and train people on process. Chris Ronzio at Trainual just celebrated their Series B round. Raised 27 million I think it was with their really great success story of using our work and, and scaling and growing their business substantially.

We're, we're a customer so we, we're using train your to onboard customer onboard. Our new, new starters. So yeah, it's a fantastic tool.

Awesome. Shout out to Chris and then if you want to manage that over time. One of our past sponsors, suite process is more like checklist type thing for, for managing it over time. We have some of our clients using that as well. Yeah. So that's your challenge. Any big breakdowns, any crises that you've had to go through?

At this point in my current business, not, not really. There's been, there's been long nights and you know, I spent the weekend getting everything ready for the onboarding and train you just to get it all sorted because the processes have Changed so much since the last round of new hires. But I wouldn't say there's been sleepless nights or anything too challenging. I think the biggest challenge that I faced more a little bit further back was when Covid happened in 2020. We were, I was running another business which was all about top of the funnel, lead generation and data enrichment. And that was the first kind of supplier to get cut off because companies froze, they didn't know what to do. And it certainly wasn't add more in at the top of the funnel because we're selling to restaurants or we're selling to leisure. So that was a very tough moment to see revenue fall by almost 50% and you just have to have that motivation to keep going, dig deep and. Yeah. And just get through it.

Yeah. I think a lot of companies did something like that fairly quickly and some went away and there were some that have barely struggled to hang on. The thing that I think a lot of people did though is they took a quick hit and then they adjusted. Like our revenue went down for a while. Certainly the majority of our speaking and workshop revenue went down last year. But then the workshop stuff came up. Being booked at conferences was non existent and the places that were doing like virtual conferences for the most part weren't paying or paying very well. So that piece that used to be a big part of my world kind of disappeared mostly last year. And yet actual like eyeballs, ears reached over the year increased dramatically right through all the zoom and virtual sessions with more and more people coming into it. Let's flip it up a little bit then. You have about 20 people on the team right now, right?

Yeah.

And how many would you consider leaders?

I'd say we've got two. There's the co founder and myself being two and then there's two more. We have project manager and a customer success manager.

Yeah, got it. So, and are you looking to develop or expand that piece? What's your priority there on the people side?

So priority on the people side is actually make the process more efficient. So we know with a predictable outcome what, what inputs have to go in to get us the results we need to for our customers. But we want to make that process more efficient and by that we can increase the amount of customers that a team member can look after or manage. So that's really the focus now, is all about efficiency. So I'm on the hunt for anybody who's a whiz with Google sheets or smartsheet or something that can help us systemize the process that we have it works. It's just not as efficient as I'd like it to. But with that being said, Bill, we're delivering great results for customers. The service hasn't slipped at all. It's just that I know it's not as efficient as it could be.

Yeah. So this is an area of weakness for you, right? The Google Sheet smartsheet stuff.

Yeah, absolutely.

So that's. If you, if you're a resource in that area, hit up Mark.

Yes, please do.

After the show. What do you think is your particular superpower? What's your personal strength?

So believe mine is rapport building and the ability to sell without selling. I see every interaction I have as a conversation. I'm never trying to sell or close a deal, but when I do take charge of the sales for the business, we close. So it's the 14th of July and my close rate is 66% so far. Now the volume isn't huge, bill, but that 66% of conversations that went from a discovery call have been now closed one business, which is a pretty high percentage. So I think my ability to be seen as the trusted advisor and be the trusted advisor. And there was somebody that jumped on a call, one of the ones that I didn't, that didn't close, they wanted to use guesting on podcasts to generate leads. And I said, no, it's not the right strategy for you. If that's your priority, you need to do something else because it's not a lead gen. It's not a lead gen strategy. And if you don't want to work with me, I know so many people that can help you with lead gen. So I'm here as a resource for you and there's no pressure and I'm not going to sell to you if that's what you are looking to achieve. Now, I could imagine other people would have seen, well, no, we can close them and it doesn't matter. We'll take their money and we'll deal with the problem in the future. It's just not the type of business that I want to run.

Yeah, so I hear integrity and service kind of really being core and a focus on relationships as being areas of strength. For you personally, what do you think are the strengths of your business? What is your business great at?

Yeah, so I think we're, we're great at understanding that we're not about the numbers, even though we're rewarded by the numbers. We sell a package which is 24 podcasts in six months. So it is about the numbers. It's not at the mercy of quality. And I think throughout everything we do, we uphold the quality across the business and it's all about the relevancy. That's really what we're aiming for. And we've turned around to customers and said, hey, look, when we started we weren't 100% sure of the total podcast market that you can reach. And now we've been running the campaign, it doesn't look like we can get you on 24 podcasts now. In reality, we could reach out, we could spray and pray, we could kind of try and convince them to get on a non relevant podcast. But no, we don't want to do that. We'd much rather say, hey, look, it's not going to work out. We owe you a month. Here's the refund. So, yeah, that's inequality and I guess once again integrity.

Yeah, I, Lucy would say that you guys do a really good job. Like the professionalism is really high. Everything is that we need is there, is timely is what's needed. You're responsive, you follow up like that. The, the service and the attention is unlike most of the others that will be scattershot and automated and that kind of thing.

Thank you, Bill. That's, that's so nice to hear. And I, there's a running joke with the team that whenever a spreadsheet row is in the wrong font, I get an alert and it wakes me up at night. And I just, it's how you do one thing is how you do everything. And that quality and that professional service is just something that really drives us to keep, keep improving when we can.

Ding, ding, ding, ding. How you do one thing is how you do everything, man. I see people again and again and we see a little pattern. I'm like, I bet you do this like that. And they'll be like, oh, I do do that. Good. To start to notice, like if you start to notice just how widespread this mischief is, like your world might change. That's really, really useful. All right, what's your biggest long term ambition? What are you really like going for? What's your biggest aspiration at this point?

Yeah, so for me it's to build a, build a business and scale a pace which is sustainable. I don't want to scale at all costs. We're not taking on VC money so we can, we want to scale in a bootstrap but sensible way. My biggest ambition at the moment is to get the company to a point where we're turning over a million a month and then also move into the fact where we can bring all of our remote people together. So we have team members in Venezuela, Chile and Mexico, Brazil. There's now two joined ones in Malaysia. One's Romania, Vietnam, the Philippines. People are everywhere. The one in Brazil hasn't seen snow, the someone else hasn't seen. You know, there's so much that we can give back to the team that are working to help us build this company. And I can't wait to get. I'm a very sociable person. I just can't wait to get everybody in the same room so we can have a meal together and laugh and share stories like that. That's one of my biggest drivers at the moment.

Well, I was in Portugal last March. I can't wait to get back again.

Yeah. You'll have to say when you come over as well, it'd be good to see you.

I think that more and more places are now. I mean, we're in vastly different camps with regard to managing Covid and Life Impact and things like that around the world. Right. There are places in the US that are just like, I'm done with it, whether they're actually done with it or not. Right. But mentally they're done with it. Mass off. But, you know, there are restrictions in places, there are impairments, there's travel issues, all kinds of things like that. But increasingly we're starting to see, like a lot of the EU is now getting opened up. If you've got a vaccination proof.

Yeah.

And a test or one of the other, you can begin to travel in some of the places now we're starting to see some of that open up. But then you've just got a restriction again on that, don't you? And.

Yeah, so the cases went up in the last few weeks. The deaths are low, but the cases have gone up. And I believe that could be more people are being tested because they're giving out free tests now and you're allowed to have a certain amount per week, but still the numbers are going up and the government has asked that the restaurants and bars after 3:30 have to be closed. I think it's changed again that if you have a negative test or you are fully vaccinated, you can go inside and eat at the restaurant. So it's very fluid at the moment, but it's one of those things. And it was the first time around. It's completely out of my control. I can't do anything about the restrictions. And what I want to focus on is my health, my relationships and my business, because I can control those three things. So, yeah, I'm a little bit. I don't keep up with news because the news doesn't affect me in the sense that a lot of the things on the news are quite out of my control on a daily basis on that. On that micro level. So. So yeah, you just, you just get.

On, find a way and move forward. I, you know, that's true of our entrepreneurs organization. In the last year, we did really well with having events and we got very creative about them. At one point with. With pretty peak, you know, fear and, and illnesses and hospitalizations, that kind of thing. We did an outdoor event. We did outdoor separated mast with food, with a movie, with a speaker, with all that kind of thing. And it was very safe and very compliant. The numbers of people were fairly low, but we just, we didn't make a big deal out of. We just figured out what we could do and then we did something right.

Yeah.

And other times we did zoom things, but we sent people a meal kit or a cocktail kit or that kind of thing, and then we connected up to try to make something richer. We didn't just stop doing things. We did things in new and different ways.

Yeah.

Useful. Like adapting your business in that way.

Yeah. Well, we started the business in June 2020, so we were in the midst of COVID as it was, and I remember speaking on another podcast and somebody asked me, how am I dealing with the lockdown and the measures, and really there's a lot more in our control than we think. So I said, I used a different deodorant, I bought a different shower gel. I tried new food because I wanted to be stimulated in a sense, in a different way, because I wasn't able to socialize and see friends for. For a beer or for dinner or for coffee. So I was trying to mix things up as much as I can. As exciting as it sounds, trying a new deodorant or shower gel, but it did help give a little bit of change. So I wasn't just staring at the same four walls.

So you've been good at attracting and engaging people at this point, like finding. I mean, you say it's one of the challenges, but it sounds like you've also dealt with it because you've gone really globally and worked virtually to connect and bring on tal deliver your service. We know you do a quality service. And, you know, I. I won't embarrass you by asking you too much about profitability and cash in a. In a public setting, but. But what do you think is the biggest challenge between you getting to this leading podcasting agency and doing 10 million a year or 12 year and where you are today? What is. What is the thing that you don't yet know how to do?

Yeah, it's probably, and this is going to be a very honest answer that Jakob, my co founder and myself have never done this before. So there's a lot of unknown unknowns. So I think that's one of the biggest challenges is knowing when to make the right moves. We've been using our rationale and logic and at times, gut feeling so far, and we haven't been doing too badly. But there are certain steps or milestones that we'll reach where we're not going to know what to do. So we are hiring in. Our HR person is very experienced. We have an advisor who's built and sold an agency for hundreds of millions. Just. We're building a network of people around us to mentor and to support us on that journey.

What's next? What are you working on now?

So it's to. If we can continue to grow at the pace we're going to, I want to double that every month. That makes sense. So we had 10 customers sign up with us last December, December, January time, and it completely broke all the processes because we just weren't ready for 10. We were ready for two or three. So now I'm future proofing as much as I can. So that's one of my main focus. It's the sales and then also future proofing the business. So really that's next for me is to be doing these stress tests and bringing in the right people at the right time so that yes, we can make mistakes, but the overall service never suffers from those mistakes.

You know, I think again and again I tell people, break it. Like, find the business. Don't go figuring out how to build some bulletproof thing, because you may never figure out how to put customers into it. Instead, push it a little bit, then fix that, then level up, then push it again and level up. Right. If you. In fact, if you build a whole thing that if you build it, they will come as complete nonsense. That's a nice movie title or a movie line, but it's nonsense in business. So build a little bit, put some people into it, things will break. The problem is if you build a whole elaborate thing out, the customers and the customer usage will show up in ways that you didn't anticipate, and then what you built will actually be wrong. You'll have to, like, redo something in a different direction because we, what we imagine and envision isn't how it actually turns out ever.

No, and I completely agree and I like to break things and learn things as I go. But here's one example, Bill, that I think you'd resonate with. If we. Let's say we've got 35 live clients right now. We're reaching out to podcast hosts to get them booked on shows. Let's turn that into 65 live clients. The risk of us reaching out to the same podcast host, if we're not tracking our activity, if we're not logging the interactions that we're having with different podcast hosts, we run the risk of ruining our, or damaging the reputation that we've worked so hard to build. So there's little things like that which I know are very, very important to the success of the long term business that I'm trying to solve ahead of time. Other things like automating things and, and building really clever workflows, I'm kind of doing that as we go. So we're very much flying the plane, building the plane as it flies. But there are a couple of things that I can foresee would be an issue if we don't get a. Get. Get on top of them now.

Right. Like imagine a little bit and work a little. Anticipate it, work on it. But, but God, you really have to figure out how to find and keep the business.

Yes. Yeah.

Oh, nice. So, quick reminder about our sponsor. I mentioned the EO organization. EO is a peer led, member led organization of entrepreneurs with chapters all over the world. It's a global network. We have three chapters in the Bay Area that sponsor this program and we're proud to work with. I've been a member of them, of two of them. I joined one. And then another one is a new chapter in the Bay Area that I'm president of this year. In the East Bay Area, we have Silicon Valley, we have the core of San Francisco and the North Bay. And then they're connected to chapters across 65 countries and 15,000 members around the world. So you can do things and connect with entrepreneurs all over and then you can spend a lot of time with people kind of in your backyard. And it's just a great place to learn, to grow, to connect together, to share experience and support each other in developing your businesses and, and then managing that in your overall life. If you'd like some more information or check it out, go to eonetwork.org.org is the place to go. Check out the entrepreneurs organization. Mark, before we run out of time, where should people go? Find out more about your service.

Sure, yeah. So you can find out more about Speak on Podcast by going to speakonpodcast.com we try to get the name as simple as possible and you can always reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'd be loved to hear from you and if you can let me know as from Getting Real with Bill, that'd be really useful for me.

So go to speakonpodcast.com you can. They'll help you figure out how to be on the podcast and what to say and help you hone it and then help you make the most of it. After you're on the show they have a package, as he said, to get you on 24 podcasts over a six month period that'll really boost your visibility for your message out in the world. It I think it's a great idea. I haven't done it with you directly, but I've been on the other side of it and your guests are like boom. We can slot those people right in. We can use them when you bring us somebody. I know it's going to work.

So amazing.

Really appreciate that and glad to feature you today and let our listeners viewers get to know a little bit about the service and what you do and that's really well. Big thanks to Lucy Summers producing in the background. In this case she's sitting actually in an airport. We were both out of state last couple days and she got stuck while I skated through by the skin of my teeth, made the connection. She got stuck overnight. Is sitting in an airport right now producing, getting things going in the background while we run this show. And I just think she's a rockstar champion. Keeps our thing going so big. Shout out to Lucy Summers. Also to Verne Harnish, author and creator of the Scaling Up Framework itself, our originating guru in the world of scaling up. And to the folks at Potfly Productions, Alby Burge, who produces and edits our audio each week. And to Ein Codina who writes up the show notes and Tim McGowan who proofreads everything. Thanks again everyone. If you want to drop us a line, give us some feedback, get in touch with our guest or find a coach in your area or that kind of thing, we're happy to help you. Just send an email to infocalingcoach.com, info scalingcoach.com thanks again everyone. Keep scaling up. We'll talk to you next time. Bye bye. Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins. You should check out our Scoreboard software powered by Align. It's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app, you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard via line to try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill G One more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.