Sweeney Daniel: A Doublecast Special on Content Marketing, Podcast Success, Consulting Strategy, Masterminds & More

Hey, this is Brad Costanzo from Digital Triggers.

And hey, this is Sweeney Daniel from Bacon Wrapped Business.

Now if we just confuse you a little bit, this is actually Brad from Bacon Wrapped Business and Sweeney from Digital Triggers. We are doing something a little different here. We are doing a. What would you call this? Sweeney?

It's kind of a double cast.

Ooh, trademark term. So Sweeney is the host of Digital Triggers, one of the top business podcasts and digital marketing podcasts on itunes. And obviously I run Bacon Wrap Business also on itunes. And we decided to do a video interview where we interview each other and both share this on each other's shows respectively. So there'll be a little bit of a duplicate content out there on the itunes world. I don't know if this has ever been done, has it?

I don't think so. We are, I imagine, at least somewhere. Right. But I mean, the basic principle is if you listen to your podcast, you probably like you. You might hear me and go, hey, I want to listen to more of his stuff. They're probably not going to go over and listen to you again, right? They already listen to all your stuff.

Exactly.

They're going to want to check out my other stuff. And if they listen to my podcast and go, hey, like Brad, they're going to want to check out your other stuff. I like it.

See, we got two podcasting icons, self proclaimed kings of the podcasting world. And so for my listeners, real quick, Digital Triggers with Sweeney is one of the best podcasts out there, all things digital and online marketing. Dude, you interview some of the top people out there as well. And we've been friends for a while. That's why I thought this would be fun to jump on a co call and we'll see where this goes. We're going to talk a lot about podcasting today. And if you want to introduce me to your. To your folks.

Yeah, definitely. So I get. So what we do is two Tuesdays we have a guest interview and then on Fridays we do something called the Friday Reload, which is where I kind of recap what happened in the week and cover some of the biggest updates, new stories and new things that came out. Now Brad has a very, very awesome podcast as well. And him being based over in California, he's connected to a lot of superstars. So we tend to get more entrepreneurs, whereas Brad as well gets entrepreneurs. But he also has people like, know high level guest speakers and book authors and, you know, these, these kind of names that you maybe have never heard of, but they've secretly pulled so many strings in the background.

So let's see where this goes. As I said, it's kind of weird. Normally I'd be interviewing you or you'd be interviewing me. We'd be pulling questions out. But we're gonna have a conversation between the two of us and just let other folks eavesdrop on what we're talking about. And today I think one of the first things we're gonna talk about is podcasting in general because we both got two hit podcasts. And then after that let's talk about consulting, because we both do consulting for fee and for fun. So let me ask you first, Sweeney. So when did you launch Digital Triggers?

So Digital Triggers launched about five months ago, give or take. We had an initial launch, a little bit of a rebrand, and that's where we are now. We recently released our. I think we're nearing about 70 episodes or so total.

Really? Yeah, I think you got about double that. I've got. I try to get one out every week, but sometimes, you know, life gets in the way and not quite able to do that. I launched in June, so I. And we're in December now, so I guess I'm right at my six month mark, actually.

So.

Boom, boom.

Congratulations.

Thank you very much.

We both celebrate our six month anniversaries.

Exactly. So what. What would be a great question for listeners to know? I mean, there's. There's the starting a podcast, there's the marketing a podcast. Actually, let's jump into this because we like to share actionable information. The people who listen to our shows, usually there's some beginners out there trying to really get started. But the thing is, there's a lot of information for beginners out there and there's not as much information for what happens when you actually get successful and what happens when you make it and how do you grow your podcast once it gets going. But for just a really briefly cover for folks out there who are thinking about starting one, highly recommend it. It's way easier to do than you would think. You know, it is if you. We're right now on Skype. I'm using ecamm's call recorder. A lot of times you use Google Hangouts. I've got my microphone, my A 2020. You don't need it. We could be broadcasting. Are you using your earbud?

I'm just Yeti over here. Got the full podcasting set up. I like it, but no, I mean, I got started with a SN snowball mic that was like, you know, 60, 50 bucks, maybe.

Right.

And it's like anything, too, honestly. Like, my recommendation with podcasting would be, go do 10, and then you'll stop sucking. You know, like, I mean, I remember, I think one of the third guests I ever interviewed was Ryan Holiday.

Nice.

And I always. I always read his blog. I always looked up to him. So, you know, here's my third guest, and he's one of, you know, probably one of the biggest quote unquote guests I've interviewed, at least in my opinion. And that's just kind of how it goes.

Right. So what have you done to grow your show?

So for us, we were lucky to have a list that we could leverage when we initially first launched, before, we had a podcast about a very hot topic, very hot subject with an expert in the industry, Ben Atkins. And we kind of, like, gated that content too. So we were able to grow our Facebook page and really kind of create a spot splash in our local community or our local tribe. And a lot of people knew about it and were talking.

So tell me about the light gating, what you did. I kind of know what you did, but I'd love to hear exactly what you did, and I know the listeners would.

So this. I mean, we don't need to dive into it too much because Facebook's actually kind of recently banned.

I've heard that.

Yeah, for the most part. So the way we had it was you had to either like the page, or, I'm pretty sure, tweet the page in order to unlike the content. And it's pretty easy. I mean, there's a few different plugins around there. Really. The key is having something that people want to hear about with someone that they want to hear about it from. And by really capitalizing on something that was popular and that was trending, I mean, we see blogs do this kind of stuff all the time. You know, seven things you didn't know about Adrian Peterson. Right. That's going to do very big because there's so much media attention and hype surrounding it. So I had a post too once on what I learned from the Wolf of Wall street. And that actually started as that grew from a PS line in an email. I said, PS, if you want to see my notes, reply to this email that I'm excited for tomorrow. And we had almost more responses than we'd ever gotten trying to hype people up for something. And I just threw it in there to see if there was any interest. I already had some notes on my iPhone, and what I remembered, I was like, you know, let me toss out the notes if people are interested. And the response was overwhelming. I actually made it into a blog post and a podcast, and it did extremely well because people were interested. It's topical. I mean, I had an interview with Colin Terrio, and he's got a large group. He's got a large influence. So I was able to post in his group. And when I posted in his group, I gave something away for free, and I was able to kind of leverage that audience. So I think. I think that can be a big part of content creation.

What'd you give away for free?

We had a top 50 best subject lines.

Oh, cool. I like it.

PDF. So it was a bonus that we had for a product, so I decided to put it in there, and it was relevant to their copywriting group.

No, that's great.

And I think that's kind of the problem with content creation, though, is it's hard to create and push something out in seven days. It's of kind going to be topical and then still have, like, you know, kind of your more regular content. So finding a balance.

That's great. Now on the light gating real quick, because I do know that Facebook has cracked down a little bit on that, but was that. Were you doing that on a Facebook page? Like they had to like it and then on the Facebook, or were you doing this on your regular website?

We were doing it on the blog.

Okay. And is that true? They're no longer liking that? Because I know there's a.

As far as I'm aware of, the direction that they're taking in general is that they. They don't want people to be forced to like things anymore. They want people to kind of really like things because they want to like things that make sense.

Yep.

So they only want, you know, they don't want you just incentivizing bane of anyone. Yeah, they want. They want people to actually like pages because they like pages. Or at least from what I've seen.

Okay. Okay. Excellent. Yeah. And that's good to know. And that's good for everybody now. I mean, Facebook is. If you're marketing online, you're not marketing on Facebook. You're missing out on a lot. But Facebook's always changing things and keeping marketers jumping through hoops. They're not as strict as Google, but they'll probably be there before too terribly long.

There's a lot of different interesting ways you can do content promotion nowadays. And that's where I was talking about something that's topically relevant, because There's a very cool tool called Buzzsumo. Now on Buzzsumo, I'm going to write.

That down because I'm not familiar with Buzzsumo.

Go for it. It gets a little confusing because there's Sumome, there's Kingsumo, there's AppSumo, there's a lot of Sumo getting thrown around. Like one is by Noah Kagan, one's not. But you can use Buzzsumo. And Brian Harris from Video Fruit. Credit where credit is due, kind of popularizes. Say I search for the Wolf of Wall Street. I can look at different articles about the Wolf of Wall street and. And I can see in order by which one has the most shares. I can go in, dive in deeper and look at the Twitter users specifically that shared that article. Now if you want to take it another step further. So, I mean, those are people you can promote to, but you can take it another step further. And there's different ways that you can guess someone's email address and send out a cold email and basically be like, hey, I saw you like this article on Forbes about the Wolf of Wall Street. I actually just saw him recently in person and I wrote up some notes I had about it in a blog post. You know, I'd love for you to check it out. Or like, I interviewed Brad Costanza. I noticed that you liked, you know, a few of his podcasts. I think you might like this interview with him. Go here to check it out.

So you're saying these are the people that you found. You found them where? Like, if they liked the podcast.

Well, they. I'm saying they shared this article.

Oh, the ones who shared it. Right. Like on Twitter.

Exactly.

For instance. Oh, hey, you shared this. You might like this as well. You know, Derek Halpern on social triggers has a really cool strategy. It's back on his blog. I know I've shared it somewhere. I'll probably. I'll try to share this in the notes. I'm gonna put this here. Share Derek's thing where he talks about getting. Getting into the slipstream for. Of press. So, like, yeah, when somebody, like when a journalist writes about specific topic and if you really want to get a, you know, get ahold of them, creating content for them, doing a very, very similar thing, like, you know, adding value. I won't go into it here and I may not be able to do it justice just off the top of my head, but I'll put some show notes on there. But it's really powerful piggybacking, doing a little extra research. Doing a little extra work to find out who are the influencers, who are the people sharing stuff and give them more things to share, more topics.

Well, I mean, the biggest thing with content, you know, and this is. This is a problem that everyone has. And, you know, I know, even us as podcasters, when you're releasing a podcast a week, two podcasts a week, you don't always give each one the love and attention that it deserves. And so often, if you're not baking in the bacon into it, and the bacon being the content promotion, it's only going to do so well compared to if you reach out to some of these influencers and you have an idea of how can I spread this content? That's one of the things that I struggle with interviews is it's good content. But if you can't, if it's not really formed around one subject enough, how can you advertise it? How can you reach people? How can you find people that you can contact with it?

That's great. Now, have you done any advertising for your podcast? Do you do any Facebook ads or anything paid in order to get.

We don't do any current paid. We're looking into YouTube and Twitter a little bit more.

Right? Yeah, Twitter ads. I may have los on to talk about that because I know that our friend Lo Silva has been really diving into Twitter ads and kind of figuring that aspect out. And it's one of the things that I'm not really familiar with. I know the most basic stuff about Twitter ads.

So doing the Friday reload, right. I've seen kind of the evolution of Twitter ads over the past six months. Sadly, I haven't dug in and spent enough money to talk from that side. But from the news side, as a reporter, for lack of a better term, they are really freaking trying. I mean, that's the reality. You see them always putting out these new Twitter cards and new features and buy now buttons and retargeting and custom audience or tailored audiences, the same way that kind of Facebook changed in the past to really tailor it to marketers, Twitter is really putting the effort and saying, hey, guys, come and spend your money with us and we will take care of you. And I heard it's pretty easy to get a Twitter rep and they will hold your hand for the first month and then you should be good to go.

That's great. And it's funny to watch the evolution of some of these platforms. Whenever a company is, it's weird to call Twitter up and coming, but they are up and coming and Advertising is.

On a revenue standpoint.

Right. And on ads, yeah, it's new to them. And whenever something's new, they're willing to let you have a lot of leeway in order to get, you know, in the early adopters and getting them spending money and then they crack down later on, just like Google did. Facebook now, you know, used to be able to throw anything up on Facebook. Now it's harder and harder to get things approved. It's easier and easier to get kicked off.

And they, with Google, I mean, they were lenient as could be because right. When they need you and then it happens and it shifts. And if you get in early enough though, you should kind of see the shift coming and be able to adjust to it.

Right. And you know, the key really is to, you know, push the envelope as much as you can. You know, walking the line is actually very, you know, walking the edge is a very smart thing to do as opposed to just staying so purely white hat in the early days. Now, once you get to that critical mass like Facebook, I say walk the straight and narrow on that now because it's too valuable to get banned from. We've both got friends who've been banned. And when you lose your rights to advertise or you lose your profile in general, it really stinks. But in the beginning, it's always good to push the envelope a little bit, see what you can do.

And too, I mean, if you're gonna take that approach, there's platforms that accept that money. There's different, whether it's media buying and pop unders. And we had Charles Kirkland on, he talked about some of these platforms. It's not to say that they're dirty platforms or anything like that, but they're a lot more lenient with what they'll let you get away with. So if that's kind of your style, then go to something that plays to that strength rather than going with one of these kind of cleaner startup y kind of companies.

Right. And to clarify, none of what I'm talking about is do things that are illegal or do things that are immoral. But it's, you know, sometimes on Facebook they don't want you to run ads to either certain niches or certain types of pages or whatever when you can do that, whether it's with Twitter, whether it's with YouTube, although YouTube is Google. Although.

But YouTube is very lenient right now.

Exactly. Because they're trying to get more advertising.

I have a buddy who's done very well with YouTube ads, and I'm starting to run some YouTube ads myself. And YouTube is very lenient right now. You have to play by their rules.

Right.

Don't get me wrong. But you know, though, they give you some wiggle room.

Yep. So tell me about some of the stuff you're about to or doing on YouTube right now. That's the topic of a future podcast that I've got coming up in January with a YouTube expert named Tommy Powers. But we're going to be diving into this.

So the basic part of it is a good buddy of mine, or, you know, becoming a good buddy of mine spent, you know, around, let's say under $1,000 and made about $38,000 in affiliate commissions.

But.

And you know, he did, he did capitalize on a launch. It was the ASM launch. Oh yeah, he did very well with it. But it's the cheap. The cost of clicks are so cheap. And here's the big reason why I like YouTube. Right. How many freaking people do you know, friends of ours that are afraid to do this to shoot a video?

Oh yeah, it's crazy.

If only 10% of people are even willing to shoot a video. How many people you think are going to shoot a video and do advertising?

Yeah. So I think that the higher barrier to entry for.

Exactly. And the competitiveness, I think over there is going to always be small. And everyone knows YouTube is so huge. Well, we just kind of forget about it because as marketers, we skip ads and other people skip ads and we think, oh yeah, no one's seeing this, but people see ads.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the reality of the Internet, Facebook, news feeds, you know, you.

Only need because, I mean, a good, a good click through rate on something. A couple percent. Right. A good click through and an ad. That means like 98% of people, 95, 98% of people could be telling you to like ignoring you, not even seeing you. But you can, you can make a fortune off a couple percent.

And we know how crazy VSL's can convert. I just had Costanosis. I can never pronounce his name from doodle video on. And what why those doodle videos work so well is because they hack our subconscious and they play to our childlike symptoms. We're so used to watching cartoons as children and it's entertainment. Right. I mean, how infotainment is like the biggest thing of, you know, 2014 or coming around after 2010.

Yep.

A lot of. If you're doing good marketing, you're entertaining. What is, what is Karn done extremely well?

Oh yeah.

You know, with that, when he had like that fake cop thing, it was just entertaining. It was funny. Yeah, people want to be entertained.

We all do.

And then if they realize at the end of five minutes, oh, hey, I just got pitched on this thing, but this thing sounds kind of cool, guess what happens? Probably going to buy or at least they're going to hear your pitch.

We all want to buy from people we know like and trust. And how do you get people to like you? You entertain them. I mean, when I came up with people ask me, why did you call it bacon wrap business? Although, you know, most people love the name, you know, because it's. Oh, it's bacon. But that's exactly why. That right there is it number one. You know, I'm playing, I'm piggybacking off another meme, kind of like you said with. You said, oh, who wants my notes on my. You know, when I watch the Wolf of Wall Street? So bacon is a big meme right now. Everything's better with bacon. And you see it in Facebook, everywhere. I came up with it by accident. Just saying, man, that's some bacon wrap business advice right there. Like, yeah, that's kind of a catchy name. But more than anything is it gives me permission to have fun. It gives me permission to be entertaining. I didn't just want to call it the Brad Costanzo show because I wouldn't listen to the Brad Costanzo Show. That bores me and it bores me to jump on here. But if I can have puns and play on words, and that's a bacon wrap business strategy right there if I ever heard one. You know, just little stuff.

You look at guys like Pat Flynn, look at guys like John Lee Dumas. Yep, it's smart passive income. It's entrepreneur on fire. I mean, using your own name is very rare. Unless it's the Tim Ferriss show.

Right.

James Altucher, age yourself the brand.

Right, Exactly. Now, notice one of the things I did is I didn't just call it bacon wrap business. The name of the show is Bacon Wrap Business with Brad Costanzo. I mean, luckily that my name has some alliteration in there, it kind of works. The B, C, bacon, Brad Costanzo, etc. But. And I did that very much on purpose because I'm trying to help build my brand along with the name of it as well. So a little bit of both.

I do love the name too. For the record, I think it was super smart.

Thank you. Well, I.

It adds flavor, literally. Yeah, like so often. Like, you know, Things are so dry. And my. One of my favorite guys for this is Contario. Yeah. And he's always like, polarized people make people hate you because if people hate you, then people are gonna love you. In this day and age, you don't need a bunch of. You don't need everybody to kind of sort of like you. Right, Right. Have you ever. Have you ever gotten a girl to be a girlfriend because she kind of sort of liked you? No. The same way people buying things they're not going to buy because they kind of sort of like you. They buy because they're love you.

Yeah, it's the. Yeah, the extremes are good. And I've. I've personally had a problem with that. I have a hard time making people hate me. I have a hard. I love taking controversial issues. I just. I don't do them a lot. I'll do them a lot in my personal life. I love getting into arguments. I love taking devil's advocate on stuff. I don't do it much in, you know, on the show, but yeah, I'll make them. I'll entertain the heck out of you. Or I'll at least try.

It's funny because I had a book idea. I'll tell you off the air.

Yeah.

And I realized that basically the headline ended up being 666. And I was like, you know, it was unintentional.

What do you mean the headline was 666?

The. Well, like, there's kind of. It's a play on numbers.

Oh, I gotcha.

Okay. So it ends up being like 666 is built into it. And everyone always makes these Illuminati jokes.

Right.

But I was in the same way that Ryan Holiday kind of did this media hacking. I was like, man, that would probably be a good story that I could spin and press out and have some people arguing and talking about my book and how it's evil. A lot of times any press is good press. Before you know it, you're on the Today show trying to defend yourself as to why you aren't this or that. Hey, as long as you're on this show, you're good.

Sometimes it only takes one thing, you know. And so you mentioned Ryan Holiday, and I always recommend his book. Trust me, I'm lying. What is it? Confessions of a Media Manipulator. And it's such a great book and it really shows you how the news and blog sphere works and operates right now. One of the things that I wish that he would have done more so is talk about how to. Because I've been able to put it together just because I'm brilliant, but I've been able to put together how to use that for good. Because he really talks about all the ways it's been used for negative or just going for negative press and publicizing. People like Tucker Max, who's very polarizing, and other folks, but really understand how to newsjack and do things in a way that gets.

Publicity in an honest way.

Well, not. Not even just honest in a positive way. Right.

We both know if I have my life savings and we're sending out an email and one says bad news and one says good news, bad news wins. Which one you putting your money on?

Absolutely.

That's why it's. It's the sad reality of the media sphere.

Yeah.

That with the exception of a site like Upworthy that, you know, kind of pulled at your emotional strings, that typically these kind of bad news stories bubble to the top. Yeah. So you kind of have to play off that. Though I do agree, it is interesting to think, you know, how can. How can I do this with, you know, good news?

Yeah.

But I think the answer there is what I really liked is how, you know, he talks about kind of just trading up in the media sphere, and that's. You don't just end up on ABC News. You end up on a small blog, and then you take that to a. And that's. It's the same way with guest interviews, too. Like, you get this guest, and then from that you get this guest, and then, you know, he has people he can introduce you to.

That's why I've got you on my show. Just so that I can now get anybody. I'm calling Bill Gates after this.

Well, I mean, it's the reason why I joined certain mastermind groups. Yeah. Or, you know, there's this one Zentrepreneur group, and I joined that. It's like 100 bucks a month, Something ridiculously.

Is that Vishens or somebody else's?

Yeah, it is. Okay. I joined it because I had a jit on the show.

Okay.

Why I like any of these mastermind groups, you have to be careful with what you're getting, what you're paying for. You know, even when I go. When I've. I've had the pleasure of being able to go to war room a few times or, you know, something like boardroom, what you're getting that people don't realize is that you're paying the litmus fee to know that anyone you're dealing with is A lot more serious. Yep, A lot more serious. They most likely at least have a real business. And, you know, it's. I think. And this is something that I thought. And, hey, maybe I'll do it for you guys. For boardroom, I was joking that, you know, someone could hire my mom at 36 grand a year just to know every single person that comes through your mastermind, they get a welcome call. We're taking notes, we're finding. On finding out what's going on with your business, how we can help you so that every time someone comes through, we're matching people up. And we're just like an entrepreneur, matchmaking service.

That's. That's exactly what. Yeah, that's exactly what we're doing at the boardroom. My mastermind. And what was this about hire your mom, though?

I was just joking that, like, you know, like, you don't need someone who's very talented.

Are you talking about to take the notes and to.

Yeah, you just need someone who's nice and likes talking on the phone. Right.

That's what my trustee assistant, Nancy does. Exactly. Yep.

You just need a Nancy.

Yeah.

And the value is. So it's one deal. That's all it ever takes. It's one deal. And the mastermind either pays for itself for the year or pays for itself 10 times over.

You're right. You know, one of the. One of the funny things is when I started off in the business, I wasn't totally broke. I wasn't, you know, rich. But like, eight years ago, I had a little savings, but I held onto it really, really tightly. And just like, no, I've got to save every single penny because who knows if this is going to work or not. And that's important to do. I mean, it's important to be frugal. But the most success I've ever had is through the relationships. And the best relationships I've ever had are through masterminds. And the best masterminds are paid masterminds. And the more you pay, the better access to people you get. And it's really kind of funny, like, if I was going to do it all over again instead of investing, you know, six figures on, on do it yourself education, I probably would have just skipped the head of the line and joined the biggest mastermind that I could afford. Just because if you do that, even if you don't have a huge business, but you're trying to get it, if people know that that, dude, you just threw down 1,000, 5,000, 10, 20,000, it.

Doesn'T have to be a lot.

No, it doesn't really have to be a lot, but when you do that, when you demonstrate that, that look, I'm willing to pay for access to, to folks, there's magic in that. People say, okay, cool, you're serious. I like you. Let's do business.

Well, and here's the difference, right? $100 means that I can Facebook message any of these people and say, hey, I saw you're a Zentrepreneur too. You know, and that's how you connect with people. How do you network? By having something in common. What did we have in common? We had in common a great friend. So it's not a big surprise that me and you became good friends and like having that kind of gateway. It's the same thing. Like, you know, with War Room or even when I go to events. I mean, I was at an event recently in Austin and day one, you know, I talked to a few people. You know, it was, it was really focused on working and training, but eventually I just kind of said to myself, like, I want a goal, that I want to meet like 40 people. You know, like I just want to completely just throw it and cast it aside, you know, not, not be shy. Cuz when you're at event, just walk up and shake anyone's hand.

So people are that have a reason. That's what people are at an event for. That would be a great podcast topic, by the way, is event networking. Okay, keep going.

I like it because I don't think anyone does it well enough. You know, I mean, the people I talk to, I can see I'm an, I am an.

I consider myself an expert networker and I don't even think I do it as well as I could. You know, it's one of those things. And the more, you know, just kind of side trail here for a second, the more events that I go to and the more people that I know at them, I find myself sticking in my comfort zone because now I'll go to most events and know 5, 10 people there, and I'll just end up in that little clique and maybe one or two more people end up joining and then the next event I see them at or whatever. And that's cool. But yeah, that just gave me a great idea for a, for a podcast topic. So thank you. Awesome.

And maybe you can do that one, do that. Do a solo. Solo cast.

Yeah.

I mean, it doesn't surprise me because, you know, growing up, part of the reason why I did well with women is because I could go to a party and know one person and for whatever reason, I'd make a bunch of friends by the end.

Right?

You're friendly and yeah, I'm a friendly guy, but you know, even with events and this is a big, big, big tip for anyone in our space. I'm behind the laptop. I am behind myself. I'm by myself all day. You're currently behind a laptop. You are currently by yourself. If you have any ounce of charisma. So many entrepreneurs out there just want to chat. I mean, I cold called for our, for our, you know, paid membership site called the Academy. I cold called two people because they were, they'd mentioned like offhand in a webinar that they were doing something and having success with it. I cold called them. Both of them picked up and talked to me for like 30 minutes plus on the phone. And then one of them ended up coming back and doing a training with us. I just cold called these people and they had no idea who I was, but yet they picked up the phone and were willing to talk for 30 minutes.

Yeah, it's amazing that most people, so few of us use the phone anymore for talking. Isn't it kind of funny? We text each other, we email each other, we Skype each other. And it's very rare that a lot of folks, I mean, in any business now pick up the phone. Everybody's just like, text me. And I've got friends, we both have a close friend who doesn't set up their voicemail box. That drives me nuts.

My voicemail box is actually not set up right now.

But how often do I call you, I text you and I do stuff like that. So we all do that. But the whole point of that being is that if you just pick up the phone and talk, it's people will pick up the phone and talk to you. People still like.

But my point here too is that like, you would be surprised at the, you know, amount of seven figure entrepreneurs that you can achieve access to. Right. If you Facebook message Frank Kern, you're probably not going to get a response. You know, you bug someone like John Reese or you know, even Kent, you know, Kent's pretty busy freaking dude. But there's a lot of guys that are very successful in making a lot of money that you can easily reach. Now I will say one caveat to the whole event networking and the paid mastermind thing. You have to have something that you're bringing to the table. Don't think. And you know, I saw. So I was at the machine live event and it's a $2,000 course. And then you, you know, I mean, you gotta pay for airfare and hotel and stuff, you know, at least $3,000 altogether. There was a decent amount of people there that were kinda there with a business that either had nothing to do with that. And I was just like confused. I was like, why are you guys here? Or they didn't really have much of a business going. Yeah. And if you don't have a service, you don't have a skill, you don't have a business, you don't have a list, what good is it if you meet any of these people? You know, I don't want to meet a book publisher tomorrow if I don't have a book idea. Not going to help me at all. So I think, I think that's worth noting. And I think so often people don't take the time to actually become useful in some way.

Well, and one of the. To extrapolate on that point, the you don't have to have a great product service skill set to be useful, but the way you be useful is you learn to ask the right questions. One of the questions that I started asking, I ask a lot of people just in person, but I also ask on bacon wrap business podcast at the end of the show usually is something like, what nut are you trying to crack in your business right now? I kind of like that phrasing. Or what are you trying to get more of? A lot of people say, what's the biggest challenge you're having right now in your business? I don't love that. Number one. I think it's overdone. Maybe it's just because I hear it so much and it loses a little bit of its effectiveness. That's why I like to say, what nut are you trying to crack? Who are you trying to meet? Is there anybody you would hire? You're looking to hire? If you could, what skill set are you looking for in your business just by asking those questions? I may not have those, but I may know somebody who does. But more importantly, even if I don't know that person and I want to be of value to them, I can go look for them. So if I meet you and I think you're a pretty big deal and I want to help you out, there's nothing in my personal life that can do it. If I ask these right questions of what you're looking for, and I do it in a very authentic way, that gives me the ability to go search for that. So when I find it, I Say, hey, Sweeney, we met at XYZ event and you told me that you were looking for somebody to, you know, comb your beard and feed you grapes. Because who's not right? By the way, nice beard you got going on there, beard bunnies.

Yeah, girlfriend doesn't love it, but no.

Mine'S a little shaggy. I haven't trimmed it down in a while.

But if you have the clean sides, you can get away with it.

Oh, there you go. But point being, I can contact you and say, hey, man, I found somebody and I thought of you and I wanted to make this introduction or right there, even if I didn't have anything else going on, just by asking the right questions. Another book that I love, and I'll make a recommendation here, it's on Amazon. It's called Power. I think it's called Power Questions. I'll send you a link. We can both put it in the show notes or whatever. But it's a great book. I've taken a lot of notes on it of just what's. And I think I may have gotten that one. What nut are you trying to crack? Or something like that from there. But what challenge are you trying to overcome? That's also a great one to do, by the way, at. At an event, if there's a public speaker, and a lot of times they open up for questions at the end of the conversation. You can walk up and maybe pay them a compliment, but then ask them that question. What resource are you looking for more of in your life? Everybody wants more of something. They want something they either don't have they want more of something, or they're looking for a relationship or an introduction. And instead of asking for something, it's a great way, you know, instead of asking for something from me, I'm asking something so I can give to you. But, yeah, that's a whole topic of another. Of another show is just relationship building.

It's a good point. And I mean, even if you're newer to the game, figure out a way that you can work for some people for free. Figure out a way that you can generate results and then just leverage that. I mean, I've done enough of these interviews now that I've learned from people being successful that it's pretty easy. You get this much success, you build on it. You build on it, you build on it. I mean, Kevin Nations, I don't know how much he's charging now, but do you think he started out charging that much? No, no, he started out like anyone else, charging, you know, a reasonable Fee, not those fees are unreasonable. But then his confidence in results, and then he grew from there. Yep.

Well, and charging fees for coaching, consulting for, you know, and that kind. That kind of segues off of the podcast, actually, you know, we didn't even really talk about podcasting that much, but that's cool. I like where this is going.

We kind of talk content and such a little bit.

And by the way, there's no need to start a new podcast. You know, you're not going to compete with digital triggers and bacon wrap business anyway. No, I'm joking. Point being, we were talking about consulting and charging large fees, and one of the. I consult businesses and individuals in a variety of ways. Actually, this has been one of my, I guess not, stumbling blocks, but one of my challenges is I feel as though I'm a jack of all trades when it comes to marketing and business. I know a lot. I'm highly curious. I learn a lot, and I can help a lot of people. But narrowing down to one specific subject that I feel is my superpower has always been a challenge for me. But one of the things that I do really enjoy is showing experts how to charge what they're worth by examining the real value they bring. And along those exact lines, like you mentioned, Kevin nations, who's a big coach and consultant and teaches people how to do that exact same thing, get really paid what you're worth and charge a lot more. And I found that there's a change that happens in a person's brain when they pay your client, when they pay 10 times more than they ever thought they would for a coaching or consulting relationship. Because, number one, now they're investing in themselves. They're no longer investing in you. Like Sweeney, if I come to you and say, listen, I want you to coach me on how to start a great podcast, and you go, great, I'll charge you 97 bucks. I'll charge you 500 bucks, or I'll charge you by the hour. Okay, I'm gonna put a little bit in. I'm as much as I can afford. And maybe $500 is everything in the world to me. Right? Maybe it is. And that's different story. But maybe you charge me five or ten thousand dollars for consulting with you, and that makes me really sit back, swallow my. Not my pride, but think, okay, if you're charging me, if you're doing what I want to be doing, and you're obviously a success at it, and I know that that is a place that I want to be, I want to be in your shoes soon. And you're charging me $10,000. I'm no longer asking myself, okay, is Sweeney worth $10,000? If I already believe that you've got the skills and education or ability to teach me? I'm thinking, I'm betting $10,000 on myself. Like, am I going to do what it takes to live up to Sweeney's charge to work when I don't feel like it, to do all this? Because if I pay you $10,000 and I lose it, I lost it. You didn't lose it for me. As long as I do what you say, and there's a switch in somebody's brain that I like selling at that angle. I'm not cheap to work with, and I like selling at that. At that level. Like, I'm gonna make it hurt for you to fail yourself. But if you pay me that, if you invest in that with me, you'll also know that it flips a switch in the coaches and the consultant's mind that I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get you a fast return on your investment and then a forever return on your investment afterwards. It's. I love consulting and coaching, and I love. I love charging a lot of money because it makes me work 10 times harder, and it makes my clients work 10 times harder. Yeah.

And the sad reality is how often, you know, you charge someone a decent fee and they just don't do anything. I mean, it's the same way when someone buys your course and then they're like, oh, it's $500 courses. And you're like, well, did you make it through module three? And they're like, no. Did you do the demographic research? No. It's like you learn time and time again how some of these fundamentals, like demographic research, customer avatar, they are not sexy, but you hear them time and time again for a reason. And similar to consulting or being a service provider, a part of it is qualifying your clients so that you don't take. Take bad clients. Oh, man. If you hear that, you know, I guess, I mean, I don't want to pick on girls, but basically, if you hear that a girl, you know, she's. She's kind of hot, but she's a little crazy. And then you date her anyways, and you find out she's a little crazy, who's the same way with clients? Like, if you take on a client that truly can't afford you or doesn't really have much of a business, what do you think is going to happen?

Yeah. Yeah. It's I've heard it say that sales is really a game of disqualification. Disqualify every single person you can to get down to those handful of people in direct response marketing. I brought this up the other day, I mean just a minute ago, not the other day with ads. Click through rate. Well, a really good conversion rate on a sales letter is 3%. You can make millions of dollars if 97% people are not interested in your stuff, but 3% of the right people are. Right. So you're trying to disqualify Everybody except those 3% or you know, maybe a little more that are really, really interested in what you have to sell. And yeah, so identifying the right client but then also realizing that most people, like you said, don't do anything. How many people have purchased information products and never opened them? I've done that.

Yeah, I was going to say how many things have I bought that I haven't watched all of our open.

So while you were saying that, I just pulled up on my other monitor over here, my friend Jim Fortin, who's a future guest on my show, and he just posted this on December 10th on his Facebook and I'll read it because it's really, it's appropriate for this, he says. Interesting. I recently did some social research in a large Facebook real estate group. I created a post that got the biggest response the group has ever had, which was how to be a top 1% real estate agent. I offered my Zero Effect selling audio program, a seven hour program that normally costs $500 to anyone who wanted to grow their sales. I offered it for free, but I did ask that they make a $20 donation to Feeding America. 417 people downloaded it. I literally gave away $200,000 in training. I just did an accounting. I track downloads and communication back to me. Of the 417 people who downloaded it, how many people do you think responded even thank you like you have? I hate when people ask me this.

Because, you know, maybe 30, I don't know, eight.

Eight people responded afterwards and said thanks. I even followed up with each person asking if they got it downloaded, which I knew they did. As I tracked it, just eight people went the extra mile. Number one to say thanks. And then later on I was talking to him because I texted him, I said, hey, how many people actually downloaded it? And that number was, I think like maybe 40 people downloaded it. So people would go through the process of buying it like with a coupon or whatever and nobody even downloaded it. There's so much information people don't take action on. Anyway, that's a tangent I have and it's one of the things that's kept me personally from creating information products in the business. Building profit, building Internet marketing space. Is my time's too valuable to create products that other people aren't going to use. I would much rather work with individuals who have established business and work with them one on one, consult and coach them or invite them to join my mastermind or something like that. I like this. I like working with people seeing their faces, seeing, seeing results in their bank account as opposed to just info products. But that's just me.

Yeah, it's a struggle because obviously you can reach a lot more people than info products. And you do get the people that dissect the whole thing, build a big business and then ping you back a screenshot and you go, oh my God, you know, they've exceeded me.

Exactly.

And it's, it's a tough balance. I mean I do think for the people out there though that are struggling, find what's working for someone else and then, and then figure out what they used, what they did and kind of do what they did. Right. You know, find a success story. Not on a sales page or maybe find it on a sales page, follow up with that person, find a success story, find out what they're actually doing and find out what they use to get there. Yeah. By the way, it might just be one course.

I can't tell you how many times I've done that. When people post testimonials, I'll google that person. And now it's so easy. Google or Facebook them and then reach out to them. I've built tremendous relationships in all different areas of life by following up with people who've left case studies and testimonials on other people's things and little secret hack. Is that sometimes like let's say that I want to find out. Let's say you're teaching a, you're selling a course on how to do XYZ and you post Los Silva as is a testimonial who's done this. I've reached out to Los and say hey Los, I understand you, you worked with Sweeney and you, you've done xyz. Can you tell me about your results? And he would. And oftentimes I've gotten all I needed just from talking to that person because they're happy to tell you what they've learned.

You can probably get that person on the phone for an hour for free. For free. And they will tell you exactly how to do it and the roadmap to follow.

Right.

And if you want to take it a step further, then you could probably offer to pay them some money. And the reality is having, and that's, you know, some of these, you know, some side projects and stuff that I'm working on. A jit showed this one thing once that I like. So he's like, write down all your different ideas and then kind of connect them in circles and see where the most connections are and where your kind of assets leverage to each other. So if you know someone that's extremely talented at, let's say, creating landing pages, then maybe a service business for yourself where you create landing pages for other people is a good business to go into. Why? Because you can pick up the phone and call one of the top experts on it and get the full download.

Exactly.

Some of the things that I'm looking to do, I'm doing them because I know that I have certain connections. And if I hit a problem, hit a roadmap, I don't have to go buy a course and then dig through a course trying to find the answer. And I don't have to try to figure out what can consultant to pay money to. I can just call some of my friends and I'm gonna get the answer right.

So.

And I think that's invaluable.

So there's a, there's a. I don't even know how to say this, maybe a phrase. So folks who listen to bacon wrap business hear me talk about this a lot. But it's the three and a half questions I ask myself or my clients to solve majority of business problems. Or it's the very first thing I do this process, I go through and I call them three and a half questions. Because there's a who question, a what if question, and a why not question. But the first one is kind of two parts. Who else has what I need and who else needs what I have. And that's really, that's actually 80%. It does 80% of the heavy lifting. So if you answer both who else? And it's so elementary. I mean, this is forehead slapping obvious, but a lot of people don't ask these questions. Who else has what I need? Well, first of all, define what you need. Do you need. If you're an online marketer, do you need traffic? Do you need leads, do you need tech, do you need everything? Do you need capital? So who else has that? And just brain dump. Who else do you know? Who else do you know that might have that just list those out. Now the next thing is, and this is probably the most critical, who else needs what I have? So who else has what I need is one side. That's what's in it for me. But then you're going to lead with who else needs what I have. And it can generate joint ventures, strategic alliances, another thing called triangulations, where I may need what this guy has over here, but he may need what you have and you may need what I have. And there's a great way to put these together. And I naturally do this. Some people it doesn't come natural to, but this. The first question I always ask is that who else has what I need? Needs what I have. The second part of that question is, what if? All right, so what? And this is more brainstorming. Well, what if is there an opportunity for me to do business with Sweeney? And if not, is there an opportunity for Sweeney to do business with somebody I know that I want to do business with? Well, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if, what if come up with and just brain dump, you might come up with a great idea. The very last question you ask is, why not? Is there a conflict of interest? Is it going to be expensive? Is there any reason that this won't work out? Is this person a jerk to deal with? But who else has what I need? Who else needs what I have? What if we collaborate in one way or the other? And then why not? And that's been so valuable to me. I've written multiple blog posts about it. I talk about it. I don't see enough people actually doing that. And it's amazing the problems you can solve with it.

Sounds like you need a Kendall. Quick release.

Thought about it, thought about it. Planning out a book launch here in the very, very near future. Probably a best of bacon wrap business along with my thoughts and ideas and some of the best strategies that I've pulled out of my guests.

What you could do is do a like, say it's 10 different chapters all around, different subjects.

Yep.

The beginning of the chapter is kind of your spiel on it. And then you bring in some of the best of and do that for each one. Something like that.

Yeah. You know, and that that's perfectly in line with the way that I what I do with bacon wrap business. So kind of back to the podcast. My strategy here. So I interview people that I want information from. I do not open this up for anybody who wants to be on the show gets to be on the show. These are only People that I may have an interest in hearing from you. At the same time, I usually have some knowledge or an opinion on this as well. So I love to start it off saying, look, today we're going to talk about. Whatever YouTube advertising, right? And here's what I know about it. Here's why I think it's important. Here's my recommendations that I'm bringing on somebody else to punch punctuate this point. I'm bringing on somebody else that I can dig deeper who may know a little bit more about this than myself. And we're going to go down this rabbit hole. So it's a little bit of both. It's my thoughts punctuating with theirs and the other thing that I do on my show, and it's probably not the best thing to admit publicly, but I don't do my show for my listeners. I do my show for me. I mean, it's a free show. I do not charge my listeners to do this. And I have conversations with people that I really like, know, like and trust, and I want something from them. And I allow my listeners to eavesdrop on our conversations. And I try to remember that they're there. I try to remember that people are listening to this. And I'll clarify topics and conversations, but I don't try to go into the most basic, basic stuff. I don't ask all standard questions that everybody else asks. I want people to feel as though they're listening to two people who charge a lot of money to normally talk. And we may rabbit trail to really advanced strategies, but these are strategies that my listeners aren't going to get elsewhere. And if I'm going to spend an hour of my time, which is very valuable, I want to get something out of it. Now, the benefit to the listeners, and I've been told time and time again that they like this about it, that it doesn't just go super basic, that I don't just cover the stupid things. So I think it ends up benefiting the listeners, even though they're not my first priority. My first priority is me. And as I said, maybe it's a good thing to admit, maybe it's not. But hey, let's polarize some people.

Hey, if it works right now, to play off what you said about the testimonials, I kind of wrote a note on this, what I really like. And this is kind of a strategy I've told my brother because he's kind of wants to switch careers and things like that. So with the testimonials, if you can reach out to five people that are maybe running an advertising agency, for example, or maybe they're copywriters. You can ask them what they did wrong, what they did right, how they would have done it differently before you grow your business. So say maybe it's Brad's bacon copywriting tips. And I can talk to five people that have had success with it. They're going to say, yeah, this part's really good. Focus on this or don't do this or don't do it this way. And by talking to people that have been there before, especially with exactly what you're doing, you're going to find out so much more and set a much better path for yourself now to bring it back to the LinkedIn thing. And this might not be as applicable for kind of the entrepreneur space, but I told my brother like, alright, before you spend five years trying to get a career and becoming this director of whatever, why don't you just hit like 20 of them on LinkedIn and ask them if they like the job, what they actually do and how they would recommend to get there? Because so often nowadays the steps are not clear, they're not always clear. And you might think that you need a job or experience doing this, but what you really need is something else. And by interviewing people that are actually there, they're going to say, no, I don't even need this degree. All I needed was three, three years experience doing this or that and then I got hired. And I also need to be bilingual or you know, whatever the skills are.

That's a great point. I love that. So what are you most excited about? What's, what else is going on in your business world that you're, you know, that's kind of cool. I know, I know you've got your consulting practice, I know you've got, the podcast is kicking it and doing awesome.

We, I like, I mean I'm kind of, I'm starting to implement some of the machine tactics. So that's kind of fun. Fun. I'm getting better at funnels. I'm getting a lot better, getting much better at funnels and I don't know personally for me, paid advertising is just juicing me up. I come from a world that can be so affiliate heavy that I see the other side and it just seems like if I can pay for it, the scalability just seems to be there so much more.

I agree.

So that's, that's kind of what I like, what I enjoy. And tool wise, I mean, the marketplace has never been crazier Never been better. There's, you know, I mean even just lead pages and click funnels or you're telling me about thrive themes. Yeah, it's never been easier to throw together something like I remember, you know my first ever landing page was literally a red headline centered text.

Yeah.

It was 12 font, there were some images and it was an aweber form and it just said name and email. Yeah. And nowadays you can throw together a lead page that looks 10 times better than that in all of two minutes.

Yep. It's crazy, isn't it? Things have changed. You know, the technology has made it easier to get started, to implement. More people know how to do things, it's easier to outsource work that needs to be done. But the flip side is, you know, and it's, it's a balance every certain things get easier, certain things get harder. So back in the day, eight years ago, 10 years ago, whatever, it was really easy to make money on Google.

Right.

But it was really a pain in the butt to create a website. And by the way, most, a lot of people weren't online. It wasn't as crowded if you were just selling something online. But the market's becoming more sophisticated so it's easier to get things out there but it's harder to get noticed and it's harder to stand out and it's harder to be unique because now, I mean the first people who were doing video marketing were setting trends and now anybody can really do it and anybody can do it. Pretty high quality with all the tools out there, podcasting, right? Exactly. So now it's just really much more focused on the market, the quality, the presentation. But at the end of the day it really comes down to the value that you're bringing to the people. Are you solving their problems in a way they want you to solve them and do they trust you that you have the ability to do that? So there's no real excuses for not starting a business, for not whether it's online or Service based business, etc. There's so many opportunities out there, but the necessity to be, to really put some thought into it strategically into who you are, who you serve, how you're going to deliver that I don't think has ever been more important than right now. You really have to stand out.

I think to play off that standing out. Something I see that I don't think is a big enough focus for a lot of people is designing UX user experience. And that is like the cornerstone of most startups. It really is, it really is it's not just about having the best product, it's about delivering it in the best way possible and reducing. If I can get them from four clicks to do something to three clicks to make it this much tiny, easier for them, I'm gonna have more success. So I think in your own things, you know, whatever you are doing to stand out on a brand aspect, design and user experience can certainly have a big part of that play into that.

I agree. And I talked about this on a previous episode of my show with Todd Brown from Automated Marketing Funnels. I love that guy. Yeah, he's awesome. And we talked about. Yeah, you interviewed him as well, right before me. But one of the things we talked about, which is one of my favorite books, Scientific Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, is the five levels of market sophistication. I won't go into them right here, but it's really important. Go read Scientific advertising or listen to the episode on Bacon Wrap Business with Todd Brown and you'll hear us talk about it. And it's really a pertinent thing to put into play right now, more than any time that I've seen.

But I think even to that though, you know, the five levels of market sophistication, I don't know as well, so I'll be open and honest about that. But such a big part of it is finding out, you know, that whole customer demographic, you know, we have analytics and tools that have never before been available to us and finding out who, who you're actually speaking to. Is it a 20 year old with an iPhone or is it a 65 year old with a Windows phone? Or is it a 40 year old with an Android phone? Do they mostly use their tablet? Are they mainly on their computer? How do they like to consume content? What TV shows do they like? I mean, all these kind of things really plays into, you know, your brand or what you should be doing as well.

It's amazing what you can figure out. I've got my podcast statistics right here. It just shows me 35% are listening on iOS, 3% are listening on Android. So 35 versus 3 now. And my stuff's available on Stitcher, it's available on, you know, if they've got, it's a podcast, it's out there, they can download it, they can get it on their other phone. Actually, I've got a 15% on others, so it doesn't really know what that is. 20% listen straight on iTunes, 23% listen on a browser. So exactly what you were saying is I, I Can sit here and figure out that's just one little slice of my demographic. I can also take my customer list, I can find out, upload them to Facebook, find out what else they like. There's no privacy out there. As a marketer and a business builder, though, it's a great tool to really drill into what your customers like. By the way, that brings up something else totally kind of unrelated. But it always cracks me up. I get the whole need for privacy and the NSA spying and all this other stuff, right? But I always hear people talk about how they get so mad that Facebook and other platforms are selling your information to advertisers, Right? So first of all, they're not selling necessarily your name.

It's the business model, right? You are the product, Right.

And they're allowing advertisers like you and me and other folks to put my ads in front of you based upon your actions, right? So I don't necessarily know who you are. If it says my reach is 2 million people who have likes of this, that and the other, I like that. I would prefer more targeted advertising. As a consumer. The funniest thing, and guys joke about this all the time. When you watch TV and a Summer's Eve commercial comes on, it's not targeted. I'm not buying feminine hygiene products, and I'm not buying things like this. If it would be really cool. If I'm watching TV and this is coming. We all know that for a fact that when I'm watching TV or surfing the Internet, only the ads that come up are the stuff that I might be interested in that I might buy. I much prefer that.

I hate when I watch football and all these stupid detective shows come on, like the advertisements and the trailer, like.

I don't want to.

I just. My eyes just roll and. Yeah, it's the same kind of thing. I mean, with that, you get better marketing. I think there's a balance, you know, as far as privacy and what they're doing is ethical or not. But at the end of the day, you signed up for Facebook, you bought a cell phone, you bought all these things. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be some rules and such, but you gotta realize that there is a balance. And if you're partaking in it, right?

And in general, I just like more targeted ads. And I don't mind ads. Ads do not bother me personally because.

I think most of those people, honestly, that complain about that, they'll complain about it. They could just polarize away. They're. They're not making money. They're not doing anything.

That's a good point. That's a good point. I mean, so let's.

Let's do a.

Let's do a plug for each other's show here. So for my listeners, I've already done this. I've told you to go subscribe to Digital Triggers. Digital Triggers IO on the website machine.

Yes, sir. Right. Triggercast is the name of the podcast itself.

You know, I didn't know that. Yeah, I thought it was the same thing.

We decided to do it for that reason.

I didn't know that, now that I think about it. But I always just think, digital Triggers.

Yeah, it plays off itself.

Well, I like it. Digital Triggers. Triggercast. Triggercast is the podcast. Digital Triggers IO is the website. And what I like about your show, you have a lot of the same people that you know that, or at least the same caliber of people that I have. We haven't had a lot of guest overlap, but we talk about a lot of the same topics. And you do a great job of exploring, deep diving into what these people are talking about. I can tell, and your listeners can tell that you're not just reading from ten questions. Answer this.

It's funny when guests ask me for a question list and I'm kind of like, my question list is just doing enough research on you that then when I speak to you and I can mention a business you had five years ago and I know enough about it that I can ask you any questions on that business.

Bingo.

It's not like, let's go through these 10 questions.

Right? Like, I tell my audience on my show that my audience, I tell my guests, look, I'm going to ask the name of the show or the subtitle of the show for your listeners who don't know, it's bacon wrap business. Sizzling hot business ideas guaranteed to make you fast, fat profits. I tell my guests, before you come on the show, bring some sizzling hot business advice or ideas or tactics or strategies. Bring something that's really working because I want it to be these conversations so good, you'd think they're wrapped in bacon. And that's really what I tell them. Just prepare to dazzle my folks. And so far, so good. But yeah, you've done a great job in asking the questions, leading them, and I always get a lot out of it. I love your Friday reloads. I know they're a lot of work curating some of the hot topics.

Not always enjoyable labor of love.

Right. But it's some of the best content.

Out there, I would say, too, for anyone. I mean, probably the best plug for either of our shows is just subscribe to it, check it out, and then just download what you find interesting. I could care less. If a listener's like, I only listen to one out of every three of your shows. That's fine. I just had a show with Tanner on E Commerce. If E Commerce doesn't interest you at all, of course we talk about other things. Don't download it. That's fine. You know, like, when even if I go to your show, I'm a friend of yours, I'm not listening to every single podcast. You find what's interesting and you download it and you listen to those.

Exactly. And that's the point of the whole thing. And this has been fun, man.

No, I agree. And so just real quick. So this was probably, like, my last note that I wanted to bring up.

Yeah.

As far as for content promotion and, you know, building kind of some buzz if you. If you're coming out with a new podcast.

Yep.

Number one, if you are about to launch and you're asking that, you're way too late to the game, that's kind of a given. You should build up hype before you launch something. You know, like, that's why there's a reason why Tucker Max is doing with Mating Grounds. He's just blitzing out a podcast, and then he's gonna have a book coming out afterwards. It's the same kind of thing. The reason why artists release singles. But one thing that can work really well is a giveaway. Doing a giveaway that is relevant to your target audience and doing that as a promotion and kind of promoting the giveaway and getting other people to promote the giveaway is a good way to build listeners. I know we did a giveaway of some of our products to anyone that left a review in order to get itunes reviews, which can bump you into the new and noteworthy. And I know you had made it into the new and noteworthy as well, so I'm sure you pulled some strings there.

I think it was all in the power of bacon. People were surfing the podcast directory and they saw bacon. I was like, you had me a bacon.

People were hungry for the bacon. Yeah.

You know, it's actually funny as I haven't. I agree with what you said. It is a cornerstone of what I tell my clients to do. And yet, on bacon wrap business, I have not put together a giveaway, except for occasionally if I transcribe the episode. I said, look, give me your email And I'll give you the transcription for this because transcriptions cost money. It helps me defer the cost on that. But oftentimes I don't practice what I preach in my own business. And I think you'll find that with a lot of gurus and other folks. But it's one of the things I'm working on right now is the giveaway. Really valuable giveaway for list building on my own.

Like the guy from Video Fruit, he did a getaway giveaway of like lead pages for 10 years or something like that.

Nice.

And he broke down how many email subscribers he got, how much it cost him. You know, just really broke down the stats and everything about it. I thought that was pretty cool and pretty interesting.

I love it. I love it.

All right, well, Brad, thanks a lot for coming on and thanks a lot for having me on.

Yeah, exactly. This is going to be fun. And like, you know, like we said in the beginning, I going to share this episode with my. With my tribe on my podcast and you're going to do it with yours. I don't know how many other folks have done this, but I think it can be really useful.

Interesting to see the feedback. We'll have to syndicate the times.

I know. And then, you know, we're going to compete with who had more downloads, who had more views.

This is true. I will have to tap into my market.

I like it. All right, well, this is Brad Costanzo from Bacon Wrap Business.

And this is Sweeney Daniel from The triggercast by DigitalTriggers IO.

I love it. If you want to get a hold of me, just go to baconritebusiness.com and like you just said, digital triggers IO subscribe on iTunes to both of our shows, come to our websites, get on our email lists. We do not spam either one of us. We just share the good stuff and you get new episodes and training and, you know, stuff that other folks don't get. So I highly recommend it. Keep tuning in, Sweeney D. Appreciate having you on and see you in a couple months in San Diego.

Right? Sounds good.

Rock and roll.

Have a good one, man.

You too. Thanks, guys.