Ep. 85- PodBooker Founder Daniel Gefen Wants To Pick Your Brain

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes.

Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life.

Now here's your host, licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Certified Neuro-Emotional Technique Practitioner, and Certified Entrepreneur Coach, Jason Wasser. Everybody, welcome back to the You and Life Podcast. I am your host, Jason Wasser. I am here in South Florida. And my guest, probably to date, is the farthest away guest I've had. But he's also living in a place that I spent 2 years after high school living in and multiple summers and have traveled back over the years. To the land of Israel, but he's a UK London, right, native, father of 5 children and husband. He is the founder of the Geffen Media Group, which is a premier podcast booking agency, the host of the Can I Pick Your Brain podcast and the Daniel Geffen Show. He's also an author of The Self-Help Addict. And most recently, he is the founder, creator of Pod Booker, which is a platform for podcast hosts and podcast guests to connect. So in short, right, so Daniel Geffen, thank you. First of all, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

I think you're officially in tradition with Fiddler on the Roof. You're a matchmaker extraordinaire.

Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match. Find me a find. Catch me. Is that how it goes?

I think so.

Yeah, I watched it like 20 years ago. Oh my goodness. Wow. Yeah.

So let's reverse engineer everything, right? This is the newest project, this PodBooker. And I actually got connected to you through a buddy of mine, Mike Vaccaro, who has his own podcast, but as a personal friend here in South Florida. And then all of a sudden, like, you just started showing up everywhere on social media in the last 6 weeks. So in a way, I was thinking about before, like, you're kind of the, like, you're the guy that's so well known, that I didn't even know existed until I started seeing you showing up everywhere over the last number of weeks. So like, what the heck has been going on? And this PodBooker thing again just came out of nowhere and it's slamming.

Yeah. Well, it's interesting because I kind of got into the podcast space 4 years ago, but really had no idea about podcasting and I had no— there was no plan to go into it. You know, it just kind of a door opened, an opportunity, you know, came. It started with a phone call. I can get into the story if you want. So 4 years ago, I was on a tennis court here in Israel playing tennis. Well, that's what you do on a tennis court, Daniel. You play tennis, right?

Although pickleball has been taking over on tennis courts.

Oh, please. No, no, stop, stop, stop.

I hope it's a bastardization of—

Don't push madness.

I know.

It's disgraceful. So I get a phone call and this guy on the other line who I've never heard of before said, Daniel, I heard you have an interesting business story. I'd like to have you on my podcast. My response to him was, "What the heck is a podcast?" I had no idea what a podcast was. To kind of give you a little bit of context, so I had a successful business that I built while I was in the UK. I guess my backstory is that I was a troubled child in school. I jumped on tables to get attention. I was the class clown that was depressed on the inside, but happy on the outside. When I went to try to work for other people, it just didn't work out because I had left school thinking I was done with prison. Now here I was feeling like I was in prison again, being told that I have to be somewhere at a certain time and work with certain people I don't want to work with. It just didn't work for me. I kept getting fired. My special dear wife, who's been with me now for 14 years, and that's the biggest miracle. We're celebrating Hanukkah, but the biggest miracle of all is that she stuck with me for 14 years.

You took 8 days and turned it into 14 14 years.

Yeah, yeah. 8 seconds and turned it into 14 years. And she's the one that really kind of pushed me to go into entrepreneurship. She said, you know, why don't you start your own business? And I was like, I don't know how to do a business. Like I've got no degrees. I've got nothing. Like how do I? And she said, you'll figure it out. You know, and so there you go. Lots of ups and downs, but I built a relatively successful business It was offline and I had no online presence, no social media following, no email, like nothing. Starting from ground zero, invisible. If you type my name into Google back then, you know, you wouldn't find me. And so when this guy said, "Do you want to be on my podcast?" And I said, "I don't know what a podcast is." And he explained to me what it was. I was like, wow, this is really exciting. Because I'd never spoken in public before, except in high school on the tables and getting detention for that. Next thing I know, I'm in my pajamas. I'm wearing a headset. I'm talking to the wall. I thought it was pretty funny because, you know, is anyone actually listening besides for this guy, right? Is there anyone else out there besides for him and his mother and his cat, right? And so at the end, he said to me, well, Daniel, thanks so much for coming on the show. It's so good to have you. And I said, well, this was so much fun, but like how many people were listening to this? And he said, oh, there were over 1,000.

Wow.

And I fell off my chair.

Yeah.

And I said, what? Did you just say 1,000 people? He said, yeah. I said, come on. You're kidding me. Where are all these people? And he said, well, they're all over the world. And he starts listing all these countries, some of which I didn't even recognize. I'm like, this is insane. I need to get into podcasting. Right? Because if you think about it, some of the biggest speakers, they get up on stage and if there's 1,000 people in the crowd, that's a packed crowd. Right? So I decided I need to go all in on this podcasting thing. So 2 weeks later, I start my own podcast called Can I Pick Your Brain? And my goal was to pick the brains of some of the most successful entrepreneurs and leaders in our generation. There were just 2 problems, Jason. One, I didn't know any successful leaders to interview. Small little problem, right? No one to interview. And two is how do I get people to listen to this? Because remember, I had no following, no social media, nothing. So that's when I had my first light bulb moment that went off. And I said to myself, do you know what? That guy had over 1,000 people listening. Well, if he had me on his show and I'm nobody, I'm this like little invisible guy, maybe I can go on other people's podcasts and leverage their audiences. So instead of trying to figure this all out myself and trying to build the audience on my own, I'll just go on other people's podcasts as a guest and just talk about my story. And then, you know, kind of throw in my podcast there and hopefully they'll come and listen. Well, that worked better than I ever dreamed of because within a very short period of time, my podcast became a top 50 ranked podcast on iTunes. We hit over 300,000 downloads. I ended up interviewing 4 billionaires, the smartest man alive, the US memory champion, the leading hostage negotiator for the FBI, New York Times bestselling authors, and a whole host of other big-name people you've probably heard of. Then I wrote my book, The Self-Help Addict, which then became an international bestseller. This all happened just by getting on podcasts. So that's the first sort of half of the story. The second half explains how I got into the business side of it. So I started getting bombarded with emails from PR agencies and basically entrepreneurs trying to get on my podcast. They're trying to get either getting their clients or themselves on my show. As guests. And I just kept sending them all to spam because they were really bad. Right? Number one, they didn't have a relationship with me. Number two, I, you know, they didn't know how to position themselves in the right way. They all sounded the same. And so after a couple of months of getting dozens of these every single day, I woke up one morning, this is 3.5 years ago, and I had the second light bulb moment, which was I've got a top-rated podcast myself, so I understand the podcast space. My friends are top-rated hosts, so I've got the relationships and the contacts. I've been a guest on over 60 podcasts, so I know what a guest is supposed to position themselves as. And I've interviewed over 150 high-profile guests, so I know how to position the guests in the right way so that top-rated hosts are going to want them. Why don't I start my own podcast booking agency? That's how Gefen Media Group was born. Then we ended up working with many different authors and entrepreneurs to get them on the top podcasts. Then I had the third light bulb moment about a year ago when I realized that I was only serving a very small market because there's only so many people that can afford to spend thousands of dollars on a podcast booking agency, but there are probably, I would say, millions of people out there that want to get booked as a guest on podcasts. They don't know how to find the podcast. How do they reach out to them? Where do they find their email address? How do they, you know, prevent getting lost in the inbox and getting sent to spam? Like how do they get them? And then on the flip side, I'm only working with the top 250 podcast hosts. Well, there's over 1.5 million podcasts out there. Right? So there's at least, I would say, a couple hundred thousand, if not more, hosts that are looking for guests, but they're not getting any from any PR agencies or booking agencies. And that's when I had the idea to create a platform, essentially a marketplace where guests can easily find podcasts and pitch to them on the platform and get booked on the show. And hosts can set up a profile and find guests and invite them on the show. And that's podbooker.com.

It's amazing. It's so simple because for the last year and change, I started mine a summer and a half ago. And it was— the whole process was so difficult and so challenging to like— I had to— thankfully, I leveraged my network. I was introduced to— happened to be a billionaire who runs a program called Business Finishing School, which in my backstory was like, you know, the therapist, very similar to you. I also, I barely graduated high school, I had a 1.8 GPA, which I'm not sure if they do the same rankings in the UK. But I barely graduated, ended up spending time in Israel. So I had no clue what I was doing. But I knew that I, you know, eventually was gonna be a therapist. And my network was just like mental health professionals and alternative medicine practitioners, but it wasn't like entrepreneurs and business people. And it wasn't until my friend convinced me, it took him 2 years, who's in my alternative medicine community, to come to this conference in Dallas. And I had no clue anything about the guy who was running it. It was just a business entrepreneur program. And my mindset changed overnight about looking at myself, like you said, like I'm not an entrepreneur. Like this triggered something in me. And all of a sudden, I started seeing this network of people that were like, on purpose. They were in alignment with their core values. They were ethical people. They were making money and they were doing good things. And like, I grew up in South Florida where like, if you have money, you're probably not going to be the world's nicest person, especially where, you know, I grew up in the area that I lived in. And I, so I always created that relationship between that. Then coming into the podcast space a little bit later, thankfully, I was able to leverage that. But I know what's out there is either a very expensive paid thing. But that same thing that's paid, that they also have a free version. It's not a simple platform to use. It's an email list and you have to apply the same information you have to put in every single time. So you have to save it somewhere, copy paste, and it takes like 8 minutes per profile.

It's a directory, right?

It's a directory. And yours is plug and play. You set up your profile in 8 minutes. And then all of a sudden you pick who you want to, right? It was such— I think you cornered the market with the publicity. And right now, right, podcasts are— it's huge. This is the media.

Yeah. 150 million Americans listening regularly to podcasts. It's insane. The growth has been staggering. Yeah.

And if you have— I think the numbers I saw that if you have at least 3,000 people collectively in the lifetime of your podcast listening to you, you're in the top 10 or 20% of listened to podcasts.

Yeah, it's crazy. This is where right now, It's undervalued attention. That's why it's so exciting. Because if you remember back in the day when Google, it was so easy to get on Google on the front page. You paid a few hundred dollars to some people in India and boom, you're like on the top of Google. Those were the days, right? And Google AdWords was like 10 cents a click for most keywords. It was a joke. You were printing money. Then came YouTube ads, for example, where again, it was was, you know, so cheap when it first started out. You know, YouTube, same thing. And as the market gets saturated, it just gets so expensive. And right now, the podcast space is wide open. It's still early days. You know, people say to me, but Daniel, there's 1.5 million podcasts. Well, first of all, bear in mind that around, I would say, only 800,000 are active.

Right?

So there's only 800,000. So less than a million that active podcasts. Now compare that to how many YouTube channels there are, over 100 million. And compare that to how many blogs there are, almost a billion. Billion blogs. So 1 million podcasts is nothing. It's a drop in the ocean. We're still in the early stage. And here's the other cool thing. And I mean, this is huge. Right now, it doesn't cost any money to be a guest on. In fact, I'm on this podcast right now. Did I pay you any money, Jason?

Not at all. No.

But that's crazy because you've been doing this now for over a year. You've put all your work and energy into it. You've got to find the guests. You've got to prepare for the guests. You've got to produce the show. You've got to edit the show. You've got to promote the show. And I come along and I just spend an hour of my time and I get access to your entire audience that you've spent the last year building. That's insane. Right? But that's going to change. I predict that within the next 6 months to a year, podcast hosts are going to start charging their guests. Because, you know, why not? You're giving them a free platform. You're giving them access to your audience. You're doing all the work. Right? And so I've actually seen it happen already. There's a trend being set.

Well, John Lee Dumas does that, right? He's exponentially expensive to be on his show.

$3,500 to be a guest on John Lee Dumas's podcast per guest, right? $3,500. And I've seen many other hosts now charging roughly around $500, $1,000. You know, you do the math. If you're on 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 podcasts, that's going to be very expensive.

That's your marketing budget right there for some companies.

100%. Well, now if you're a solopreneur, if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a small business and you don't have that kind of budget, Now's the time to really take advantage while it's still free, right? To get on podcasts. It's incredible.

One of the things I'm seeing, especially in the different podcast groups on Facebook, is someone joins a community and they're like, well, I've been thinking I should make a podcast. What should I do it on? Right? Over and over and over again, I see that question. Yeah, it's frustrating, right? Because I see it one as a therapist and, right, what else is going on in their backstory of like, what else haven't they figured out? And what is like, you know, what is it that's compelling them to want to do it? Are they jumping on the bandwagon? Or can when they provide value in a different way than someone else is. But it's also the same way that I'm working with my clients. One of my old clients returned to me last week after I'd not seen them for a year and a half. And then we switched from actually therapy to coaching. And they have a really amazing life story. And they wanted to leverage that. And I'm like, okay, well, let's find the XY apex. What are you really, really amazing at that you can, right? And what's the way you can make money on that, that other people will want to pay you to do? It's the XY, right? And find that little apex in between. And we found out based on their story, based on the trauma trauma they went through and being a single parent, that this is exactly their niche and who they need to market to within the span of a half hour. We figured that out. When you said that all these podcasts, right, they're not consistent, right? There's a lot that aren't making— I also know, like, I also heard that most of them don't get past like show 20 or something like that.

Yeah. 20 or 30. Yeah.

Usually. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's—

yeah. And 85% of podcast hosts are not making any money from their podcast. That's the other thing.

Should they?

You know, should they?

Meaning if they're looking at it, like for me, like I see it as a marketing tool. I see it as me getting in front of amazing guests like you. And in a way, I'm being a little bit selfish and, and like, you know, like, how would I have access to them in the first place if I didn't have this platform?

Yes.

Right.

Yes. There's lots of benefits to it for sure.

100%. But the marketing side, for me, it's been like more of the perspective of I just want to put good quality stuff out there. And obviously, I'm one of a few therapists here in South Florida that are doing this with this, you know, these 4 areas that I'm passionate about, the psychology, the spirituality, the natural and alternative medicine, and entrepreneurship, and weaving those together. And that's the brand of my practice. But I know a lot of people aren't looking at it as a financial thing. But then there's people going in, I'm going to make money. I'm going to quit my job in 3 months.

Right? So that's the wrong way about it. Right? For sure. If you're quitting your job and you think you're going to start a podcast and you're going to make a full-time living within less than a year, no, don't do it. 100%. You know, my podcast, I've been podcasting now for 4 years. I haven't made money directly on the podcast, like from sponsorships, but I've made a lot of money because of the podcast. Right. Right. What it's done for my career, I could not put a value on that. Like I just can't. Like podbooker.com, Gefen Media, you know, the connections that I have now with all the guests that I've had on my show, the I've basically become a mini celebrity in this space. And that is, I mean, I get on calls with people, Jason, and I don't need to sell. They're like, oh yeah, Daniel, I'm ready to sign up. Just sign me up. I've already followed you. I've seen the guests you've had on your show. I've seen you on, I've listened to you on podcasts. It's the best thing when someone says, I've heard you on a podcast. I'm basically ready to sign up and work with you. I don't need to do anything. Like they've already, they already know me. It's the weirdest thing. Like, yeah, Daniel, I hear you while I'm in the toilet. I'm like, that's a bit weird, man. You did not need to share that with me. You know, it was like I had one guy.

I can help your life and I can help your bowels. That's really good.

Yeah. I had one guy who was going cross-state, like cross-America. It's like, I don't know how many hours that is, but that's a long trip. And he listened to my, he binged my podcast back-to-back episode. Episode after episode. And I'm just like, that's just insane. But that's what people are doing. They're binging content.

Well, that's what Pat Flynn calls the super fans, right? You're taking people who have already bought in, you're creating a community around those people, which is what I think you're really doing with Podbooker, right? And my guess is, and you'll share this if you can, and if you will, about what's the next steps for Podbooker, right? The community that could come out of that, right? I know there's Podcast Movement, which is an incredible community. I've attended their conference pre-pandemic. 4,000 people. Like, it blew my mind. It was— I was into episode 2 or 3, just launched. And I have new best, literally best friends that I met that weekend, that I've now collaborated with. My buddy Pablo Gonzalez, we did a, we did a retreat at his family's house in North Carolina for a bunch of other young entrepreneurs, a weekend retreat before the pandemic hit. And that came out of a connection from Mike to this, right, for that we've met through. My buddy Pablo is going to this conference. You guys should meet. Pablo said, we're meeting tonight. We're getting a bunch of people together. And I met this whole crew of people that have become really good friends. So I think like, right, so what's the next steps for Podbooker?

Yeah. So for Podbooker, the goal there is more, I want to focus on people who are looking to really get their message out. And get their brand out. Right? And you have, and I don't like putting people into boxes, but at the same time, right, you have the A-listers, right? You have the Joe Rogans who will have Jim Carrey on his show. Right? And then you've got the B-listers and the C-listers and the D-listers. You know, you've got a lot of people who are sort of just starting out. And they just want to get, how do I get to, you know, D-level? How do I get to C-level? How do I get on the bigger podcasts? How do you grow? And I feel like the big picture for Podbooker is that my goal is for someone to join Podbooker, at first just get on a couple of small podcasts just to get their name out there, get their message out, start creating relationships, start building their email lists, start, you know, growing their audience and their super fans. And then what happens is, as they get on more shows, they get on bigger shows because it's a small world. Everyone knows each other. And then they're like, "Oh, you should definitely go on my friend's podcast." And then you go on their podcast and that's how it works. And what we've built into the platform recently is that you can get reviews from hosts. You can actually reach out to a host and now say, "Hey," you know, Jason Wasser, which you'll probably get after this interview with me, you'll get a message on Podbooker saying, "Jason Daniel wants you to review him as a guest." And of course, hopefully Jason Wasser, you'll leave me a nice review. And then What happens then is, of course, when hosts look at your profile, they'll see, oh wow, this person has, you know, 15 5-star reviews from all of these hosts. And oh, I know that host. Yeah. Oh my goodness. If he says or she says that Daniel's a great guest, well then I've got to have him on my show. And so you start getting booked on the bigger shows. And it's like a game. Like imagine a game where you just sort of unlock the next level. So the goal for PodBooker is really to sort of gamify the sort of branding experience.

Well, you're taking that Yelp experience with that LinkedIn experience and tie it into to make it really that interactive and engaging. And there are people on there that have reached out to me. And at the beginning of my podcast, I would have probably booked them out. And now, you know, it's— I unfortunately like— and it felt weird for me to say no to someone. But they're no longer what my podcast compared to the guests that I'm looking for. And it's interesting, like you were saying, I want to hear people to hear this. I had a guest on my podcast that was— they were on some pretty well-known TV shows with pretty— you know, they were on an Oprah show. And when I reached out to them to be a guest, they asked me about my numbers. And my numbers aren't staggering like a Joe Rogan or an Andy Frisella or those guys in that business entrepreneur space, right? But I said, here's the people and here's what they do that have already been guests. So it was Coach Michael Burt who spoke at the 10X Conference and such and such, whatever it is. And immediately they wrote back and said, okay, great. I didn't even answer the question about the numbers.

That's the game. And boom, there it is. And that's really important because people ask me, how did you get billionaires on your podcast? How did you get Robert Kiyosaki? Or—

And that was recent, right? That was a few weeks ago.

Robert Kiyosaki was the last time. Well—

It was someone you had recently that was a pretty big— Like you said that you were reaching, you were trying to get.

Oh, one second. That was— Oh man. He's— Now he's off. Now I don't remember who it was. But yeah, he's a big, big speaker. But you know, once you get like one big name guest, so then all of a sudden, all you need to do is just name drop a couple of guests and they won't even ask you about, you know, this is like, oh, what if he went or she went on your show? Like I'm definitely coming on. And that's kind of part of the whole game that we play, right? It's who knows who, right? And it's the same thing with clients. Like I started getting some big name clients as, you know, for my agency. And once I had like a couple of, you know, sort of big named clients, then basically HarperCollins reached out to me and said they wanted to partner with me and send clients my way. And I'm like, wait, hold on a second. HarperCollins just reached out to me and wants to partner with me. Like what the heck is going on? Right? And here's the message I think I want to really give to people listening to this. You just got to get out there. I'm serious. Like you really, really, really don't know what's ahead of you. I would never in a million years have imagined that I would have a bestselling book or a top-rated podcast or interviewing billionaires or, you know, running an agency, partnering with HarperCollins. Like it just you know, starting launching a SaaS company. I don't, what the hell do I know about SaaS, man? Now suddenly I'm like going on YouTube and checking every SaaS thing out and like trying to learn because I don't know how to do this. Like I'll be honest with you. I don't know what I'm doing. We just hit 1,000 users. And I'm like, oh my goodness, what is going on over here? Like it's just doors open up and doors close.

Right?

And sometimes you go through hell. Like I had a partner break up with me and throw me under the bus. And I had to start my whole company from scratch. I had my you know, COO who was running my whole company, my first company, who became suicidal and quit. And suddenly, I was left with a business I didn't know how to run. And I've had so many, so many things that just came up. And I honestly thought many times that it was over. Like business was done. Like there was no way I'm coming back from this. And then you just somehow manage. And I really believe that that after every major breakdown is a breakthrough. There's breakthrough at the end of it and you just have to keep going.

Well, resiliency is in your DNA.

Yeah.

Right? With the shared story that we have of our families going through the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. But can you share a little bit about that with everybody?

Sure. So, you know, I go on a lot of podcasts and sometimes I get asked the question, you know, Daniel, who's your biggest inspiration of all the people that you've interviewed? And, you know, because they're obviously expecting me to say someone famous that I interviewed. Unfortunately, I can say that some people I've interviewed who were famous and who I looked up to, let's just say that I didn't have much respect for them after I interviewed them. Because my interview style is kind of, you know, I dig deep. I like to kind of cut through a lot of the, you know, the fluff. And I'll provoke because that's kind of how, in a way, what makes a great host is someone who's comfortable enough to kind of really ask the tough questions that the audience really wants to hear. But the guests, especially the famous ones, don't necessarily want to go there because they've got a script, right? They follow their script and they have their agenda. So when you throw them off and you throw them a curveball— So I had one guest and I'll name him. So Robert Kiyosaki, the guest that I mentioned earlier, I threw him a couple of curveballs. He did not like it. And it ended up, let's just say it ended up with a train wreck. On his end. People wrote to me saying, Daniel, I cannot believe, I've never seen this side of him. This is insane. Crazy. Yeah. Crazy situation. So my answer though is my biggest inspiration is my grandfather, more than anyone I've ever met or interviewed or heard about. The reason why is because my grandfather was in 18— different concentration camps from the age of 13 till 18. So for 5 years, he was in various different concentration camps. We don't know much, unfortunately, because he very rarely spoke about it. What was really special about him was that he always smiled and you would never know that he went through hell. He was always smiling and he was always serving people. You know, he was always looking to serve people. But the few stories that we heard from him are just mind-blowing. So one story that he shared was that he was standing in line and they basically shot everyone, including his whole family. So he watched, unfortunately, his parents and siblings die in front of him. And the bullet hit him in the shoulder and he dropped down and pretended to be dead and was buried alive and then waited to climb out. And then he managed to run and they found him and then they tried to hang him. So he actually had the noose around his neck and he said a little prayer And as he said that prayer, the sirens went off and it was a false alarm, but they thought it was a real thing. So they ran and my grandfather was able to escape and run into the forest. And then they caught him and hung him again. So he was hung twice. And again, he said a prayer and I guess it just wasn't meant to be because the sirens went off again. That time he was liberated. He was just a living, walking miracle. At one time, he was by the gas chambers, probably about 10th in line, somewhere very close to entering into the gas chamber. Next to him, there was a Nazi whose horse defecated on the boot. Of the Nazi. He turned around to the person closest to him, which was my grandfather, and said, "Get out here, you dirty Jew, and clean this up." My grandfather came out of the line, bent down, and cleaned up the shoe. Then the Nazi sent him away. He was essentially saved by horse poop. I actually shared this story with someone and they said, "Daniel, you realize that Sometimes when you're cleaning up crap, it could actually be saving your life. So sometimes we're in that situation. And the thing about my grandfather is that he didn't give up. He didn't give in. He came out of the Holocaust with nothing. And I mean literally nothing, like no money, no relationships, no friends, no family. No connections, didn't even speak the language, nothing, and just built himself up from scratch and spent the rest of his life just wanting to serve others and did it with a smile on his face. To me, that's the epitome.

The resilience in this, right? As I was mentioning before, we have all of these tools today compared to what our grandparents had. My grandfather, after he survived, he came over to Scranton, Pennsylvania and opened up a furniture business and married my my grandmother. And then the family business came here subsequently that my siblings and my father are running. But right, there was nothing, there was no community, there was no— most of the families were wiped out, most of our families were wiped out. And they had no choice but to start over. But that theme of resiliency, I think, really is something that I want everybody listening to this episode to take into consideration. Because we have so many free— Facebook is free. If you're like, I don't know how to start a podcast, then do a Facebook Live. If you don't know how to do, right, then do an Instagram. And then you can download that off your Facebook and then upload that to a podcast platform eventually, right? Just save it on your computer. Like there's so many ways that like this idea of like, I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to be successful. I'm going to give up. Like it's in a way, it's a slap in the face to the capabilities that we really have if we do give up too early. And I know that, like I've been there. Like this is the first, like we're in the middle of a pandemic. I closed my office mid-March. I moved out of my office in June, the end of June. But as scary as this is, and I don't take this for granted, this is the first time in my life I have not worried about whether I'm gonna pay my bills or not. In my life. At 42. I've been on scholarship since I was 18 and being on my own since I was 18, right? Remember being scholarship student. Being on my own since I was 18 financially, this is the first time in my life I'm not worried about what's going to happen because I know I've built up using these tools, social media, marketing, my podcast, the brand of my identity. And 2 weeks ago, my main Instagram page with a couple thousand followers got shut down randomly.

Oh no. Right.

So, so we're putting people out there like I'm putting everything into one little pocket, right? And when it comes to social media versus like, you know, using Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram and Twitter, right, you have to have that spread read out, but I had like 2,800 followers on—

Well, here's the thing. I think this is my issue with social platforms. I have two major issues with them. Number one, they've got you by the balls.

That's it.

That's it. They've just, they decide. And so you could build the biggest following on Facebook or Instagram.

Or YouTube, right?

And YouTube, right? Well, think about it. Like Google changes underpants like God knows how many times, right? When they change their algorithms, right? Well, they could do the same thing with YouTube. Google owns YouTube. Facebook can, I mean, Facebook, we've seen what happened. Like when we, when you, when I first started on Facebook, if I made a post, I would say probably 80 to 90% of my friends saw that post.

Right.

Today, you're lucky if 10% of your friends see the post. Right? So already we see that the amount of exposure that you're getting on social media is very, very small.

Well, they're pushing more to that marketing where you have to buy the ads to push it up.

Because they want you to pay. That's the same reason why Google changed its algorithms because they wanted you to pay. Facebook is a business. Don't ever forget that.

Right.

So Facebook will be pushing you to pay them in order to get exposure. So number one, my issue with it is no control. My second issue with social is the lack of attention that you get and quality attention.

Yeah.

So the average attention span today is about 8 seconds, which is 1 second less than a goldfish. Okay? That's pathetic. But in social media, in the world of social media, it drops down to just 3 seconds. That's the average attention span. So that means that if you're posting on social media, you know, you've probably got, I don't know, Susie sitting on the toilet till her thighs go numb scrolling through her Instagram feed. And you've got just about maybe a second or two of her attention. That's worthless. What is that worth?

Nothing.

Now to put that into perspective, contrast that to podcasting. You own your podcast. Nobody can take that away from you. You own that. That's yours. There's no Facebook. There's no Instagram. No one can take that away from you. Number 2 is over 85% of people that listen to podcasts listen to the whole episode from beginning to end. And the average podcast episode is 45 minutes. Long, 45 minutes long. Okay. That's a goldmine because attention is everything. It's everything. Yeah.

Right. And it's so crazy because when you were talking about before about like, right, writing a blog, doing a social media post, doing this, doing that, you can take that content from this episode, right? Which I'm going to do. And I have my editor edit it and then I have him pull out 6 to 10 little juicy nuggets. Make that into a 60-second Instagram video. And we already know that videos get higher attraction and higher, you know, likes and all that stuff than just a regular picture post with words. And you take those screen, you know, those, those juicy nuggets of what you're saying or another guest is saying. And that's going to draw them in way quicker to be like, oh, I really like what this person is saying. And I'm gonna go click the link than just a picture with maybe some quote from what they said. And it's obviously, it's useful to do the quote cards as they call them as well. But you're automatic. And then from there, we take, right, I don't know if you do this as well. But right, I take the transcript. And I have my virtual assistant, take stuff out there, you know, and post, you know, do the transcript on there and make that into a blog. So now I have the SEO, which leads it back to, so it's, it's cross-pollinating everything. But it all came out of one 1-hour conversation. And it's multiple uses from that.

Yeah. Now I kind of want to do something because it just came in my head.

Yeah.

I'm sitting here and I'm thinking, if I was listening to this 4 years ago, 5 years ago, I'd probably feel overwhelmed.

Sure.

Okay.

Even a year, even a year and a half ago, I was overwhelmed.

Yeah. And the reason why is because, you know, there's so much that you can do as an entrepreneur today. Yes, you can build a Facebook following, an Instagram following, a YouTube following. You can start a podcast. You could repurpose every episode. You can go on podcasts. You can start trying to build an email list. You can— there's just a million and one things to do. And the problem is because everyone's trying to do everything, most people end up doing nothing.

Right.

So here's what I really want people to do. If you're feeling overwhelmed right now by all the options, I want to help you with that. And this is advice that I kind of wish someone gave me me 4 years ago. I want you to just pick one thing and just do it really well. And I really— and I'm saying this, you don't have to sign up to PodBooker. You can go do it another way. I'm not saying this just to pitch my platform. I really mean this. Go and get booked as a guest on podcasts. Get out of the comfort zone. A lot of people are afraid, but trust me, I hated the sound of my voice when I started. I couldn't listen to it. I sounded like a dying cat. And you know what? I got used to it. And now I actually like, I like the sound of my voice. It sounds weird to say that, but I do because I just got used to it. And like anything else, you'll get used to it. And maybe you'll bomb the first few interviews you do, and that's totally fine because there's plenty more. There's plenty more podcasts out there and no one really cares. Like they'll just move on to the next thing. They'll probably, you know, look at what Trump's doing next or what, you know, what's happening with the pandemic. Like, you know, you're small news. Like I'm small news, you're small news. We're just small news. Like at the end of the day, we care about ourselves, but no one really else cares. Like they all care about themselves, right? That's just, that's just psychology 101. Okay. So get on some podcasts, get booked on those shows, start sharing your message, start sharing, you know, your story, and then do one thing, start building your email list. Okay. Have some sort of call to action, some sort of free giveaway. Some offer that you can offer people who are, you know, a few steps behind you. There's always going to be a market of people who are a few steps behind. You don't have to serve the whole market. You just need your 1,000 super fans and you've got yourself a very nice business. I promise you, you'll have a very nice successful business. But I want you to get super, super focused. On just building that email list. Because here's the thing, like I said, social media is great, but it's so noisy and you have no control and there's such little attention on there. Go away from that. Go to where there's undervalued attention. Right now, that's podcasting. Build up your list. Get people to sign up to your email list. Nobody can touch your email list. It doesn't matter what happens in the world. You will always have your list. And your list is going to be the most valuable asset you own because anytime you want to sell anything, Your list of super fans will buy from you because they love what you're doing. They love your message. They relate to your story. And that's what it's all about. You go on podcasts. You make an emotional connection by sharing your story. Get very relatable. Okay? You're speaking the language of the people that you can help. Get very clear on your messaging. What is the one thing? Don't give me 10. Don't give me 5. Don't give me 3. Give me one thing that you're going to help me with. And you're going to help me with it because you've been through it yourself. Give me one thing. Okay? And then make me a promise. Give me a value. Make it easy for me to just sign up. Now you've got my email list. Now we're friends. I look up to you. Now give me value. You know, hit my inbox with value. And then every now and again, tell me, hey, here's an opportunity to work with me. I'll buy into you. Just do that. Yeah.

And for those of you who are still struggling with that, and I've had this conversation with people before, So I said, I challenge them to do the next step on top of that. If you're really still stuck after brainstorming and thinking like, what do I really have to offer? What do I really have to speak about? I haven't gone through much or whatever. Why would anybody want to listen to me? Go on your social media, whatever one it is, right? Mostly, right, Facebook for most people at this point. And put the following question. If I were to give a TED Talk, what topics of a TED Talk would my TED Talk be about? And the title. Yeah, and you're gonna have some really, you're gonna have some really funny answers. But it's also an energy. I mean, an attention grab, right?

So, you know, yeah, I want to, I want to add something as well, because Facebook could be that, you know, I've got 5,000 friends on Facebook, but like, come on, like, how many are close, right? How many are close intimate friends? I would challenge people to, you could do the Facebook thing. I like that idea. That's great. You're going to get some great insights. But if you want to go even deeper, yeah, go to your phone, okay, and text, text 50 of your friends, like text 20 of your close friends and ask them the question. Because there you're going to get deep. They're going to go deep and they're going to tell you, because the thing is, is we always as humans, we're kind of, we underestimate ourselves. We're going back to what you said, Jason Wasser. We, if we only knew If we only knew how powerful we are. If we only knew how powerful. If you wake up every single morning and you say those words to yourself, if I only knew how powerful I am, I promise you, you're going to have a different, your mindset will change. And it's like muscles. Okay? When you go to the gym and you lift up a weight, at first you can't, you know, you can't see a difference. There's no difference. Like I did a weight, but why am I not coming out like Arnold Schwarzenegger for crying out loud? Come on, man. I worked out hard today. Like what's going on? Same thing with your mind. Your mind is a muscle. Your mind is a muscle. So you have to keep working it. You keep working it. And eventually, you start to believe it. You stretch your mindset to the point where you see an abundance and you see yourself as someone that is capable and that can do it. And that's it. And then you get that feedback from your friends and that's your calling. That's what you should be doing.

And then the following feedback, it will come when you start putting out that value and you start putting out the content. People will reach out to you. I had this conversation last night. I'm starting a second podcast with a matchmaker in New York. And she and I were talking about that. And she has a massively large group of people in her community. And we're talking about like just these basic conversations. We've been doing Facebook Lives, and we're going to take the Facebook Lives and then edit it and make it into the podcast. But already we're getting like this consistent between like 400 to 1,000 views within the span of a couple days on there. And people are writing back like, I can't believe no one shared this information with me. Why isn't anybody else talking about this stuff? It's really raw, in-your-face, doing it from the therapeutic side and the no BS side that no one else is willing to, especially in those circles, right? And, and we're just getting those quick little comments like, okay, this is worth it. And it will come. And it will come. So people out there, I really want you to listen, right? It doesn't matter if you— and even more so, you're like, well, I work for someone else. Why should I do a podcast? I'm not creating my own business. Yeah, but what makes you so good at working for someone? There's the intrapreneurs, those who help grow a business from the inside. And there's the entrepreneurs who are the ones who create the business. But it— but you can be entrepreneurial as an entrepreneur, you can help that business grow. And you can talk about all the ideas that maybe that you want to share with businesses that are like yours about here's what we can do, here's my suggestions, here's my brainstorming, right? And other businesses out there that have people like you as employees might pick up on that. And another employee in another business might listen to you. And all of a sudden, you're like, hey, can you coach us on this? And you never thought about coaching another business, right? All the different positioning that can happen out of this podcast platform is absurd.

Yeah. And you never know who you're going to affect. That's the other thing. Like you're talking into a microphone and you don't know who you're affecting. In fact, I'll never forget one day about, I would say it's probably now 2 years ago, I got an email from someone who heard a podcast that I did. I literally had tears rolling down my face when I read this email. He said, Daniel, I just want to let you know, you don't know me, but I was considering taking my life this week. And I stumbled upon your podcast episode and I've decided I'm going to give my life another chance. This person ended up becoming an author. He wrote a book, started his own podcast, grew his own audience. Like he's inspiring now, you know, other people. I mean, this is not normal. Like, do you understand? Like I said to myself, it was worth doing all these podcasts just for that one, that one impact to say you could save someone's life. This is not a joke.

That's, that's, I think, maybe the biggest takeaway of this conversation is that every single human, every single story has a value behind it. And if you're out there listening to this and you're like, but I haven't done much yet, or like I said a moment ago, but I'm working for someone else, or maybe I went through too much in life, why would anybody benefit from me? I haven't even figured it out yet. But like Daniel said a few minutes ago, you might be be a few stages ahead of a bunch of other people who are going through that now or have gone through it. And you might have some keen insights that only you can share through that vantage point from that mountaintop that you're sitting on. And don't be afraid to share it. And that's like, I really think like, that's the underlying beauty of this.

And then I can do this story. I do a crazy story.

Please.

I had a client called Ellie Nash. Ellie came to me, said that, you know, he's He's been very successful in business, but he has a message that he desperately needs to share with the world. And it's a message that's really hard to share, but he's ready to share it. And his message was basically his story of how when he was younger, he was unfortunately sexually abused by someone in his community. And for years, he kept it hidden inside. He didn't tell anyone about it. And it was only because people that worked for him had to tread on eggshells around him because he could just fly off the handle any minute because he was holding all of this inside. And they basically said, "Elli, you're going to lose your best workers if you don't go and get help." Okay. And this is someone who is running a very big corporation doing hundreds of millions of dollars. So he went to a therapist and he didn't say anything to the therapist. He kind of just danced around the real elephant in the room, like his issue. And the therapist kind of said, were you sexually abused when you were a child? And Ali said, how the hell did you know that? You know, the therapist said, well, you know, I've been doing this for a while. But he said to Ali, he said, you know, the only way to really, you know, get better is to find this person and really, you know, have a conversation with them. And he said, there's no way I'm doing that. Like, I can't face, you know, my, like this, this perpetrator. I can't do that. And his therapist said, well, that's the way you're going to get freedom. And so eventually, Ali found the courage to find this person. He had to kind of hunt him down. And he wrote him a message and said, I'd like to sit in a room with you and just talk to you. And of course, this person said no at first, but then Ali said, look, you know, I'm happy to have my therapist in the room, you know, a third person. It's gonna stay in the room, you know, I don't want anything else from you. I just want to speak to you. And he managed to get him in a room. And this person was absolutely broken. He was just a broken human being. And Ali said, for the first time, he saw this guy as the victim.. And Eli felt like almost pity for him, and he was able to get to a place of forgiveness. And he said it was the most beautiful, unbelievable feeling he's ever had. It was so liberating, and he became so strong and so powerful because of it. And I got him on some big podcasts., and this is the crazy part of the story. First, Elie reaches out to me, says, Daniel, I cannot believe the response I'm getting. People are texting me and sending me emails and like reaching out to me, telling me. Then he did a TED Talk, which had over a million views. Okay. But this is the crazy part. His next door neighbor, who he's known for years, They were over, the family was over for dinner, they were doing dinner together, and he takes Ellie to the side and he said, and he, he holds on to Ellie and he burst out crying and he said, Ellie, I went through the same thing. And he heard him on a podcast. Can you imagine? They were neighbors, been to each other, their children playing together, their wives saying for years and he didn't know, but he heard him on a podcast. He said, "Eli, thank you." That's the power that we have. But we have to share it.

Yeah. And I have heard Eli speak and he's in South Florida now. All of these vehicles to healing, to having a better life, having better relationships, can— it's coming through conversation and podcast. Like, I really do see this, right? This is podcasting for so many people is therapy. And you have to know what to share, what not to share, and obviously, yeah, boundary, right, needs to be in, you know, whatever it may be. But, but that could be done through finding the right people to coach you through it. But just like that story of another friend of mine also, right, she had cancer, was married, her husband was very abusive. No one in the community believed her. He withheld giving the divorce, all that stuff. And now she's starting to go on podcasts.. And, and to share this as a tool of what she went through and to have no one believe in the community that this was a real thing. And now even like, the friends, like it was just released a few weeks ago, and like, his friends are like, we're gonna sue you for slander. And like, but it's all true. And we all know, right? And, but it's been such a therapeutic process to go through. Imagine going through chemo while like, right, it's, it's, you're going through a divorce process, you're going through chemo, you're finding everything's being stolen from you. To not have a voice in any of this and being able to find a voice and now be able to share that on the podcast community is so profound. So again, I like, I really want people out there, there is a way for you to share your story and for you to find your part of your purpose, if not maybe a main purpose is for you to be eventually doing something else, to be speaking, to be sharing your wisdom and your experiences. And, you know, we're going to hold you accountable. And in fact, I want, I want anybody who's listening, I want you to reach out to us. I want you to reach out to Daniel. I want you to reach out to me that if you— that you've come up with something, and that you've asked those questions that we've asked of you, and share it with us that this is what I want to share with the world. And I want to make sure that I bring that value, value out there. So as we wrap up, I just want to make sure people know where to track you down. I know there's the podbooker.com website.

Yeah, well, it's free to join right now as well. When is this episode going live? Just so I kind of—

hopefully sooner than later, but it's— we're now at the end. We're now in the beginning of December, something in probably January-ish.

Okay, yeah, so, so, um, it's always going to be free to join and to set up a profile, whether it's a host profile or guest profile on there. Um, so yeah, totally free. And, um, the other way they can reach me is I started a podcast called Grow Your Show, which is basically how to, how to grow your show, how to grow your podcast. And I interview other podcast hosts who have hit, you know, millions of downloads and monetize their podcasts and how they did it. And they share sort of all their tips and tricks and journey and how they grew their podcasts. So you could subscribe to Grow Your Show as well. That's another way to sort of find out more. Right.

And then the name of your book that's available, I'm assuming on Amazon. That's a whole nother story there.

Yeah. I mean, the name of my book is The Self-Help Addict. And I'm going to say this.

Yes.

I am a little bit embarrassed. The reason I don't promote it, I wrote it 3 years ago. I wrote it for my son's 10th birthday and he's turning bar mitzvah this month, next month. And a lot of the book I feel like was written from ego. But it's only now 3 years on, you know, I work on myself a lot, try to, you know, try to develop myself as a human being. So looking at a book that I wrote 3 years ago, you know, it's kind of painful for me, but I'm going to take my own advice and say there are still people who can benefit from it, right? There are, there are people who can benefit from it.

Well, at that vantage point, that's where you were at that vantage point, right? I have a video that I found from my second— it was the end of my first semester of graduate school for my master's in marriage and family therapy. We had to do a model therapy session videotape it, right? VHS. We're talking like, you know, 2000. Oh, wow. 2003 here. And then give it to the professor and explain what we were doing. It's now 2020. I've been licensed since I graduated 2005. So I've been licensed fully since 2007. To this date, I still haven't watched that video. Once it was turned in from that first semester, it never— and I found it. I'm like, I can't imagine, like, I would cringe. Yeah, to see me at 20, early 20s, and like, you know, attempting to be playing a therapist at that time. But, but I know, like you said, like the vantage point about like the wisdom that's there was very apropos to the wisdom there. But it also maybe is the calling for the, you know, the recovering self-help, right? The next, the next book, part 2, is the recovering self-help addict. And I know, like, you know, in the alternative medicine field and the therapy field and the chiropractic field, I have so many friends who are chiropractors, every weekend when pre-pandemic they're going to a conference. And this training will make me this and this money. And if I get this specialization and this tool and this, so it's not just in the business world of self-help and the Tony Robbins and all that other stuff, but it's also in the medical space. And so I think we all need to figure out how to leverage that and be a little bit more calm and gentle to ourselves.

Sharpen the saw, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So awesome. Awesome. So everybody again out there, Today's guest was Daniel Geffen. He is the creator of the website PodBooker. He's an author. Again, he has the Can I Pick Your Brain podcast, The Daniel Geffen Show. Also, he's the founder of the Geffen Media Group. And Daniel, I'm so glad we finally got to connect.

Thanks so much for having me, Jason. Happy Hanukkah. Happy Hanukkah. Yeah. I'm going to go get some latkes now.

With the applesauce? I know some people have— Oh, yeah.

Right?

The applesauce or the sour cream. But I heard a kicker and I had it a few years ago. It's sour cream with caviar on top. Hey, I know I thought it was gonna be awful, but I was quite blown away by it.

Listen, I mean, I eat eggs with baked beans for breakfast. So, you know, whatever. We all do weird things. That's my weird thing.

That's it.

That's one of them.

So now you know. So now when you reach out to Daniel and you ever want to get it right, it's like, ah, I know that recipe, right? I heard that episode.

Oh my goodness. I'm telling you right now, if you try Scrambled eggs with baked beans. You will thank me for life. That's it.

That's what you got to do, guys. All right. So that's it.

You get nothing else from this podcast.

Nothing else, right? That was the only value tipping point that we got from this one.

Good.

Looking forward to connecting again. Thanks so much.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast.

If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribed so you don't miss an episode.

You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at You Winning Life.