Turning Awkward Podcast Interviews into a Million Dollars | The UnNoticed Entrepreneur

Hello, welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur with me, Jim James. Now, if you've got a question on your mind, which is, do you need to get noticed or do you need to get results, then this show is for you. Because my guest today has spent a lot of money going slow and realized that actually need to spend money to get results more quickly. And he's had a very successful podcast where he got over a million dollars worth of contracts by hosting a show. And we're going to talk to you and him about whether you should have a show or just be a guest. Josh Thomas, self-proclaimed fancy pants business consultant in Austin, Texas. Welcome to The Unnoticed Entrepreneur.

Thank you, Jim. I'm really happy to be here. And, you know, it's, you mentioned it right there at the beginning. I love the premise of your podcast. It's about, hey, you're unnoticed. You're trying to get noticed. You're trying to get out there. But I think we need to ask one extra question. If you're unnoticed, do you want to be noticed or do you want to get results? Because if you start getting results, people will notice you.

Well, that's— I love the way we're starting that conversation, Josh. Can you get results without getting noticed? Explain how that would happen.

Yeah. So here's the thing. We all start out at the same place. We were all born completely invalid and not even able to feed ourselves. And somebody had to provide that for us. Somebody had to give us that attention. Somebody had to give us an opportunity to succeed. Once we got through school, somebody had to, you know, a lot of us have to go and scrap for everything that we have, but somebody had to give us that chance to do it. Somebody had to say, yes, I believe in you. I'm going to pay you money for the service that you're offering and give us an opportunity to go out there and start our business. Everybody had to get that chance. And the way that we got that chance was we produced a result of some sort and that got us noticed. Now, whether that was a monetary result or not, it depends, but— Everything that we've ever been known for in our lives, including with our family, our friends, or any success we've had in business, is because of some result that we've produced. And so we, those of us who have yet to kind of cross the threshold of running a successful business, we kind of glorify this fame and recognition on a pedestal, like that's what we need. And it's great, but it's not going to pay your bills. It's not going to make your life any easier. It's just going to say, oh, hey, I recognize Josh when you're walking down the street. And that's it. What's really going to get you noticed is success. And so sometimes keeping your head down and doing what needs to be done to get the result is actually the recipe for getting noticed. It's just kind of a, a backend recipe, if you will.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I guess at the point that, you know, you can't really have fame and fortune without having done the hard work. I think we're more and more seeing in public how every, every celebrity and every successful business person has put in, put in the work and the hours. And I know that later on, Josh, you're going to tell us 7 things that people can do, and you're even going to give us, uh, uh, some templates at the end of the show, aren't you, on how people can get some success.

Sure.

Before we get to that though, Josh, um, you have a unique approach to podcast hosting, and can you just share with us your story? Because you managed to make your podcast into a very successful source of leads. Let's just touch on that if we can, because in England, we'd say that's a great result. You know, so certainly, how did that work?

Yeah, so here's a great example of the formula that I just mentioned. I started a podcast in 2016. It was called How to Lose Money. It's probably still available if you go on Apple or Spotify, you can probably look it up. It's me and a guy named Paul Moore. We did 238 episodes and we interviewed investors and entrepreneurs and they shared a major failure story and the lessons that they learned from it. And so without going into the origin story of why we did that podcast, I'm just going to talk about the fact that I was just an awkward dude who had no interview skills, who had very little social skills, and I had no clue what I was doing. But I got one little tiny one-line piece of advice from the guy who helped us start the whole thing up. His name's Dave Carberry and he runs a business called Sweet Fish Media. He helps people start podcasts. And Dave was sitting there with us and he said, listen, I'm gonna give you some advice that most people won't tell you. When you start a podcast, Do not worry about building a relationship with your audience. Instead, focus on building a relationship with your guest. And my mind was blown because all I could think about at the time when I'm starting a podcast is, all right, how many people can I get to listen to me and glorify me and so that I can get noticed? And I'm envisioning and fantasizing in my head about how I'm going to have 20,000 listeners per episode and all this stuff. But, you know, reality was much more modest, if you will, about the amount of people that are willing to set aside time to listen to me talk to somebody else for an hour. But you know who was definitely paying attention to me for an hour? My guest. And so I started focusing on Finding people that I wanted to know and people that I wanted to maybe do business with or I wanted to partner up with. And I would bring them on the podcast and I would give them 2 things. I would give them the spotlight and I would give them an experience. And there's this reciprocity that happens when you point a spotlight at somebody and you say, Jim, tell me about how great you are. And they feel it. Like, oh yeah, man, Josh is all right. He's a great guy. He just told me how great I was. There's this reciprocity that happens. And then you have the experience. And then when they walk away from that experience, they think every time they see me, they think, oh yeah, I know him.

We go back.

Even though we only talked for like 30 minutes, but we had an experience together. And if I can give you the spotlight and I can give you an experience, you will notice me. And if you notice me, now we've got an opportunity when something comes up like, hey, I think I can help this person increase their business. Let's talk about it. They're going to take my call because they know me. And they appreciate me and they kind of owe me something. You know, this— I'm not saying that they do, but it's like there's— that's the feeling and the thought that happens. And that's going to make it much easier for you to get in front of somebody you don't know and have a conversation about either doing business with them or partnering with them or asking them for some insights or advice that you maybe just wouldn't have had access to before. So I'll kind of stop there. But that's the idea is if you're going to start a podcast, don't worry about how many people are going to listen to it. Start a podcast that's based around the thing that you're interested in. And that is going to draw in the people that you want to do business with, the people that you want in your center of influence.

Josh, that's wonderful. And, you know, now you're being a, you know, a guest, you still got a podcast. haven't you? I think, uh, and now you're running an entrepreneurs club as well. And one of the things that you're offering to entrepreneurs is to increase or even double business for entrepreneurs within, within 90 days. You know, in this world where people are making promises and giving guarantees, how do you have the confidence to say you can double people's sales in 90 days? And what does that look like?

So interestingly enough, and you may not have known this, but it actually all started with a guy I interviewed on a podcast.

Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.

Yeah. And so I interviewed this guy. And it was very early on, my first, probably within my first 20 or 30 episodes. And if you go and find it right now, I bet it was a horrible interview. But we established a relationship and I meet this guy and I'm like, I don't know jack about what he does, but he's a cool dude. So a few months later, we kept in touch. I reached out to him and I said, hey, what are you working on right now? And he's like, well, you know, I'm trying to get this sales thing going. I'm trying to increase my sales, my business. All right, cool. Can I take a look? And he says, yeah, of course. Because again, we already know each other. He definitely trusts me because we spent that time together. And so I get in there and I realize I can help this guy solve his problem. I make him an offer and he says yes. And I was able to actually 5x his business in a 90-day window.

Wow.

And I did it not by weird, crazy back alley sales voodoo. I just focused on what was going to move the needle in his business right now. And that was a sales process. And most businesses under $2 million, their problem is sales. If I can help build a better sales process for you, it's going to bring in more cash, More revenue, and it's going to give you more options. And so that's exactly what I did with this guy. We 5x'd his business in 90 days. We kept working together. We ended up 10x'ing his business. It took about 3 years for that, but we were able to 10x his business. And I personally earned more than $1 million in income from this relationship that started from an awkward podcast interview. When I was just still wet behind the ears. Well, that's one person, $1 million in personal income. That's not like I didn't make him $1 million and got a percentage of that. That's how much he paid me. So imagine how much he made.

Josh, I need to be interviewing people that have got that kind of problem and that kind of cash. So that's, that's a wonderful story of drawing a direct line between podcasting and the relationships that you can build. with somebody who's your, your target client. Now you're doing these sales, um, processes. I, I can't let you go any further without asking you for some tips.

Sure.

On sales processes, because as you say, results really matter, uh, and you can always send out a press release to announce how well your business has done, but you've got to do well before you can send the press release out. So, Josh, what— could you give us some guidance? I know at the end you're going to give us a sort of a template that people can download, but just guide us through those, can you?

Sure. And just to put a punctuation mark on something that you mentioned there, I need to be interviewing people that have that kind of cash. He got that kind of cash because of the results I was producing. So keep in mind, he didn't cut me a check for $1 million. I got him results and then he kept paying me over time for those results. So I'm kind of self-funding that situation, right?

So yeah, that's wonderful. Yeah.

And so we don't necessarily need to find people that can cut us big checks. We need to find people who we can help so that they can afford to cut us big checks over time. And so as far as, as far as sales goes, sales is actually pretty simple. Most people shy away from it, because it's like this confrontation conflict kind of thing. I tend to look at it a lot differently. I tend to look at it as problem solving. And we have to start with one specific thing. Are you talking to somebody that has a problem or that is aware of a problem? If they're not aware of the problem, can you make them aware of the problem in a way that they feel is true? We can always say like, you know, hey, your shoe's untied. Oh, that's a problem. I gotta fix that, right? Or if you don't care that your shoe's untied, yeah, that's the style, man. I'm not going to be able to sell you my shoe tying service, right? You're not my customer. It's fine. So the first thing we got to look for is, are you talking to somebody that has a problem or can you make them aware of the problem? From there, I like to take a very consultative approach. I'm asking them questions to really understand what is their motivation, what is their level of desire. Is there anybody else involved in making the decision for this service? There's a whole kind of list of questions that you want to go through before you ever offer anybody anything. You want to ask enough questions to really know, like, hey, what's this person all about? What drives them? What motivates them? What scares them? And what's hurting right now? Once you've asked all those questions, you've got the answers. Now you have to compare it against what you have. Does what I have alleviate the pain? Does it solve the problem? Does it neutralize the fear? And if it does, if those 2 things line up, your only job as a salesperson is to help them understand how your solution solves their problem. And then from there, it's up to them to decide. And deciding is easy. Yes? Is a decision.

No.

That's a decision. I don't know, let me think about it. That's not a decision. So your other job as a salesperson is just to help somebody make a decision, and either decision is fine. Anybody that's ever told me no, I believe them. I'm not going to challenge it. I'm not going to ask you why. Like, no, this isn't what I want to do. Okay, I applaud you for making a decision. Most people can't.

So it sounds as though as well, Josh, you've got, you know, part process, part psychology, um, and, you know, part methodology in, in there as well, right? That there's the sales process has a flow to it that, you know, it sounds as though you're very relaxed in your, in your approach, that not everyone is going to be a customer. And to know who is going to be a customer is kind of the first first part of the journey for selling. And then if you can identify the need, the person actually has a shoelace untied and looks distracted by that. Certainly my daughters would say, I like it like that, Dad. You know, the shoelaces are not supposed to be tied. So it's a great analogy. Josh, what about things that you've seen or that you've done from a marketing point of view getting noticed? that you'd say are don't-dos, are mistakes that people make or that you've made yourself as an entrepreneur that you'd care to share?

So I think one of the biggest mistakes that I've ever made and that I still make to this day is not paying for help when I need it. And there's a huge arrival point that I want to make here. That will be a little bit controversial, but we've probably all heard somebody say, hey, time is way more valuable than money. It's a non-renewable resource. And then we've heard some other people say, well, you know, I would just rather pay for speed. And some of us may hear that and think, well, yeah, must be nice. But I can't afford to pay for speed. I don't have much money, so I gotta churn it out and figure it out on my own. And I would just venture a guess that 80% of us in this audience right now are probably thinking, yeah, that's me. And I know this because it's also me. I definitely prefer to pay for speed, but sometimes it's like, nah, you know what? I gotta do this one. It'll save me a little bit of money and it'll get done right. I'm just going to do it. And I've been through this cycle a bunch of times, but I have a verifiable example of a thing that I decided, no, you know what? I think it would be better if I do it myself. And that decision to do it myself, not only did it cost me a year of my life, it also cost me documented $100,000 to develop this product that I was developing. What I could have done instead is I could have paid somebody $10,000 to do it for me, and it would have been done in 4 weeks. And so my way of saving money, because I wasn't able to pay for speed at the time, my way of saving money was to instead spend a year and $100,000 instead of $10,000 in 4 weeks. That's how I was saving money.

Josh, and you're not alone. I think we've all made that mistake. And I think I'm in danger of doing that now with building the podcast course. I've gone and paid to learn how to build a course and how to market a course. And actually, I should just focus on the content of the course and then pay people to do the production and distribution, right? Because that's implementation. That's not where my genius lies either. So absolutely hear you on that one. It's always a tightrope because you think, oh, I could do it. I'll do it quicker. We always think we could do it quicker than we can, right? So that's a wonderful one, you know, to not to be cheap, right? And then to invest in the success of the project.

Good point. And I think the biggest thing about it is when you hear somebody say, well, I'd rather pay for speed, it's almost like, it almost sounds arrogant to a lot of people. It's like, yeah, it must be nice, right? If your reaction to somebody's talking is, oh, must be nice, you don't respect what they're saying. And like, let's be real with that. Oh, it must be nice. It means that you are not in a place to understand really why they're saying that or you acknowledge that you're nowhere near the same position as that person. And so what are you left with? Well, I'm just gonna have to just grind it out and figure it out. But just keep in mind, the tab is still running for that too. It still costs you money, and it will probably almost assuredly cost you more. Josh, money.

Yeah, that's a, that's a great one, Josh. And I think part of that as well, though, is to make sure that you've understood the business plan or the business model before doing something, because a lot of us DIY because we haven't thought through the upside and the downside and whether really it's a business that's worth investing in. So we're kind of still playing at the edges of whether or not it's going to be sustainable. But Josh, what about the moving the needle? Obviously you had great success with your podcast, although it does sound like listening to over 200 people tell you how they've lost money on the one hand, you'd feel good about yourself that you'd maybe not lost as much yourself, but also it might feel a little bit depressing to hear those stories all day. Notwithstanding your comment that maybe you don't need to get noticed, you just need results. From a getting noticed point of view, Josh Thomas, what would you say in your view really does move the needle?

Well, certainly if you produce something, people will notice. Starting a podcast, I think, goes a long way. But if you think about anybody who you notice, and let's go more basic than that. I like to call this the, the hey dude principle. And so let's say you're, you're sitting with your friend at a bar. Or if you're in England, it's a pub. And so you're sitting at the pub and you're sitting there with your friend and you just tried out this amazing product and you got a ton of results from it. You're going to say, hey dude, you really need to try this new whiz-bang thing that I have because it did this and this and this for me. You just said, buy this product. It got me this result. You're leading that story with the result that it produced for you. Hey dude, have you heard this new Ed Sheeran song? It really melted my heart. It really, really got me going. That's a result. You just said, buy this product because the result that it got for me. Now, because of that result, this thing becomes noticed. You want it to be noticed by somebody else because of the results it produced. Most of us have probably heard of Alex Hormozi, and Alex Hormozi has spent the last 2 years posting reels talking about the results that he got with Gym Launch. And we're paying attention to him not because he's a cool dude, which he is a cool dude, but we're paying attention to him because of the results that he produced. Not the other way around. And so if you get results, the next thing you have to do is you got to talk about them because our brains are wired to be attracted to those results. Just as I mentioned in the Hey Dude Principle, hey dude, you got to try this new product. It really helped me sleep better. Hey dude, you got to watch this show. It's the funniest show I've ever seen. Result, result, result. That's why you notice things.

Josh Thomas, I love that. And the Alex Hormozi, I mean, I think like the biggest book launch ever, wasn't it, or something? So as you say, people are intrigued and inspired by his results, and then he's getting the celebrity. So getting the results really comes before anything else. If people want to find you, Josh Thomas, and also get the download of the 7 things that they can do to increase their business, uh, revenue In 90 days, how can they find you? Sure.

Do you want me to walk through those really quick or?

Yeah, sure. Let's go through those if you want to step through those quickly. Yeah. Yep.

So I'll walk you through what, what I call the precise method. And for anybody that's interested, you can go to factorone.io/training. That's factorone.io/training. And I put together a free training that walks you through in Painful detail exactly what all 7 of these things are. Okay, great.

Thank you.

The PRECISE method. The PRECISE is an acronym. My team gives me crap for how many acronyms that I create for them. But this is, this is one they have to deal with. So what I, what I learned is I worked with 5,000 different entrepreneurs over a 15-year career. And I sat down and I crunched all the numbers and I analyzed all the data and I found that the most successful campaigns all fit into 7 different templates. There were only 7 different things that I was doing to help these businesses grow. And several of these businesses were 2x, 3x, even 5x in a 90-day period, just by focusing on one. Like, we typically would not combine more than one until we got the results. And then, for instance, I told you about the other guy, we were able to 10x his business after we were 5xing it in 90 days. So then we started kind of mixing and matching different things that we could do so that we could help kind of 10x his business. And so, you're sharing your screen there.

Yeah. And I just, for those people that are listening, if you go to factorone.io, you can see Move the Needle in Your Business Now. There's a Facebook group and also there's acres and acres of content here from Josh. He's gonna just take us through this very quickly for those people listening. Um, but I just wanted to share those people who wanna go onto the YouTube channel for The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. You can also see Josh's screen as well, so you can see where he's going with his, with his mohawk as well. Yeah, actually.

Yeah.

Mohawk.

Mohawk.

There you go. Okay.

Yeah.

So just take us through that.

Yeah, I don't have much left in the bag. So yeah. So, okay, so the Precise Method— these— there are 7 simple ways that, uh, templates that anybody can follow that inject quick cash into any business really fast. Okay, the first one is called process improvement. Okay, and process improvement is basically you're changing a procedure, an SOP, or something in your business that makes your company work more efficiently or more effectively. The next one is called reposition, and reposition means that you are elevating your status, moving your company upstream to a more premium option. You could also call a reposition as changing, like opening into a new market or changing industries. I have the third one is called EGG, and EGG stands for everything's gotta go, and that is a sale or a promotion on an existing product. After that, we have conversion message, and a conversion message is the words that you say that help your customer decide to buy from you. An innovative offer is the next one. An innovative offer is something that you are providing a solution to your customer's unmet needs and desires. So you're selling a product, they have a different need, that you're not covering with that product. And so we develop a new product for that. It's called an innovative offer. A secondary sale is the next one, which is called— it's a cross-sell, which means that you are selling somebody else's stuff in addition to yours, kind of like a joint venture, or an upsell, which means you're selling them product A and, oh, by the way, we'll throw in product B at a discount. And then finally, the last one is Elixir. An elixir is your special sauce. It's some kind of secret ingredient that only you provide that puts you into a category of one. So those are the 7 different templates that we follow with the PRECISE method. And if you take just one of those and apply it into your business, install it into your business, operate it the right way, then in my experience, you should see an influx of cash really fast. And that cash is going to solve a lot of upfront nagging problems for you because you're going to be able to point that cash and just pew pew pew, just eradicate that problem right away because now you have resources. And more importantly than anything else, you have momentum. And when we have momentum, we're able to get ourselves out of the rut, over the wall, and start focusing on leveling up our business. When you have momentum, it's a lot easier to get noticed.

Josh Thomas, you've given us a huge amount of momentum today. Final question, quickly, a book you'd recommend?

Right over my shoulder, there's a book called Atomic Habits by James Clear. If you have not read that book, shame on you. But you really need to read that book because it will change the way that your brain works and the way that you operate in your business, as long as you focus on it. And I'll give you one quick clip that you can actually Google this right now. It's, uh, there's an article, just Google Motion Versus Action. And it's an article by James Clear that's from a topic in the book. And you can read it by yourself. Uh, you don't even have to buy the book. It'll take you like 3 minutes. Read that article. And what it's going to tell you is motion is where most of us spend our time. Action is what creates results. Motion is preparation work. It's getting ready. It's busy work. It's all of these things that we're doing to be moving and feeling like we're getting things done. But motion doesn't create results. Only action creates results. If you're not taking action, you won't get results. So as entrepreneurs, we get stuck in motion all the time. Read the article. You'll understand what I'm saying. if that article resonates with you, buy the book. And if you like both of those things, we should talk.

Josh Thomas, elegantly done. Thank you. Now I know how you got $1 million from one interview, and I'm going to follow your lead. Josh Thomas, thank you so much for joining me on The Unnoticed Entrepreneur Show today. If people want to get a hold of you, where can they do that?

Yeah, so, uh, you can go to my website factorone.io. That's factorone.io. Or you can find me anywhere on social media at JT Literally.

Thank you so much for joining me all the way from Austin, Texas today, Josh Thomas. Thank you so much.

You got it.

Well, I feel like we, we got a huge amount of information. We've run a little bit longer than normal just because Josh kindly shared those 7 tips at the end, and they're so valuable that I didn't want to cut short the conversation. So, so much to go there, but I think the key takeaway is that we've got to get results first. Getting noticed is the byproduct of the results. It's not the end in itself. So kind of a good salutary lesson, really. I've been focused on getting noticed, but of course Josh has challenged that and said we've got to get results and get noticed for those. So thank you so much for joining me, Jim James, on this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. If you've enjoyed it, do follow the show. As you can tell, I've got lots of great advice coming from really seasoned entrepreneurs and coaches. And do please review the show on your player because it really helps me to know what you think of the show. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating. Thank you for joining.