Joe Sanok - How To Leverage Podcasts To Grow Your Business

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

What's up, everybody? You're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast with your boys, Mount Wolf and Joe Fear. Welcome back.

Hello.

Welcome to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast. My name is Matt Wolf. I'm here with my co host, Joe Fear.

I'm here.

Remember we used to do that on every episode. We used to introduce ourselves and then we just got lazy and assumed everybody knows who we are.

Well, yeah, we did get a lazy. Yeah.

I used to be like, I'm Matt Wolf. And you'd go, and I'm Joe Fear. And you're listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast brought to you by Evergr Green Profits.

Don't we have an intro that says that or no, we might have.

And then we said, that intro is too serious. Let's just beatbox and make stuff up.

Yeah. I wonder if we ever even say our name in the beginning. I don't know. I guess our listeners.

Yeah, we do, because they say with your boys, Matt Wolf and Joseph.

Okay, Steve, there we go.

We just don't re intro ourselves after that intro.

That's fine.

Yeah.

Only if we feel like it. Only if we feel like it's been like it. Yeah, that's good. It's been a while. So these are all for the new folks for the gym, Larry and Mar. And thanks for joining us for the first time.

All the Aries out there.

Just the first ones that came to mind.

So today we're talking to Joe Sanock. So what did you think of this one, Joe?

I thought it was an amazing episode full of rich content that I am already taking action on. I remember this clear as day. Like we recorded it an hour ago. Yeah, it's a great episode. You're going to.

I mean, my favorite part is pretty much all the points that you brought up in this episode. That was my favorite part of the episode.

I was so silent because I was taking notes the entire time. I was blown away.

I was like, actually, I like this narrative better. Let's go with this narrative. So me and you interviewed Joe Sanoff. Yes, the truth. Me and you interviewed Joe. And Joe Fear was just so quiet on this one because he was heads down, taking notes on the whole.

I was taking the notes on this episode because there's so many. And you should get them for free. They're amazing. I mean, you can get them. Just go to hustleandfluidchart.com computer. Those are the notes. Thank you, Sue. But yeah, so I was silently in the background, taking notes this entire time.

Yeah. Also, you know what? If you text, there's a phone number you can text. 38470. Text the word comp to 38470 and we'll send you the notes from there too.

38470. Texting the word comp to that number or hustleandflowchart.com comp. Alright, so in all reality, I was not in this episode. I was busy having a baby.

What? Who was that sitting next to me taking notes then?

I don't know who that guy was, but you let this weird dude in your house and.

Yeah, I thought, I thought it was weird that you grew your hair out, grew a beard and stunk like a.

Hobo and brought in like a.

And you were drinking a 40 in a brown paper bag. Like, I thought it was weird, but like.

Well, this is the new Joe, I guess.

Haven't seen him in a week. No. But, yeah. So Joe was literally having his baby on the day we were recording this. Either that or we recorded it the day before. Either way, you were at the hospital either having a baby or about to have a baby when we recorded this.

We were in the process. Yes, yes.

So me and new Joe, I'm just going to call him New Joe. Me and new Joe just decided to just go rogue and do this one without you.

Yeah, N.J. and you were just yakking it up here in the podcast. And I've heard that this is a great episode because I know Joe. We met him actually at New Media Summit. That's Steve Olsher's event about a month ago. And Joe, we're sat next to him actually at this mastermind that happens the day after. And at these masterminds, you start to see, you know, who's doing some interesting, cool stuff, who's got some good brains that we can, you know, kind of take a little bit, apply it to our business and vice versa, because that's what a good mastermind should be like. And Joe, is that like one of those dudes, like one of the top. Like, I would say handful. Yeah. And yeah, we basically on the spot, we're like, yeah, you need to be on the show. We're going on his show as well to talk about partnerships and.

Yeah. So literally he wants us on his show to talk about partnerships and psychedelics.

Even better.

So we'll see how that plays out. Can we get on more shows and talk about.

I mean, yeah, somehow we're making a living talking about. Well, whatever works, man.

Whatever works.

But, yeah, Tell the folks what we actually did.

All right, so. So Joe Sinock is. He runs a podcast called the Practice of the Practice.

Yeah.

He's also got a consulting agency. He also does done for you podcast setup and management and all that good stuff for. For podcasters. And, you know, like Joe said, we met him at New Media Summit. We actually sat next to in a Mastermind, and we're just kind of blown away by some of the stuff what he was doing with the podcasting space.

Yeah.

So on this episode, I just. I had to pick his brain about some of the stuff he's doing. Like, his podcast has over 100,000 downloads a month. It's, you know, it's up there. It's a big show. He's got a lot of listeners. He's niched his podcast down to just people who have private practices, you know, doctors, lawyers, consultants, things like that. So he's got a very specific sort of tight niche on his podcast. And then he just has some, like, really smart ways of growing the podcast, of monetizing the podcast, about driving people who listen to the podcast and turning them into customers. And all of this kind of stuff is where we really take this podcast. We go in the direction of if you're to grow a podcast, we, you know, how am I going to make money off this damn thing and how am I going to ensure that this thing keeps on growing? And really, that's kind of the realm that we hang out in on this podcast. Yeah.

So I think the notes on these ones, I have not actually seen them yet, but I know they'll be good because Joe, as you were saying, is like a super, super, super systems guy.

Yes.

Very systematic guy with every little thing he does. Which is what? When Matt was debriefing me the other day on, like, how this episode went, I was like, ooh, there was a lot I was getting just from that alone. So the notes on this bad boy are going to be good?

Oh, yeah, yeah. He has like a five step. I don't remember the amount of steps, but he's got like a five step process for, like, launching your podcast. And he's. He breaks down like what should be in your first handful of episodes. And then he's got like, a cool growth strategy, and then he's got some strategies for, like.

Basically how he's growing his list off of his podcast. And I actually got some real aha moments around how he's actually using his podcast to grow an email list, which. Which I don't even think I've told Joe about. So Joe's gonna have to wait for the notes to see how that plays out. But lots of really, really cool processes that you'll probably see us start to steal a few of them and implement them in our business. Just saying.

That's what we do, man.

That's what we do. We interview people on their podcast and say, we're gonna steal your life. And then we just turn their life into our life. No, I'm just kidding. We do model a lot of things that they teach us.

We model and we credit. We give credit where credit is due. And we usually bring on the folks back on the podcast so we can talk about the cool shit that we did with their stuff.

Exactly.

So it's a big win, win, win, win.

This is one you're definitely gonna want the notes on again. So I am gonna mention the notes again. Do it. Hustleandflowchart.com comp or text the word comp to 38470 do one of those things. We'll send you the notes. This one's got all of his step by step processes. This is gonna be a pretty actionable note pack, so make sure you get it within the next couple weeks of this episode going live before it disappears and gets locked into our vault. We'd love to get these to you, so go get them.

Hustlerfloechart.

Do slash comp.

All right, let's go listen to Joe. New Joe and Matt.

Hey, Joe, thanks for joining me on the show today. How you doing?

I'm doing awesome. How are you, Matt?

I'm doing good. Yeah. This is actually kind of an interesting episode because I don't have my co host here. He's actually literally having a baby right now as we record this.

I know as excuses go, that's a pretty darn good excuse.

Yeah, we'll let him pass on this one, I guess.

Yeah, for sure, for sure. But yeah, having met you guys at New Media Summit and hanging out there, you know, anytime I can hang out with you guys, even if it's one of you, I'll take it for sure.

Yeah, man. We had some. We had some good conversations at the New Media Summit and I'm excited to dive in on some of the same stuff that we talked about then.

Yeah, absolutely.

So let's. Let's get started with your story. So I know now you're a podcaster, you hold events, you kind of speak to, like private practices and sort of high level clients. What were you doing before this and how did you kind of Land on this path you're on now.

Yeah. I took a very traditional route where I did my undergraduate and graduate work in counseling and psychology, did the double master's degree, and jumped into the nonprofit world and was happy. I was making $30,000 a year, and it was tough work. I had to drive an hour and 15 minutes each way and worked with kids in residential facilities and then got a better job where I was happy. I made 40 grand a year and was like, oh, I reached it. And from there, got a job at community mental health and had this side private practice going where it was just to pay down student loan debt. You know, if I can make a few hundred dollars an hour a week doing just a little bit of clinical work as a counselor, well, you know, that's gonna help pay down student loan debt. And then I finally got kind of the golden counselor job. And that's a community college job where, you know, I had state pension, I had decent benefits, all these things that I had put up with in the nonprofit world. I didn't have, you know, 247 on call and finally had made it. And my private practice was going well. But then I realized that there was no upward mobility unless I wanted to become a supervisor and work more hours just to get paid a little bit more. I started to really look at that private practice as more than something to pay off student loan debt. So I got into some podcasts on business. Never learned any of the business principles in grad school at all. And so just ate it all up and realized, wait, this really works in regards to this field that I really care about. Because before that, my taste for business, the only thing I had ever done was I sold vacuum cleaners door to door in college. They kind of taught us how to sell this $3,000 vacuum in trailer parks and show people they got a good return on investment for it. It just felt super slimy. Like, this isn't what business. I didn't want anything to do with that. But then when I realized, wait, it was more that that specific company was slimy, not the business itself is slimy. And I felt, wow, I can grow my private practice. This is amazing. And so I just started blogging about what I was learning. So I read Guerilla Marketing and I wr blog post about it. I listened to Smart Passive Income and wrote a blog post about it and then started a podcast in the late 2012. And at the time, there was no one that was podcasting on private practice. So, you know, like, they talk about guerrilla marketing. Find those Markets where you can be number one right away. And so right away I was the number one podcast for counselors in private practice, and it kind of took off from there.

Yeah, that's cool. So you're kind of old school with the podcast and you've been doing it for a while now. It's interesting. I think the first podcast I ever tuned into was Pat Flynn's podcast. And I actually met Pat before he was a podcaster at a little Mastermind thing, and he got me into podcasting and then I dragged Joe into podcasting. This was around 2010, but we only podcasted about eight episodes and then took like a two year hiatus on podcasting. Yeah, so you've, you've gone straight through with the podcast then. So since 2012, you just been doing the same show or has it been multiple shows?

Yeah, so I launched a couple other shows, but the Practice, the Practice podcast, the one that I started, is still the one that has the highest numbers and highest reach. Uh, I started the how to Become a Consultant podcast and had Pat Flynn on it, had John Lee Dumas, Chris Ducker, and really said, oh my gosh, I have these big names, like the podcast is going to be successful. Did 80 episodes and realized that the return on investment just wasn't there for my time. I. I kind of leapfrogged my audience. They weren't at the point where they could come along with me and say, I want to become a consultant. They were still just growing their practices. And so one of my first lessons was, you know, ask your audience what's the natural next step for them and then create that as your next product. I did that podcast. I also helped launch the Happy Podcast. My friend Pete Kirkwood and I explore kind of happiness research and what it takes to be a really happy person. And so the Hapitlist, it's just like capitalist for the H. That's another one that's more of just a fun side project for me. Pete's doing a lot of the legwork on it, though.

Oh, nice. I actually want to talk about that in a couple minutes because I love that topic. So that one you're still doing, you're still one of the hosts on that show right now.

Yeah, so we do that one as a season. So Pete owns a brewery. He's a former attorney that started a brewery and kind of left the world of law. And so we did, I think, 12 or 13 episodes for season one, and then we've got season two planned out. He's going to be moving to Argentina for the winter. And so we're going to do it before that. But then we'll probably do season three after he's back or from Argentina.

That's funny, because I think if you ask, like, any male in the world, that's, like, probably 90% of their dream is to quit their job and start a brewery.

I know. Yeah. And I mean, he does a great job with it. And we talk about how he implements his business ethics from that hapless perspective.

That's cool. That's so cool. So I want to talk about podcasting and kind of your feel on the state of podcasting, because you've been doing this for, let me see, seven years now. Yeah. So what have you seen as some of the biggest changing in changes in podcasting since 2012? And, you know, now in 2019, as we're recording this, what are some of the biggest changes you've seen in that world?

Yeah, I think that when you look back seven years ago.

At that point, it was still pretty easy to start a podcast, but a lot of the tools to figure out what was working just weren't there. And so the automation tools for actually making money off of a podcast are so pronounced at this point. I mean, anytime I hang out with podcasters, I pick up 20 or 30 tools that I've never heard of, and you may not implement all of them, but just to know that you have the option, it's just insane. So I think figuring out how to launch a podcast and how to get it out there, it's never been easier. But also because of that, people that are jumping in aren't necessarily doing what converts to actually make money. And so people really, I think, are deciding, do they want it to be more of a hobby podcast, more of a business that they actually make money off of?

Yeah, yeah, I agree. So with your podcast, you know, has there been any. Was there any big, like, pivotal moments in your podcast where you saw the growth start to accelerate, you know? Cause I imagine, you know, I don't really remember back in 2012 when we were podcasting, what this sort of numbers looked like for new podcasts. But I knew it was. There was not a lot of adoption back then. There wasn't, you know, it wasn't in every single car. Everybody wasn't talking about podcasts like they are now. But outside of just the sort of more acceptance of podcasts, have you seen anything that's sort of been a pivotal point in the growth of your podcast?

Yeah. So in 2014, I was at the point where I Was saying, is this worth it? You know, the amount of downloads per episode weren't growing. It was a decent audience, but I knew that the potential was just out there. And so a couple things that I did is I hired a professional web developer to totally revamp the website. So up to that point, I had installed my WordPress theme, did my best, kept it kind of bootstrapped mentality. So I did that. I also paid to have a professional logo created. And then the third thing I did was I committed to at least once a week podcasting. And so every Tuesday morning before the morning commute eastern time, the podcast goes live at, I think 5:00am and so at least doing that. And it was just a total kind of upward trajectory after that where people could count on it. I also started doing some blitzes where I would do some 10 minute episodes, but five days in a row around a topic. So I did this thing called Blog Sprint, where it was a five day blog teaching series, but then it led into an automated email sequence that then sold people on a live event that was a live blog sprint where for two weeks the goal was to write 10 blog posts in those two weeks. And so every day for two weeks during the work week, we met for half an hour. They then went and worked on it. And then the next day we jumped in and said, what's working? And we sold more in that kind of launch than we had ever sold before. And so that was kind of like, oh, here's some keys here, where people really want topic specific training that's affordable, but they're willing to do it in a larger group.

Yeah. And so you were able to convert a lot of those customers probably over into podcast listeners as well.

Absolutely.

Very cool.

I think that when you look at the stats, people that are into podcasts still feel that podcasting, it's already saturated. There's too many people. Every celebrity has a podcast. Well, those are people that are listening to podcasts that are saying that. But we know that depending on which survey you look at, anywhere from a quarter to a third of Americans listen to one podcast a month. So there's still a gigantic market there. And when you really look at the stats between. And it was interesting because at New Media Summit, we had heard some of these stats, but I had already dug into them for an opt in that I put together to help people start podcasts. But if you look at just the stats alone. So if you start a blog, you're competing with 660 million other blogs. And so if that's the equivalent of a six foot tall person. Then what's the statistical difference in regards to competition to a YouTube channel? Well, that's the equivalent of King Kong, 104ft tall. Now you're like, oh, wow, that's a really big difference in regards to competition. I want to be King Kong. But then if you look at, if you just have a podcast, not even an active podcast, it's the equivalent of seven Titanics stacked on top of each other bow to stern. And then if you make the jump to an active podcast, that's the statistical equivalent of Mount Everest. So really it's. If you're going to put an hour into something, you're going to put an hour into a blog post that can help you rank in Google and SEO. But competition wise, you're a six foot tall person. Or are you going to create a podcast, optimize that for SEO, and be Mount Everest?

Yeah, no, I love that. I think, I think there's something like 750,000 podcasts, which, you know, on the surface sounds like a big number, but then you go and compare that to the amount of blogs, which is, you know, in the millions. You know, tens of millions, probably.

Yeah, hundreds of millions.

Yeah, hundreds of millions. I don't know. I just know it's a hell of a lot more, you know, so. So podcasting is like, you know, blogging dwarfs podcasting. And so I still think personally there's a lot of opportunity in podcasting and there's still a lot of niches that are just untouched by people.

Well, and then you look at even just how many of those podcasts have bad sound? How many of them pod fade after 12 episodes? How many of those are just the person has an annoying voice? It's like you then start to eliminate down. Okay, a good half of those podcasts I can say my audience probably won't listen to.

Yeah.

And the competition then. And then you say, okay, so maybe there's three or four other really good quality podcasts around my specialty. Well, that, that proves the model. And none of those people have your perspective. I mean, Matt, if you and I picked any topic and said, what would you do around a topic? On fly fishing, for example, I would start with, I have no idea how to fly fish. I've always hated fishing, and now I'm going to try to do this thing and you might have a completely different perspective. So the people I would draw into a fly fishing podcast would be the ones that hate fishing, never wanted to fish, but they're like, well, maybe this would be fun, and you might draw a different audience. And so. So really owning your uniqueness and your quirkiness is the thing that helps you really stand out in regards to podcasting.

Oh, yeah, for sure. And nobody has the same set of experiences and stories that you have.

There's a lot of high profile guests that you see doing the rounds. Right. Gary Vaynerchuk might have a new book out, and when his new book comes out, he goes on 50 different podcasts. Right. But every single podcast that he goes on, that host has a different backstory, a different set of experiences, a different perspective on what they think of Gary Vaynerchuk and what their opinions on his methodologies are. And every single person brings something unique. So I, I would, you know, I agree with you. And I would even argue that, like, even in niches that are still saturated, there's still a chance to sort of stand out among them if you're, you know, you're bringing your own unique perspective. I feel like.

Go ahead.

I was gonna say that I feel like one of the big mistakes a lot of podcasters do is let's say you're starting a business podcast. They want to try to sound like the other existing business podcast, which is the big mistake, because you want to be unique from the other business podcasts and still get to talk to the same people. But I think so many people go into it going, you know, I want a podcast just like Pat Flynn's, I want a podcast just like John Lee Dumas's. And they just try to replicate those podcasts and they can't figure out out why they don't get any traction. It's because it's already been done. People are already doing the exact same thing you're trying to do.

Totally.

Yeah.

And I feel like people often overestimate what downloads mean. So you figure if every single week you could show up in a conference center and have a thousand people sitting there and listening to you and then taking action, that would be mind blowing. I mean, any of us that have spoken to more than a thousand people in a live setting, that is a gigantic crowd. And so to think about, oh, it's just a thousand downloads per episode, and I'm down on myself because I'm not getting a million downloads. It's like, are you kidding me? That's so many people. And that recording perpetuates itself after you're there. So what it actually takes to convert people, what we're finding with our done for you clients is really, if you have 500 downloads per episode. You are very well positioned to start monetize that podcast into the six and multiple six figures.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. I. Are you familiar with, with Sean Stevenson? He just passed away.

I had him on my podcast.

Oh, you did? Yeah. You know, he passed away a couple months ago from the time of this recording. He actually said something at an event. I wasn't at this event, but I saw somebody post what he said on social media and it was something. So somebody walked up to the microphone during like a Q and A session and asked the question, you know, I've got a YouTube account and I'm trying to grow it, but for whatever reason, I can only get like 500 views on each of my YouTube videos. I'm stuck at 500 views. What would you suggest in order to get more views on my YouTube videos? And Sean's response was something that this was years and years ago and it still stuck with me. He said something to the effect of if there was a terrorist attack or something and 500 people were injured or killed, or a plane went down with 500 people on it, would that be a big deal in our society? Would that be a big number of people? And the person at the microphone said, yeah, yeah, of course. And they're like, so stop focusing on how many lives you're not affecting and start focusing on the souls that you are affecting, because you are affecting a lot of people.

Absolutely, yeah. 100% agree. Because the more that you can really find out what those first 500 people have found attractive in your podcast, the easier it is to then figure out what the first product should be. Because I often say that if you can fall in love with the people and the pain, then it's much easier to pitch the product. Because so often new podcasters, they'll say, oh, I have this membership community, or I've sketched out this entire ebook, this whole E course. I spent all of a Saturday building my E course. And I say, well, do you have the podcast launched yet? And they're like, no. Well, you just wasted a whole bunch of time because you're going to be pushing people into a product they may not want. And so to really kind of survey those original people. And my suggestion is that you suggest to jump on a 20 minute phone call with them and just ask them three very specific questions. The first question is, what's your experience been with the pain that my podcast is addressing? So if you're helping people lose weight, what's that experience been with? If you're helping people Grow a private practice. What's that been like? So you really get how they talk about their pain. Second is, if there was a magical product that solves all or most of that pain that you could just dream up, what would that magical product look like? What would be included in it? What would not be included? And then the third question is, how much would you pay for that? So I went through that exact same process when we wanted to launch our membership community. And what I thought my community wanted was night and day from what they actually wanted. And so they said in all of these 20 phone calls, they said, honestly, we want ongoing knowledge. We don't want just like an E course we go through, we want to have ongoing content. So what do we offer? We offer 30 plus E courses in it and we do new E courses every month and we do live events. Second, they wanted genuine community. They were sick of just Facebook groups where the person's in there, but it didn't feel like a real community. So we actually have small groups that are led by small group leaders in groups of 10 to 12 that they meet independent of me every other week or so. And then they also have accountability partners to follow up with each other. And then lastly, they said they wanted tools of the trade. They said, we know people have done logos, we know people are making images for blog posts. Why can't we just share that? Or have you created for all of us? Us. So every month we give something away to them that is at least equal in our minds to whatever they're paying for our membership community. So now, after those conversations, I have now 20 people that are getting the exact product they're asking for. So my beta test group is super easy to sell to. And so I can say, hey, I listened to you. These are the trends. I noticed that you said, we're going to be launching this. Here's our early opt in. And we're going to be doing it at $55 a month. And eventually we're going to be selling it at $99 per month, but you're going to lock in that 55amonth forever, as long as you stay in the community. But part of that is in the first few months, we are going to screw things up. You've got to tell us what's screwed up so that you can help make it better and we can change accordingly. And that's why we've been able to sell out every single cohort we do, because it's the language that they wanted, not what I thought they needed.

Yeah, I Love that. I love how you essentially crowdsourced what not even, not even the development of the product. Like a lot of of what you think of crowdsource. You actually crowdsource the ideation of the products. Which is, which is pretty amazing because I do think most businesses go into it thinking I'm gonna build something I think they want. I don't know how many info product creators go, well, I know a lot about, you know, how to make YouTube funny cat YouTube videos go viral. I'm gonna make a course about making funny cat YouTube videos go viral. And they make it and they try to sell it and for some reason nobody to wants, wants to buy a course on making YouTube cat videos go viral.

I love the process that you followed of actually discussing things with your audience.

Well, it's like even our done for you podcasting. So my team is doing all of our podcasting show notes, getting the transcription done, coordinating with guests, everything that goes into making a podcast. And I realized a bunch of my higher end mastermind or individual consulting people were saying, joe, we know you had a, we know you know how to do this. Will you please just tell us what to do? Instead of I was taking the, oh, everyone has their opinion, they want to feel heard, they want to lead the process. No, they were just like, no, just tell us what to do. And so I for two weeks just started saying to all my pre consulting calls and my masterminders and one on one people, we're launching done for you services. Here's what it's going to be based on talking to you. Here's all that's included in it. And then I didn't put a bunch of money into that or hire a whole bunch of people until I had the first person buy, you know, if they're gonna drop 18 grand for this thing to launch 26 episodes and get all the coaching and all the back end, like then I need to have that money in hand and so to sell it. And then it's like, okay, now we need to hire some people. We already had some people to do it, but I'm not gonna have that risk beyond me. It's gonna be on. Let's test the product first and then we can actually implement the product.

Yeah. So you've listed off just kind of throughout the course of this conversation a few different ways that you're monetizing your show. But could you give us this sort of overview, the full picture of here's how the show is monetized and here's how we're Making money off of it.

Yeah. So for three different. For podcasts, there's really three major ways that you're gonna make money. Affiliate links, sponsorship, and your own products. For the most part, almost everything falls into one of those three. The easiest for a new podcaster is your own product. So I'll talk a little bit about that and how we do that. Affiliate links, you just want to typically look at what are the things that you are using on a regular basis. So for my audience, people that own private practices, what's it take to start a private practice? So I know for my 28 step checklist, opt in. And then new private practice email series, if people opt in for that, I know the average person makes me about $17 in affiliate links. So if I'm paying a dollar per lead for Facebook, that's a great return on investment. So it's gonna be things like, what phone system should I use? Okay, so I'm gonna refer them to Grasshoppers. So I have a unique link that I can use that I can send out. What hosting should I use? The person that's starting a practice, they're going to be bootstrapping it. And so I want to give them all those tools through either people that are paying for sponsorship or paying for affiliate links. So that's one way that we're bringing in probably $5,000 a month just in kind of passive income through that list. The second way is through sponsorships. One trap that people get into is not realizing who their audience is. And the more that you specialize in, the higher you can charge per episode. So, for example, Therapy Notes is one of the biggest sponsors of our podcast. They have an electronic health records that is awesome for therapists. I would recommend them whether or not they were a sponsor. I'm just happy they're a sponsor, though. And so every single therapist that's going to bill insurance needs to have an electronic health records. I happen to have 100% of their target audience in front of me. And even coaches or physical therapists, they're going to want some sort of system. And they could use therapy notes as well. So having that captive audience there, where they know that their audience is right on that podcast, they're going to pay way more per episode than worrying about how many thousands of downloads there are per episode. And so we're bringing in per year anywhere from, I would say, around 100,000 or so just from sponsorships. We do a monthly income report similar to pats, like in. So people look and see that, but we break that down in larger sponsor packages. So if someone wants one episode, it's going to be a minimum right now of $1,500. Whereas, you know, as they get a package of five or 10, it's going to go down by about $100 per episode. So if they want a podcast sponsorship of five episodes, we're going to be at around 1400 per episode. And if they get, you know, 10 or more, we're going to get closer down to 1000. So it encourages them to buy larger packages. Packages at those larger levels. We're going to add things like an email to our list or a Facebook Live or Instagram Live or infographics on our Pinterest page. So then we can have it genuinely be a package and not just, we're just mentioning your name. And I'm tracking the roi. I'm making sure that they feel like they're getting a strong ROI on that investment. And if they're not, I want to know that. Also the customer service side, if someone says, oh, I had this problem with this sponsor of yours, I'm going to reach out to my contact there and say, hey, can we do a three way phone call to talk about this, to figure out what, what the solution is so I can legitimately stand behind it?

Yeah, yeah. And I love that approach. I think, I think so many podcasters, they go into it, they go into sponsorships thinking, okay, well, everybody says you get 20 to $30 cpm cost per thousand downloads. And they just, you know, they just accept that. They go to the various agencies out there and they just accept that. But really, you're the one who owns the audience. You own, you have people's attention. Companies want to get that attention. You actually hold the cards there, you know, and so, so we do the same thing. We only sell bundles. We don't sell direct cpm. You know, with our podcast you can, you know, we'll do host red sponsorship ads at the beginning of the show, but then we also bundle in things like we'll email our list for you. We actually do direct mail, so we'll actually put pieces of mail into our direct mail list for them and we sell it as bundle deals. So I really like that. And you mentioned earlier that about 500 downloads per episode is where you want to start looking at sponsorship. Why do you feel that that number is kind of like the sweet spot to start looking into it?

Yeah, there's a few factors. So I'd want 500 downloads per episode. I would. Also, before someone even launches their podcast, they really want to have an email course, not just a newsletter, not just an update. Nobody wants that. But if you have a dedicated email course, a nine part course, or I'm sorry, a nine email course that has three parts, you want to have at least 100 people on that email list. And so that email course, this is what typically works. Email one you say, here's a quick win. So in five minutes I want you to do this exercise often. If you send a video, give them some sort of quick win. So for us, I have them go to Google, type in their town and type in counseling, and just see who are the first five websites that pop up. And then I say, hey, if it's all like Psychology Today or Yelp, and it's not other therapists, that's a really good thing. I have them also look at the Google Maps and so they learn very quickly how do they look at their competition? And usually they feel, wow, this is super easy. No one's doing anything in my town. And so then I have an automated email the next day that says, hey, how'd that exercise go? Can you just respond, yep, awesome. Here's what I learned. So then you're moving from the potential spam folder over to the inbox.

Yeah.

Getting that reply.

Yeah, yeah. Then you want to do three different parts. So part one is, how did we get in this situation? So for example, for therapists, it's how did we feel that we didn't need to learn business all through grad school? Like, why are we set up for failure because of this. Three emails around that second is three weeks of quick wins. So this week I want you to do this, this, and this. And then the next week I want you to do these quick wins. And then the third part is going to be how do we turn this into a habit long term? So where are we headed over the next six months to a year? And so what you're doing then, whether you're a woman with a podcast, helping stay at home moms kind of find their identity, why did we lose our identity as a mom? Let's do a couple of emails around that. Here's some quick wins. Like do these things, you're going to feel better about yourself and then how do we turn this into a long term habit? That model is really important. So why 500? Back to your question is that when you're at 500, you're typically on track or pretty close to at least 100 subscribers in that email list. If people have given their email, then you can start Testing things. And you want to test, you know, if I say, hey, let's jump on a phone call for 20 minutes to hear about what you wish I could launch and you get one person, well, you know, you need to develop kind of that connection with your audience more. You need to do more on your podcast. So then you're getting data. Before you put all this time into launching a product or building more emails or doing more podcasts, you're getting that data to inform how active your audience is.

Yeah, no, I love this because you've essentially built an automated system to constantly be getting feedback and information from your potential customers about what to deliver next for them. And it's just all automated and very. They're feeding you what to build for them next.

Exactly. And then you can look at your stats. If you have 100 people on your email list and you notice you have 86% open and then it goes down to 76 and then it stays around 70 and then you have one email that drops to 20%, you might want to change what the subject line is. You might want to look at what was right before that. Why are people dropping off there? So before you put all this time and energy and often money into launching a new product, you want to be able to really work out those kinks so that when you do launch it, hopefully you ensure as much success as you can.

Yeah. Now with this multi day email sequence, are you doing any sort of selling, is there any pitches in these emails or are you just kind of sharing information, indoctrinating them, getting them to reply, just kind of building the relationship or at any time, are you saying, by the way, here's something that you can go check out from me or hey, come book a call. What are you doing in that email sequence as far as calls to action?

Yeah. My recommendation is first think through the transformation that you want to occur over those nine emails. And so, so for our start a practice email list, people that are just getting going, they are craving all the tools. So here's the link for hosting, here's the link for setting up your website, here's a video tutorial. So that makes sense because the transformation is I want to start a practice fast and so I'm going to then give them those tools, those affiliate links in that for our grow a practice one. These are people that have an established practice. They're really probably, they're looking for more content. And so that nine part is going to have fewer affiliate links. But at the end of it, I'm going to Have a very clear call to action. Hey, why don't we jump on a half hour phone call, I'll talk about your next steps and let you know where I think you can get the best return on investment for your time and money. Because it makes sense for someone that has an almost six figure practice, they have the capital, whereas the people on the startup practice list, they're better fit for our membership community that only opens three times a year. So they're going to get a ton of emails when we're in launch phase, three times a year, but most of it's going to be content or tools the rest of the time.

I love it. I love it. So when it comes to podcasting and calls to action from a podcast, you're obviously getting listeners of your podcast and you're trying to get them back to your website to opt in to get on your sequence and then essentially get indoctrinated and eventually buy something from you. What has happened? Have you found any good ways or best practices for getting people from a podcast to an email list? Because I know from our own experience that's actually been a pretty big challenge. And talking to other podcasters, I know that's been a big challenge for them is getting them from listening to something on audio to actually taking an action on a website somewhere else.

Yeah. So we're actually, for us, that's not been a challenge. And part of it is probably a year And a half, two years ago we set up pressure practiceofthepractice.com resources. So any of the downloads are all on one page. We also, so we have over 30 different resources there. So if we do a webinar, we have it transcribed and turned into an ebook. So then there's this 20 page ebook on HIPAA compliance which no one else cares about except for medical practitioners, but then they can read it and then they can watch the video. And recently we've realized that people didn't like having to opt in for every single one of those resources. So we bought pillars of practice.com and so now we have a start a practice e course in teachable and a grow a practice. And so they give their email once get added to the list, but then they also get access to all 30 of those resources. So we've found that if you have very specific things that you can give people based on the episode, that's what tends to convert the best. And so we're talking Pinterest. And even if I have an old guide for how to set up a business, Pinterest account. I'll just say, hey, head on over to practicethepractice.com resources. And now I'll be saying head on over to Pillars of Practice because you can get not only that resource on Pinterest but 30 other resources that are going to help you start a practice or if you're in the growth phase, go over there. So then they get this mega course totally for free. And so that to me is an over delivery for people like of course I'm going to give you my email if I get access to this. We also recorded all of these. We're calling them eight minute experts. And so some of my favorite consultants around private practice where I did zoom calls with them, I literally started a timer and said okay, we have eight minutes to talk about websites, let's get it all done in eight minutes. And we're not releasing that anywhere else except for in our Pillars of Practice E course. And so for them to get this exclusive content, it's all behind an email wall. But then after that if someone's like I opted in but I don't see this, we just email them that opt in so they don't have to keep opting in over and over.

Yeah, I like that. So pretty much the big key to it is make it highly, highly relevant to whatever it is they just listened to.

Yeah, absolutely. I think what they listen to but also their phase of whatever you're teaching them. So if you're teaching people to start a business, make sure you have a lot of opt ins that are very clearly around the startup phase. So checklists and honestly I didn't realize how simple some of these things are. How to set up a Facebook business page Checklist is one of our most opted in checklists. And I'm just like, that seems dummy proof. It's not that hard. But people just don't know. And so, so the things that we think people need, how to project ROI over four quarters next year. Most people don't need that level of an opt in. They really need just some simplified things.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. I mean a lot of the people that are entrepreneurs at a high level, we probably tend to think like, oh, this is really, really valuable to us where we're at. But most of our listeners probably aren't quite there yet. So that totally makes a lot of sense. And all of the sort of lead magnets that you offered from episodes a year ago, two years ago, things like that, those are still available over on that resources page. Right. So they can go pretty much Find anything you've ever talked about and opt in for it.

Yeah. One other strategy we've done is we've used speak pipe to have people leave us voicemails. So when someone sends me an email question, I'll often say, this is a great question. I would love for you to leave it as a voicemail that I can use on the episode. Then before I do that episode, I'll let my designer know I'm going to be answering a bunch of questions. I want you to make an opt in around this. So then I just play the question, I answer it, and I say, hey, you know, we've also got a resource over@pillarsofpractice.com that's included in our E course. Make sure you go grab that today. That directly kind of walks you through this. So then the question that's being answered. We've then developed an opt in for all of that for that kind of Q and a question and answer episode.

Very cool. I love this. No, this is some really smart stuff. Stuff like that Joe and I haven't thought about that we're probably going to implement after this episode.

Over to Joe.

While you're having a baby. Why don't you listen to this?

Yeah. Yeah. Here's something to do for the next hour, so. Very cool. So I have two questions on the podcast front that I want to kind of shift into live events a little bit. So with the podcast, have you found any sort of growth tactics or growth strategies to work really well, kind of more recently, I know when you said you did the redesign and some of those things earlier, that was a sort of catalyst for growth. Have there been any new sort of tactical things that you've tried that have worked well lately?

Yeah, honestly, it's been working with newer podcasters to be one of their first guests. The more that you can align yourself with people that are new talent, I found that to be actually one of the best ways to have super fans that just are so into you. Because when they were nobody, when they just were getting started, you said, sure, I'll be one of your first guests. And then they're over the moon about it and they just talk you up and then their whole audience is like, well, yeah, I'll listen to this person, but it sounds like I should also listen to Joe. And so that makes it a lot easier. So I'd say that. And, you know, two thirds of those podcasts, pod fade and your episodes out there. And maybe it's not a super strong podcast anymore, but to me, I Want to have the future leaders of the field be people that I have a relationship with. So anytime someone is starting a podcast and says, hey, Joe, will you be one of our first guests? If I can make it work in my schedule, I almost always do. So I would say that. And I would say hosting co Facebook lives or Instagram lives with influencers is also one of the other best growth strategies. And so to just be able to do a Q and A with your audience, that you plan ahead and be able to have sort of a live webinar on the social media and then having them opt into something that is kind of a natural next step, and then you can feed them the podcast. Those are the two best growth strategies I'm seeing right now.

Yeah, I love that. I think you were actually telling us about the Instagram Live strategy when we were at New Media Summit, and Joe and I were pretty blown away by that because we haven't done a lot of that kind of stuff. Now, do you take those Instagram lives and repurpose them as like full podcast episodes, or do those just kind of live on social media?

You know, some I haven't done them as podcast episodes. I may just repurpose them on my general Instagram feed or may repurpose them in Facebook. I feel like when people repurpose everything from everything, it's like, well, why would I follow you, follow you on Instagram if there's not unique content? Why would I follow you on Facebook? And so to me, I view Instagram Live as, here's just some quick little things. If you happen to be following me now, if I do a longer Facebook Live, like five steps to launch a podcast, I'll download that and then put it into Dropbox. And from that point, that's when Sam, my chief marketing officer, she then makes it look pretty, puts it on our YouTube channel. She then has it transcribed. We turn it into a blog post and embed that video into that blog post. She then creates an infographic she puts on Pinterest and also adds to our opt in and then also adds that content to our email list. So I just did a five minute Facebook Live and then she did all of that. So I can see which Facebook lives get the most traction and then start there to have her do all that work.

I love that. I love that. I also want to speak into real quickly. Just going on the newer podcast, I was actually literally reading an article this morning, probably 15 minutes before we jumped on a call, and it was actually all about podcast growth strategies and in the article, they were talking about how they experimented going on some long, larger, more well known podcasts versus going on some smaller, newer podcasts, but have a real rabid, you know, happy following that loves listening to their show. And the results from the smaller podcasts were actually outperforming the results from the bigger podcast. They were getting much more new listeners from these smaller, newer shows than they were from the more established, bigger names.

So I would totally agree. I remember when I was asked to be on Entrepreneur on Fire and I was just like, oh my gosh, this is going to be a game changer. And I think I had like two or three opt ins from it. Whereas if I'm on a really well positioned specialty show, it almost always is a big bump in the numbers.

Yeah, I think our, the second best performing podcast we've ever been on was a show called Sold with Webinars with Joel Irwe. And he invited us on and he said, it's not a very big podcast. I only get a few hundred. I don't know what he's at now, but at the time he's like, I only get a few hundred downloads, but per episode it's not huge. But my following is a, a very rabid following. They love these episodes. And we're like, yeah, sure, because we go on it, we'll go on any podcast. Also, if you have 10 downloads, I don't care. We're, we're, we're happy to do it. And that was probably the, it was the second best performing podcast we'd ever been on as in terms of how many opt ins it sent us. So, yeah, definitely. Don't, don't sleep on the small podcasts.

People will remember if you treated them well when they first got started.

Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, definitely. And you know, you never know which podcasts end up being the, you know, the next big mega podcast, you know. So, yeah, you can always say you.

Were there in the beginning, connect with another guest that's, you know, a really awesome guest and you see that and you reach out to them and say, hey, how'd you get that person? Are you up for an introduction? I mean, it's just if you treat people well and you say, I want to help my own clients get a really strong return on investment for their time and you go into it and say, I'm going to tell you honestly, if I think that this isn't going to be worth your money and time, to me, that's the way I want to run a business.

Yeah, yeah. And you know, so Joe and I, we've worked for years and years and years in this sort of Internet marketing, digital marketing community helping people sell affiliate products and info products and things like that. And it's like, I feel like the podcast world and the digital marketing world are like two completely opposite ends of a spectrum. The digital marketing world, there's so much, much ego, so much competition, so much, you know, my product is better than your product and, and, and that sort of thing. In the podcasting world, you really do get this sense of we're all trying to make the, the tide rise and all of our ships are going to rise together. I really feel like you get that sense in the podcasting world. And you know, when I see new podcasters pop up, I get excited for them, I want to help them, I want to share advice and I want to be on your show. You know, I, I, I really think there's just some, it's a really, really good community to be a part of.

Well, I think part of it is this putting a spotlight on the difference in the different mediums. So in podcasting, your biggest differentiator is you, that you are the product. Even if you're selling a product or recommending a product, ultimately it's you and your voice and that uniqueness. In the online marketing world, it's very easy to just have 10 people selling the same drop shipping thing. And so part of that is that they haven't figured out their unique voice in regards to what they're doing in the online marketing world. And then in the podcasting world, I think people often find their unique voice, but they don't know how to sell very well or how to create that membership community or live event or whatever kind of the monetization strategy is.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So this is, this is my last sort of podcasting question, also kind of related to your Instagram strategy. How do you actually, how do you get in touch and get on the radar some of these bigger influencers to get them on your show or to get them to do, you know, shared live streams with you and things like that?

Yeah, I think first genuinely being interested in the people and I would look for people that are a few steps ahead of you, more than the Gary Vee's or the Pat Flynn's and those folks, they are just requested so often and if Pat Flynn comes on your show, it's like, okay, awesome, so many people know him. Whereas if you have some unique guest that is a few steps ahead of you, they're gonna really promote it. And so I would say look for people that have twice as many Instagram followers as you have. So if you've got a thousand, look for someone with two or three thousand followers instead of the people that have millions.

Start there.

When you're looking to connect with somebody, I would say find the social media platform that they have the most personal content. So that's how I got Pat Flynn on my show. He didn't know who I was. I noticed that at the time on Instagram, it was mostly personal content, and there was a certain time of day that he was posting that on a regular basis. And so during that time of day, I just sent him a video recording. I tagged him on it and also sent it as direct message. And then he responded right away because I noticed he was usually there. So there was a little bit of stalking there.

If you just come cold versus having commented and shared and really got involved for a little bit, that's going to be the kind of thing that stands out. I would also say if there's a way that you can be in their physical presence, that usually helps. So, for example, Daniel Pink, the business author, came to Traverse City for the National Writers Series. He's written all these books I really respect. He has a new one that he's on a book tour for. So he was at the Traverse City Opera House. We were gonna stand in line to talk to him, but our friends were like, let's just go get drinks. I'm like, yeah, okay. So I figured I'd reach out to him via email or something. And then my wife ran into him at a coffee shop the next day and said, my husband has a podcast. Is there any way you'd be on it? And my wife isn't the kind of person that usually goes out on a limb like that. So I was almost more excited that she did that. I got Daniel Pink on the podcast, but he gave his personal email to her, and then we went from there, and I had him on the podcast. And so I think a lot of it can be luck, but a lot of it also is putting yourself out there, trying to find out what people are interested in. Are there things they're interested in beyond just kind of the business side of things? Are you both paddle boards? Find those genuine human connections and reach out to them, and you don't have to sell yourself real hard. If someone's going to say yes, they'll say yes, and if they're not, they won't.

Yeah. And you can't really overstate enough. The power of Getting people that aren't necessarily big influencers on your show. Because from a marketing standpoint, at least in our experience, we've found that the ones that maybe aren't quite as established or don't have quite the influence as a Pat Flynn or a Tim Ferriss or a Gary Vaynerchuk, the ones that are still at a sort of a stage a few levels before them, tend to be the most excited about the fact that they were on your show. They tend to be the ones that want to spread the word about the fact that somebody's interviewing them and featuring them more so than like some of these bigger names who, in all likelihood you'll get them on their show, but they're not going to mail their list for you. Maybe they'll give you a shout out on Twitter or something, 100%. But, you know, the smaller names are the ones that get much, much more pumped up about doing something like this and being on the show. And, you know, they love the fact that they're being put in the spotlight a little more than the people that have been in the spotlight for a while.

Yeah. And I think that I figured a few things out and how to do that in a more organic way. When I interviewed Rob Bell, who he has a number of really kind of larger, more spiritual type books, you know, he had made some recommendations on the podcast that I took to heart. And then a month later I emailed him and said, hey, Rob, thanks so much for being on the podcast. I actually took to heart this, and this is what I'm doing from it. I just appreciate that advice to just kind of keep in touch with those people, even if it's a two or three line thing, thanking them and saying what you've done. So then later on, I was listening to Rob's podcast and he had Lewis Howes on, and they were talking about how they watch football together and hang out. And so I then emailed Rob and said, hey, I've always wanted to have Lewis Howes on my podcast. Is there any way you could do an introduction? I know this is a big ask and just recognize you don't really know me that well. He said, oh, yeah, sure. Next email is, hey, Louis, meet Joe. I was on his podcast, super cool guy. You should do a show. And Louis was like, I never do interviews anymore, and you must be pretty special if Rob introduced you. And it's like, no, I wasn't. But it was cool that he went out on a limb for me to make that introduction. So even just respectfully Asking for an introduction. I think that's really important. One time I really failed because I think it's the failure story. So when I landed Pat Flynn for my podcast, I then kept tweeting to try to get John Lee Dumas and Chris Ducker on the podcast and kind of including him, like, hey, got Pat Flynn. You two want to be on it too? And did it a whole bunch of times. And Chris Ducker called me out publicly on Twitter and was just like, I don't want to do this podcast with you because it seems like you're using Pat and he's a good friend of mine. And it was totally right that he called me out on it because when I stepped back and looked at how it came across to him, it was, I'm just name dropping to try to get other people onto the show and doing it publicly and not doing it in an authentic way to myself. And so I think just being careful about how you come across is really important and to not put too much stock in those kind of higher end names either.

Yeah, yeah. One cool thing that we've done, and we've shared this on some past episodes, and I think we may have even shared it when we were all in a mastermind together during New Media Summit, is we actually have our Dream 100 list of these are the hundred guests that we'd most love to have on the show. And I mean, it's a mixture of like really kind of moonshot guests. You know, we've got Elon Musk and Tim Cook and, you know, Richard Branson and some names like that on there that are a little more moonshot to us. But then also some, some guys that we know people in our network are connected to. And we actually put that, a link to that Dream 100 list in our. Our.

Email signature. And so every person we email, there's a little thing at the bottom that says, hey, by the way, this is our dream 100 list. Maybe you know, somebody you can connect us with. And we just get organic connections all the time, almost a daily basis where like we get an email from somebody going, hey, I know Derek Sivers. Here's a connection. Or, you know, and. And by doing this, we've had, you know, James Altucher on the show, we got Mike Dillard on the show, we had David Allen from getting things done on the show. And it was all from this exact process, just putting it out there and telling people, hey, here's who. I want to know if anybody knows these people. Make an intro.

I love it.

Back Sometime, you know, the David Allen.

Thing, I had him on the show recently too, and that actually came about. I had a listener who's in my membership community say, you know, this book has been really impactful for me. I would love to try to like, I would love for you to have him on the show. And I said, well, why don't you find his email? Why don't you then email the two of us and then do an introduction even though you don't know him or have no business introducing us and just say, hey, your book has been insane for me. This podcast has been insane for me. I really think you should be on the podcast. And then this guy that now is a friend, he was able to get talking to, David Allen. He's like this guy he looks up to that I hadn't even heard of. He then has connected us and he's now a part of that. It's fun to bring your audience along as part of that connection as well.

Yeah. So cool. So cool. Well, I want to, I want to shift into talking about events real quick. I know you put on a couple events a year. You want to quickly tell us about those events and who they're for and what you talk about at them.

Yeah. So in the summer, we always do Slowdown School here in Northern Michigan. So Slowdown school is an event that we do for a week here in Northern Michigan and people fly into Traverse City and we pick them up in a big yellow school bus and take them out to a boarding school. That's right on the waters of Lake Michigan. There's a river that goes through the campus. We bring in an executive chef that has partnerships with local farmers. I mean, even like every carrot, they're like, oh, that's the Jones family from down the road. So for two days we just really slow down. So we go for hikes. I bring in massage therapists and a yoga teacher. We play spike ball on the beach and we just hang out. Because a lot of those high end entrepreneurs, the biggest thing they need to do is they need, need to slow down. They need to stop putting out fires and they need to step back and allow their brains to say, what's the most important use of my time? And it's amazing how in those two and a half days of slowing down and genuinely just enjoying themselves, just sitting and skipping stones for an evening while the sun goes down on the beach. By Wednesday, when it's time to work on their business, they just are running full tilt. They know exactly what they need to work on. So we had one guy who he had been struggling with outlining kind of his process in a book. And we did this 20 minute sprint where people just run full tilt towards their big goals. So it could be a podcast, it could be sketching out social media for the year, kind of looking at some system in their business. And he sketched out seven chapters of his book in 20 minutes. Another lady named her consulting business, bought the URL, and sketched out her initial offering in 20 minutes. And so when you give your brain that time to step back and say, I'm not even gonna look at my phone for three days. I'm going to pull it out to take pictures, but that's it. I'm going to put it on airplane mode. I'm going to just genuinely allow myself to be around really inspiring people. What we see happen through Slowdown School is they just go so much faster towards their big goals, and they're the goals that they know are going to be the game changer for their business instead of just putting out fires. So we do that for two and a half days, and then we kind of land the plane for the week by going wine tasting. We often, we'll go to this place called Grocer's Daughter, which is this chocolatier who does an awesome chocolate tasting with us. And then we go to this other place called Cherry Republic that has a bunch of cherry products. And so we just really kind of land it together and then debrief it. And then people go home. And really the people that we then have speak at our other event oftentimes are people that came to slow down school and just took off so quickly in their area of specialty.

Very cool. Yeah. I mean, I've always noticed that when it comes to business ideas and what my next move should be, in business, those ideas almost never pop into my head while I'm actively trying to think of what's the next thing I should do in my business. Right. That's not when the ideas come. If you're trying to force it, they don't come.

Well, the neuropsychology research supports that we're going to have those aha moments when we're in the. In the shower, when we're on a long drive with the radio off, when we're on vacation. The second I sit down to meditate, I remember all the things I should be doing. It's just like, okay, I got to write all that down. Whereas if I said, what do I need to be doing? It's like, oh, I don't know, I should check my checklist. Versus when you just let your brain rest, you actually are able to figure out the things that are the biggest return on investment for you.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. You've also got your killin it camp. So what's that one about? And. And what's the difference between the two events?

Yeah, so I would say slow down school is for people that are at that 6 and multi 6 and 7 figure where slowing down really is the primary thing they need to learn to do, whereas killing it camp is kind of the other side. People that are under six figures. We did have a number of group practice owners that came as well, but people that really want to kill it in their business. And so it's aimed at coaches, consultants, counselors, people that have a private practice, they want to start growing scale. And so within that we meet out in Estes park at the YMCA the Rockies.

Oh, I love Estes Park.

Awesome kind of camp feel. We had elk that took over our parking lot while we were unloading. There's like 30 elk there. And so we make it a lot of fun, but we also really run full tilt towards their goals. And so it usually kicks off on a Sunday. We then work together to be able to just kind of look at their roi, look at what they're doing, deconstruct a lot of the ways that they've done things. And then we also have breakout sessions too. But through that process, we very quickly try to help people connect with each other to realize that a lot of the answers and a lot of the tools are in the room with them. So we do this thing called pop up events where anyone can host an event there. And so one lady just said, I want to order pizza for lunch instead of what we're planning to have. And so anyone that wants to order pizza, come join me for lunch. And someone else said, I want to have a discussion about public speaking. How do you get public public speaking gigs? So at dinner I'm going to be hosting a discussion at a table. Come find me. I hosted a discussion on podcasting. And so the idea was sort of like a music festival. You go to a music festival and there's the planned musicians. But oftentimes the best kind of hangouts are around a campfire at someone's site. A hand drum circle just pops up and someone starts jamming out. And these pop up events are the things that make it memorable and unique and never, it can never be replicated.

I love that.

So I wanted to capture that in a conference and the goal is to have it, have that kind of intimacy of a summer camp with a lot of the amenities that we want. So we have an open bar, we had goat yoga, people all stay. And there's this cabin that has a hotel style room. So it's not camping at all, but they're hotel style rooms with your own private bathroom. And all the food is there as well. But the community that's formed out of that, I mean our most common reaction we had from people was the mining mind blown like kind of reaction where they just are around people that inspired them to think in a completely different way than they had been trained to think about their practice.

That is, that is so awesome. I want to be in the loop on when that next one is because, you know, first of all, I love Estes Park. I go there every year. But actually we have family that owns a cabin out there. So we're out there like every year. I love that place. And Joe and I have actually talked about doing intensives and the place we've talked about doing them is Estes park because we like it so much out there.

And honestly the ymca, the Rockies, like if you want to just rent one of their big cabins and include that in it, you can get it for very affordable and they're pretty easy to work with. Yeah, we're early October 2020 and then Slowdown School is late July 2020. So. Slowdownschool.com or killing itcamp.com Very cool.

So what have been the biggest challenges of putting on live events? That's something that we're actually starting to do in our business and we've partnered with some other people to do some intensives in the past. But the people we partnered with took on a lot of the workload. So we're still kind of newbies to this whole thing. What have been some of the challenges that if somebody's thinking about putting on kind of a smaller intensive kind of event, what sort of challenges might they run into?

Yeah, the biggest thing when you're putting on new events I'd say is reducing your risk from the get go. And so every event that I've done, I've had my basic costs covered before I ever sold the ticket through a sponsorship. So I remember I hosted this event in La Jolla called the Most Awesome Conference. It was with some partners. We rented this gigantic house to put it on and had a poolside and it was going to be up to 40 people that could come. But we had sponsors that paid the full ten grand. It cost to rent the house before we rented the house. And so we had that money in hand and from there on, every ticket sold for three grand was just money in the bank. And so being able to bring on sponsors that believe in it, you have to have those relationships if you're going to do that model. But if you reach out to your sponsors and say, you know what, this is the first year we're doing this event. We hope so for Killing It Camp, we said we hope to have between 100 and 200 people. You know me well enough that if for some reason we don't hit those marks, we'll figure out what feels fair to you. But part of it is honestly we want to reduce our risk in putting on this kind of event. So if you BrighterVision website Solutions wants to come on at the $5,000 mark, you'll be the exclusive website person and sponsor moving forward because you believed in us in year one. And same with TherapyNotes, same with Practicat, same with all of our sponsors. So when we launched it, we knew that all of our basic costs were covered and then to have really kind of clear indicators. So for all of our speakers, we said to them, you need to pay $500 to be a speaker here that covers your lodging and your food and all of kind of everything that comes with it. But if I couldn't get the people that are speakers that most know my work to give me $500 and to come speak for me, if I couldn't even get those most loyal people to give me money, it's probably an indicator that I shouldn't do the event. And so did that. And then we also, we had a volunteer rate where people had to donate five hours to us and they got then a $500 ticket as well. So we had 50 volunteers that were giving us five hours each. Way more volunteers than we needed. But if I needed a glass of water, it was like I snapped my fingers and people brought me a glass of water. My wife had someone that literally just followed her around all day and if she needed something, she said, go get my phone. I left it in the other room.

That's so smart.

And so, you know, to have, you know, of our 140 people, 50 were volunteers. They're super invested in it and know that they need to put in some time. So I'd say that sort of thing. If you're doing a larger event, if you're doing a smaller retreat type event, I'd want to pre sell at least four or five tickets to my own clients before I ever go public. Because if those people that know you best won't buy a higher end retreat ticket, that's kind of a red flag that you may have missed the kind of messaging and what people want.

Gotcha. Now, when it comes to the sponsorship, what sort of things do the sponsors get by sponsoring one of these events?

Yeah, so you know, even our most awesome conference. So that was 30 people. And so you look at it and you say that compared to a larger sponsorship, why would they spend several thousand dollars to market to 30 people? Well, we talk about our reach in promoting the event. So when we talk about Killing It Camp, we're gonna talk about how TherapyNotes is our major sponsor. Even now, you know, it's like I'm saying therapy notes. And if there's a therapist listening, I'm doing these things that, that aren't really trackable, but they know that I'm going to talk the heck out of them. And so it's not just the event that they're at, but it's also that they become part of the buzz around it. So for example, Brighter Vision, we said, we don't want you to just sit there. We want you to bring your whole team of website people and do a website lab for anyone that has a website, whether or not they're a client. And it was one of the best things that we could have done. They said, we're going to do this at every other event we do. They had people that were pulling out their credit cards saying, I want to work with you right now. That had never happened to them. So being able to say, we're going to tweet 20 times about you in the lead up to the event, we're going to be able to do this many Instagram posts on every webinar and selling tickets. We're going to do it on our lead page. We're going to have your logo there. And at the event, surprising them. So for example, the two open bar nights, I just said, the first night, Therapy Note sponsored. Second night, open bar, Brighter Vision sponsored. So they then get these surprises in addition to what they had already bought, where they're like, dang, like you're promoting the heck out of us. And it's authentic to the audience where it's not just, hey, we're gonna just list this off at the beginning. It's listen, if you want an electronic health records, TherapyNotes is the one to go with. And here's why. And so you've embedded it in the conference as well in your Recommendations. So that's why it's so important to really know the products well and to feel like you can stand behind it as actual affiliate, not just a name.

Yeah. Oh, I love that. So smart. Well, Joe, I don't want to take up too much more of your time. I really, really appreciate it. I feel like I owe you a consulting fee for this session because I've kicked your brain so much. But I love it. So I have a few kind of wrap up questions. First, I want to ask you what sort of tools do you use for your podcast and your business? What's your tool stack? I also want to know what this thing is that's kind of around your face right now while you're talking to me.

Yeah, absolutely. So tool stack wise, let me start with the free things, but how I use them. So the notes function on my phone. The voice to text is the place that I first capture ideas. So if I drop off my kids at school and then I'm driving and I'm like, oh, I'll do, you know, hey, do a note into my phone. Then I'll usually dump it into Trello. So Trello is a project management system that we use with our entire team. It's what we use for our done for you podcasting. All of that is where we keep everything. So every consulting client has a Trello board and we organize it in a very clear way with our clients. So if you are my consulting client, we would have Matt's one thing. The one thing that you need to do next is in the list. Then we'd have Matt's next thing. So when you're done with that one thing, you know exactly the next thing to do. And then we have resources and tools questions for Joe and then completed. So we keep it super simple to keep our mind on exactly what we need to be working on. So those would be the biggest tools I use to stay organized. The other tool that I would use is more of a mental tool and that's setting very clear boundaries around my time. So I work Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I drop off my girls at school every day unless my wife surprises me and says she wants to. So I don't start until usually 8:45 or 9 in the morning. And then I almost always wrap up at 3:30 so that I can be around right when my kids are done with school. That's really important to me. I don't work on Mondays and Fridays. I do have some exceptions around that because I'm doing a book proposal right now and I Might do a little email wrap up for half an hour, but even that, I'll set a timer for myself so that I don't just get sucked into things. The other thing I would say is I probably every day set five to 10 timers. So even with this, I had a timer going so I could work full tilt until two minutes before we were supposed to jump on this podcast interview. So, I mean, we have a lot of kind of tools and there's, you know, like leadpages or, you know, meet Edgar, things like that. But to me, those kind of mindset tools are the most important productivity tools that I could recommend to people.

Love it, Love it. And then as far as your equipment.

Thing is, it's sort of. I can kind of lift it up if you're going to show the video, but it's a foam. It wraps around the microphone.

Ah, gotcha.

Okay, so I have soundproofing in the corner right here above my computer. But I got this when I was working in an office and they were building a building next door and I didn't want to have to go home to podcast. And so I saw it on the Dr. Dre documentary. Oh, shoot. The Defiant Ones.

Yes.

If it's enough for Dr. Dre, it's good enough.

So it's basically so you don't have to go hide in a closet to record your audio.

Yeah, yeah. And you can just like my body kind of is right up against it and then the mic is just right there.

Very cool. What kind of mic do you use?

An@2020.

@2020. Very cool, very cool. Do you have any book recommendations or books that you refer back to often or recommend to your clients often, anything like that?

Absolutely. So I think the book, the one thing Jay Papasan and Gary Keller did such a great job with that book. So I would recommend that. That I would also say if anyone wants to speak, talk like TED and the Storyteller's Secrets are both. I mean, if you're communicating in any way, that's really, I think, important to know how to tell good stories, especially for live events. Those would be the ones that I would definitely recommend. And then the rest would be more topic specific. If someone wanted to learn to sell better get the only sales guide you ever need and if you want to be inspired in this way is there'd be more kind of topic specific ones I would recommend.

Very cool, Very cool. And then final, final question. Where should people go after listening to this interview to go learn more about you?

Yeah, I would say it kind of depends on where they're at in what they're doing. So if they are just starting a practice, a coaching practice, any sort of consulting, heading over to practiceofthepractice.com start they can get a 28 step checklist on starting a practice if they're interested in that membership community. If they're under 100k and starting any any sort of practice that helps people practice with a practice.com invite would be the best place to go learn more about next level practice and then if they are interested in any of our services that are higher end. So one on one consulting mastermind done for you podcasting. I'd say head on over to practicethepractice.com apply and then in 2020, right around when this episode goes live, we are going to be launching podcast launch school and so the early bird access is available at podcast launch.

Very cool. Well, thanks again so much for the time you spent again. I feel like you just, you dump so much good info that you know, I feel like I owe you for this one.

But oh no, I love it. I love helping. I mean I think that whole idea of if people say wow, that's your free content, what's your paid content? I just you want to over deliver everywhere. And so I try to live that.

I love it. One last question about your done for you podcasting service. What does that come with if somebody wanted to hire you from for running their podcast?

Yeah. So we we help you with 26 episodes. The goal is that the podcaster can show up, they can do the interview. So typically we recommend that people do five to seven solo shows and then do five to seven interviews with experts to align themselves with experts, and then do five to seven shows where they're working with their ideal client to demonstrate their consulting skills. And so the idea is that you show up on Zoom, you do the recording and then once that goes to the cloud, it's taken over from there. So our team does all of the show notes, all of the transcription coordinates with the guests, builds an infographic that can be a download. We also help build out the entire nine part email series that we talked about earlier every month. You get to do a Facebook Live or Instagram Live that we repurpose in the way we talked about where it becomes a blog Post, becomes a YouTube channel, all of that. And really it's you're talented at doing things that you should be doing. You should do what you do best and outsource the rest. And if you are spending all your Time learning how to do show notes in WordPress. That's just a terrible use of your time. The price for that, it's one time 18,000. Or we can do it in four payments. It's a little bit higher price, but as we've looked at just what it would cost to hire a person for every single one of those things, it's just way more than what we're charging. And to have a team coordinate together, it's an easy sell for people to understand the value of their time.

Love it. Well, very cool. Thanks so much for spending the time. The practice of the practice. That's the name of your show. It's a great show. Everybody needs to check it out. We're going to link up all the resources, all the books, everything you just mentioned is all going to be in the show notes. So make sure you check out the show notes to get all the cool resources we talked about. Thanks so much, Jill, Matt, thank you so much. Hey, thanks so much for tuning into that episode. I hope you loved it as much as we loved recording it. Now, before we wrap this up completely, I want to give a quick shout out to.

Supporters of the show. These are some companies that have really helped us and have supported the show and we just like to give a big thank you to them. And they also are offering some cool free gifts for you as the listener. So number one supporter, Podcast Magazine. Podcast Magazine, the preeminent publication covering podcasts, podcast culture and the podcasts that fans love. It's launching in January of 2020. Prior to launch, you could grab a free lifetime subscription over@podcast magazine.com that is a free subscription, a free lifetime subscription to Podcast Magazine where they are talking about everything. Podcasting, podcast culture. The podcasters you love behind the scenes of podcasts, they're ranking and reviewing podcasts. And guess what? Joe and I are actually going to be regular contributors to Podcast Magazine. So if you want to hear more of our insights around podcasting and the shows that we're listening to and some insider tips about what's going on behind the scenes of our show, we're actually going to be one of the featured experts inside Podcast Magazine. So if you love podcasts, if you're a podcaster, or if you just want to stay on top of what's going on in the growing medium, subscribe now because you can, you can get a free lifetime subscription until it launches. So make sure you do this early. So once Again, go to podcastmagazine.com free subscription to this magazine. Go do it. Get on that. Now, another supporter that we really, really want to thank is EZ Webinar. Now, this is the webinar platform that we tend to use when we run webinars. If you go to easywebinar.com hustle, you can actually try Easy Webinar for free right now. And what I love about Easy Webinar personally is that it's got both the live options. So you can just go live with a webinar like you would normally. But it's also got automated webinars where you can make a webinar feel like it's live, but it's happening on a recurring basis. Then they have what's called, you know, hybrid webinars, where portions of it are live, but then it goes to a prerecorded and they do encore webinars. I mean, they've got pretty much every feature you can ever want from a webinar. Now, you probably know that webinars convert better than any other marketing tool, but if you thought, you know, webinars, Easy Webinar is going to surprise you. So with live, automated, all these different functions of webinars, you're going to be using the best onboarding customer platform. You're going to be able to create automated courses. You're going to run automated sales funnels. So much cool stuff that you can do with Easy Webinar. It is our preferred choice of platform for webinars. So make sure you check out Easy Webinar. You can get it for free right now. Get a trial of it over@easywebinar.com.

And check out our episode with Casey Zieman, the founder of Easy Webinar, where we dive into a lot more cool stuff that you can do with webinars. So check it out again. Easywebinar.com hustle to get a free trial, go to podcast magazine.com to get a free lifetime subscription. Both amazing products, both products that we use, we're subscribed to and we support and can't thank them enough for also supporting our show. So go check those out. We appreciate you and thanks for tuning in to Hustle and Flowchart.

Thanks everybody for listening to this episode of the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, for taking the time to listen. We want to give you something a little bit special. Every single episode that we do, we actually have somebody on our team take notes. We basically have a Cliffs Notes version of every episode where you can go and find, find all of the tips and tactics that they laid out, all of the resources that they laid out all the good stuff from this episode. We actually have a nice simple notes version that you can find on our website. So go to evergreenprofits.com find this episode that you just listened to and give us your email address and we'll send you the notes. Thanks for listening.

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