0233 | Podmatch: Automatically Matching Ideal Podcast Hosts & Your Perfect Guests For Interviews with Founder & CEO Alex SanFilippo

Hey, this is Alex Sanfilippo, the founder of podmatch.com and you are listening to EA Interviews.

EA Interviews, episode 233, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the Imperfect Action Round.

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Join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority effect interview. I am super excited for this episode because I have the CEO and founder of Podmatch here, Alex Sanfilippo. And if you have a show, if you're thinking about doing a show, or if you want a guest on shows and you don't have a show, see how easy and clear I made that? Here's the deal. Podcast guesting is huge. You should be doing it. No matter if you have a show or not. His service will help you. We're gonna be talking about it and I'm trying to keep a straight face because we're having a great time already and it's just gonna be great. So if you want to get on podcast, he can help. We're going to be talking about it. When I come back from thanking the sponsor, we're going to have Alex Sanfilippo. Every business needs a book, including yours. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating a business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's free businessbook publishingcourse.com Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Alex Sanfilippo. Alex, how are you feeling today, Mario?

I'm feeling great. Thank you so much for having me. Still the best dressed in all of podcasting land. Here you are. I almost like threw on a vest for you, but I just decided couldn't do it. I can't fight with you there, so. But glad to be here, man.

Well, I do appreciate that and I want to know more about. Because, you know, we met each other at a podcasting event and we were in touch. You know, we're cool, we're talking this and that, but it seemed like out of nowhere you were like, I did this thing and I was so excited for you. Definitely supporting you. But why did you just, I mean, tell me about it? Because I don't even think I know the full story. And we've talked at length about it and I'm just so excited for you, man.

Yeah, thank you. For sure. I'd love to get into it here. First off, I believe the first time we met, if I'm not mistaken, was at podfest.

Absolutely.

It was an in person conference. Um, I don't know if listeners know what that is. But we used to actually go to, like, an event center or a place, and we'd all, like, shake hands and hug and stuff like that, and we wouldn't get each other sick, believe it or not. So the world has changed. But, yeah. So we met back at PodFest, and.

It was PodFest 2020 in person in March.

That's it. Yep. Yeah. And I remember going to that conference with this idea that wasn't an idea. It was an idea to find an idea is what I decided to do. And I say that kind of, like, jokingly, but a friend of mine who had a conversation with.

He's been in the business world for a long time, and his advice to me was to stop trying to come up with my own ideas for businesses and instead listen to the people that I can serve the best and the people that I'm surrounded by. And I decided to really go all in on that. I decided, you know what? I'm actually going to try this. And his name was Dane Maxwell, and he has a book called Start from Zero. His whole idea is Start from Nothing. Not even an idea. Just go solve somebody's problem. So when I went to that conference where we happened to meet, I was asking as many people as I could what they were struggling with in the podcasting space, because there's a podcasting conference, and I'm a podcaster like you. So I was like, you know what? Is there a way I can serve these people with a need that hasn't been met? And Mario, I found it really interesting because.

I very quickly realized that there was podcast hosts in the room, but also there was enough people. There's like 2,000 people. This conference or something like that. It seemed like a lot, but there's also just people that didn't have podcasts yet. They were authors. They were people who wanted to actually just talk about their story. And it was very interesting to see these people in the same room, Granted, a massive room that couldn't find each other, but they really wanted to. The host was saying, I need a guest that can talk about this. And the guest on the other side was saying, I have a book that's about this. And I was like, wow, I should introduce them. So I just started making introductions and talking to people. Be like, oh, I just met so and so. They'd be a great guest for you, or, oh, I know this host would be a really great fit for you. And that's really when it clicked. I realized there was a need to actually do some form of matchmaking. For podcast guests and hosts. And yes, there are booking agents, which I absolutely love. You and I are mutual friends with some of them, some of the CEOs of those companies, and, man, they are fantastic. But it's. And they'll even tell you it's not realistic for everybody. For people that are just getting started or maybe just releasing their first book, they really can't afford that. So there really wasn't an option. Was seeing that. That the industry had. And that was kind of like the birth of Pod Match was me just realizing, okay, somehow I have to help these people find each other.

Well, that is great, and I'm glad you brought that up, because if you're not familiar, if you. Okay.

Okay, calm down. Because this is so powerful, and I want to make sure people get this. Whether you have a show or not, you should be guest podcasting. I tell my author clients that, you know, I have a show, so I'm on shows all the time, and people are always reaching out to me, which I'm thankful for. And absolutely, I take them up on it, because I'm telling you should be guest podcasting. But it's. This little niche is so voluminous to begin with. If you're promote. If you have a business, if you're promoting a book, if you're doing a campaign of sorts, if you're willing to invest on paid advertising.

The world is all digital. And I'll also throw in, it's been that way for a good decade or two. This is nothing new. Just saying.

You are the TV station, you are the media, and people have heard about press releases, but not a lot of people do them. Everyone's heard about paid ads, but, you know, not a lot of people do them. There's all these things, and I've even trained people on all these different methods, and they're just like, I didn't know this was all out there. They still think it's like newspapers and stuff. But there's nothing better than going on someone's show where they have the credibility of the host.

They'Re being promoted, they get to share, they get to educate, they get to add value. The same way, you know, I love publishing books for people, business books specifically, because you get to share that training and expertise and put it in someone's hands, and it's essentially building up the sales cycle. Within that, we have the agencies. You have. You know, if you. If you have no time for anything, you just say, here's money. Book me on a dozen shows. There's people who can do that. But like you said, not everyone's in that position. Then the other alternative is Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups and all these things. If you have more time than money, you can absolutely spend 20, 10, 20, 30 hours a week just looking around for stuff and you'll find it. But what I like about your platform, because I use it, is it does it for you. You have the great high caliber guest, and you don't need to be spending hours and hours, because as a host, I look at it going, if I spend five hours doing this, I could interview five to six more people.

You know, what's the solution to this? So tell me why you decided to make that matchmaker feature into it and pair people up and say, hey, I'm looking for authors. Here's an author. Instead of just a normal listing where it's cool, you give me these people that there's. They're in here. But I'm still doing a ton of work, frankly.

Yeah, you know, it kind of goes back to the need that I saw. There's directory services out there which are awesome. I've used some of those. Like, that's great. It's a directory service. But I really wanted to actually solve the need just to match people together. I mean, a lot of people in the space, you and I included, we don't have a lot of time to look for guests or for hosts to have us as guests on their shows. And so again, that was the need that I saw. And going back to one of your. I listened to your podcast in a previous episode, it's 184 with Corey Lee. He talked about how he decided to add masterminds to his coaching service because he just saw a need and decided to fill it. So for me, the need wasn't just the directory anymore. Like, similar to what Corey was saying, he saw a need and he decided, you know, I can do something about this. I can fill this need. So for me, I was like, we need a matchmaking service, one that's truly going to match people together. And so, I mean, your other guests are saying it too, which I think is interesting. You know, we're talking about the same thing, is truly defining that, that need, that niche, and getting really focused on it. So for me, I knew the only way to really help people in that giant room, one person being an author, one person actually being a podcast host that's looking for an author that wrote a book on the same topic, would be to truly match them. Because even if I just put them in a smaller place, Together like a directory. It still didn't solve the ultimate problem that I wanted to. So, man, I just, I went straight to the drawing board after that conference. I mean, the world shut down like virtually a couple days after. I mean, I feel like we were so blessed to get like to get in at the end there. But when I, when I went back to the got home, I remember I actually had a kettlebell in hand. I was doing kettlebell swings on my back porch because that's, I don't know why I was doing back there, but I was working out and I just stopped like mid workout. And that's when the idea clicked because I was like thinking about like, what can I do do for these people? And I ran straight inside of my whiteboards and immediately just started writing it out. And I thought, what if there was like an online dating app? But instead of finding people for dates, it founded podcast guests and hosts to do interviews together. And man, that was kind of like the birth of it. And I just literally, it was March 10th, I'll never forget it, and just started writing it down, getting it all out there. And that same night called an old friend of mine that I had done a project, like a SaaS project with before and just said, hey, are you working on projects right now? And he was like, no, actually, I'm just now freeing up on something. He was like, you got something going on? And I explained it to him. He literally was like, I'm all in, let's get started. And man, it was June 15, same year 2020, when we actually launched it into very early beta. But yeah, man, we got it, launched really fast, got it knocked out, made a very minimal viable product. A mutual friend of ours, Chris Kremenzos, was proud of me because we started ugly. Like his book says, we literally launch it day one that we possibly could, telling people it's not going to be beautiful. But here's the crazy thing. I launched with 100 users and most of those people that I launched with, they were in that room back in March. They were the people that I was talking to. We were able to exchange information. So I already had a bit of a built in audience because they said, oh, I need this. I said, well, let me get your information and when I have something for you, I'll let you know. And I was able to actually test with those people and they're very gracious because they had a lot of problems initially of course, because we launched very early, but we've been able to work out those issues and continue to grow it since then.

Yeah, I remember seeing. I think it was a LinkedIn post. You had shared it, and I was like, what is this? Because you weren't really talking about it the months before. And I was like, I didn't know yet, man. You know what I mean? It's like you didn't bring it up at the conference. You weren't talking about it. And then all of a sudden I was like, this is awesome, but what's going on here? And I remember being on the speaker call for PodFest Global Summit. And for anyone who doesn't know Chris, check out episode 111. He's fantastic. He's also been on the show. And Podfest is a great organization that I highly recommend you come join us with. But we were on the speaker call for that, and, you know, you were talking about it, you sponsored it, and I was just like, I think I had already signed up at that point. But when you started talking about it even more, I. I was already telling people about it because I knew what you were doing, and I know for a fact people signed up.

Oh, yeah. And you've helped a lot, man. I've done some, like, for the audience listening today, I've done some coaching with Mario. He's helped train me a little bit, and we're reaching more people now since I've talked to him, because that's your area of expertise, that's not mine. I'm solving a problem. You're helping me find the people that have the problem. So I appreciate that. That's just a little side note there. I had to say, well, I do.

Appreciate that and wasn't expecting it, but nonetheless it still appreciate it. But what you're doing is so. I see it as like my whole goal with this is I want to connect the world. And if you have 10 hours a week, I'm always telling my author clients what is the highest and best use of your time, you know, because when we're talking about business book publishing, it's like, well, what about this? What about this? It's again, so voluminous. I go, all I need from you is your expertise. The rest we can handle. Stay right here. Stay very niche. Stay very focused. Because it's like, what can only you do? Right now my team's working on stuff, and I'm very thankful for them. But right now, I'm the only one who can host my show. Yeah, you're the only one who can be doing this interview. Now. There's other stuff that can be going on And I think people get too deluded with all of it. And it brings me back to your software because if you only have 10 hours a week to do what you want, I would say that's better than having 100 hours a week because it's going to force you to go, okay, where's the highest and best use of my time? And the answer isn't, I would say for anyone hosting a show or any serious author or any CEO, it's not just doing all this other stuff. There's tons of ways to get the bookings. You should be doing the interviews. And I, you know, I, like you mentioned, I know people with other services, they're great. Some of them been on, some of them are coming on and I think they all have their place. And there's so many people.

There'S. I see.

Cooperation, not competition. But you have done something unique. And when I first used it, you were one of the first services to get me bookings nearly instantly in under seven days. And you don't even know this yet. It's in those notes I just showed you.

And it's one of the things I go, what is something that you did? And I go, you know what I mean? It's that proof of concept where if someone doesn't know you and they go to use this like right now. Anyone listening, check out podmatch. Okay. Eainterviews.com podmatch and you will see within, you know, I don't want to say any time frames, but it'll be a lot quicker and you'll have guests for your show as well as if you want to be a guest on show. It just works. So tell me a little bit more about the, you know, tell me about the behind the scenes. How are you pulling this off instead of just having yet another Facebook or yet another direct LinkedIn with names and all this and people still have to do it. How are you finding such high quality connections?

Yeah, man. First off, thanks for the kind words like seriously just made my day. So thank you. I really appreciate you saying all that means a lot and your support, your expertise, like you being where you're at, that makes my day. So thank you. Yeah, I'll go back to like when we started building it. So I've got the business partner in this. So I immediately, again, I'm looking to solve a need. So I wasn't going to be greedy in this at all. I knew that I wanted to do it quickly to help people, so I immediately brought that friend in as a partner. So we did all the legal stuff that you're supposed to do, right? So and said, okay, we're just going to work on this thing together now. And he's really the guy who's built everything as far as. And some subcontractors and some tools and things like that, of course. But I whiteboard it all out. I'd actually write up the technical documents of, like, here's what it needs to do, how it needs to work. And we just started building, man. Like, again, I pitched the idea to him on March 10 and March 11. We hit the ground running and we just went for it, and we just kind of had a vision for what it needed to do and. And then we started testing with users as early as we could. So we just bring on two or three people and just ask them, hey, what do you think? And what I actually ended up learning in that point, in that point, that the better feedback I was getting was from the people who didn't like it versus the ones who liked it early on. Because people are just like, this is so cool. There's nothing like this. And then there's other ones that are like, oh, it's really slow, or I don't understand what this does. And I was really, like, honing in on those people, which I think many of us, we want the gratification, right? So we kind of try to avoid that, even if it's subconscious. But I knew I needed to. If I really wanted this to do well, I had to be willing to let it hurt a little bit. So I just kind of really dove in and listen to those people and said, okay, if this was really going to work well for you, what would it need to do? And a more recent question to kind of fast forward, we kind of fill in the gaps here. But the more recent question I'm now asking people is, this is now, to the people who actually like it, I asked them this question. What would podmatch need to do in order for you to tell everybody you know about it? What'd you think about that question, man, that's like, super powerful, right? Like, they might say, like, oh, it needs to get me paid or needs to do this. But, like, I want to hear that information. If I can somehow take that and do something with it that helps people at a deeper level, that's going to be really big. So I want to make sure I'm asking that question. But along the way, we've built this whole thing based off asking questions, and we can get into exactly what it does and how it works, but it's all been based off of real time feedback that we're getting from people.

That's fantastic. And I want to ask you a specific question that I know you have a great answer to, but everyone's going to want to know. And it's actually another one from the notes that you haven't even seen yet. But it's around the security, because so many people are concerned with security nowadays. Why? How much have you looked into the security of your platform and why are you so confident about it?

Yeah, that's a good question. I'm glad you asked that. Actually, we don't really talk about this at all, but it's.

And that's what's in the notes. You absolutely need to. And lead with it because it's on everyone's mind and not a lot of people do and it freaks people out. Seriously.

Yeah, you're right. This is good coaching for me. This isn't even a podcast episode anymore. This is just coaching.

No, it's a legit question because.

Take the floor.

Yeah, so that was one of the median things we wanted to address. Just because we see the world we live in today where things, information of people's information just gets thrown out everywhere. Like it's all over the place and you can see things getting hacked more and more. And I don't want that to happen to us, obviously, but we wanted to make sure that was really safe for people. So the very first thing we did, before we even let people do beta testing, like we were still in alpha testing, I met with an attorney who specializes in this type of software, if you will, and just asked her some questions like what do I need to do to keep people safe? And one of the first things she mentioned is make sure there's No1under18 on the platform because that would already be. That could potentially cause some issues, which isn't directly security, but it's security of our IP. Right. If it turns out there's a bunch of 15 year old kids getting interviewed by people far older and there ends up being an issue, the whole thing could shut down. And that to me is a security issue in itself if we can't keep it up. So we made sure that it's like one of the first questions and it's actually the number one complaint. People are like, why does it need to know what year I was born? And I was just saying because we needed to know if you're over 18 and if you're not, it won't let you register. But anyway, so that's kind of like where we started. But the lawyer also gave us some other things. But long story short, the guy I'm working with, he. And I can't give up too much of his information, his work history, but he worked for the military as a database builder. And you can imagine a US Military database has got to be at least somewhat secure. Right? I mean, Mario, we can both agree it's got to be there. So. So what we did is we actually really worked hard to make sure it was gonna be really safe for people. And then on top of that, we actually have a friend who's in cybersecurity, also working government, and I'm just gonna leave the rest of it out there. But we asked him to actually do some stress testing. I was like, hey, from your perspective, is this safe? And the first runaround was during alpha testing. And he poked some holes in it, like, that we didn't think would be there to kind of give us a different frame of mind. But what we did is end up really doing some heavy patching and, like, actually really upping the security on it and making sure that it's a really safe platform. So we're, like, really proud to say today that it's up to, like, a super high standard. I can't say like military or government standard, but it's extremely safe for our members. And we call the people that are on podmatch our members. Not our users, not our customers. We call them our members because we want to consider it something that we're part of as well, a community. And I believe when you're part of a community, you want everyone to be safe in it. So we merely made sure that the security side of things was really up to par, because, again, those are my people, and I want to make sure I'm doing what I can to take care of them.

Yeah. And I wanted to highlight that because when I developed my SaaS for building WordPress websites, automatically, it was paramount. I mean, especially with WordPress and all the plugins and all this other stuff.

That's a whole other thing.

That's a whole nother topic there. I use WordPress as well, but I feel for you. You have done it, my friend.

And people just don't talk about it because it's not that sexy, cool thing. And I've had security experts on the show, and. And I was asking them some stuff.

There's at least three to four episodes where they worked for the FBI, the CIA, their cybersecurity experts. And it was just fascinating to Me, because it's like, I would say most people in the mainstream, they're irritated if they can't log in or they forget their password. Use LastPass, by the way.

Yes, I use that.

But there's so many people. It's like, oh, yeah, I'm secure. I have two FA on it. Or I have, you know, I forgot my password. And people are like thinking the tip of the iceberg. But the reality is it's much deeper than that. Everyone's got all these screens, everyone's got the Internet. And I think pretty much everyone's probably got near half a gig or gig Internet. I don't know anyone that's running. I remember when 5 meg connection, it was like, whoa, that's rocket fast. Now it's like, oh, It's. It's only 646. It's a slow day. Like, think back to 28 8. Like, relax for a second. Just enjoy what you have. But the reality is you can. I've actually processed payments doing over 80 miles an hour in a car from a hotspot.

You could be on a plane hacking something. With the Internet, you can be attacking stuff, and I'm not advising it. Okay. But the reality is if you do anything online, you need to protect yourself from a user standpoint, like use Carbonite.

Have a vpn. But especially if you have a software and own a server, holy smokes. That's a whole other thing. So when you were, when you were telling me just briefly, I was like, I'm definitely going to ask you this because too many people are wondering, too many people are losing trust in, let's just say different things. And one of them's on. Nevermind, I'm just going to shut up right there. But there's a lot of websites that people use nowadays that they don't trust what's happening to the information. So I'm glad you definitely secured it down.

Yeah, we did. And we made it so that there's a lot of things that we, we don't have access to. Like, we use Stripe, which does a pretty good job of keeping certain information private. We want to make sure that even from our standpoint, because right now it's me and my partner Jesse that are working on this, and that's fine. But what happens when we add a couple vas here? Like, we want to make sure still that everything is going to be safe and there's no information that ever gets shared. Like, we want our members to be able to use this and do so feeling secure. And some people May never think about it. They might hear this and be like, wow, I would have never thought about the security implications behind a SaaS. Right. I was there a few years ago, but now I realize that, like, no, they've trusted me to give me their information, even if it's just a name and email address. But they've trusted me with that. So I need to respect that and I need to honor that and do what I can to protect it.

So now that we covered the security side of stuff, because.

I just think it's so cool what you've done.

Yeah. Thanks, man.

Tell me more about the results now. What are some of the transformations you've seen? I know I've experienced it literally within the first week. It was already getting matches. I was like, this is way quicker. And I'll tell you, some of the timelines for the other ones are six to eight weeks later.

There was one I reached out to. Not gonna say who. Didn't really like, the guy wasn't super nice, to be honest. And he was like, well, just, no, I don't have a free trial. Idiotic. No, I don't have a free trial. Just get the full plan, but don't expect anything the first few months. Dude, you're not in sales, are you? Because you're doing everything you're not supposed to be doing. Needless to say, I'm more upset I didn't get to test the platform because.

Sometimes I don't need it. Sometimes I just dive in to say, hey, because there's a lot of people who watch the show, listen to the show, and they go, what do you recommend? I want to be able to say empirically, hey, here's what you should do. Here's what you shouldn't. You're definitely on the. Hey, sign up. This other one.

I. I've never been an advocate for. They're horrible, they're bad, blah, blah, blah, and just throw them under the bus because you don't need to. And I think people will just figure it out on their own. I do not promote them, though. But that was literally my firsthand experience. I'm more upset I didn't get to test it than anything. I don't care if I'm on it or not, because I frankly have a wait list of people. But I'm more upset because I'm like, I want to see the inside and how it works, but just based on the owners. I mean, if the owner's mentality is that, there's no way it's going to far exceed My expectations. You know what I mean? There's just some things that make common sense. So tell me about the transformations that people on the platform are having. If someone wants to sign up right now, which they should at EA interviews.com forward/podmatch, what should they be doing and what should they be. What should they expect to see in the next couple of weeks?

Yeah. So the way it works right now. And I'll actually mention something because you mentioned a cost. PodMatch is a free service for 90% of our users. And what I mean by that.

Which is smart because you get people to try it out.

Oh, yeah, yeah, definitely. And, you know, I did that for a specific reason. It goes back to the original reason I started. I saw a need that I wanted to help fill, and I remember. And Mario, I don't. You're like a legend, so maybe you didn't have this problem. But day one, when I started podcasting, finding guests and convincing them to come on a show that didn't yet exist wasn't super easy. People value their time, which they should. But it was really tough for me. So initially, I didn't have any budget. I was just getting started, saying I wanted to do it, and I had to grind to. To get started, man, like, to find my first 12.

It was the same for me, too.

Okay.

Nothing was handed to me. I had to work my tail off the first year to get everything the way I wanted. And. But I did have a goal that helps a lot to create a problem, because I heard John Lee Dumas told me, he's like, I get over 400 requests a month and I have eight slots. I go, that's a problem I want to have. So I just worked towards it. I said I was willing to do the first hundred completely on my own. No booking agencies, no software, no nothing. I didn't, frankly know about any of it. I knew there was stuff out there, but again, if it takes me four months to look into it, I can pick up the phone and email 15 times quicker. You know what I mean? So I just. Yeah, it took a lot to get it off the ground, but now I'm glad there's a wait list and people are months out. But this was my goal, you know, before I launched.

Yeah. Oh, definitely. Kind of going back to that. So for me, same thing. Like, I had a goal. I knew what I wanted to do. It was just tough to get there. So when I started Pod Match, I said, you know, I want this to be something that's free for people who really need it. And there's people out there who. They need this solution. So when I say free for 90% of people, I mean the free version of podmatch, we have a free version and we have a paid version. The free version will work for 90% of users. And that was that from day one was the goal. Can we make this work for 90% of people for free? And then, of course, in any industry you're in, doesn't matter what it is, there are always those 10% that are like the power users, the ones that say, I want a podcast every day, or I want to be able to search by these filters, or I want a check mark by my name. All these different things, which are all great. But we found that it's about 10% of people. And so that was the goal when we launched. We're actually hitting just over 8% right now. And we're actually implementing a couple of things I think will boost it up to that 10%. But those 10% are happy to be paying because they know that they're the name in the industry, right? They're the ones that really have a goal to make it a big business or they have a new book they want to promote. So they, maybe you're just doing three months of a paid membership instead of keeping on the free ones, they get a little bit of a boost. But we really wanted to serve those people, so that was really important. So what we found is with, with either side, free or paid, people immediately get matches. So I say immediately, there's always a bit of lag time. Cause it actually has to do, like there's an algorithm and a core and stuff like that that has to do the matching. And if like a hundred people sign up at the same time, which we've seen in some days, it can take like an hour or two for your initial match, but it'll match you with five people. Almost immediately, it say, it says these five people are great to interview, or vice versa. These five people could. You could have. They could. You could be on their podcast. And so the matching core works really fast. And we're actually on version three of that, and we're getting ready to launch version four, which will be even quicker and even more accurate to find more precise matches. And that was some feedback that you gave me to really improve that. We're like a week away from doing that now, which I'm excited about. But yeah, man, it's like, quick. Some people, They've said within 20 minutes they, like logged in, they already had Their matches, they're waiting for them. But the system will email you when it's ready, and then you just start messaging. But we built that inside the system too. We wanted it to really feel like similar to an online dating app because we modeled after a couple of them. So you can actually not only message back and forth, you can also schedule the interview, add the location. It'll send out calendar invites without ever having to exchange an email. If you don't want to exchange an email, you actually don't have to. It'll do it all inside there and then ask you to review each other afterwards. And yeah, I mean, we built it to be like, a very holistic problem solver.

Well, I'm glad to hear you're making it faster. It was already good to begin with because there's a big difference from three to four weeks. And then homeboy over here is telling me, just use it for two to three months and you'll see some traction. Like, I don't have two to three months to test this out.

Right.

And now you're dropping it down from. I mean, it sounds like you're. You're really dropping it down.

Yes. It's gonna be quicker and more accurate so that we give a match percentage, and we're actually gonna up that percentage. So the requirement that it's gonna have is gonna be more strenuous, if you will. But we're fine. We've really just been able to kind of figure out, like, okay, what makes a good match, and we're, like, letting the system figure that out, and it just will get better and better over time.

Wow, that's fantastic. It's great. I mean, I remember when you launched it, it was great then, and that's why I just started talking to people about it. And this is exciting.

So, yeah, man, thank you.

I think I might ask you something that. I'll see if I can pull it off. So who would you say it's the best for? You keep mentioning authors, obviously. Podcast host for finding people, podcast guest for finding the host. Who are. Do you have any stats or do you know. Here are the top five types of people we have on the platform, the archetypes, if you will.

Yeah, so we definitely have that. So first off is, like, authors, which is kind of general, but it's kind of a wide range of books. We do find entrepreneurship business to be really the driver, which, if you. You're in podcasting, that's kind of the driver of podcasting as well. Right. So we've got that as a Number one, number two seems to be coaches. So people that are actually, they are doing some form of coaching. And then after coaching, excuse me, after coaching, we have people that are in some sort, they're kind of coaches as well, but it's like more medical based. So people that are actually in some sort of mental health, physical health, that are really big into that industry and marketing is, is like all over the place. But people that are actual marketers, like if you hone in on it, like people that are true marketers, that's like actually a really big one. But I mean, you could be marketing your book, you could all kinds of things, you know. But true marketers are like kind of that fourth one, and I'm blanking on the like where it goes from there because there's actually a pretty big drop off after that. But those are really kind of the big four that we're hitting right now. But you know, we're adding people every day, so we're actually seeing it kind of the spread grow a little bit, which is. Or shrink a little bit, which is nice. You're seeing more categories of different kinds of people coming on. I didn't expect comedians to be on there, but we're actually seeing quite a bit of those, like increase, which is really kind of interesting. I don't think I'll ever go any of those podcasts, but it's kind of cool to see.

I think I have some insight on that. Perhaps it's not statistical, but I do believe.

Comedy is the number one category of podcasts. So if you go religion, comedy, business, entrepreneurship, house gathering, food stuff, and I know there's this chart on, there's literally hundreds of categories for Amazon and podcasting in general. I do believe it's either. I really am like 99.99% sure it's comedy.

Okay, cool.

Spirituality, I believe, is number two. Spirituality, religion. And I frankly would rather see it flipped personally, but comedy is for sure at the top. So I think just the sheer fact that it's for podcasters in podcasting, it doesn't surprise me because there's a few comedians that I've seen on multiple groups, platforms, whatever you want to call it, they're just all over the place. Like me. If you're serious about it and committed, you're just kind of all over the place. And there's people that have reached out to me and it's like we don't know each other or anything, but we just, you know, just like at events, you see each other enough at some point. It's how I've made some connections where I'm like, I know we've crossed paths like 15 times. I actually booked a meeting with someone at an event last week.

For that exact reason. I've seen her at Podfest. She's speaking at the next thing. Like I am. And it's literally been over a dozen times. I'm like, I just wanted to book a call and say hi because we've never talked in person. It's so interesting. It's a small community and everything. But I'd say, go on the comedy ones. I would.

I don't know if I'm funny enough, man.

You definitely could.

I'll give it a shot, Mario. I'm going to try one, but I'm going to call you out if they're like, you're terrible. And be like, Mario told me I should go over interviews, everybody.

Yeah. I've actually. One of the things I want to do is actually do stand up.

Really? Okay. Because I've always respect for that, man. I really do.

I think it would be interesting. I've.

I've said some things and not sure if I should have said them out loud. But here's the deal. Everyone was still laughing then, hey, you.

Need to give it a shot. But when you do that, you have to let me know because I want to make sure that I'm. I want to like, I want to be there in person. If it's an in person thing, I want to be there for that. That sounds cool.

I'm still working on the routine, but I'll definitely let you know. And I have another file like the one I showed you on your software. I have notes on everything and it's how you remember stuff. But I have one that's like stand up comedy one, stand up comedy two. And yeah, comedy's cool.

I'll kind of throw a little piece of wisdom out there. That's not just for comedy, but it was used in comedy. Somebody asked Jerry Seinfeld for advice to becoming a stand up comedian. Like, what should I do? And his response was like, not what you'd expect. I saw. It's an interview. He only said, write one joke every day. That's all he said. And he said that's how he got to where he was. He wrote one joke every day. So he literally wrote it. And he'd do it again the next day and write another one the next day and just keep on writing. But that works with anything you do. It's the repetition. It's the practice of what we do in business. Like, for me, Pod Match wasn't built overnight. It was one right step every day. But I thought that was interesting how we could kind of tie that together. Because he's a comedian.

Yeah. The consistency, you know, same thing I heard with. And I'll tell you, tell everyone. When you're more consistent with the show, it's like, well, how do I get more downloads? How do I get more bookings? Well, how often are you focused on bookings? How often are you dropping episodes? You know, how often are you letting people know you're even out there? It's like, you know the other one, when I'm talking to audiences, they're like, I want to increase sales. I want to attract more people, more clients. Cool. How many offers have you made this week? What do you mean? There we go. Don't ask me about anything else. Call someone right now.

So, you know who does that actually, is someone I really respect. I've done some real estate investing in my life, and not on, like a massive level or anything like that, but Brandon Turner of Biggerpockets, he's kind of the face of it. He writes all these real estate books, and his number one piece of advice for getting more real estate deals is to make more offers. And so he starts from just. He goes look at listings and make offers. He's like, if I make one offer a month, I probably won't get that one. He goes, but if I make 100 offers a month, I might actually get one, two, or even three deals. So he's like, it's all about doing the analyzation up front, figuring it out and just going after it, making it offers everywhere you possibly can, and it turns out to just be a numbers game. And so much of what we do, we've got to go through those motions, which is actually Seth Godin, I think you probably coined it, as the Practice is what he calls it. It's his latest book, and he just says it's the practice of what you need to do. And eventually practice turns into something it materializes. It's just so important. No matter what business you're in, doesn't matter. That's what you have to do. You have to be willing to do the reps. And eventually it pays off over time.

Yeah. And that's so important. One of my favorite quotes, I believe it's Wayne Gretzky. And he says, well, it's not the one where it's, I skate to where the puck's going to be, not where it is, but it never hurts to take a shot on goal. I'm like, oh, that's solid. What's gonna happen? You know, it doesn't work. So what? It's definitely not gonna work if you don't try.

100%, man. You're exactly right with that.

Well, I'm glad you're implementing it for PodMatch, and it's awesome to see you succeed with it and move forward. I got one more question for you.

All right.

It's time for the Wheel of Whatever.

And it was coming.

And I didn't say it earlier, even though I wanted to. Man, I'm getting really good at that spin. Some of them have been. They just don't look.

I'm impressed, man.

Look at that thing go. There we go. Hit the brakes, Abs. So my question for you is.

I was going to ask you something fun that's just like, you know, whatever, but I did this with someone else, and I got them to. Anyway. Tell me something that you're coming out with that no one knows about yet.

Jeez, man, look at that, man.

Yeah, I'm in the middle of actually my research for a book that I'm going to be publishing. I've maybe put it on my website a little bit, but it's kind of like, hidden and stuff like that because I'm not quite there. But it's something that I've been wanting to do for some time, and so that's something to be coming up in 2021. I'm actually going to begin writing as soon as January hits, and I have a plan to have it finished by summer and then doing all that, which is something you know about. So I probably shouldn't have just, like, announced it to you. I should have made up something totally different, because now you're going to be all over me about this. But, yeah, man, that's something that I'm doing. It's uncharted territory for me. I know nothing about it, but it's something that I just. Even after doing some podcast interviews, like, I guess I'm at 90 or something like that now, it's enough that I now feel that I actually have really honed in the message that I want to get out to the world, and that's something I'm really going to go for.

Good for you. You definitely should. And I had no clue about that. And I don't hound anyone if, you know, I'm always looking to help. But, you know, I do realize there is a thing as far as with timing. You know, some people like My show. We actually had produced over half a dozen other shows for years, my team and I, before I even launched mine.

Oh, wow. Okay.

It was timing. It's not that I had no idea what to do. I just was like, someday, someday, someday, someday. There's an interesting story about my very first guest, Tony Bernard. Very thankful for him. He's awesome. But episode one, I mean, it was. It was literally just a timing thing for me. So I can appreciate that. So, yeah, we're gonna. This is awesome. You're gonna love our sp. So we're going to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours. And it's true. And that's why you should visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori.

I went from having an idea and a possibility to actually getting my book published.

Or Catherine, thank you for making my.

Mom number one best selling author.

Or Mary Alice, what he got done.

For me in three days regarding my book launch.

Unmanageable. John Cody.

I've worked with Mario over the phone and online and he's been very helpful in getting me where I needed to go with promoting my books. Rocio, there's no way in the world I would have been able to do this with somebody else again. I've attempted it in the past. It didn't serve me. As a matter of fact, I ended up more frustrated than anything. So this has been a very seamless process. Adele, if you're looking for an amazing business coach, I highly recommend Mario Ficini or Bill Benner. I can't make a higher recommendation than.

To work with Mario Ficini.

He has been great for me and right now I won't work with anybody else except for Mario.

Hey, their words, not mine. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started now. And I look forward to hearing your transformation as the next video success story. Once again, that's free. Businessbook publishingcourse.com and we are back with the imperfect action round. Alex, are you ready to take imperfect action?

I am. Sorry. I'm laughing about the advertisement like lined up perfectly what we're talking about, but I'm ready. Let's go.

Yeah. That was a great. I had no idea. I thought you might reveal something about the platform. I'VE actually John and Stacy Curry. They own Semper Savage salad dressing, and it's delicious, number one. But number two, I was like. Did the whole thing. I was like, so what's a flavor you haven't announced yet that you're coming out with next? And she's like, oh. And I got an email from her staff. They were like, we didn't even know. How'd you get her to reveal it? Like, Wheel of Whatever. So I use that now for all myriad of purposes. So love it.

Let's get back into it. Man. I'm ready.

Yeah. What are we doing? Oh, the imperfect action round. Right. Question one. What is the fastest path to the profits?

The fastest path to the profits, man. For me, it's been making mistakes really quick and then recovering really fast because I have done a lot of wrong things and every time it's just showing me one wrong way that doesn't work right. It's how the light bulb was made. And my life has definitely been that. I've made a lot of mistakes. And I've gotten more and more comfortable with the mistakes I make because I'm able to then pivot and lead me closer to success. But for me, that's kind of been the big action for me.

You and me both. Great answer. Definitely me.

Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

Yeah, I see people that are not willing to focus and what I mean by that, if something's going to take longer than a few minutes. I find that people in today's world like, is there an easier way to do this or something faster and not even cheaper? People are willing to pay for something if it's quicker, but that's not always the right solution. Sometimes doing the time for something makes things more worthwhile. And being really willing to sit down and focus on something instead of have your TV on the background, your smartphone in your hand, checking your Instagram or TikTok, where people check these days, but actually saying, you know, I'm putting everything aside, I'm going to focus on this and see where it brings me. Instead of just quickly being like, this is going to take too much effort. If people will be willing to do that, I think they'd see much quicker results in their lives. And I can tell you that many people I've served, that's the biggest thing that I try to help them overcome.

Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

To keep them. First off, keep them for as long as you can. Right? To maximize the value is really about hearing them. People want to feel involved in something, so the quicker that you can keep them somehow in the loop with what you're doing and make them feel like they are somebody of value to you, that's going to keep them around much, much longer and keeping them involved in the entire process. Ask for feedback. Ask them to tell you when they like something, when they don't. Be willing to jump on calls with even random people that might be your customers, even if you don't have any direct contact with them. Like it could be completely a service. But really treating people like they're human is really what keeps people around. People want to feel like they belong to something and that they're actually part of it, not just another number. And I've found that that really helps a lot.

Great expert authority insight. Thank you for that. What books would you recommend to Expert authority World Man?

Here's the deal. I read, I think I've read 44 books this year. I love to read and I can't recommend all of them.

So I'll go with top three to five. We have room for a bonus six, but I always say top three to five.

You said top 35. Okay, I got that. No, I'm just kidding. First on my list for this year that I think has really been like just a huge book for me this year and for people. I've shared it with so many people. Indistractable by Nir Eyal. It's really uncovering what I consider to be a human superpower of not being able to be distracted. And it really goes deep into that goes back to the whole focus thing that I see being an issue for people. This really hits on the head. It's a fantastic book that I read this year that I really liked. Another one that I really just enjoyed reading.

I'm going to go with some of these books, aren't. I read a lot of galleys, so that book's actually not out. Let me think of a different one here. Fix this Next by Mike Michillowicz. Profit first is his more popular book previously, but now he's got this one called Fix this Next. It's really great about teaching you how to focus on the very next action that needs to happen to continue to grow your business. And that one was a really impactful one as well. And I'll dive in with one more. This one is like my personal all time favorite. I'm a believer. I love the Bible. And specifically I actually really have Made it a point. Every single day, I read Proverbs, which is one of the books in the Bible, and I read based off whatever day it is. So, like, the 17th of every month, I'm reading Proverbs, chapter 17. There's only 31 chapters, so it works. I just roll it over and read through it, and I really study it. And what I've actually found is most wisdom that the world shares in other books and things like that. You could actually almost put all of it into just the book of Proverbs, which kind of blows my mind. If you really start dissecting it and reading it, it's like there's whole books on just this one thing. Someone pulled this one concept and wrote an entire book on it. So that would be. That's my number one. And also the one that's kind of like. People don't really expect me to say, but, man, that's been really impactful in my life.

I'm glad you did mention it. And it's why I stopped. I've only messed up and said business books a few times.

I think the Bible's number one also. And it's interesting. There's 31 books, and most months have 30 to 31 days. That's not coincidence. And also, I love when people argue. They're like, no, it was Napoleon Hill. No, it's Dale Carnegie. No, like, no, he was the originator. I'm, like, wrong on both accounts on all of them.

It's so true, man. Yeah, but. Yeah, so I know it's not all business books, but I do read just a ton of business books. I will say this. One of my goals by the end of this year is to actually, for the first time since I was in high school, I suppose, actually pick up a book that is, like, just a fiction book. And I'm leaning towards a Star wars book, which I know makes me sound like a nerd, and I completely accept that and embrace it. But there's, like, this newer series with, like, Thrawn from Star Wars. I'm thinking, you know what? Maybe I'll pick up my first fiction book and read it and see how that goes. But we'll see.

Hey, nothing wrong with that. I'm a geek, too. And one of my favorite shows, Leverage. Have you ever seen it?

I've not, actually.

Oh, you'd love it, Hardison. He's like, age of the gate. Age of the geek, baby.

Okay. All right. I'll have to check that out.

I mean, we're not in. I respect farmers and Agriculture and I'm very thankful. But for sure we definitely are in the information and geek age, so.

Yes, we are.

All right, well where would you like people to learn more at?

Man, you've given them the right URL. Man, that website is perfect that you're sending people to send them straight back to your place. What is it?

Eainterviews.com podmatch that's it.

That's where I want people to go. That's the space to be. It'll have link. You can find links to me and stuff there. It'll all be there. That's the place they go. Or I'm guessing it'll be there. Maybe you talk about me at all in there.

We can make sure it does. And there's definitely be links for the show notes. Your social there, all that stuff is standard. We have epic show notes and I'm very proud of them. So.

Yes, you do. So just you can. You all can find me there. That is the place to go.

All right, well, appreciate you sharing, Alex. It's been a pleasure.

Yeah, thanks again, Mari. Appreciate it.

All right, Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless. You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate and qualify leads while increasing profit for you 24 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With the expert authority effect publishing method, it's easier and faster than ever. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit freebusinessbookpublishingcourse.com to get started. Now, once again, that's freebusinessbook publishingcourse.com. hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show. And also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.

I'll see you.