Lessons Learned From 100 Podcast Episodes | Ep 100

This is the hundredth episode of the whole Squad Eats podcast, and I thought I'd do something a little bit different. I have my team put together some questions and talk about why did I start the podcast? What did I learn over this hundred episodes? Some of my favorite episodes. I just, right before I hopped on, I glanced at these questions, so I have no idea what they are. I haven't, like, scripted these out or come up with any of these. I'm kind of just going off the top. So this is the hundredth episode. Most podcasts probably do like seven to 10 episodes and then fade out. This is our hundredth episode, and I am more excited now than I even was when I started the podcast based off of the experiences that I've had over the past hundred episodes. So let me get into the initial stuff, which is why did I even start a podcast in the first place? So I was. I was a guest on the Jobber podcast about two years ago, and when I was the guest, I had. But before that, I had made content online through my blog and through. I did podcasts and YouTube videos before that, and even news interviews. And I knew that I could articulate the value that I was bringing to the table. But in my business for flash consulting, I hadn't truly demonstrated up until four or five years. I didn't have the stories yet. So what inspired me to start the podcast was I went on the Jobber podcast. They literally flew me to Las Vegas. This is my first time on a podcast for the company, for my company, flew me to Las Vegas, paid me to be on a podcast show. Then the episode comes out, and I got 10 leads straight from that episode. So I'm like, okay, well, I need to be on more podcasts, clearly, because it's gonna get me leads. So I started reaching out to try to get on more podcasts. And what I realized was that it's much easier to get on podcasts when you have a podcast because you can pod swap and have people come on your show and you can go on their show slowly. It's evolved a little bit from that, which before it was a lot like, let me get on other people's show so that way I can get in front of their audience and hopefully they're audience hears me and then turns into customers, which we'll talk about some of these wins and things. But now that is a component of it. But now I think my mindset has shifted a little bit, which is, can I get my target audience people onto our show? So that way I can build a relationship with them. And how can I build a relationship with other people so that they could refer me business and have this initial conversation around that. Not so much just getting in front of their audience, but using the platform of my podcast to build relationships with people and have that initial conversation and obviously share it with the world to add value there as well. So how has your goal or focus for the show evolved over time? Okay, well, that's the second question, what I just said. It's evolved a lot because it was like, hey, I used to think this, and now this is. It's kind of changed my whole thought process. And for someone listening to this, a lot of times, you might think, oh, well, if I had a podcast, I could share my message out to the world, which is good. Yes. However, if you use. And you can, like, this is a solo episode, and I have solo episodes on here. But you could also use your podcast as an excuse or an opportunity to bring people on and build relationships with them. And you could highlight your potential clients on your podcast as a way to build trust and relationship as the initial conversation. And it makes you look good. All right, what was something you wish you'd known when you started? So when I first started, I was basically like, okay, I'm just gonna have people on and I'm gonna interview them, style questions, and I'm gonna deep dive. Kind of like how I built this framework and not really dig in too much dig in, but. But mostly, like, try to let them lead the conversation and guide it. And one of my good friends, Blair, if you're listening to this, shout out to you on this. About, like, seven episodes in, I was on the phone with him. He's like, bro, you gotta, like, drive the conversation and dig in and make sure that you clarify things. Because if you're thinking it or you're feeling it, so are the people that are listening. And I wish that I had known that when I started. I got better at it probably around episode 20, where I started to really, like, command authority and say, hey, okay, so it sounds like, da, da, da, but this is what our listeners are probably thinking, because I know the listeners that are listening to this. So how does this correlate to that? And it allowed me to make sure that I'm extracting the most amount of value for the people that are listening while also holding my authority and giving color commentary around what I've seen and almost building up my credibility as well. Not just having someone on to share their story and talk about whatever they want to Talk about. So I wish I knew that more when I started, but I know that now, and I'm getting better at it. How have your interviewing or storytelling skills improved since episode one? Well, that exact thing, which is the authority and the conversation piece, for sure. The other thing I would say is when guests come on. Like, to be honest, I interview guests and their episodes never make it onto the podcast. Because what I know now is that if I'm not giving value in these conversations, it's kind of a waste. Like, it's. I don't want to diminish the value that someone's going to get from listening to this, so I don't want to share things. So my interviewing or storytelling skills have improved because in all the conversations, I can feel it now. I'm like, okay, this is not going to be adding value. So let me try to save this and get as much value as I can and weave in, like, hey, can you tell me a story about that? Or dig in on, like, okay, that doesn't make any sense for this, but it sounds like maybe this over here. All right, what's the hardest part of staying consistent for 100 episodes now, we have it down pretty good. Like, today, when I'm recording this, this is podcast day. So I schedule once a month, I have five or six episodes that I just do back to back, and it gives me one day out of the month where I go in and bang them out. And then we have them ready to go for the next month, and we kind of build this backlog, which is great. A lot of people, initially, what I thought was going to be hard was, who the heck is going to. Who am I going to find to come on this podcast? Like, who am I going to even interview to even talk on the show? That's going to add value to people. And naturally, what you find is when you have a podcast, it's really easy to get guests to come on and tell their story to. You just need to figure out the guest that's going to make the most sense for the audience that you want to attract. So that was the first part. If I did a bunch of solo episodes, I could see how that would be hard for me. I make YouTube content, but it's like maybe 10 to 15 minutes, the podcast. What I found out from the data is that really, you want them to be at least like, 30, 40 minutes, because people are willing to spend time and talk, you know, on a podcast and willing to listen on a podcast, but you really got to give them some good, juicy stuff inside of there. And the conversational piece is good. So the hardest part about staying consistent was finding people. Now we are scheduled out probably, like, six months, so it's not really that hard anymore. Then just finding the time and building it into the schedule, which. That's why we do monthly recordings. All right, this section is called Biggest Lessons Learned. What are the top three lessons you've learned from your guests? That's a tough one. You know, every. Every recording session like this, it's like. It's. This is the. This is the best thing about podcasting, is that when you have these experts that come on your show, you instantly learn so much. And when I'm talking to people, I'm like, hey, I had this guy on my show, and here's exactly what he said. And, like, it transformed the way I thought. Some of the most recent ones, I had this guy, Ryan Tansom, on his episode just came out, and his framework of, like, there's three things, which is cash flow, wealth, and time, and you can prioritize them accordingly. That, to me, helped give me a framework for what I'm doing in my business, whether that's, am I optimizing for cash flow? Do I need a bunch of cash? Am I optimizing for time, or am I optimizing for wealth? And it's okay to do that as long as you have a game plan. That was a big one. Another lesson learned from your guests for me was having Marcus Sheridan on twice. He wrote this book. They ask, you answer, but he's a thought leader in home service and content creation. And every time I have a chance to talk to him, I learn more things, and he helps me expand the way that I think, and also, I feel like I can add value as well. So it's almost like we just vibe off of each other. So. Well, the last lesson for from guests, I would say when I interview home service business owners that have scaled or sold, that to me is very. Is a good lesson to know that, like, the people that I'm talking to, they're normal people, you know, like, they're not, like, God's gift to business or something. They're normal people that have done some cool stuff, but they're all, like, normal people. Like, I have guys that I talk to that, hey, I sold this company for $20 million. I run a $30 million business, and these are normal people that I'm getting on a call with for 30 minutes that I have the opportunity to ask them any question that I want, which is really, really awesome. So those would be the big three lessons. Patterns are common themes. Have you noticed along successful guests, again, they're just normal people. What I can say is that there's this thing in like business that everyone has to be mean and grumpy and haggity and like, you know, gotta get my dog eat dog. That's, that's bogus. Like, that's every single person that I've talked to is a nice person that cares about people and wants to create win win opportunities. No one's out here just trying to take people's money and get over on them. And I think that that's a narrative that's out there. That's just not true. What have you learned about business leadership or marketing that surprised you? I mean, in general, that thing like people really care about other people and they care about their team and they care about doing the right thing. It's not just dog eat dog world. How has, how, okay, how has podcasting helped you grow your own business or brand? What I can tell you is that people that spend hours on your content, like literally listening to content like this on a podcast or YouTube video, when you talk to them or they reach out to your business to work with you, there's instant credibility. Not only does it allow you to, you know, like, I'm a real person and you know what I'm about because you've listened to all this stuff that you've heard me say these things, but also it allows you to share your message and build your credibility by having other people on that are authorities. Right? So like having Neil Patel on my podcast and asking him whatever question that I wanted to for 30 minutes or an hour, probably a really cool thing for anyone that then I can say that I had that experience. And it also builds up my credibility that other people would want to come on my show. And wow, he had this guest on, you know, he must be a thought leader in the space as well. So. So that the other big piece of this is when for me, when I've had people, business owners on that I want to attract for my homes, for my digital marketing company. So for example, we work with one to $10 million home service businesses. When I have those type of people on our show and I can build credibility with them, usually it turns into some type of a sales opportunity because they recognize that my company knows what we're talking about, knows what we're doing, and also adds value. And it's not just let me come in here and tell these people that they need to spend More money on ads, but it's an actual good conversation. So those are a couple of ways. There's a couple other, like, simple ways, which is creating a bunch of content and allowing that content to be cut into shorts. And then post these things online and people see it and then they follow us. It's harder to. To quantify that, but it's a great thing. I would recommend doing it. All right, got a couple, two or three other sections here. Behind the scenes. What's the behind the scenes story that listeners wouldn't know about? Funny, stressful, or surprising? Okay, so I am getting a new office slash studio. I tell my wife, so I'm getting. And it's going to be in our basement. But I actually record this in a. In my guest bedroom. And I have one, like, light to the left of me and I have a rickety old desk that I built during COVID that's nothing fancy. And then I have this microphone that's probably like 20, 30 bucks on Amazon. This is not some, like, big production or something. It's literally me getting on and recording things. So it's, it's nothing too huge. How do you prepare for an interview now versus in the early days? All right, so before I used to be the one that was pulling all of the interviews, doing the research, and it took me a good probably hour or two to research the interview process and talk through things. And now I have a. We have an admin at my company and I basically build a process out for her. And so she does the research and. And then she adds the. We have an outline for every single person where we kind of have their bio and then some basic questions. The cool thing now at this point of doing 100 episodes is that I have a loose structure, but I know what I want to get out of the conversation for our listeners. So it allows me to ask very pointed questions to make sure that whatever this guest's expertise is, that I can draw out what it is that I want to know. And I usually lines up with the problems or the solutions that our target listener wants to hear. So it's definitely transit. It's transformed over, you know, two years into what it is now. What episode or guest took the most work behind the scenes? I would say some of the bigger authors, like Mike Michalowicz. Marcus, now that he's been on, it's fine. Neil Patel actually wasn't too much. I would say Mike potentially, because Mike Michalowicz, he came on, he's the author of Profit first, which is like A game changing book for me and I always highly recommend it. With Mike, there was a little bit I had to go through. We actually had to reschedule it and then kind of get on. We only had 30 minutes, ask him some questions, but, like, it was a really good conversation. And I use that actually in our sales process to share because I think his books are amazing. And it was a really fun episode to do, but there's a lot of back and forth to try to like, figure out when we're going to record and how we're going to do it, and a couple hoops that we had to jump through. What's your podcast set up like? Well, I just, It's. How's it change? It's literally the same thing. 100 episodes. It's about to change with a minor studio upgrade, but it's been pretty much the same. Have there been any near disasters or technical fails that stick out? Of course. I, to be honest, I have never, I've never not hit record because what I do is I hit record and then I actually count down. It's just like in my process now. But near disasters. Like sometimes people's Internet drops. Shoot, my Internet drops. Sometimes when I'm on podcast, technical fails, like, they're really glitchy or they have an echo. I have one episode where there's like a really bad echo because a person and I didn't call it out and I realized. And then at the end I'm like, oh my gosh. Okay, this is not good. So some of those things, I think you get through them and, you know, you learn from those. But there's a lot of tools out there. Like I use Riverside to record and. But there's also Streamyard or these other ones and they, they, they take a lot of the technical stuff out of it. You just kind of hop on and hit record. That's really it. All right, favorite moments. I'm going to hit a couple of these. Let's see. Which episode are your personal favorites and why? Chuck Toki. That was a cool one. That, that one has over a thousand views on YouTube. That one, how to close at 65% for your home service business. Great episode. Just like a really good dude and open book. And I've never sold at a home service business like directly, like big ticket stuff. In that episode, I was able to ask all the questions that I would want to ask if I was a salesperson for big ticket home service stuff. So that was a really good one. Obviously having Neil Patel on was really cool. The episode itself wasn't that earth shattering, but it was just cool. You know, I listened to him for years, and then to spend 30 minutes to an hour with him on a. On a live call where I could ask him any question that I want and have an interaction with him was really cool. And then any other authors, like John Warlow, Built to Sell, like, that was cool. Just getting to talk with him about the book that I read. And then how does this correlate to home service and other people? There's a lot of cool guests. Was there a guest who completely changed your perspective on something? Yes, I interviewed a guy. Shoot, I don't even remember his name. He was British, and it was about podcasting. He was from England, not British. I guess he is British. It was about podcasting, and this kind of changed my thought process about podcasting. Like, what I talked about in the beginning, that was a big one. Having Marcus and Neil Patel and talking about AI search and formulating my thought process and bouncing off my ideas with them, which is really cool. And it's. It's great, you know, for our company, as. As a digital marketing consulting company, because I can. In conversations, I'm like, hey, I had Neil Patel on, I had Marcus Sheridan on. I literally asked them 30 minutes to an hour. We talked about AI search, and I bounced off ideas of what they thought and what we're doing, and everything checked out. And also what they told me we implemented on our side as well. So very cool opportunities that podcast has opened up. What's the moment that made you realize the podcast was really making an impact? Well, one, when we get clients, when someone's like, yeah, I've been listening to your podcast for six months, and I love all these episodes, and we want to work with you. Okay, great. That's a real impact. The other thing is, you don't know what. You know, you make content online, and it's always been like this for me and any other content creator, I would say, like, you make content online and you have no idea who's watching it, who's listening to it, what, what they're taking away from it. And, you know, there's glimpses of reviews or comments or people that are just like, hey, dude, like, thanks so much for sharing this. And that is really cool. I can say one instance in particular, a company was like, hey, I've been following you for six months, and I listened to all your stuff, and you helped me get to a million dollars in revenue. And I had literally no idea of this person. Very, very Cool impact that content in general can make on people. Which episode got the most listener feedback or sparked the best conversations? There's a bunch of them. That Chuck one probably is the best one, I would say. All right, the last section here, Impact and growth. How has a podcast influenced your company or your personal brand? What I can tell you, there's a book called Marketing to the Affluent from Dan Kennedy. And I read this book, which is one of the reasons why I started the podcast. And he said that as you charge more money, people work with you because of who you are, not what you do. And having a podcast and getting associated with some of these bigger name people, authors, content creators, being on other people's podcasts and shows, it instantly gives the story that your target audience wants to tell people of why they work with you and why you charge more a month. And it validates your pricing. We like my company, I would say we're probably above average for our pricing. And I don't even know the last time we ever got a price objection. Because the personal brand and the what we do and the value that we bring to the table, I feel like is there. And people can justify that. It makes sense because of these things. So that's the first part. The second thing is having this content in this platform to be able to bring on subject matter experts. We have 17 people on my company, and it allows me to take those subject matter experts, distill down the transcripts and the thought process, and easily give it to my team and say, hey guys, I had this person on the show. Here's what we talked about, and here's some good takeaways for this from this episode. Learn this very quickly and then you can execute it with your. With your clients. So it's not only helped us internally, but also externally. What's been the most surprising opportunity that came from the podcast? Well, that initial Jobber podcast that I was on has now bloomed into a bunch of. A bunch of opportunities with Jobber in general. Like, I'm going, I'm as. I'm recording this. It's August 10th. I'm going back out there in two weeks. I'm going back out to Las Vegas. I think this is the fourth or fifth time with Jobber where I'm recording four episodes. Last time I was there, I did six episodes. And like they pay me to do it also. It's my target part of my target audience, getting in front of those people that. And then now I'm doing webinars with them. I'm a Brand ambassador for Jobber. So that part in general has really turned into something that I never in a million years would have ever thought that would be possible. Or doing, you know, doing digital marketing for home service businesses, remote, and then being flown to Las Vegas and doing podcasts and doing webinars. The last webinar that we did with Jabra had 1700 people registered. Like, imagine a stadium or something with 1700 people. That's listening to you, what you have to say, and watching your stuff. Like, that's alive. Like, that's insane. So that's really cool. I would say some of the other surprising opportunities would be like, people definitely come out of the woodworks to try to, like, sponsor or do things with you or pay money to be in front of your audience, which we don't have, like a huge audience. You know, I think we have 1500 subscribers at this point on YouTube and, you know, decent listener base on the podcast and other platforms. But people are willing to, you know, come on your show or be a sponsor. I don't have any sponsors for this show because I don't want to dilute the message. But. But that's been really surprising to me. So this is a hundred episode, 100, which is really cool. If you, if you listen to this podcast. I don't know, everyone listens to the podcast. The stats, the data is all skewed and you have no idea. But if you like this type of. If you like the content that I put out, one way that you could give me a shout out is leaving us a review on whatever platform that you're listening to. This, it just helps say, like, one of those signals is like, hey, dude, I've been listening to this. I like your stuff. That would be very helpful. If not, it's all good, you know, sharing the podcast with people going on YouTube, liking or subscribing to different things, or even connecting on LinkedIn or other platforms. And DM is always cool too. But I'm always happy to be your resource. If you ever have any questions or comments about things that you would want to see or guess or whatever, feel free to shoot them over. We have Flash Consulting, phlash consulting.com? can always put stuff in there and just want to say thank you so much for being a listener and I appreciate it and look forward to the next hundred episodes.