The Influencer's Secret: How Knowing Your Purpose Helps Your Podcasting With Matt Brown Of The Matt Brown Show

Wish you were one of those influencers with raving fans who binge on your every word, consume all your content, buy everything you have to sell, and demand even more. Then stay tuned while Authority magazine columnist and buzzfeed contributor Tracy Hazzard shares strategies, tips and tactics from top videocasters, podcasters, authors and social influencers on creating that bingeable factor. Now let's join Tracy as she explores how to rise above all the digital noise with the Binge Factor.

Hey everyone.

Welcome to the Binge Factor.

I'm Tracy Hazard and I have a.

Podcaster whose mission is very clear. He wants to facilitate the growth of aspiring entrepreneurs and business leaders and steer them towards meaningful impact in the world. This is what he stated and he's.

Done that in a way that caught my eye.

Because when your mission is so outwardly.

Focused and yet your show is named.

After you, how can it actually work? And in Matt Brown's case, that's who.

We have on the show today.

Matt Brown, the host of the Matt Brown Show. It's working and it's worked for 850 episodes. Millions of downloads later. But this is not my advice for all of you. So as you hear this, I want you to understand where we're going with Matt. I'm doing this ahead of time rather.

Than telling you this in post because.

I want you to listen with this understanding. If you tried to create the Matt Brown show today, if he tried to create the Matt Brown show today, it would not work. And the reason it would not work is because of the competitive landscape, because of the pendulum swing for the what's going on in the world and the economy. And the outward focus of his mission would be counterproductive with a show named after yourself. So it would not work today. But that doesn't mean it isn't working and hasn't worked for Matt for all this time. But that's because of when he started his show. So this is one of those things where you model someone and you try to use what they've done as a success and it won't work today. So I'm warning you ahead of time.

Not to follow that. But Matt has tons of great advice.

And all kinds of successful tactics that you can employ and he's really a fantastic business leader. So let me tell you a little bit more about Matt. Matt Brown is a veteran founder and entrepreneur zealously dedicated to aiding entrepreneurs, CEOs, business leaders, and the broader business community in fostering positive change.

Change.

As the host of the Matt Brown Show, Matt has steered over 850 episodes to success, making it a powerhouse of insights with millions of downloads. He's recognized for a superpower of compelling business leaders to reveal their well guarded secrets. He has crafted a network of unmatched in depth and diversity, hosting a sterling array of guests including billionaires from six continents, New York Times bestselling authors, Navy Seals, prominent professors, scientists, and a legion of business thought leaders. He's a three times bestselling author with accolades including your Inner Game, Secrets of Fail and Secrets of influence that have established him as a significant voice in the entrepreneurial world. A reputation cemented by recognition such as being named among the 25 most influential people in technology by CIO Views magazine and finding a place in Fast Company's magazine list of most influential people in business.

He has his own business, obviously.

He's known for his leadership interventions where.

Professional speaking, masterclasses, personalized coaching sessions, all.

Of those are places for him to share his wealth of knowledge accumulated over years of hands on experience and ushering that positive change in the business world one startup and one leader at a time. So let's hear from Matt Brown and the secrets to creating a really exclusive podcast that goes beyond the typical 100 episodes. Let's hear from Matt Brown.

Matt, so glad to have you here. At 0.2% of all podcasters get to 750 or more. 0.2% and it's even less if you look at like overall podcasters. That's just the active ones. So I am just astounded by your stamina on that. And before we were talking you were saying something about how like you really wish you could quit it, but you can't, you can't quit podcasting. Why is that?

Oh Jesus. Become part of my identity here. And, but also just to let everyone know, like thank you Tracy for pointing that out because I don't really measure my success against volume of output, do you know what I mean? I'd rather measure myself against value of impact or something like that, you know what I mean? But yes, there's a graveyard of shows that could have been, you know what I mean? Like two, three episodes, maybe 12. And they kind of like self published books in some sense where 90% of self published books sell less than 100 books in total. So largely self publishing is what podcasting is. You're self publishing your ideas or other people's ideas and so on. And so podcasting is the same. And so over the years, yes, I've wanted to quit many, many times to answer your question, Succinctly, why didn't I quit? Is really just, again, it's the map branch part of my identity. I think I've been able to really make a positive difference to a lot of people in so many different areas, from cryptocurrency to stories of failure to mindset to network growth and influence. And I've written three books off the show, and I've built an amazing network of billionaires and New York Times bestselling authors from all around the world. And so when you look back over that journey, how can you quit? Like, what would you do if you do? You know what I mean? Like, it's different if you quit after, like, six months, but if you've been doing it for a decade, it's a pretty hard thing just to turn off. I mean, to be honest with you, the show actually was the reason why I'm in America. So it gave me that opportunity to pursue what I believe is still true, which is the American dream. And so I was always doing the right thing in the wrong country.

And. Well, is that because podcasting is more popular here? Like, is that what drew you in? What's the story behind you coming over to America for that?

Yes, it's a great question. So, look, I mean, when I started podcasting, podcasting wasn't a thing, especially in Africa. I mean, I think there was like, maybe Joe Rogan and maybe a few others, but in South Africa, where I'm from, and in Africa in General, there was zero podcasters. And I just wanted to do three episodes. I've done over 800 now, and I wanted to just have some content for a product I was launching. And eventually I believe that the medium chooses you. And to be honest, I sucked at it in the beginning. It wasn't even called the Matt Brown Show. It was called the Digital Kung Fu Show. And only at around episode 64, one of my friends, Richard Mulholland, says to me, he goes, dude, whenever I'm at Entrepreneurs Organization, and someone says to me, what's my favorite podcast? I mentioned the Digital Kung Fu show, and I don't know why I have to say that, because it should be called. It should be called the Matt Brown Show. And I'm like, you're right, maybe I should do that. And so I did. And then the whole media consumption ecosystem changed in Africa and around the world, and podcasting became a thing that wasn't off center. It became centered to a lot of things, and a lot of media personalities moved into the space. And I was just first. First mover advantage.

Well, and that's really my. When we first kind of connected up and I started to get to understand you is my first comment is, I don't go on a show that's named after the host. I just don't do it. Like, we have a whole policy here. But you started a decade ago, and the advice is so different back then than it is today. Somebody starts a show with their name on it, they're competing against the celebrities. It's much, much harder to do that today. But you built up your influence. You built that up over time, and you earned that right to call your show this. That's what your friend was telling you. You earned the right to call it the Matt Brown show in what you gave and what you're providing in terms of value.

Yeah. So I think that when you're doing a show, I think there's many ways to climb a mountain. But I. Unfortunately for me, to your point, longevity versus influence, for me to rebrand my show now, I'd lose a lot of equity. Like, it's this. All my books are, you know, it's just. It's everywhere. And so for me, I'm too in it to rebrand it. And why. Why would I rebrand it? And it's kind of weird. Like, and it's. I don't see myself necessarily as an influencer. I don't see myself as wanting to compete with Howard Stern or Joe Rogan, because if I did, I would have quit nine years ago. But for me, I do it because I believe that a personal brand, when it intersects with something called influence, that's when you're able to really make a difference to the communities or audiences that you're trying to serve. And people buy people first. And I think if you're thinking about building an audience, as an example, let's call it the 101 hassle show for Entrepreneurs or whatever it is, and you're thinking about building an audience and selling it, then absolutely do that kind of brand. Like the binge factor, you Build, get to 10,000 downloads an episode and whatever, and maybe you can offload it to an acquirer somewhere, and that's fine. And guys are successful at that. Many girls are successful at that. But for me, this is who I am. This is my legacy. And so I'm building a legacy. So every interview I do with whoever it is, for me, when my son Googles his dad, what's he going to find? Do you know what I mean? Like, if I got hit by a bus tomorrow for argument's sake or today, God forbid, what would he find and what would anyone find about Matt Brown? What contribution did he make to society? And I didn't want that to be called 101 Street Hustle for you know what I mean? Like, I didn't. I wanted people to remember who I was and in terms of the contribution that I made to society and the influence that I wanted to create in society.

So I have to stop you right there because my 9 year old told me recently that I'm famous because I'm on YouTube. So they don't Google anything anymore. Their measure of whether or not you've created impact is whether or not you're on YouTube. So it depends on the age group you're talking to. Of course, my teenager thinks that if you're not on Instagram, you're no one. So yeah, I love that.

Understood. And life stages are different. And you're right. My best friend Brendan, he said to me the same thing. It's like his son overheard Brandon talking to his wife Daniela about me and he said, no, Matt's got a YouTube channel. So he didn't know that his son Saxon was listening. But he went onto Google and actually Oz YouTube brother and he found Matt Brown. I was like, oh, he's got 22000 subscribers. He must be legit.

He's legit. That's right. Like he's real. So let's talk about that. Your definition of influence, I really like it aligns completely with what I keep trying to get people to understand about influence. That's different from being a influencer that most people are out there talking or this influence marketing model. Talk about your definition of influence.

Well, influence isn't about elevating oneself, it's about elevating others up. And strategically, influence is about the ability to shift perceptions, inspire actions and drive decision making at scale. So the to your point around influencer marketing, if you and by the way I talk to as you do, I'm sure lots of CEOs and so forth and if I ask 10 of them, what's influence? I'll get 10 different answers. And I do this now I'm actually running a series called Secrets of Inference and I ask that question as a standing question and guess What? I get 10 different answers every single time. And the prevailing paradigm is influence is influencer marketing, meaning you have 1 million followers on Instagram and that makes you an influencer. But my view is, well, that's a pretty shitty form of influence because taking beautiful pictures of yourself and who knows Actually, how many of those followers are real, by the way? Because everything can be fake now, even podcast downloads, New York Times bestselling authority, Wall Street Journey Journal. Rather, best Everything can be bought. And so in that space, how much value or equity does Influencer really have? Also, if you think about a brand paying an influencer to promote their products to their supposed million followers, is that really the kind of influence that we want to have in the world? Is that really what influence is? And so what I'm doing with my book, Secrets of Influence, and with the series and all this kind of stuff is really helping business leaders and entrepreneurs and just the general community of people interested in contributing to society in a way that's positive. Because if you think about influence, it's ethics, it's about reputation, it's about credibility, like we were touched on earlier. It's about trust. And ultimately it's about leaving society in a better place. That is for me, what the North Star of influence is.

I think that goes back to your point about being difficult to quit podcasting. Because if it's your trust building model, it's you showing up every single day, it's part of the integrity, part of the trust that I have that you're going to be there for me as a listener, you're going to be there for me as a coach, as a guide. And when you're not there anymore, what does that say?

Absolutely. Well, listen, if you Google your name, what is someone going to find? So if you Google Matt Brown, you'll find a UFC fighter, and that's not me.

But if you Google Matt Brown, show, you'll find books, you'll find videos, you'll find multiple credibility signals is what I call it. And so that's what I'm very passionate about, is about helping business leaders understand that when you're trying to really differentiate yourself, make a positive impact in the markets that matter to you and to the customers that you serve, one has to think about holistically this idea of influence systems. So a podcast is part of that, a YouTube channel is part of that, having a LinkedIn page part of that. Instagram. But it matters less about the number of collective followers that you have, but about the story and the contribution and the value that you're creating to the markets that matter to you. And so that's what influence is. It's about elevating others, not yourself. And I think influencer marketing has been about elevating oneself. You pay me to promote you, so what am I doing? Am I elevating My community or am I elevating myself? Could be both, but it's primarily myself.

Well, and I think it's in decline. I think people don't really understand that. But when you are a. Look, I've worked in, I'm going to say it in influence for a really long time, but mine was in consumer products, right? So we would design and develop products that got bought every day at mass market retail and that is a form of influence. When I decide that that's going to go in to Target, Walmart, a lot of it's available and now it's there. You may not realize that, but if you don't intimately understand what the consumer needs, whether it's consuming content or consuming a product, then you're not serving them that product. Won't you can only go so far with you pushing it in their face to sell it if it doesn't deliver on the value and needs that they have.

Understood. Yeah, couldn't agree with you more. I mean I'm hearing some, I mean obviously we all know about the Israel Palestine situation at the moment and there was this one influencer, forget her name, but she was on X and she said one of her biggest sponsors paid or offered to pay her twice the amount of money if she would stop saying that. She's pro Palestine. Do you see what I mean? So that for me stinks of the worst kind of influence ethically that can exist in the modern day world. And when you think about the relationship, if you imagine influence being two sides of the same coin, right, the influence coin, you have ethically a positive influence and a negative influence. Traditionally it's been very negative, mostly negatives obviously influencer marketing, everyone's like, oh, if you're a brand you can reach more people and it outperforms digital advertising and da da, da, da. And of course in some cases that's true. But when you're looking at the broader business community that includes yourself, it includes me and many other entrepreneurs and CEOs and visionaries who are trying to change in industries. Many of my clients, they don't want to compete, they want to take over, they want to take an industry from A to B. They want to transform society, they want to transform industries. And so if you then ask yourself what's the currency to do that? It's influence, but it's not influencer marketing that's not going to get you to shape societies and transform industries. It's just not going to happen.

Well, I think the look at that is they're about numbers, right? This is what influencer marketing is all about. Do I have a million followers? Do I have that? Because you need it. Because the conversion's not as good. When we started our very first podcast on 3D printing, we were actually really popular in South Africa because they were dying for information back then. And that's where we really realized our global reach. And so we said, well, what do you want more of? Oh, we want to know more about printers. We want information about what happens when the power goes out, because the power goes out all the time here. And I was like, oh, we can do that now. You're serving the needs of what your community really has. Then everything we recommended, they would try. And so that came with power that we had to treat responsibly.

Absolutely.

That's the difference between the numbers and understanding the impact that you're having on someone spending their hard earned money and in some cases, very little of it. I have to be careful with what I recommend.

There you go. See, that's exactly such a well framed point. You landed it. Well done.

Yeah. So thinking about that, I didn't hear ads on your show. Have you ever done the advertising model on your show?

Never. Not once.

I'm so glad to hear your show as big as yours. That's never done it. I never have done it except as a test to show someone like how it works or done a concentrated project that I felt I was passionate about. But I don't do it. It's why I have my company potatized so that you, you never had to do it if you didn't want to.

Yeah. So, I mean, who likes advertising? Who likes to be sold? People like to buy, but they don't like to be sold. And so an ad, if you're doing a million downloads over a year, whatever it is, what happens is they use the CPA model. As you know, it's like cost per thousand downloads or whatever, and then we'll pay you a set fee. Who was that brand that contacted me that did a lot of UFC advertising anyway? And so I've always felt like that was selling out. Do you know what I mean? Like, why do I care about a hundred dollars when I'm going to frustrate my audience listening experience? Also, everybody else is also selling the same person's adverts. So it's like because they're in the.

Volume side of it because they're not converting really well. So they want to hit as many downloads as possible. They don't care how.

Yeah, Manscape. That was. Yeah.

Oh, yeah, they're all over. They try to hit as many podcasters as possible.

You know what I mean? So it's like, oh, so then so. Because I do believe that in the world and in the world, in business especially, everyone's trying to commoditize you. So if they see the same ad or they hear the same ad or multiple channels, they just going to associate you with the same thing. Also, I don't know if you behave like me, and maybe some of your audience do as well, but if I'm on. I was on Joe Rogan listening to Elon Musk and Lex Friedman doesn't advertise, but Joe Rogan does. And you hear these ads, what's the first thing you do? You pick up your phone and you skip through the ads to go back to the content. So what are you doing? You're just frustrating my listening experience. And I'm probably in the car, right? And so now I'm not even looking at the road.

So it's like you're making it dangerous.

Yeah, exactly. It's just I never believed in that. And so I've been able to commercialize my show or my brand, the Matt Brown show, in many, many other ways that have been far more lucrative. Way more lucrative, like, exponentially way more lucrative than selling an ad for 30 seconds to a manscape.

So let's talk about those. I call them alternative forms of monetization. So, like, let's talk about some of those forms of monetization. I'm sure you've tried a lot, but which ones did you find to be the most useful and the most valuable to you and your impact that you want to have in the world?

Yeah. Cool. So in 2019, the Bitcoin price ran, and I knew some of the main thought leaders in the space. And what I was noticing through my network was a number of CEOs and business owners were taking out second mortgages, credit card loans. They were selling their kids educational funds to buy more bitcoin. And when I heard that, I knew that that's never going to end well. And going back to this idea of influence and making a positive difference, what I started to do was throw these events. And so these events were free, but if you were interested in cryptocurrency trading or bitcoin trading or speculation, you could come to my events for free. And so I sold out a dozen shows across the country. I had Media deals with CNBC. My shows are being broadcast 52 countries around the world at a time. And I had every opportunity to stay in the cryptocurrency space. But I chose not to. And the reason why I chose not to is because you define yourself as an influencer not by what you say yes to, but by what you say no to. And so all I wanted to do was to help, I wanted to educate so that people understood the risks involved in cryptocurrency trading. Because let me tell you, I'm never selling my children's education fund to buy cryptocurrency ever. Like, ever. Like whoever's doing that's lost their mind.

I so agree. I'm just sitting here nodding away, but I so agree with you there.

Yeah, so events was a way for me to commercialize, right? In other forms, sponsorships and this kind of stuff with CNBC and so forth. Then also being able to extract someone's story. A lot of people believe that they have a great story, but they really suck at getting it out into the market. So I've spent a lot of time interviewing people, decision makers, business owners. I create digital television shows. So I'm the host of your digital television show. It's got nothing to do with me necessarily, but all I'm doing is with all my experience of asking the right questions that are designed to position you as an expert or a thought leader in your field. That that skill set is what I commercialized. And then of course, books. And then you write books, you do speaking opportunities. If you do one talk, you're making like nine and a half thousand dollars. No 30 second ads going to reward you as much. You know what I mean? And so I always hated advertising. I just always have. Which is ironic because in a previous life I spent I was head of strategy for Ogilvy in South Africa. But advertising as a podcast host, never believed in it. And I was always trying to innovate and pushing the boundaries of how do you commercialize a show like mine?

Yeah, and this is the thing, is that if the advertising is causing me to drop out of your show faster, there's not listen through, there's not impact, it's not having the effect that you wanted. And all the effort and time that you've put into your show is in decline and you really don't even know it because most people are only measuring their downloads.

Yeah, that's another one. How many subscribers do you have?

It's like, oh, I hate it when people ask me.

I've never cared. I've genuine and even I actually don't know. Like I actually don't know. So if you go to It, Yeah.

We got deep in the weeds with Spotify as statistics in the last year.

Okay.

And I was astoundingly disgusted, really, by what I found there. So they tell you who your followers are, but there is no way that the followers and the playthrough downloads go hand in hand. It's just not possible. You'd have to have such a high percentage, based on some of the claims of followers, that you'd have to have such a high percentage of your listens happening from Spotify, which isn't the case.

Yeah. So here's why I hate this conversation around how many downloads do you get? You mentioned it up front, or we touched on it up front about the graveyard of could have been shows. And I believe that the reason why most people quit with podcasting specifically is because they focused on the wrong thing. They focused on the amount of downloads and they go, I only got 50 downloads this episode. It's not worth my time. Do you see? And so they quit. And so when you quit something, you immediately lose all the impact or the potential impact for you to influence the world in the market in a better way. For me, here's what I believe is true. If you get those 50 downloads right, I care about the one download, not the 50 or the 5,000. I care about the one person. You listen to what I had to say with you. And because I know that you can change someone's life with one conversation. There's no such thing as an idle conversation, especially in the world of podcasting. And I believe that you can change the world one conversation at a time if you focus on the one person that you can make a difference to you. Because is that then not worth it? What's more important if you change someone, one individual's life for the better? If I can encourage someone to start a business or to persevere or to try something new, one person, what's that worth? Is it worth more than 50 downloads or is it worth less?

So I want to say that because you're talking about some of the things that you're doing, you've done series on failing, series on influences, you do series on various things. And I'm very sure that part of that is you aggregating really cool conversations that you want to have. And it's what's keeping podcasting alive and interesting for you, right? Making it even harder for you to quit. It's not only for your audience, but that's something for you. Is that really what's happening there when you're sort of thinking about, like, what.

Do I really want to talk about?

I want to talk about influencer, I.

Want to talk about failure.

This is where it all started. So when I moved to the States about 18 months ago, I lost all my networks. And when I totally land, I felt like the Italians after Second World War. You know, we don't know anyone, it's. But it's the land of opportunity. And so obviously I had a huge network back in Africa, but in the US obviously that all dissipated or disappeared. And so I sent a thousand emails to startups in California that had raised a million dollars or more in the preceding 12 months. So I introduced myself, a simple cold email said, listen, I run this popular business show, I'd love to interview you, get some free PR exposure. Click here to book your interviews. I didn't know what was really going to happen. And I write about this in my book and I give the actual email and all that kind of stuff. But I went to bed, I woke up the next morning, I had 190 booked interviews. And so I was like, holy, what has actually happened here? And so now I was able to grow this amazing network really, really quickly. But it was built in California, that was the series. And then I went built in Colorado, built in New York, built in Texas. And then I started to learn just how different each state was in terms of the types of startups that are being funded. So for argument's sake, or not for sake, for actual truth, reference facts, in Texas there are more health care funded startups than anywhere else than in any other states in America. Why? Who knows? But it's an observation. But that's where these series, this idea of a series started to come to the fore. And then I thought about, well, what is a series actually? So if you think about Netflix, right, you have all these different series as like all seasons, right? Season one, season two, season three. So the Matt Brown show is obviously like Lord of the Rings, but then you'd have these seasons tackling specific stories, right? And so that's why I borrowed that and I implemented it on my show, but not because I wanted to package things up for people, for my audience to be easily, to easily find things. I wanted to make a difference. So for argument's sake, this idea of Secrets of Failure was to paint a counter narrative in the world of business that I believe needed to be painted. So for argument's sake, if you go to LinkedIn, what do you see? You see success, everyone's successful. Jobs, mergers and acquisitions, companies being sold, everyone's winning, right? Everyone's winning. But behind all that winning is so much failure, so much hurt, so much suffering. And what I wanted to do was to bring that conversation out to let people know that if we all lived our LinkedIn timelines, we would all be millionaires. But we don't. Right? We do.

We really don't.

We don't. We don't at all. And so that's why I did that series, Secrets of Fail. And let me tell you that the stories on there were just ridiculous. That even surprised me. Millions of dollars lost, billions. Businesses being lost, People being led or families with no form of income. Da, da, da, da, da. And yet some of these guys persevered to build billion dollar businesses. In fact, the stories in my book, Secrets of Fail, literally feature business owners in aggregates with revenues over $10 billion. And so when you think about the impact that that can have. So as an example, what I want to, or what I'm starting to do now is to speak at universities, at colleges and things like that, because what do you learn at school? That if you fail at a test, it's bad. You didn't get an A. Oh, it's bad. Oh, you didn't get the right grades. You're not going to college, are you? And so when you leave that educational system and you move into the real world, what do you have in your mindset that failure is bad. And so what you and I know is that failure is a prerequisite to success. Right. You have to fail. If I don't fail every single day, I haven't had a good day. And that's what I mean by influence. You can take a child's life literally and changes by letting him or her know that failure is actually essential and that the doctrine that these school systems give you that failure is bad, you can let it all go. And when you let it all go, you can then elevate yourself and activate your true potential and so on.

Yeah, I think that is so critically important. It's something that we try to highlight here, is sort of understanding when you're looking at success, principles of podcasters who've really stuck it out and the amount of failure that is going on, the lack of analysis on that failure is a huge problem. Right. Why didn't it work? Was it focused on the wrong things? Was it didn't fit my business, didn't fit my personality? Like there are so many things that we don't even look at. We just go up failure and run.

Away from it without learning.

Yeah. We don't Reflect. I mean, this is idea. My mentor, he owns like hundreds of businesses, stupidly wealthy. And he basically said to me, you know, at the end of every year, what do we want? We want rest and recuperation. And he said to me, matthew, I actually believe that we should have rest and reflection. Look at all the things. And even doing it once a year is not really, you know what I mean? Like, you're losing a lot of the kind of personal growth that you could manifest for yourself, that you have to reflect. And again, it's amazing the people that shared. We did over 150 episodes just on that. And I've had people cry on the show because they start reliving that experience and then they're very apologetic because they're crying. And then I'm like, listen, dude, it's okay. This is what it's about, right? We all humans, we all up, we all make mistakes and it's a necessary journey that we go on. And I do believe that if we can shake the or disrupt the paradigm that failure is bad, that as a community of entrepreneurs and business leaders, we can actually do a better job at making a difference to society.

Yeah.

I think there's so much in that reflection process that helps us decide where we want to go, what's next, how to stick things out, how to not quit.

Right.

How to make it more effective.

And we don't do it enough.

So I'm so glad you mentioned that. So let's reflect a little on the show. What are the things you love the.

Most about your show?

See, now you're making me reflect.

That's right, yeah, yeah.

Probably the ability to access anyone I want. Like, you know how powerful that is?

Yeah.

I can send like the startup example with a thousand startups. That's when I realized like I was like, this is influence. And I've been able to, if I want to go there, wherever there is, and I need a network and that network is historically closed, or I don't know anybody in that network that can open up that door or I need to advertise to open up that network, which costs money. Right. And if you think about all the constraints around I want to go there and it's basically a closed network. I cannot get there. All I have to do is send one email to anybody in ypo EO Vistage like it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And nine times out of ten I'll be successful. And the reason for that is because of the story. Right? It's about the story. Behind the show, if you put the right story in front of the right person, you're able to really get them to. Well, I suppose the one way I can talk about it is you can emotionally trigger them. And I write about this in my book with emotional triggers. So the idea being is that if I. And by the way, I'm also appealing to someone's status. And the insight here is that if people love to talk about themselves. So as an example, if I want to meet, when I met Jordan Zimmerman, he literally said to me, so he runs Zimmerman Advertising as part of WPP. It's a $4 billion a year advertising company. Okay. So he hates creative awards as much as I do. And when he arrived, before we started recording, he said to me, I don't do podcasts. So I said to him, why did you decide to say yes to me? He says, well, if you've done 800 episodes, you're the type of guy I want to spend 30 minutes with. Do you see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

And so this is. It's about the story. So I would say that that is probably the number one thing I'm able to grow a network, and this idea of network is your net worth. And I'm able to get into any boardroom, open up any conversation with pretty much anyone with my story. And I think that's what's really probably the biggest asset behind the show today.

Oh, I so, so agree. I love that.

What about changes?

I'm sure you're reflecting on what you're going to do different. What's on going coming up next for your next series, your next book, what's next for you? And what are you reflecting on? The things that you might change in the upcoming year.

Yeah, well, I think podcasting's changed me as a human. I'm an introvert. I don't like people. I like people I know and I trust. And so, like, I was at a sort of my. Obviously with kids, you have to go to birthday parties and stuff. And we went to this place called Urban Air here in Colorado, and standing around, meeting these strange parents for me, I hate it. Like, I genuinely feel uncomfortable. I'm looking at every single way to get out of there. And I remember when I first started doing podcasting, I hated interviewing people. I used to script everything.

And now over time, I started to transform from this introvert to a contextual extrovert, meaning if you put a microphone in front of me now I'm suddenly an extrovert like this. And. And I'm okay with meeting Tracy Hazard for the first time. And I'm able to connect with you in a way that you remember, but that didn't come naturally to me. So when it comes historically, that was been the biggest transformation was who I became. I got over myself and I started to lead conversations. I started to become the influencer rather than interview the influencers. And then looking forward, it's all about really using the show and my platform to make a difference. That's all I care about. It's the only thing that motivates me. I'm not motivated by financial gain. If it comes, great, but I'm not, you know what I mean? Like, I don't get out bed going, how much money can I make today? But I care about leaving the world in a better place because it's just the only thing that really matters to me from a value system perspective. So more books, more talks, more series tackling real issues in the world of entrepreneurship and business that I believe based on my unique perspective, needs to be tackled. And so one last point on that, like with being a podcast host like yourself, over time you start to develop a rich perspective. In fact, you develop a richer perspective than anybody else. And I believe that if you always rich in perspective, you can always generate wealth. But if you pour in perspective, you will always remain poor.

I'm going to leave it right there because that's your binge factor. And so that's what I want to end in. And normally I do it somewhere during this show, but your binge factor, Matt Brown on the Matt Brown show, is simply that it is this broadening of perspective, but not with the point of like just being diverse, to be diverse. It is a broadening of perspective in.

A deep dive to learn about influence.

To learn about failure, to learn about crypto, to learn about these things. It is a deep dive in that and in that you're seeking out diverse experiences and diverse perspectives and that's what really changes and impacts your audience. At the end of the day, it's really the reason why I want to go and listen to all your shows and it's why I'm going to subscribe and listen to the next one and the next one and the next one. So the Matt Brown Show. Matt, thank you for being elite podcaster, doing so many shows and, and not quitting.

Thank you. And I love that point around perspective. It's funny. And like I said, no idle conversation. I never thought about it that way, but now I do. So that's all thanks to you.

Secrets to Influence. That's one of Matt's books, and I want to start there. We haven't really talked about influence in the same way that we've been talking.

About it here with Matt.

There's just a different definition of influence. We think so much of influencers as being that sort of outwardly defined somebody.

Who has lots and lots of followers.

We think of it in the terms of social media. But influence is so much more than that. If I can't influence you to buy something, if I can't influence you to listen to Matt Brown's show or any.

Other guest that I have on my.

Show, then I'm not really an influencer, right? I'm a podcaster, but I'm not a podcast influencer.

If I want to be a thought.

Leader, if I want to make people do something that's changing the world, I've got to become an influencer. And that's where you really have to think carefully about how you structure your show, how much commitment you give to it, how long you're willing to go into it, what it's going to take for you to really be an influencer. Be the person who has the ear of your audience and can move them to action. That is what we're looking for here. That is what you ultimately want to do. And for me, I have had this definition of I don't need millions of listeners, I don't. I need hundreds who are really dedicated to taking some action. They're going to start their podcast, they're going to promote their podcast better, they're going to stick with podcasting and last beyond a hundred episodes. That's my goal. My goal is to influence at that level of things. You've got to figure out that for yourself. What is your ultimate influence goal? If it's just to sell your course, that's not enough. I'm going to say that it's not enough to hawk something. Go run a sales email, go run a sales page, a landing page, an activecampaign, go run one of those things. But don't run a podcast for that. It's not effective enough. It takes too long for you to get to that level if that's your ultimate goal. But if your goal is to be able to influence your audience and have.

Them ask you what else you have to sell?

What's your next book?

What courses are you doing?

What workshop are you going to do next? Now you're an influencer in podcasting. That's what we are looking for. It's what we found when we started our very first show on 3D printing. It's what Matt Brown has found in his he's found that being that center of influence and moving that audience forward has ripples of impact into the world. And that's what he was looking for. So what are you looking for? Think carefully about this, reflect on this and really think about what kind of influence do you want to have in your market? What kind of influence do you want to have with your audience? What kind of influence is really going to achieve your ultimate why? So I'll leave you there for now, let you think that over. And of course, I'll be back next week with another podcaster and another perspective on the wonderful world of Binge Factor podcasting.

You've been listening to the Binge Factor Podcast. For more information on podcasting and videocasting success tips and tactics, please go to thebingefactor.com and be sure to listen to our other show for podcasters called Feed you'd Brand. If you'd like to be interviewed on this show, as well as featured in Tracy's column, please go to the bingefact factor.com guest and apply.