Magazine RainMaker Podcast
How To Leak-Proof Your Magazine Business
Are you looking to take your community magazine and your income to the next level. In this training Charlie McDermott reveals powerful strategies to drastically increase revenue for your magazine business without working harder. He shares innovative techniques to boost leads, prospect show rates, and sales conversions. Following an easy - Anti-Ghosting HACK', could mean over $160,000 in additional revenue per year.
Charlie discusses becoming a "category of one" in the eyes of prospects to escape competing on price, differentiating yourself with irresistible offers like branded podcasts, books, consulting, and more. He provides scripts for cold calling, email templates to get appointments, and leveraging social media videos to stop getting ghosted by prospects.
You'll learn how to keep clients for life, and a framework to potentially add over $420,000 in annual revenue without more work hours. Charlie shares real examples of bonuses and value stacks that allowed him to close deals at higher prices. Whether you're an experienced publisher or just starting out, this training is packed with actionable strategies to take your magazine business to new heights.
Magazine RainMaker
MagazineRainMaker.com
Are you looking to take your community magazine and your income to the next level. In this training Charlie McDermott reveals powerful strategies to drastically increase revenue for your magazine business without working harder. He shares innovative techniques to boost leads, prospect show rates, and sales conversions. Following an easy - Anti-Ghosting HACK', could mean over $160,000 in additional revenue per year.
Charlie discusses becoming a "category of one" in the eyes of prospects to escape competing on price, differentiating yourself with irresistible offers like branded podcasts, books, consulting, and more. He provides scripts for cold calling, email templates to get appointments, and leveraging social media videos to stop getting ghosted by prospects.
You'll learn how to keep clients for life, and a framework to potentially add over $420,000 in annual revenue without more work hours. Charlie shares real examples of bonuses and value stacks that allowed him to close deals at higher prices. Whether you're an experienced publisher or just starting out, this training is packed with actionable strategies to take your magazine business to new heights.
Magazine RainMaker
MagazineRainMaker.com
All right, let's do this. You guys ready how to leak proof your magazine business? And I don't know, should we let the latecomers in? Put you over there too? They just keep coming. All right, here's what we're going to cover today. Number one we all have leaks, right. I guess the big aha for me, as I went through the numbers and as you'll see, these are really conservative numbers I mean, you're looking at close to half a million dollars of increased revenue without really working any harder any longer. So you'll see how that all plays out. Heck, even half of that. Would you guys be okay with half of $420,000?
Speaker 2:Anyone.
Speaker 1:Going once.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Sounds good to me. The anti-ghosting hack Anyone ever get ghosted? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean it happens to all of us how to stop competing on price huge, huge, huge, huge, uh, irresistible cold calling. And email cold email scripts. I'll share with you all they're actually in the playbook the ultimate prospecting checklist. And, yeah, how to keep clients for life. So you got the playbook. Those of you who are just joining us, the playbook link is in the chat, so grab that and you'll be able to use that.
Speaker 1:All right, hey, I know a lot of you guys and this is awesome, but not everybody knows me and I always ask the question when I'm on a session, I or deciding to be on it why listen to this guy or gal? And, and for starters, I, I was a publisher, just like you all, just over three years and generated just over $5 million. I walked the talk for the most part. No one's perfect and prior to that, I was in the health club business. I had a chain of health clubs, grew it to $10 million, 350 staff, and grew it because of marketing. Frankly, after I sold the clubs, I ended up. I did a stint in Hollywood, not because I have any acting abilities whatsoever, but my son got into the acting world and we figured what the heck, let's get him out there and see if he really has talent and fingers crossed hopefully he doesn't so we could focus him on going to college like everybody else, right and dang it. The kid had some talent. He ended up getting a gig on a show called the Middle, but leading up to that I did about 23 different forms of marketing, different channels, to get him recognizable in a very crowded and cluttered place like Hollywood and use things as you can see there on the screen full-page ads in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety. Yeah, surprise, surprise, print works. Who knew? Right Now I spend my time consulting and the founder of Magazine Rainmaker.
Speaker 1:Before we get into this, I want everyone to be aware I'm here to help. Whether it's on this training and or after the training, you get to a point where you're like paralysis by analysis, so many things I want to do. What do I do first? Or maybe I know what I need to do, but I've got that fear. What if I make a mistake? Or I'm just freaking confused, been there? Or I'm frustrated. Yeah, I want to get there like yesterday.
Speaker 1:That was me when I first started with BVM, I had a financial need to just leapfrog. I didn't want to slowly get my revenue up and grow my magazine. I had to get there as fast as possible, so I was willing to do whatever it took. And the same thing now. I just invested 18 grand in a coaching program to get me to a whole different level. So, magazine, rainmakercom, slash, meet, yeah, free. I'm here to help Go there and I'm happy to spend some time with you and we'll customize a game plan for you.
Speaker 1:Four areas that we're going to cover and really the four main areas in your business where, yeah, it's leads right. Leads aren't booking, for whatever reason. Maybe we just can't flat out get all of them. That's usually the case, right. Or prospects aren't showing or ghosting us, or prospects don't buy, don't need any more leads. We just bumped up the closing rate significantly increase in sales. Or it's that rotating door of new client comes in, old client goes out, right. It's like how do I stem that? How do I just keep growing, growing, growing, growing, without the frustration of yes.
Speaker 1:I got a new client and then the next day somebody else wants to cancel. I call it the four don'ts. Leads don't book, prospects don't show, prospects don't buy, clients don't stay. So let's flip the switch. Let's get more quality leads to book. This is not about just running around with their head cut off, having 20 appointments a week but 19 of them really don't have marketing budgets. That is just exhausting. It burns us out. It's, frankly, it's not fun. Getting more prospects to show, how can we ensure that we get the most possible highest show rate? I'm going to share a hack with you where you'll get that how to get more prospects to buy Huge, huge. We'll share that with you. And then how to get them to stay for life.
Speaker 1:All right, let's start with what I call the power of one, Just one more lead. Think about just one more lead is all it takes, and everything else being equal, and I'm just using averages here. Okay, I know everybody is different, but average show rate of 80%, average closing rate of 20%. Hopefully yours is higher and if so, the numbers are even better. All right, but just one new lead a week for 50 weeks. We'll give you two weeks off for vacation, and what does that mean? That's upwards of $160,000. Now I'm averaging a sale to be about twenty thousand dollars. Okay, so your sales are averaging ten thousand dollars, still close to six figures. You get the idea. It doesn't take much to hit six figures simply by adding one more quality lead into your funnel per week. So really, what we're talking about here is doing the same work, just getting better results.
Speaker 1:Number one where to fish. You've got this in your playbook. If anyone joined us late, make sure you grab it in the chat. And I'm just gonna touch on a few here. One is overlooked, and whether you're brand new or you've been doing this for a while, your personal network, your phone. How many friends, family members do you have that you could just reach out with a simple text message and say hey, I'm the publisher in XYZ community. Who's your favorite X Pick? Your expert contributor you're looking for. And now you have a reason to do warm calls instead of cold calls when you think about it, right, Because if your Aunt Matilda says I go to Dennis Joe all the time In fact I go there extra because I like him so much he drills my teeth I don't even feel it. Whatever the reason is, you've got a reason now to call those experts to be warm versus cold.
Speaker 1:Social media connections maximizing all of your personal network to get as much squeeze, as much juice, from it as you possibly can. Direct messaging on social media Now, for some of you, this may be old hat. I think for many it's just we know it, but we're just not taking advantage of it. Connecting with folks on social media first and then reaching out to them, direct messaging them content. I'm all about positioning, differentiating ourselves from being a publisher, no offense, it's great. But the business owners how do they see us? I can say this because I was there. They see us as someone who wants to sell them something an ad, whatever it is, digital print doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:How do we again flip the script so that they see us differently? So they see us as the authority, as the expert, and one of those ways is putting out content that simply positions you as that expert. You're all experts, even those of you who are new. Get that content out there. I know in the case of BVM. Every month you get that drop-off sheet and it's loaded with great content. That alone is enough for a number of social media posts Doesn't mean that all the business owners are going to stop in their tracks and look at it.
Speaker 1:It's a cumulative game, right? It's long term strategy. They keep seeing you over and over again, months, even years, and all of a sudden you start getting calls. I was just working with a publisher yesterday, one of the top publishers from a sales standpoint, and he was just going hey, I met with this company a year ago. They are big B-I-G and they just reached out to me. And it wasn't by accident. It's because he continues to stay front of mind. They continue to be reminded subconsciously.
Speaker 1:Next thing you know they're sending an email, making a phone call, speaking webinars, speaking in front of the various groups in your community. Everyone should have just a PowerPoint presentation that you can do on the fly to be that authority, take videos of it, use it on social media. Business owners they don't need to listen to the whole seminar or the whole webinar for that matter, but they see that you are a leader. They see that you know what you're talking about, whether it's advertising or marketing. It doesn't have to be all about print. It's just how can I help businesses in my community grow? And when you come from that point of view, the sky's the limit in what you can share. And then, guess what, before you know it, they're saying hey, stacey, loved your webinar, loved your training, loved your talk. Can we get together and talk about marketing? I could really use more clients, more patients, more customers. That's how it works In those speaking engagements, especially webinars. Think about it. Even if no one shows up, it doesn't matter, because you can slice and dice that content up to fuel your social media for the next 30, 60, 90 days. That continues to position you as the expert, let alone what you can do with replays and all that Gift and Advantage is simply heard of Chet Holmes.
Speaker 1:You're familiar with what was the ultimate sales machine. He talked about the top 100. All right, I whittle it down for publishers to the top 20. Top 20 should be those businesses that were willing to invest, to go the extra mile to gain their attention, their affection, because you know they've got a sizable marketing budget and when you get them on board, we're not talking eighth page, quarter page or anything like that. And my recommendation to my group of publishers that I work with is be willing to invest, be willing to walk your talk.
Speaker 1:We're all about helping other businesses, selling them on marketing and advertising. What are we doing? So a gift in advance is just simply gifting that business owner, maybe that business owner that you've had a hard time getting behind the gatekeeper. Send them something. Some of these are a seminar all in of itself. This one also lead magnet. If you're not familiar with that term. What a lead magnet is? It's simply a inexpensive but perceived high value something, using our playbook as an example For the right audience. For magazine publishers, that playbook could be very, very valuable and they would be willing to give up what to get it. An email address, maybe a cell phone number, all right. So now you're building your list, you have the ability to reach back out and get them on your webinars or let them know hey, we've got this new offering, or whatever. The messaging is All right, but you're no longer chasing. They're coming to you and the dynamic is completely different than the cold dynamic. All right, let's take a look at podcast. Podcast, tom, you've heard of podcast, right, how's that work for you?
Speaker 2:It's great, I do it differently than you do.
Speaker 1:Oh, there is no magic to what I do. It's all about, and it's always been. Does it help you get appointments, however you do it? Does it help you get appointments, however you do it? Tough to say, because I want to learn a little bit more how you use it to open doors. Okay, all right. Well, I'm going to share that in a moment. But it doesn't matter. Even if your answer was I don't get any, I don't do it necessarily to get leads or whatnot. It's back to the authority. It's back to the content. It's back to helping businesses. It's back to working with businesses. You pick up the phone and call the CEO of XYZ company and say hey, you're invited to be on my show. There's a very, very good chance. I know from experience, having done 930 episodes with business owners, that they're going to say, yeah, let's do it, even if they don't know who you are or never met you. But what does a podcast do? First and foremost, it's just like a book. It's positioning You're a celebrity, you're an authority, and don't discount that. That's really, really important.
Speaker 1:Referral fee affiliates Think about offering some kind of referral fee or gift to encourage more referrals. So, for example, my health clubs we would do a contest on a regular basis and when the members came through the doors they would see what the prize was going to be that month or that quarter. So we'd have a really nice cool mountain bike hanging from the ceiling, for example, and whoever was the top referral would get it right. We make a big deal out of it. Send out newsletters and all that. You have the same opportunity here and the ability to just speak about it. I know with drop-offs sometimes it's hard to say, hey, charlie, how about referring your friends and all that. But if you have a reason, reward for that, all of a sudden it becomes a much easier conversation or email or whatever it is.
Speaker 1:Think about trade shows. I know Christy Lyons. She's based in Melbourne, florida. She's like the networking trade show queen. The cool thing about attending these trade shows is who typically attends them. Business owners have the booths there. Even better, you have a booth and you get to meet these decision makers face to face.
Speaker 1:Last one is drop-offs Planting some seeds here. We'll get deeper into these in another training. But think about what you can leave. That gives you an excuse to return in a few days to pick it up. All right, something of value, something that business owner won't just throw in the trash. I'm not talking about a media kit. Years ago there were and they're available, they're not that expensive Video books. You opened it up. It's very classy, nice cover. It looked like a hardback book. You open it up and there's a kind of a mini iPad in there. It wasn't an iPad but a video player and it's your way of getting your initial message to that business owner and a reason to come back and pick it up and, ideally, book an appointment.
Speaker 1:All right, let's get into this. What I call income robbing mistakes. Hey, sales is a process. No one, my guess, wakes up tomorrow and says I'm going to advertise in a magazine. First I have to know a magazine exists, which magazine it is, what the other options are.
Speaker 1:It's a series of events and I share that because I think all too often it's easy just to burn through leads. I've called this list a few times. I got who I got, I didn't get who I didn't get and those frigging gatekeepers. I need more leads. I don't know. I'm sure a lot of folks would love the one-day diet and look like that, or I'd even go for the one-day workout, but we all know that influencing our health takes more than just a one-time crack at it.
Speaker 1:Success in sales is a sequence of focused events over time. We all love it when we make a call and we book an appointment, but that's not the norm, right? So what about those 95, 80, however many percent of those that don't book? What do we do with them? Think sequence, to transition from one off or two off or whatever it is, cold calling or emailing, to strategically work through these leads to get my end result. Okay, and with the knowledge that, boy, if I can be omnipresent. And this is where your social media content comes into play, because now they'll recognize you and when you're reaching out to them over the phone, recognize you. And when you're reaching out to them over the phone leaving voicemail, email, direct messaging them on social media, stopping in, they're seeing your content on social media. Guess what that makes an impact? Okay.
Speaker 1:So, strategically laying it out, and a few things will happen. One, you'll get better results, obviously. Two, you'll find that when you stay consistent with this, there'll be a point where you'll get the majority of your responses. Might be day 17. Heck, it might be day 43. You'll just begin to notice a pattern and you'll be able to go huh, what did I do there? What was that one thing that made them want to reply to the email or pick up the phone, or allow me to get past the gatekeeper or whatever it is, or respond to me on social media? Okay, so sequence, sequence, sequence. All right, there's no magic in this particular sequence, and if you've got the ability to automate it, even better. But simple Excel spreadsheet will get the job done. All right, just so you can eyeball it. No, all right. Geez, day five, which we have two of there, because that's day five. There's always two day fives. You know, you knew that right. I know some of you have teams. Get to a point where you know Day seven. When someone reaches day seven, we're going to reach out to them on social media. Your virtual assistant can do that.
Speaker 1:I think the big problem is with multi-channel marketing. I think a lot of publishers stumble on. What exactly do I say? Great book. Anybody read this? You're familiar with Alex Hermosi. He's a big time fitness health club guy that morphed into. Now he owns literally over a hundred million million of various companies.
Speaker 1:But the concept of irresistible offers applies just as much to a health club, as it does to a publisher, as it does to any other business. Who's going to resist that cake? I could go for that right now. What if our offers could be as irresistible as that cake? We'd be doing quite well. So let's start with cold calls. This is a post I put out on social media a few weeks ago and the concept here is just to change our terminology a bit.
Speaker 1:An example of an irresistible offer in this case could be just using marketing strategy or marketing framework in your conversations and how you're able to implement a marketing strategy or marketing framework for, ideally, a well-known company in your community. Any of you have clients that are well-known in the community. Now, this training is for experienced publishers as well as brand new publishers. So if you're new and you've got no clients, that's okay, because, guess what, your company has clients all over North America. You can use other companies because your marketing framework is going to be the same as it is for every other company in North America. So don't discount that and go. I can't do that until I get my first few clients. An example script could be hey, we recently created a marketing strategy for ABC Landscaping. This proven framework has been a game changer for numerous businesses across the US. The email subject line would be take a look at what we did for ABC Landscaping.
Speaker 1:So the idea there is the business owner they know, abc Landscaping or whatever company it is in your community that you decide to use, and guess what? That email is going to get open? And in that email it's just simply a conversation about how you've helped that company. And I think I have the script here. Rather than memorizing it all right, I will, I will add the script to the playbook so you guys have that. But it goes something like this Take a look at what we did for company XYZ and then the email is short and sweet and it lets them know that, based on what you've seen on their website and social media and what you know of their company, it looks like they can benefit too.
Speaker 1:And just a simple hey, would you like to know more about what we did for company XYZ? All right, if that's the case, just reply to the email or hit my link and I get on my calendar. You now have something that you can rinse and repeat. Back to that sequencing send a voicemail, reach out again on email, call social media, direct messaging, drop into the company. That all make sense. Is that helpful?
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, good, good, all right, let's talk podcasts because, again, as I said to Tom, there's no magic in what we do. Everyone can do a podcast. We've got over 30 of these now all over North America the Good Neighbor podcast. The reason I started using it was because I was tired of getting ghosted. Ok, and I started during COVID and it was all Zoom meetings and obviously it's much easier to go someone on Zoom than an in-person.
Speaker 1:My strategy was then to provide value. First. It was also to position myself differently and to get to know them and, more importantly, for that guest to get to know me as a podcast host versus an ad rep. I didn't try to hide anything. There was no shenanigans, there was no bait and switch. If it was ever asked, I'd say, yeah, I make a living by and I'd hold the magazine up. At the end of the podcast I would hold my magazines up and in fact, they would see the magazines in the background and I would flat out say, hey, you do business in Naples. I can't believe we've never met before. We need to get together.
Speaker 1:I work with the residents that I'm holding my magazine and they go oh yeah, cool, let's do it. The difference there is. I've provided value to them. It's that law of reciprocity. You give value, you do something nice for someone. They feel compelled to do something nice for you. You do something nice for someone, they feel compelled to do something nice for you. And that's something nice is obviously not just make the appointment but actually show up for the appointment, and that was the big shift in my business. I was able to get in front of more people because of that.
Speaker 1:So the cold call script, as you can see on the page and it's in your playbook, is just simply hi. I'm hoping you can help me out. I'm trying to get an invitation through to whatever the business owner's name is. He or she was recently nominated or invited whatever you're comfortable with to be interviewed on the Good Neighbor podcast, and so two kind of offshoots of that is, if you're just beginning, they will of course ask what's a good neighbor podcast or what's the Tom's podcast, and your response should sound something like we and I think it's in the email follow-up here the podcast airs to tens of thousands of residents in whatever market area. So that's in the beginning. You'll get those questions. But once you get going and once the business owners see your podcast website and they see their competitors that were on your show. Guess what? There are no more questions. It's a request Tom Stacy, when can I get on your show? All right. So again, instead of you chasing the business, businesses, they start chasing you.
Speaker 1:So the email and, by the way I mentioned, we do the Good Inver podcast for over 30 publishers and we have a cold email campaign. And that's the first step for our publishers. They're not making calls. I call this a warm call, even though I have a cold call there, but we get a 40 to 60 percent open rate and a huge amount of clicks and schedules. These publishers are waking up, for example, next Monday, even though they left the office Friday with five appointments. Next week. They wake up on Monday with eight appointments because it's a great offer, it's irresistible, it's branding for your company. You'd be a bozo not to be on the show. So the email goes something like this Hi, this is booking agent, first name.
Speaker 1:All right, this is a little nuance that will pay you big rewards. Rather than it being from whomever Brianna or Todd that drops you down a notch, can Todd be this podcast producer guy and he's sending out emails and making phone calls and whatnot, sure, but if you had your team doing the bookings for your show, it's a whole nother level. So my recommendation is to use a booking agent. How much is it going to cost you? Zero. I will allow you to use our booking agent.
Speaker 1:Her name is Claire and she's a digital booking agent. She doesn't exist. Use someone. If you have someone in-house or VA, great. If you don't. If you have a spouse, great. If you don't use Claire. And if you don't feel comfortable with it, have fun with it. If someone ever asks who's this Claire person, charlie, she's just my digital assistant that I use. It's an AI. You can get away with it now with AI, right? No, it's just my AI creation and they'll go oh cool. So this is Claire booking agent for the Good Day Podcast. It airs at tens of thousands of residents in your market area. Your company was nominated to appear on the show. We spotlight many local companies and now it's your turn. Book your spot here to learn more. Go to the website. By the way, there's no charge to be on the show or to receive a copy of your episode. Any additional questions? Feel free to reply to this email or call or text Phone number. Thank you, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. Okay, podcast isn't the only game in town. Other irresistible offers is to plant a seed.
Speaker 1:This is something we just launched. We call it a book chapter interview. I don't know if you know Garfield Garfield Bell. He's got a magazine in Port St Lucie, florida, and the concept here is much like a podcast. But it's not a podcast, it's just an interview that you conduct and it can be done via Zoom or face-to-face, doesn't matter, and you can create a book out of it. Now I know the first reaction could be oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. That sounds like a lot of work, but it isn't. We got into this step-by-step in last month's training how to do this, so I'm just going to give you a real brief overview of it. And it's just simply interview the business owner, you take that transcript and have AI do its thing to create an interesting chapter from it.
Speaker 1:You don't need to do a printed book, you do a digital slash flip book. That costs you nothing and there is the ability for you to make a little nice side income, should you decide. Because think about it you interview 20 businesses and I know it says 50 of port, port st lucie's best. Spill the beans. My recommendation is go with 20 or 23 businesses. Pick a strange number. So people go oh, wow, 23, what's that all about? So now you have a book of 23 businesses, you've interviewed those business owners, you put them all in a book and ideally it's one of each expert that you're looking for.
Speaker 1:Then you go back to that business now that they have the flip book and you go Todd, todd, would you like your own hard copy of the book with you on the cover, or your business on the cover? And Todd's going yeah, yeah, I could. This would be great. I always wanted to write a book. So you charge him five hundred two thousand dollars to be on the cover, mark your books up five bucks per copy. Tom orders 100 copies. There's five hundred dollars for the books and books and 500 to 2 000 for easily putting him on the cover, and you got some great appointments.
Speaker 1:I would focus on your top 20 list for that video spotlight. I know publishers. They just walk into the business with their video production company in hand, ie their cell phone, and they interviewed the business and then they promoted on oh, this place, what's it called? Video YouTube? Is that it? Yeah, so they have a YouTube channel that they promote the business on right. Awesome, business owners love that. Free branding.
Speaker 1:And you get to know the business owner Listings report. You know we did this for a period of time and we, because of the good neighbor podcast, we didn't have to. But businesses love to be in directories. Create a directory, put it on the internet. Oh oh oh, I'm sorry, local direct listings report. I would use the bvm link and create a landing page that the businesses would go to and they could sign up to get their report. And then, of course, that's an easy appointment. Hey, let's review the report. Private Facebook group access.
Speaker 1:Giving them free leads. There are lead scrapers out there that you could just say Mr Business Owner, how would you like 20, 30, 50 free leads? Client reactivation campaign and this is a whole other training. But the ability to walk into a business and say how would you like to get 10 appointments over the next two weeks? Okay, and now the qualification is they need to have a list and you have to have the ability to be able to send out emails or text messages.
Speaker 1:Ok, but rarely do you find a business that is taking advantage of their prospect or past customer list. For them, it's all about the next sale, the next sale, next sale, the next sale, the next sale. For you to come in and take those hundreds of leads or what I call alumni clients who have left the practice or the business, and provide an offer for them to come back, you will get appointments, they will get customers. From that, you look like a hero and they want more Again, that's a whole. Nother training, just planting the seed, as in. You're only limited by your imagination. You all have different experiences and skill sets. Tap into that and make it work for you. You only need one. I wrote that podcast, like I said, for 930 episodes, and I would still be doing it if not for the hurricane moving me two and a half hours outside of my market area.
Speaker 1:All right, the cost of getting ghosted, let's talk about that. This one's an easy fix. Going back to our model four appointments a week, 50 weeks, that's 200 leads or 200 potential appointments face-to face over the course of a year. If we just bump our share rate up from 80 percent to 85 percent, we're talking about 10 more over the course of the year. It doesn't sound like much less than one a month, but 10 more over the course of the year and if we don't improve our conversion rate, it still means two extra sales.
Speaker 1:Right and back to that. $20,000 on average per sale. Again, nothing to sneeze about. $40,000, okay, I'd be happy with $20,000. I don't know about you. How do we do that? All right, so we booked the appointment and I'm going to put off to the side. However, you got them there. Whether you did a podcast or a cold call or whatnot, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:All right, Because, bottom line, the reason why we're getting ghosted is because they don't know us or they think they know us. They think they know us, as I just use the terminology, ad rep, right, someone who wants to sell me something. And at two o'clock, which is a half an hour before I'm supposed to meet with you, my business just blows up. My best employee decides to leave. Stuff happens. So the answer to that is connecting on a personal, and we do that via social media. The moment you book someone, whether it's you or someone on your team spend a few minutes finding them on social media and make that connection Become less and less a stranger and more and more a person, and a person who lives in the community where that person is doing business.
Speaker 1:As a health club owner for 23 years I, on a regular basis, would meet with ad reps. I did not want to meet with for one reason Because I knew they lived in the community and in the back of my mind and this was before Google reviews and all that in the back of my mind I thought someday they could be a member. So it's worth me spending whatever half hour with this individual because it could pay off down the road and, yeah, secondarily, it was well, maybe he or she will have something that can help my business. Okay. So that's the thought process, and the more you can make it clear to them that, yes, you live in the community because I know that, or they may not have connected the dots.
Speaker 1:And then part two of this strategy this is the next level Is record and send a personal message. Pick up your phone, and I have mine. I don't know if you can see it with the green screen and all that, but I'm set up with the, the whole tripod, and it's pretty easy just to hit the record button and in 30 seconds have a message out there. Anybody have done this, you guys? Have you done any sending out a personal video on social media?
Speaker 2:Okay, you do that probably like by direct message, or in what capacity?
Speaker 1:All right, let's walk through it. Great question. I did this with my group on Tuesday and these guys are advanced publishers and I was really surprised that they didn't even know this was a possibility. I'm just using LinkedIn as an example. Now you have to be connected. Okay, that goes back to part one of this. The sooner you can connect, the better. And then you're just simply going to find and this is a screenshot of my mobile phone You're going to find that contact and then, once you have the contact up, you're just going to click on that. What is that? Like a paper fly thing? What do you call those things? I don't know what's the name for that symbol. I know what to call it. I just have click there's the airplane the airplane.
Speaker 1:Okay, uh, paper airplane.
Speaker 1:We'll call it in the future, all right. So once you click that, it takes you to where you want to be. Unfortunately, my wife got a lot of videos as I was demo, demoing this for the group. And once you get to that page there you click the, the paperclip, and then, yeah, click to take a video or photo. Okay, so click that puppy and how do you like that mugshot? And then you hit the record button. And that was even better. It looks like I've been out drinking. Anyway, I should proof these before I actually do them live. Anyway, once you've recorded it, you hit send and your video is sent. Okay, so you show up differently Again.
Speaker 1:They get to know you and guess what. No one else is doing this. Is it worth 30 seconds? Yeah, the first time. It might be a little weird second time, but you get out of your head. You be you and guess what happens.
Speaker 1:You start meeting with these businesses and they start asking you questions, like you just did. You're like how did you do that video thing on LinkedIn or Facebook? So you become helpful and not just a ad rep? All right, okay, any questions on that? Does that make sense? Good, good, good. And then, of course, it goes without saying that we want to send them a confirmation and a reminder sequence. However you do that just so it stays in front of mind and they have the ability. I know, with our sequence that we put out for the publishers, they can click the link and reschedule. So it saves you a lot of time and I know with Calendly you can do those types of things as well. Man, that's a huge time saver from having to do that phone tag or text tag.
Speaker 1:Hey, how about next Tuesday at three? Nah, I have a meeting. How about Friday at four? Nah, that doesn't work. Okay, let's talk about getting more prospects to buy, because this is money right here. All right Back to our funnel Getting more prospects to show. We tweak the show rate to 85%. So what if we follow the same pattern here and we just look at bumping our buy rate, our conversion rate, up by 5%? Okay, that means over the course of the year we've got 11 extra sales, and that's just from 20 to 25%. Now what I'm going to share with you in a moment here I would be shocked if you implement some of this stuff, if your show rate or your conversion rate isn't well over 30%, or at least 30%. But again, I want to keep this conservative and we're not talking about adding any more appointments and we do that show rate hack thing. We get more people to get in front of, but at the end of the day, 11 additional sales that's real money, right, that's almost a quarter of a million dollars. So if anyone's paying attention, all three of those added together you're looking at four hundred and twenty thousand dollars of an increase without really working any harder for long. The old work smarter, not harder, routine. So how do we increase sales or our closing rate?
Speaker 1:Number one we need to get out of the commodity business Newsflash. You ain't the only one selling ads in a magazine. My health club, I wasn't the only one selling ads in a magazine. Right, my health club, I wasn't the only one selling fitness, and it's why I actually invested millions of dollars building a $20 million complex, because I saw these $10 a month health clubs coming my way and I said I don't want to be in that business. I want to be in the $100 a month health club business my way and I said I don't want to be in that business. I want to be in the $100 a month health club business, and so we built a mega facility that had a day spa, five swimming pools, two restaurants, fitness, basketball courts and on and on and on. No one could compete with that. We were in a whole different marketplace. So, ideally, that's where you want to be.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, if your product can be compared to your competition, buying decisions will always come down to price, and that puts us in a very awkward position because we can only discount so much, and the more we discount, the more sales we need for us to feel great about our income. Right, and yeah, as Roy Sutherland said, any fool can sell something for less. We see it all the time, just in mainstream business. Right, everyone's looking for the cheaper price. But you've all seen those surveys over and over again. When the consumer is interviewed, price is never at the top. When they make their buying decision, it's always I don't think I've ever heard it even in the top three.
Speaker 1:How do we, yeah, escape commodity that's the question and become a category one? All right, we focus on value versus price, and that doesn't mean that we pitch them on our product differently, because at the end of the day, it's their perception. And I can describe a pen 300 different ways, but they know this as a pen. And what are they willing to pay for? A pen, not $200. So value we make it impossible for your prospect to compare you to anyone else.
Speaker 1:When I was a publisher, it was easy to compare me with all the other magazines. The business owner had in their mind what an ad in the magazine was worth or what they were willing to pay or what they were used to paying or whatever it was. When you differentiate yourself, when you become that category of one, guess what Game over, we're talking higher prices simply because you're not forced to discount anymore and in fact, higher pricing for the business owner reflects your value. If done right, you get bigger packages, you get more digital, you get more everything else, simply because of what you're providing from a value standpoint. This will make sense in a few more slides here of what you do to do that. Longer agreements Again, my agreements were between 31 and 32 months. It was like a non-negotiable thing. That's just the way it was. This was the package Better retention and, yes, referrals, because they're getting results. They want to help their fellow businesses get results.
Speaker 1:The added benefit was the confidence and conviction was, for me, ridiculous. I went into every presentation with a smile on my face because, one, it was fun. Two, I love the reaction I got from the business owner, because it's like they were like blindsided. They were expecting a sales presentation for an ad and they got something completely different. I also found that the stress was replaced with excitement. I wasn't stressed out about oh my God, I need to sell, I need to sell. It was like I can't wait to show this business what I've got because they've not seen it anywhere, anywhere. And they continued to say that first appointment closes off the charts. And I was not a first appointment closer. In fact, my expertise is not in sales. I health clubs, I had a 12 full-time sales people. They did all the selling. I did not. And yeah, you'll be in the top tier of closing percentage simply because, again, the value. So becoming category one.
Speaker 1:A couple terms you may have heard, certainly in Alex Hermosi's book. He talks about the grand slam offer. I've, from a speaking standpoint, I know it as a bonus value stack. If any of you have been in a room where a presenter is selling something, typically it's like here's my pen and it's three million dollars, but today. You're gonna get the remote control that's worth 80 million dollars. And you're gonna get what do I have here? This, this eyeglass case that's worth 300 gazillion dollars. And they just keep piling on the bonuses, and what happens is what One? You got your fence sitters that need that little nudge to go. Well, yeah, you know. Geez, now this really makes sense because I really like that one bonus, and yeah, I'm willing to pay $40,000 for that, along with everything else that comes with it. So the trick here is to provide something of high value to that business owner at a low cost to you, and when I say low cost, I'm talking about dollars, I'm also talking about time. This is from a $1 million offers.
Speaker 1:Alex says your Grand Slam offer forces a prospect to stop and think differently, to assess the value of your differentiated product. Doing this establishes you as your own category, which means it's too difficult to compare prices, which means you've recalibrated the prospect's value meter. All right, they don't know. There's no anchoring here. They don't know what box to put you in, and that's a good thing. So the question then is what the heck do I offer Now, what I would?
Speaker 1:At the end of my presentation, I would have a list of things In fact I'm going to show you, so we'll get to that, but a list of things In fact I'm going to show you, so we'll get to that but a list of the bonuses, some visual where they saw everything and I would walk through it. But what worked magically for me was a podcast. I called it a branded podcast and the one-two punch was we did the Good Neighbor podcast, and many times the conversation after the podcast was Tom. I've always thought about doing a podcast before. This was fun. And then Tom would say yeah, actually, charlie, you did a great job, you should do a podcast. Would you like to learn more? Well, yeah, yeah, ok, well, let's get together next Tuesday or two and I'll give you all the ins and outs. Oh, would you? That'd be great. Yeah, and, by the way, I also I work in the community XYZ and you cool if I also share with you what we're doing in the Naples community here. Well, yeah, absolutely. You see how easily that flows.
Speaker 1:Okay, now, I'm not saying everyone says, hey, I wanna do a podcast, but I was really surprised by the folks who would say it's like business owners and book writing. How many business owners have thought about writing a book Like who has it Right, but how many have actually done it? Well, podcast is the new book writing. So podcast was a great offering. I called it a branded podcast because they got a taste of it with the Good Neighbor Podcast and then, when I met with them, I shared with them how we could start the podcast for their company. So, using ABC Landscaping as the example, we would start their ABC Landscaping podcast and we would work with them to get their episodes out. It was a time commitment but when you look at the time I would have spent in driving all over kingdom, come doing drop-offs and all that stuff to actually meet with my clients one-on-one on a regular basis, no drop-off in the world came close to the relationship building that I was able to do with the branded podcast. And we can knock out a few podcasts in a half an hour and they were a tickle pink.
Speaker 1:So question what is that worth? What is that worth? The answer I don't know. Is it valuable? Heck, yeah, especially when they realize that your one podcast. We're going to create 15 new web pages for your business, for your brand to get found on Google. Would you like that? Yeah, yeah, and you're going to show up differently because you're buying public. They're going to find you and they're going to get to hear you and see you and get the full appreciation of what you can offer and why you're different than the competition Bottom line. If a business isn't doing a podcast, they're missing the boat and you can help them with that opportunity. Because most businesses aren't doing a podcast, all right.
Speaker 1:Book All right. We talked about the book. You get that. You can do a book, just like I shared with you a few moments ago. I'm just going to blow through that, unless you have questions Consulting Don't discount that. I know one of my publishers offers consulting. I charge $500 an hour. That adds up, so don't discount yourself. I know many publishers have a background in consulting or marketing and advertising. You can help these folks.
Speaker 1:Masterminds, create a mastermind group. Make it exclusive, just for your clients or the folks. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort. You're the ringmaster, you just get the businesses in the room and you let the businesses just take off from there. I've been involved in masterminds where I've paid upwards of $34,000 a year to be in a room of very smart business owners. Private community Facebook group. I know publishers, one in particular who kills it with this strategy because he's got all the residents in his community in his private community Facebook group and then he allows certain vendors to come ine the ones that are in his magazine to get all the business, because residents need a plumber and an electrician and a landscaper and so forth. All right, huge value there. Sponsorship packages if you do networking newsletters, you can put their logos and all that fun stuff there. Directory listings, customer react, customer reactivation campaign that stuff we already talked about, so I'm just blowing through it just to save time.
Speaker 1:Social media services Most businesses are clueless when it comes to social media If you have a background there or if you're willing to hire someone to do it. I always looked at hey, that's great, I'm getting 80% on a sale. I always looked at hey, that's great, I'm getting 80% on a sale. So keep it simple math. If I just brought in a $1,000 a month client, that's $800 to me In a heartbeat I would take $200 and pay someone to do work to make that business thrilled to be a client, to give me referrals, and heck, you probably didn't have to pay that much. You could find people on the internet Fiverr, f-i-v-e-r-r dot com. Upwork is another one where you can find very talented people for all kinds of services for 50 bucks a month. 100 bucks a month to provide social media services, among other things.
Speaker 1:Heck what if you, if you made a flip book for them of all their articles, right? Or put those articles on your website and promote it with social media press releases. Youtube, opuspro I don't know if you guys are using that. It's worth looking at. If you're doing videos, uh, especially longer videos opus shops them up into your short videos that you can just. You know, really, in a click of a button does it all for you. Spritzycom is a site that builds your youtube following. You could package youtube videos and you'll build that business's YouTube channel up for them. Okay, and for next to nothing. Both those resources are ridiculously cheap, okay.
Speaker 1:So this is what I would do for my clients. You can see it's not graphically pleasing, but it got the job done. So how I differentiated myself from everyone else. Number one I walked in with that document on the left the 61 benefits. I called it the Good Neighbor Omnipresent Marketing because they were familiar with the Good Neighbor podcast and I came up with everything I could think of that the magazine offered, the digital offered, the expert contributor offered, and on and on. Then I looked at my bonus stack and everything from a benefit standpoint that that offered, and so I would hand them that page at the beginning of our meeting. So right away they're getting a good feel that this is different. And you run into folks who did print before and it didn't work, or that kind of routine, right, I would share with them. Well, hey, good news is we don't have to depend just on the magazine ad. I have no doubt the magazine is going to be gangbusters for you. It's the perfect community. We'll talk about that, yada, yada, yada.
Speaker 1:But let's play devil's advocate. You get nothing from the magazine, but all these other benefits. You'd see the head nodding and they would get it, and on and on and on. So what I would do is then let them know the bigger the package, the more they get, for example, $975 when I put everything together. I'd have a quick conversation. Hey, you know, john, just add listings and you're just over a thousand dollars and that'll get you six more podcasts and six more bing, bing, bing, bing, bing and you go yeah, let's do it. So then we get to.
Speaker 1:How do we keep clients for life, whether they come on board for 12 months, 36 months or whatever? It's the same dilemma that I have with my health clubs, and it was just always so painful to look at your sales for the month and go, wow, it was a great month. And then you look at your folks leaving your health club and you go we had negative three growth for the month. That's a deflator, right. So we spend a lot of time on focusing on retention. What can we do to retain our clients?
Speaker 1:The same concept here, but really it's kind of simple when you think about it. The question that you want to ask is what's my pain of disconnect? What is my client thinking that if they pull the plug or cut the cord will happen? And probably better stated, I should just read the slide here Do your clients know that without you they'd lose ideally a lot more in sales than what they're paying for your marketing?
Speaker 1:You hear stories of people who are down on their luck. They give up everything except for their cable. I just got to have Netflix, can't give that up. I guess it's not cable anymore because you don't need cable. But you get the idea what's in their head so that they make the right decision, which is to stay with you. This could be a training all in and of itself. The easy solution here is they know on a regular basis they're getting customers and I don't want to just discount that and throw that out the window, because we're all about branding and if we go down that ROI rabbit hole there's going to be hell to pay.
Speaker 1:My answer to that but what if we could do that? To me? That comes back to let's get creative here. I don't want to lose a client. What can we do? The other is loss of relationship. There are clients out there that you just have a great relationship with and they enjoy being connected with you and they're happy to pay just for that. They just don't want to lose that connection. So obviously that's important Doing whatever we can to stay connected to those individuals. So I know I've gone a little over time here and let me just look at the comments here.
Speaker 1:Claudia says I have a ton of questions of how this is specifically executed. Mary says am I the only one who is super confused by this? Who does the podcast? Is this just to get appointments? Anyone who is super confused by this? Who does the podcast? Is this just to get appointments For Mary, yeah, that's what keeps publishers, I think, from really upping their game. It gets confusing. They don't know how to even begin, let alone to pull it off and they end up wasting time. Their sales drop while they're trying to figure out technology. So for Mary and everyone else who is watching the replay of this, I am happy to meet with you via our magazine, rainmakercom slash meet and we can walk through this.
Speaker 1:But I wouldn't let the confusion keep you from moving forward. I mean, what's growth? Think about it. Anytime we reach a point where we have accomplished something, it doesn't happen by luck. We want to run in a marathon. We don't just show up at the race tomorrow and go okay, I got a new pair of sneakers, I'm ready. It takes training, it takes commitment, and the same with something like the podcast. Frankly, I had some experience going in, although I'd never done a podcast before. I was relatively comfortable with the internet stuff. But you ask Barb, my wife, and she'll tell you my first two podcasts. I was like what the heck am I doing? I was making it up as I went along but fortunately my guests were like, wow, this is great. So taking action is huge. But I get it. You want to be prepared? Take advantage of that. We can talk further, claudia. If you want to unmute, claudia, I'm happy to have a dialogue. Sorry, I was just having some lunch.
Speaker 3:So I took myself off camera and went. You know, see you guys. It was that irresistible cake wasn't it? It made everybody hungry. No, it's lunchtime here, so I was having lunch. It was what you were talking about before. I forget what slide it was, but I had specific questions, so maybe you and I can just talk separately.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, sounds great. Are you going to send us this recording? Yes, yeah, everybody who's on this session. We will get the recording out to you in the next day or two.
Speaker 3:Okay, great, so I'll just review it and then, before you and I chat, I'll go in and make sure that. I'm clear on what it was that I had questions about.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, awesome. Thank you, I got to run. Thank you, yeah.
Speaker 1:I know it went over time, so thanks for hanging in there. See you, claudia. Hey, there's a lot of information here. We don't just do it all at once, because what will end up is we end up doing nothing, all right. So the Strong, strong Recommendation and Gary Keller's book, the Power of the One Thing it's all about. What is that? One thing you can do today, tomorrow, next week, next month that will make the biggest impact in your business. So if you don't need more leads, don't worry about adding one more leap. If your closing rate is not where you want it to be, focus on that. That's going to be your biggest bang for your dollar.
Speaker 1:And so then, what does that mean? Well, then we start looking at what can we provide that business owner that gets us out of the commodity business and provides more value? So now, when they look at my thousand, two thousand dollar a month option, they go, yeah, that works, because here's the reality. I've had a digital agency and I'm involved with digital agencies and companies worth their assault that are going to do SEO, among other things. They start at $2,000 a month and many of them are $5,000 a month and more, and that's before any money is spent on paid advertising. And I would let my business owners know that when they're looking at 1500 a month and comparing me with an SEO company and seeing that not only they're gonna get better SEO from all the things we're doing with the podcast and the content and all that, but they're getting an ad in the magazine, they're getting articles, they're getting Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Right, they couldn't put us in a box, but they knew the value was there and at that point they became a client. All right. So pick one thing, focus on that until you get it to a point where you go, yeah, all right, my closing rate has bumped up from 20% to 28% or 32%. Now let's go to the top of the funnel and let's get one more lead in or more, and that closing rate shouldn't change if we're focused on quality leads. And in fact, you may see that your closing rate gets higher just simply because you're now able to focus on quality leads. That's the other advantage we had, or I had, with the podcast is I was able to get behind the gatekeepers, which meant I was meeting with businesses that were of higher quality from a dollars to spend on marketing standpoint, so that, in and of itself will increase your closing rate, simply because, hey, if you're presenting to a business that's broke, it doesn't matter. You could be the Dave Cohen times five and they ain't buying. They don't have the money.
Speaker 1:Right there it is MagazineRainmakercom. Slash me. It's not a sales pitch, by the way. I'm just here to help. My theory is just like what I did with the Good Neighbor podcast.
Speaker 1:I did 930 podcasts, as you heard me say three times now. I did not make 930 sales. I did not make half of those in sales, but I've always found that if I provide my I always call them future clients with value, with help, when the time came for them to consider marketing and advertising, they would at least give me a shot. Okay, so that's why I offer this free training. Hey, let's face it, you all gave me your time today, which I value very much, and I am willing to pay it back with. I'll spend some time with you, give you some direction and answer some questions and get you some results. Okay, last question I will have is takeaways for the day. And, mitch, I know you jumped on real late. Your big takeaway might be. And, Mitch, I know you jumped on real late, your big takeaway might be I got on too late, but unmute yourself and just share. If nothing else, it'll be helpful for others who maybe forgot that. Mary, what comes to mind?
Speaker 4:Oh yes.
Speaker 1:Hi Hi.
Speaker 4:My big takeaway is, again I'm still confused about the podcast thing and I am not technologically sound and in by any way shape or form, so that is something I would like to talk to you further about, because the whole concept of that is, for some reason, like over my head at this point. Yeah, but I want to learn more. Yeah, so that's my biggest takeaway.
Speaker 1:Okay, and I apologize. I thought you had left when I was answering the question. I couldn't find you.
Speaker 4:I just stopped my video for a second. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will, I will guide you along there and uh and again it. It doesn't have to be a podcast. I mean, I it's, it's, it's what I used, but it doesn't mean everyone needs to do a podcast.
Speaker 4:So I have a problem, just, you know, putting out a newsletter, ok, so that's where I'm at and I need help. So I need lots of help.
Speaker 1:Well, you can't do it all in a day, and you know it's, it's, it's back to all in a day. And, uh, you know it's, it's, it's back to. Well, I know I need something. And back to that, what's the biggest bang for your dollar? Right? So a newsletter is, I can easily say that's not a big deal because I've done newsletters. But for someone who's not done newsletters and doesn't have a template to work with and doesn't know what kind of content to use for the newsletter and all that stuff, it becomes this overwhelming monster that just never gets done.
Speaker 4:Exactly, and I did it for two months and then I now I'm like I can't do it again. It's, it takes too long. Yeah, it's, it's a lot, and doing the flipbook thing and you know that's a lot. I need an assistant. That's where I'm at right now. Anyway, sorry.
Speaker 1:I'll shut up. No, no, that's, that's good. It's helpful for everyone to hear that, because we've all been there and you know that that knowing when to make that leap to the assistant is I need one. Yeah, so.
Speaker 4:Yep, but thank you for this. This is really informative and interesting, and I wanna learn more.
Speaker 1:Good, good, good. So thank you so much, you got it. You got it. Thanks, mary Todd. Anything you wanna add before we wrap?
Speaker 2:I see Jeremy Wolf down in South Florida also does a Good Neighbor podcast. I'm assuming that's related through you.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, jeremy is one of our publishers. Yep In the program. Yeah, yeah, are you in Florida?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm up in the Lake County area just north of Orlando.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay.
Speaker 2:All right Awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we've got quite a few publishers in florida.
Speaker 2:Is sean preston one of your? Is sean preston one of your guys?
Speaker 1:uh, sean, yes, who's? Who's talking? Sorry, it's mitch. Oh, mitch I. I thought it was ty, but his lips weren't moving and his voice changed. Yeah, Sean and Jeff.
Speaker 2:I understand they're having huge success with it. Their personalities are perfect for it. My personalities are very different. I'm not the same age as them and have the have the technological background maybe that they have as well. So I guess what I'm looking for is I realize it's important.
Speaker 2:I mean a little bit of social media I do now a little bit of little bit of work I'm doing on my own is effective, so I don't know if you're offering anything that's sort of a here's where I am, here's what I do. You know the businesses I work with. Let us look after this for you. Is that kind of what you're offering, or are you just coaching people on how to do all these podcasts, things like that themselves?
Speaker 1:yeah, so we what? We I'll just use Sean and Jeff, but for all of our publishers, jeremy and so forth. You know, this started out with the podcast because that I had so many publishers when I was at the various events or they would call me like what are you doing, tell me how? And it was just like Mary. It's like they want to do it but they have no idea and it's overwhelming. So I would try to help, but it's hard. I mean, we just spent how much time here kind of explaining it. But, Mary, and for that matter, I wouldn't have been able to walk away and go all right now I know how to do it, unless you spend an ungodly amount of time and research and all that which many of us don't have. So I created a platform where all the stuff gets automated, and then we yeah, we coach the publishers on how to do it. We have the scripts and all the podcasts set up, and on and on and on. And then I took it like 20 steps further, because I knew that not everybody like you mentioned Mitch wants to do the podcast, for whatever reason. So there are other campaigns that are set up to help our publishers get appointments without them doing the work because, as Mary shared, there's only so many things we can do and so if we can automate everything we can automate, that frees up a lot of time, a lot of bandwidth for our heads, right, we don't have to worry about. Oh my God, I feel guilty because the next newsletter was supposed to go out two weeks ago and all that stuff drains us. So we provide that support system and the automation for that stuff to get done as easily as possible.
Speaker 1:But you know, I wouldn't necessarily compare the podcast with Jeff and Sean. Yeah, they have a certain personality and all that, but you'd be surprised at the publishers that have zero technology. And you know, heck, I'm an introvert big time. I'd rather just stay in an office and not talk to anyone, but I knew I needed more appointments and therefore I said buck up, little camper, do a podcast. And it became kind of the highlight of my day often because you just you know you're giving and that feels good, and it feels good on both ends. So I guess what I'm saying, mitch, is don't discount yourself because you look at someone else and say, well, I can't do it because there is no Mitch out there doing a podcast like you would do it, and just like there is no Sean out there doing a podcast, like he would do it. And Garfield and Jeremy and on and on and on, all have her own style.
Speaker 2:I see, so I need to be the face of it. You're saying you need to do what Pretty important, I need to be the face of it. You're saying you need to do what Pretty important, I need to be the face of it.
Speaker 1:That was the answer to that that's a great question, because I thought about not being the face of mine.
Speaker 2:However, you know where I'm coming from, then from that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, I, I decided to continue to be the face simply because of the relationships I was able to build in doing the podcast. I got to know these guys better than sometimes their best friends. They would share stories on the podcast and they know, going in these business owners, what the questions are going to be asked. But you would hear some pretty compelling stuff and it would just bond you with them. And I thought, geez, if I had someone else do it. And they said, ok, now you're going to meet with Charlie, I'm still going in cold Now, I can still make sales because of the value. But I just felt it's a much warmer presentation because I did the podcast, yeah, but I've got nothing to back that commitment. Presentation because I did the podcast, yeah.
Speaker 2:But I've got nothing to back that up. The time commitment for these podcasts like I know, I think Sean and Jeff are spending two days a week or something.
Speaker 1:It's up to the publisher. What I coach everyone on is designate time blocks and, depending on what your goal is, if in need of appointments, carve out two or three hour chunks two or three days a week. So it's podcast, podcast, podcast, podcast, and then go out and do your presentations, and not necessarily, yeah, spend the whole day, do a podcast at nine o'clock and then wait till 1130 and do a podcast and then wait till two. That's a complete waste of time, right? So it's really manage your time, block out your time and then it becomes a very efficient and effective. Yeah, so my routine was Monday, tuesday, I would block out chunks of time and it would fill my schedule up for Wednesday through Friday, and then I would do another time chunk on Thursday and that would fill up my schedule for the early the following week.
Speaker 1:So it just was this ongoing cycle of appointments for me?
Speaker 2:Right, so it sounds like it'd be a lot more lucrative than the market leader position I took on this year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we had a publisher. You know, every Tuesday I do trainings with all the publishers and it's really it's like a mastermind. I mean, you got we got some of the top publishers in the country and the things that they're sharing what they're doing is pretty fascinating. Sharing what they're doing is pretty fascinating. But one publisher just started offering a podcast two weeks ago and she, for the first time in the longest time, she got a sale two weeks in a row. It's like, oh okay, yeah, I see how this works. And, more importantly, I don't think it's so much the sales because, hey, we can all get lucky it's her conviction now her attitude going in. She knows she has something special and she's excited about it. And the businesses are excited because they've never seen or heard anything like this before.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:All right With that, we're going to wrap it and until next month we'll see you.