John Corcoran 11:16
agree with that. One caveat, though, is that, you know, one of the best things you can do for figuring out your market or product market fit is to have great conversations with prospective buyers with other smart people in your industry. And so that’s a big difference between like, I might get a job with a company versus I might start a company completely different. But if you have more of a focus and a direction, I’m gonna start a company. But I just, I’m not exactly sure who’s our right client avatar, which is so common, so frequently, the case, actually taking the you know, the time to have conversations with existing clients, past clients, your champions, the people who love you, others in your industry, the thought leaders, the speakers, the authors in your industry, one of the best ways to figure out who your avatar is, who you should be going after some of the biggest insights we’ve had has been from that,
Jeremy Weisz 12:11
I totally agree with you on that, and to think about and dip your toe and explore different avatars in this situation, there was no business and my fear was, if it doesn’t create revenue, or money, people quit doing it. And so he in this situation had no business. So my fear was, he’s gonna quit after a very short period of time. If it doesn’t result in business. If you don’t have a business or services, then you don’t But yeah, if you’re going to explore different topics, or avatars, Yes, totally. The other one that we talk about a lot is following up in getting more guests recommendations. You know, if we think of kind of gold medalist as a standard for podcasting, people are, we are and we tell our clients to to get asked for guest recommendations, ask for introductions of more of more great guests from your, from their network and your network.
John Corcoran 13:14
Yeah. And it’s funny people ask sometimes, should I use the podcast to get referrals? Well, yeah, absolutely. Yes, you absolutely should. It’ll work 100 times better than, you know, Hey, guys, reaching out to your your clients and saying, hey, hey, clients, you know, next month is looking a little light. Do you mind introducing me to some people that you know, that could maybe some others that I could talk to you about my service? But you know, we do a great job? And I’d love to tell them about that. And that’s not gonna work, right? You know, whereas leading with, you know, here’s the type of person I’d love to be connected with. We’re featuring these people on a podcast. Who should we feature? Who would you who would you recommend, and oftentimes, people will be really helpful with that. And of course, this comes again, with the presumption that you’re not going to try and immediately sell someone that you’re going to build relationship. First, you’re going to deliver value to that person, you’re going to give them exposure and thought leadership using your podcast. And in many cases, that will lead to other things. Nothing ever works 100% of the time, but in many cases, it will. What are some other qualities of gold medalist? And then we’ll get into the qualities of people who don’t land on the metal stand?
Jeremy Weisz 14:27
Yeah, I mean, the other thing is just focusing it goes deeper on focusing on that relationship, but what else can you do to deepen that relationship and help that person? Not just before the interview, not on even on the interview? Obviously, you’re going to promote it across the channels, but but after now, how do you deepen the relationship? So what else can you be doing for that person? Right? Could you be making introductions to that person? Could you offer that episode as a resource? Because that, you know, they talk about their skill set, what else can you do to help that person Just think it in their shoes, like when you have someone on? What are they looking for? Right? Yeah, yeah,
John Corcoran 15:07
yeah. And oftentimes they’re looking to get exposure for their, their company for their business for something new that they’re launching. And you’re viewed someone earlier today who has a book that he’s hasn’t finished yet, but he’s going to be launching it is going to want to get promotion around it. Even just the opportunity to talk through the ideas that are going into that book can be helpful for an author as they get better at talking about these things that can be really helpful. I have
Jeremy Weisz 15:35
so many people, John, you know, I’ve had on my podcast, and they’ve gotten clients from being on the podcast, because it’s in maybe someone who listened to the podcast for me, I mean, numerous people, but it’s also something they can use. They can go, Hey, like, watch me talk about what I do. And they’ve gotten clients using that same asset.
John Corcoran 15:57
And one thing you are really good at is following up then making an introduction leader and sharing that link to that live episode to that person that you’re introducing them to. So imagine this scenario, you’re a guest on someone else’s podcast, a month or so later, your episode has gone live, and they introduce you to someone who’s a prospective client of theirs, and they link to that episode. You know, you look so great in that scenario, you know, that person is going to love you. And if you do that, for someone who’s already your champion, they’re gonna love you even more. So let’s talk about the other end of the spectrum. So you know, there’s a gold medalist and then there’s everyone else who doesn’t land on the medal stand. So they’ve worked really hard, they trained really hard, and they haven’t gotten anything to show for it in and, you know, what we like to say is that a lot of times what happens is they focus on the minutia. And there’s limited time and energy that you have to put into this. It’s a very finite window, just like the Olympics to succeed. And focusing on the minutia. You know, what color is my jersey? You know, things like that, that don’t matter as much when it comes to athletics is, you know, that is a carryover to the world of podcasting. And so what are some of those different examples of minutia? Jeremy,
Jeremy Weisz 17:11
I mean, people spending too much time on, you know, like, for instance, people spend hours and hours hours figuring out what is the right software I should use for recording, okay? Just don’t overthink things too much. There’s already something you use. So use it like, is one of the software going to be better than zoom or, you know, the quality’s good. I mean, we use Zoom for interviews. Now, people are like, we have zoom, but I’m not sure if the video quality, great, okay, when you have like, millions of subscribers or whatever, like then go off and spend three hours doing research. Um, so just don’t overthink it. If you already use a company, use something, just use it. Second is, you know, again, on the technical aspects, people will spend hours and hours researching mics and equipment and technology setup. Again, we’re talking about a b2b podcast, if you are NPR great, like that’s your business, you can research all you want and get $1,000 mics. There’s very, there’s amazing easing solutions, affordable solutions, like we use, I use a Blue Yeti, Johnny’s, an ATR 2100, just don’t overthink those, those things just get it started.
John Corcoran 18:30
Right. Now another one is another example is people who they spend personally hours and hours too much time on the podcast, or their team spends too much time. And oftentimes for the team, that means they’re torn between client work for internal initiatives or internal marketing work like the podcast, which leads to frustration for so when
Jeremy Weisz 18:52
you say on the podcast, you mean, like trying to, it could be scour over the audio or what only
John Corcoran 18:59
that’s the case, right? It could be the post production. You know, I’ve talked to people that have $5 million businesses, and they’re editing video themselves, you know, and, and they’ll say to you, you know, I’ll say what’s the big goal your business? Well, I want to go to 5 million to 10 million. Well, the Why are you spending time editing video yourself? You know, or why are you spending an additional 90 minutes or two hours after the interview is over, combing over and reading through the content yourself? You know, you shouldn’t be spending your time on that. versus getting an introduction from a guest that you had on to someone else following up with that person. having a conversation with that person about being a guest on the podcast that one relationship could be tremendously valuable to you. So you get you’re stealing your own time and energy and attention away from what you should be doing spending time on stuff which admin which is minutia, and I would put it in that category also spending a lot of time fixating on the audio quality you know and includes cutting out arms and ahhs. And you know, and we don’t say this because we believe in inferior quality sound, we say this because we know, we’ve seen this many times before. We’ve seen people that focus their time and attention on the wrong things. And it steals time and attention away from the things that they should be focusing on.
Jeremy Weisz 20:17
And on that front, you, you still want to keep the authenticity of the conversation and, you know, making it too polished. People sometimes see through that. And also, it doesn’t allow you to, it doesn’t force you to get better necessarily as an interviewer. If you do, like I say certain things, and it forces me because I’m not telling the audio or audio person cut this, cut that out. I keep it in there. So I’ve had people criticize me on YouTube and say, You’re doing this and if I cut that out, I wouldn’t get better. And when realize that,
John Corcoran 20:54
right? Yeah, it becomes kind of a crutch. If you know that someone’s cleaning it up for you afterwards, then it it allows you to depend on that. Rather than and I’m choosing my words really carefully right now you can tell rather than trying to get better naturally, which is a skill, which is incredibly important. If you want to be a speaker, if you want to speak on stage, if you want to be on other podcasts, you get have to get better at that you have to learn to improve your language, and it definitely will over time. I mean, podcasting has definitely made me a better speaker 100% another, you know, some other qualities that people focus on who don’t land on the metal sand versus gold medalists, focusing too much time on on the written content or the production end of things, rather than making sure they’re using the right strategy rather than using it as an outreach tool rather than having great conversations. And then also, of course, this goes without saying but people who try and manipulate and use a podcast in a salesy way, trying to in a manipulative way. Get trick trick trick prospective customers into what effectively becomes a sales conversation. Now I’m all for people who use a podcast, connect with people who might be a prospective client, have a great conversation, and at some point transact business together. But we all know the difference between someone who’s just trying to trick you into a sales conversation, and those who are doing it in order to deliver value. Don’t be those types of people who’re just trying to trick you into a sales conversation.
Jeremy Weisz 22:36
I mean, if your thought should be, how do I add as much value as humanly possible to this person? That’s the mindset that we go in with.
John Corcoran 22:43
Thank you all for being here and go check us out Smart Business Revolution. Inspired Insider is Jeremy’s podcast. It was a pleasure talking about this, and we will talk again soon.
Outro 22:54
Thank you for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast with John Corcoran. Find out more at smartbusinessrevolution.com. And while you’re there, sign up for our email list and join the revolution. And be listening for the next episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast.