John Corcoran 5:04
I do want to point out that there are other ways of doing it. But we have found over the years that it’s not as effective for a number of reasons. So, you know, people use this strategy, you know, by featuring people in a book or an article, or a video interview or something along those lines. And what we found is that the best combination of speed and simplicity is personal connection. And personal connection is using a podcast. You know, I wrote for Forbes for a number of years Business Insider, I’ve written for
Unknown Speaker 5:35
a lot of people in those articles
John Corcoran 5:36
I did and what I found was that at the end of the year, really, you know, because of all the work that went into it, I would end up connecting with, you know, half a dozen 10-12 people, something like that, you know, it was difficult.
Jeremy Weisz 5:51
I mean, writing an article is not easy. You crafting those things takes a long time.
John Corcoran 5:56
It takes a lot of time you get to get through the editorial process to get accepted. to larger platforms like that, and what I eventually found is that you could maximize the number of relationships, which is really the name of the game, if you actually were just recording something, and you didn’t have to spend all that time in the post production process of writing an article producing an article, getting it published, getting past the editorial process, all that kind of stuff.
Jeremy Weisz 6:20
Yeah, so the first is give short break, we’ll break down actually, our exact emails, but the first one is give, we want to make sure there’s a give in that outreach message. Great. So what the second piece is the second is social proof. Right? So if anyone who’s studying direct response marketing copywriting, that they will pound into your head that you have to have social proof elements and we’ll break down what social proof elements social be? Well, you did it in the beginning of the interview, right? You say I’ve had founders of you know CEOs of Activision Blizzard lending tree OpenTable like that’s social media. Proof because they’re saying, oh, John, have you had these other people? Or Jeremy, you’ve added the founders of Atari p90x or x bar. You had these people that’s complete social proof. Right. And providing it. They’re essentially vouching that you are that individual. It’s validating. It’s validating that you’re legit.
John Corcoran 7:21
Yes. Okay. Right. Got it. So how do you do that? If you feel like you don’t have any social proof what is that like?
Jeremy Weisz 7:29
Whoa, that’s great. Yeah, we get that a lot. So Exactly. So let’s say you feel like while I, let’s say something, you know, sick people say to us all the time, I just started my podcast. I don’t have any guests. What do I do? Well, most of the time, they have some type of social proof. They have past clients, you know, we say past clients, past people. They worked with years of experience in the industry like we had. I was talking to someone this morning. They’ve been in the medical industry for 14 Yours? Well, they’ve had some of the time they’ve, you know, consultant been some of the some of the part of some of the top medical schools in the country. And so that is social proof. I’ve been doing this for 40 years, I’ve had, you know, basically help this medical school, this medical school, this medical school, like naming the medical school or social proof, the years of social proof. So there’s a lot of social proof there.
John Corcoran 8:25
So it’s often maybe things that are already in your bio, like, if you’re going to read a bio view, what are the things that you would recount if you’ve written a book, The name of the book, if you’ve been quoted in certain reputable well known publications, you’d maybe do that your education, certainly your experience, all those sorts of things? Yeah. And okay, so that’s the second piece. So the third piece was the third piece. The third piece is what is called the velvet rope. And we want to give credit for that. So John, what are you talking about? Yeah, although,
yeah. So I give credit to my Michael Port who has been a big mentor and a friend, he uses this term in a number of his books. And what it means is essentially, is you want to make it so that they want to get inside, you know, think of like a club or something like that has a velvet rope outside, you know, even if there’s no one inside of this valve or open to people waiting in line, like everyone wants to get in. So it’s kind of the same thing. So you want to make sure that it’s not just that it’s open to anyone, we’ll just take anyone, but I’m, I want to profile you on a feature you and because you’re one of the top CMOS in the manufacturing industry in the tri state area, or because you’re one of the top, you know, business development executives in the southern Florida area working in retail today. You know, it’s like you want them to want to be a part of that community or group of people that you’re going to be featuring. And actually the concept that you use is your idea of a series now Season especially when it comes to podcasts. A lot of times you see podcasts and people do want to do a season. There’s a big difference between a series and a season. So talk a little bit about that.
Jeremy Weisz 10:08
Yeah. I mean, it’s similar. That’s exactly how I would, I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing at the time, but it is a velvet rope. Right. So if I did you know, so I went to University of Wisconsin Madison. And when I did the top Wisconsin entrepreneur series, that was people want to be included in the top Wisconsin entrepreneur series,
John Corcoran 10:30
you know, considered a top founder from your own alma mater. It’s like he
Jeremy Weisz 10:36
made it right. And the thing is, John, I realized that I was going to do the top university of wisconsin series, but I realized, well, why not just do Wisconsin, like, broaden it and there are lots of people that came out of university of Milwaukee, you know, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, lacrosse, Madison, so I was like, I just made a broader and did it Wisconsin series, but That’s the velvet rope. It’s a velvet rope in terms of grouping them into a series.
John Corcoran 11:05
So Right, right, so now, did we talk about the commonality or the common connection we talk about?
Jeremy Weisz 11:14
I think I saw over that, but that’s also the next one actually with an open loop was the next one. So it has to have a give, it has to have social proof. You have to have a velvet rope. You don’t have to, but it works better. And open loop. Yeah. So you do the open. Yeah.
John Corcoran 11:31
So the open loop is not including all of the information in your initial outreach message so that the person wants to open a loop so to speak, so they want to close that loop. We naturally have a curiosity towards that. So if someone says I can share more details with you, or set says like, let me know if that’s of interest and I’ll, you know, provide for you the additional information that you would need from you. People naturally are curious. And so what you want to do in an outreach message like this is open that loop so it naturally invites them to respond, if nothing more than to get that additional information. But then what that effectively does is it carries forward the conversation when it gets a response and it gets you into conversation. And then it’s harder for people to say no, once they are in that conversation.
Jeremy Weisz 12:23
I mean, you know, John, I went down the path into the top direct response marketing copywriting series, right. And I had some of the best people on the planet. And one of the things they said was, there was a story about what’s the number one thing that you want to make sure to include in your copy out of anything, and there is lots of guesses and, and so, if you want to find out more, you have to listen to the next episode. No, we could open a loop and just actually haven’t watched but the number one thing was curiosity. The number one thing Was curiosity. Gary Halbert? I think I don’t remember who I was talking to me was Caleb Oh doubt or Sam Mark was one of the Gary Halbert protegees. And it was a Gary Halbert story. And that’s, you know, comes from him. And it was curiosity. So opening a loop creates some curiosity,
John Corcoran 13:17
right. And if you watch any local news, if you listen to, you know, News Radio anytime they do this every time, right, right before the commercial break, you know, coming up next, have we found them out the fountain of youth? Find out, we’ll be right back, you know, and he’s like, Oh, my gosh, I’m gonna stay to listen to these commercials. So that’s exactly you know, what’s happening there.
Jeremy Weisz 13:41
And the next one is what you’re referring to. So give social proof, velvet rope, open loop. The next is instant connection. So how do you form an instant connection?
John Corcoran 13:53
And I think we were alluding to it earlier. It’s with things that you have in common, right?
Jeremy Weisz 13:58
Yeah, I mean, instantly. So again, like all this is customized, this isn’t just templated you just throw it out to everyone, you really need to customize this. But it’s the connection. You know, if you look at someone most of the time, you can look at someone’s LinkedIn profile and form some kind of instant connection or their about page. It could be John, somewhere where they live. It could be a college they went to, it could be a Hey, Michael. It could be, you know, anything that you were like, it could be they have four kids, I was reading something. You know, this morning, one of the people I was reaching out to, they wrote an article on like, having six kids and running a business. So if I were John reaching out the person, I’m not as cool as you. I have four kids, you have six kids, and you get this instant connection. Like we’re both entrepreneurs that have a lot of kids. So there is definitely something you can find in and I think you and I kind of hone in on that in the beginning when we’re looking at something how do we form an instant connection with Someone um, it could be places you have hobbies. You have all those things. Yeah,
John Corcoran 15:05
right. This just happened yesterday, you emailed someone cc me on it. And I looked down at the person’s email signature. And it said that they were from my hometown, not the one I live in now but the one I went to high school in Roadrunners to live there. And I looked, I knew the exact address knew exactly what the building is, and everything. And I just mentioned that I just said, Oh, hey, you’re right from where I live right near you. I went to the high school close by, you know, cuz that’s an immediate connection. You know, maybe aren’t you? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 15:30
Immediate. Right.
John Corcoran 15:32
So any final thoughts?
Jeremy Weisz 15:34
No. So let’s go through some actual copy. We have some different approaches. So we can maybe read the actual copy of the email. I know sometimes you have a short email that you’ll send with the loop and then do a long email. And then sometimes, honestly, I just go straight with the long email which I should probably do more of what you do, which is open a loop. So I’ll read My direct, you know, my cold email and I said 11 of these today and modified them accordingly.
John Corcoran 16:08
So, yeah, let you go with your short and long version. Sure, sure. So I have a short version, this is so short that I can use it by text message, I can use it by email, I can use it on LinkedIn message or however. And often I use it once I have already had an immediate connection with them, but like in an email exchange or something like that, or I’m connected with them on LinkedIn already. Or sometimes I send it cold. So before I’ve had any real communication with them, so I’ll say something just like the first sentence is this straight into the point, um, if I have something in common, then it’d be something like, hey, by the way, you know, we both went to University of San Francisco or something like that, you know, we have something in common or, hey, we both did ascend. Do you want to lead with the instinct connection? Right, you know, or, hey, you know, Bill Jones told me that I should reach out and connect with you. He said, You guys had a great time last month in Cabo. Whatever you know somebody that you have in common, and then I’ll say, I’d love to interview you on my podcast period. I’ve been podcasting since in my case 20 2010. But you don’t have to put that in there if you haven’t been doing it for a while. And I’ve interviewed 400 plus entrepreneurs, business owners, business book authors, including the founders of CEOs of Activision Blizzard lending tree, Opentable, x software contextually and many more. And I can share many more details, dot dot, dot, that’s intentional dot dot dot, because that is opening the loop right there.
Jeremy Weisz 17:32
So it’s very short of the social proof, the velvet rope, the open loop and instant connection.
John Corcoran 17:37
Each of the pieces are there. Right, right. So and then you know what, sometimes people read that and they think, well, I can’t do that. That’s, that’s his story. I don’t have any of those things. But you just break it down by the different elements that we were talking about there. And you substitute your own social proof, you substitute your own experience or your own commonality, and you can structure an outline messaged in the same way you want to share yours.
Jeremy Weisz 18:01
So go on, you want to talk about the long one.
John Corcoran 18:05
So the longer version then so then when someone responds back and they say, Great, I’d love to know more details, then I send them a longer version. And it basically just says here all the details. And then I have multiple different paragraphs. So I’ll say, you know how long I’ve been podcasting for at this point. It’s been quite a while. It’s been about 10 years now. But I’ve been doing this for a number of years. And so I started doing it, you know, previously. And I talk a little bit about what I focus on the podcast. But pretty much this second follow up message is designed to answer every possible question that that person might have. Because I don’t want to spend a ton of time going back and forth answering questions. So I want to answer all their questions there. So I give links to past episodes that they can check out. I give a list people who’ve been guests on my podcast now that are designed so that when they look over the list of names They say, Wow, how could I possibly say no to this outreach message, if all these other people said yes. So, I also describe what exactly I like to ask about because people frequently want to know, what are you going to ask me about. And then I give them a link directly to book a time so that they can go ahead and do it, you know, directly if they want. Or I say they can also message me back if they can’t find the time. format. I talked about what the format is, how I record the interviews, and how long they’re gonna last. I asked them I answer, you know, they often ask, you know, do you script, do you send me the questions in advance? So I say, No, I don’t do that. I don’t prescribe them. I keep them casual. And then I give some information about me. So I say, you know, by the way, here are some more details about me and because they don’t, they don’t know much about me. And then finally, composition of my audience. That’s another common question that I got was who are the types of people that are going to be listening to this? That’s the basic breakdown in the follow up message.
Jeremy Weisz 20:02
Yeah. Cool. Thanks for that. Yeah. And that’s a good point, you know, with the second email or with my first email, you want to make sure you answer the most commonly asked questions that they’re gonna have. Because those are, you know, objections that they may have a why not doing it? So I’ll tell you mine. And so my outreach, I, you know, I sent 11 of them today. You know, and I customize it. So usually, I will look at their LinkedIn profile, I may even look at their about page. And if they’re important enough for you, you should do a little bit of research and give some context. So I basically will start off by saying, you know, I really love what you’ve done with this company, and I won’t stop there. And I will say something like, I saw that in 2015. You got just 2015 alone, you added 72 staff and this year, you moved into another largest facility, so I’ll actually show them I did a little research on them. I’m not just like, blanket, you know, messaging them. Or here, like you said, the instant connection piece I may say, you know, John told me that you had an amazing company. And once I looked at it, I saw you did XYZ. So immediately they know you, John. They’re like, Oh, cool, like I’ll read on because I know John two or whoever. So there’s an instant, you know, connection. The next piece is, like you said, giving some social proof because they’re like, Okay, cool. We have mutual connections. And then I say, with the exact ask, I would love to feature you on my podcast. So you want to be straightened to the point so they don’t have to read three paragraphs deep to know what you’re asking. So right is straight to the point. I’d love to have you on my podcast. Now. They’re thinking, why would I go on your podcast? Right? So now you got to provide some social proof and say, I’d love to feature you alongside other founders. I’ve had the CEOs and founders of p90x quest, nutrition. Einstein, bagels, Atari Mattel, Baby Einstein, Begley Jr. The list goes on. So I say you’ll definitely be a good company. And if you haven’t had those, like John said before, you could just include whatever social proof elements you have. And then here’s what I put out. I will say check out this link, check out the links in my signature for popular episodes. Like if they’re interested, sometimes I will take something like in my signature, I have the link to the p90x one Einstein bagels, the Atari one, but here I may put something really industry specific to them. Like if it’s a top SAS founder and they’ve heard of, you know, Zapier, I will go here’s the one I know you’re in sass. Here’s the one I did with, you know, Wade, a founder of Zapier, and I’ll put it in there. So someone in their industry, and then I will even borrow credibility you know, the other thing is, we talked about social proof, you could borrow credibility from platforms. So we’re going to promote the interviews to our email subscribers, social media, iTunes, Google Play Spotify, and many more. And if you have a number around that, which we do, we’re promoted to over 165,000 of our email subscribers’ social media following. Put that in there. Yeah. And then then I asked again. Because I said in the front, I love to have you on the podcast. All I want is a yes or no. Like John opens a loop. I just want a yes or no and then I’ll send more details. So I go, would you be up for an interview? Question mark, and then I put parentheses some people don’t know we’re not traveling. Some people were like, is this via phone? Are we meeting in person like so I will say it’s all done via video conference, you know, conference at the comfort of your own home. Close parentheses. And then thanks, Jeremy. And then I have you know, anyone worth their salt and copywriting has taught me I have a PS. So of course, I have a PS you know, and so, um, you whatever you put in people Yes, it could be more social proof. It could be another interview link. I put, you know, I’ve already asked, I just want to yes or no, like, Are you interested? Or not? Like, would you be up for an interview? That’s it. So I’m always
John Corcoran 24:12
like a casual nature of that. Are you up for an interview? It’s not even like committing to like scheduling a time. It’s just yeah, you know, time to the idea. Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 24:21
exactly.
John Corcoran 24:22
Which only Yeah, you don’t want to another thing. I was going to mention that I’ve put in some outreach messages, though. Or in a follow up, I’ll say, you know, if you look through my past guest list, you’ll see I’ve had a very impressive list of CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs, that sort of thing. In many cases, after I’ve conducted the interview, I know more about you. And I’ve been able to make great introductions between my guests introducing some of you know my guests to other prior guests, which have led to all kinds of different things from people starting businesses together to strategic partnerships, referrals, All arrangements, great collaborations, that sort of thing. So you can take a look at my past guest list, and there may be someone that I may be able to introduce you to. So that’s
Jeremy Weisz 25:08
a thing they’ll lead with, actually, because that’s another give besides being on the podcast, it’s like, I’m gonna, you and I both make maybe 10 to 20 introductions every day. So I should probably put that in my outreach message.
John Corcoran 25:21
Yeah. Right. So
Jeremy Weisz 25:23
I don’t have any, I should add, I’m gonna change that. And PPS, PPS, there you go. And because of this conversation, so it’s great. something new.
John Corcoran 25:34
So what are any final thoughts Jeremy on this?
Jeremy Weisz 25:38
No. Um, and I guess in the PS, I will, if they want to make it super easy, I will sometimes include, you know, maybe here I you know, send me your schedule to make it super convenient or throw out a few times or here’s my schedule type of thing. So, I think that’s it. I think that about sums it up, you know, make sure to include those elements. Social Proof velvet rope open loop instant connection. Well, that was great. Dr. Weisz, remind everyone where they can connect with you and learn more about I mean, go to Rise25. And when I tell people to go to Rise25, watch the video, John, people say we’re like an old married couple bantering on the opening video.
John Corcoran 26:22
Is there a nine or 10-minute video there? It’s kind of funny. You and I talking about some of the strategies that we’re talking about? Yeah,
Jeremy Weisz 26:28
we’ll talk about some of the strategies. And you know, since I think, you know, John, I can actually share my screen. So I’m going to do that. And I’ll show you that right here. Yeah. So this video here is where we actually were running the podcast official podcast of a large 17,000 person conference. And we talked about some of the principles of podcasting and how do you get ROI from podcasting?
John Corcoran 26:57
Right. Alright, so thanks, everyone. One we’ll talk again soon. Bye bye.
Outro 27:03
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