Calling B2B Businesses

How Any B2B Business Can Create a Referral and Client Pipeline

The Rise25 ‘Dream 200’ strategy connects you to your ideal clients.

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We help B2B businesses get more clients, referral partners and strategic partners through our done-for-you podcast service

TOP NEWS: Rise25 Ranked #116 on the Inc. Regionals Midwest Fastest-Growing Companies 2023 [Inc. Magazine ]

Our Rise 25 Podcast Formula

At Rise25, we help B2B companies to get ROI, strategic partnerships, referrals and clients, using a podcast and content marketing. With over 20 years combined experience in the podcasting space, we have developed a proven strategy which allows our clients to build life-changing relationships using a podcast and we have built a top-notch team which handles all of the details to produce a podcast so our clients can focus on the highest and best use of their time.

Companies we’ve worked with

We simply can’t overstate the benefits that have come from our podcast. Thanks in large part to podcasting, we have worked with or profiled many nationally and internationally known companies, such as:

Dov Shares How He Gets New Clients from His Podcast

Mark Bayer

Mark Bayer

{
“I got a keynote speech and an all-expense-paid trip to New Zealand, a number of consulting gigs, and I’m now directly connected with many of the top decision makers my space. I couldn’t imagine where I would be without Rise25’s help.”
Adrienne Richardson

Adrienne Richardson

{
“Working with Rise25 is worth every penny and more…and I know it will continue to pay off for a long time to come. Not just in monetary ways but through the relationships that have been built.”
Dave Burlin

Dave Burlin

{
“Rise25 connected me to my biggest client I’m working with today, and I’m really excited to help them to launch this new startup project. I couldn’t be more grateful to Rise25.”

Kellianne Shares How She Launched a “Whole New Business” and a Podcast with Rise25 

The Challenge

Every business needs referral partners and clients. Without referral partners and clients, businesses can’t survive.

After many years of entrepreneurship, and working with clients on growing their businesses, we’ve developed a podcast and content marketing engagement system which helps build strategic partnerships, generates leads and referrals, saves time by connecting you to high caliber people who would otherwise be unreachable, builds brand authority, and creates marketing assets that will generate leads for you for years to come. 

Best of all, with our system we do 100% of all the behind the scenes tasks to launch and run your podcast and provide high level strategy to make sure you get ROI. All you have to focus on is the relationship with your highest value clients and referral partners. We do everything else. 

You are already doing things you need to have a podcast (you’re having conversations already with referral partners, clients, and strategic partners – we’ll show you how to turn these conversations you are already having into podcast content and make them go a lot further in generating ROI and staying top of mind).

We have worked across many industries as you as you saw the logos above.

 A few examples of clients include: a government relations consultant, a consultant to CPG companies (from small start up to Nestle and Gillette), a boutique law firm, a former public company CEO and public company board member turned expert consultant and professional speaker, an ecommerce consulting agency, and many other business owners who need more leads and more clients. Our service is most valuable for B2B businesses where there is a high lifetime client value.

Our goal is to make sure that you ROI from your podcast by forming invaluable relationships and being seen as the leader in your space.

About Us

About RISE25

Former White House speech writer and recovering Attorney meets Chiropractor and Biochemistry major

Experience and Credentials

Dr. Jeremy Weisz & John Corcoran have been deeply immersed in the podcasting world since 2010, and have been honing a process for using a podcast for content marketing, client acquisition, referral marketing and strategic partnerships with hundreds of clients.

Eventually, businesses started asking Jeremy and John about their process and they began training businesses on it and doing it for clients.

There is a long list from the past 15 years of top leaders, entrepreneurs, authors that Jeremy and John have been able to connect with and forge relationships with that have brought credibility, have become customers, and have referred projects.

Our Rise25 team is very selective about which companies work with because the work we do is very labor intensive so we have limited capacity.

Through this process, John and Jeremy have been able to profile founders and CEOs of Mattel, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Nordstrom.com, Baby Einstein, P90X, Orlando Magic, Hint Water, RX Bar, Open Table, Three Twins, Lending Tree, Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), and many more.

About Dr. Jeremy Weisz

Dr. Jeremy Weisz, in addition to running Rise25, has been featuring top entrepreneurs with video interviews since 2011, including founders/CEO’s of P90X, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, Nordstrom.com, the Orlando Magic, and many more on InspiredInsider.

For 6 years, he was also senior producer for the groundbreaking podcast Mixergy, helping to implement streamlined systems to interview hundreds of guests and create dozens of related online courses, resulting in one of the most popular and profitable early business podcasts.

He continues to run his own chiropractic & massage facility in downtown Chicago and is founder of a nutritional supplement business. He also created one of the top chiropractic jobs website on the web.

He also has been through extensive training on copywriting and direct response marketing and has sent millions of emails and direct messages designed to get a customer response.

John Corcoran is a recovering attorney, and a writer, father, and a former Clinton White House Writer and Speechwriter to the Governor of California.

Throughout his career, John has worked in Hollywood (as an early employee of DreamWorks), the heart of Silicon Valley, and ran his own boutique law firm in the San Francisco Bay Area catering to small business owners and entrepreneurs.

He has written for Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, Lifehacker, The San Francisco Chronicle, and basically anywhere else that will let him.

John started the Smart Business Revolution podcast when he was a practicing lawyer when he invited one small client to do a short, 15 minute interview. That client turned into one of his longest and best clients for his law firm, and so he repeated the process over and over again, interviewing other clients, prospective clients, referral partners, strategic partners, authors, speakers, and more. Eventually, he generated so much revenue from the podcast and related efforts that it eclipsed revenue from his legal clients and he phased down the law firm.

Rise25 Co-Founder John Corcoran with Presidents Obama and Clinton, and with Tesla and SpaceX Founder Elon Musk

About John Corcoran, Esq.

Done-For-You Podcasting

Why Start a Podcast?

There are many ways to leverage a podcast — if you use it strategically and with a clear plan.

Our Complete Done for you Podcasting service is designed to position you as an expert and authority in your market, differentiate you from competition, connect you with high caliber potential clients and referral partners (who often would otherwise be unreachable), build a long lasting relationship with your current customers, and build an evergreen content engine to bring in more traffic and incoming leads on a consistent basis that is completely systemized and requires very little of your company time. It ultimately helps to build a business with customers that come to you.

You can use a podcast to:

  • Create a valuable new lead source and marketing asset for your business, and avoid wasting months or years of frustration
  • Attract more clients/customers, referrals, strategic partnerships and revenue
  • Build Trust with your target market
    Get your Message out in a Scalable way
  • Be seen as the Respected Expert and Leader in your field and across many channels
  • Drive new traffic to your website, social media profiles and website
  • Connect with influencers in your field so you get more high quality referrals
  • Create a body of work which helps prospective clients to find you (inbound leads)
  • Attract clients without working 24/7]
  • Build long lasting relationships with your ideal customers and referral partners

Dean Dutro Explains Why Prospects Close at a Much Higher Rate with Rise25

Who We Work With

We work best with clients who value relationships, take a long-term approach to their business, and want to use the podcast to support an existing profitable business.

This service is best for people and companies that want to use a podcast as a business development, networking and lead generation tool which will position them as an industry leader and expert and allow them to connect with their ideal prospects, referral partners, industry influencers, and strategic partners each and every month.

We are very focused on only working with clients who desire to get ROI from their efforts and we help them to get ROI as fast as possible because we know from our years in the industry that podcasters are much more likely to keep going if they are getting return from their efforts.

We do not work with everyone and our service is not a right fit for everyone. We do not work with people who want to create a “hobby podcast” or a “passion project” – because we find these types of podcasters tend to give up quickly when the creator/hosts struggle to get ROI and get frustrated. We also do not work with people who want to create a podcast solely for branding or marketing, or who are too fixated on interviewing the most famous person they can interview, regardless of whether there is a strategic purpose behind the interview or a logical connection to the interviewer’s business objectives.

G. Steve Cleere

G. Steve Cleere

{
“It’s a wonderful business development tool for getting referrals and for getting signed customers. It puts you in a different position. You are coming to them, offering to help promote their product or mission, as opposed to you trying to sell them. You learn so much from the interview itself. You can’t get that from a sales call.”

We Make Sure You Get Massive ROI with Your Podcast

A podcast can provide the incredible ROI in your business – IF you do it right…

We have learned over approximately 20 years of experience with podcasting that the name of the game is being consistent in putting out shows and having the right strategy. If you put out one interview per week, then you are building strong relationships with 50+ high caliber people per year who can make a huge difference in your business. If, however, you don’t have the right strategy, then it doesn’t matter how many episodes you put out. These are two sides of the same coin.

Our goal is to get you the same results we get with our podcasts – to make sure you enjoy putting out your podcast, do it consistently, get tremendous ROI, and never want to stop doing it because you know it gets you great return. The two biggest reasons people stop doing a podcast is because they can’t figure out how to make money from it, and/or they get tired of dealing with myriad tedious details around publishing episodes.

That’s why we handle virtually everything for you – including high-level strategy, all audio and/or video production, and distribution. We want creating a podcast to be as “push button easy” for you as it is for us, because we know you are far more likely to get great ROI and to keep doing it.

We provide a complete, 100% solution so you can relax and enjoy the process. We bring all the pieces under one roof from distribution to media editing to content writing of the show notes to posting it on your website to the distribution across all channels to the most important aspect, the strategy.

Here are a few of the highlights of how we are unique

  • We were early adopters of podcasting and with a combined 20+ years experience as hosts and producers of podcasts, we have far more experience than most in this new and emerging industry.
  • We provide you with high-level strategic advice around how to leverage a podcast based on our approximately 20 years of experience running podcasts and experimenting with different ways to leverage the medium.
  • You get one cohesive team that oversees strategy, production, distribution, audio editing, show notes, and web development. You don’t have to get drawn into overseeing and coordinating multiple different staff or helping them to communicate with one another.
  • Our systems and processes have been honed and refined over 20 years of experience and you get to benefit from them.
  • We are flexible – we have used podcasts as a strategic tool in multiple different ways and industries, from client acquisition, to business development, networking and more. We’ve used podcasts to get law firm clients, consulting clients, and land webinars which resulted in thousands of new email subscribers. We’ve used podcasts to get speaking gigs and sell online courses.
  • Use the same systems and processes the best podcasts use. Our Co-Founder Dr. Jeremy Weisz spent 6 years as Senior Producer for the groundbreaking Mixergy podcast with Andrew Warner, one of the earliest and most successful business podcasts. Jeremy put many of the systems and processes in place that enabled that podcast to be so successful and to produce thousands of episodes along with dozens of premium courses.
  • We want you focusing on the highest and best use of your time so that you will love podcasting and it will give you energy and not drain you by taking any tedious details off your plate.
We are like a luxury concierge travel agency that handles all of the details around booking your flights, hotel rooms, transportation, meals and more, so you have no “missed connections” and can focus on enjoying yourself.

A Podcast Will Save You Time

Think a podcast is time consuming? Guess again.

A podcast actually saves you massive amounts of time. It is one of the most time-efficient things you can do for your business, and here’s why.

A podcast gets you access to higher and higher caliber people. The types of people you should be connecting with. Often, these are people who are busy and successful and would never respond to a sales pitch or a request for a meeting.

Truthfully, we feel sorry for people who do not have a podcast because it is so much harder to connect with high quality clients, referral partners, strategic partners and investors without a podcast.

If I asked you can you find the time to spend 30 to 40 minutes on the phone with an ideal prospect, referral partner or potential strategic partner or influencer in your field, would you say ‘hell yes!’?” You better believe it, right?

One of the best features of a podcast is it actually saves you a ton of time – as long as you delegate the production and employ the right strategy, which is exactly what we guarantee you are doing.

As a business owner, you have to constantly be finding new leads. For different businesses that may mean going to (boring) networking events, attending conferences, going to coffees and lunches, etc. You will find it will take you less time to run your business with a podcast than it did without, if you follow our direction.

Another reason a podcast does not require any additional time from you is because you are already doing the things you need to do to have a podcast. That is, you are already having phone conversations with prospects and referral partners, going to coffees, going to lunches, talking to people. All of these things are hugely time consuming – but when you start incorporating these activities into a podcast, you are actually delivering tremendous value, leveraging the principle of reciprocity, and creating marketing assets that will send you leads for years to come.

In fact, a podcast can effectively replace time wasted spent ‘networking’ – especially with people who are not a great fit for you. Instead of networking with strangers, doing the dance to try to figure out if you can “help one another,” you spend your time on the highest value task….which is directly connecting with the most important people in your field and your most important high level customers and prospects.

With the done-for-you podcast service, you can expect to spend approximately 45 minutes to an hour per episode having conversations with your ideal prospects, prospective referral partners and possible strategic partners. However, because these conversations often lead to longer discussions with the guests about your offerings, we recommend you carve out additional time after the interview, should the discussion continue. We find this is the highest and best time you can spend on developing leads and connections for your business. Best of all, you decide who you profile in these conversations. Thanks to the principle of reciprocity, the people who you invite to be a guest want to ‘repay the favor’ of being a guest on your show.

You can think of the done-for-you podcast as networking and business development which doubles as marketing, because you are also recording your casual conversations and posting them. That will become marketing that will lead more prospects, referral partners and even influencers in your field to be drawn to you, and it will establish you as a thought leader in your field.

The done for you podcast service is not something you can have one person perform. There are different skill sets involved: audio & video editing, copywriting, lead targeting, search engine optimization, blog post drafting, social media marketing, outbound lead reach out, and many administrative tasks that go along with it. We’ve put together the team that will handle all of this.

A Few of Our Current & Past Clients

Add-Ons

Power Hour Interview Session & Rapid Episode Creation:

Leverage the strategy used by Tony Robbins and Oprah Winfrey

We will interview you (after jointly deciding on the topics in advance) and create 1-2 months worth of episode content in one 60 to 90 minute rapid fire session. We read the intro, sponsor message, ask the questions, and wrap it up. All you have to do is show up and answer questions – it has all the ease of a guest podcast interview, with all the benefits of having your own show. You can even have your choice of interviewer (ask us for current availability). Schedule a session every few months and you won’t have to worry about creating new content ever again.

Cost: $1000 per session

Done-For-You Podcast Specifics

  • You get 2-4 blog posts per month on your website
  • You get 2-4 episodes that go across multiple podcast platforms every month which profile you and feature qualified prospects and industry connections.
  • We turn your expertise and syndicate your episodes across platforms – on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Overcast, I Heart Radio, Spotify, Podbean, and more – that means we have to create all the posts and feeds and everything else involved.
  • Our team of skilled audio editors and video editors (if needed) balance volume levels and attach the professional intro and outro for each episode
  • Our SEO-optimized blog posts have a cascade effect because people searching for your information find a well-optimized set of blog posts and episodes via Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
  • Without breaking a sweat, you are creating regular and consistent content which is viewed highly by Google so it can increase your organic traffic.
  • Your blog post and show notes page is written in a compelling, intriguing way that prompts readers to become regular listeners
  • For each episode, we create a written summary describing the episode, with appropriate headers, a time-stamped bullet-list outline of the main topics covered in your episode, and all resource links mentioned in your episode. That’s websites, books, resources, anything… if we can track them down, we will.
  • For each episode, we also build “Deep links” into your own website to encourage web crawlers to discover more of your content and improve your SEO, and “Outside” links to people, places, things mentioned in your podcast. This also improves search engine estimation of your site for SEO purposes.
  • We Post everything DIRECTLY to your website
  • We post everything DIRECTLY to the various media and podcast host – scheduled according to your criteria.
  • If you like, we integrate your posts to go out on social media platforms
  • Upon your request – as an additional cost we run separate posts using the 3 Social media blurbs taken from the episode and we post on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or other social media networks.

Wrap Up

Every business needs one common thing: to get into a conversation with its best referral partners, clients, and strategic partners. 

For a combined 20 years, we have been getting into conversations with referral partners, clients and strategic partners using one of the best tools today for this purpose – a podcast.

And we’ve had conversations with high caliber connections who we never otherwise would have connected with. People who are busy, successful, decision-makers, and who are very difficult to connect with when you don’t have a podcast.

But they do have time for a podcast interview. And that interview turns into trust, which turns into a relationship, which turns into referrals and clients.

Our Done-for-you Podcast service is the product of 20 years of testing, iteration, and improvement upon a process – you benefit from all of this effort, vastly shortcutting the process for you.

Our service is designed to get you in a conversation with qualified prospects, referral partners and strategic partners.

Finally, I’ve asked myself often: what if I never started doing any of this?

What if I didn’t start proactively doing outreach and didn’t start doing video and audio profiles years ago?

I think of the 300+ amazing guests who have turned into friends and strategic partners; the authors, influencers and speakers I’ve connected with; the weddings I’ve been to, all the clients I’ve served, the referrals I’ve generated, the strategic partnerships, the hundreds of webinars and dozens of live events I’ve filled up, and the countless conversations I’ve had that lit up my days and left me more inspired and excited than ever.

All of this came from proactively doing outreach, creating profiles and publishing them. But we also realize how many moving pieces there are to put everything together, which is why we created this service to make it easy on you.

Now is the time for you. We’re confident that this service will be the best investment you’ve ever made, that it will save you time, be more effective outreach than what you’ve done before, and connect you with ideal prospects, referral partners and influencers. You will wonder why you didn’t start doing it sooner – we’re confident of that.

F.A.Q.

Do you require a long term commitment for the done-for-you podcast?
We do sign a service agreement with clients just so expectations are clear. There is a lot of time and energy upfront to get this started so we have a 6 month minimum. We are all about great customer service so we do not lock clients into long term agreements. Nevertheless, while our done-for-you media platform service can show short term successes, the real benefits come over time.

After the initial minimum commitment, there is a 30 day notice – either side can cancel services at any time for any reason.

What is the workflow?

Our goal is to make this as easy as possible on you. We have designed our system so it is as “push button” easy on you as it is for us to publish our own podcasts. There are 3 simple steps for you (which should take 8-10 seconds).

Our service uses Google drive and specifically Google spreadsheets and Google Docs – which are mostly free.

Here’s is the general workflow:

  1. You hit the “stop” button on your recording
  2. You upload the audio to a folder in google drive (we go over how you should label these)
  3. You fill out the episode spreadsheet we provide to you with the name of the guest and company.

That’s it! From there onward, we handle the rest of the details to get the podcast audio edited, add on the intro and outro, upload the audio to your audio hosting and get the blog post created.

What is the onboarding process like and how long will it take?

During the onboarding, we will explain to you how we work and give you examples of how to conduct interviews. In general, it could take 4 to 6 weeks to launch, depending on whether you are creating the intro and outro music or the artwork, or if we are. Usually the biggest delay is Apple, which could take up to 3 or 4 weeks to approve the podcast for iTunes and Apple Podcasts after we submit it.

Here is the initial onboarding:

  • Create intro and outro for the podcast which includes music and voiceover
  • Create video intro and outro to overlay on the audio if doing videos as well
  • Create podcast cover art design and approval
  • Create 4 podcast episodes that are needed to launch on itunes
  • Apply to get approval on itunes
  • If doing video then add us as a manager on youtube account for uploads
  • Sign up for audio hosting to upload episodes

Here is the ongoing process after the podcast has launched:

  • Our audio editor gets the audio portion done (if applicable)
  • Our video editor gets the video done (if applicable)
  • Our audio and video editor produces the audio
  • Our audio editor uploads the mp3 in the media host
  • Our audio editor enters the details for the episode in the episode log for your audio/media host
  • Our audio editor notifies the writer that it is complete
  • Our writer goes into creation mode
  • Our writer gets the audio from the audio editor and reviews
  • Our writer does SEO research on the topic
  • Our writer completes all sections of the blog post which will then be loaded into the media host notes also
  • Our writer communicates with web assistant to post everything on the website
  • Our writer communicates with the client that it is being posted
  • Your resources are scheduled where and how you want them based on the episode log we provide for you you
  • We do it all again for the next episode.

We have been doing this for a combined ~20 years and have thought through every step of the process to streamline and systematize it, so that it runs smoothly for ourselves and clients week after week, episode after episode.

Can you provide me with podcast cover art?

Yes, we can. We can create podcast cover art. It includes…

  • Use of any elements you want (within the iTunes guidelines)
  • Use of your brand colors (if desired)
  • Use of your headshot (if desired)
  • 1400px X 1400px png and jpg files in RGB color space
  • Up to two (2) revisions to get it just right

Cost for podcast art: $350 one-time fee

Link to get started with podcast art: https://rise25.typeform.com/to/upQ7QO

Can You Provide me with a Podcast Voiceover Intro and Outro?

Yes, we can. We work with voiceover artists who have great voices, incredible presentation skills, and the ability to bring that special “something” to your show’s intro and outro. You can choose your voiceover artist’s nationality, style and gender, and the musical style preference. All you have to do is provide a short script about your show.

You can choose from:

  • Male or female
  • Various nationalities (American
  • English, British English, Aussie, etc.)
    Professional or casual

Our basic VOICEOVER Package includes:

  • a 30 second clip intro with music overlay and voiceover read by professional voiceover talent (script provided by you). (We use royalty-free music from Audio Jungle to make sure you have the rights to use it.)
  • a 30 second clip outro with music overlay and voiceover read by professional voiceover talent.
  • up to two edits of the intro/outro.

Total cost for podcast intro & outro: $450 (one-time fee)

Link to get started with podcast intro & outro: https://rise25.typeform.com/to/qUQZtS

Total cost for podcast art, intro & outro: $900

How do the "Power Hour" Interview sessions and Authority Map Strategy Sessions work?
For the Authority Map Strategy Sessions, we will meet with you for 60 minutes to brainstorm, strategize and map out your content for the show.

For the Power Hour Interview sessions, we interview you (after jointly deciding on the topics in advance) and create 1-2 months worth of episode content in one 60 to 90 minute rapid fire session. We read the intro, the sponsor message, ask the questions, and wrap it up. All you have to do is show up and answer questions – it has all the ease of a guest podcast interview, with all the benefits of having your own show. You can even have your choice of interviewer (ask us for current availability). Please note: you are responsible for reaching out and arranging an appropriate time that we can meet for these sessions.

How do I know what to ask during the interviews?
You will be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to record an interview. Usually taking a few minutes before an interview to review a person’s website and LinkedIn profile will be enough to come up with a few questions to start off the conversation. If you have problems coming up with questions, we are happy to help you.
Are there any other costs to perform the interviews, etc.?
If you do not already have a USB microphone for the computer we recommend getting one that will cost $50-$100. We provide our clients with a full suite of tool recommendations as part of our client onboarding. In addition all audio files need to be hosted on an audio hosting that integrates with apple itunes. We also use this to syndicate your episodes on spotify and google play. We typically set up an account for our clients on a recommended platform and the typical cost is $15/mo.