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[Podcast Series] Dr. Jeremy Weisz | Reinventing Learning: How to 10X Your Professional Development Using Podcasting

Dr. Jeremy Weisz is the Co-founder of Rise25 Media, a company that helps B2B business owners connect with their ideal prospects, referral partners, and strategic partners through a done-for-you podcast service. Dr. Weisz has been involved in podcasting for 11 years and was a senior producer for one of the early business podcasts where he helped to put all of their systems in place and helped them add volume, feature, and edify various business leaders.done-for-you podcast service. Dr. Weisz has been involved in podcasting for 11 years and was a senior producer for one of the early business podcasts where he helped to put all of their systems in place and helped them add volume, feature, and edify various business leaders.

Dr. Weisz has also been running his own podcast, Inspired Insider, since 2011. He has featured top entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs of companies such as P90X, Atari, Einstein Bagels, Mattel, the Orlando Magic, and many more through video interviews on Inspired Insider. He also continues to run his own chiropractic and massage facility in downtown Chicago and has also founded a nutritional supplement business.

In this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, John Corcoran is joined by his Rise25 Media co-founder, Dr. Jeremy Weisz, to discuss how podcasting helps reinvent learning. They also explain how a podcast can help grow a person’s network, how it can bring in more leads for their business, and create connections with other professionals.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll hear:

  • How can podcasting help with professional development?
    John explains how a podcast can be used to connect with professionals and recruit new employees
  • Why podcasting can be considered as a forced discipline
    How does a podcast help introduce people to new networks?
  • What are the benefits of having a podcast in addition to a website?
  • Where to learn more about Dr. Jeremy Weisz and John Corcoran

Resources Mentioned In This Episode

Sponsor: Rise25

Today’s episode is sponsored by Rise25 Media, where our mission is to connect you with your best referral partners, clients, and strategic partners. We do this through our done for you business podcast solution and content marketing. 

Along with my business partner Dr. Jeremy Weisz, we have over 18 years of experience with B2B podcasting, which is one of the best things you can do for your business and you personally. 

If you do it right, a podcast is like a “Swiss Army Knife” – it is a tool that accomplishes many things at once. It can and will lead to great ROI, great clients, referrals, strategic partnerships, and more. It is networking and business development, and it is personal and professional development that doubles as content marketing. 

A podcast is the highest and best use of your time and will save you time by connecting you to higher caliber people to uplevel your network. 

To learn more, go to Rise25.com or email us at support@rise25media.com. 

To learn more, book a call with us here.

Check out Rise25 to learn more about our done-for-you lead generation and done-for-you podcast services. 

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Episode Transcript

Intro  0:14  Welcome to the revolution, the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we ask today’s most successful entrepreneurs to share the tools and strategies they use to build relationships and connections to grow their revenue. Now, your host for the revolution, John Corcoran.

John Corcoran  0:40  All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here. I am the host of this show and you guys know my story, so I won’t go too deep into it. I’m a recovering political hack, spent years working in politics and in law. I discovered this medium of podcasting about 10 years ago, and I’ve been doing it ever since. And it’s one of the best benefits and gifts I’ve ever experienced in my life. You get to talk with so many amazing individuals. And I’m just reflecting back on the past year and some of the great people that I’ve talked to, one of whom is on the other end of the line. And we started this series in this past year of doing live episodes where we go deep on talking about a topic related to podcasting and content marketing. And that’s what we do at Rise25, where we help b2b businesses with the strategy and the production that they need to create a podcast that produces tremendous ROI and connects them with their ideal prospects and referral partners. And before we get started with this episode, I want to give a big shout out to two people. Dan Rollins over at LiveWire Films. He’s a video strategist, really smart guy, and doing great things with video. So check him out. And then also Alexi Cashen of the Alexi Cashen Podcast and Elenteny Imports. Alexi started a podcast last year and we’ve been privileged to work with her on it. And we just recorded a big episode that’s coming up this Friday talking about all the amazing insights and ideas and relationships that have come from doing her podcast. So that’ll be released on Friday. I’m really excited for that episode with her. But today, we’re going to be talking about how to learn faster. How this is kind of one of those unexpected benefits of doing a podcast and Jeremy, you and I talked about podcasting as a Swiss Army knife. It’s like a tool that can do so many different things at once. There’s so many benefits, business development, content, marketing, referral, marketing, up-leveling your network strategic partnerships, there’s so many different ways in which a podcast can benefit you and bring value to your life. Even if you build a tremendous Joe Rogan size audience, I would continue doing it because of all those benefits. And professional development is a huge one. I can say over the last 10 years, there have been individual conversations I can think of that wouldn’t have happened unless I was doing it for the podcast and insights that came from that, which resulted in massive changes and impact to my business. And I don’t know of any better way, frankly, to be able to talk to smart people, ask some questions and learn. So let’s dive into this topic Jeremy. So what do you think of when I say podcasting is professional development? It is constant learning.

Jeremy Weisz  3:18  Yeah, I think the best advice that I’ve ever been given was, find a mentor. And that can mean in health that can mean in wealth. That can mean in anything we can go more specific, which I know talking about finding a salesperson like specific advice, it could be an investment. So the best advice I’ve ever gotten is find someone who’s done what you want to do or is doing what you want to do. And we found no better way to do that. If there’s something in your life you mentioned, learn faster. leapfrog the learning curve by going to someone that you want to learn from and you could have them on your show and actually learn from that person. Like let’s say, you know what, I mean, there’s a book I read, one of one of my favorites, “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss and I read it. He’s an ex-hostage negotiator, FBI hostage negotiator. I got it. Not for business, but for parenting because kids if you have kids, it is I swear to God, it’s like a hostage. Like, you’re not going like I’m not putting my shirt. I’m not putting on my jacket. I’m not doing this. It’s like there’s a stand on nothing you can do about it. standoff, right? How many standoffs? Do you go through a day? With your four kids? Yeah, I mean, stop touching him. Don’t do that. But it’s like everything right? And so I listened to that book for parenting purposes. Okay, if he deals with terrorists, then maybe I can apply some of the same methodology, the same methods to negotiate with my kids, but,

John Corcoran  4:51 

And you were a really early advocate of Chris Voss, his work and and I remember a few years ago talking about him, and now he’s done it. Master Class. I mean, he’s done big speeches. He’s become this big thought leader and influencer.

Jeremy Weisz  5:06 

 Yeah. So I want to learn. My point is I want to learn from him more in depth. And I can ask the questions I want to ask him specifically, I had him on the podcast, right. And I was able to learn from him. And then we ended up going to dinner when he came to Chicago. And so you get to learn from the best of the best. Yeah, and he has a master class at masterclass.com. So it just, you can shortcut when you’re reading a book, if you’re listening to this person, you can go right to the source and ask the questions that you want to know.

John Corcoran  5:35  

Right? Absolutely. Yeah. And that’s really one of the big benefits of using a podcast is professional development. If you get to talk to the source directly, you get to talk to experts directly. And you get to ask them questions that you’re curious about, right? You know, because the magic of it is that it’s not just you calling up someone asking to pick their brain, which no one really likes, right? But it’s actually you’re recording it, you’re showcasing their expertise, you’re sharing their thought leadership, even on even if you don’t have a tremendous number of listeners, it is an amazing gesture to take time out of your day, it takes money, no doubt about it, to create that content, and then to share it with the world. But you know, it’s also another big benefit of it is that it can lead to further partnerships, it can lead to further learning, it can lead to further as you mentioned, going to dinner with an individual afterwards, it could lead to I’m a big advocate of meeting up with someone later in person, maybe it’s at a conference, you go to an industry conference, and you can meet up with people. So talk a little bit of some of those other further benefits, which can come from using the podcast as a professional development tool.

Jeremy Weisz  6:51

Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of benefits, obviously, like, just content-wise, I’m putting it out there and having other people watch it and learn about you is huge, right? And that goes across. As we know, with a podcast, you can put it across, you know, over 1720 different channels you can put on on social media, you can put it on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, all the channels. So more people are discovering that conversation. So isn’t living in a bubble, but you’re actually pushing that conversation out to, you know, all these platforms, so more people can discover it. You know, I was talking to a guest today that I had on my podcast. He’s like, Oh, I love what you’re in John’s interactions. I’m like, what, like an old married couple like you guys. I don’t know. He said good dynamic. I think he meant we like bickers actually, as we’re talking. But he was able to listen to that, because we put it out on all the channels. And that’s a benefit, obviously, you know, I formed many of our business partnerships, because of podcasting. I’ve had many people that refer to partners that we refer to, they refer to us through the podcast as well. But from a professional development standpoint, I wonder if you talk about that, that one specific example they have recently about the sales.

John Corcoran  8:07  

Yeah, thank you for reminding me. So that part of what inspired this discussion was a client I was talking to yesterday who had a key person who’s leaving. And so you know, he was talking about I gotta spend all this time we’re gonna recruit someone hire train someone up, you know, and it’s a lot of work when you lose someone and I said, Look, you gotta use the podcast as a tool for that go out. And you could do a series focused on that, you know, in this case, it was someone who was in a sales role. So, you know, you can go out and you can get access. You know, we had a client who interviewed you know, Jack Daly is kind of the king of sales out there. There’s lots of big sales experts out there. Jim comes to mind as another sales expert who I’ve had on my podcast. Jeremy, I’m sure you’ve had a bunch. You’ve had a ton of different sales experts out there. And that’s a measure of what Joey Gilkey is.

Jeremy Weisz  9:00 

Like, Oh, I’d have Joey Gilkey on and Joe, you could promote what Joe is working on and give it to him and then ask the questions you want and hiring the best salesperson,

John Corcoran  9:10 

 Right in GM, Jason Swenk is another sales expert. And now we belong to a community that Jason organizes that Joey is also in. And so it goes from an initial conversation, where you’re featuring that person on the podcast, to then a much deeper conversation and longer conversation where you have further interaction. And so yeah, so I said, you know, don’t look at it as the podcast is an additional thing that you have to do but integrated into your current needs in life, where it actually will save you time because, you know, if you were just hiring for a regular role within your company, and you tried to call up all these different experts and say, Hey, can I pick your brain about this role than I did hire for my company? People are gonna be like, okay, where’s my check, right? But when you’re doing the podcast, it doesn’t work. That way. You’re actually giving them exposure, you’re delivering value to them. They’re not doing you a favor, you’re doing them a favor, and you’re learning at the same time. So that was a big message for him a big aha moment for him was realizing, oh, wow, you’re right, you know, I can actually use this as an opportunity to further uplevel my knowledge base and learn more about this role and also use it as a tool to recruit. And we know many people just happened with us where, if you, as you mentioned, our business partnership came through podcasting. But in addition to that, you might hire someone filling the role through a, you know, either directly or indirectly, maybe someone that you interview who you then hire, or maybe you interview someone, and then they immediately afterwards introduce you to someone who then leads to you filling that role. 

Jeremy Weisz  10:44 

 Yeah, I remember we were at Brian Kurtz event. And we were speaking and attending and Joe Polish was talking. And he said, I would podcast if no one was listening in. The reason he gave next was not necessarily the one I was expecting. The reason he gave was exactly what you said. He goes for professional development and learning alone. I would podcast if no one else was listening, because I get to talk with some of the best people in the world and learn from them.

John Corcoran  11:11  

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s, that’s really what it is that I can remember. You know, another friend of ours, Kevin Thompson, that conversation that I had with him was about six or seven years ago now. And this amazing guy, he had worked on commercial fishing boats, you think of like the, what’s it called the Deadliest Catch. And he worked on those types of boats, then he started his own business, like it was like, I forget exactly a cleaning business or something like that, where it would play the carpet, carpet cleaning, right. And then that’s how I discovered Joe Polish. And for him to be insight was that he could do these, these teleseminars where he would train people, and he would partner with equals would go to conferences, he, he was really good at making friends with people. And then he would offer to do training for them. And he didn’t need to reinvent himself. He had one training that worked, he would do it over and over again. And when I had that interview with him, I realized, Oh, that’s my superpower, too, if I can connect with people and build a relationship, I could create a training once and I could do it over and over again. And the year following my interview with him I did I want to say over 50 different in that in my case webinar training. Because of that insight that I got from that one conversation, it blew me away, it really helped my transition from practicing law into a new business in, you know, made it a lot more profitable. So it’s a big impact. The other thing, the third benefit that I wanted to mention, is really, it’s about discipline, because it’s so easy for many of us, Jeremy, I know you read hundreds of books a year, you know, you’re on autopilot, you’re always listening to different book, I aspire to hit that. But for many people, you know, we get busy with work life, family, that sort of thing. And we forget to be constantly learning and constantly reading. And a podcast is a you probably read about

Jeremy Weisz  13:09 

Four books a day, because you have four kids, you’re probably reading a different story.

John Corcoran  13:13  

That’s true. They’re all six pages long, but I read four books. There you go. That’s true. That’s true. And they it’s mostly pictures, frankly, but

Jeremy Weisz  13:22 

 It’s the kind of book I love.

John Corcoran  13:24 

 Exactly. But so it really doing the podcast is a force discipline, you know, this, in 2020, when COVID hit in in March, I made the decision for the first time in 10 years of doing a podcast to double my output to go from putting one episode a week to putting out two episodes a week. And the reason I did that just because I had no idea what was gonna happen. But I knew that doubling the number of relationships I was building and deepening was the right choice that would lead to good things. And it was a force discipline. It forced me to read books for people that I was having on the podcast, not every time but most of the time. It forced me to learn about them. They forced me to ask them questions. It forced me to be engaged in the conversation and ask follow-up questions, reflecting and building based upon answers that they gave in the interview. So I think that piece of it is the force discipline of uploading a building your knowledge base is an important point you want to fall Yeah,

Jeremy Weisz  14:23 

No, I mean, I think you hit it on the head. I mean, I try to listen to the audible every single week. But if there’s a book I really want to listen to usually as a force discipline, I will ask that person to be on my podcast because that means I will listen to the book. It’s almost like studying for a test like when you study for a test. You study the night before Yeah, you study the night before because you’re like Oh, I’m so busy. So it forces me to listen or read the book because I know their books are important and that I should be reading it but maybe it’s not a priority with everything I have going on. Same thing with you but it makes a priority. I’ll be talking the next day and when I show up and listen to it. So I will create that force discipline by having that guest on.

John Corcoran  15:06 

 Yeah, that’s a great point. Yeah. And, you know, one additional one I was just thinking of Kim Walsh-Phillips. She’s an amazing trainer. You know, salesperson. We’ve learned a lot from her. We’ve hired her over the years, she’s come to events of ours. We’ve partnered and collaborated with her on so many different things. And, you know, I was just listening to an episode that she did on the Built to Sell podcast where she was talking about selling her business. And, you know, I was getting insights from that even just, you, we’ve gotten so many insights from talking to her, but I was getting insights, even from just listening to her being interviewed on this podcast because she was talking about some things I hadn’t heard her talk about before. So just even, you know, listening to that, and, and, and getting that knowledge, you know, I mean, we haven’t even mentioned the benefit of listening to podcasts. But of course, that is an additional benefit, because we will, you know, I will go and listen to a bunch of other episodes of someone who’s going to be a guest on my podcast before I interviewed them. So then there’s that additional benefit because you, you know, whether you’re a regular consumer of podcasts or not, I will go and listen to other episodes in preparation for interviewing someone as well. Yeah. 

Jeremy Weisz  16:26 

 And you mentioned an additional benefit that I always think about, which is how do we serve our current network, right, we always want to give to our network, and the more guests we have, we get to introduce them to other amazing people in our network. And so like when I Chris VA, I was having dinner with Chris, when he was coming to Chicago, and then Brian Kurtz and Richard Rossi, who both know, we’re coming in town for a Strategic Coach. And they were putting together a group of entrepreneurs to have dinner with and I go, do you mind if I bring someone and, and I sent him his bio. And they’re like, Oh, of course. Yeah, you can bring him. He’s amazing. But I was able to introduce him to the network that I had. Right. And so that’s another additional benefit.

John Corcoran  17:09  

Yeah. And I’ll bet he ended up speaking at Genius Network, or he ended up speaking at one of Richard Rossi’s events or something came from that, though,

Jeremy Weisz  17:19  I mean, one guy in the room was a really successful entrepreneur but was a huge fanboy of Chris and he was like, end up sitting next to him at dinner. And he’s like, I bought 100 of your books and gave them to 100 different friends. So yeah, it was just cool. Yeah.

John Corcoran  17:42

Grateful to you, you know, sometimes we forget about these things. But, you know, I try and do the same thing where you kind of try to introduce people, especially someone who’s been a guest on your podcast, or you’ve gotten a lot of value from them, you try and repay the favor by introducing them to someone else of value. And I’ll do that. And years later, I’ll, I’ll kind of forget about it. And I’ll reach back out to that person back. Hey, I don’t know if you remember me, but had you on my podcast A while back, we connected? And remember you? Of course, I remember you. Yeah, you introduced me to this other person. We started a business together. And that has happened a number of times, where people who said we started a business together. Or I can think of another occasion where someone actually relocated, they moved. They moved from the city they were living in to another city because they started a business with another person. Ben settled in, they ended up living in the same city together so they could do that business. So it was really cool.

Jeremy Weisz  18:37  

So many benefits.

John Corcoran  18:38

  Final. Any final thoughts on this? Or shall we wrap it up?

Jeremy Weisz  18:42 

 No. I mean, my own final thought, John, and we’ve been saying this before, was self-serving. But I said this on the episode that I just did earlier today. And I said, if you have a business, you should have a podcast. I mean, you wouldn’t have a website or not have a website. If you have a business, you have a website, right? And so we’ve always said, if you have a business, you should have a podcast period, hands down doesn’t matter if you use us or whatever it is, but it’s just so beneficial in so many ways.

John Corcoran  19:09 

 Yeah. And to take that analogy even further, you know what so often a website is, it’s a stack of glossy flyers in the corner. You might need them from time to time, like someone will stop by and look at the glossy flyer, they get a better understanding of who you are. The podcast is the conversations. It’s the engagement. It’s talking to your best potential clients, your best referral partners, your best champions that people that already know, like and love you that are already out there telling the world about you. It’s about deepening that relationship even further. So they will go out and tell others about you. That’s really what it’s about. It’s about the classic glossy stack of flyers that will sit in the corner not to minimize a website. We all need to have websites, just like we need flyers from time to time. But we also need to have conversations with people and that’s what I love about it. Jeremy, where can people go? To learn more about you learn more about us in the work that we did.

Jeremy Weisz  20:04

 Yeah, you just go to rise25.com and you go to the about page. We actually told someone the other day who brought up the stories of our grandfather’s people actually, surprisingly read our about page. But it has our background, your very impressive background, the White House and other places and also kind of what motivates us to do this, which is sort of our grandfather’s story. Collectively.

John Corcoran  20:28  Go check that out. Rise25.com. Thanks, everyone. We’ll talk again.

Outro  20:32  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.