Jeremy Weisz 6:00
Yeah, you can connect to people before and it’s a great mechanism to deliver value after. So when you’re connecting with people, you say, “Hey.” What are you going to say, “Hey, John, we should chat sometime.” That never happens. But listen, why don’t we connect in a few weeks after the conference and we catch up a little bit? And I’ll have you on my podcast. And the reason people want to say yes is because you’re making it go a lot farther. When you have a podcast it goes across, whatever 15 plus channels, it goes on Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and they know that so that one conversation that you have of them explaining what they do, you can actually publish it out and they can use it as marketing material. You can use it to — and we often use it to make introductions to people go, “Hey, before I introduce you to John, here’s a podcast I do with them. And here’s more information.” And it just goes a lot farther.
John Corcoran 6:56
Yeah, another one I say to people is that it’s hard as a professional, as a business person to say, “Hey client, a little slow next month, our company’s a little slow. Do you mind introducing me to some of your best clients so I could talk to them a little bit about what I do?” I mean, of course, you’re not gonna do that. It’s not going to fly at all. But it’s much easier to say, “Hey, I’m doing a series of my podcasts, I would like to feature this type of individual. Do you know anyone who fits those type parameters because we’d love to feature them?” It’s a much more of a give, but at the same time, you’re getting high-caliber referrals to people. Now, we’re not saying that you should immediately turn around pitch that person. Absolutely not. You should start by delivering value. But it does get you that access, that is much more difficult to get at the times that you want it.
Jeremy Weisz 7:47
Yeah, I mean, you just continue to think of ways to give in the process. John, like what you said is, your approaches in a giving fashion, you want to be in the podcast, and after the podcast, well, who can I introduce you to? It’s not selling them anything, it’s not pitching them anything, it’s just learning more about them, so you could deliver even more value to them? And they will be aware of what you do as a business. So if they know someone, or they may be looking for that, well, then they’ll naturally come on, you don’t really need to put it in their face all the time.
John Corcoran 8:21
Yeah. Now another one. Another point that you often make is that the podcast should help you with your current big objectives that you’ve already set for your business that you’re already focused on. Whether it’s hiring people, whether it’s recruiting, whether it’s getting better at implementing SOPs within your business. So talk a little bit about that point.
Jeremy Weisz 8:41
Yeah, that’s a great one. Because people will say, even people who do podcast, they get busy. And there was one client that we had about a month ago, and I was like, “You’re not producing as many episodes as normal.” They’re like, “Oh my God, Jeremy, we are getting so much business. We’re just focused on hiring right now.” And I said I pause for a second go, “Great. Where are you getting the referrals for people to hire?” Well, they mentioned that they get them from certain universities. And I mentioned well, great, so your biggest initiative is hiring, recruiting. So why don’t you have some of the biggest pockets of your hiring, the referrals are coming from the hiring recruiting on your podcast. And they said, so now, their biggest objective is not like oh, we already find with clients and referral partners. Now they go well, when I shifted their mindset around, you could be using this for the biggest initiative, which is hiring, recruiting, they immediately got excited, and they figured, great, now this serves the purpose of what our biggest need is right now. They started having on people who are referring them, potential candidates.
John Corcoran 9:55
Let’s go back. We were talking a moment ago about attending conferences and the ways in which doing a podcast can save you time when attending a conference. But even if you do attend a conference, whether you attend a conference or not, you like to make the point about creating a series leading up to a conference perhaps, or using the podcast to reach out to the speakers and exhibitors. You’ve had experiences and I have as well, where you walk into a conference and immediately you know some of the biggest players there, the organizer of the conference, the members of the board, the keynote speakers because you’ve already established a relationship with them using the podcast. So talk a little bit about that point as well.
Jeremy Weisz 10:37
Yeah, whether you go or not, like you said, is a good point because when you think of the needs, and again, it’s not my needs or your needs, it’s the other person’s needs. When we think of the needs of a conference, they want to attract more attendees. They want more sponsors. And if they have sponsors or exhibitors, they want to help those people get more exposure. So when I think in terms of the other party, well, how can I help them accomplish their goal? Which means okay, well, I can promote, there’s many times where you do this John too, is like someone’s having a conference, and we have some of the speakers, some of the exhibitors on. And we posted on social media to tell people this conference is going on, we’re also building relationships with some of the top players in that industry, but ultimately, we’re serving the needs of that conference. So you can reach out to the speakers and exhibitors. And even if I never went to the conference, I still know, let’s say a large majority of the speakers, the sponsors, the exhibitors, some of the organizers, but when you go to the conference even more powerful because people would look at me in a room John, as I’m introvert. I’m not really introverted, but they’ll think I’m kind of like observing from the sides. I’m not like, very outwardly, boisterous or anything like that. So really helps me make individual connections, it makes the room smaller. So when I go in person, it could be a networking group, it could be just connecting with people one on one through the podcast. When I show up to that I know everyone individually, and so I feel like I can approach people where that’s not my natural inclination is just a go up to people and say, hello, if I don’t know them.
John Corcoran 12:22
I think a lot of people have experienced that where they feel a bit of introversion, and they feel nervous in room full of people. And so that idea of connecting with people beforehand, knowing a few people in the room can make it feel smaller for them. Let’s talk about speeding up your sales cycle. That’s another point that you’ve made frequently about how podcasts can help speed up a sales cycle. Talk about that.
Jeremy Weisz 12:47
Yeah, I think building trust is a big thing. And when you’re talking to a prospective client, building up trust and continuing that trust. And also, it saves time, because, let’s say, John, we have this conversation, and one of our episodes you can check out is The Five Different Types of Episodes You Should Create If You Do a Podcast and let’s say we’re on the phone with a client, a potential client, and we’re giving them value. We’re trying to give them as much value as possible in the little time, we have to discuss it, but when you have a podcast, we can deliver that value and say, “Hey, John, we have this episode, which is.” And by the way, if they’re thinking through podcasts are going to find this very valuable, the five different types of episodes you should be creating, if you have one, and we break it down. And we may spend five minutes discussing it, but it doesn’t do justice to the full topic. So we will send that 20 or 30-minute episode to that person. So that speeds up the sales cycle without you having to be there necessarily, you can deploy the content you’ve already created to that person. It also, if you do have them on your show, it’s another give, right? And so it’s just building that trust, building that relationship, not asking for anything, and just helping them as much as possible. So it’s just they’re getting to know you and building trust. They may go in and I know it’s happened to you, John, they’ll go, “You know, John, I feel like I know you. I just listened to five or 10 of your episodes.” You’ve maybe talked to them once or maybe it’s the first time you’re talking to them, but they’ve binge listened to five or 10 of your episodes. They come knowing your story and knowing.
John Corcoran 14:38
For sure. The way I describe it to people a lot of times is imagine it’s Saturday night, it’s whatever 10, 10:30, you’re about to hit the sack. You get an email from someone, from a great potential client. They’re excited to talk to you. They say, “Wait, when can we talk? I really want to know more about what you do.” But you’re busy. You’re busy on Monday, Tuesday, you’re fully booked, you can’t talk until Tuesday evening. In the interim, you can share with them one of these resources that we’re talking about here, which is not like pushing someone off your website. It’s not like a marketing pamphlet or anything like that. It’s a conversation. And if they consume it in the meantime, before you talk, they will be that much further along. They will be that much warmer, and it didn’t take any of your time, as you pointed out. Let’s talk about content creation. So one of the big advantages of doing podcasts is it saves time with content creation because you’re talking out your content. How many people do we know that are beating themselves up because they haven’t done a blog post in six months, they know they need to do it. They know that the Google and SEO and the world relies on content creation these days, you need to do it for thought leadership. And yet they’re beating themselves up because they haven’t done it. But such a better way to do it is to talk out your content. So talk about that.
Jeremy Weisz 15:51
Yeah, I mean, we’ve talked about this, you’re a writer. So it’s not maybe, maybe it’s more painful. But maybe I feel like it’s not as painful for you. I could be wrong. If you asked me to write a blog post. I mean, you were a speechwriter at the White House Governor of California, if you asked me to write a blog post, in over decades, I’ve been podcasting, I’ve been putting out two to three episodes, blog posts a week that go on 15 different channels, they go on the website, they go everywhere, I probably wouldn’t have done one. Maybe, maybe. But it’s more engaging, I find it easier, I’ll hear what you have to say about it, but to talk and have a great conversation. And then we hand it to our team that does all of the writing and posting. And so it’s an easy button, I could just upload, this is what we’ll do after this. We will in less than three minutes, send the file to our team, it will magically appear there’ll be a nice blog post written. And good thing, John, works with writers because if it were me, we probably get nothing out the door because I was a biochemistry major.
John Corcoran 17:02
This is audio file. That’s all you get.
Jeremy Weisz 17:03
Yeah, exactly. But it allows you do that is authority, that is SEO, two to three episodes or posts a week is SEO, I know that. And if you do video, it’s on YouTube. I know, a couple weeks after I’ve done interview, people Googled someone’s first and last name I’ve had on and I’m like three search results on the first page of Google for their name. And so now they’re I’m showing up in searches for someone else. So it just saves so much time because you just show up and talk. And then the rest of it gets deployed as audio and video and a blog post and transcript. So, I want to hear what your thoughts are because I’m not a writer.
John Corcoran 17:49
I mean, to the point you made, I describe it sometimes as a land grab. It’s grabbing real estate, where the real estate matters the most, or it’s almost like back when the yellow pages was a thing. It was like getting a free yellow pages ad in the section that you want to be in. Because, by creating this content, and putting it out there you are grabbing a piece of that coveted real estate on the first page of search results that people fight tooth and nail to get there. The other example that I give is, I wrote for Forbes for a few years. And I didn’t put out that many articles. Yeah, it had cachet and everything, but I put out like 10 to 12 articles a year, that’s 10 to 12 people that I was building and deepening a relationship with, it probably took over 100 hours. For half that amount of time, I’m connecting with five times as many people. And it was more fun. It’s more enjoyable. And so yeah, even though I’m a writer naturally, that’s my background, I realized that the impact, the number of hours that you put into the number of relationships that you build to the amount of content, the output in terms of word count, article count is just far greater when you talk about your content.
Jeremy Weisz 19:05
Yeah, I mean, what’s the easiest way to deploy your ideas and get your relationships and serve so many other purposes? Even though what I want to point out, so I don’t know if there’s anything on that piece, but it just saves time in content creation. There’s no doubt about it. I mean, you have some of the busiest people in the world, if you look at some of them have a video person following them around just to record it. And then the magic happens afterwards.
John Corcoran 19:07
Yeah, they do. Two more points. One is panel discussions. And then the last one is repurposing, perhaps content that you created in another context like a speech or webinars, something like that. So panel discussions is one that we usually don’t recommend that people embark on if they’re just getting started. But you and I are doing one this Friday, where it’s going to be basically a panel discussion. So you can do it two different ways. You can do a panel where you and perhaps other clients come on your show and interview one person. Or you can do a panel discussion where you’re building a relationship with multiple guests, who are all panelists on the panel, you’re the moderator or facilitator. And you are guiding them through. Either way, it’s high leverage. So talk about that point, Jeremy.
Jeremy Weisz 20:21
Yeah, I mean, you want to make sure you run it right so people aren’t talking over each other. So, it’s always a work in progress. But panel discussions, when you have and I’ve had people on like two or three people, I remember, one person reached out and they said, “Jeremy, I’m launching a new book. I want to come on the podcast.” I’ve already had him on the podcast, great person. I’m like, “This would be great. I’d love to have you on. Who are some of your friends, we’re also releasing books that we could have on as well because I’ve had you on?” Usually don’t have a ton of repeat people. So I like to get some fresh people on the podcast. And he brainstorm with me names. And he’s like, “Well, I have this friend, and it was in the marketing arena. So we wanted something that was similar.” He thought of two other people, I think one of them was releasing a book, and one of them had written a book. So we had three people on in the marketing realm, and he basically brainstorm the people. And I didn’t even know them. So he’s like, he reached out to them, he got them. We arranged it. And it was a great session. And they all had chemistry together because they knew each other. So it’s kind of fun. I only knew one of the three. But it’s a great way to build relationships in this arena. And like you said, John, most people don’t think of it. There’s several we’ve done where we had another guest interview we’re on. I had one in particular lately in the wine industry. And I don’t have a lot of industry knowledge in that. But we have a client who does. So I said, “Hey, do you want to come on, and you could really be the brains behind the wine stuff and I’ll ask questions about the journey?” And it was great for both of us.
John Corcoran 22:16
Yeah, that’s great. And then final point. And by the way, we should do a whole other episode on best strategies, best practices around doing a panel model and panel discussion, but last one is repurposing. So repurposing a speech you gave, a webinar you did, a LinkedIn Live, Facebook Live, talk a little bit about that point.
Jeremy Weisz 22:35
Yeah, I mean, listen, we spent, I don’t know, John, between the two of us, how many webinars have we done? Like over 400 or 500. So we spent a lot of time constructing those webinars, thinking them through. And it’s kind of a shame if just like, let’s not bring that into your podcast. And so there’s certain points that you’ve really thought through, certain stories that you can tell, and a lot of times, it’s based around, you have the webinar on that topic because you are the thought leader in that specific space, you may answer questions that are really powerful that you want your audience to know. So you can take pieces of a webinar and release it. So repurpose what you’ve already done, a speech that you’ve given, it could be something that you touch on in, like you said, in a LinkedIn Live or Facebook Live, like you just said, you bring up these topics away. The panel discussion, people ask us all the time, like, how should I do that? Well, now we just are brainstorming on the fly right now. And we can pluck a topic that we can just touch on in one and bring it to another episode. So there’s so much that can be done, but use repurpose the stuff you’ve already done, the topics. You don’t like take it and you just play it on your podcast necessarily. But you can take pieces of it and actually record it and have individual pieces that you can deploy when necessary.
John Corcoran 24:12
Yeah. And I realized in the course of you answering that, that that’s not even focusing on repurposing once you’ve done the podcast repurposing that in other ways. So putting it on different social channels, putting on LinkedIn, creating interactive, dynamic audios, where you take a little snippet of something that the guest said or that you said, and turning that into something that you put on social media that gets a high amount of engagement. So there’s those other benefits as well.
Jeremy Weisz 24:40
Yeah, I mean, saving time, in general, to give to your network. Once you have that conversation, now, you can put it on all the channels. You can like you said, we’ve done it where we’ll take like a snippet of it and we put it across all the social media channels all over again. So it’s giving to them all over again, and posting it on the social channels when you’ve already had the conversation. And you’re even posted about that conversation now you’re doing it a second time. You can just keep giving with the original content or the repurposed content.
John Corcoran 25:15
All right, wrapping things up. Where can people go to learn more about all of these ideas and what we do?
Jeremy Weisz 25:21
Yeah, I mean, you can go to Smart Business Revolution, amazing guests, you can go to Inspired Insider. Again, all this content is free, by the way, amazing guests, you can go to more episodes of the Top Business Leaders Show and go to rise25.com to learn more about what we do, and we are just creating tons of free content to deliver value.
John Corcoran 25:45
Yeah, and connect on LinkedIn if you like as well, for either of us and happy to answer questions. We’re passionate about this stuff. So always happy to answer people’s questions if they’re curious about it. All right, Jeremy, thanks so much.
Jeremy Weisz 25:56
Thank you.
Outro 25:56
Thanks for listening to the Top Business Leaders Show powered by Rise25. Visit Rise25.com to check out more episodes of the show and to learn more about how you can start your own podcast.