Ep.11 – Podcasts, Podcasts and Podcasts with Matt Johnson

Chris Bruno [00:00:02] Welcome to the All About Digital Marketing podcast, the show all about digital marketing, digital marketing, digital marketing, digital marketing. Brought to you by Social INK; the digital marketing agency specialising in social media and content marketing for brave brands and forward thinking SMB. I’m your host Chris Bruno and as always we’re here to bring you the most actionable tips tricks tools and insights to help you achieve more when it comes to your digital marketing. You can find all the show notes and all the episodes on  christopherb121.sg-host.com. If you enjoy the show feel free to subscribe and of course share with a friend who you think might find this useful.

Chris Bruno [00:00:56] Hey everybody. Chris here, and today we have a special guest Matt Johnson who is really all about podcasts. Matt runs an agency pursuing results which is focussed on providing turnkey podcast services and podcast PR. Suffice to say he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to podcasting. As we continue to create new episodes for the all about digital marketing podcast I’m happy to say I’ve taken away loads from our conversation and I’m pretty sure you will too. Whether you’ve already started a podcast or you’re thinking of starting one you’ll find this interview really really helpful. Remember you can check out the show notes and find all the links mentioned in all of our episodes on our website christopherb121.sg-host.com. Enjoy!

Chris Bruno [00:01:44] Hi Matt. Thank you very much for joining me Chris.

Matt Johnson [00:01:47] Super excited to be here.

Chris Bruno [00:01:49] So for those who don’t know you and who don’t know pursuing results can you just tell people a little bit about who you are what you do and how you started doing this.

Matt Johnson [00:01:58] Yeah. So a quick snapshot of where we’re at now. So we are a podcast production and PR agency. What that means is that we work with like six and seven figure business coaches and consultants and we help them launch a podcast that essentially helps them break in and dominate a super specific lucrative niche. So we do all the back end production we also book two guests a month for their show. We also do the email and social media promotion on the back end so essentially it was modelled after what I built for myself from my first podcast which I wanted to just be able to show up and have super awesome conversations and then walk away and not have to worry about the rest of it. So I had already built the team to do that for me. Eventually that turned into us running an agency where we do that for other people so our clients just show up on zoom like we’re doing now have really awesome conversations with other influencers that they record solo episodes and then we grab those recordings and do all the rest of it. So it’s essentially a hundred percent turnkey podcast production.

Chris Bruno [00:02:51] That’s absolutely awesome.

Chris Bruno [00:02:52] And to be found slightly upset that we met four weeks after I launched the podcast on my own with my team figuring out everything from day one and scratch ourselves at the point it doesn’t matter. Okay so what’s the main belief for you behind podcasting? Obviously you started podcasting you’re now encouraging other people to start podcasting. What’s the number one attraction to podcasting for you?

Matt Johnson [00:03:16] So besides the fact that I just love ideas and conversations right now what I’m seeing in the world of like influencers and entrepreneurs is that podcasting has become the new networking. So when I look at like how my like the guy that I used to work for who ran the agency that I came out of he had to fly all over God’s creation you know buying bottle service in Vegas for people at 3:00 a.m.. It’s like trying to convince them to give him a credit card that would hopefully offset the cost of the trip to get there so that he could come back home with a you know one or two more clients to turn over to his partner and that that was like five years of doing that before he was able to actually build something that started to run itself.

Matt Johnson [00:03:57] And so I haven’t had to do any of that four years ago. I was just some dude working at an agency but he had the idea to start doing some business development with influencers in the space and base it around like live Webinar. So I ended up hosting like live webinars with a bunch of influencers that they had relationships with. And it was a niche that I was familiar with because of my background. But one of those people pitched me on the idea of starting a podcast together and like you know I’m a big fan of podcasts. But I’ve never hosted one. It sounds fun like my my potential co-host was interested in selling coaching in that space and then I was interested in tinkering around with developing training and education products and so we’re like okay let’s let’s do it.

Matt Johnson [00:04:35] So we launch a podcast you know flash forward four years later or whatever that’s at one point one million downloads. It’s was named one of the top five podcasts in that niche and has done really well as a ton of fun. I still drop in about once a week to host that we my partner is the primary person on that show. And yeah like that experience started exposing me to relationships and hooking me up with a bunch of people that were super high level and very influential in the space and that did a lot of things number one to turn me from from a nobody into a fellow influencer.

Matt Johnson [00:05:09] It allowed me to meet potential clients without ever leaving. Right. So I’m based in San Diego. I virtually don’t have to travel for work. I travel by choice and I don’t have to go. I don’t have to do things that I don’t want to do to get clients because I can reach out to virtually anybody I want with with a few exceptions but I can reach out to virtually anybody I want and either book them on my podcast or pitch myself as a guest on their podcast and what I’ve noticed is that the quality of the relationships that come from that is better than I would ever get by trying to shake their hand in between a session at a conference and I’m not super good at that anyway I don’t about you but I’m a natural introvert that’s learned to turn it on when I need it but it burns me out really fast. Right. So me showing up and having do like 16 hour days at a conference is like it sounds like the worst thing in the world and I know there’s always a lot of people that can relate to that. And the great thing about podcasting is that I don’t have to do any of that because I can specifically laser target exactly the types of people that I want to work with and I can either talk to them directly through podcasting or I can go one level up and I can talk to the influencers that they look up to and I can have them on my show and vice versa. So to me like podcasting being the new networking that’s the number one thing that I think is so important for people understand about podcasting is not just about hosting a show and it’s not about the audience it’s about the relationships you build.

Chris Bruno [00:06:26] I think that’s really interesting actually it’s the new version of networking and I think that’s quite cool because the same way as you know your Web site is definitely as important if not more important than your shopfront or your office or whatever it might be your social media is the or your two way conversation with people and your podcast becomes your way of networking and like you said. So we’re a completely distributed team. None of my guys come into any offices. We don’t have any offices I’m quite happy that way. We don’t want any. The idea being that actually we meet and we talk to people from all over the world. So we’ve got connections from the olden days and again sort of know people from Gibraltar. So we worked with them. Recently we started working with two companies in Holland and we’ve worked with people in Dubai. We’ve worked with people in France. We work with a lot of companies in the UK that are based all over and like I said everything has changed. So looking at the podcast as a way to actually network is quite interesting. How how do you think it fits in. Oh sorry.

Matt Johnson [00:07:25] I just I just agreed it’s it’s it’s been a huge game changer and I think more people are kind of getting getting turned on to that fact.

Chris Bruno [00:07:32] Yeah and how would you say it fits in as part of the bigger digital marketing scope for a company or for an individual?

Matt Johnson [00:07:41] I love that question. So I’m working on a book right now that’s going to come out in a couple of months to kind of explain that so I’ll give you a quick rundown. To me. It fits into the bigger picture is if you are. I mean I don’t I don’t care who you are as far as a service provider. But ideally you look at yourself as a leader right in your ear a thought leader you’re an influencer you’re supposed to be leading your clients to results that they couldn’t get on their own right. So we’re all leaders. For those of us that really step into that I think podcasting gives us a couple of things no one gives us a platform to lead people right to deliver content that will cultivate the right beliefs over time and kind of incubate people into becoming ideal clients even if they didn’t start out that way.

Matt Johnson [00:08:20] We can use guest appearances on podcasts to then reach new audiences and leverage those and kind of pull in people from the outside world and get them to give us permission to stay in touch with them. So we build our email list. We both build that asset of permission right. And then then that it solves To me it solves the the other problem that I think most entrepreneurs seemingly go to bed and wake up thinking about which is what in the world do I post today that’s gonna get me to grow my business. And to me we’re starting with the wrong question. I think the problem and the reason why we wake up every day wondering about what to post or if you’re in a big company wondering what the heck your people are posting. Right.

Matt Johnson [00:08:54] I think the reason that we wonder that is because two weeks ago we weren’t being interviewed on a podcast or hosting our own show. So we don’t have long form content to pull small chunks out that we can post on social media like if you look at what someone like Gary Vaynerchuk actually does. Yes he is engaged to a point but most of the content that you actually see him pump out is pumped out by his minions which are like his content team of 19 people that he uses for promoting his own personal brand. So what you’re actually seeing is somebody like Gary Vaynerchuck do, as he has built a machine behind him that he just kind of steps into. And and it pumps out content for him and then he engages on top of that.

Matt Johnson [00:09:35] To me that’s where all of us need to go and the only question is how do we build that machine. We don’t have 19 people. My answer to that is we really only need one person. We it doesn’t need to be us but we do need somebody. So that’s my my big vision is I want I want my clients I want my friends I want everybody in this world of influencers and agency owners and creatives I want all of us to have a person that is like their ally in the battle for attention that produces their podcast gets them featured on other shows and then pulls micro content out for social media and takes care of all that behind the scenes so the the person the leader at the top of that just like they just they step into that content machine almost like they were stepping into a BMW.

Chris Bruno [00:10:16] The micro content is really interesting. From my point of view we often talk about strategy. You know actually before we started the podcast officially we were having a quick chat and we talked about it again strategy being the number one one of the biggest things that we find doesn’t matter on the size big small or anything else. When you explain to someone okay. Right. So you’re writing one big core piece of content and they go Yeah. And then we post it on social. Yeah and then what do you do, and that’s it.

Matt Johnson [00:10:42] It’s like silence crickets the crickets.

Chris Bruno [00:10:46] My shoulders drop. People in my living room with me all that can see me at a cafe think I’ve just had the worst news in the world that people don’t realize how much all of this is usable. And when you do do a video or when you do record a podcast or even when you’ve written a long format blog or two thousand word blog you’ve got something that you can now read out loud. If you wanted to you could take clips out of it you can make quote graphics out of it. You can. From a podcast we use Headliner to create smaller chunks and then use those to promote the podcast that we’re actually talking about. There’s a hundred different ways from one particular blog post or one piece of content and you’re right. Gary V talks about it loads and a lot of people I think I like the idea of having the one person behind you for our clients obviously it’s been a team it’s the company that kind of helps them but I think the biggest thing is actually even understanding that themselves. So the biggest takeaway from this for me and for anyone listening would be you know no matter what that one piece of big content is it’s not one social media posts worth. It’s 15-20 social media posts worth if you know what you’re doing and if you’re looking at it in the right way and I think that’s kind of a really important part.

Matt Johnson [00:11:57] So yeah I couldn’t agree more.

Chris Bruno [00:11:59] So I guess this leads in really nicely to the next question I wanted to ask but there’s probably some selfish reasons considering we have just launched a podcast but marketing a podcast. So we just talked there about the idea of you know repurposing taking small clips using that as part of it. But what would you say are some of the key points for anyone who’s looking at starting or is just starting to help them actually market the podcast and to get people to listen to it?

Matt Johnson [00:12:24] Well obviously you know the strategy is the most important thing right. Getting the positioning of the podcast right and really going after a hyper focussed niche. To me that’s the fastest way one of the biggest issues I have with clients that come in when they first when they first come into our world and want to start a podcast is they’re not really they’re thinking of themselves more than they are the audience they’re thinking of the content they want to push rather than what is their ideal audience searching for. And where are they looking for it. So if you can kind of refocus around that. Right away that that will help solve some problems.

Matt Johnson [00:12:53] Now just tactically Like what. What small things can you do to promote a podcast. A couple of years ago Tim Ferriss put that question out to his audience and I read that there was probably his audience is insane. I swear there must’ve been 400 comments on that post. I read every single one of them. And the consensus that I found was that the only thing he wasn’t doing that they wanted from him was smaller short clips that made it easy for them to share it with people. Right. So his audience was already looking at people in their life and going you know I bet they would LOVE THE TIM FERRISS show. But I can’t just tell I can’t send them a link to an episode because all they’re gonna get is eight minutes of ads and then forty five minutes later he’s going to say something really awesome and significant that they should hear.

Matt Johnson [00:13:39] And I think that’s one of the big problems in podcasting is just you just have to. It’s one of those. It’s like it’s like an LP back in the day in the 70s like you had to sit and stew with it marinate it right to it to listen to it until I get to know the music. And so his his consensus out of that was OK. We need to start doing highlight clips from the podcast. And that’s what we immediately started implementing that for all of our clients. And that still to this day as many people as I’ve talked to that have podcasts nothing has topped that. So for example with our with our clients the vast majority of them record on zoom like we’re doing now but with video because we want them to be on YouTube to be more easily found. And we’re going to pull out a two to three minute video clip of that podcast and we’re going to throw it up on natively uploaded to Facebook specifically. It’s also going to go up as what I call a lead generation clip to YouTube with its own title its own additional tags to hopefully catch the SEO traffic of a very very specific answer to a specific question that their ideal clients might be searching for. So to me I don’t know of anything else that tops that combination of just using and leveraging a highlight clip and you mentioned headliner or audiogram. Like those types of things if you’re not on video and you’re wondering how to reproduce that you can absolutely reproduce that you basically just take your audio paired up with a little graphic and it has a little audio stream on it so that that works really well. So I don’t think it’s quite as effective as video especially on Facebook but it is the next best thing if you’re running an audio only podcast.

Chris Bruno [00:15:07] OK my next podcast is definitely going to be video as well.

Chris Bruno [00:15:16] So what’s the biggest piece of advice from your side. Biggest piece of advice to anyone right now that’s sat there that’s going. You know I’ve got a bakery or I’ve got a small flower shop or whatever it is but they want to do a podcast. They’ve been thinking about it. They’ve been talking about it. Maybe they’ve even had a couple of drinks with friends going we should definitely do one together. Biggest piece of advice about getting started and getting out there and doing something.

Matt Johnson [00:15:40] Well I think the biggest especially for that type of client it’s not so much. You know it’s not so much about the audience. Let’s put it that way. I would focus more if I were running a podcast for you know like a medium sized company or a local business or something like that. I would look at a podcast as an easy way to reach out and build a network of people that have had a great experience and it’s a great conversation with me who can then send me referrals and then I would then follow up and keep a good relationship with those people through you know like thank you notes and cards and stuff like that.

Matt Johnson [00:16:14] Anyway point being I think we get really really wrapped up in Who’s listening. How do you get more downloads and all that stuff in the bottom line is if you unless you’re really nicely tightly defined and you go after a very very specific niche of people who are looking for information that you have on how to solve a specific problem. Right. To me that’s when a podcast has a potential to kind of grow and catch like wildfire and start getting a lot of downloads right away as people are already looking for it and all of a sudden you step into that gap and you fill that need.

Matt Johnson [00:16:43] So if you’re not doing that right if you’re if you can’t like if you’re running a business where you just can’t get that hyper focussed and you’re it’s more about branding it’s more about communicating with with like an email list or something like that to me. If you start by focussing on relationships first and you use your podcast to build this network right and let’s say you run a podcast for a year then it’s a weekly show so you’re inviting let’s say four people a month on to your show by the end of that you’re going to have what is that 50 people. Yeah 50 people. So you have this network of relationships with 50 people if they’re the right people you’re going to get referrals off of that in real estate they they talk about how like every every potential referral source even for a real estate agent where the deals are. They only come around like every seven years that people only move houses every five to seven years right. So they don’t need your stuff every day but every potential business or influencer in the community is worth one to two referral or repeat deals every single year. So theoretically and it’s not well and it’s not really just theory because people prove this all the time that people that really use this strategy people that have 50 really good solid referral partners are selling 100 homes a year which is you know 10 times with the average real estate agent. So that’s just a very basic example of how local service provider can use this strategy. The problem is people get hung up in numbers they get hung up on the audience and they ignore the opportunity to build a strategic referral network of using the podcast as a way to get them on the phone.

Chris Bruno [00:18:11] That’s really interesting. I’ve never thought about using the podcast for the relationship building side of things. So that’s kind of opening a massive door and something that I need to look at in a lot more detail from our own side.

Matt Johnson [00:18:27] We can chat about that off line but yeah I mean for agency just just as a quick aside. Yeah I mean it’s for example my own podcast I invited I think I was introduced to her by a mutual friend. I invited an agency growth consultant here on the stage on my show. We had a lovely conversation it was great. We really hit it off and we just have similar beliefs. Like at the end of that conversation she was like I have a client that needs to talk to you. Let me let me make the email introduction like it happened just that fast. I got introduced. We hopped on the phone we did a podcast episode. Immediately I had a referral like it can happen that fast. So yeah once once you see the possibility of that approach. I mean to me it’s I know it’s a really it’s a missed opportunity especially for agencies.

Chris Bruno [00:19:09] So that’s probably brings me on something quite interesting. Do you find that most agencies are good at promoting themselves?

Matt Johnson [00:19:18] No we’re we’re universally terrible. I hope I’m better than average because we we do you know like we wanted to call eat would you cook. Yeah I don’t I don’t secretly like here’s here’s what I have found with other agencies. They’ll be selling content marketing blog writing blah blah blah blah blah. Then you find out that they actually grow their own business by hosting podcasts and showing up at events right. Like it’s completely different.

Matt Johnson [00:19:44] I can honestly say like every potential client I have I have met through podcasting and the referrals that have come from podcast like it all came from relationships that were developed from podcasting and the you know the new crop of clients and stuff like that that we’ve signed up over the last year or so they’ve all come from podcasting or friend introductions that were surrounding that. So I can very clearly say like we we do exactly what we say and recommend to our clients and that’s exactly how we’ve grown our business. I do think that sadly is rare in the marketing world especially in the agency world where you know it seems like what they’re selling to clients is not exactly what they’re doing to grow their own business or they believe in it and they know it works but they kind of you know the clients always come first and we kind of you know we do a halfway job on our own marketing. I think that’s also common to it. It’s really hard it’s a hard thing to overcome. It’s not easy. And I think that’s we should always put our clients first. So my recommendation for probably other agencies if they’re listening is wall your own marketing off from the stuff you do for clients and have it done by separate staff same systems but different staff that way. Their number one priority is your own marketing and not the clients because the clients are always going to come first to somebody in operations.

Chris Bruno [00:20:57] Yeah I agree. It’s something that actually we and we found ourselves kind of slacking at the end of last year and we put in place a monthly challenge for ourselves as an agency and this was interesting because some of the ideas my team will be listening to this and thinking Yeah he’s going to tell that story and we hate him for this.

Chris Bruno [00:21:14] So it started off with something as simple as there’s a creative hub here in the UK called 1 minute briefs on Twitter and basically you have 60 seconds to come up with a brief idea for a brand or for an idea for a product or whatever it might be. And we decided that actually we’re going to get involved everyday day minute. So in total between knocking up something posting it maybe five minutes in total every day. So we do that. We get involved. We ended up winning a brief for KFC which was phenomenal here in the UK. They hosted one and it was a prize draw kind of brief and we won that we were super proud of it. We’ve carried that on ever since. So since I think it was beginning of March every single day we’ve had to take five minutes creatively to come up with an ad idea for something really random that we have no idea about before that day’s up. So that was our first one and then that kind of went from there and we decided to do live.

Chris Bruno [00:22:10] So for 30 days we went live every single day. So one of the members of the team. Anyway we were in the world whatever we were doing weekends and we all went live at least once at least one of us we went live every day. And then we got to June and we thought you know what our biggest product that we sell is the content marketing side of things. And for us if you don’t have good blog content if you’re not using that as a core part of one of your strategy or a core part of your strategy then we think that’s something wrong. So we know we challenged ourselves and I say we challenge ourselves because they’ll all say I challenged everyone, we did 100 blogs in the space of 30 days and that was insanity. But the idea behind it wasn’t to kind of try and boost our SEO rankings or anything else. Those are all by-products. It was the point to show small to midsize businesses if you can’t post once a week if you can’t create something once a week then it’s an excuse. It’s not true. We don’t believe you, like it it’s impossible we did it. We’ve done all of these things on a maximum kind of extreme level.

Chris Bruno [00:23:10] Same with the podcast that was a monthly challenge. We will get this up and running setup. Recorded published hosted on Apple on Spotify can’t seem to gain Google but apparently it will come eventually. And the idea was that you go like we’re gonna do this in a month and in four weeks we did it and we launched with a couple of episodes pre-recorded I think we actually had five or six pre-recorded and we had an interview as part of that we had made stuff but one of the episodes the very first one we didn’t know what the podcast was called.

Chris Bruno [00:23:42] And literally we were like that but it doesn’t matter like we know what we want to talk about and the first one was talking about this idea of starting a podcast. But why does everyone have these limiting beliefs and I think that’s probably bringing me to the next question which is for all those people that are sat there and they talk a great game when they’ve got a glass of wine in the hand or whatever it might be. What are you finding that the biggest barriers to entry because let’s be honest it’s not the tech. It’s not you know with a pair of airpods and an iPhone you can start recording what the perfect quality but it doesn’t matter. But what are the biggest objections that you’ve come across that people set themselves in terms of actually getting started.

Matt Johnson [00:24:19] Well you’ve got your run of the mill imposter syndrome and that can be an issue sometimes. But if if you if you get past that I think the next the next most important one is just I don’t know what to say I don’t want to talk about and having conversations with other people definitely solves some of that but I do think it’s important if you are like if you if you’re expecting a podcast to lead to new clients they want to hear from you. They don’t want to just hear you interview other people. So I strongly believe that and I’ve started to shift my own podcast from having like one solo episode a month to like one solo episode for almost for every interview that I do. And the key to that I think like when we take in new clients where we help them map this out so that they come out knowing kind of OK here’s my topics for solo episodes here’s and we base that around. What are the thing. What are the beliefs the values and the opinions that that podcast host has. Right. What are the things that they can share that are unique different interesting arresting surprising compelling polarizing and all that stuff. Right.

Matt Johnson [00:25:22] So just let’s make a list of everything. Now let’s refine that down to OK. What are the few maybe five or 10 at the most core beliefs that people need to have in order to not only buy from you but then to be an ideal client for you. Right a client that you love even after they pay you. And if you can hit continually and you just create solo episodes around those five to 10 core beliefs. That to me is what turns your podcast from just a way to keep in mind and stay in touch into something that actually incubates and creates new potential clients for you down the road doesn’t happen overnight. Right. Which is where a lot of people also slip up.

Matt Johnson [00:26:00] I think half of the podcasts that are out there are like six months old or less. I think a third of them aren’t even active anymore right. They haven’t released episodes in the last six months. So there’s a lot of people that launch podcasts. There’s a lot of people that are launching new podcasts right now. And three or six months from now they’re not going to be releasing new episodes anymore. And part of that is because they are they don’t know how to get quick wins out of a podcast and a podcast by nature as a long term strategy anyway. But there are ways to get quick wins that a lot of people don’t know about. And but they also don’t know how to do the right things now to incubate clients to sign up six months from now and they can’t handle the time gap between that. Right. So if you understand more of that you understand that the you know one of the biggest things or how to overcome that big question of what the heck do I talk about. And you have a list of topics that you can always pull from and you just turn on the microphone and just record something. It doesn’t need to be epic. It doesn’t have to be you know book publishing worthy just record something that will make the podcast much more effective. And if you hang in there three and six months from now you’ll have people coming back to you saying hey I’ve listened to like five or 10 of your podcast episodes where do I sign like I have clients right now to sell an extremely extremely unique and high trust, financial product let’s put it that way. It’s it’s unconventional. It bucks all of conventional wisdom and it takes a lot of trust and a lot of content to get somebody to come up and say I’m ready to go right. And they have people. I think it’s at this point one to two leads off the podcast per week so eight to 10 per month of people essentially coming to them reaching out scheduling a call. And when the guys show up to the call the prospect says I’ve been listening to your podcast and I’m ready to roll. Where do I sign. The only question is how much money am I going to hand you. So if we do the podcast right. If we do those things we talk about the right things we just hit those things over and over and over again. That’s what happens you know six months down the line into a podcast.

Chris Bruno [00:27:52] It’s interesting actually said we were talking with Eugene Kahn last week co-founder of make an ex editor of hype beast. Guy is phenomenal when it comes to storytelling. He hosts a podcast as well. We were talking about it because everyone seems to want to start a podcast but it reminds me of five years ago. Everyone wanted to start a blog maybe 10 years ago. Yeah showing my age now. But five years ago ten years ago everyone wanted a blog. So what happened was they set up a blog or the YouTube channel or whatever it might be and what happens invariably is like exactly like you mentioned. So I’m six weeks into it. Nobody’s picked up the phone called me and offered me a million pound deal. This is no good I don’t want to I don’t want to play anymore. So it literally just dies a death and he was talking about, he was saying you know podcasts aren’t necessarily right for everyone. And this is something that I think the way he put it was if you would do it regardless of if you were getting paid for it. So in other words even if it made no money would you want to do this. Do you enjoy the process would you carry on doing this six months from now a year from now even if it made zero money. I think that’s a really interesting thing and I’d like to ask you the same question. Would you say that’s an important factor in this because all of these things for us whether it be social whether it be blogging content for SEO purposes campaigns advertising doesn’t matter. It’s all about doing trying testing seeing getting that feedback and then it’s evolving from that. But the most important thing is always that no you don’t post twice on social media and then say social media doesn’t work right. Like would you say that’s the same from your point of view for a podcast?

Matt Johnson [00:29:30] I would say it helps. It definitely helps you get through you know what Seth Godin calls The Dip right the time the time gap between when you feel like you’re putting in all the effort and when the results start to come in. Right there’s always that dip where things just get tough. And yes hosting a podcast where you just genuinely enjoy the conversations and you enjoy doing it for its own sake is hugely helpful. And I know I know I’m in that boat if you don’t feel like you have that and you’re looking at it strictly as a way to grow is and as a new media method or a tactic. I do think it helps to focus on the relationships and turn those into quick wins and use it as a way to build a network of like if you use a podcast to build a network of referrals and then you are actively keeping in touch and kind of furthering and building the relationship behind the scenes with those people that you have on your show. I think it definitely gives you some quick wins that allow you to see the podcast as a success even if the numbers are not exponentially taking off like you would like them to and you’re not the next Joe Rogan and the next Gary V.

Matt Johnson [00:30:33] So if we get if we get the right quick wins I think it comes down to more than just passion. I do think people get led astray a little bit in the sense that when they launch a podcast they look for. They look for an idea for their podcast that I call the magic umbrella which is an idea that’s so broad that it can allow them to talk about anything they want to talk about and promote anything they might ever create to anyone who might ever want to buy it. That that makes it really tough for a podcast to take off because people aren’t necessarily looking for that information your information ends up being really scattered it’s all over the place. People can’t basically scroll down the list of episodes and even tell by the titles who the podcast is for or what they’re expected to learn. Where were you leading them like what we know. What does this all leading up to. So yeah I think that’s the only word of caution I would say about that is it’s great to start a podcast just on a topic that you can talk about forever because you just love it you’re passionate about it but not if it means starting a podcast that’s so wildly unfocused that it can’t grow.

Chris Bruno [00:31:36] That’s quite interesting as well I think so we have this conversation with clients every time we start with the basics of the strategy and they’ll start telling us about all the bolt ons or the additional things that they do for their clients and all these are wonderful.

Matt Johnson [00:31:49] I love that phrase the bolt ons. That’s awesome. Yeah I’m totally going to steal that by the way because I love it.

Chris Bruno [00:31:57] Go for it Eugene stole something off me the other day as well I said I’d send him  the invoice.

Matt Johnson [00:32:03] Right. It’s like you didn’t know that I had that copyright and trademark.

Chris Bruno [00:32:08] Royalty check. Thank you. But the idea being that they want to kind of focus on all these other things that they’ve done once or that you know they helped that one person that one time in that one situation you’re sat there going none of those things matter. And when we start with anyone. But it’s true though it’s that extra bonus with a client that you know that the things that you get a pat on the back and if you’re lucky the guy buys you a beer for it and says Thanks.

Chris Bruno [00:32:33] But the main thing he’s always coming back to this core service. What does your company actually do? And anyone who starts by telling us they do one hundred and twenty two different things we automatically have alarm bells ringing and we just leg it. Basically we’re trying to get out the meeting as quick as possible. But when you sit there and you actually break it down usually they have two maybe three core services and they’ll be interlinked whatever it might be. So if they’re in events for example it’s event marketing it’s event management and then it’s event organization for all the back end kind of crap for it.

Chris Bruno [00:33:03] So we look at it and we go forget about all the other bits because it’s not about because at one time you got them an article and an interview in the magazine that no one cares but focus and I think that’s really important because you just set it there for the podcast. What’s your podcast going to be about and again every interview I’ve done so far we’ve ended up on some sort of a wild goose chase just kind of coming down the rabbit hole talking about something else. But at the same time we’re always trying to figure out what are the best tips tricks ways methods the the principles behind small to mid-sized businesses and how they can use digital marketing. And the reason why we say it is because there’s so many amazing podcasts and I listen to them. You’ve mentioned one of my favourites Tim who helped me to lose 18 kilos some five years ago three years four years ago fwith the Four Hour Body and I read The Four Hour Work before that and started, I pushed everything out to VAs until you realize you’re doing it wrong and then you bring everything back in-house but that’s right.

Chris Bruno [00:33:57] The idea being that you know they’re so far away from where people are right now and I think this is the thing that we get sort of stuck on so you listen to somebody you know Travis from UBER and you know it doesn’t matter what the company is but somebody’s talking from a multi-million pound they’ve made it and they can give you these ideas and these tricks and these challenges and the way they got over it and how they dealt with it but the reality for me is that’s so far away from where somebody is today and not only that but it’s so unlikely that you know your company is going to become the next unicorn.

Chris Bruno [00:34:31] I’m being honest when I say this you know like this there’s very few trillion dollar. There’s very few trillion dollar companies. There’s very few billion dollar companies in comparison to the huge amounts of small to midsize businesses who are making really good money making a few million and making 20 million is not a laughing matter.

Chris Bruno [00:34:49] I mean it’s huge. And I think this is where people kind of get lost and they kind of focus on the Gary V. And like you said you don’t need to become the next Gary V. But you could be the next Gary V for the thousand or the 5000 people in the UK that work in X and you will be more than wealthy enough to be able to cover all your bills and to pay and to have a good life and to travel and to do whatever you want if you can understand that you’d like you said the niche that you’re going after. Seth Godin who talks about it as you know your minimum viable audience who you actually doing this for and why. It’s not about you it’s not just for personal gain it’s not to give yourself a pat on the back at the end of the week. But focussing on that core audience.

Matt Johnson [00:35:27] Yeah yeah I think there there’s there’s all the benefits of it. I think the main thing that holds us back is just fear fear of focussing fear of missing out fear of putting all all of our eggs in one basket and having you know to watch that one basket right. We always want to hedge your bets you know like the question that I hear you know and I’ve heard myself ask it. I’ve also heard clients ask it which is well why can’t we do both.

[00:35:53] And that is that is the eternal question right. Why can’t we do both. Because you just can’t right because it just doesn’t work. That’s the deal. You know we can’t do both Why. Why can’t we sell to both the mitt. Why can’t we sell is the mainstream and the top people because they just can’t. Like they make decisions differently. They spend their money differently. They have different strengths and weaknesses. You know why can’t I be in this niche and this other niche over here because you just can’t. I. It just doesn’t work that way. Now I can see this at all root. It’s funny because it all roots in human nature right.

Matt Johnson [00:36:26] It all has to do with how human beings think. We have a hard time linking any one thing with you know two niches or whatever like. We want to say what is what is Matt right. Podcaster. Great. Like if I tried to stand for two or three different things if I came on here and I want to talk about like business development personal development you know like all the other stuff that I’m passionate about and excited about or God forbid we talk about music or something like that. Like who knows what category people are going to put me in like I need to reinforce the perception that Matt equals podcasting right. Because if I try to get two or three or four things stuffed in there what I’m going to end up doing is just making sure that they don’t remember me at all. And that’s worse. But we want to live under the fantasy that we can talk about and do and offer 17 different things. Like you said and that just doesn’t work. We can’t do both.

Chris Bruno [00:37:19] I think that’s again very well put in that sense and it’s this idea that people are too scared or like you said human nature the psychology of it is a panic stricken moment of what you mean I can only be in one niche. Why do I have to be put in to one niche?

Matt Johnson [00:37:36] YEAH. IT’S TRUE.

Chris Bruno [00:37:38] Like we talk to people going. There’s nothing wrong with being front and centre the celebrity behind your small business. Ultimately you know you read the reviews of stuff and I’ve got an amazing team and they talk to my clients and my clients love them and all the feedback I get is phenomenal about them. But invariably people will go I want to talk to Chris. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s part of building a small business and one day we’ll get to a size where I can’t talk to everybody hopefully and then it has to be slightly different.

Chris Bruno [00:38:07] But I have no issues being front and centre and making sure that people know me just like you said. But I want to be digital marketing not for you know I don’t want to go work. I should maybe Google I’d be quite good fun but only because I’ve seen that canteens and stuff like that. But the main thing is I don’t want to work in a massive company I don’t work in FTSE 100 or a Fortune 500 company where I’m sat there all day arguing over some absolute numpty about whether or not the typeface should be in this format or in that format when it goes on a business card, like the thoughts of that kills me.

Chris Bruno [00:38:38] So I’ve got no issues with that but I’ve chosen kind of where I want to sit and I’m really happy with the small to midsize businesses because I love working with them because their ballsy they’re daring that incumbent they can come out fighting and swinging and they’re trying their best and they give it a go and they’ll do things differently and they’ll be a little bit more outrageous maybe than the bigger brands and that’s what you want. That’s what I love working with and that’s how they end up getting results because of it. .

Matt Johnson [00:39:02] Right.

Chris Bruno [00:39:03] I know that in terms of where we’re getting a little bit closer down but I always end with the same two questions but one of them is stolen from ten but not this one. The biggest single piece of advice you’d give to anyone and it doesn’t have to be 100 percent podcast related it doesn’t have to be professional or personal. It can be whatever you want but just that one little nugget from your point of view this is what you’d recommend.

Matt Johnson [00:39:27] Honestly I think the main thing I always recommend is for people to hire someone right now. And the reason I say that especially if to people like solo producers and freelancers and marketing people that are just kind of doing it all themselves hiring somebody else even if it’s for five bucks an hour for a V.A. in the Philippines to work for you five hours a week. Right. So 100 hundred bucks a month or something like that. What it does is it starts you on a personal development and leadership development journey that will change your life.

Matt Johnson [00:39:55] So the process of forcing yourself to sit down and think about what you do and what you shouldn’t be doing and what you should be handing off to somebody else and starting that process of like bringing somebody in helping them to build a system documenting what you do. You know I’m saying like all that stuff just that natural normal process if you haven’t gone through that it’s really interesting. So I’ve gone through it. I’ve helped people on my staff go through it by giving them the freedom to hire their own person to raise up to either replace them or a system. And I’ve watched people go through that leadership journey and it it just it changes your perspective on the world. So if there’s one piece of advice I can always give to virtually anyone at any level it’s to hire someone right now especially if you don’t have someone hired assisting you in your own business right now.

Chris Bruno [00:40:38] Awesome. I like it. So we’ve like I mentioned earlier it was Tim Ferriss Four Hour Work Week that got me into the idea of the eyes and proud to be able to sit there and say actually one of the videos that started with us back in 2017. Today is our Head of Social Media work full time with us. So I really do believe in the V.A. system in the V.A. model.

Chris Bruno [00:41:00] OK so finally where can people find you online where can people find out more about Matt?

Matt Johnson [00:41:04] Yeah. So for the podcast production service go to pursuingresults.com. We do have a course because we don’t offer this as a service of getting people featured on other podcasts which to me is the really the first step. So if you’re not ready to launch a show and be a host. Great. In fact I recommend people start by getting featured and getting interviewed like I am here. And this is exactly how Chris and I met. I had my assistant reach out to Chris we researched the podcast we felt like it was a good fit. We felt like I could bring value my assistant reaches out they facilitate. They set everything up and then I show up and just have an awesome conversation everything else happens behind the scenes.

Matt Johnson [00:41:39] So if you want that operating in your own business you can absolutely have that you go to howtogetfeatured.com. I’ve got a training that actually shows exactly how to get how to get featured how to find the right podcast How to pitch yourself how to get on the show and actually speak in a way that gets you ideal clients right. And then we talk a little bit about how to how to basically hire somebody and we have the training for them that you can just essentially say hey I bought this for you go show up here and they get four weekly calls and all the training that they need to come out fully equipped and they’re going to pitch you starting in week two. So you probably have podcast interviews showing up on your calendar on week 3 and 4. If they go through this particular program. So anyway we only sell the podcast production service that we worked with clients so that’s why I created this training course for VAs to help get more feed more people featured because I see the need for all my clients needed I needed it. So I just built the system for myself and then we sell the training.

Chris Bruno [00:42:33] Awesome. So I need to ask the question I think because Matt equals podcast. So how did I do?

Matt Johnson [00:42:37] It was very good. I had a blast. This is one of the most fun conversations because I hate the word interviews because I don’t want to listen to podcast interviews. I want to listen to conversations and that’s exactly what you and I had like this felt like we just happened to have the recording like a tape recording on and you and I are sitting on a couple of couches in a bar or something you know talking about growing an agency. So that to me these are the most fun conversations to have. And I hope I hope podcasting goes even more in this direction. Let’s put it that way.

Chris Bruno [00:43:07] Awesome. Thank you very much Matt for joining us and hopefully we’ll do this again sometime.

Matt Johnson [00:43:13] I think we will.

Chris Bruno [00:43:14] Awesome. Thank you.

Chris Bruno [00:43:20] There you have it. Matt Johnson equals podcasts and more importantly we’re doing a good job having these conversations. If you’re thinking of starting a podcast ask yourself a couple of questions.

Chris Bruno [00:43:32] One. Who’s it for. Who’s the audience. Just like Matt said try to find a niche that allows you to create something that has real value for one particular audience rather than trying to get out there in front of the masses.

Chris Bruno [00:43:45] And number two would you keep pushing through as Seth Godin calls it “the Dip” to get you through those hard times when you’re not seeing the results that you were hoping for. Whatever you end up doing, we’d love to hear more from you. And if you’ve just started a podcast drop us a link to it and we’ll have a listen. Remember you can find all the show notes links and details for our guests on our website. christopherb121.sg-host.com.

Chris Bruno [00:44:09] Take a moment to subscribe on our website or on your favourite podcast app including Apple podcasts and Spotify. See you soon.