- Speaker #0
So you said something interesting, Eric, about the reason that you actually started the podcast on LinkedIn was actually to get clients. Did that actually work very well?
- Speaker #1
You can't be gentle with your lists. And I would tell people this all the time when you've got a client, like, oh, I just want to send once a month. No, no, no. Target, for example, sends 10 emails a day. I'm not saying you should do that, but don't be gentle with your lists. I think the same thing is don't be gentle with your podcast. You're not just competing with the other companies in your industry. You're on the internet. So you're competing with porn and games and sports scores. You have to be omnipresent.
- Speaker #2
what are you doing about marketing? What are your favorite channels?
- Speaker #1
But if you want to engage in your old, like me, you have no idea what's going on in the world of social media. TikTok is drunk.
- Speaker #3
Your watch. I'm talking marketing misfits with Norm Farrar and Kevin King.
- Speaker #0
Mr. Farrar, how are you doing, man?
- Speaker #2
I am doing great. How about you, Mr. King?
- Speaker #0
I'm alive and kicking as my buddy Mark would say. Y'all got a question for you. Are you famous or are you infamous? What's the difference? You know, someone's asking me the other day, what's the difference? Famous or infamous, it doesn't matter. They both have the word famous in them.
- Speaker #2
Well, there's a big difference. And yeah, you might be infamous.
- Speaker #0
I might be. I might be. I might be. Especially if I keep cussing, you know.
- Speaker #2
Well, we just beep you out.
- Speaker #0
Just beat me up. But no, I mean, you know, there's a lot of, we interview a lot of people on the podcast and we're pretty in tune with what's going on out there in the internet marketing world or just marketing world in general. It seems to be like a common theme lately among a lot of our guests is how AI is starting to affect everything. And several people are saying that becoming a brand or having a voice or becoming an expert or becoming well-known in the eyes and not necessarily. of just humans, but also of AI bots is becoming more and more important. And something that keeps coming up, I've seen this in writings, I've seen this in people we've talked to, and I think you have too, is that having a podcast is one of the easiest and best ways to actually establish that authority, that expertise. And what do you think?
- Speaker #2
Yeah, we're hearing a lot more about that. But what I'm seeing is... people trying not to put in any effort. So you go to Google LLM, you ask for their deep dive, they have the interview, and now you've got your two people that everybody knows talking. It's good, but having a podcast like we're having right now, I think is a lot better. I think AI is definitely going to come in and have a play with it, especially with editing, Kev. So, you know, the ums, the ahs, the filler words, just expressions, your eye contact, all that's changing right now with AI applications. So that, I think, will help tremendously. But the actual podcast itself, I don't know if it's going to go down a quality control rabbit hole, you know?
- Speaker #0
Well, you and I were at the podcast show. There's a couple of them. I forget the name, Podcast Expo or whatever. I won a DCP.
- Speaker #2
Podcast movement.
- Speaker #0
Podcast movement. Yeah. Last year. And it's a stat that stuck out to me was that the average person, they always have these big dreams or these big ideas. I'm going to start a podcast or I'm going to start a blog or I'm going to start a newsletter or there's several different ways that people try to get their word out. And I think they said that the average podcast lasts seven episodes and that's it. Yeah. Because people realize, hey, this is actually work. I got to commit to this. I got to stay on a schedule. And life gets in the way or they're just not disciplined enough. And so most people fail. And that's why you need someone almost like, and some of that is a money thing. Some of that's a technology thing, trying to do it all themselves. And that's why you need somebody behind the scenes, like kind of like our guest today, Eric Ryan. He got referred to us by another guest that was on the pod. So you and I, we're getting to know him just like the audience is getting to know him today. But one of the things he does when I went to his website, is it says something to the effect of, I'm paraphrasing, like, do you want to be famous? And what they basically do, I was like, what was this guy, like a celebrity creator or something? And I started looking down at his site and it's like his fundamental principle thing, one of the things that he does is helps people create a podcast and helps do that back behind the scenes stuff and helps them have a better chance of success. So it's going to be interesting talking with him today because I think it's going to maybe motivate a few people and understand really what does it take. To actually do this and to do this well.
- Speaker #2
Yep. Let's bring them on. Let's do it. Let me just do my job. I got one. You got one.
- Speaker #0
You got one button. It's the big one. It says green. It says go.
- Speaker #2
There we go.
- Speaker #0
That's it.
- Speaker #2
You hit the button. You did it. I'm getting better at this, Eric. I believed in you and I always have.
- Speaker #1
So I think you said that the average podcast only lasts seven episodes. I think I've read this statistic. If you make it to 20 episodes, you're going to be in the 1% of podcasts. Just really. Yeah.
- Speaker #0
Yeah. I seen something along those lines too. I didn't know it was 20, but yeah, it's, and it's a huge field. I mean, there's so much in there. out there, but there's so many dead ones. I mean, there's an app called Podwise that I monitor a lot of podcasts. Norm and I are big in the Amazon selling space. We both have individual podcasts in that space, and then we do this one together. And so I monitor a lot of the other ones that are out there, just looking for nuggets of piece information, put it through AI and stuff. And it's amazing how many of them come and go. And Podwise monitors all this stuff and pulls transcripts and pulls mind maps. everything's pretty cultural but it's amazing how many people do it i mean what do you what do you see when people come to you and say hey i want to i want to do a podcast what what's some misconceptions maybe people have or what this entails i think yes there
- Speaker #1
are a lot i think one of the major ones is that you're going to get like normal famous you're going to become joe rogan off a podcast and i think that's ridiculous it might happen i listen joe rogan was a terrible comedian and a D-list actor, and he made it, so it's possible. But I think- what you should do is if you can get niche famous, that's pretty good too. So if you're the best toaster maker or the best concrete guy or the most well-known, you can still kill it. So there's a blogger named Bob Hoffman. He's the ad contrarian. I don't know if you read his stuff, but he said something brilliant. He was like, there are no absolutes in marketing, but one of them is fame. So if you're famous, people like in any given situation, if you know of somebody and you don't know of somebody, you're going to buy the person that you know. So if you can get niche famous in whatever your niche is, I think you're going to make a lot of money. You're going to be very happy. You are going to be buying Wagyu beef and cigars. That's what you guys are into, right?
- Speaker #2
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
- Speaker #0
That's about it. Not Wagyu. The real stuff. The real stuff from Japan. Not just the American Wagyu, but the actual true Kobe beef and stuff from Japan. That's the A5. The A5. A5 Wagyu. to clarify. I'm a little snob on that.
- Speaker #1
I know you are. Well, listen, I mean this in the nicest way possible, but I listened to your little intro of another podcast, and you mentioned being at St. Bart's or something at a hotel that was $2,000 a night. So I know you do it for a reason.
- Speaker #2
Okay.
- Speaker #1
Plating about $10 Coke Zeros. Snobby about your beef. It's on Amazon. Listen, I do my research.
- Speaker #0
I haven't sold billions. I've sold... tens of millions, but I've helped people sell beef.
- Speaker #1
You facilitated the sale of $20. Yeah, which is just as good. Same thing too, real quick, just because, you know, who am I? Well, I managed to make my LinkedIn Live. I was doing a daily LinkedIn Live for eight months. And I parlayed that into a show that's going to be on cable television, which I got to tell you, it's pretty impressive. I don't think anyone, anyone has ever gone from LinkedIn to cable television, except for me. So listen, if there's an authority in this space, it's me.
- Speaker #0
So what was this LinkedIn Live about?
- Speaker #1
So the idea was I own a marketing agency, which is not notable. You know how I know that? Because I watched another one of your episodes where a guest said that there's something like 6,500 agencies out there. So who gives a shit about another agency? But I thought, so my general premise was everyone hates a sales pitch, but everybody loves, do you want to be in my podcast? So it was like, why don't we find some people whose business we want, invite them on the podcast under the guise of they're going to get to know us and then like us and then hire us. So the show was me and two other guys. I had a co-host and a like a Robin Quivers. And we would cover the news for the first half hour. And then for the second half hour, we would interview the CEO. And then I got discovered by somebody who produced the last comic standing for NBC. And then on his client list was a guy that owns National Lampoon. So then we did some stuff. And then all of a sudden, this National Lampoon guy happens to own Jewish Life Television, which is a channel. Check your local cable package. And we're going to go on that. I'm not Jewish. I'm the Jackie Robinson of Jewish television. Somehow I broke the glass ceiling. But I just think if you do something interesting and unique, big things can happen. You're going to end up on Jewish Life Television.
- Speaker #0
That's awesome.
- Speaker #2
We've got to try to do that, Kev.
- Speaker #0
We should. Maybe you can be on the Cross Dresser Life Television.
- Speaker #2
There he goes. What was it? I don't know.
- Speaker #1
It's big money in cross-dressing. No,
- Speaker #0
there's nobody with a beard. You'll stand out.
- Speaker #1
You'll stand out. I don't know.
- Speaker #2
I tried all you fans, but...
- Speaker #1
You'd be the hottest beard I've ever seen. Eric,
- Speaker #0
you said something really interesting there that I think a lot of people don't realize on podcasting. Some people do. They go into it with the exact reason that you started the LinkedIn. But it's one of the best ways to meet people. To meet, like, you know, you just mentioned before we started, hey, Neil Patel. You guys had him. He's kind of a big deal on the podcast. And, yeah, it's a great way to meet people and to ask them what we want to ask them directly, you know, like in the case of Neil. And then actually just to create a relationship. And we're not trying to sell something to him, but the door is opened. And now maybe he'll come speak at one of our events. Or maybe he'll end up working with him or whatever. But your approach, like, hey, let's get it as a way to get clients. to actually come on was, I think that's really smart. Did that work pretty well? Because a lot of people, they'll start a podcast and it's a great way to meet people. Like you said, before we started with us, you saw what we had Neil Patel on. That's a great way to actually start to create a relationship with him. That's one of the reasons we reached out to him and got him on. And it's a great way to make connections. But from the side of a great way to create clients, how did that work?
- Speaker #1
It worked pretty well. I think it would work better if we were more niched. So my co-host owned a email marketing agency. So sort of like buying and warming up email addresses and then spamming people. So that's what he was selling. I was selling podcast services. So it's kind of tough to be like, God, he is a perfect potential client that wants to host a show or who wants to spam people. So it did work. Not as well as it could have if we were more niched down. Now, you own or you have a marketing podcast. So you have people that are interested in marketing. So I think it's a. It's a better ecosystem if you were to monetize it in a marketing way. So it does work, but I think we could have done a better job at it. Then again, I always had delusions of being actually famous and actually on TV. So I was pushing sort of an agenda. I was trying to be over the top and aggressive and making the news segment the thing that I wanted people to pay attention to. So yes and no.
- Speaker #0
Hey, Norm, you'll love this, man. I talked to a seller the other day doing 50K a month. But when I asked them what their actual profit was, they just kind of stared at me.
- Speaker #2
Are you serious? That's kind of like driving blindfolded.
- Speaker #0
Exactly, man. I told them, you got to check out Sellerboard, this cool profit tool that's built just for Amazon sellers. It tracks everything like fees, PPC, refunds, promos, even changing cogs using FIFO.
- Speaker #2
Aha. But does it do FBM shipping costs too?
- Speaker #0
Sure does. That way you can keep your quarter for... chaos totally under control and know your numbers because not only does it do that, but it makes your PPC bids, it forecasts inventory, it sends review requests, and even helps you get reimbursements from Amazon.
- Speaker #2
Now that's like having a CFO in your back pocket.
- Speaker #0
You know what? It's just $15 a month, but you got to go to sellerboard.com forward slash misfits, sellerboard.com forward slash misfits. And if you do that, they'll even throw in a free two-month trial.
- Speaker #2
So you want me to say, go to sellerboard.com misfits and get your numbers straight before your accountant loses it.
- Speaker #0
Exactly.
- Speaker #2
All right. You also mentioned at the beginning about, you know, being, getting out there, becoming famous podcast is a great way to, you know, to do that, to get exposure. But what we found is we don't get that many leads, but we have the authority. So the podcast really has helped us become more of the authority in our niche.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And I think authority is great. And I think, you know, you mentioned it earlier in the, before I came on, all the hard parts after podcasting, sitting down and talking is easy. Editing is a pain. Once you edit it, putting up on all the channels is a pain. Luckily, we do all that for you. But I think a lot of people just want to sit down and talk. And that's the easy part. So I think when they sit down and talk and it doesn't get any traction, that's when they give up. because they're frustrated. It's all the harder stuff that I think eventually is going to like, for instance, I went to your YouTube page, the full episodes do less good than the shorts. That's exactly what happens on my YouTube page, but creating the shorts and posting them is, you know, it's not the fun part. So I think, yes, it builds authority, but I think if you do it right, you can get a lot more views than if you only put it up in its full length on YouTube or on, you know, Apple podcasts.
- Speaker #2
And that's where you, that's where the magic happens as well, because You've got the expertise where you know what the length of the shorts are. Are the three minutes and under doing better? Are the three-minute to nine-minute range doing better? The long format and then what to post to the other social media channels is really hard to do. And to find somebody who can take that content, add the captions, and to get the engagement, it's almost impossible to find somebody that can do all three. You can have two. But not all three of those.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. So we put together a team that loves to do that stuff and test and iterate and see what the algorithms want. I just blast out on myself because I'm desperate for attention. So luckily I do, I take my own drugs, but then I have professionals that would never do what I do. So we're doing both sides of the coin, which is nice, but you have to do it. You cannot just do the full episode. No one's going to watch your hour long thing without being driven there by a 30 second thing or a 60 second thing or a seven minute thing.
- Speaker #0
And then they're going to watch it. I mean, I don't think I watched it. a single podcast or listen to a single podcast in 1x. Everything is 2x, or if there's a thick accent, it's 1.5 or 1.75. And so, because I don't have it, and sometimes it actually, you know, I do podcast, and it's the great content, but sometimes when I hit a link, I get a bunch of newsletters, and it'll be a link, and it looks like an interesting subject line, like, oh, I want to read that story, and I click there, and it's a damn podcast. And I'm like, I back out right away. I'm like, I'm not looking, let's... I look how long it is. It's 42 minutes. Like, no, forget it. I skip over it. So how do you, how do you, you know, in a world where there's newsletters and there's LinkedIn posts and there's podcasts and there's all this stuff, how do you actually get someone to actually listen? Like, take my case where I'm like, I'm not even going to listen to the first five seconds to see if I get hooked. I just back completely out. But I do listen to podcasts. It's not that I'm against podcasts. It's a, it's a time management scannability thing. Should I be like, when I, when I'm driving traffic to that? Should I be driving to a three minutes short or nine minutes, three to nine minutes short? Because I'm more likely to actually take a minute. Okay, I'll spend three minutes and put this in 2X versus driving to a length. What do you find works best for you and your clients in that regard?
- Speaker #1
I find for me what works best is, and this goes back, so I've had a marketing agency since 2012 and it started with B2C and emailing and particularly bonsai trees. That's where my first major client was a bonsai tree company. You can be gentle with your lists. And I would tell people this all the time. We've got clients because like, oh, I just want to send once a month. No, no, no. Target, for example, sends 10 emails a day. I'm not saying you should do that, but don't be gentle with your lists. I think the same thing is don't be gentle with your podcast. Not the full thing, but you can cut it up in a million different ways. Like Opus Pro does such an okay job. So if you send this thing in an hour into Opus Pro, you're going to get 80 clips. Put them everywhere all the time. Here's the thing about any industry you're in. You're not just competing with the other companies in your industry you're on the internet so you're competing with porn and games and sports scores and you know what i mean so it's you have to be omnipresent so i i think number one is just don't be gentle and make sure it's all the right places make sure the video is on your website make sure it's all over every social make sure it's in your weekly newsletter like get it out there you know because you're competing with every single thing on the internet and there's a lot of things on the internet from what i've told whenever
- Speaker #2
i type in porn kevin's picture pops up i don't know why but me too
- Speaker #1
because he's, you know what it is.
- Speaker #0
I'm pretty good at marketing, man. I'm pretty good at
- Speaker #1
SEO. Not only have you sold billions on Amazon, but millions.
- Speaker #0
I'm in seen by billions.
- Speaker #1
See, this is why you can spend two grand a night on a hotel room.
- Speaker #0
And buy Kobe, even buy Wagyu beef and a $10 Coke zeros. That's right.
- Speaker #1
I'm very jealous.
- Speaker #0
So you said something earlier that speaking is the easy part. You said all this backend stuff is a part of the. that frazzles a lot of people, but speaking is the easy part. There's a lot of people that that's not the easy part. There's a lot of I've been on probably 150 podcasts as a guest. I don't know how many times people want to send me the questions in advance. I'm like, I don't want that. We're just going to talk. Or they're obviously reading from a script or a list of questions that they've made, and it becomes unnatural. So there's a lot of people that are almost like forcing themselves, and there's other people that just love to chat and they're really good at it. Or they're good. But I find to be a good podcaster, you got to be a good listener too, because you got to be listening to what Eric is saying at the same time in your mind, be like, okay, what is, what is the next thing? The question that's going to segue well and actually going to flow and not be like this hard break or like me asking, I got a question in my mind and I'm just going to bring it up. And it's a hard, it's a hard cut. It's like, it's a jump cut. They call that in video editing. So how do you, how do you tell people? that have that fear, should they not be doing podcasting or is there a way where they can learn or is it practice or just, or what do you tell people like that?
- Speaker #1
I think the way you have to mitigate it, like you got to nip in the bud. You can't set them up for failure. So if long is, so even the most boring person is passionate about their niche or whatever. So this is why I tried to go after CEOs. CEOs obviously have a passion about the thing they're in, or they wouldn't be doing it. So if you're in that space, if you sell towels online, for example, it'd be the most boring thing in the world, but you're probably into towels. So have people on that also like towels. And then the passion will come through. I think the problem is when someone wants to be a general interviewer. and they have no real interest in the subject matter. They're just trying to, you know, they want to talk on camera. Don't do that. Just be passionate about the thing you're talking about. Like, I guess we're all kind of into marketing. We can talk about marketing, getting it worked up no matter how boring we are. So I think that's, you can't convince somebody or you can't make a shitty conversationalist into a good conversationalist. I think what you can do is hone in on their passion and hope for the best, you know? So.
- Speaker #2
Yeah. I think everybody's got their own styles too. You know, there are people that uh like for me i am scared of interviewing like just coming out here and just doing uh something like this five years ago it never happened i've had to get used to it i've had to you know um just work it i i've got some like kevin knows this but i have dyslexia oh and it makes it so hard when you're talking kevin's picking up something And I've got to process that twice as long before I can say the question. And it's something that's not just now. It's been forever. It's all my life. You deal with having to, oh, okay, that's what the person said. Now I got to understand it the right way. And by the time I start to do that, Kevin's already asking five other questions. So it's really weird how the styles for different interviewers have to happen. But on my own podcast. It's really interesting because I can fly. There's no interruption. I do my own thing. Oh,
- Speaker #1
I'm sure you just talk to the camera.
- Speaker #2
Yeah, I just talk. Whoever's on, I just, like, it's rapid fire. We just go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. But in a three-way, in this type of three-way, it's completely different. It's really weird.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, I think the problem with humans in general, I say this all the time on my show, is that humans are binary absolutists. Like it is either A or B and there's no room for discussion. You know what I mean? But in this case, I think there's one school of thought that says double down on your strengths. And there's another school of thought that says work on your weaknesses. So I'm proud of you for working on your weaknesses. I mean, listen, I said before, you guys are podcast sluts. So you've obviously gotten over the fear of interviewing people because you're on a million of these things.
- Speaker #2
No, I just pee a little every podcast, you know.
- Speaker #1
Thank you.
- Speaker #2
Just a little bit.
- Speaker #1
So do you guys, have you been able to monetize the relationships, the podcast? I mean, you've done a lot of these.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, this one, the marketing misfits, we started about a year ago. And so we've got about 70 of them that have been released somewhere in that neighborhood. And we're about to actually, we do have sponsors. So there are paid sponsors on it. Most of those come from our connections in the Amazon world, even though this is not an Amazon. podcast and then we are doing a newsletter around this but taking the content and creating a newsletter um in our others in our other other genres where norm has a podcast called lunch with norm that's the one he was just speaking of by himself and i i do one called am pm podcast i do that for a company called helium 10 but i'm in total control of it uh that those two we do monetize with through the amazon world like i have the number one newsletter with um over 56 000 people and he's on have signed up for it uh that one prints money for me uh for through sponsorships and advertisements and stuff uh it'll make me half a million bucks this year uh it's your beach money right there look at you yes oh that that for that that affords ten dollar coke zeros yeah that that one by the way that's a lot yeah the podcast is just part of that hub of it uh that you know that it's not really driving it all but it's it's a it's a part of the ecosystem and that helps uh but On this one, the biggest thing is the connections that we're making and the relationships that Norm and I get are probably what's been the biggest benefit so far. But once we put the newsletter out, it's easier to monetize, at least for us from our backgrounds, a newsletter than it is. Because we're both, just like you said, we both come from an email marketing world. So we're not these people that are afraid to email. I'll keep email until someone says get lost.
- Speaker #1
That annoys me about people's like, oh, email's dead. No, it's not. And if it was like, okay, if you want it to be dead, stop buying shit off of email. I'll stop sending you emails. You know what I mean? Like it's the public's fault too, for continuing to make it work. I know we all hate spam emails, but they work. What do you want me to do?
- Speaker #0
I mean, I'll give you a case. I mean, I have an event coming up in two weeks called the Billion Dollar Seller Summit. It's a virtual event that I do. I do an in-person event once a year and a virtual one. And I can post, I have, I don't know, 13, 14,000 followers on LinkedIn. I'm a bunch on Facebook, a bunch. WhatsApp groups. They're pretty active. I can post to my heart's delight in there about this event. I might sell one or two tickets, one or two tickets off a 14,000 person LinkedIn post. I send an email to my list. I'll sell 100 tickets, 150 tickets, just like that. And so, and it's some of the same people. So, I use the LinkedIn. and the Facebook and the podcast and these other WhatsApp groups more as a branding thing. I will put a link in case someone like, you know, I put a link in something yesterday and two people went and joined. You know, that's OK. I'll take that. But I don't have any expectation. I see all these people that that's all they do is all they do is promote on their LinkedIn or on their on their podcast that has 17 viewers or whatever. And they wonder why they don't make any money. And it baffles my mind how many people, Norm and I talk about this all the time, just will not. They're afraid to piss off somebody by sending them an email or getting unsubscribed or whatever. It's stupid.
- Speaker #1
The fear of pissing people off is ruining everything. It's ruining marketing in general. It ruins the efficacy of certain tactics. And the thing is, I hate the president with every fiber of my being. He's Velveeta Hitler. But he proves that, listen, do whatever you want, and you're going to be successful. 50% of people are going to hate you, and 50% of people are going to love you. That is a more... reasonable approach to everything, then, oh my goodness, I'm going to offend somebody by sending them an email. Okay. So they unsubscribe. They weren't, they weren't on the brink of spending 10 grand with you or unsubscribe. You know, it's not like, it's not that delicate. So I just, I don't understand. Marketing is, this is what I wanted to ask you. So the name of the podcast, Marketing Misfits, do you find people want misfits in their marketing? Because what I find is most people just want a lot of boring bullshit. That seems to be the thing that everybody wants. No, no misfittery at all. They just want just Plain, boring, vanilla, redundant, repetitive garbage.
- Speaker #2
That's what we're trying to do with this podcast. We're trying to show people successful entrepreneurs, marketers who have thought outside the box to get where they're going. So we're hoping that people are going to listen to this podcast and that they're going to utilize some of the information.
- Speaker #0
There's a lot of people like quick wins. So we don't want to preach the corporate beat, the NBA. uh, textbook type of stuff. This is like out of the box. Like, what are you, what are you doing? You know, when someone says, uh, uh, what's that term that someone used on me at Helium 10, a good, good practice or something. When someone says, yeah, email, best, best, that's the word I'm looking for. Thank you. Uh, best practices is to send, uh, no more than one email per, per week and make sure it's short and to the point and to this. I'm like, dude, that's the absolute wrong thing to do. Um, And so that's what we're trying to do with this podcast is bring people on that are doing stuff outside the box. They're thinking differently that are on the cutting edge. And sometimes it's not, you know, it's just cutting edge. It's not. But like nobody's nobody else is bringing a lot of people on to say, hey, you should be doing a podcast. And this is what you need to be doing. And and this is how you do it. So some people that hear this will go, wait, maybe I actually should do. But it's not that bad. Maybe I will reach out to Eric and let use his service. That would actually make it easy for me to do it. That type of thing. And to realize that, hey, like you said at the beginning, starting a podcast is not a, let's become the next Kim Kardashian or Joe Rogan. No, go and niche down. And it's not about how big your podcast is, it's about who's listening. If I got 500, if I'm doing a plumber's podcast and all 500 of my people listening are own plumbing companies around the US, I don't care that I don't have 50,000 people listening to the podcast. and someone goes to my YouTube channel and says seven views per. episode or whatever. I'm like, I got the right people. And that's where I think a lot of people, it becomes a vanity thing. It becomes an eco thing. And it becomes a, it's just like in social media. How many likes do you have? It doesn't matter. So that's, that's why I think we're podcasting. And the beauty of podcasting is even, it creates this massive content library. And so Norm and I have a massive content library. I have a website called billiondollarsellers.media. I I don't know if you found this in your research or not.
- Speaker #1
I sure did.
- Speaker #0
But you go there and I have data zap on there. So I probably have your name and email address and your home address because I'm anonymously getting data from about 70% of the people that go there and that you didn't get spammed onto my list to sign up for my newsletter. You will at some point. But that database is valuable and I can leverage that as lead managers. I have a version of that that's an LLM that's behind a paywall where you can interact with it. And you're creating that and you're creating this authority, which now in turn with this new AI stuff and the AO and answer engine optimization is even more valuable than ever before. And so you become authority. So starting a podcast with 20 listeners and. a week, I think is a good idea for a lot of people because it's going to establish this pattern of authority. It establishes discipline and commitment, and it's going to make some connections for you and probably bring in some business.
- Speaker #1
Yeah. And I think there's still a little bit of friction because a lot of people don't want to get behind the camera and a lot of people don't want to do the research that's necessary to interview somebody. So there is inherent friction. A lot of people won't do it. Whereas the opposite of that is AI can write your emails and AI can write your blog. So that's going to become ubiquitous. even more than it is already. So it's going to be just filler garbage that no one's going to pay attention to. So I think it's more important now than it perhaps is ever going to be. They still can't do humans on camera. And I know some people go, oh yeah, but there's avatars. Listen, if an AI can replicate your personality, you have bigger problems than your marketing. You're boring and no one likes you. So you still have to show up.
- Speaker #0
And it becomes all the sameness. I mean, this problem is happening right now in the adult, you spoke of the adult industry earlier. adult history there's there's a big debate going on of ai models or human models you know the only fans type of stuff and there's some people saying oh all the human models are going to go away it's everything's going to be ai because ai is getting better and better and better but it all starts to look very similar and there is no quirkiness or there is no little humanness and people want that so in a podcast with us hosting and me and norm hosting and you on here there is there is that that an AI cannot
- Speaker #1
duplicate that at this point in time and not anytime soon no and if ai can make an ai uh in an only fans model with daddy issues then maybe i'll turn it but i'm it's to this point no here's the other thing too i think it'd be who it's it's so spotify have you heard that uh the velvet the velvet uh sundown have you heard this no we're a completely ai band that's on spotify oh yeah yeah yeah yeah that's nobody knew it was ai right but it's like He's on. Yes. It sort of sounds like a floaty Neil Young, and I hate to say it, but I don't mind it. I think it's pretty good. But think about it from Spotify's perspective. If they create a whole bunch of AI bands, they don't have to pay the artists. They just pay themselves. So the same thing with OnlyFans. Not only is it kind of weird to whack it to an AI, but also OnlyFans doesn't have to pay the creator. They are the creator. So that's scary.
- Speaker #2
you know yeah my buddy uh he's an entrepreneur and he just he didn't write a i wrote this song a patriotic song for entrepreneurs. And it's got a gazillion views right now. And he knows nothing about music. He just posted it last week.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, it's kind of hard.
- Speaker #0
You talking about Marcel?
- Speaker #2
Huh?
- Speaker #0
You talking about Marcel?
- Speaker #2
No, Colin.
- Speaker #0
Oh, Colin. Okay. He did a song?
- Speaker #1
Colin did a song? Yeah. I'm hoping that, I don't know, it's hard to predict where this thing's going to go, but I don't think it's going in the right, in the happy direction where we're all pleased. No, I think it's going to be, it's going to be bad, real bad.
- Speaker #0
So how did you get into doing this? You said you started the LinkedIn channel, but were you, and you had an agency, but before the agency, were you doing a podcast for the agency that wasn't the same podcast and you decided to flip it and say, hey, this is a great way to get clients with you and your buddy for the email thing? Yeah. whole thing? How did this whole thing? And then you're like, no, I'm going to go help people actually do this. How did that complete thing evolve?
- Speaker #1
I needed, again, like with marketing agencies, it's tough. There's 6,500 of us, according to the guy that was on your show. So it's hard to break through. So the initial show that I was doing was called the Five Bourbon Lunch Show. And I thought it was a great concept. So I would send people five bourbon samples blind, and then I would ask them five questions and we'd take a drink. you know we drink the first bourbon with the first question the only and it was great so it was like uh the five band uh if you were trapped on a desert island and you could bring the complete works of five different artists slash musician or groups who would it be so then people you know some people would like answer immediately but some people got strategic they'd be like paul mccartney because you get all the beatles and wings you know what i mean so it was like a real interesting answers then it was like your five favorite movies your five favorite books and then two other questions and that was fun but the only problem is by the fifth bourbon we'd be pretty drunk. And then the fifth question was generally unusable because people would say, can I watch it on TV? I couldn't remember what I'd said. But I was doing that for a while. And I was like, man, I'm drinking during the day every day. This probably isn't great. So I thought it was good content, but it wasn't exactly generating the kind of audience I wanted at that point. So then I sort of quit that. But the guy who ended up being my co-host saw one of those episodes. It was like, no, we should do a show together. So that's kind of, and then we started like, let's be more reasonable about this. Let's invite on CEOs. Maybe we can sell to them. And then it went, because I got discovered, I was like, ah, screw it. I'm going to pursue fame. But then also go, you know, on the B2B side, everyone should be doing this because it opens doors and magic happens if you put out a lot of stuff all the time.
- Speaker #2
So when you put out all this content, what are you doing about marketing? What are your favorite channels?
- Speaker #1
You know what? I won't say it's my favorite channel, but I will say I just, I only, I'm way too old. I'm 44. I don't give a about TikTok. I started a TikTok because it's good for short form content. I have like 30 followers and they're all my friends. I get more comments on TikTok than anything else from people I don't know. It's wild. So if you, I don't know if it's ever going to turn into anything, but if you want engagement and you're old like me, you have no idea what's going on in the world of social media. TikTok is crushing it. Are you guys on TikTok? Yeah. Yeah. How do you do?
- Speaker #2
You know, we only started about a month ago, a month and a half ago, and we're doing great. We've got some videos that have had tens of thousands of views, which is nice for us. Yeah,
- Speaker #1
it's crazy. The only thing is I can only read the numbers. I can't read the comments because they're all mean. So my show is we talk in all the news. It's very incendiary. So everyone's like, you're right. Everyone's like, you're a moron. I'm like, yeah, I guess so. So don't read the comments, but I do get a lot of them.
- Speaker #0
That helps that engagement. I mean, that helped. It's interesting to see how social media has changed from what used to be who was following you and who your friends were. That's all that saw your content. Now, they often don't see your content. It's a push thing now. It's more of a for you type of thing than it is a push than a pull. And just like you said, it's 30 people following me as my friends, but I'm getting all these comments from all these random people. that's the beauty now of social media if you craft something right, then they, it can get pushed out to thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of people way easier than, than in the past. Is there anything that you do or you advise your clients to do to try to better their chances of that happening?
- Speaker #1
So again, I think there's a, there's an odd dichotomy between my, um, sort of car crash style of what I'm trying to do and what my team does. We're all professional nerds at this kind of thing. And we'll look at your industry and look at your contact list and look at who the guest is and look at what has worked for them. So they do it in a very smart, thorough, thoughtful way. Whereas I just throw shit. I'm throwing shit against the wall because I'm trying to piss people off. So, I mean, yes, there are methods to the madness. You had one woman on. She's very famous. She was on The Voice. You know this? You must remember this chick, Right? She's got like 2 million followers on YouTube.
- Speaker #2
Oh, yeah. Yeah.
- Speaker #1
She seems to have a method. And she does some really cringy, but she's crushing it. So I think you can be successful in a lot of different ways. I don't think there's one. Again, we cannot be binary absolutists. But if you're in a particular industry, there is a formula for success, and we'll figure it out. Like I got on cable by being a big dumb idiot. I wouldn't advise that for everybody. But I would say that whatever you're doing. Get out its consistency. And it's going to take some time. Even this chick, the one that has the five million that she did for five years, it wasn't monetized at all. Now she's saying what? She gets half a million dollars a post. So consistency is key. I think that's probably number one. After that, figure it out.
- Speaker #2
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- Speaker #2
Let's talk about managing expectations. So we've got a lot of listeners that might want to. Start a podcast. What can you tell them about managing their expectations?
- Speaker #1
Say, give it a year, baby. Again, going back to the, so most people don't get past seven episodes. Getting past 20 would put you in the top 1%. It's the long run. I would say this early on too, when we were doing like SEO and PPC, which we still do. I think what people look at their competitors are doing really well. That's the equivalent of going to the gym and seeing some jacked up monster, squatting 650. You're like, oh, if I squat 650, I'll get jacked. No, baby, he worked up. That's years and years of hard work. That's why he can do that. That's what this is too. You have to show up time and time again when it doesn't look like anything's happening, when there are no results, and eventually it'll come. But if you expect it right out the bat, you're not that pretty. You're not that hot. You're not that smart. You have to compete and you have to keep showing up. So you give it a year. Give it a year. Be committed to a year. And then magic is going to happen just like a diet, just like working out, just like whatever.
- Speaker #2
And what happens if it doesn't? Like what happens if the expectations are tens of thousands of listeners per episode and maybe you're getting 40? Well,
- Speaker #1
it would be delusional and they should probably find another line of work. You know, if you're building an email list, do you think you're going to get 10,000 sign ups in a year? Probably not. I mean, everything is so saturated. I think the people that are going to make an impact are those who stick around. because sticking around is hard. All of the easy stuff, like, listen, man, it's 2025. All the easy stuff has been discovered. It ain't happening. You're not going to be an overnight success. You have to stick with it and you have to be good. But again, I'm coin operated. So even if you're not good, I'm going to tell you you're good because I want the retainer, but it would behoove you to be good.
- Speaker #2
What about promotion though? Are you doing any paid promotion to get the word out there?
- Speaker #1
We do. But again, I think you need to establish an audience before you start doing paid for books. promotion. I think all the magic happens after you get 20 episodes in a can. And from there, it has to be everywhere. We'll do it for you, but it has to be on your website and it has to be in your email slash newsletters. It has to be in your social. You have to show up every two weeks to do it and you have to put it on the podcast. So get a base and then start being aggressive about putting money in.
- Speaker #0
You put something on your website. I think it was... a blog, I think it's the only blog post, but there's a blog post on your website about a challenge or you're like, I make a thousand bucks per client. I want to get to where I can put 30 grand a month or something like that in my pocket. So this is, I got to do this many cold calls, this many of this. If I converted this, can you walk us through that strategy?
- Speaker #1
Yeah. You know what? Somewhat ironically, the thing that has always worked best for me since day one, when I started this in 2012, all the way to now is one-to-one personalized emails. to clients that I want, like well-researched emails. I've never had a ton of success in the B2B space with marketing automation. I think everybody knows that it's spam. Personalization is your name in brackets that says first name. That shit doesn't work. But if I do the research and I reach out to somebody and I'm like, hey man, I looked into yourself. This is where I think you're doing well. This is where I think I can help. That works exponentially. I have seven calls this week from cold emails that I just did the personalization with. So that stuff continues to work. And it's tight. It's laborious. It's boring. It hurts my shoulder. But it works.
- Speaker #0
So how big is your team that's behind this?
- Speaker #1
We have on the video side about 18,
- Speaker #0
19. And did you find on... You talked about the short form earlier, and you mentioned Opus. Are you guys using Opus, or are you finding that, you know, that does okay, but really to get these right, to get the right hook, to cut it at the right spot, we've got to have a human go in there and actually tweak this, or are you finding that the AI?
- Speaker #1
My team uses humans, and again, this happens to be the line of delineation. I don't use my team for my stuff because it's obnoxious and I put out too much. but yes I think I mean Opus is good for beginners. And I think it's good for people that want to saturate the market and people that want to make people mad on YouTube. I think that's fine. If you're doing this in a professional way, you have to have people started at the right spot, cut it off at the right spot, make sure that the captions are correct, make sure that the ads and hashtags are all pertinent. So again, not to be a binary, you can't be a binary absolutist. Some things work well for some things. And if you're going into the B2B space and you're dealing, We have a lot of cybersecurity clients. Don't use Opus with cybersecurity because you're going to look like an idiot. You have to be trusted. I don't have to be trusted. I just have to make people mad.
- Speaker #2
We've tried Opus, and it's fine for certain occasions. There's quality, and then there's quantity. Opus is definitely for quantity, just getting out there, posting a few times a day on different social networks. But if you really want to look professional, you've got to do it. You've got to edit it yourself. And you might put that out on a specific channel that you need to look professional. You can't use Opus for stuff like that.
- Speaker #1
No. So on the Hollywood side of things, my producer has the catalogs for a whole bunch of different comedians. And all he had on his YouTube page was the full sets. And that's an hour long. That's a big for an audience, especially these days. So I ran through Opus and then I sent it to him. He was like, well, I got to go back and edit these. I'm like, no, you don't. No, you don't. Just get it out there because it's going to send people back. to the full set, which is what you want, that's a perfect application. It's an hour-long comedy special. It might not start it exactly where you want it to or end it exactly where you want it to, but it's going to get the gist. I think the gist is good enough in that space. So I probably wouldn't do that.
- Speaker #2
One of the things that set me back that I didn't realize when I started doing this, you know, five years ago was the equipment or the setup. So you're, you're in a position where you can do all that. You can, it's, we spent thousands and thousands of dollars in just mistakes, wrong cameras, wrong lighting, wrong, everything wrong. Mike, we went through three or four different mics before we got it right. And it takes time. And it's frustrating. So that's something about going to an agency that does this and can handle it. You'll see thousands right there.
- Speaker #1
Yeah, you get a producer. We send you a mic. We send you a camera. We send you the stands. We get a whole package of everything that we use. And you get an in-studio producer that tells you to adjust the lighting and adjust the mic settings and everything. So it's a very professional operation that I'm not involved in in the nitty-gritty because you wouldn't want me to. I'm just a gorgeous genius with perfect hair. uh but i'm america's sweetheart but i will say there's a like i don't think it has to be perfect if you watch espn for example these days not everyone's in studio you have these idiots in hotel rooms who are covering you know the football team and people in their houses and it's not lit correctly and they don't sound great i do think covid with the whole idea of like zoom meetings opened up people's eyes uh to the general idea that we're just looking at people in boxes in their rooms. So there is a level of professionalness. that you have to achieve, I think. I think you have to look reasonably well, and I think the audio has to be able to be heard. But perfection is dead, I think, in this space to some degree. I don't think anybody expects it.
- Speaker #0
I think audio matters. Video is not nearly as important as the audio. You'll turn away. The video is a little jumpy or not so good or not lit right. You can deal with it. But if the audio is coming fading in and out, or it's weak, or it sounds tin canny, you're more likely to turn off. So audio, I think, is the most critical.
- Speaker #1
That makes sense. especially because not everybody watches the video. Some people just listen to the thing. So yes, I mean, yeah, you have to reach a level, but I think if that's the thing that's holding anybody back, don't let it. Go watch ESPN and tell me that you don't have the right equipment.
- Speaker #2
Is there a general answer for the length of a podcast?
- Speaker #1
They say 21 minutes is the magic spot. So oddly enough, I'm doing... television now and I have to do because of commercial breaks I have to do three 21 minute segments I mean three seven minute segments for 21 that seems to be the magic number that's that in my experience it goes quick I think it's punchy and uh yeah so that's the I would somewhat ironically 21 to 23 minutes the is the average length of a sitcom you know like so classic half hour tv blocks so maybe it's just innate maybe humans now have developed some sort of taste for 21 minute long content. So that's what they say, the magic number.
- Speaker #0
Well, I think that's where the three to nine minute short form comes in. And then if they want to go deep, then they want to go deep. And so, or do you disagree with that?
- Speaker #1
I don't. So it's, again, it's tough. It's because, you know, they'll say kids these days have no attention spans. But then a few years ago, they were reading Harry Potter books that were 2,000 pages. So I do think it has a lot to do with content. Joe Rogan's a perfect example.
- Speaker #0
I hate- It's three and a half hours. And look at, the diary of a CEO is three hours. Look, a lot of these are long.
- Speaker #1
Right. So I hate unstructured three hour conversations. It does nothing for me, but there's an audience for me. I prefer like This American Life to me is the perfect podcast. I think it's well produced by professionals, journalists. They know what they're doing. They know how to tell a story. I much prefer that, but they don't pull the numbers Rogan does. So there is no truth. It's just the best version of whatever it is you do will still work. McDonald's crushes it. Three Michelin starred restaurants crush it. Like, you know, again, we want to be binary absolutists. If your four hours is perfect, Infinity War was, what, two and a half hours long? People showed up. We watched it, you know? So anything can work as long as it's good.
- Speaker #2
What about diving into analytics? Like, we'll take a look at charts and we'll see that there's a drop off, let's say, at nine minutes. If I'm looking at that, I'm worrying that... people, the charts don't show when they come in. All it shows is that the average time spent would be nine minutes. Do you worry about that? Because now when are they dropping off, the algorithm picks it up and is it hurting us? And that's just a made up number, by the way, nine minutes. Do we have to work on that? What's some advice that you can give us?
- Speaker #1
I don't know that you could even work like, what do you reverse engineer the nine minute fatigue that sets in i'm not sure so when i on the on the comedy channel that we have if you go through the shorts we have you know so we have the catalog to andrew dice clay who is still our number one producer even though all the specials were from the 80s Even Dice's stuff, nobody's watching the full short. They're not watching the full short. So in this case, they're obviously into him. He pulls our best numbers. They can't sit through a 90-second Andrew Dice Clay clip. So he was a professional. He sold out Madison Square Garden. He was the biggest thing of a certain time. So at some point you go, I just don't understand humans. Put out a lot of stuff that you think is good and hope for the best. I don't think you can engineer in perfection.
- Speaker #0
You're looking like Matt Rife. Those little short clips is what made him a millionaire and made him famous. I mean, posting stuff on TikTok from his shows and his crowd work stuff that blew him the heck up. So you can become famous from this.
- Speaker #1
You can. It's a lot easier in comedy than it is for marketing. But I think that it can be done. You know, it's funny. Gary Vaynerchuk seems to be doing pretty well. He did wine review videos for the first 10 years of his career. And then he essentially became Tony Robbins. you know so listen anything is possible but again it's consistency he did whatever eight ten years of wine reviews before he became anybody um and then again that woman that you had on did five years before she monetized the thing and now she's a millionaire so i think more than anything it's worry less about making it perfect and worry more about showing up and doing it consistently so what what are some mistakes that people make when they come in uh that you're seeing that are are
- Speaker #0
really difficult to overcome?
- Speaker #1
Yeah. I mean, I'm being unprepared, having nothing really interesting to say. I think low energy. And it's different spaces too. So that show where I was interviewing CEOs every day, I would say about one a day a week, I'd want to kill myself after the show because they had nothing to say and they were boring audience. Yeah, it's tough. I think to your point, you guys have been guests on shows and they're reading questions. Don't just read questions, interact. have an opinion, add. So the thing, the ESPN analogy I use all the time is when I was a kid, man, ESPN was huge because they had the ticker at the bottom that would show you scores. I didn't have a cell phone. So if the Red Sox won or lost, and I wasn't living in Massachusetts at the time, I had to wait for the ticker, right? So sports scores were a big thing that they would do all the time. Now we have a phone. I can look up scores instantly. So now what they do is they have big personalities like Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith. So it's less about the information. and more about the spin and the personality behind what you're saying. So keep that in mind.
- Speaker #0
They also do something, though, not to interrupt you there, but they'll put up on the right-hand side seven things like coming up next or they'll tell you at four minutes after the hour, this person is going to be a guest. At seven minutes after the hour, we're doing this. I don't see anybody really do that in podcasting. Would that be something that actually we actually I'm just brainstorming off the top of my head. Should we maybe be doing that?
- Speaker #1
We might be connected cosmically. So one of the shows I did in the lead up to this thing was a show called Damned Lies and Statistics. And what I did is I interviewed authors of nonfiction books. And then I did four questions, like four misconceptions about the area of expertise. And I put up a timer. So I prompted them. And then they let it go. And that was like a three-minute thing. And then I would have the ones that are coming up next. So it was like sort of a, you know. You don't have to pay attention for too long. It's only three minutes. And by the way, maybe you're interested in the next thing, and here it is. So I do think sort of engineering in this idea that we have no attention span is a good idea. Now, it's hard. It's hard.
- Speaker #0
It's extra editing and extra thing. But now with AI transcripts and stuff can be knocked out really quick. You should be able to do that, even if it's an audio thing. Just like you're inserting ads, you insert a little audio. Coming up in seven minutes, we're going to be talking to Eric about... Blah, blah, blah. So I'm like, oh, I got to take a piss. I was just going to turn this off and go on, but I'll just let it keep playing. Go do my business and come back and I'll hear this little thing.
- Speaker #1
The best example of that is part of the interruption. That show has the next 10 topics and they only do two minutes topic. And I've always thought that was genius. And if I could engineer that into a show somehow, I absolutely would.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I wonder that would be actually good. That actually might solve some of those problems of people watching. Or they can just, if they're watching on YouTube, they can just skip to it.
- Speaker #1
Yes. And not only that, but I thought one of the good ideas about damn lies and statistics that was baked in is that each segment was three minutes. And I could take that out and just have that as an individual video that lives on social media. So you could watch the whole thing, or you could watch two of them at a time. You know what I mean? So I thought, I agree with you. I think it's a great idea. It's just all the editing.
- Speaker #2
Yeah. Just take out that chapter, use it as a clip. It's perfect. You know, one of the lessons I learned early on, while it was my first year, is I had an interview and there was a person that it sounded like it was going to be a great podcast. The person came on. I started asking questions, open-ended questions, and it would be a yes, a no, a yes. And because of that, we started researching. So if somebody comes in and says they want to be on the podcast, Mary goes out, listens to their podcast, and sees if they're a good guest. Because we don't want those yes-no answers.
- Speaker #1
And it should be innate. No, I don't know. I think it goes back to it's not just their appearance on the podcast. I'm sure if you knew them in real life, they'd be a boring asshole. It's not crazy to think that a certain percentage of your guests are going to be boring. There's just a lot of them in the world. I just don't understand how we live in a world where these people have obviously heard a podcast. Don't you understand that good guests don't just say yes and no, that they add some context and color? So that's what I don't understand. How you can't adapt to the situation is what bothers me.
- Speaker #0
I used to have a... But some of the earlier podcasts I did, I tend to just go on. So I used to have a guy would interview me. He's like, Kevin's like the easiest podcast guest to interview. All you got to do is come on, do the introduction, ask a question, go make some coffee, go to the bathroom, go walk the dog and come back and still be talking. And then you ask another question. And I was like, I started thinking about that. I was like, well, that's not good. That's not a conversation. That's just me up on my pulpit talking. But there's some guests that are like that where they are very passionate or they're very vocal about it. Do you find that you need to cut them off and steer them? Or do you find that just let them go as long as it's good?
- Speaker #1
Because cutting people off seems rude, but it needs to be done. The guy that my partner and producer who does all the real stuff, he has this number. I think it's like one and a half to two minute bursts of answer and then a new question. And I think that makes sense. One of the, when I, Back when I was doing the show that got me the thing on TV, I had one guest, kind of what you just described. So it's a half hour thing. I think I asked one question and then he talked for half an hour. So we just never got to anything else. And that doesn't make for good listening either. I think it has to be a punchy back and forth conversation. And it takes time. There's a flow. You got to do it a lot. It's practice. But I think eventually if you care about the art of conversation, you'll get there.
- Speaker #0
What do you think about open loops or bringing stuff back? A lot of people, normal, a lot of times say, Kevin, you do it like a, what do you call it? Journalistic style of questioning or something like that. And I hear that my ex-wife used to say the same thing. I'd meet somebody like, Kevin, quit interrogating them. You're just like asking them boom, boom, boom questions. But then you try to bring it back. Like something, a lot of people, they just keep moving down a linear path. But I'll try to bring something back that you said 45 minutes ago.
- Speaker #1
And you're paying attention. You know, and it's not just a list of questions you're getting. You know, I think it's to be, I think someone said to be interesting, you have to be interested. And I think I find that to be true. Like, don't just ask the questions. Be interested in the answer. Add your own anecdotes and, you know, your opinions on the answers. You know? That's why, so Hot Ones, do you ever watch Hot Ones? That's the hot wings thing. It's huge. So it's progressively hotter wings. Everyone is like, oh, that guy has a great interview. He's... horrible. The show's crushing it. Don't get me wrong. They're the biggest celebrities on. But he just asks the question, the celebrity answers, and he adds no color or context. I don't like that form of interviewing. I think Howard Stern is a great interviewer. I think Larry King's a great interviewer. I thought Letterman was a great interviewer because there's a back and forth, an interesting back and forth.
- Speaker #0
Hey, Kevin King and Norm Farrar here. If you've been enjoying this episode of Marketing Misfits, thanks for listening this far. Continue listening. We've got some more valuable stuff coming up. Be sure to hit that subscribe button if you're listening to this on your favorite podcast player, or if you're watching this on YouTube or Spotify, make sure you subscribe to our channel because you don't want to miss a single episode of The Marketing Misfits. Have you subscribed yet, Norm?
- Speaker #2
Well, this is an old guy alert. Should I subscribe to my own podcast?
- Speaker #0
Yeah, but what if you forget to show up one time and it's just me on here? You're not going to know what I say.
- Speaker #2
I'll buy you a beard and you can sit in my chair too. you can go back and forth with one another. Yikes. But that being said, don't forget to subscribe, share it. Oh, and if you really like this content, somewhere up there, there's a banner. Click on it and you'll go to another episode of the Marketing Misfits.
- Speaker #0
Make sure you don't miss a single episode because you don't want to be like Norm.
- Speaker #2
Oh.
- Speaker #0
That can be learned though, right? Or is that inherent in a natural and a personality?
- Speaker #1
The older I get, I think the more I realize people just are who they are. And I don't think they get any better. I think your personality is probably locked in when you're 14. And then we just become bigger and fatter and older. I don't know. I think you're off. Let me tell the wrong. I don't know. I don't know if you can learn to be interesting or learn to be a good conversationalist. Because I don't think,
- Speaker #2
in order to be good at something, I think you have to care about it. And if you don't care about it, being an interesting conversationalist.
- Speaker #1
you're just not going to be because it's not a value of it you know yeah this just add the hot sauce you know that'll work well it's this is what annoys me when i so clearly people are bad but they're crushing it you know who am i to say that this guy's bad i'm as well to be fair he's not on cable television like me but it's really at least successful internet show and he's interviewing shack you know so i haven't had shat on yet let's
- Speaker #0
see him go on the jewish network
- Speaker #1
I have Shack on Jewish Life Television. I've really...
- Speaker #2
All right, we're getting into the top of the hour. I was wondering, one last question, and that's if you have a special, or what is it called, a secret sauce, something somebody can do, if there's somebody out there listening, what's one thing they can do that you could recommend?
- Speaker #1
Be different, baby. You've got to do something interesting. I mean, you know what, again... I'm not going to be a binary absolutist, but I'm saying if you want to do something interesting, if you want interesting results, you have to do something interesting, be a little different, be a little unique. In marketing, this breaks my heart. I thought marketing was going to be a lot like Mad Men. Remember that? You show up drunk, you sleep with your secretary, you come up with some half idea, you tell people to execute on it, you go out to lunch, you have three drinks, you come back, you're drunk, you take credit for what they've done. It was like, let's come up with big, bold, interesting ideas. and then hope for the best. Now what marketing is, is doing what everybody else does. Like fitting in is the thing, which David Ogilvie would put a bullet in his head if he saw what marketing has become. Be interesting, be unique, do something, or don't, but don't expect interesting results. You know, be liquid death, be Dollar Shave Pump, be Poo-Pourri, be something that's unique and talk aboutable, or don't, whatever.
- Speaker #2
All right, so we're at the top of the hour. and we have a question we ask all of our misfits. Do they know a misfit?
- Speaker #1
Yeah, not really. I know you said you were going to cut me off after this. I couldn't think of anybody. Well, do you know who Rory Sutherland is?
- Speaker #2
Yeah.
- Speaker #1
Go get Rory. Rory answered a couple of my emails. He's the smartest man in marketing today. Everything he says is perfection. I mean, he works at Olwe. Every one of his books is a masterpiece. Go get Rory.
- Speaker #2
Very good. All right, sir. Well, that's it. We've come to the end of the podcast.
- Speaker #1
Now, I'm sure everyone's very disappointed. Listen,
- Speaker #0
this one, you know, we're looking at the analytics right now. I'm forecasting they cut it off at three minutes. We didn't even make it to nine.
- Speaker #1
Well,
- Speaker #0
they don't know what they're missing. They don't know what they're missing.
- Speaker #1
They don't know what they're missing. At that point, I had mentioned Jewish Life Television. So as soon as they hear Jewish Life Time, this guy get on Jewish Life Television.
- Speaker #0
That's right. They're going to want to know. They're going to want to know.
- Speaker #2
The man answers. All right, sir. We're going to remove you and we're going to be right back.
- Speaker #0
You know what Eric just said there, be different is something I think is critical. And I think in a world of AI, everybody is becoming the same. You look at these AI videos that are going viral and stuff, you know, whether it's babies talking or it's... bunnies jumping on a trampoline looks like a security camera or it's these apes these bigfoot things all of a sudden it goes by you start everybody gets in on that and they get they get millions and millions of views but at the end of the day what does that do does that does that make you any money did they get you any exposure or are you just looking cool or you can say that was me that i did that or mine is better and i think that's something that everybody's got to do you look at i mean you've seen this you uh the videos that i'm doing to promote my newsletter those detective videos, the black and white. I think I've sent you one or maybe two of them. But those, almost everybody I've shown those to is like, holy cow, those are really cool. Those are totally different. It's AI and humans mixed together doing those, but it's not some more apes or babies or whatever. It's totally different. And the proof will be in the pudding. We're testing it right now. My buddy Manny is doing stuff, and he created one that's more traditional video with apes and the... typical stuff and i'm testing it on facebook that as you started running yesterday that versus my style and we'll see which one at the end of the day performs the best and generates the number most silence but i have a feeling it's going to be mine that's actually the other one might stop get more views, but the one that actually converts better, I think it's going to be the unique one. And that's what Eric said there is being different, whether it's in a podcast or newsletter or marketing. I think that's major, that differentiation is major. And I think so many people miss that.
- Speaker #2
I think the definition of being different is going to change.
- Speaker #0
What do you mean?
- Speaker #2
I think that right now there's certain things that you could do to be different. For me, roll a beard, go and talk. I have the wheel of Kelsey on it. Like it's just the difference that we have in the podcast, but with AI coming in and all these changes and all of a sudden you see babies talking, Oh, that's different in the next six months to a year, the difference. I don't know what it's going to be, but it's going to be a completely different angle than what we're used to. There'll be a paradigm shift in different.
- Speaker #0
Yeah, I think so. And I think it's like that clip that I just recently sent you about there's AI people don't know marketing and marketing people don't know AI. And the two people that could put those two together and do well, I think have huge opportunity.
- Speaker #2
Right. All right.
- Speaker #0
What's that called? Dragonfish or something like that, Norm?
- Speaker #2
Yes. The company's called Dragonfish Communication LLC. Coming to you soon.
- Speaker #0
Cool, man. Well, this has been a great episode. We're going to be back again next Tuesday with another one, right?
- Speaker #2
Absolutely.
- Speaker #0
So if you like what you hear, it's marketingmisfits.co. You can be like Eric and go listen to a whole bunch of episodes. And check out the YouTube channel, the Spotify channel. Listen to it. Find us on all the socials, the talk tickers. What's it called? Whatever that's called.
- Speaker #2
Ring that bell. Yeah,
- Speaker #0
ring that little bell, whatever. But we're out there. If you like this episode with Eric, share it. Send it to a friend. Make sure you hit that like button and we'll be back again next week.
- Speaker #2
See y'all later.
- Speaker #0
Take care.
