TBT 001: Jay Baer on Transcending the Transaction

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Soft and Strong, So It's Simple

Hello, hello my my friends, and welcome back to The Ryan Hanley Show. Today's episode is actually a throwback episode.
It is Throwback Thursday, and I had a podcast guest cancel on me or reschedule. They were not being a jerk.
They had an emergency, no problem. But I wanted to take some of my old episodes that I had done when this podcast was called Content Warfare and bring them back because some of those conversations were so incredible.
They were so deep and they just, they transcend the year or what was happening in that specific moment because the ideas are so crucial to digital business. And in this case, my guest was Jay Baer, who is absolutely epic, all-time Hall of Fame speaker, Hall of Fame marketer.
And the conversation that we had was called Transcending the Transaction, which I think is going to resonate with all of you insurance peeps, all my insurance peeps. You are going to absolutely love this episode.
Jay is just a, he's a rock star. He's just a rock star.
And I've actually had him, I had him on the content warfare podcast twice. This was our very first conversation.
We had this conversation in 2015 and you are going to love this episode. So get ready for that.
Before we do, I want to make mention of a couple of the companies that are helping make this podcast possible. The first of which is Tarmica.
Now you may not have heard of Tarmica because some people call it Tarmica. Some people call it Tarmica, but how you actually pronounce this company is Tarmica.
And Tarmica is the premier rating platform for insurance agencies, the premier commercial insurance rating platform for agencies and it's built by agents for agents. This is really a platform, and I've said this before, that I think is going to be a transcendent piece of technology.
Not so much in like it's doing things that no one could have ever imagined before, but because I think that Tarmico will quickly permeate through the independent agency world and just be a, it will be the tool that hard charging, fast moving agencies, the type of agencies that are trying to grow and build in automation and other pieces of customer experience, improving technology. I think they're going to be using Tarmica.
I believe in Tarmica. I'm glad they're supporting this show and I will be building the commercial storefront for Rogue Risk, my agency, on Tarmica.
We are very pleased to have Tarmica as one of our sponsors. Our second sponsor is Advisor Evolved.
Advisor Evolved builds insurance websites that alleviate service work and generate leads. They help time-strapped, non-techie, independent agencies acquire and retain more clients with marketing tools and a gorgeous conversion-optimized website that will never be mistaken for an outdated online brochure.
Advisory Evolved will also be powering Rogue Risk. And we're just a pleasure to have Chris Langell and his team at Advisory Evolved as one of the sponsors of this podcast.
You know, when you work for yourself, you got to pay for these things.onsors like Tarmica and Advisory Evolved make it happen. Thank you, my friends.
Use these tools. I would not have them as sponsors of the show.
I would not talk about these tools. It's not just about taking money and paying to make the show possible.
I think these are the tools that I endorse to the industry, and that's why I'm willing to take them on as sponsors. So thank you guys.
If you're not subscribed to this show, please subscribe. iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, we're there.
And if you ever have questions, comments, feedback, hit me on Twitter, Ryan Hanley underscore com, or just Ryan at Ryan Hanley.com. That's my email address.
Otherwise, enjoy Jay Baer. Enjoy this throwback episode.
I love you for listening to this show. Here we go.
In today's hyper competitive market of digital and social media marketing, it's the companies that can take their message and make it inherently useful to the

consumer that will be successful. That's according to today's guest, Jay Baer from

Convince and Convert, and Jay calls this process utility. Okay, Content Warriors, just a couple quick notes here before we get to Jay Baer.
I want to let everyone know that as of today, as of right now, if you subscribe to the Content Warfare newsletter, which is an exclusive newsletter, the content in that newsletter does not show up anywhere else. If you subscribe to the newsletter, you now get two free eBooks, the social tools book, basic guide to 12 social media platforms that you should and can be using to market your business.
Basically an overview, kind of a get you going guide. And the other is the no BS, no bullshit guide to a successful blog, which basically runs you through what it takes to actually get a functioning blog up and running and kind of cuts through some of the nonsense that you see in a lot of other guides.
So two very simple, very basic guides that have a lot of value you now receive when you subscribe to the newsletter. So I'd like to encourage you to do that.
You can get on the newsletter by going to ryanhanley.com right there on the homepage. You'll see a form.
Just enter your email in and you'll get those two guides as well as subscribe to the Content Warfare newsletter I want to thank everybody who's supporting the show last week, a bunch of new reviews. Even if you didn't go to iTunes or use ryanhanley.com forward slash review, that's ryanhanley.com forward slash review.
If you did not go to iTunes and leave a review, but you hit the like button or the tweet button, or you shared the content warfare podcast on Google plus, I just want to say thank you. It just, you know, you guys are awesome.
You know, I just, I grew up in the nineties. I don't have a better word to describe how I feel about, uh, the supporters of this show.
It just keeps me going. And I know I say that every week, but, uh, it never ceases to amases to amaze me how much energy I get seeing that type of engagement from you guys.

So thank you so much for that.

Last but not least, if you're not listening to the podcast on my website already and Jay mentioned something or I mentioned something that interests you,

I have links to all the different resources, including we're going to talk about Jay's new book, Utility. If you'd like to pre-order that book, just go to ryanhanley.com slash the number is 32.
So that's ryanhanley.com slash the number 32. Gets you to my blog and the show notes, and you can find all the resources there.
So with that, let's get on to Jay. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Content Warfare podcast.
Today, we're joined by a most excellent guest, Mr. Jay Baer of Convince and Convert.
And I want to say I've consumed quite a bit of his content stuff. He's written his books and his podcast.
And Jack, I just want to throw this out there. You are probably the wittiest, quote unquote, social media professional out there.
I absolutely love the podcast and it's very smart humor and I appreciate it very much. So thanks for coming on.
Ryan, thanks very much. I'm delighted to be here.
I appreciate the kind words. No pressure.
I know I've got to be like witty and funny. So you've totally built me up now.
So it's going to have to be amazing. Yeah, I did it on purpose so that you'd be extra funny.
No pressure. No pressure.
All right. Well, I want to get right into it.
So just so everyone knows, Jay has a new book coming out, Utility, and it is just so much of what we talk about here. He is packaged up into his own beliefs and his own thoughts.
And it just, it's a fantastic book that I can't wait to get. I'm pre-ordered.
I'm waiting for it to come in, but I basically consumed everything that you've created around it. So I have a good feeling for what we're going to get when we get there.
So I want to get into it. So if we could, let's do kind of the traditional, you know, what you do, what got you to writing the book, and then we'll get into kind of the concepts and theories behind it.
You bet. So my company, Convince & Convert, is a social media and content strategy consultancy firm.
So we work with medium-sized and large companies across North America to help them make better decisions in social and in content. And I wrote a book a couple years ago called The Now Revolution with Amber Naslin, which was all about social business.
It was one of the very first books about social business and loved that topic. But increasingly, I kept seeing companies starting to create content or starting to embrace content marketing, partially the result of the kind of work that you do here on the podcast.
And the problem was that they were making stuff, but they didn't really know why. They're like, okay, yeah, we got to make some stuff.
And I felt like what we were missing was a rationale or a framework that kind of explained how the world has changed and why content is necessary and sort of a playbook that you can use uh to determine whether or not you're doing it in a way that's going to be additive to your brand over the long term so that's where i came up with utility why smart marketing is about help not hype and the book is all about the fact is all about the fact that if you sell something, you create a customer today. But if you help someone, you can create a customer for life.
So lots of different case studies in the book about companies of all shapes and sizes using very, very useful marketing to tell their story. See, I love that because specifically specifically I do similar work inside the insurance industry for the most part, helping agencies get a grip on what content marketing is and how it can help them.
And most often when I begin talking to them, it's exactly what you said. They've started doing something and they're doing something but have no clue what that something is and how it is moving them forward.
So that kind of takes us into really my first question, which is, you know, I've heard you say this, I've read it in things that you've put together. It's, you know, many companies are marketing online today, kind of doing the wrong things.
And I completely agree with where you're going to go with this, but I really want you to dive into what are the wrong things and kind of where did people get the ideas for doing these kind of wrong things?

From consultants.

Primarily from podcasts.

No, I would say there's a lot of things that this is where I put on my like grouchy middle-aged man hat.

No, put it on.

I love that hat. I would say, you know, there's a few different things that that this is where I put on my like grouchy middle-aged man hat no put it on I love that hat I would say you know there's there's a few different things that that bug me first is you know look content is fire and and social media is gasoline and it doesn't matter what kind of company you are you will succeed better in social if you use social to draw attention to your very useful marketing instead of using social to draw attention to yourself, this fundamental belief that somehow social media is just the world's shortest press release is not really a success formula.
The, hey, you know, the tweet, and I'm paraphrasing, but you've seen this and you see it every minute of every day, the tweet of, we're awesome, click here to let us prove it, is really not going to work. It's never going to work.
So that bugs me. The notion that companies believe, both in social and in content marketing, that just because a platform exists, they need to do that platform.
I think that's a poor line of thinking. You end up spreading yourself really thin.
And instead of doing anything great, you do 11 things half-assed. So I don't think that's very good advice.
And then the one that probably bugs me the most, that I talk about the most in this book, is, look, we're in a hyper-competitive environment now, right? Everybody's a publisher, et cetera, et cetera. It's really, really hard for businesses to break through.
And we can elaborate on that a little bit. uh it's really tough right it's tough for everybody and and so there's two schools of thought right two two ways to break through in a hyper competitive environment what you'll hear from a lot of people and what you'll see in books and you'll see in blogs and podcasts and speakers is this advice of just be amazing right just be amazing just just be an um Just be a terrific company and your marketing will take care of itself.
And while that's probably true, you're probably not an amazing company. Nor are you probably going to be.
Nor are you able to make a company amazing. Maybe it's not your company.
Maybe you don't have that kind of authority in the organization. So it's very seductive advice.
Just be amazing, be better. But I don't think it's very good advice because go viral and be amazing is more hope than strategy.
So instead, I believe the answer is to be useful, that if you are truly and inherently useful, if you create marketing that is so good, if you create content that is so helpful that people would theoretically pay for it if asked, to me, that's the success for them is to become a utility, to create utility. If you do that, your customers and prospective customers will keep you close.
They will reward you with loyalty and attention and dollars. So let me throw a different kind of angle on the amazing idea.
And that is another thing that I've heard and actually heard the other day. I was given, I was not the keynote.
I was after the keynote at an insurance conference and the keynote person I wasn't familiar with beforehand, but their thing was, you know, be yourself, you know, whatever it is that you are, just be you. And, and I feel like you could take that advice and throw it in the same basket as the be amazing because you might not be that interesting.
People may not connect with you. I feel like that is just a slice of that amazing concept is this do you be you thing, which I think has merit.
Like you said, there is merit to it, but it ultimately is not for everyone. Is that where you're going with that? Yeah.
Although I think in that industry, right, in insurance where most people are buying insurance from an agent that they want to look in the face more so than from State Farm or Allstate or whatever. At the end of the day, right, it's a people business.
So I don't think that's terrible advice. You know, what I always tell people is your real life is probably way more interesting than your professional life, right? So, you know, I've done those kind of presentations before in those kind of industries.
And, you know, the fact that you sell insurance is not interesting. The fact that you grow prize-winning roses and happen to sell insurance, that is interesting.
And I might remember that. So from a sort of personal branding perspective, I don't think it's bad advice.
But that's more on the personal level, not on the company level. But what I would say is take that one step further.
It's not just about being yourself. It's about being yourself and finding a way to be useful that isn't just about insurance, right?

So a big part of the utility formula is giving yourself permission to make the story bigger.

Let me give you an example if I can.

So Columbia Sportswear, right?

You know those guys, they make jackets and pants and all that, right?

Outdoor gear.

So Columbia Sportswear has this mobile app called What Not to Do in the Great Outdoors, K-N-O-T. And it shows you how to tie knots.
It's an animated demo that shows you how to tie knots on your iPhone or your Android, which is pretty cool, right? So if you're hiking or you're hanging off a cliff, you're like, damn, this is amazing. This is super interesting information.
I need this. If you're recording a podcast, less so.
I don't really need any not knowledge just now. But here's the thing, right? Columbia doesn't sell rope.
Right? So they are providing useful information that their customers need. They're finding a way to be useful in the lives of their customers that isn't necessarily exactly their products and services.
So one of the key things about utility is to transcend the transactional, to find a way to be a part of your customers' lives that isn't reliant solely upon your products and services. So in an insurance situation, it's could you as the local insurance agent be the guy who knows everything about youth sports and actually publishes standings of all the little leagues because the newspaper never does because i don't have any space so could you be the guy that actually has a website with all the little league standings that would be useful to your customers i just made that up but that might be that might actually work i actually just wrote that down because now i'm gonna do that i actually have to you know bring back some deliverable stuff to my boss so that he doesn't think I'm just in here playing around all day interviewing people for my personal podcast.
And if he's listening, that was just a joke. All right.
So I'm wrapping my brain around that concept. And I think that where I find a lot of the people who are just getting in are struggling, and even myself when I first got in, is this idea of I want to get traction early.
And it seems intuitive that the only way to get early traction is to start asking for stuff. So how do we talk ourselves out of work ourselves through those early stages where it feels like nothing we do is gaining any traction.
And in order to make you know, and this speaks to what you said, a lot of times the people who are doing these things in organizations aren't the business owner, they aren't the decision maker, they're trying to get buy-in because they believe that it should be part of their organization and it's not currently. So how can people be useful early or if it just applies immediately and kind of get the ball rolling per se to where you can really expand upon a project? Because if I went to my boss two years ago and said, I want to do a little league blog because that's useful to our community, I probably would have been fired on the spot.
Yeah, I think there's a few things there. One, I'm not suggesting that you only do utility.
I think that's ridiculous, right? So it's part of the marketing mix. Anybody who says you should do any one thing only doesn't really understand marketing, whether that's search marketing or TV or social or content or anything else, right? It's a marketing mix because you do multiple things.
So some of what you should be doing is utility. And that is essentially farming, right? You are developing relationships that will pay off long term.
The direct response by now kind of stuff that you're doing is hunting, right? We're like trying to kill something immediately. There's a difference, right? And there's a place for both.
But what I always say is if you want to have a bunch of new customers this week, you're better off having built a relationship with those customers over the last year. And this is the week that you happen to harvest those customers, right? That's the way you got to start thinking about it.
Because A, if you're going to start a utility project in your company, you got to do it in pieces. You got to do it in.
You've got to say, look, let's try this. You can't just say we're going to change all of our marketing because no one will go for that.
So you've got to start small. And the second thing that I think is hopeful is to think about how you actually buy things and sign up for things and interact with companies.
How often do you respond immediately to some sort of direct response, coupon, special offer, interruption, marketing, same old song and dance? How many people listening to this podcast have purposefully not filled out a contact us form, even though they were interested, because they didn't want to be hassled? I can tell you the answer. It's every single person listening.
And consequently, why would you suggest or why would you believe that your customers behave differently than you do? They don't, right? Nobody wants to be shouted at, especially now when everything is a vehicle for shouting. People want things that are useful, that make their lives better.
And so does that mean that you have to be more patient about marketing and ROI? Yeah, it does. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

See, I really like that because when we first get involved in social marketing and especially in my agency, and then I know that because, you know, having done some of the work, everybody immediately says, you know, it's that ROI question is the very first question. And I like the idea of the pieces and doing different pilot programs to get this off.
And is there a way to integrate your direct marketing or your, I want to, you know, I need to get this going at the same with your utility. So can you have both at the same time working together or do they tend to be separate entities working to the same goal but performing different tasks? That's a great question, Ryan.
I think it depends on the company and how many different components of your overall marketing plan you have, but certainly you can have them run together. And in fact, in terms of metrics and ROI, the entire last part of the book is all about exactly how to measure utility and actually walks through a bunch of ROI formulas.
So it's not like it's just a concept that you're left to figure it out on your own. We actually have charts and graphs and the whole thing and equations.
And an example that I use in the book is a blog, right? So let's say you started a blog like Marcus Sheridan's River Pools blog. I know Marcus has been on the show.
In fact, Marcus wrote the foreword for a utility. Let's say you have a blog like that.
You can very easily track the effectiveness of your utility in a blog situation like that. You can tell how many people came to the blog, how many people ended up becoming a lead as a result of looking at the blog, how many of those people actually bought something? What their lifetime customer value is? What your average margin is? All you've got to do is have a pen and a piece of paper, and you can fill out your ROI formula in that circumstance.
So if you want it to be trackable, you can build it to be trackable. It's absolutely doable, right? But what most people want is some sort of press magic ROI button and formula spits out of your computer.
It's not that easy. It's never going to be that easy.
If you want to do something trackable, you have to do something trackable. A lot of clients, even big companies that we work with, come to me and say, oh, Jay, we've got to figure out the ROI of content marketing and the ROI of social media.
I'm like, great. So do you have a bunch of trackable URLs or do you have some sort of insight into the commerce chain so you can see when somebody converts? No.
I'm like, well, then I can't help you, right? I'm not a wizard. You're not going to have trackability.
Though if you were a wizard, that would probably help your business quite a bit. Totally.
I should absolutely work on that. If I could actually become a real wizard, that would be sweet.
So that's actually a great topic for your third book, which would be how to become a wizard. And then, geez.
I like it. I like it.
I'm not a big fan of any of those sort of guru, wizard, genius. I'm just a guy.
I'm just a guy with a laptop. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm right there with you. Okay.
So I want to transition out of the book itself for a couple minutes. Mostly, and this is, I'm going to be honest here, it's completely selfish because I'm, and I told you this before, I'm about two-thirds done with my own book.
So I'd like to talk about, move out of the book itself and talk a little bit about putting it together, some of the decisions you made around how you packaged it, how you've brought it to market and that kind of stuff. So my first question would be, because I think that it's the hot question in book publishing today, is did you even consider self-publishing for this book? No, I did not.
That's not to say I wouldn't consider self-publishing in the future, but I think that question, I've been on some panels about this question in the past, I think it really depends on why are you writing the book, right? So what's, you know, are you trying to make money on the book itself, in which case self-publishing probably is the better way to go because you keep more of the money. If you're trying to use the book to generate consulting business, then I think it's probably about a wash, probably 50-50 at this point.
But for me, the book is about speaking, right? I do a lot of speaking and more and more all the time. Obviously, we have a large consulting practice as well.
But for me, the book ties mostly to the speaking business. And at this point in time, meeting planners for major conventions and events still believe in the vote of confidence that a major publisher gives you.
So that's why I went that route. And I'm with Penguin Portfolio this time in the book, and they've been fantastic to work with.
I love the guys over there. It's been a really good experience.
Now, in releasing the book, and I know it's coming out on June 27th, so that everybody knows who's listening. If you go to ryanhanley.com slash the number 31, I'll make sure that there's links to Jay's pre-launch website and the Amazon pre-order form and stuff so you can get this.
I know the first day that I got the email, I logged in because I'm very excited to get the to get the book myself but you have done the complete swath of things that I could personally think of to market your book contests a trailer music video you did like some slideshare stuff you've given away free chapters which is all really valuable content front. And I think what a lot of people who may be new slash naive to the kind of publishing game would think, well, geez, you've given away so much before you've ever published the book.
Are you diminishing the actual product itself? I hope not. All right.
I mean, I've actually given, man, I've probably done the keynote presentation of the book 40 times before the book has even come out. So I've presented this material live to audiences all around the world, probably at this point, I don't even know, man, 25,000 people that I've talked about this concept to live from the stage before the book even comes out.
So it's a relevant question, Ryan. Is it, hey, now that everybody knows about the book, they want the book or everybody knows about the book and so now they don't feel like they need the book? I think we'll find out here in the next three weeks.
And it's definitely an experiment because I did it differently the first book I wrote, right? The first book I did very traditionally, did not release much in the pre-order phase, didn't do much speaking about the book until the book launched, et cetera. This time I did it the exact opposite.
In fact, this book is based on a presentation. I had the presentation first and then wrote the book around it.
But I'll tell you, the whole idea of the book is to give away information snacks to sell knowledge meals. And I thought it would be a little bit hypocritical to write a book about being extraordinarily useful and helpful in content marketing and then not be extraordinarily useful and helpful in content marketing around my own book.
So that was a level of hypocrisy that I couldn't handle, which is one of the reasons why we marketed it the way we did. Which I think is very obvious.
I think that when you read the concept behind the book, even if you just read, you know, kind of the early breakdown of what it's about, and then you see what you've done around the book, I think that is apparent to people that, you know, hey, look what we're giving you up here. And, you know, Like you say, the snacks for the meal.
I like that analogy. I personally think that it's going to, I mean, there's so much buzz around this and I've had people say, hey, did you see the five-minute version that you've done? And, you know, people are talking about it.
So it just seems only natural to me that it would work. uh know, my next question is kind of around, I don't know if everybody, both from a knowledge standpoint, maybe where they are in their career, what have you, could put together all the resources that you've put together, or, you know, has the time, inclination, whatever.
Is there a a is there like a minimum amount for when you're launching a book is there a minimum amount of promotion that you should do versus you know kind of going up what are the necessities and what are the luxuries i just beat that that question quite a bit that's a great question i don't i don't totally know know. And all I really have is anecdotal evidence, which I'm always cautious about extending because, you know, it's a case study of one.
But let me tell you what I do know to be true, Ryan. And you're right.
I mean, we've worked our ass off on this book. You know, we've put, you know, every dollar I got paid to write this book has gone back into marketing times 10.
So this is not an insignificant effort. There are multiple people working on the marketing, not just me.
So yeah, it is a fairly significant book launch. There's no question about that.
That being said, though, of all the things that we've done, two different websites and pre-orders and banner ads and retargeting and giving away all kinds of content and speaking and blah blah all this stuff right um i'll tell you the thing that that has worked the best um in terms of selling books and it's not even close is me sending individual emails or phone calls to people that i know who i've worked with for the last 10 or 15 or 20 years and said, hey, this book is really important to me. Will you buy some? By far, that is the most effective tactic.
And that may not be a very good answer because this is a podcast about content marketing, but it's true. And I had a conversation two years ago before I launched my first book.
And I was talking to Gary Vaynerchuk. And he and I have known each other for a long time.
And he had just finished Crush It and had done really well with that launch, of course. And I was on the phone.
I said, Gary, what am I not thinking about? How can I sell more books? And he said, look, you've already sold the books. You just haven't connected the dots yet.
And he's exactly right. The reason this book will launch well is not, frankly, because of all the content marketing we're doing.
The reason this book will launch well is because of all the helpful content that I've produced for the last 10 years. It's not about the executive summary of the book with the videos that we created.
It's the thousand blog posts that I wrote over the last five years that people have read for free. And now when I say, you know what, I wrote a thousand blog posts for free for you and a weekly podcast and a daily email for five years, I'm asking you to spend 20 bucks.
And so when you put that much value into the well, when you finally get around to asking to kind of even the score, it's amazing how well that works, which goes back to your question earlier about ROI and immediacy. I feel like so many people miss the mark on where we take the value out.
I had this conversation the other day about something which I feel is very trivial and I think applies on a much smaller scale about doing Facebook contests. Someone emailed me and was asking me about doing Facebook contests as a strategy for growing their Facebook presence.
And what I said to them was, a Facebook contest is not a strategy that you can do on a weekly basis. It's a one-time value extraction tool from your community that you've built up over the course of weeks, months, years of delivering value over and over again.
And the question that they opposed me with is, how often can I do Facebook contests? And to me, it was just like a microcosm for what so many people miss on in everything that we're doing here. And it's that the relationship has to be there first.
And if it is, you know, then you have the ability to do all these things that you want to do. You know, is that, I mean, that just seems like the essence of what we're really drilling down to here.
Yeah, and absolutely. And in terms of Facebook contests, the thing that most people don't realize is that i mean that just seems like the essence of what we're really drilling down to here yeah and absolutely and in terms of facebook contest the thing that most people don't realize is that it's not necessarily value right you're asking them to do something you're asking them to create a photo or upload it or whatever right so it's not actually a give it's an ask in some case it's totally mischaracterized yeah i mean it's completely, it's completely an ask.
It is value extraction for you, the company, not in any way of value to the people. I mean, yes, one person may get an iPad or an iPod or whatever thing you decide to give them.
But for everybody else, it's a testimonial, putting their neck on the line. It's sharing to their friends, you know, filling up their news feed with information that their friends probably are not interested in.
So it's these type of activities that make me nervous, I guess, in trying to help people because they don't necessarily see them as what they really are. You know, your book is the value extraction from a career of dumping value onto people for nothing.
Yep. That's exactly it.
That's the whole idea. We'll see if it works.
So far, I'm happy with how things are trending, but that's absolutely the way I look at it. Okay, good.
Well, when you have an expert on, I like to get my mind framed around where they're at. I mean, I selfishly do these things because I wanted a chance to pick your brain on this stuff, so that's very good.
Next time, I'm screwed, right? Because I can't wait 10 years to write another book, so I'm going to have to come up with a different strategy next time. I won't have as much value in the well and I have to come up with something new next time.
I hope it's like the music business, right? When the last album sells, the next album just sells because people bought the first one. We'll see, but yeah, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
I think that'll be the case. So we're getting close to kind of the end here.
I want to ask you one more question only because this is a podcast and you have a podcast. And personally, I love the format for delivering information to people.
And I think that when I was building this podcast, yours was one of the kind of shows that I listened to quite a bit in an effort to try to model how I kind of delivered this product. This is a different format from yours because I think yours is a little shorter and it's more, you have like three or four people on at one time.
But I wanted to get your ideas on what the podcast means to you, how it has maybe helped your brand, and what advice or guidance could you give someone who is potentially considering a podcast in today's environment? I know when you started yours or even when I started mine a year ago, the environment was different than it is today. Yeah.
Yeah, it's definitely different. The show is Social Pros.
It's socialpros.com, and it's the podcast for real people doing real work in social media. So each week we interview somebody who is a social media manager, content marketing manager, or community manager for a major brand.
So just this last week we had on the guy who was the in-the-field social media manager for TaylorMade Adidas Golf. So Charlie Kautz is his name, and he goes to every PGA tournament and takes all kinds of Instagram photos and makes Vine videos and things like that around the actual golf tournament in terms of promoting the drivers and irons and balls and putters of TaylorMade, which is a pretty cool gig.
So the show is very inside baseball, right? So people who do social media and content marketing for a living love the show. People who don't are like, I don't understand this.
This is stupid. But that's okay, right? I don't think you, especially in podcasting, right? Don't be afraid to be specific.
And I started the show, I don't know, a year and a half ago, kind of on a lark. Like it wasn't even my idea.
Eric Boggs, who was my original co-host, said, hey, do you want to do a podcast? I'm like, yeah, sure. I've always kind of wanted to do one.
So we did and just sort of on a lark. And it ended up becoming very successful.
And a lot of people listened to it in the industry. But it's turned out to be a fantastic vehicle for me and for my company.
It doesn't have nearly the reach of the other things that we do. It doesn't have nearly the readership that our blog does or the subscription that our email does.
It's a much more focused audience. But from the consulting perspective, it's been very, very good.
I would say all of our clients and certainly all of the clients that we have signed in the last year and a half are podcast listeners. And I think especially in a B2B environment, that's a good lesson.
Create a podcast where you interview your future clients or who you want to be your future clients. That's a page of the playbook that everybody can execute on and is very simple to do.
Yeah, I feel like the podcasting format, because there isn't video associated with it, is one of the most intimate forms of, I guess, content marketing or communicating with your audience. Because you really have to, in order to get enthusiasm, passion, energy, expertise, you really have to be on your game.
Otherwise, it sounds dull and boring and bad in some cases. So I feel like you really get a good, solid look at who people are,

what they're really about, their sense of humor, their expertise.

Because if you can come off the cuff on audio

and really kind of drive your point home without the use of visual aids,

images like you would on a blog post or on YouTube or something like that it is a really great highlight of your skills and ability yeah i think so especially as much uh speaking as i do and i'm starting to do actually more emceeing and hosting of events and things like that so it's a good showcase um uh for for that skill set too i think great well jay i i want to wrap it up i want to thank you for coming on i I know that you're a busy guy and this has been really fantastic. I want to let everyone know that all the resources we talked about that Jay discussed, including links to his book and the Now Revolution, his first book, they're going to be on the show notes.
You can get at those at ryanhanley.com forward slash the number 31. So the number is 31.
Jay, let people know where the best place to connect with you is. Best place to connect with me is probably on convince and convert, convince and convert.com.
You can find all of other stuff there, links to the book and all kinds of other stuff that we're doing. Okay, great.
Well, Jay, thanks so much and have a great day and good luck on the launch man i'm

gonna do everything i can to help you out thanks so much i really appreciate you having me on the show uh best of luck to you and all the cool stuff that you're doing and hey when you get uh you know as you're working on the book give me a shot i'm happy to help uh however you want you let me know thanks buddy music

music

music

music

music Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know I had mentioned show notes in the podcast there. Again, I did this podcast in 2015.
There are going to be no show notes for this episode. Go to jbear.com or convinceandconvert.com if you want to learn more about Jay and his work.
If you're interested in Tarmica, go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Or if you're interested in Advisor Evolved, go to Advisorevolved.com.
Check out those two tools. If you have questions about either one of them, Ryan at RyanHanley.com.
And if you're not yet an insider, if you are not following my journey as I go from zero to one with a scratch agency and come in to this kind of mastermind coaching community where we talk through all the issues of ramping up a business. You know, this, even though I'm talking through it in the context of a scratch agency, I am not necessarily building a scratch agency in the same way that someone who has never been an insurance agent before or been involved in agencies before.
I've been in this business for 15 years, was an agent for eight years. So this isn't the traditional scratch agency situation.
Really what we're talking about are making the decisions necessary to grow your business and grow it fast in a sustainable and meaningful way. That's what's important to me.
Rogue is going to be built in a sustainable and meaningful way. And we talk through all the decisions that I'm making as well as issues that come up with the members inside that group.
There are some tremendous people in there already. I'd love to have you start your 14-day free trial of the inside.
Go to ryanhanley.com forward slash insider. You'll learn more about what it's all about

and sign up right there.

I hope to see you on the inside, guys,

and I'll see you on the next episode of this show.

I'm out of here.

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