The Easiest Way to Follow Up

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Stuart: Stuart Bell here. Welcome to another episode of the book More Show Today, talking with Betsy Vaughan. We're going to dive a little deeper into a topic that we touched on last time. So we often talk about your book as one of the greatest lead generation tools that you've got available. Really is the best thing to get those prospects, invisible prospects, to raise their hand. But the secret is then once you've got it completed, is engaging and interacting with those people over the long term. So they've raised their hands, they've expressed an interest, but really it's how you communicate with them over the next number of days, weeks, months, years that is really going to lead to the opportunities to speak with them about educating them and motivating them over time to do business with you and how you can best help them. So a couple of ways you can do that. Obviously the immediate opt in sequence is important, how you follow up with those people immediately, those that are the most engaged, the most ready to go, the closest to making that decision ever going to be ready to go now. But then it's how you get engaged with all of the rest of the people over the longer term. And one of the best ways of doing that is a podcast. We talked about that last episode. We're going to dive into it a little bit deeper this time, going to give you some more ideas. It's going to be an idea that we're going to talk about increasingly over the coming weeks and years. I think there's, there's a lot of talk about it out there in the community as a podcast being the best way of engaging just because it gives you so many options to do things with that content once you've created it. So we're going to dive into some of those details today. It's going to be a great episode. If you are interested in us helping you get that podcast set up as well, we can do that. Just hit reply to this email or shoot us an email to hello at 90 Minute Books and we'll give you all the details and get that set up for you. Okay? So without further ado, let's dive into this episode.

Guest: Betsy Vaughan.

Guest: Hey, Stuart, Val, how are you?

Guest: Very good, thank you. How's your week going?

Guest: Very good. Busy. It's almost Friday. Been crazy busy though.

Guest: Time's going fast. Lots of updates for people on the books and making some changes. Updates, new versions, new books, lots.

Guest: You know, people haven't been quite as quiet this summer as well. Summer's past. A lot of them busy. I think it is like that people are using this time to update their books or you know, they're starting to think about doing their book in September. And so I'm getting a lot of those calls and communication and you know, so I've seen a lot of or people who have sort of fallen off a little bit or kind of, you know, maybe it's their slow time so they're spending that working on their book a little bit.

Guest: So yeah, dump it back on now. That's true, I think for updates as well, being sort of five, four, five, six years in now. What are we five years, I guess since the start. So I guess there is more people are kind of doing that full cycling background where we might not have seen that in the past.

Guest: Right, right. Definitely seen it this summer, which is good.

Guest: It is definitely, definitely. Well, one of the other things that is causing a lot of conversations is the idea, which we talked about a couple of shows ago of the follow up and how a book is a great idea to get people to raise their hand but then once they have, what's that best follow up option? So we're going to dive a little bit deep into one of those ideas today, I think.

Guest: Super. Looking forward to it.

Guest: Perfect. So we are going to be talking about podcasts. A couple of reasons. One, it's something that we've used obviously this show, which admittedly is a bit more sporadic than we'd suggest people do. But this show we've got on the coaching side of the business, we've got more GS, less whiskers and the joy of procrastination. On the real estate side of the business, we've got the listing agent lifestyle and now we're branching out a little bit further into producing shows for other people or facilitating shows for other people, I think is a better way of describing it, which we'll get into the kind of nuance of that language in a bit. But having that as a mechanism for being able to regularly stay in touch with people in a way that's easy because I think for years this kind of content schedule type approach or the understanding that, okay, someone's on the list now, now I need to stay in contact with them. That as an idea isn't rocket science or anything new, but I think it's really surprising or perhaps not so how many people struggle with that stage. So oftentimes you'll see people talk about social media posts as a way of staying in touch, but depending on your audience, for a lot of people that's just too distant. It's not in front of people enough. I'm talking about blog post writing, and that type of thing is a way of constantly pushing out content. Difficulty. There is. It's a. It's an overhead. Either to write that yourself or to get someone else to write it in a way that you want it written is challenging. So podcast really ticks the box as a easy way to create content. A simple way of creating content that's engaging in the first instance, when it's created in the first place, but then it's also super leverageable and very scalable in the things that you do with it after the fact. So that, as a mechanism, is one of the easiest ways of people getting more content out there, I think so.

Guest: I think what it does for people is, you may have said this, it does engage it, but it makes it feel very personal and more real. I think you really find yourself, like, interested in what that person's saying versus just an email or just a blog like that. You really feel like you connect with that person that you don't know. But it's almost that very personal touch. And you kind of, you know, hey, I need to find out more from my friend John or whatever. You know, you really, you know, it really does make you want to reach out and know more and sort of listen. And I know that even just with this podcast, that when we haven't, you know, we haven't done one, people say, hey, where's the podcast? You know, like, you know, we hear that. So there, there must be some. Some valuable content here that people are enjoying, which is. Is great to hear when that comes across the screen, you know, so same thing with your business. I mean, people are looking for that and they've come to. To rely on it. So it's very valuable.

Guest: That personal connection, I think, is one of the key differentiators as well. I mean, not only is it easy to create, which is often the thing that I talk about with people as the reason why to do it, because it's more, well, like the preparation for this show. We obviously know the subjects, but we don't put a big show outline together or go through the details because nine times out of 10, we are close enough to the subject to be able to talk about it without referring back to notes. So that goes the same for the majority of people. Especially as you're listening to this now, this is almost certainly the case for you because the audience that this show goes to is the same audience that have raised their hand to express interest in a book. And it's exactly the same premise there you know, enough information in your head to get something created and prove value. So it's another string to that. But the making the personal connection and adding an extra dynamic that definitely goes a long way in terms of building a relationship and a rapport with people and even just giving them a view behind the scenes and kind of that real world insights into the day to day going on. One of the favorite people for content at a kind of an extreme level is Gary Vaynerchuk. I mean, obviously if you see what he's doing, I mean that really is a documentary of the day to day life. And he constantly talks about there the fact that it's not about just having set staged pieces that are presented like produced content. It's just that constant insights into, into the background of the day to day of what's going on. Now that's the day to day of what's going on at a very high level organization and high level individual. So there is a difference that brings a certain amount of dynamic to it as well. But I think the same applies at any stage.

Guest: No, I think so too. I think it's just whatever's relevant to what's going on in your life, you know.

Guest: Yeah, yeah, definitely. So let's dive into some of the, some of the important elements of the podcast that aren't necessarily anything to do with podcasting itself. I think like with the, with the books, it's easy and expensive and time consuming and costly to get caught up in the production process itself. Where the real benefit of having the book is, is the fact that the book exists and it gives people to raise the hand and request so you can identify that invisible prospect that you wouldn't otherwise be able to identify as easily. So when we talk about creating books, it's much less about the production process and font choices and pagination and all of those things. It's really about the using it. So the same with the podcast. The podcast is far less about the, the production and much more. Right. As long as you have a compelling message, some valuable information, something useful to put across the amount of return that you're going to get for investing hundreds and hundreds of dollars in headphones and renting studio space and sound deadening panels around the room that you're speaking and a music bed underneath and a production engineer tweaking some, some dials. It was quite funny actually talking about that. We went to, it's Lucy's birthday coming up, so we went to see John Mayer in, in Philly, a couple of days ago and the seats we had were right next to the stage and the, the sound desk was just there as well. So watching the audio levels and the guys tweaking the dials and the level of automation. So I mean literally there were two guys. And not suggesting that a John Mayer concert is the same as producing the podcast, but they were literally two guys tweaking dials all the way through this three hour show to get the audio perfect. Now, as an audience member, how much difference would people have known if they were or weren't doing that to a certain level? As opposed to like a set it and forget it type setup of going or even just a purely acoustic set of just him playing. I think that a lot of the audience would be perfectly happy to not have that level of production and just have the one on one experience a lot closer than. Obviously there's a million reasons why it's not a perfect analogy, so don't bother emailing where it falls down. But that thing of if the message is there and the engagement is there, the extra bang that you get for the many, many books that it would take to close that gap, it's like the 80%. Dan Sullivan's 80% rule of the majority of the work gets done in the first 80% trying to get an increasing number of 80 improvements of the remaining 20%. Just the cost accelerates away and it's not worth it. So again, as long as there's a minimum viable level of quality, it's really not about the production. And I think it's easy to get sidetracked on that, easy to make it seem difficult. And you want it to be perfect before you start. But if the assumption is it's not going to be perfect until you get hundreds of episodes in, then do the first hundred as quick as you can with whatever and then same thing with the book.

Guest: Like you said, it's. There's the idea of perfection and it does not, does not have to be that. So. And I think people tend to, you know, I think people tend to like that real too. You know, there's something, there was a time I think that we couldn't have gotten away with that, but I think there's so much more now where we're a little more casual, a little more real, and I think people prefer that, that real person, you know, who do you know?

Guest: I think it's a development the, of the environment. So when you. Exactly. You said when you first like the life cycle of what podcasts have gone through has changed so when you first started, the quality across the board was pretty low. Ish. Because podcasts at least not. I'm not talking about radio shows that are distributed through podcasts, but podcasts that people doing themselves. Equipment was expensive. People didn't necessarily have the resources or the knowledge to dive into it too much. So everything was a little bit rough and just technology was older then there was a period of everything getting more and more refined as the game lifted and it lifted it to a certain base bent. Can't speak. See this? No amount of audio production would get over chopping a few words. The baseline was raised. So there's a certain bare minimum of audio quality which improved everyone. And now you see a lot of kind of fully produced and heavily produced shows coming into the space. So all of like the NPR shows that come on or the BBC podcasts that go through, they're actually really radio productions that are just distributed through a podcast mechanism. So they're heavily, heavily produced. And now you've got this situation where the more traditional podcasts are trying to get to that same production stage, so they're putting in music beds or they're having like pre roll extracts from the show. Some of the advertising that you see in podcasts now is getting very, very clunky and obviously inserted ads which are to my ear, just a bit nasty. So you've got all of this thing where people are trying to replicate a traditional radio production quality, but it's actually A, not worth the effort and B, it's a little bit disengaging because as you said, the authenticity and just the two people talking type interaction is much better. So yeah, I think just like with the book. So stick with that analogy because it's what everyone understands. You could spend the low thousands of dollars working with others to get something out there that is perfectly acceptable. In the job of work of quickly starting to engage people and getting them to raise their hand, you could spend another $10,000 running it through goodness knows how many edits and changing the fonts are using some special bespoke font. But how much is that going to move the needle really? If the job of work is engaging people, then you can spend 60 grand plus on books that have, that take a long time to write, that have a lot of production value, that are a thing in and of themselves. But again, what's the job of work? If the job of work is engagement and kind of keeping the conversation going until people are ready to make a decision to work with you in one way or another, then it's not worth that effort. If what you want to do is sell a podcast to a network and get advertising revenue, then it might be worth it. But that's probably not what we're talking about for the majority of people because now we're in a space where 10 years into the every year, the resurgence of podcasts really to get that you might have been able to sell something relatively small six or seven years ago, but now selling a podcast or getting a lot of advertising revenue is very much an education based, an entertainment based play and not an education based play. So it's the same. Exactly the same. As with the books. The word book can mean many different things, has many different jobs of work. The word podcast, although it's still surprising how many people don't listen to any podcasts. But I'm blown away.

Guest: Yeah, but just people I know that these are, are people who are in businesses that, you know, like in banking and finance and just. Oh no, I've never listened. What, what should I listen to? They ask me what should I listen to. I'm like, well, what are you interested in? You know, like just Google, start there.

Guest: Google.

Guest: If it's not, you're. If you're looking for something outside of, you know, your realm and you just want entertainment, that's there too. I mean like there's. You can find a podcast on everything and anything, you know, somebody's speaking about it, you know. So, yeah, I'm really blown away. I tend to, and I think I've said this before when my significant other is watching football that I'm not so much interested in. That's sort of my. On Sunday afternoons, that's when I catch up on all my podcasts. And so I just. So that it appears that we're having time together. We're sitting on the same Sofa, I have AirPods in and I'm just listening and taking notes and every once in a while I talk back to the person I'm listening to and that's when I get a reaction. What did you. So I look forward to football season for different reasons. So I actually take myself find the time to sit down and catch up on so many, you know, so yeah, but I am surprised at how many people don't listen. You know, just the information. There's a lot of valuable information out there, a lot of, you know, compelling messages that you, you know, that somebody's wanting, you know, so yeah, it's proud

Guest: to listen because no matter how you read newspaper, newspaper, you read magazine or I guess newspaper articles about how Podcasts are in a resurgence. I mean, like I said, I've heard those stories for goodness knows how many years. And if you listen to some of the bigger podcast networks, the hosts on those shows, they're always kind of joking about it every time there's a newspaper headline. And then when you look at the shows, the downloads for the shows that we have, that we've got access to, and you hear about the show downloads for some of the bigger produced shows that have got very big audiences, it's a bit like YouTube, I guess. There's some very big numbers out there, but 99.9% of the, of the population are in a much smaller, smaller niche. But even so, it's still the case that a lot of people don't. It's not something that they necessarily listen to because they're not familiar with it. But that I think is where the opportunity lies. Because establishing something now where it is on the cusp of that we're no longer in the early adopter stage, far from it. We're not even in the kind of that next bit of the curve where you kind of get in some of the enthusiastic fans, they're going in and finding it now we're really in the stage of it's just starting to break into mainstream awareness, if not actually mainstream adoption, but then that adoption is the next one. And I think when you look at things like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, the way that they're making it now in the Apple world, I don't know Android that much, but iOS13, which is going to release later this year, makes the CarPlay interface much better to, to stream audio and then allow it to do other things. So it's not like it's taken over. There are some talk about building podcasts into solutions. There's a lot of like Spotify has invested quite heavily in podcast content. There's another organization whose name is escaping me now. But anyway, they were in the news last week because they'd captured millions in VC funding. And we're looking at a way of making podcasts. They're paid for service, which is kind of quite antithetical to the idea, but still it shows that a lot of money is being passed into that space. So anyway, I think that's the. None of those things are really what we're, we're talking about, but it shows that there is a growing awareness out there that we can leverage and make the most of. So I think now is a now is a good time. So that kind of sets the scene for Podcasts generally. So what diving to specifically the way that we view them and use them and how it ties best into the. You guys, as you're listening here, knowing that you're receiving this because you've expressed interest in writing a book. So obviously we're talking about a kind of a marketing and engagement type context rather than entertainment. So recording the content. Sorry, go for it.

Guest: No, no, go ahead.

Guest: I was just going to say recording the content. Maybe we will do a quick little show about that at some point in the future just because there are a couple of ways that people can do it more easily than other ways. If nothing else. Then I recorded a show, a new one that we're going to put out in the next couple of weeks. We're just getting a bit of content to get started. We recorded it literally on the app, the voice memo app on my phone. We were in the office talking, we've been talking about for a little while, said, okay, well, let's just bite the bullet and get going now. So we just literally recorded into the phone and the audio maybe isn't the best because we were in an office and it was a bit echoey and with the two of us talking and actually I forgot to put my phone on airplane mode so it rang in the middle of this recording which interrupted it. But even so, that's the word and we're left with a file that we can do something with. So the recording itself is not too much of an issue. So we'll do another show at some point, talk about what you then do with it and how to get it into, into a feed, that type of thing. But the main thing to emphasize here is this opportunity for once you've got the audio recorded, once you've got the show, it's what you can then do with it afterwards. So the first thing and most obvious is you're going to release the show. So that's not, not difficult to imagine. You record the show, do whatever you need to do to get it released and then it releases. Now the majority of podcasts that I subscribe to, apart from our own, that's pretty much all that happens. They don't send any email, they don't send any follow up. I don't even know for some of them if there is an opt in in any way. It's literally just recorded and published because the point of it is entertainment, really. They've got some advertisers on there that they'll talk about every now and then. But really the point is entertainment. So that I think is the bare minimum. And honestly, from the point of view of a marketing plan, if you're. Or an engagement, I don't necessarily want to just say a marketing plan, but from the point of view of you engaging the audience to have some kind of outcome other than they just listen to it, if that's all you do, that's not terrible. But that's probably one step below minimum. Minimum is release the show and send out an email that the show is being released. So how do you capture those email addresses? Because as a listener, if you tell me to subscribe so that I can email you when the next also I'll get an email when the next show is released. Then my podcast player tells me that. So there's not really a reason to, to subscribe to anything. The book is then the perfect tie in. So sending the podcast to the people who've opt in for a copy of your book is the perfect way of keeping in touch with people and then saying to new listeners in the show, if you want to continue the journey, then head over to the podcast website and you can download a copy of the book, the manifesto book, where we're talking more about what we're talking about here. So for us, this is the book more show. So we point people towards the 90 Minute Books website where you can download a copy of the 90 minute book and all of the other resources that we've got. That's the perfect tie in. You get people to raise their hand, giving them an opportunity to learn more and understand and you're able to capture the details of people who are interested in exactly the same way that the book would happen. So I think as a minimum, email out the show release notes when the show releases, rather than just pushing it into the feed and hoping that people will listen and listen in the feed. So that's the, the minimum one. So when looking at taking that to the next level, okay, well, you can then also release the show notes and the release note onto social media channels. So you can push a Facebook post or a Twitter post or Instagram or Snapchat or whatever other platform that is out there or comes up, push the same release note into all of those channels. Now there is some duplication, but that's always been the case for everything. And the. Our perspective at least is that duplication is not really an issue because we're not talking about an issue where we're looking at organic, the organic SEO type things and their duplication might be more of an issue. Typically, people, particularly these days, aren't on all platforms, people tend to gravitate more to one than another. So although they might have accounts on all of them, they're not necessarily active in all of them. LinkedIn is another one I just missed off the list list. Push the distribution notes to all of those so that there's an increased likelihood that people are going to see it and it's a reminder that you're there offering the service that you offer. So you might just pop up on their mental radar as they're thinking about having your service, which is the underlying reason for doing all of this. So distributing into social channels, there's. If you have guests on the show, you can orchestrate ways that they can promote to their list. So rather than having someone on the show and just talk about, just say, hey, that's great, the show's going up. If you want to share it, share it, then give them the way to share it. So write the content of the blog post for them, write the content of the email, write the content of the tweet or the social feed piece. Give them some album artwork or some episode artwork that makes them look good and, and gives them some extra credibility. All of these things that you can do means that they're more likely to do it. And if you can set the system up in an efficient way as possible, then hopefully the overhead for you creating that in the first place is relatively small. But you've given it all to them as a way of increasing the likelihood that it gets out there. It goes back to the old checkmate things. The, the Dr. Gleason wombat selling book that you can't make someone, you can't checkmate someone. You always want to put them in check to force them to present the opportunity that it's going to be more likely successful rather than less likely. I butchered that analogy a little bit. Go find the book.

Guest: But that, I mean, when you stop and think about that, like if you've got a guest on your show and then you're willing to, you know, write the post for them for their social, I mean, that's just a no brainer, you know, that's, it's not a lot of work. It's not a lot of, you know, it's, you're not writing a blog post, you're not writing, you know, it's, it's very simple. And I think, you know, your, your guests would be, you know, foolish not to feel like jump on that opportunity, you know.

Guest: Yeah. Particularly when you're doing this for yourself. Anyway, so a post that gets written to say a post gets written to say that we're releasing the show is identical to the post that say hey, virtually identical to the post that says, hey, I was just on a show and here it is. The album arts are all the same. The details of what the show is about is all the same. You just may be having to REWRITE A sentence that is the introduction. And you doing it means it's 99.9% more likely that it will get done. It's still no guarantee, but it's far more likely than if you just say hey, that was great. You should really promote it to your, your audience. So that's the. So that's the kind of initial release. The other benefit that it creates is this kind of. It's the same social proof or psychological trigger, the pre suasion type elements that a book achieves. And trying to talk to industry experts is easier if you can say, hey, I have a podcast on such and such topic. It'd be great if I could interview for the podcast. I'd love to be able to share your message. The likelihood of them saying yes and wanting to, wanting to engage is far greater than just trying to get someone's time intention for another reason, by association of other people within the industry. There's a certain amount of credibility that's being reflected on you as the person that's bringing these things together. And again, this isn't anything new. This has been talked about in the kind of written or blog post type world for years and years and years and probably offline even before that. But still, just as you mentioned before, particularly outside of tech circles or in kind of air quotes, entrepreneur type circles, the number of people who have listened to podcasts or have been on a podcast or invited to be on a podcast is still really pretty, pretty low in comparison with the general population. So just as an example, we're releasing a show soon that's talking about a particular tax setup. Now talk about small niches, this one is very, very specific. But there's a big enough audience that is a subject and for those people where it's important and it resonates, this is super important. The person who's hosting the show and when once it releases in a week or two, we'll definitely do, we'll do a little bit of a circle back and talk about it. In fact, might even be able to get the person on the, on the podcast here and we'll talk about the setup. But anyway, he was feeling back saying that he's Reached out to some industry leading experts and really the person that invented this whole framework and was able to get time with the person and talk and the person was grateful and was impressed at what was happening. All from the fact that this person doesn't, the other person doesn't, the guest doesn't work in tech. They're not a podcaster. They never kind of get any exposure to this. I think in fact they were referring to it as a radio show a couple of times when they were talking, but still because it's something that they've got. No, they don't know how the sausage is made behind the scenes.

Guest: Right, right.

Guest: They were just asked to be on something that is being publicized that in their mind sounded like a radio show. They hadn't been asked that before. It was a great opportunity for them. I mean they're getting towards the end of their career now. It's not like they're trying to leverage this platform, but they just really wanted to share the message and the content with people and this was an opportunity that they hadn't been presented with previously. So as far as it being able to open doors. And when I say open doors, I don't mean kind of in a disingenuous kind of jam your foot in and try and switch people into something they're not expecting. This is open doors in a genuine sense of there's an audience that's desperate and super interested in this information. How can we get it out to them? And this is more one of the, one of the more effective ways. Okay, we've talked then about the creation and so I just wanted to hit on one more thing and that's kind of like the leveraging. So we talked about the creating what to do on day one. We've talked about a couple of the bigger pre suasion type things of why it's a. Why it's a medium that resonates with people and gives you a kind of a reflected light of the guests that you have on. So the leverage element is okay, now that I've got this audio, what can I do with it afterwards? And if you haven't subscribed to the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, definitely recommend doing that. Head over to MoreCheeselessWhiskers.com because A, not only is it a great example of look behind the scenes at how the sausage is made, but Dean's got guests on there every week where they'll talk about this similar kind of framework. Might be different examples, but this similar kind of framework. So definitely subscribe to that one. What you'll notice there is that we're also able to leverage the content of each episode so that we send out not just one email a week, but three emails a week. Because twice a week we also send out an email that refers back to a previous show that just takes out a kind of a key takeaway, kind of a nugget of information from a previous show and highlights it again in an email. Now why do we do that? Well, we're really interested in the kind of Super Signature which we've done a show on in the past, the Super Signature and the PS message that goes out with that email broadcast. And the message itself, the nugget, the takeaway from the episode is really just a way of keeping that conversation going. It's a way of presenting the Pearson Super Signature whilst also delivering something of valuable in a little bite size, easy to consume way. Again, that email goes out in the form of the email and also social media posts. The content itself really comes from the audio of the podcast. You need to rewrite a little bit just to make it make sense in 200 words. But that's a lot easier than trying to write a 500 word blog post two times a week on brand new subjects or writing words that didn't previously exist. So again, from a scalability point of view, the opportunity that you've got to take this one piece of content and push it a lot further to get more bang for the buck out of it, more opportunities to get the PSN super Signature in front of people whilst delivering something of value. This is one important thing, I guess, is that this isn't. Those two nuggets aren't from the episode of the week that just happened. So it's not like you're just trying to hammer people to the same thing that they just listened to a couple of days ago. This is from weeks or even months ago, so it's not going to be so fresh in people's mind. It acts as a good reminder. There's a link back to the show if people missed it or if they want to kind of re listen to it again because it spurs some interest. But really that is from these seed pieces of content, these seed recordings. The ability to leverage this content into multiple touch points is really one of the more powerful things, particularly because we're all busy, we've all got a lot going on. Creating a structure and a setup so that you can do this as quickly and as easily as possible means that it's far more likely that you'll do it rather than not do it. Because I don't think anything that we've talked about is rocket science or will come as new or novel to people in terms of. I know I should be better at staying in touch with people, but in terms of being actually able to execute on it, this is one of those examples where the execution is more important than the idea because the idea is not necessarily anything new, but the execution is where people fall down. And to be able to get that executed in a way that it's more likely to happen really makes the difference between doing it and not doing it.

Guest: Very true. I think I was, when you were speaking, I was thinking about, I mean, obviously we have a service that we can do this for people and. But it really is, I mean, it's such a. It's such a small commitment on someone's, you know, of their time to have someone do it. But if they have someone in house that can do it, whatever, getting that out there, you know, I see the responses to our emails, most of our emails and even the ones that go into Dean's, you know, get forwarded to me and such, but just the response from those things and how, you know, not everyone's going to respond. And this email is not going to touch on every single person, but it really just takes one person. You know, if you get someone to based on these emails and this communication and it may not be today, it may be six months down the road, but you know, getting people to raise their hand and you know, people who've been listening, listening, listening, and then finally something, you know, they get them on those emails and they just. The light bulb goes off, you know.

Guest: Exactly. That's the most important thing. I think it's this idea that it's the long term where the majority of the business is not the immediate term the likelihood, unless you're an emergency plumber where someone's got a leak and they need something dealing with. Now, the majority of other transactions of other business relationships happen over the long term, not the short term. So this being a way that you can constantly stay in front of people, regularly stay in front of people so that your. One of your messages is likely more likely to interact or intercept the point that they're ready. Not even so much that the penny drops, that it was some new piece of information that made the penny drop, but it was just that the timing that the stars aligned and your mail happened to come in within a day or two that when they think themselves, oh yeah, I really need to do Something about that. Now that's the key difference because you can put people on the list as much as you like, but unless you regularly stay in touch with them, the likelihood of those things align is far too slim and kind of leaving, leaving relationships and money on the table.

Guest: So I'm always surprised when I hear people who say, oh, I have a list of, you know, oh, my list isn't very big. It's 500. Well, that's 500 people. When's the last time you sent an email? Oh, gosh, I haven't sent an email in two years. I mean, like there's. That is that to me is just such an, I mean, no brainer, you know, and we've used. I can use this example and I will, because I don't know that he'll listen to this. But with, with my fiance, he has had a business almost 40 years and he has this, you know, he's got 35,000 clients and they have never created that list which you and I've talked about, but they're doing, they're, they're finally doing this and they're creating this list. But he's not, he hasn't been doing that. And when it finally dawned on me that he wasn't sending out emails and staying in touch with his clients, not just so that they would reach out in an emergency situation, but just for routine maintenance or referrals, you know, I was completely blown away. And I, that happens to me all the time. Having conversations with people who have, you know, significant, not, you know, 500 people is 500 people. I mean, that's where you start. You know, not everyone has to have thousands of people on a list, you

Guest: know, particularly in certain niches. I mean, when you think about any local businesses that really specialize in something, I mean, how many. I'm just looking out of the window here and there's kind of fencing, some random weird looking fencing across the road, which is probably pretty specific. So within a 15 mile radius of here of people who have those fences, the number is probably pretty slow, pretty low. 500 people on that list probably represents a large proportion of the potential audience around. So yeah, it's. Even if. And again, the podcast that we were talking about that we're just getting ready to release for the tanks, one I was talking about, one client a year is worth a substantial amount of money. If that podcast turns into even just one a year, then it's worth the time and money investment of getting up and running. And that's even just on the immediate an obvious and trackable return, let alone the bigger picture of the extreme amount of content that's being created that can be reused year after year after year after year. It's. Yeah, it really is. It's exciting and straightforward.

Guest: Yeah. And I think, I don't think people need to be scared about, oh, I don't have time or two emails a week, or three emails a week. That's a lot. Then don't start there. Start with one email, you know, just, just something to constantly, you know, be, you know, in communication with them and just sort of remind them that you're there. You know, just. Yeah, hey, because it's just like you said, it takes one and some people in some business, it is just that one email is such a return on the investment, you know, it's definitely worth it. So.

Guest: Yeah, definitely. I just looked at the clock and as usual we are running long. So let's wrap that because I think this is a good benchmark for that conversation of the ongoing engagement. The book as an opt in is a reason to get people to raise the hand, works great at the front end. You then need something to follow up that thing that you've got following up. You then need people, you need to give people a reason to opt in and raise their hand. So the book works great in the follow up sequence for the new audience that's coming through as well. And the main thing is, the main reason for doing it is the opportunity to stay in front of people and deliver that PS and super signature, which as I say, we've done shows on that in the past. And the main reason the podcast works particularly well, just like a book works very well to get people to raise their hand, is that there are ways to make it very simple to create and very leverageable and scalable. So it really is one of the easiest solutions, if not the easiest solution to get out there. We'll do a couple of shows in the future, diving into a few more details. So as you listen to this, if you've got any specific questions, then drop me a note. As I say, I'm not too worried that there's a ton of resources out there for how to record a podcast. So I'm not sure we can add much to that conversation. But if people are particularly interested, then we can do a quick show on that, the podcast service that we mentioned, that's a 90 minute book service that we've got Dial Talk done. So if you just shoot us an email to support a 90 minute books, then we can get you the details on that. We'll be launching that live to the general public in the next month or so probably. But anyone who's on the list already, just choose an email and we'll get you the details sooner rather than later. You can be the first to get that information back out. And I think that's it. Anything that. Anything that we have missed?

Guest: No, I think that that's good stuff and valuable to anybody who's been thinking about the podcast, thinking about communicating with their list or if you haven't been thinking about communicating with us, maybe you are now. So hopefully that's beneficial to you.

Guest: Fantastic. Well, as always, head over to 90minutebooks.com podcast and you can find the show notes for this episode. As I mentioned, if you want any information on the podcast service, then just drop us a note with DialTalk done in the subject heading and we'll get you that information ahead of the head of the general launch. And as always, if you're listening, haven't yet started your book or thinking about a second, then reach out again to support a 90 minute books and we can help you get started with that as well. Alrighty. Thank you, Betsy. We will talk again next week.

Guest: Take care.