--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello, hello 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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 transcend the year or what was happening in that specific moment because the ideas are so crucial to digital business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In this case, my guest was Jay Baer, who is absolutely epic, all-time Hall of Fame speaker, Hall of Fame marketer. The conversation 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 rock star. I've actually had him on the Content Warfare podcast twice. This was our very first conversation in 2015, and you are going to love this episode.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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. Some people call it Tarmica, some people call it Tarmica, but how you actually pronounce this company is Tarmica. 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This is a platform that I think is going to be a transcendent piece of technology. Not so much in that it's doing things no one could have ever imagined before, but because I think Tarmica will quickly permeate through the independent agency world. It will be the tool that hard-charging, fast-moving agencies—the type of agencies trying to grow and build in automation and other pieces of customer experience-improving technology—are going to be using. I believe in Tarmica. I'm glad they're supporting this show. 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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. Advisor Evolved will also be powering Rogue Risk. We're just pleased to have Chris Langiel and his team at Advisor Evolved as one of the sponsors of this podcast.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When you work for yourself, you gotta pay for these things. Sponsors like Tarmica and Advisor Evolved make it happen. Thank you, my friends. Use these tools. I would not have them as sponsors of the show if I didn't believe in them. It's not just about taking money 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you're not subscribed to this show, please subscribe. iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts, we're there. If you ever have questions, comments, feedback, hit me on Twitter at Ryan Hanley underscore com, or just Ryan at RyanHanley.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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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, 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, you now get two free eBooks: "The Social Tools Book," a basic guide to 12 social media platforms that you should and can be using to market your business, basically an overview, 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 cuts through some of the nonsense you see in a lot of other guides.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Two very simple, very basic guides that have a lot of value. You now receive them when you subscribe to the newsletter. 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 and you'll get those two guides as well as subscribe to the Content Warfare newsletter.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I want to thank everybody who supported 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 didn't 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. You guys are awesome. I grew up in the 90s, I don't have a better word to describe how I feel about the supporters of this show. It just keeps me going. I know I say that every week, but it never ceases to amaze me how much energy I get seeing that type of engagement from you guys. Thank you so much for that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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 Jay's new book, "Utility." If you'd like to pre-order that book, just go to ryanhanley.com slash the number 32. 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: With that, let's get on to Jay. Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Content Warfare Podcast. Today we are joined by a most excellent guest, Mr. Jay Baer of Convince and Convert. I've consumed quite a bit of his content—his books, his podcast. Jay, you are probably the wittiest quote-unquote social media professional out there. I absolutely love the podcast and its very smart humor. I appreciate it very much. Thanks for coming on.
--:-- Jay Baer: Ryan, thanks very much. I'm delighted to be here. I appreciate the kind words. No pressure. I know I've got to be witty and funny, so you've totally built me up now. It's going to have to be amazing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I did it on purpose so that you'd be extra funny. No pressure.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, I want to get right into it. Jay has a new book coming out, "Utility," and it is so much of what we talk about here, packaged up into his own beliefs and thoughts. It's a fantastic book that I can't wait to get. I'm pre-ordered, waiting for it to come in. I've consumed everything you've created around it, so I have a good feeling for what we're going to get. I want to get into it. Let's do the traditional—what you do, what got you to writing the book—and then we'll get into the concepts and theories behind it.
--:-- Jay Baer: You bet. My company, Convince & Convert, is a social media and content strategy consultancy firm. We work with medium-sized and large companies across North America to help them make better decisions in social and in content. I wrote a book a couple years ago called "The Now Revolution" with Amber Naslund, which was all about social business. It was one of the very first books about social business. I love that topic.
--:-- Jay Baer: But increasingly, I kept seeing companies starting to create content or starting to embrace content marketing, partially as a result of the kind of work you do here on the podcast. The problem was that they were making stuff, but they didn't really know why. They were like, "Okay, yeah, we got to make some stuff." I felt like what we were missing was a rationale or a framework that explained how the world has changed and why content is necessary, and a playbook you can use to determine whether you're doing it in a way that's going to be additive to your brand over the long term.
--:-- Jay Baer: That's where I came up with "Utility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help, Not Hype." The book 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. There are lots of different case studies in the book about companies of all shapes and sizes using very, very useful marketing to tell their story.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love that. 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. Most often when I begin talking to them, it's exactly what you said. They've started doing something, they're doing something, but have no clue what that something is and how it is moving them forward. That takes us into my first question.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I've heard you say this, I've read it in things you've put together—many companies are marketing online today doing the wrong things. 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 where did people get the ideas for doing these wrong things?
--:-- Jay Baer: From consultants, primarily. From podcasts.
--:-- Jay Baer: No, I would say there are a few different things that bug me. First, look, content is fire and social media is gasoline. 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 tweet—and I'm paraphrasing, but 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.
--:-- Jay Baer: 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. Instead of doing anything great, you do 11 things half-assed. I don't think that's very good advice.
--:-- Jay Baer: The one that probably bugs me the most, that I talk about the most in this book, is this: we're in a hyper-competitive environment now. Everybody's a publisher, et cetera. It's really, really hard for businesses to break through. We can elaborate on that. But it's tough for everybody. There are two schools of thought, two ways to break through in a hyper-competitive environment.
--:-- Jay Baer: What you'll hear from a lot of people, what you'll see in books, blogs, podcasts, and speakers, is this advice of "just be amazing." Just be a terrific company and your marketing will take care of itself. 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.
--:-- Jay Baer: Instead, I believe the answer is to be useful. 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 formula. Become a utility, 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Let me throw a different angle on the "amazing" idea. I heard this the other day at an insurance conference. I was after the keynote, and the keynote person—I wasn't familiar with them beforehand—their thing was "be yourself." Whatever it is that you are, just be you. I feel like you could take that advice and throw it in the same basket as "be amazing," because you might not be that interesting. People may not connect with you. I feel like that is a slice of that "amazing" concept—this "be you" thing. I think it has merit, like you said, but it ultimately is not for everyone. Is that where you're going with that?
--:-- Jay Baer: Yeah, although I think in that industry, in insurance, 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, it's a people business. So I don't think that's terrible advice. What I always tell people is your real life is probably way more interesting than your professional life. I've done those kinds of presentations before in those kinds of industries. 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. I might remember that. From a personal branding perspective, I don't think it's bad advice, but that's more on the personal level, not on the company level.
--:-- Jay Baer: 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. A big part of the utility formula is giving yourself permission to make the story bigger. Let me give you an example.
--:-- Jay Baer: Columbia Sportswear. They make jackets and pants, outdoor gear. Columbia Sportswear has a mobile app called "What Not to Do in the Great Outdoors"—K-N-O-T. It shows you how to tie knots. It's an animated demo that shows you how to tie knots on your iPhone or Android, which is pretty cool. If you're hiking or hanging off a cliff, you're like, "This is amazing. I need this." If you're recording a podcast, less so. I don't really need any knot knowledge right now.
--:-- Jay Baer: Here's the thing: Columbia doesn't sell rope. 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 exactly their products and services. 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.
--:-- Jay Baer: In an insurance situation, 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 they don't have any space? Could you be the guy who has a website with all the little league standings? That would be useful to your customers. I just made that up, but that might actually work.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I actually just wrote that down because now I'm going to do that. I actually have to bring back some deliverable stuff to my boss so 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm wrapping my brain around that concept. Where a lot of people are just getting in or struggling—and even myself when I first got in—is this idea of wanting to get traction early. It seems intuitive that the only way to get early traction is to start asking for stuff. How do we talk ourselves out of, work ourselves through those early stages where it feels like nothing we do is gaining any traction?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This speaks to what you said. A lot of times the people doing these things in organizations aren't the business owner, aren't the decision maker. They're trying to get buy-in because they believe it should be part of their organization and it's not currently. How can people be useful early, or does it just apply immediately, and kind of get the ball rolling to where you can really expand upon a project? 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.
--:-- Jay Baer: I think there are a few things there. One, I'm not suggesting that you only do utility. I think that's ridiculous. 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. It's a marketing mix because you do multiple things.
--:-- Jay Baer: Some of what you should be doing is utility, and that is essentially farming. You are developing relationships that will pay off long term. The direct response, "buy now" kind of stuff that you're doing is hunting. You're trying to kill something immediately. There's a difference, and there's a place for both.
--:-- Jay Baer: 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. That's the way you got to start thinking about it. If you're going to start a utility project in your company, you got to do it in pieces, in pilot. You got to say, "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. You got to start small.
--:-- Jay Baer: 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: every single person listening.
--:-- Jay Baer: Consequently, why would you suggest or why would you believe that your customers behave differently than you do? They don't. 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. Does that mean you have to be more patient about marketing and ROI? Yeah, it does. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I really like that. When we first get involved in social marketing, especially in my agency, and I know this because I've done some of the work, everybody immediately asks the ROI question. It's the very first question. I like the idea of doing different pilot programs to get this off the ground. Is there a way to integrate your direct marketing or your "I need to get this going" with your utility? 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?
--:-- Jay Baer: 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. 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. It's not like it's just a concept that you're left to figure out on your own. We have charts and graphs and equations.
--:-- Jay Baer: An example I use in the book is a blog. 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 "Utility." Let's say you have a blog like that. You can very easily track the effectiveness of your utility in a blog situation. 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.
--:-- Jay Baer: If you want it to be trackable, you can build it to be trackable. It's absolutely doable. But what most people want is some sort of press-a-magic-ROI-button and a 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.
--:-- Jay Baer: 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?" They say, "No." I'm like, "Well, then I can't help you." I'm not a wizard. You're not going to have trackability.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Though if you were a wizard, that would probably help your business quite a bit.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I should absolutely work on that. If I could actually become a real wizard, that would be sweet.
--:-- Jay Baer: That's a great topic for your third book: "How to Become a Wizard."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I like it. I like it. Although I'm not a big fan of any of those sort of guru, wizard, genius labels. I'm just a guy with a laptop.
--:-- Jay Baer: Yeah, I'm right there with you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay, I want to transition out of the book itself for a couple minutes. I'm going to be honest here, it's completely selfish because I'm about two-thirds done with my own book. I'd like to talk about putting it together, some of the decisions you made around how you packaged it, how you brought it to market. My first question, because I think it's the hot question in book publishing today: did you even consider self-publishing for this book?
--:-- Jay Baer: No, I did not. That's not to say I wouldn't consider self-publishing in the future. I think that question—I've been on some panels about this—it really depends on why you are writing the book. If you're trying to make money on the book itself, 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, I think it's probably about a wash, probably 50-50 at this point.
--:-- Jay Baer: For me, the book is about speaking. I do a lot of speaking, more and more all the time. We have a large consulting practice as well. But for me, the book ties mostly to the speaking business. 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. That's why I went that route. I'm with Penguin Portfolio this time, and they've been fantastic to work with. I love the guys over there. It's been a really good experience.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In releasing the book—I know it's coming out on June 27th, so everybody knows who's listening. If you go to ryanhanley.com slash the number 31, I'll make sure there are links to Jay's pre-launch website and the Amazon pre-order form so you can get this. The first day I got the email, I logged in because I'm very excited to get the book myself.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You have done the complete swath of things I could personally think of to market your book. Contests, a trailer, a music video, SlideShare stuff, giving away free chapters—all really valuable content up front. I think what a lot of people who may be new or naive to the publishing game would think is, "Geez, you've given away so much before you've ever published the book. Are you diminishing the actual product itself?"
--:-- Jay Baer: I hope not. I've probably done the keynote presentation of the book 40 times before the book has even come out. I've presented this material live to audiences all around the world—probably at this point 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 that now everybody knows about the book so they want the book, or everybody knows about the book so they don't feel like they need the book? I think we'll find out here in the next three weeks.
--:-- Jay Baer: It's definitely an experiment because I did it differently with the first book I wrote. The first book I did very traditionally. I did not release much in the pre-order phase, didn't do much speaking about the book until the book launched. This time I did the exact opposite. This book is based on a presentation. I had the presentation first and then wrote the book around it.
--:-- Jay Baer: The whole idea of the book is to give away information snacks to sell knowledge meals. 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. That was a level of hypocrisy that I couldn't handle, which is one of the reasons we marketed it the way we did.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think that's very obvious. When you read the concept behind the book, even if you just read 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. "Hey, look what we're giving you up here." Like you say, the snacks for the meal. I like that analogy. I personally think it's going to work. There's so much buzz around this. People have said, "Hey, did you see the five-minute version you've done?" People are talking about it. It seems only natural to me that it would work.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My next question is around whether everybody, from a knowledge standpoint or where they are in their career, could put together all the resources you've put together, or has the time or inclination. Is there a minimum amount of promotion you should do when launching a book versus going up? What are the necessities and what are the luxuries?
--:-- Jay Baer: I get that question quite a bit. It's a great question. I don't totally know. All I really have is anecdotal evidence, which I'm always cautious about extending because it's a case study of one. But let me tell you what I do know to be true.
--:-- Jay Baer: We've worked our ass off on this book. Every dollar I got paid to write this book has gone back into marketing times ten. This is not an insignificant effort. There are multiple people working on the marketing, not just me. It is a fairly significant book launch, no question about that.
--:-- Jay Baer: That being said, of all the things we've done—two different websites, pre-orders, banner ads, retargeting, giving away all kinds of content, speaking, all this stuff—I'll tell you the thing that has worked the best 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, 15, or 20 years and saying, "Hey, this book is really important to me. Will you buy some?" By far, that is the most effective tactic.
--:-- Jay Baer: That may not be a very good answer because this is a podcast about content marketing, but it's true. I had a conversation two years ago before I launched my first book. I was talking to Gary Vaynerchuk. He and I have known each other for a long time. He had just finished "Crush It" and had done really well with that launch, of course. I was on the phone and I said, "Gary, what am I not thinking about? How can I sell more books?"
--:-- Jay Baer: 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.
--:-- Jay Baer: It's not about the executive summary of the book with the videos that we created. It's the 1,000 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 1,000 blog posts for free for you, and a weekly podcast, and a daily email for five years. I'm asking you to spend $20." 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.
--:-- Jay Baer: 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 it applies on a much smaller scale, about doing Facebook contests. Someone emailed me and asked me about doing Facebook contests as a strategy for growing their Facebook presence.
--:-- Jay Baer: 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. The question they opposed me with was, "How often can I do Facebook contests?" And to me, it was just a microcosm for what so many people miss in everything we're doing here. The relationship has to be there first. If it is, then you have the ability to do all these things that you want to do.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I mean, that just seems like the essence of what we're really drilling down to here.
--:-- Jay Baer: Yeah, absolutely. And in terms of Facebook contests, 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. So it's not actually a give. It's an ask in some cases. It's totally mischaracterized.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I mean, it's completely an ask. It is value extraction for you, the company, not in any way of value to the people. 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, filling up their news feed with information that their friends probably are not interested in. So it's these types 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. Your book is the value extraction from a career of dumping value onto people for nothing.
--:-- Jay Baer: 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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. The 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.
--:-- Jay Baer: I'm going to 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. I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think that would 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. Personally, I love the format for delivering information to people. When I was building this podcast, yours was one of the shows that I listened to quite a bit in an effort to model how I delivered this product. This is a different format from yours because yours is a little shorter and you have 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.
--:-- Jay Baer: Yeah, it's definitely different. The show is Social Pros at socialpros.com. It's the podcast for real people doing real work in social media. Each week, we interview somebody who is a social media manager, content marketing manager, or community manager for a major brand. Just this last week, we had on the guy who was the in-the-field social media manager for TaylorMade Adidas Golf. Charlie Kautz is his name. He goes to every PGA tournament and takes all kinds of Instagram photos and makes Vine videos around the actual golf tournament, promoting the drivers, irons, balls, and putters of TaylorMade. It's a pretty cool gig.
--:-- Jay Baer: The show is very inside baseball. 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. Don't be afraid to be specific, especially in podcasting. I started the show about a year and a half ago, kind of on a lark. It wasn't even my idea. Eric Boggs, who was my original co-host, said, "Hey, do you want to do a podcast?" I said, "Yeah, sure. I've always kind of wanted to do one." So we did, just sort of on a lark, and it ended up becoming very successful. A lot of people listen to it in the industry.
--:-- Jay Baer: 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 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 we have signed in the last year and a half, are podcast listeners. 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I feel like the podcasting format, because there isn't video associated with it, is one of the most intimate forms of content marketing or communicating with your audience. You really have to be on your game to get enthusiasm, passion, energy, and expertise. Otherwise, it sounds dull, boring, and bad in some cases. 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. If you can come off the cuff on audio and really drive your point home without the use of visual aids, images, like you would on a blog post or on YouTube, it is a really great highlight of your skills and ability.
--:-- Jay Baer: Yeah, I think so. Especially as much speaking as I do. I'm starting to do more emceeing and hosting of events and things like that. So it's a good showcase for that skill set too.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Great. Well, Jay, I want to wrap it up. I want to thank you for coming on. 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, are going to be on the show notes. You can get those at ryanhanley.com forward slash the number 31. Jay, let people know where the best place to connect with you is.
--:-- Jay Baer: Best place to connect with me is probably on Convince and Convert. Convinceandconvert.com. You can find all of our other stuff there, links to the book and all kinds of other things we're doing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay, great. Well, Jay, thanks so much and have a great day. Good luck on the launch, man. I'm going to do everything I can to help you out.
--:-- Jay Baer: Thanks so much. I really appreciate you having me on the show. Best of luck to you and all the cool stuff that you're doing. Hey, as you're working on the book, give me a shot. I'm happy to help however you want. You let me know. Thanks, buddy.
--:-- [The podcast recording ends. Ryan Hanley addresses the audience directly.]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know I 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 tarmica.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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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 into this kind of mastermind coaching community where we talk through all the issues of ramping up a business... 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.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: 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. I'll see you on the next episode of this show. I'm out of here. Peace!
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