MicroFamous

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the biggest challenge for us in the coaching/consulting space.

I’m curious if you’d agree, but here’s how I’d describe it:

If we don’t want to follow the Gary Vee model and chase free attention on social media, what’s the best alternative medium to put our content in front of people who don’t know us?

There’s no easy answer, but when I look at the landscape of content marketing, a few things are high on the list

Podcasts (both as host and as guest)

YouTube

Substack

(Of course, platforms like Pinterest or Twitter might be better if you have the right niche audience.)

Since I already have podcasting pretty much on autopilot, I’m experimenting with YouTube and Substack.

Here’s how I’m thinking it’s going to work.

I’m launching an official MicroFamous YouTube channel, where I’ll cover shorter topics related to turning your expertise into a lifestyle business without spending all day on social media

I’m launching an additional podcast featuring conversations around life-changing books. Podcast episodes will mostly have guests, a mix of emerging thought leaders and some names you’ll know

I’ll follow up those podcast episodes with shorter “piggyback” videos on YouTube where I pull out my takeaways. I’ll sprinkle in 1-2 clips from the original podcast episode to highlight the podcast.

ALL my content gets published on Substack, from stand-alone articles to podcast episode summaries.

That allows me to publish several times a week to Substack for people who want to hear from me more, without hitting people in my list who didn’t sign up for that frequency.

You can see the Substack blog in its current form here: https://microfamous.substack.com/

I’m liking what I see so far from Substack on it’s customization options and how clean and readable the posts are when put into email form.

Now let’s turn to YouTube... Why YouTube?

Well, first, YouTube was part of my original success with Real Estate Uncensored.

We got great traction from YouTube between 2015 to around 2018 when we shifted the live show over to Facebook for good. 

We put about 4000 emails into our list for free based off of people finding our search-optimized videos and clicking over to a simple lead magnet page. 

Now, whether I can reproduce that level of success in today’s environment, and use YouTube to build the podcast audience for MicroFamous as well, remains to be seen.

But the discoverability and optimization tools available on YouTube are just too good not to explore.

And being there allows me to keep experimenting with building a cross-platform “show” - where certain forms of content go to YouTube and other forms of content go to the audio podcast.

That might be the near-term future of podcasting, at least until Apple and Spotify get their act together and catch up to YouTube in their analytics and insights.

Now this is just my answer to a set of questions I’ve been asking myself, and they might be helpful to you too.

So here are the key questions:

If my business grew from the systems I already have in place, what sort of content would I produce just for the fun and enjoyment of it?

What are the platforms where I could put my content in front of new people in an authentic and sustainable way?

What platforms allow me to pay to promote my content, so I’m not forced to rely on social media to drive traffic or reach new people?

What platforms allow me to...

We’ve all heard the quote, If one person can do something, anyone can learn to do it.

It might be a helpful belief, but that doesn’t make it objectively true.

Especially when it comes to marketing.

I had a client ask me if she should focus on Instagram, because a friend of hers grew a following of 100k in just 6 months.

Of course it turns out their friend is a massive extrovert with a huge personality who loves social media.

Once we identified that, it became clear that my client didn’t have those attributes that contributed to that success.

What does this have to do with the 80/20 Principle?

Everything.

Do you know Perry Marshall? He’s the author of 80/20 Sales & Marketing, one of my favorite marketing books of all time.

He points out that the 80/20 principle isn’t just a handy rule of thumb for economics, or a way to use our time better.

The 80/20 principle is a universal law of cause and effect.

The vast majority of actions don’t produce much in the way of results. Some might even backfire.

A few actions get huge results. 

And that makes people *really* uncomfortable.

The 80/20 principle messes with our perception of fairness at a very deep level.

There is nothing equitable or fair about the 80/20 principle.

It doesn’t care who you are, it doesn’t care how much effort you put in, it doesn’t care how much you want it.

Especially when it comes to marketing.

On my podcast Real Estate Uncensored, we’re coming up on 700 episodes and 2 million downloads.

Would we get that if we launched the same exact podcast today? Maybe, maybe not.

We got in and built an audience when the podcast space in real estate was still relatively uncrowded.

We also got a huge boost from YouTube that would be hard to reproduce in the same way today.

On the other hand, there are podcasters who’ve put out far less content on their podcast and have millions upon millions of downloads.

Is that fair? Maybe not, but that’s the 80/20 principle in action.

Their actions produced a completely different level of results.

In marketing and in life, there’s no guarantee that just because we put in the same level of effort as someone else, or model their success and do the same things they did, that we’ll achieve the same level of success.

The 80/20 principle tells us that out of 100 actions, maybe 20 will produce measurable results, and only 5 of those actions will produce huge results.

Over time, you’ll tend to see this in your content, where a few podcast episodes go gangbusters and get tons of downloads for unexplainable reasons.

You’ll notice this in your guest appearances on other podcasts.

One will just hit the right audience at the right time and you’ll get a ton of leads and sales. 

Like one of our clients, who went on Pat Flynn’s podcast and Entrepreneurs on Fire in the same year. The Pat Flynn episode went gangbusters and ended up making her 6 figures in revenue. EoFire did absolutely nothing.

So when it comes to starting a marketing platform like a podcast, you need other metrics of success other than how many views and downloads you get.

And I’m preaching to the choir here, too. I deal with this just as much as anyone, even though I choose smaller target markets and don’t need millions of views.

To get to where you can leverage the 80/20 principle to get better results, you have to go through the period of throwing a...

With Apple releasing paid and freemium podcast subscriptions, there’s a lot of talk in the podcast world about this new option for monetizing podcasts.

So this is a perfect opportunity to cover an idea I’ve talked about behind the scenes but isn’t in the MicroFamous book (at least, not this current version).

There’s a big difference between a product that helps you build demand for you, versus a product that harvests demand that already exists.

Let’s give a couple examples.

Dan Kennedy tells a story of him taking his personal swipe file and offering it to his email list and making a quick 6 figures, then offering it out through affiliates and making another quick 6 figures.

What gets left out of that story is all the years he spent investing in that email list. 

Sending out high-value content.

Making promises and then keeping them.

Building trust over time.

Then he can release a product that capitalizes on the demand and trust that already exists.

If no one knew who Dan Kennedy was, no one cares about his swipe file and he doesn’t make multiple 6 figures off that product.

Let’s look at another example, the rise of Substack and alternative journalism.

Take someone like Glenn Greenwald, now an independent journalist, but in the past someone who contributed to big name outlets like the Guardian and the Washington Post, where he won a Pulitzer Prize, then went out to found the Intercept.

Now he publishes on Substack, a platform for paid newsletters.

Estimates are that he has 20k-40k subscribers each paying at least $5 a month, which puts his yearly earnings around 2 million. 

With podcasting opening up the option for paid subscriptions, we’re going to see some similar success stories in that space.

Here’s my opinion: Paid subscriptions capitalize on existing demand. They don’t carry the heavy lifting of creating new demand.

So should an expert - like a coach, consultant or business book author - jump into the world of paid subscriptions?

It depends on whether you have an existing audience or not.

What we forget about folks like Glenn Greenwald is that they spent years writing for big name publications, going on TV, writing books or speaking. 

They spent years, maybe even decades building their influence, creating trust, gaining notoriety, attracting attention, getting their content in front of thousands, maybe even millions.

So unless you have already done that, remember that the economics of paid subscriptions may not be in your favor.

In my point of view, paid subscriptions are like harvesting a crop you’ve been growing all season.

But it doesn’t plant new seeds.

So the success stories we’re about to hear in paid subscriptions will probably be those who already had an audience.

They are “harvesting” from the crop of fame, influence and demand they built over years.

Demand is how much of YOU people want. 

When there’s more demand for you than supply, you can harvest that demand in different ways.

You can launch a book or an online membership.

You can raise your speaking fees or your coaching fees.

You can launch certifications or group coaching where your involvement is minimal

Why?...

Yes, I listened to all 3 hours of this episode so you don’t have to.

However, there are so many fantastic nuggets, I still highly recommend it to any podcaster.

We align on virtually everything, from his simple approach to gear, to handling guests and prepping for episodes.

But like you, I was most curious on how Tim’s brilliance had been applied to growing his show. 

In some areas I was surprised, and I’ll give you my overall conclusions at the end, but for now let’s dig into the nitty gritty. 

Here are the Tim Ferris Top Tactics for Podcast Growth….

Podcast interviews 

Meaning you being a guest on other podcasts, which is foundational to the MicroFamous system.

Tim’s best advice here was to be explicit in sending people to your podcast. “If you don't, there's not an automatically high conversion rate.”

It’s easy to forget that, and end up plugging a book or a lead magnet. And there’s nothing wrong with that. 

But if your goal is to grow your podcast by giving interviews on other podcasts, don’t send people to 5 other things.

Send them to your podcast and make it clear that’s the best way to connect with you. 

Now, if you’re really good at getting people off podcasts and into your email list, keep doing that. 

Over the long haul, I believe an email subscriber is worth more than a podcast subscriber, because an email subscriber will get your podcast episode via email and have plenty of chances to subscribe to your podcast.

So I think there are 2 lessons here.

First is not to forget to send people to your podcast in the quest to give them a bunch of options to connect with you. 

Second is to sprinkle in mentions of your podcast naturally into any conversations you have on other podcasts. So people know about your podcast even before you get to the end where you can give a call-to-action. 

Email & Newsletters 

This one surprised me a little, but as Tim put it, “They’re only one link click away from the action you want them to take.” 

So email is still incredibly powerful and if you have a podcast, make sure to incorporate your podcast into your email strategy. Tim obviously came into podcasting with a large and engaged email list he’d built up for years, which is a great advantage.

But all of us have an email list of some kind, and it still remains one of the best ways to promote our podcast, so don’t neglect it.

Yes that means sending new episodes to your list, but it can also mean tactics like:

- adding your podcast episodes into your initial follow up sequences

- recording certain podcast episodes specifically for your email list or email follow up system

- creating special short-run podcast series which can then be offered to your email list on top of your normal level of communication with your list. 

Andre Chaperon and Digital Marketer are both good at this, where they offer a certain email series with a specific goal. Each email is numbered and has a set limit so people know exactly what to expect, and it’s delivered on top of normal communication with their list.

Now I’ll interject that with all the inbox filtering going on, the more authentic and personal your emails are, the better. Dean Jackson and Andre Chaperon are my personal email heroes, and inside our agency we’ve nudged our clients in the direction of super personal, less branded emails. 

Big Name Guests 

Tim has a big...

I came across a really interesting video the other day and I wanted to share a short clip and some thoughts.

The gentleman you’re about to hear is Jaron Lanier, he’s known now as a sort of Silicon Valley philosopher and futurist, with a background as both an entrepreneur in virtual reality in the 80s, to working at Microsoft as an interdisciplinary scientist. He's also a composer and musician, so a super interesting guy and clearly a very deep thinker.

So I want to play you this clip, and it’s in response to the question: “Why does social media have an effect on politics, is it because of the way people respond to things on social media?”

Here’s they key part of Jaron’s response that jumped out to me:

YouTube link: https://youtu.be/kc_Jq42Og7Q?t=672

Here are 3 lessons I take away from Jaron’s perspective.

1. To be successful on social media today, you must tap into emotions that rise quickly and generate quick, impulsive responses. 

Controversial opinion posts can do this. There are copywriters I’ve stumbled across on Facebook who are really good at this.

That’s also why opinion posts work so well. Especially when they are short, easily readable, or offer a few preset options people can choose from without thinking. 

It’s also why social media experts tell you to talk about random things and talk about your business only a tiny bit. In fact, the more randomness, the better in terms of getting engagement.

2. Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook Doesn’t Work Anymore

You are in an artificial space, very different from a typical public square. It isn’t just about who shouts the loudest or most often. 

There is an algorithm that stands between your content and your audience. And that algorithm is looking for very specific, fast, impulsive responses.

If it doesn’t see that kind of response, your post doesn’t go very far.

Which changes the game. When Gary Vee’s book, Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook came out, the algorithm was much less sophisticated.

You could post value, value, value and then post an ask, and roughly the same people would see each post. So it makes perfect sense.

Now that has completely changed. 

A very small portion of your audience will see a post, and if it doesn’t get the right kind of engagement the algorithm is looking for, your post doesn’t go beyond that small portion. 

And because business oriented content isn’t going to outperform most personal and social content on a social platform, guess which posts are the most likely to get squashed down by the algorithm?

It’s your right hooks. The posts where you expect people to see your call-to-action for your business.

So what happens when you give value, value, value and then when you go post something about your business a call-to-action, the algorithm squashes THAT post?

It’s like a boxer who does the jab, jab, jab and whenever he goes in for the right hook, the referee holds his arm back. I wouldn’t box under those circumstances, I’d get my butt kicked.

3. To actually deliver the “right hook,” you have to pay to play.

The social media companies have figured out this genius business model.

They let you build an audience, they let you get a taste of reaching them for free.

Then they pull the rug out from under you, cranking your reach down to 1-5% of your audience and asking you to pay to reach the rest of them.

So there’s no free lunch when it comes to social media.

And as Jaron Lanier pointed out,...

For experts like coaches and consultants, it’s easy to get trapped in a business that doesn’t fit us. 

In the real estate business, Mike Ferry is still going out and speaking to live audiences and real estate offices in his 80’s. That’s the lifestyle he wants, but it’s not what I want.

On the flip side, some experts set the goal of a business that runs without them and throws off a high profit that allows them to essentially retire. Richard Koch is a great example of this. He works a few hours in the morning in communication with leaders of the companies he’s invested in. That leaves the rest of the day to think, write, ride his book or tool around his property in South Africa. 

He does no 1-on-1 coaching or mentoring, it’s all through the books he writes and interviews he gives.

For me, I want something in the middle.

I genuinely enjoy the client work of helping people figure out their marketing strategy, their messaging, their ideal client they want to attract, the Point of View they want to put into the world, the big, valuable problem they want to solve. That’s where I get the sense of fulfillment and impact.

So my ideal business doesn’t take me out of that work, it just adds a ton of leverage.

(Side note: if you’re on the introverted side like me, we need leverage. We don’t get energy back from all of our social interactions, so we need to get more out of each interaction. That’s leverage.)

So the question for this episode is, What do you REALLY want?

As a newer coach or consultant, there are two paths people tend to choose from, and one path they get stuck on.

Now, what do I mean by newer?

That could mean you're just launching your coaching or consulting business, but it could also mean you're jumping into a new niche. Maybe you're well known in your real estate space, but you're jumping into a much bigger space like personal development. Or you've been involved in big companies with big brands, but you were behind the scenes. So you have credibility, but not a lot of name recognition.

These are all very common scenarios, and I love the strategy decisions at this stage.

So here are the two paths in terms of what you offer and how big of an audience you try to build.

You can either go big audience and small prices, or small audience and big prices.

Those are the best two options, but the absolute worst option is the path where people often get stuck - small audience and small prices. That's a recipe for frustration.

So which of the paths is better for you? Should you go for building a big audience and sell them a digital program or course? Or should you go straight to the most valuable slice of the market and cater to them?

When you sell something that is a “necessary evil,” like accounting, insurance, mortgage, and even real estate to an extent, I haven’t seen a lot of evidence that people are interested in long-form audio content.

HGTV shows with pretty homes and pretty hosts? Absolutely, people vacuum it up.

But notice what’s happening. In shows like House Hunters, the hard parts of the transaction are glossed over. The emphasis is on the homes and the fun of speculating what home these idiots are going to pick and yelling at the TV about how dumb they are.

Then you have flipping shows, which actually do show the hard parts, but play them up for drama and in the end, the house still ends up selling and they usually turn a profit. 

So if I’m advising someone who is selling a professional service to the consumer, check the search traffic on Google and YouTube for the content you want to put out.

Which brings me to a good rule of thumb I just made up:

If you can’t find evidence that people are actively searching for the content you want to put out, then long-form podcast content on the subject probably won’t be a winner.

This comes from one of our newest clients who’s in that fantastic position right now, and it’s time for her to scale up her influence and impact without taking more time and energy.

When you take on most of your clients through relationships, referrals, speaking engagements, etc they can come easy, but they’re coming for the relationship with YOU. They don’t want leverage, they don’t want something scaled.

So the key to breaking out of that and taking on clients who are willing to get less of you but still enthusiastically sign up is about way more than just lowering the price.

Your level of influence has to go up. Podcasting builds real, enduring influence. 

In the book I break down the 3 elements of influence, which are authority, visibility and relationships, and there’s a lot I could say on how podcasting works for each of those elements.

But a story is best. 

Jay Campbell is a perfect example. He’s one of just a few influencers and experts in the men’s hormone optimization space, and he’s approaching 300 episodes of his podcast, which we’ve produced for over 5 years. 

He has a ton of men reaching out to him asking to work with him personally.

Of course he doesn’t have time to take on all those, so he partnered up with another influencer in the space and built a multi-6 figure group program in just a couple months.

How is this possible? It’s because his level of influence allowed him to channel that demand for him into a scalable program people wanted, even though they don’t get a 1-on-1 coaching relationship with him. 

People’s willingness to settle for a scalable, group program is directly related to your level of influence in your space. Not just your visibility, it’s about real, enduring influence. 

You have to channel some of the demand for you into demand for your system. 

Podcasting gives you the control over your messaging, and the quality time with your audience to do exactly that. 

Lars Hedenborg is a great example here, because he’s so good at building systems in his coaching business that he’s removed himself from the day to day. He can spend as little as 4 hours a week inside his coaching business.

But more than that, the way he markets his coaching puts more of an emphasis on his system - his tools, methodology, than on personal access to him.

So by the content he puts out there on his podcast, yes he’s building influence and creating demand, but it’s not just demand for time with him, he’s creating demand for his system. And that system can be coached by people other than Lars himself.

That’s the secret to being able to bring in staff coaches. The demand has to be for your system, not for YOU personally, your time, your creative problem solving, your hand holding.

Now if both of these things we’ve talked about are happening, your level of influence is building, demand for you is growing, you’re channelling that demand into your scalable group program, what happens next?

Podcasting frees you up to spend more of your time in marketing mode, rather than client service mode. 

And this is the key to making big leaps in your influence.

You have the time to go write for Entrepreneur.com, or fly out and appear on the Today Show like one of our clients just did, or write a book like most of our clients have, or go after speaking engagements and podcast appearances that put you in front of larger audiences. 

Many of those opportunities just don’t show up in your life until you’ve created white space on your calendar and mental space in your...

Today’s topic is deeply personal to me, but I’m going to pull out lessons that are really applicable to anyone in the thought leadership game. 

When I think about the thought leaders I look up to, admire and respect the most, these are the top 5 who have impacted and influenced me in various ways. 

1. Tim Ferris - He thinks like no one else I know, and his engineer/architect approach has heavily impacted how I think and approach problems. 
2. Derek Sivers - He popularized the concept “if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a no”. He has an ability to pierce right to the heart of a challenge and come up with a simple rule of thumb to deal with it. 
3. Richard Koch - He went from consultant to half billionaire through just a handful of key investments, and he spends his days almost exactly like I do - mornings are for work, afternoons are for walks and reading and thinking. 
4. Seth Godin - He understands the philosophy of marketing at a deep level and I love that. 
5. Mark Sisson - He’s one of the OG's of ancestral health, he consistently publishes on his blog and has built a huge audience around his Primal Blueprint.

Lessons learned:

• They can't help but teach, train and lead. Listen to Mark Sisson on Rogan, he's a great example. He didn't perfectly promote his book, in fact he said flat out it's all the same principles he's been teaching for 20 years just in a format that's more accessible
• They design their life to suit themselves and their personality, not the demands of others. Seth Godin selects speaking gigs based on proximity to NYC and the travel logistics. He doesn't say yes easily. Tim Ferris shows up at the events that are strategic and otherwise focuses on the podcast and writing books. Richard Koch spends a good chunk of his days writing, thinking, and managing his investments.
• None of them appear to be driven by the latest marketing trends. They have all found a way to build an audience that suits them and stuck with it. Tim Ferris and Seth Godin both have their blog and their podcasts. The others use podcast Guest Interviews to reach more people and promote books, where I'd love to see them start their own. These folks that are extremely influential in their spaces have found the marketing form that works for them and have stuck with it for the long haul. 

There’s a bunch of other thought leaders that could have made this list, but those are the ones that stuck out to me for the way that they run their life, their impulse to teach, train, lead, and the fact that they don’t just on the latest marketing trends and yet they still do fantastically well.