Today on the Book More Show I'm talking with Betsy Vaughn, and we're going to dive a little deeper into a topic we touched on last time.
We often talk about your book as the greatest lead generation tools you have. It really is the best way to get invisible prospects to raise their hand, but the secret is how do you engaging and interacting with those people over the long term.
It's over the next number of days, weeks, months, years, that you have the opportunity to speak with them, educating and motivating them, to do business with you and by showing how you can best help.
Obviously your immediate opt in sequence is important. Following up with people straight away so those who are the most engaged, the most ready to go, can take action, but then it's how you engage with all of the rest of the people over the longer term. One of the best ways to do that is a podcast.
We introduced this idea in the last episode, and we're going to dive deeper this time giving you some more actionable ideas, and it's going to be something we talk about increasingly over the coming weeks and years as it gets more attention out in the world and people realize just how many options you have to do things with that content once you've created it.
As we mention in the show, if you're interested in us helping you get your podcast set up and produced each week, just send an email to hello@90minutebooks.com, and we'll get you all the details.
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Transcript: Book More Show 082
Stuart: Hey, Betsy Vaughn!
Betsey: Hey Stuart Bell how are you?
Stuart: Very good thank you. How's your week going?
Betsey: Very good, busy. It's almost Friday.
Stuart: I know.
Betsey: Been crazy busy, yeah.
Stuart: It's time to go fast, lots of updates of people on the books and making changes, updates, new versions, new books.
Betsey: Lots, you know, people haven't been quite as quiet this summer, as summers past, a lot of the busy, I mean it is like that people are using this time to update their books, or they are starting to think about doing their book in September, and so I'm getting a lot of those calls and communication, so seeing a lot of people who have sort of, fallen off a little bit, or maybe it's their slow time so they're spending that working on their book a little bit, so plus I think the updates as well, with being sort of five, four, five, six years in now, what are we? I mean I guess it's the start, so I guess there is more people are kind of doing that full cycling back round, where we might not have seen that in the past.
Betsey: Right, right, definitely seen it this summer.
Stuart: Yeah. Yeah.
Betsey: Which is good.
Stuart: 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 deeper into one of those ideas today it think.
Betsey: Super. Looking forward to it.
Stuart: 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 is actually a bit more sporadic than we suggest people do.
Betsey: Yes.
Stuart: But the show we've got on the coaching side of the business, we've got More Cheese Less Whiskers, and The Joy Of Procrastination. On the real estate side of the business we've got The Less Engagement 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 will get into the 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 of approach or the understanding that okay, someone’s on the list now, now we 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 often times we'll see people talk about social media posts as a way of staying in touch.
Betsey: Mm-hmm.
Stuart: But depending on your audience, for a lot of people that is just too distant.
Betsey: Right.
Stuart: It’s not in front of people enough. And talk about blog post writing and a way of constantly pushing out content, difficulty there is 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 an 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.
Betsey: 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 interested in what that person is saying verses just an email or just a blog, like that, you really feel like you connect with that person that you don't know.
Stuart: Right.
Betsey: It's almost that very personal touch and you kind of, you know, I need to find out more from my friend John or whatever you know.
Stuart: Yeah.
Betsey: And it really does make you want to reach out and know more and listen and I know that even just with this podcast that when we haven't done one, people say hey where's the podcast.
Stuart: Right.
Betsey: So we hear that, so there must be some valuable content here which people are enjoying, which is great to hear when that comes across the screen, I mean you know, same thing with your business, people are looking for that, they have come to rely on it, so it's very valuable.
Stuart: 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 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 subject but we don't put a big show outline together or go through the details because nine times out of ten we are close enough to the subject to be about to talk about it without referring back to notes.
So that goes say 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 your 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 making the personal connection and adding an extra dynamic, that definitely goes a long way in terms of building a relationship and a report with people and even just giving them a view behind the scenes and kind of that real world insights into the day to day goings on.
One of the favorite people for content, at 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 not about just having set staged pieces that are presented, like produced content, it's just the constant insights into the background of the day to day of what's going on.
Now that's the day today of what's going on at a very high level organization and a very high level individual.
Betsey: Mm-hmm.
Stuart: So there is a different, that brings a certain dynamic to it as well, but I think the same applies at any stage.
Betsey: Yeah I think so too. I think just whatever is relevant to what is going on in your life.
Stuart: Yeah, definitely. So let's dive into some of the important elements of the podcast that aren't necessarily anything to do with podcasting itself. I think like 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 the fact that the book exists and it gets people to raise their 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 production and much more about, 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, and headphones and renting studio space, and sound deadening panels around the room that you speak in, and music bed underneath and-
Betsey: Mm-hmm.
Stuart: A production engineer tweaking some dials, it's quite funny talking about that actually, we went to it's Lucy's birthday coming up, so we went to see John Mayor in Philly a couple of days ago, and the seats that we had were right next to the stage and the sound desk was right there as well, so watching the audio levels and the guys tweaking the dials and the level of automation, so literally there were two guys, and I'm not suggesting that a John Mayor concert is the same as producing the podcast but there's 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 a set it and forget it type set up of or even just purely acoustic set of just him playing.
Betsey: Right.
Stuart: I think 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, 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 the assumption is it's not going to be perfect until you get 100 episodes in, then do the first 100 as quick as you can with whatever you've got and go from there.
Betsey: Same thing with the book, like you said there's the idea of perfection and it does not have to be that, and I think people tend to like that real too, there was a time I think when 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's-
Stuart: Do you know I think it's a development of the environment, so exactly as you said, when you first like the life cycle of what podcasts has gone through, has changed, so when you first started the quality across the board was pretty lowish.
Betsey: Mm-hmm.
Stuart: Because podcasts at least, I'm not talking about radio shows that are distributed through podcasts, but podcasts that people are 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.
Betsey: Mm-hmm.
Stuart: Then there was a period of everything getting more and more refined, getting lifted, and it lifted it to a certain, they... they... I can't speak... no amount of audio production would get over tripping over your words,
There's this, 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 the like MPR shows that come on or the BBC podcasts that go through, they're actually 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 role extracts from the show, some of the advertising that you see in podcasts now is getting very, very clunky and obviously insert 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 would the effort and B- it's a little bit disengaging.
Betsey: Mm-hmm.
Stuart: Because as you said, the authenticity and just the two people talking type interaction it is much better, so yeah, I think just like with the book, so stick with that analogy because it's one that everyone understands.
Betsey: Yeah. Right.
Stuart: You could spend the low thousands of dollars working with us 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 dollars running it through goodness knows how many edits and changing the font so you're using some special bespoke font, but how much is that going to move the needle really?
If the job at 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 at work? If the job at 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 the podcast to a network and get advertising revenue then it might be worth it.
Betsey: Mm-hmm.
Stuart: But that's probably not what we're talking about for the majority of people. Because now we're in a space where ten years into the every year, the resurgence of podcast, really to get that you might have been able to sell something relatively small six or seven years ago, but now, selling a podcast that would get a lot advertising revenue is very much in entertainment based play and not an education based play. So it's actually 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.
Betsey: I'm blown away by people I know that, these are people who are in business that, you know, like in banking, in finance, and just oh no, I've never listened, what should I listen to they ask me-
Stuart: Right.
Betsey: But I'm like, well what are you interested in? You know, just google, start there, just google, if you're looking for something outside of you know, your realm and you just want entertainment that's there too, you can find a podcast on everything and anything, you know.
Stuart: Yeah.
Betsey: Somebody's speaking about it, 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, 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 air pods 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 'what?'.
Stuart: Busted.
Betsey: So, I look forward to football season for different reasons, so I actually make myself find the time to sit down and catch on so many, but I am surprised at how many people don't listen at you know, just the information, there's a lot of valuable information out there, a lot of compelling messages that somebody's wanting.
Stuart: It's surprising isn't it, because no matter how you read magazine or I guess newspaper articles about how podcasts are in a resurgence, I mean like I say, 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 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 population are in a much smaller niche.
Betsey: Right.
Stuart: But even so, it's still the case that a lot of people, 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.
Betsey: Mm-hmm.
Stuart: We're not even in the kind of next bit of the curve where you get in some of the enthusiastic fans who are 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, for IOS 13 which is going to release later this year, makes the car plate interface much better to stream audio and then allow it to do other things, so it's not like it's taking over.
There is some talk about building podcasts into solutions there's a lot of, like Spotify has invested quite heavily in podcasts 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 were looking at a way of making podcasts a 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.
Betsey: Right.
Stuart: So, anyway I think that's the, none of those things are really what 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 good time.
So, that kind of sets the scene for podcasts generally, so let's dive into specifically the way that we view them and use them and how it ties best into the that you guys listening here, knowing that you're receiving us because you've expressed interest in writing a book, so obviously we're talking about a kind of marketing and engagement type context rather than entertainment.
Betsey: Right. I-
Stuart: So recording the content, Sorry go for it.
Betsey: No, no, go ahead.
Stuart: 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've recorded a show, a new one that we are going to put out in a couple of weeks, we're just getting it a bit of content to get it started. We recorded it literally on the voice memo app on my phone. We were in the office talking, we'd been talking about it 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're in an office and it was a bit echo-y and the two of us talking, and actually I forgot to put my phone on airplane mode so it rang in the middle of recording, which interrupted it, but even so, that still worked 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 the what do you then do with it and how do you get it into a feed, that type of thing.
Betsey: Very good.
Stuart: 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 difficult to imagine, you've got 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 opted in, in any way. It's literally just recorded and publicized, because the point of it is entertainment really, they've got some advertisers on there that they'll talk about 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 with the engagement, I don't necessarily want to say just 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 get an email when the next show is released, then my podcast player tells me that, so there's not really a reason to subscribe to anything, the book is then the perfect tie in, so sending the podcast for the people who've opted 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 talk 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're getting people to raise their hand, give them the 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 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 notes on to social media channels, so you can push a Facebook post of 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 our perspective at least is that duplications not really an issue because we're not talking about an issue where we're looking at 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 towards one more than another, so, although they may have accounts on all of them they are not necessarily active on a lot of them, LinkedIn is another one that I've just missed off the list. Push the distribution note 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 in social channels.
Betsey: Mm-hmm.
Stuart: There's, if you have guests on the show you can orchestrate ways that they can promote their list, so rather than having someone on the show and just talk about, just say hey that's great the shows going up if you wanna share it the share it, then give them the way to share it, so write the content of the blog post, 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 gives them some extra credibility.
Betsey: Right.
Stuart: 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're giving it all to them as a way of increasing the likelihood that it gets out there. Because that's the old check moves, the Dr Gleason that you can't make someone, you can't check mate someone, you always want to put them in check to force them to present the opportunity. Then it's going to be more likely to be more successful than less likely.
Betsey: Right.
Stuart: I butchered that analogy a little bit-
Betsey: Right, but when you stop and think about that, I mean if you've got a guest on your show and then you're willing to write the post for them for their social, I mean that's just a no brainer, you know, that's not a lot of work, you're not writing a blog post, it's very simple and I think your guest would be foolish to not jump on that opportunity.
Stuart: Yeah particularly when you're doing this for yourself anyway, so a post that gets written to say that we're releasing the show, is virtually identical to the post that says I was just on a show and here it is.
The album arts all the same, the details of what the shoe is about is all the same, you just maybe 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 audience.
Betsey: Right.
Stuart: 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 persuasion 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 you for the podcast, I'd love to be able to share your message, the likelihood of them saying yes and wanting to engage is far greater than just trying to get someone’s time and attention for another reason. So 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 talk about in the 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 the particularly outside of tech circles, or in kind of air quotes- entrepreneur type circles, the number of people who have listened to a podcast, or been on a podcast, who have been invited to be on a podcast is still 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 set up, now talk about small niches, this one is very, very specific, but there's a big enough audience that it is a subject, and for those people where it's important and it resonates this is super important.
The person who is hosting the show, and once it releases in a week or two we will definitely do a little bit of a circle back and talk about it, in fact we might even be able to get the person on the podcast here and we'll talk about the setup, but he was feeding back saying that he has reached out to some industry leading experts and really the person that invented the 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 the guest doesn't work in tech, they're not a podcaster, they never get any exposure to this, I think in fact they were referring to it as a radio show a couple of times when they've been talking.
But still, because it's something that they've got no, they don't know how the sausage is made behind the scenes.
Betsey: Right, right.
Stuart: 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, if 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, jam your foot in and try and switch people into something that 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 one of the more effective ways.
Betsey: Okay.
Stuart: We've talked then about the creation, and so I just wanted to hit on one more thing and that's kind of the leveraging. So we talked about the creating and what to do on day one, we've talked about a couple of the bigger persuasion type things about 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 morecheeselesswiskers.com because A- not only is it a great example of look behind the scenes at how the sausage is made, but Deans got guests on there every week where they 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 are 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 key take away, 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 interesting in the super signature that we've done a show on in the past, the super signature in the PS message that goes out with that email broadcast, and the message itself, the nugget, the take away from the episode, is really just a way of keeping that conversation going. It's a way of presenting the PS and 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 or email and also social media posts.
Betsey: Mm-hmm.
Stuart: 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 opportunity to get to PS and super signature in front of people whilst delivering something of value, one important thing I guess is that 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 the same thing they just listened to a few days ago, this is from weeks or even months ago, so it's not going to be so fresh in peoples mind, it acts as a good reminder, there's a link back to the show if people missed it or if they want to re-listen to it again because it's of some interest.
But really that is from these seed pieces of content, these seed recordings, the ability to leverage of 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's 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 in terms of I know I should be staying in touch with people, but in terms being actual able to execute on it, this is one of the examples where the execution is more important than the idea because the ideas not necessarily anything new but the execution is where people fall down and to be able to get the executed in a way that it's more likely to happen really makes a difference between doing it and not doing it.
Betsey: Very true, I think when you were speaking I was thinking about, I men obviously we have a service that we can do this for people.
Stuart: Right.
Betsey: But it really is such a small commitment on someone’s 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 Deans get forwarded to me and such, but just the response from those things and how, you know not everyone is going to respond and this emails not going to touch on every single person, but it really just takes one person, you know, if you get someone to, based on this email 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 and listening and listening, and then finally something you know, they get one of those emails and a light bulb goes off you know.
Stuart: Exactly. That's the most important thing I think, is 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 the way that you can constantly stay in front of people, regularly stay in front of people, so that one of your messages is 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 is just that the timing, the stars aligned and your mail happened to come in within the day or two when they think themselves, oh yeah I really need to do something about that now.
That's the key difference.
Betsey: Yeah.
Stuart: Because you can put people on the list as much as you like, but unless you regularly stay in touch with them, the likelihood that those things align is far too slim and you're kind of leaving relationships and money on the table.
Betsey: Yeah. I'm always surprised when I hear people who say 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 that to me is such a no brainer, we've used this example and I will, because I don't know that he will listen to this, but with my fiancé, he has had a business almost 40 years and he has 35,000 clients and they have never created that list that you and I talked about, but they're finally doing this, and they're creating this list, but he hasn't been doing that, and-
Stuart: Yeah.
Betsey: 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, I was completely blown away.
Stuart: Yeah.
Betsey: And that happens to me all the time, I'm having conversations with people who have significant, not 500 is 500 people, that's where you start, not everyone has to have thousands of people on a list.
Stuart: Particularly in niches-
Betsey: Yes.
Stuart: I mean when you think about local businesses that really specialize in something, I mean how many, I'm just looking out of the window here and there's 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 numbers probably pretty low, 500 people on that list probably represents a large proportion of the potential audience around. So yeah, and again the podcast that we were talking about that we're just getting ready to release for the tax 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.
Betsey: Absolutely.
Stuart: And that's just on the immediate and obvious and trackable return, let alone the bigger picture of the extreme amount of content that's being created that can be re-used year, after year, after year, after year. It really is exciting and straight forward.
Betsey: Yeah and I don't think people need to be scared about oh well 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 something to constantly be in communication with them and just remind them that you're there. You know? Just hey, because like you said it takes one, and some people and business it is just that one email is such a return on your investment, you know, is definitely worth it.
Stuart: Definitely. I just looked at the clock and as usual we are running long, so let's wrap there, because I think this is a good benchmark for that conversation of the ongoing engagement. The book as an opt in, as a reason to get people to raise their hand works great at the front end.
Betsey: Mm-hmm.
Stuart: You then need something to follow up, that thing that you've got following up, you then 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 have 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.
Betsey: I’m sure.
Stuart: We will 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 them drop me a note, as I say I'm not too worried there's a ton of resources out there of 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, so if you just shoot us an email to Support@90MinuteBooks then we can 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 shoot us an email and we'll get you the details sooner rather than later. You'll be the first to get that information back out.
And I think that's it.
Betsey: Yeah. Very good.
Stuart: Anything that we have missed?
Betsey: No, I think 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 your list maybe you are now, so hopefully that's beneficial to you.
Stuart: Fantastic, well as always head over to 90MinuteBooks.com/Podcast and find the show for this episode, as I mentioned if you want any information on the podcast service then just drop us a note with that in the subject heading and we'll get you that information ahead of the general launch, as always if you're listening and haven't yet started your book or are thinking about a second then reach out again to Support@90MinuteBooks and we can help you get started with that as well.
Alrighty, thank you Betsy, we will talk again next week.
Betsey: Thank you. Take care.