Up next in 10
Mark Harari is dropping some bombs on this video about getting past that pesky gatekeeper. In today's world of technology, it seems like everyone has a podcast whether they're a professional speaker or just a guy with an opinion. Podcasts have been around for years but now they're being used more than ever before by people who want to get their message out there without having to go through all the hassle of networking in person.
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Do you want to know how to get past the gatekeeper to reach your ideal prospect and land that big meeting
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Me too. I'm Evelyn Taylor. I'm the publisher of DIY Marketers and the host of Visit Palooza Chat
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And in this session, we're going to share a recipe for using podcasts to get past gatekeepers
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Bet you didn't think I was going to say that. You're going to get straight to the decision maker, and we're going to show you how to do it today
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with me today is vice president of remodelers advantage author of lobster and a cheese plate
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president of our a marketing and podcast coach that was a lot to say it's mark harari welcome
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Hello, Mark. Stephen, how are you? Oh, I'd love to see your morning smiley face
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All right. So you have this very unique way of using podcasts
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Lots of people talk about using podcasts to generate leads, but you've got a whole different
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take on it. Say more about that. Yeah, so everybody thinks podcasts, the strategy for that when it comes to lead intake is build
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an audience. wow the audience with amazing content, and eventually they'll call you, which actually
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is a great strategy. It works. It's a long-term strategy, but there's a short-term strategy
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and I call that the audience of one strategy. And that strategy is, it doesn't matter if you have
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400,000 listeners or subscribers, or if you only have two, the audience of one is your guest
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and the strategy is to use a podcast as you're in to getting to these big accounts or you know
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big chances or opportunities or whomever you want to get to and invite them to be on your show as a
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guest you always get past the gatekeeper on that one because you're not calling them for anything
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you're calling them to be a big celebrity right you want to get their knowledge and get that out
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into the world. And by using podcasting as a way to get past the gatekeeper, you can build
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See, the great thing too is you start to build a relationship. You're going to have a call
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beforehand to kind of go over what the session is going to be. You get to know each other. Then
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of course, during the podcast, you're having this wonderful interview. Like you and I are talking
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right now, right? I feel like I'm your best friend already. I feel like you and I could go out to
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lunch just because we're having this chat, right? And you and I haven't met before this, right
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That's right. But would you like to go to lunch with me? I would love to go to lunch with you
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Next time I'm in Baltimore, next time you're in Cleveland, we're in
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It's amazing how we could go from complete strangers to ready to have lunch together
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just through a conversation like this where we're sharing some wisdom, right
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So you don't even have to have a great, and the beautiful air quotes, beautiful thing about
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podcasts is nobody in the world knows how many listeners you have unless you tell them
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that data isn't available to anyone other than the podcast host. So unless you run it, you're the only one that knows how many listeners you have
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So I'm not suggesting you lie about it, but I'm saying the guest or potential guests can't
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go look up and say, oh, he only has six subscribers. I'm not going to get on that show
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They can't do that kind of research. So, you know, you just build this
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There's that concept of reciprocity, you know, too. So you've built this rapport
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And then you say, hey, I'd love to talk to you sometime about what we do
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It's just a great way to get past it. I actually used it. So you mentioned I'm the author of lobster on a cheese plate, right
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John Borlow, big author, wrote Built to Sell and a couple others, The Automatic Customer
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I had him on my podcast and he ended up writing the foreword for my book So there you go Right It just a very strong John and that a connection that gave your book some credibility
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And I gotta, I gotta love the fact that, um, in essence, that's what we're doing here. People
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that is what I'm doing here. I am inviting people. I know who I know have an audience
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to sort of spread the word. It's such a win-win circumstance. You're going to get publicity for your book through this
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I'm going to get a little publicity through your audience of remodelers
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who are small business owners that I want to reach. So it's a total win-win
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And it takes nothing, right? How much work was this, Mark, for you doing this
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To put together a podcast? No, to do this little thing that you and I are doing
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Oh, with you. Nothing. Nothing, right? coffee. Yeah, there you go. Okay, so let's take, let's say now someone saying, whoa, I really like
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this way to like, it's kind of the new way of cold calling, right? Right, right. It's the new
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podcast or the new cold call. So the, you know, so I love it. Right. So if you're going to do that
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then take us through the steps of like, what did you go through when you were doing this for
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yourself? Well, so the hardest, a lot of people, it's an intimidating proposition for podcasting
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and probably, you know, four years ago, maybe it was, you got to buy all this fancy equipment and
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all that stuff, but, you know, heck, you and I are on a Zoom right now, right? Zoom is as good as it
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gets, really. I mean, it's a pretty good platform. You get really good audio. You can get really
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fancy, but you don't have to spend thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on equipment
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I got myself a little wireless lav. Hopefully I'm sounding pretty good to you. Yeah. You know
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something like that. I mean, I think all in, it was maybe $250. And that's just because I wanted
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to have better sound quality. So people are more hung up on equipment, right? In my opinion
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what's really difficult is coming up. If you are going to use podcasting as a lead generation
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tool to get past the gatekeeper. How do you come up with a topic that works for you
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and that's going to work for that other person? Yeah. So, you know, really for us, I mean
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so for us, Remodelers Advantage, our audience is remodeling business owners across the U.S
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and Canada. And so really it's about solving their problems. So that's the topic. And I want to
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again, from a long-term perspective too, because we're going to do both strategies here. We want
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to build an audience. We want to build a listenership. At least we did, right? So how do I get these
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people to listen and subscribe? I solve their problems. So that's going to be the topic. And
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then my guests are going to be people that are either helping the industry or successful role
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modeling business owners already. And who also happen to be part of your target audience
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They're decision makers for you. Right. So then you can say, so listen to, you know, you can tune into this week's episode and listen to someone that's in your shoes, you know, walking your walk and feeling your pains
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Today, we're going to have, you know, John Smith. But John Smith may not be a member of my community
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So by inviting him in, I'm flattering him. I'm honoring him and his expertise and everything he's done
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And I'm going to build a little bit of a relationship with him. and the hope is by the end of the podcast or afterwards because then there's also the post
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podcast now i can reach out to them say hey your podcast is live thank you so much for being here
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here's some links to share it with your community we're going to share it with everybody we'd love
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to have you on again sometime you know so so how did you convert john smith to be in a customer
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now after the podcast that what we really talking about right so now john well and you know hey you should join man You know 95 of our guests are actually already members and you should join that community
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So why don't you do that? You know, you want to talk to some of our members? We'd love to have you, you know, and so the wheel rolls
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So it really is about having a conversation. That's what you're talking about
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Doing, inviting them to the podcast is really the cold outreach. Engaging with them is being in the conversation
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Interviewing them is being in the conversation. And then really it's up to you
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And I think that's where people really get stuck. I can see just like not finishing the loop, getting 80% there because that's easy
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Yeah. How many salespeople, and I've run into plenty, how many salespeople have said, man, if I
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could just, if I could just get him on the phone, if I could just get her at lunch, I would close
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her, you know, I'd sell him, I just need to get in front of this person. And I can't get this
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I can't get the meeting, I can't, they won't give me the time of day. So really, that's the big
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obstacle is so many salespeople or business owners trying to sell is just getting this
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this thing you and I got going on right now. And so this is a great way to do it
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What do you think about, have you had the experience in a podcast of having a quote unquote prospect, right? Sharing what their pain points are. So that kind of gives that salesperson something to work with
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Beautiful. Yeah, it's brilliant. So in the interview, oftentimes with guests that were not already members, but they're in businesses, we could go into that. So what challenges did you have? What did you do come over that? And then I'm a co-host with Victoria, who's the president of the company. And so she and I also are able to have some banter
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And then this is a nice little beautiful thing too with in our format, at least once our interview ends, we say goodbye, thank you for being here. And then he or she pops off and then Victoria and I have about five or 10 minutes of back and forth reviewing the show
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and there we can talk about things that now I know he's going to listen to the show in the
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full episode afterwards right so now I can almost do like a little one-on-one pitch just to him or
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her um in this thing like yeah that was great John had all these great tips and you know something
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else he didn't realize was if you also did x y and z that also will get you there and yeah yeah
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that's absolutely true so John had great ideas but also xyz are great ideas and so now he's also
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going to listen to the episode, you know? So, I mean, there's just a thousand ways you can
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you can work it to, to help you get through that. Well, here's the part that everybody wants to know
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And let me just tell you, Mark, I am not into, um, what do you call it? Your results may vary
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because we all know that your results will vary. Right. And we all know, I think one of the things
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on my soapboxes that, um, my audience tends to do what I call a thousand points of marketing
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They will try a million different things because it sounds like a great idea. But what I think the real, what I call millionaire marketers, the super successful people, if you read their stories, one of the things you'll notice is they sucked at a bunch of stuff
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They sucked at like so many things and failed miserably. But then there was like that one thing where it's not that it was like, it's not like I suck, I suck, I suck
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And now here's this awesome hockey stick performance. No. It's like, oh, this thing just didn't suck as badly as the other ones, right
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I like doing it and it didn't suck as badly. So I'm going to double down on this thing
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I mean, have you noticed that? So when I'm asking you how, what have your results been like
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I don't expect you to sit there and say, oh my God, we were having nothing
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And then we got hundreds of new people. I think that's unrealistic, honestly
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You see where I'm going with that? And no I don have you know it not something it not a tactic where we sitting there saying okay well I have a 22 version It not that right It just it more you know
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we've used it not just for membership. There's a couple side benefits to it. I mean, I didn't
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have John Warlow on the podcast in order to get him to write the forward. I had him on because
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he's an amazing author and a brilliant mind. And I built a relationship knowing that maybe one day
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I would be able to, you know, what's the word, um, parlay that relationship into something
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We actually had him speak at one of our events, which was great. Um, so it's, it's through that
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So sometimes it's just about being forward thinking with that, this, uh, this strategy
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we need to get this guy. So let's have them as a guest. It's, it's one way you could do it
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And maybe one, one off here and there on your part, right? You have segments of customers
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right? Some people you want to build relationships with because they're influencers. Like you said
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it's more of a long-term relationship building thing, just like the John Warrello thing
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versus perhaps some other strategically chosen people that you were like, wow
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this person is an expert and they would be a great addition to our community
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So talk a little bit about that. What have been some success stories? Do you have a couple that
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you can maybe share? As far as having people for- On the podcast that ultimately became members of
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your community. Yeah. I mean, well, I don't really want to specifically say any names, but- No, no
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no, no names, just sort of. Yeah. I've definitely had a couple of, we've gotten a couple of new
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members that joined Roundtable. So Roundtable's really quick. It's a peer-to-peer organization
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kind of like a Vistage, something like that specifically just for remodeling vertical though
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So we've, we've been able to get a couple of new members from that. But that's a high value sale
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Yeah. Yeah. You're, you're 13 to 15,000 a year kind of thing. So that's just what I'm saying. When you're saying you have a couple of people joined
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this is not like a couple of people at 999. Right. Right. This is right. It's a, it's an investment, right? And, and that's per year
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So when you get into lifetime value, it's significant. Exactly. And we also do sponsorship
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So by having companies like Appella or ThermaTru Doors, having those kinds of reps or higher
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ups on the show, open doors to us, be able to get some sponsorship dollars
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Sometimes it's after the episode and stuff. It'll be like, well, thanks for being here
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And we're out. Thanks so much, Sue. That was wonderful. That was great information
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Oh, thank you for having me. It was such a blast. And you know, you got to tell me a little bit more
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They'll just ask you. Yeah, tell me a little bit more. I mean, do you guys do events
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Maybe it's something we want to be a part of. You know, oh yeah, absolutely. We do the Remodeler Summit every September
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It'd be great to have you there. Have a booth, be a sponsor
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Oh, that'd be wonderful. You know, oftentimes they start asking you. You know, I didn't even know about you
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I didn't even know what you guys do kind of thing. So it's just, it's been great
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It's been great. And so the point being that it may seem daunting, but even if you're just starting today, you
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don't need to already have that audience, right? You just think of the audience of one
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I love that, audience of one. And I think that's really terrific. Mark, thank you so much for being here
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Oh, by the way, before we wrap this particular one, is there anything that you're giving
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away for the audience or are you just promoting the book? So, well, I'll tell you what, Lobster on a Cheese Plate is full
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It's a marketing book and it's full of free tools and resources on the website of the book
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So even if you don't want to get the book, you can get the free tools and stuff by going to bethelobster.com
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Awesome. Thank you, Mark. Really appreciate your time
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