The Sales Podcast
Michael Greenberg talks with Wes Schaeffer about the importance of starting a podcast, repurposing content, and podcast monetization on The Sales Podcast.
Wes Schaeffer 0:00
Hello, my friend, and welcome to the 385th episode of the sales podcast. I’m Wes Schaeffer, the sales whisperer, your host. If you listen closely, you may hear my five-year-old screaming in the bathtub as my 19-year-old gives her a bath. But I digress. That’s not why you chimed in to listen. I had a little vacation last week. I was in the mountains with the family for a few days. My wife stayed for a whole week. But it was nice not having any set schedule because I blanked out the whole week. So it’s quite refreshing. Got a few episodes ahead. Today, I had two great guests, but you won’t hear from them for almost two months but got into artificial intelligence on how to use that. Not only I guess a robot like a spider, you know, doing magical things behind the scenes but actually helping humans that work for you. Even on a contract basis, provide better real-time support on the phone. And in chat, there are some cool things there. Had a guy on from Southern California that is using, he calls it small data instead of big data. He’s basically kind of like a list broker, but he helps you get accurate information. Because we talked about what is working today in business. Is cold calling working? Is direct mail working? Is email working? And we’ve seen this trend, I’ve had multiple guests on recently, that you’ve heard us talk about direct mail does still work. Cold calling does still work. Email marketing is less efficient and effective than it used to be. It is the easiest platform to ignore. So just constantly, I’m saying reaffirmation, confirmation of that which is why I’ve always said you’ve got to provide multimedia, multi-step marketing, to reach decision-makers, right? To reach the ideal people that you need to close to grow your business. If you’re relying on just one means one method, then you are vulnerable. And my goal is always with this podcast. With all the work that I do is to keep you from being vulnerable. You know, and actually, with the guy that I had on, we were talking after we turned off the recording, but how to get great people. How to get great salespeople. I’ve had a sponsor here for a while now several months, we’re coming up to the end of this first trial, which has been good. But if you’re looking for great salespeople in the big cities, they’re only in a couple of big cities now. But check out the sales whisper.com/recruit. Okay, the folks over at Rainmakers. They find great salespeople with the intent to move. They’re not just trying to beat up their own current people. To get a raise, these are folks looking to make a switch. And because they have this proprietary system of bringing the candidates in waves, right every two weeks, you as the hiring company, have to act quickly, but so do the candidates. So it’s a win-win. If you’re a candidate. It’s free to use. If you are a company looking to hire. It is not free to use, but you will save money, and more importantly, you will save time. It costs over $2,000 a day. When you have a salesperson, not in the seat. That’s based on a $750,000 a year sales quota. And in those big cities, that ain’t nothing. So check it out at saleswhisper.com/recruit. If you’re looking to hire great salespeople. If you are a great salesperson and you want to get greater. You want to sharpen the edge. You want to stay sharp. You want to pick my brain, just to make sure you’re on the right track, check out 30day alesgrowth.com. Come join right now. It’s still a one-time payment, and you’ll have lifetime access to the content in the group. Otherwise, pretty soon is going to turn to a subscription model. But you can join now as I’m porting over all the content. Join, get the on-demand content to ask your questions in the group, and I will answer them. Okay. 30daysalesgrowth.com. Now we’re going to jump into why you should be podcasting with Michael Greenberg. Michael Greenberg is running callforcontent.com, the podcasting agency all the way from Denver, Colorado. Welcome to The Sales Podcast. How the heck are you?
Michael Greenberg 4:48
Doing great. How about yourself, Wes?
Wes Schaeffer 4:50
I’m good. So man, where were you when I got started a few years ago? Are you really doing this? Are you producing, monetizing, growth, and advertising for people wanting to get into the podcast realm?
Michael Greenberg 5:06
I am indeed. We started out of B2B content marketing, actually. And then about nine months ago, the success we had with podcasts there, started working on our first case study, launched white-label podcasting for agency partners, and then said, Man, this podcast thing is working. Let’s go all in.
Wes Schaeffer 5:34
So hold on, you’re talking about, you were doing content for B2B. Can you elaborate on that? Because believe it or not, not everybody may know what that means.
Michael Greenberg 5:45
Yeah, I mean, my hope is that just about nobody knows what it means because when I went into audit marketing teams, it certainly seems like they don’t. No offense to the marketers who might be listening but the sales guys authority. And that’s where we started, B2B content marketing is about lead generation and positioning your organization for success in the market. And that means creating content that supports the sales process. Because in B2B, when you’re selling a $15,000 service package, or you’re selling a $200,000 enterprise software package, it’s about relationships. And there are touchpoints involved. It’s not like e-commerce or something like that, where people can just click buy online. These are complex sales. And these are big numbers. And so the content you develop looks very different. And where we started was with blogs and ebooks. And then we realized it’s so much easier if you just start with an interview of the subject matter expert, or get the customer to host a show themselves even better. And create content from that. And so that’s how we got into podcasting.
Wes Schaeffer 7:05
Ah, all right. So does all that still work. And you’re just recommending podcasting as another leg on the stool. Are you putting all of your focus now behind podcasting instead? Are you just starting there?
Michael Greenberg 7:26
So we start there. I’m doing what’s called a podcast first now. So we’ll create a podcast, and then we’ll use the content from that podcast. We’ll transcribe it and use it to create the blogs and the ebooks and everything that comes afterward.
Wes Schaeffer 7:42
So you’ll take a client, always pick on a chiropractor. Because a friend of mine is a client who is a chiropractor, but it’s also I think if it works for them, it can work for anybody because people are like, Oh, my business is different. It’s like, well, here’s a guy limited a little bit by Healthcare regulations and whatever. So would you take on a chiropractic client and have them start a podcast? Or would you simply interview them and maybe distribute that interview to like health care type podcasts? Do you see where I’m going? I’m just trying to understand the process. That chiropractor may or may not want to start a podcast.
Michael Greenberg 8:26
Yeah. And the chiropractor having a local business like that might not benefit in the same way from some of the things that we do with podcasting. I should specify a local business with a fairly low value per customer in comparison to say an accounting firm. And so to stick with the chiropractor. We likely placed them on a few shows to get some information from them. And then we take a look alongside that and see okay, is the target market for this chiropractor, listening to podcasts. And from that, we then either see, yes, they are. Okay, we’re developing a show for them. Actually, to listen to, and we’re going to promote that to that audience. Or, no, they aren’t. Okay, we’re developing a show for SEO. We’re developing a show that’s going to be focused on traffic generation and content generation for their business. But we’re not going to assume. We’ll show it’s part of the optimal plan to gain customers. Does that make sense? The idea is that when we start with the show when we start with that audio content, it’s cheaper for us to produce all the written content down the line.
Wes Schaeffer 9:55
Now couldn’t it, even though they are local, you know, it is the chiropractor with this smaller local audience. Couldn’t it still help them kind of become a celebrity in a way? Even just interviewing locals, it forces them to kind of get out of their own head a little bit right and expands. Because now they’re going to interview the pizza shop owner in the same strip mall. But he may have an interesting story. And if the chiropractor gets good at interviewing, I mean, you can pull a good story out of just about anybody. Yeah. And now you’re this pillar of the community, helping people get the word out. And, yeah, okay. A dude in New York probably is not going to fly to Yorba Linda, California, to get his neck adjusted. But I don’t know. I mean, I’ve heard of hairdressers charging $600 and $1200 and people flying across the country to get their hair done. And wants to prevent that chiropractor from creating a DVD series or an online course, how to control your own health and you can sell that to New York.
Michael Greenberg 11:12
And that’s exactly what we’d recommend if that chiropractor wanted to go after that market. When we look at the locally-focused stuff, in particular, the markets we see that do really well with our professional services. Where you really can build that community and weave yourself in, and so that might be insurance. Real estate brokers have been quite successful with that. And accounting firms, as I mentioned before, have been another good one. So anywhere where you can use the podcast, this is the real key when we can use the podcast and have on people who would make great customers or great partners. Then the podcast has a really nice direct line to generating relationships. At the end of the day. The business we’re in is the business of building relationships. That’s the core function for any business and B2B.
Wes Schaeffer 12:18
A while ago, I had Ana. And she’s the queen of repurposing content. And it sounds like that’s what you’re doing. You’re starting with the podcast, right? So you’ve got the audio, and then you can get it transcribed, so you’ve got a blog post and article, and if you do a video like this even like with zoom, you have a video that you can reproduce it pull snippets out, sizzle reels and whatever, right?
Michael Greenberg 12:46
Yeah, and that repurposing really is the name of the game. That’s why we like audio to start with because once you factor in a whole content plan if you start with audio, it’s one of the best formats for repurposing. The lowest cost to produce for repurposing that we found?
Wes Schaeffer 13:03
Do you use the video as well?
Michael Greenberg 13:06
It depends if we have a video. My big issue with the video is that it gets costly to edit.
Wes Schaeffer 13:15
Well, how much editing and like polishing? Do you really need it? Maybe it depends on the industry. I do a lot of videos on my iPhone sitting in that leather chair right back there.
Michael Greenberg 13:27
Yeah, it comes down to industry and preference. You know, I have some clients who only want to shoot a video, once a month, they want to go in and have a professional videographer, run some studio space and set up that whole thing because they’re not going to do it without hair and makeup. But I’ve got others, if somebody is willing to shoot from their phone, they’ll do the quick videos. That works well. And what we do is we create the audio, the little snippets from podcast interviews. Use either a static image or some stock video, combine that with the quote. And so then we create a video, even if we have none, to begin with.
Wes Schaeffer 14:10
Gotcha. Are you finding those work pretty well? Are you putting them out like little one minute things on Instagram and things like that?
Michael Greenberg 14:18
Yeah, we’re seeing good responses from those. And we’re actually getting ready to run a whole bunch of tests with them. Over starting here in May, and then planning out over Q3 2019. We’re going to be testing and figuring out exactly what the best formats are for those, and then publishing all those results as well.
Wes Schaeffer 14:41
Interesting. So, you don’t think the podcast market is topped out yet?
Michael Greenberg 14:50
No, I think people are doing things all the time. And they want the content to listen to when they do it. I like to look at the Chinese market to see an example of a more developed podcast market. They are several times the size of our podcast market. Primarily self help, and like personal development shows, and they’re almost exclusively funded by subscriptions. So we see podcasting, in large parts. As part of something to help you sell more courses, sell more info products, build and really develop a deep conversation with your audience. And so long as people are building audiences, podcasts are going to be part of it from now on. And when I say podcast, I’m really expanding out to all the different kinds of streaming audio, and long-form video options that fall in that category. Because a podcast is a word that means nothing on its own.
Wes Schaeffer 15:54
So what are they doing in the Chinese market? I mean, are they charging very low amounts so that it’s easy for somebody to subscribe? Are they charging higher amounts to an exclusive kind of audience?
Michael Greenberg 16:10
So I mean, if you’re getting a couple of dollars a month from, you know, 2000 or 3000 audience members, you’ve got a solid show going at that point. That’s bigger than most. That’s more money than most podcasts will make through the entire lifetime of their show. And they’re building with that model from the beginning. So maybe you’re putting out one episode a week to the public. But you might have another two episodes to dig in on those topics, that are only for your community.
Wes Schaeffer 16:49
I see. So, you’re doing three a week, let’s say. And on the one that’s live. That’s kind of the teaser or the feeder into,” We’re going into more detail if you want to know even more. Become a subscriber and get access to this premium content that only our members get”. That sort of thing.
Michael Greenberg 17:08
Exactly. And we’ve started to see audio courses come back along with that sort of stuff. So, you may remember the Jim Rohn and Tony Robbins CDs from back in the day. And audio cassettes before that.
Wes Schaeffer 17:24
I used to go. I’ve been to those success seminars back in the day with, I think it was Colin Powell and Norman Schwarzkopf. I’ve seen people like that live in Houston when I was younger. Making their rounds. You probably watch it on YouTube?
Michael Greenberg 17:46
Yeah, those were a little earlier than me. But I got lucky to have a client who said,” Hey, I think it’s time to make an audio course.” And he’s going towards the end of his career now, but he realized, and he saw that audio was coming back.
Wes Schaeffer 18:06
I finally have it on my calendar to do an audio version of my book. I’m doing the first couple of chapters actually as podcasts, to kind of tease people, right. Lead them in. I want to make the audio because people tell me, and I noticed my own consumption. I listen to a lot of podcasts. I listen to audiobooks, I love written books. I can take notes in the margins. And I dig deep when I get into something. But I mean, audio is here to stay, and it’s only growing.
Michael Greenberg 18:39
Exactly. And that’s really what we’re planning on.
Wes Schaeffer 18:45
Because people talk about the growth of podcasts and sometimes people are like, well, it is so big and popular. I’m too late. I’m too late to the game. But it’s not late at all, is it?
Michael Greenberg 18:59
No. The game is just getting started.
Wes Schaeffer 19:05
Could someone like me with the show this old turn around and start selling subscriptions?
Michael Greenberg 19:18
I don’t know. We haven’t really made that move with an existing show. Normally, with existing properties, we’d like to do audience research first. So go in, talk with audience members, see what they’re interested in seeing more from the show, see what kind of content they like from the show. And then how we can productize that and sell that back to them.
Wes Schaeffer 19:43
How do you find the audience members? Because that’s what’s always kind of bugged me with podcasting, right. Is, yeah, some people will subscribe. But kinda like selling through Amazon, right? It’s like,” Oh, whoo-hoo, I made a bunch of sales.” But I don’t know who bought it because Amazon keeps all the info.
Michael Greenberg 20:04
Yeah. So we do a couple of things. One, we’re really big on having websites and email lists associated with shows. Because that gives us much better detail into who’s listening.
Wes Schaeffer 20:17
Well, for sure, but I mean, you still have RSS feeds right, and things from your host like I use Lipson. If somebody’s just subscribing through stitcher or whatever, you don’t have their contact info.
Michael Greenberg 20:33
Right? And so what we do is we’re going to use a call to actions embedded in the show. To try to push people over to those secondary options. And we’re going to try to grab somebody through a social pixel, or through another social media post we put out. The hardest people to reach are the person who gets recommended the show by a friend, and then they never hit your website. They never hit anything. They just subscribe through an app and start downloading. And we’re lucky now that attribution is starting to come online for podcasts. We’re getting some of that retargeting information now, we’re getting better demographic info. But to actually get in front of and to speak to those audience members. There’s a lot of work involved. We still gotta have a way to find one.
Wes Schaeffer 21:25
Yeah, I’ve tested different things, and they work. In the past, I’d offer my free, or a PDF, a copy of my sales training flashcards. I mean, I sell the physical copy for 20 bucks. And if people leave me a five-star review, send me a screenshot I’ll mail them a PDF of that. So I’ve done different things to capture the names of folks. So I know who is listening. But yeah, sometimes it’s hard. I know some of these guys. They’ll make like a transcription. They’ll do all that major work for each individual episode to give unique content. And, man, I don’t know if I want to work that hard.
Michael Greenberg 22:10
Yeah, we try to keep all that pretty standardized. That’s why we’re so big on repurposing. If we know, we’re creating a show where we create the podcast, and then that’s going to get some light show notes. And then two weeks later, it’s going to be posted as a blog post. And that that podcast is going to get rolled up at the end of three months with the other five best performing shows into an ebook. And we know all that from the start. It’s a lot easier to plan everything out and know how it all falls together. And it saves quite a bit of time and money.
Wes Schaeffer 22:44
So you take the transcription and turn into an Ebook?
Michael Greenberg 22:48
Yeah, well, I mean normally we’ll end up taking the transcription, turning it into a blog first, or extended show notes format. And then use those to take the highest performing ones and create an ebook.
Wes Schaeffer 23:01
Yeah, actually, I’ve been thinking about doing that right now. Like as I approached my 400th episode. This year I’ll hit 400. Like, let me pull it up. Let’s take a look, shall we? When is that coming up? So August will be at 388. So, August, September, October, probably by Thanksgiving, I’ll hit 400. And although like right now, I’m at a pretty hectic pace, that I am going to slow down. Right now, I’m throttling it back to one every four days. I need to get kind of back to one a week. But I have just been busy lately. So let’s say 2019. I hit 400. And I’ve been thinking about consolidating just the high points and even if I just did one episode per page. It’s a 400-page book, people kind of want a 400-page book. But if there are pictures and bite-size nuggets, takeaways from each one, you know, you get through it quickly. I’m actually doing like a full-on book, instead of just an ebook. What do you think about that idea?
Michael Greenberg 24:17
I love it. I mean, when you say you’ve got 400 episodes. My first question is, have you published a book around this yet?
Wes Schaeffer 24:27
Don’t shame the guest, okay. Man, it’s not a good thing, man. If I cry in my own interview. I may not publish this one.
Michael Greenberg 24:36
Well, if you cry in your own interview, that’ll make for great content.
Wes Schaeffer 24:43
All right, hold on, man. Hold on. Yeah, I gotta do something with it. I know.
Michael Greenberg 24:50
Anywhere from 15 to 30 episodes, is what you’d want to pick out of that batch. And then really narrow down, you know, pick out your best episodes. The best couple dozen. And use those to create the book from.
Wes Schaeffer 25:06
Fortunately, I didn’t transcribe all of them back in the day. I guess I can always just take the audio and hand it over. There are tools like zoom now transcribing this automatically, and it’s pretty good. I mean, it needs to be cleaned up but considering its part of the service and no extra charge. I mean, that’s a great value.
Michael Greenberg 25:24
Yeah. And we use Otter, which syncs with Zoom. So every time we do a cloud recording on Zoom, it pushes straight to Otter, or we just upload to Otter afterward.
Wes Schaeffer 25:34
That’s Otter like the animal.
Michael Greenberg 25:37
Yeah, otter.ai, is the website.
Wes Schaeffer 25:45
Nice. How do they charge?
Michael Greenberg 25:47
Annual.
Wes Schaeffer 25:50
Oh, no kidding?
Michael Greenberg 25:51
Yeah, I think it’s 80 bucks a year for up to 100 hours a month.
Wes Schaeffer 25:58
Yeah, here we go. So it’s $8.33 per user per month billed annually. And that gives you 6000 minutes per month. That’s legit. You can get it free for 600 minutes a month.
Michael Greenberg 26:11
Yeah, transcription has really gone to zero and cost for the automated stuff.
Wes Schaeffer 26:15
Oh, man. Yeah, for real, because I’ve seen different ones out there. And I mean, what was it rev.com or something. One of those was like $1 a minute, and I found one for 10 cents a minute. Now you’re talking free?
Michael Greenberg 26:30
Yeah, so $1 minute is sort of the industry standard, and rev.com is the one who set that pricing for human transcription. So at $1 a minute, I expect it to be 99 or 100% accurate. But once you get down into the, you know, 20 cents, 10 cents or free, then you’re using automated. And so the big companies who are doing all the AI work these days, they’re just about giving away credit. Their platforms to get more information through for the transcription.
Wes Schaeffer 27:05
Oh, I see. So it’s building up the algorithm basically.
Michael Greenberg 27:09
Exactly.
Wes Schaeffer 27:10
Yeah, that’s smart. So down the road, they’ll probably be charging?
Michael Greenberg 27:16
I mean, I’d imagine it’ll remain zero. As the cost of computing power goes up. The cost for them to actually transcribe goes down. Or sorry, I said that wrong, but I think the message got across.
Wes Schaeffer 27:30
Yeah, no, that was right. Man, I’m gonna check that out. The way it syncs with Zoom. That’s awesome. Now, do you just use them, or do you kind of compare Zoom versus them. That might be redundant. Be more a pain in the butt.
Michael Greenberg 27:47
Yeah, we just use them. I know that somebody is going to be listening to the episode on our team probably a time and a half or two times speed. But at the end of the day. I know that anything that goes out the door is going to have the right words in it. And so as long as we’ve got a semi, a pretty accurate, searchable version of the transcript, it makes things much easier for us when we want to go back and pull quotes later.
Wes Schaeffer 28:14
And do you take all of the content? So do you take that transcription and make it content on the blog post itself? So is it searchable, or is it just a free download people have to opt-in for?
Michael Greenberg 28:31
So that’s a case by case. We do some clients where the transcript is the download, and we do that with every episode. So you’ve got show notes. If you want to download the complete transcript, click here. I personally prefer not to release the transcripts. And so I make pretty detailed show notes for myself. And that’s what we post with our company, podcasts.
Wes Schaeffer 28:57
Why do you not want to release it?
Michael Greenberg 29:01
So I like to save them because we’re going to reuse parts of them later. And so that’s really a personal preference thing.
Wes Schaeffer 29:11
Just to create more exclusivity? That kind of feel.
Michael Greenberg 29:13
Yeah. And my personal belief is that Google is transcribing every piece of audio on your sites. Regardless of whether or not you asked them to, and that they know what’s in those. That just seems like a no brainer for me if I was them.
Wes Schaeffer 29:33
They’re everywhere.
Michael Greenberg 29:35
Yeah, I’ve been seeing positive results from posting podcasts with no transcript in SEO for over two years now. So that’s something we’ve been tracking quite heavily over time.
Wes Schaeffer 29:52
So when you embed the interview, you’re saying Google is actually following that link through and listening?
Michael Greenberg 30:01
That is my belief. Yes. I don’t have any direct proof to back it up. But all the surrounding evidence says yes, this is happening.
Wes Schaeffer 30:10
Well, it makes sense. I mean, they have, with echo and everything else. They certainly have the ability. And why not? I mean, just like any kind of crawler, right? I mean, they’re crawling and reading your site, so them crawling and listening it’s not really any different. A different form of content. Different mediums, right?
Michael Greenberg 30:33
And they do that for YouTube already.
Wes Schaeffer 30:36
Yeah, for sure. Man, I remember when they bought Youtube. I was like, what’s going on? Are they really that smart? They’d be spending that much money on it. Kind of like when Facebook bought Instagram, you’re like, Oh, yeah, they’re that smart.
Michael Greenberg 30:49
They both have turned out to be fantastic.
Wes Schaeffer 30:53
What about. I’m not a fan of these whole Avenger series. But Disney bought them, right?
Michael Greenberg 31:01
Yeah, Disney owns Marvel.
Wes Schaeffer 31:02
Yeah, they spent what 4 billion on it. And then they made like 1.2 billion on the opening weekend. It’s like yeah, I guess these guys with big bucks might know a thing or two about where to focus.
Michael Greenberg 31:18
And when we see the numbers that Disney posts from their subscription streaming service. That they’re launching. That’s where the real wind comes in for them with Marvel.
Wes Schaeffer 31:30
What are they doing?
Michael Greenberg 31:32
Disney is setting up its own Netflix. But just for Disney stuff.
Wes Schaeffer 31:37
Yeah.
Michael Greenberg 31:38
So all the Marvel content is going to get pulled down from Netflix when their contracts expire and are accessible on the Disney platform.
Wes Schaeffer 31:46
Right. Man, content is king, isn’t it?
Michael Greenberg 31:52
It’s funny. I’m actually getting ready to write about how content is inherently worthless at the same time.
Wes Schaeffer 31:59
All right, elaborate.
Michael Greenberg 32:01
So content is king. From a marketing perspective, from a branding perspective, you can’t put out better stuff than content. It’s going to outperform ads over the lifetime, almost every time.
Wes Schaeffer 32:14
Unless it’s a Super Bowl.
Michael Greenberg 32:16
Yeah. Well, I don’t know about the Super Bowl.
Wes Schaeffer 32:20
Yeah, they may not get an ROI, but people do tune in. So the old adage and I always quote, Howard Gossage, he said people don’t read an ad. They read what interests them. And sometimes it’s an ad. I think ad makers, marketers just create bad content. You know, it’s all me, me and me focused. And so yeah, that ad didn’t work but doesn’t mean the mediums bad. It means you wrote a bad ad.
Michael Greenberg 32:49
Exactly. And that’s what the core of the content is right, creating content that appeals to your audience. It’s the research that happens first.
Wes Schaeffer 32:58
So how can the content be king? But be worthless?
Michael Greenberg 33:02
So it’s worthless from an economic perspective.
Wes Schaeffer 33:06
What do you mean?
Michael Greenberg 33:06
As soon as you create content and digital content, I can copy-paste and distribute it another time. It has no inherent value. All the value in the content that you create isn’t the entertainment it provides to the reader. Or in education, it provides to the reader. And if they already know that information, or if they are not entertained, it does nothing for them.
Wes Schaeffer 33:37
Yeah, but I mean, that’s splitting hairs. When you say content is king, I guess the implied assumption is good content, valuable content. And now more than ever we’re in the engagement and entertainment age. You had better know how to capture their attention and keep it. But has that not always been true, at least since the internet came in? And at least since social media came on, get away with boring stuff. I mean, there’s always been shows launched, even though it was just the big three, right? Shows would launch and be canceled if they weren’t any good.
Michael Greenberg 34:19
Yeah. And that’s still part of it. But the cycle is faster. And if you’re putting out that ebook download that everyone has, you’ve got to make sure it’s got real value in it, and that that value is understandable and viewable before somebody downloads and reads the book.
Wes Schaeffer 34:42
I mean, even a few years ago, people were more willing to opt-in for something. Just on the off chance, it was decent, but now our bs meters are on. They’re more sensitive, right?
Michael Greenberg 34:57
Yeah, the assumption is that it’s worthless. You have to prove the value.
Wes Schaeffer 35:02
So how do you do that? How do you do it before they’ve even opted in?
Michael Greenberg 35:06
So we put it out there for everyone to see. Anyone of our ebook downloads, at Call For Content, is entirely accessible in web form online. You can go and look at the whole playbook. We call them playbooks. They’re on our site, you can go look at it. It’s got a table of contents, it’s all right there for you. But if you want the PDF, we’ll take an email. If you want the added workbook exercises, we’ll take the email. But all the content is there available for you to see. And for you to understand how it might be useful for you. So our goal with the content we put out is to get somebody in conversation. We want them to ask the questions.
Wes Schaeffer 35:54
Well, yeah, for sure. But you were saying earlier that you would not give the transcription. Like you would hold it back. But you’re still saying you put out, you put a chunk of it out?
Michael Greenberg 36:12
So it’s different kinds of content. So for the ebooks we produce, for the playbooks we produce, that go in-depth and explain a single strategy on, for example, our authority marketing playbook, is about positioning your business for authority and start getting started on partnerships to expand your brand. Our B2B podcasting playbook is focused on developing a podcast for business to business lead generation. And so we’ve got these playbooks that are really in-depth on specific channels, and those are open and free. Then the more entertaining content, the podcasts we put out, that’s focused where we have the podcast, and then we have the show notes that are the highlights. And we reserved the transcript for use in some other format later.
Wes Schaeffer 37:06
Gotcha.
Michael Greenberg 37:07
So we kind of approach the repurposing for each channel a little differently. We approach the way we give and restrict access to the content for each one. And the reasoning we do that is because we’re looking at where the value is in this chain. Because we assume that all the content has no value until something happens. Until we have some indication that the person is finding value in the content. And then, we can navigate, recommend, and get them deeper in and capture them with content that has real value to them. I’m sure you’ve noticed that statement, you know, content is inherently worthless. That’s as much buzz as the content is king. Content is worthless until you put it in perspective. Until you put it within the relationship of you, the content creator, and the knowledge you have and the experience. And what the audience is doing on the other side. So once we put it in the frame of the relationship, we can find the value again.
Wes Schaeffer 38:21
I like the way you think it may be time to experiment with charging for the podcast. I know one guy that I follow, he actually turned his podcast off, he brought it all in house. He kind of followed that model. And I kind of miss him. But I think it’s working for him.
Michael Greenberg 38:43
Magic numbers we see around 2000 for business audiences and 10,000 for broader audiences on podcasts.
Wes Schaeffer 38:51
What do you mean? Do you need 2000 subscribers or downloads or what?
Michael Greenberg 38:56
Yeah, I look at all Audience totals. So we take all the different analytics and metrics that we’re getting everywhere. And I’ve got some tools that I’ve built internally to help us get a better idea of what the actual regular audience is for a show. And so then we use that number rather than downloads per month or anything like that. But you can make a rough comparison between the two.
Wes Schaeffer 39:26
So you’re looking for B2B like 2000 regular listeners.
Michael Greenberg 39:32
Yeah, if it’s a show that’s not been monetized. If it’s a show that has no services attached, that has no revenue opportunities attached. Then we’re looking for about that 2000 regular listeners number to go in and develop either product to monetize, services to monetize with, or to look at sponsorship.
Wes Schaeffer 39:55
That’s cool. So 2000 for B2B and 10,000 for B2C?
Michael Greenberg 39:58
Yeah.
Wes Schaeffer 40:00
Good, interesting metrics. Alright man, well, where do we send people to learn more? What do you want them to do?
Michael Greenberg 40:09
Go to callforcontent.com. And let’s chat. On the website. That’s Call For Content. If you go to that homepage. In the bottom right corner, there’ll be a little chat widget that pops up and says, “Would you like to book office hours?” And if you’d like to talk with me, if you want to chat, podcasts, talk content. Those office hours are exactly like the office hours at university or anywhere else. They’re free. They’re open to my audience, and they’re there for me just to talk with people. Learn more about what you’re trying to do. And make sure that we’re still creating the content you want. Because there are people who come to us wanting to work with us. And everyone else, I just want to make sure you put out good content because I don’t want to see all that bad shit.
Wes Schaeffer 41:10
There is a little bit of bad stuff out there. I would tend to agree. And these office hours, is it a group call? Was it one on one? What is it?
Michael Greenberg 41:18
Is it one on one? Normally, I’ve got a couple of slots open each week. We’ve got time every day, but my schedule books up. I think we still got some open for the next couple of weeks since the summer is a little slower for us. But yes, they’re free. They’re open, they’re one on one. It’s 30 minutes, you and me. And if you just want to talk about bread baking, I’m happy to do that as well.
Wes Schaeffer 41:52
You’re weird, man. Come on, dude. You don’t want to talk about bread baking.
Michael Greenberg 41:56
I got one of my favorite clients now. Because we were talking about bread baking, and we were both bread bakers. And there’s a lot you can learn from bread about how to create a better business and create better content.
Wes Schaeffer 42:11
Oh, yeah. Give me one tip to leave our listeners with.
Michael Greenberg 42:16
Patience.
Wes Schaeffer 42:19
No, get right to it. Tell me now.
Michael Greenberg 42:23
So you make the best bread by doing what’s called a pre-ferment and letting that sit. So that’s a mixture of yeast, wheat, and flour. Takes me a couple of days in advance of creating the actual bread dough. So it gets complex flavors. And that’s how you get real professional quality bread. And similarly, you got to make sure you create your pre-ferment for your content. You want to start putting out little snippets of content, interacting with your audience early on. Before you even consider a dedicated podcast or continuous channels. You gotta know the flavor you’re looking for.
Wes Schaeffer 43:04
I guess yeah, it could also be the six p’s. Prior planning prevents piss poor performance.
Michael Greenberg 43:09
Whoo. I like that. Yeah, that’s exactly what we go for.
Wes Schaeffer 43:15
Begin with the end in mind. All those kinds of good things. Very nice. Well, Michael Greenberg all the way from Denver, the baker. Thanks for coming to The Sales Podcast, man. It’s been great.
Michael Greenberg 43:29
Thanks for having me, Wes. It’s been a lot of fun.
Wes Schaeffer 43:31
Alright, and have a great day. My biggest regret about podcasting is not sticking with it when I first started in 2009. And I’m glad I’ve stuck with this is 2013. It’s a great way to get the word out. It’s a great way to give you fresh content regularly. It’s a great way to get access to great people. I’ve always said you know, this is like me getting free consulting from all these people. I’ve always been able just to pick the people that I want to talk to, and for the most part, I’ve never been turned down. There’s been a few with a little bit of an attitude, and I just haven’t followed up with them. But people say hello, they reach back. And yeah, podcasting is grown. If you try to get all the same bigwigs, there may be a line. Even me publishing these every four days booked out over two months. And so you get some top celebrity or whatever, it’s gonna be a little harder to reach them. So try zigging, and everyone else zags. Use this to target the people you want in business, and I’ll be making those changes later this year. As I get more strategic about who I go after. I want to slow this down a little bit, get to every five days, maybe every seven. Ideally, I’m going to get to do more book reviews, things that I like. Books that have piqued my interest and books that have changed my life and sales. And give you my take my spin on that and go after bigger businesses. People that you may not typically hear from. But there are people that I can land as clients as well. So I’ll be working on that. But again, I’m two months into the future already. And that’s four days. So it takes a little while to get moving, changing the direction when you’ve been so entrenched like this, but hey, it’s a good problem to have. But you should look into it, consider reaching out to Michael. If you have any questions, you know, you can join the implementtours.com. It is my free Facebook group. You can ask questions there, continue the conversation, and have a true conversation right. Because right now it’s very much one-directional. So I’d love to hear from you. You know, leaving five-star reviews of big help, subscribing is a big help, boost the numbers as the numbers go up, I can reach more people. Greater chance of turning those into clients, which helps you put food on the table for that five-year-old you may or may not have heard screaming in the bathtub. So appreciate your help. Thanks for tuning in. As always go sell something