Welcome to invest in yourself the digital entrepreneur podcast. Join the podcast murder feel better as he interviews success launch move that make their living in the digital world. Now let's join your host Phil better and your special guest today on invest in yourself the digital entrepreneur podcast. Welcome back to another amazing episode of invest yourself the digital entrepreneur podcast. I'm of course Phil better the podcast mogul. And today I am exceptionally excited for our guests because they are the podcast strategist. And they tell businesses approach podcasting, turning it into a powerful growth and engagement tool. So he's the founder and podcast coach behind a company that has successfully glided over 50 podcasts probably close to 100 by now, providing that strategic planning is key to a podcast triumph with a philosophy that shuns the notion of winning it. He emphasizes treating podcast like a business to drive tangible results. His unique insight stems from a challenging and personal experience being removed from his company's podcast because it didn't drive leads only to quit and later coach numerous business owners to podcasting success. Since 2020 he's driven over 200,000. He's probably close to 500,000 now downloads generated thousands of leads and produced hundreds of episodes for B2B businesses. He offers customized packages and podcast strategies for high level business owners and provides comprehensive social content strategy on top of it across platforms like LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube and of course our favorite Instagram is commitment to guaranteed growth, lead generation and brand awareness has made him the the sought after expert in the field. So listeners get ready to dive deep into the strategies that separate the successful podcast from the rest and learn from how to transform your podcast into a business driving machine. It's great excitement that I introduced the man the legend the podcast strategist himself, Ryan Sullivan. Ryan, thank you so much for being here. I know this is maybe the reaction that you often get, but that was an intro man. Wow. Yeah, I appreciate it. I kind of get a bit of those reactions and I always say the same thing. I'm a lover of hip hop, but I can't rap. So I always look at the hype man and the hype person and that's who I look at myself. I'm the hype person for this episode. You're the star you're the big rap star of this episode. So I do I do rap as well. So even better. Hey, we can we're gonna work together on that past life. We're gonna get there. But yeah, I do want to call that. But okay. So you started wrapping and then you transitioned to the business world. What made you decide to transition from wrapping, which is a highly lucrative career. We see Drake and Kendrick right now beefing so you can jump in on that be. But what made you decide to become an entrepreneur and give up the hopes of a rap star lifestyle. Kendrick one. Yeah. So I'm a fan of both, by the way, I'm a J Cole guy. So hey, that's me. That's just how I am. But yeah, man. So I started in music when I was in high school. I mean, I've been playing my whole life, but one of my friends, you know, got into the wrapping and freestyling stuff and I ended up spending a lot of time with him. So just carried over to me. I'm a words person, not a numbers person. Long story short is we released a diss track in high school and I'd talk in teachers, substitute teachers, buster, like everybody listened to it. It was crazy. So that entire thing, I had I mean, I was a kid, like I didn't know any marketing or digital marketing, right? But like I didn't realize that. Okay, you just put this on SoundCloud. And then if if it's good enough, people will, even if it's not good, because it wasn't that good, people will still listen to it. So that was my introduction to like the, you know, the mute that music world, right? I had made YouTube videos before that got 100,000 views on a video when I was like 12, like, wait, because I thought it was nerdy. And so funny, man, I literally made YouTube videos in 2014. And now in 2024, I teach companies how to do it. So it's just, it's crazy, full circle moment. But in terms of the transition, I mean, I don't, yes, music can be lucrative, but it's actually, it's mostly not. It's impossible. It's almost impossible to make money. In, in a lot of the traditional, excuse me, forms that people will make money, right? So it's like, you go on tour, but you're making more money from the merch, right? And there's all these things like you have a million streams, but you're making more money from a Patreon. It's just, sure, you can make, there's a ton of artists who make a ton of money. And I'm not saying it's not possible. Here's the thing. I didn't dedicate myself to that. And I honestly, most likely did not have the belief that I could make money with it or make it a career. So then at the same time, I'm podcasting, and I can kind of pause there, but I got into podcasting in 2018. So I've been doing it for six years now. And then that slowly, I'm talking slowly, I even had a hip-hop podcast, I interviewed rappers, singer, songwriters, you know, that ended up, you know, that was my first 10,000 downloads. And that was super local and really fun. But slowly, over time, the podcasting started to take over my life. I love that. I love it. And so when you've business ties, I don't like that word, but the first time you actually used a podcast for B2B was with the company that you want and you left, but how did you convince them to start a podcast? That's, that's my question because I'm pretty sure there's a few listeners here who work for a corporation and are like, I want to start a podcast and I think my business would be the right thing. How did you go about convincing them about a podcast? Yeah. So we can go deeper into that in terms of, hey, if you're in a company right now, what you should do, I can give you definitely a few prescriptions there. But what happened with me is I had had a guy in my podcast named Tory Grant and he said he made six figures doing social media management. So he was like, here's my scripts, get on upwork and just apply for these jobs. So I applied for all of them, ran out of credits, didn't get any of them. And so I'm like, you know what, but I'm doing this podcast, let me see if podcast editing, maybe I can do that. Now this was 2019, 2018, 2019. So Upwork and Fiverr, what it is today, it was just, it was still a lot of people on there, but not as crazy as today. So I'm on there and there's a company, they, they messed up, they put their name, the name of their company in the Upwork post, which you never do that. For people, for people that have posted on there or applied on there, you know that that's a sin because that people are going to contact you, right? So I went on this, the website and I booked a call with the founder of the company acting like I was a company and I just used my YouTube channel as a reference and I'm like, Hey, it's a YouTube channel. I'm looking for marketing help. The guy gets on the call. I tell him, Hey, I'm here for the podcast editing. I ran out of credit on Upwork. You're in New York. I'm in New Jersey. I just figured why not book the call and let me see what happens. And he was like, I love the approach. I like the hustle. Why don't you come in in the city and we'll do an interview. I'm like, okay, so I'm going in the city. I get to the city, right? This like two and a half hours takes me to get their bus train car. I'm walking in the interview and I'm like, wait, I don't know what I'm interviewing for. I was supposed to edit the podcast from Upwork. So I'm going through to an interview that I don't even know what job I'm interviewing for. So I get there like the guy's like on his phone. He's kind of like not paying attention, but he's like, yeah. All right. So like, you want to just run the podcast, you're going to host it, produce it, edit it, video, audio, design, publish, SEO. I'm like, yeah, sure. He was like, how much do you charge? I'm like, well, I used to be a mechanic. I was mechanic at that time. So I was like 15 bucks an hour. He's like, okay, sounds good. So that was my first gig. So I didn't have to convince him. He wanted me to do everything. I was definitely more outgoing. Definitely had a little bit better, you know, feel for people. I'm a people person. I'm an extrovert. He was more of a numbers guy. So it made sense. But fast forward 19 episodes and he's like, we didn't get any leads from it. And I'm like, that's not the problem. You're the problem. Like the problem is you stopped. That's don't do that. Yeah. Going, it takes a long time. So that was my first intro into B2B podcasting. And that was a that was in startups, actually. Nice. And so I have to say, I have to commend you on how you got the gig. Because that's, again, like you said, it shows hoodspy, it shows commitment, it shows a Christian termination. Pretty much hustle because you trick them into giving you the job. But tricking the positive way, like, I'll always find a way. Yeah, it's yeah, that's the goal is always find a way to convince a business because it's it's it's creating your own media empire for a business that then can be used to add more services to your businesses. You can offer this offer to other businesses and build their podcast and stuff like that for them. And then you have a an actual column, another pillar to grow on. When when you unfortunately did get let go, which obviously it was the best fault for not understanding the power of podcasting, how it takes. I think Tom, Tom Hunt, a founder of Bcast, said it takes about six months for what our clients are. So we're able to speed that up a little bit now because of its through experience. But yeah, I mean, six months for anything really, truly meaningful to happen, I would say, in terms of like, even like lead generation, you know, yeah. With with you then learning all this, pretty much being paid to learn how to run a podcast for D2B. When you were like, Oh, were you already working with other people, other podcasts, other businesses to build that? Or were you solely focused on this one enterprise? No, yeah, I had no other. What happened was, like I said, I was a mechanic. So I was able to quit that job. And it's not like the I worked at a shop mom and pop shop. They trained me. I worked there for four years. I could go back there today and they have a full time job for me like 100%. You know, you didn't burn any bridges leaving. No, no, no. And I had worked 10, 12 different jobs up until this point, you know, so I always had a way to work. But what I'm saying is like, if I was slow or something, I would go to that. But what happened was I came on for the podcast, then they put me on sales. So I'm doing like, you know, spreadsheets, I'm doing scraping, I'm doing like sales calls. So it's not even that they just took me on the podcast. They kept me in the company. But I ended up, I quit because it this guy, like I knew it wasn't the right person to work for. The company ended up dissolving. I don't know if they filed for bankruptcy or they just ended the company or whatever it was. But it was a lot of bad like, I have some horror stories from that, like fun stories to tell today, but in the moment, crazy. But what happened was, no, I did not have any client elder clients or anything. I left at the end of 2019 or no, I left in February 2020, so I'm around there. Oh, there's my time to quit. Yeah, perfect time to quit. And then I planned on starting my business in March 2020. So I did that. I got the logos, I got the business plan. Wilfredo, is that how you pronounce Wilfredo? That's such a cool name. Shout out to you, Alfredo. That is a really cool name. So I'm starting the business March 2020. And again, yeah, perfect time, but then it actually was the perfect time. And so no, I didn't have any clients, but I got one editor, his name's Mo Ali or not editor. I got one editing client, his name's Mo Ali. He's a professional soccer player. You can look him up. He's got millions of followers. He was the nicest guy ever 20 bucks an episode. Then I got a contract with a mentalist. And that was wild. So, and I don't even know, they just called me one day. We still don't know how they ended up getting my number. But no, I had no clients, but then I ended up getting enough to float me through. And then I would work at my mechanic job whenever I was slow. I love that. I love that. I love how the day job was still there whenever you needed to pick up a few hours of things were slow. So after you got your two, you got your first, you got your professional soccer player, professional footy player, helping him with his podcast. And you get this mentalist with, he probably defined your, your phone number of being a mentalist, you know, their own. Yeah, right. He probably summoned it. Yeah, I have some friends who are mentalists. And it's always not fun being around them when they're starting their stuff. When, when did you go, okay, I can make a good living with this? Like, when did, how many clients did you hit when you're like, okay, this is a sustainable career, we'll say. Never. There's never a moment like that. There was never, there was a moment where I was like, okay, like, I can make money. But I'm not a, like, I didn't come from money. I wasn't around entrepreneurs. Like it was full rich dad, poor dad, like, kind of like my grandpa was kind of my rich dad, like, because he in his 50s started to invest in real estate, then he got in the stock market and made a lot of money there. But like, my parents didn't do that super brute blue collar. So no, no, there was no, like, even to this day, my dad, every time I'm like, if I have like a slow month, he's like, well, yeah, see, I told you, like, it's not gonna, you know, so that's what I was around. So no, there was never a time where I was like, yup, this full time job, like, even if, even though it was a full time job, I never thought that like, I can make as much money as I've made, you know, and I'm not rich. But like, I've had a really good months and I'm like, wow, that's incredible. Like, I would never be able to do that in a job the same way. But for me, it was not about now it's about the money for sure, because I have a partner who's full time and, you know, it has to be about the money. It's a business right at the end of the day. But the, it was always about the podcast. Like, it was always about that mission of like, I know this, I'm obsessed with this medium. I know this medium is where we're ahead, but we're also behind. Like, they're not fully picked up yet, especially in the business world. So that's all I was always focused on. I was just focused on like, how to make a better intro and, you know, how to, you know, create a podcast strategy. So it was not a, I fell into this. Like, if this was 1985, I would have been a car salesman, you know, so I like that. I like it because we are like, as much as podcasting is super advanced, we're still super young. It's we're like, not even 30 years old. We're 30 years into the radio, right? So it's like Howard Stern's not on the radio yet. Like, I know that we have Rogan, but there was a Howard Stern before Howard Stern, we just don't know his name because nobody remembers him. So Rogan is the Howard Stern before Howard Stern. And yeah, you have to be proud to think about it. It's insane because if you think about it, you also have like Ricky Gervais who is quote unquote the godfather of podcasting because he has one of the oldest podcasts, but no one, no one really counts him as or the father, you know, and the father, yeah, the father as well. But he's super early or Tom Green to he had a TV show in his house, which is kind of a podcast. So yeah, well, here's what I say now. Podcasting now is not guys from Sirius who went from radio to Sirius to their own website. And that was called a podcast. That's not podcasting anymore. Podcasting is a business who wants to have a different form of content, a founder who just wants to talk instead of like try to type a post or another way to access media, right? So instead of watching a true crime, you can listen to a true crime. And so all that's modern podcasting video, tons of video podcasting, YouTube are almost the same now. So anyway, you you you know these things. It is crazy to to kind of look at that evolution. All right. No, it's insane. Because I came in just before Joe Rogan really blew up and true crime blew up. I've been in it just over a decade now. Yeah. So it was right when cereal was starting to come in. That's when I was even I miss that. But people mention it to me all the time. Yeah, I'm the serial generation. I like how I listen to a lot of comedians and they say, oh, we're the class just before Jerry Seinfeld or, you know, like they say there's classes. So I'm like, I'm the class before cereal, you know, exactly. I'm Rogan. You're the cereal. Then it was Rogan. Then it was, I don't know. Yeah. Now we're just waiting to see who's next, you know, the halls, I guess, you know, yeah, in a sense. Well, we'll say the polls. I love no opinion. No. Business acumen. Great. Yeah. With what they're doing, it's just like Mr. Beast. Yeah. Just investing in themselves. And then Mr. Beast, honestly, let's say, I mean, if you just zoom out beyond podcasts, I know he doesn't do them. It doesn't really make sense for him to do them. But yeah, man, it is he's gusting on them now. And he has said how powerful podcast, guessing he'll do it. But it's going to be in some weird Mr. Beast way, probably. Yeah, he's one, he's going to be going on the huge podcast, the top one, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1%. You know, the ones who already have those big names, you're not coming on to like the Ryan Sullivan podcast or invest in yourself podcast, you get, you get, you word is yet. So I focus more particularly on the independent podcasters, because that's where I come from. I'm an independent podcaster with my first one. You're focusing on the B2B. What do you feel made it as not a smarter choice, but your decision to go B2B instead of like B2C? Yeah. So I was similar to you, Indy, you know, really Indy. And when I say that, I mean, like, yeah, like your cousin who has a podcast or like your best friend who started an NFL podcast, like that's Indy podcast, right? Well, you know, three guys who do an NBA podcast on the weekends or, you know, my friend has a treasure hunting podcast. He's not trying to make money with it. It just blow, it does well on TikTok, right? So that's Indy. I did, that was me, to an extent, it still is me. I was that transitioned into the creator slash solopreneur niche, which is LinkedIn, because I really reside on LinkedIn mostly. So then I started serving those people. So these are people with like a one-person business, some freelancers, right, who also have a good personality, and they can go ahead and podcast. So then we did really well there, but the recurring revenue, it was hard to scale that. And so, and I love coaching them. And they're my favorite people to work with. But in terms of like what they want versus what we could provide at scale, it just, it wasn't going to, it makes sense for it to be our core offer. And I think an individual podcast producer, which I know many, many, many of them who don't have an agency like we do, that's probably somebody who they're more for, right? Because it's much lower rates, it's much more flexibility, much more time, right? All those things. So when I went in though, I was anti-company, right? I was like, I already worked for a company, I that didn't work, all these things. And I thought that I was doomed. I thought that it was just like, nope, no companies. Then I realized that there are companies out there that fit this mold that believe in these things, but it's so much harder to find them. It's so easy to find a creator or solopreneur or, you know, just content creator who wants to do a podcast, they all do, right? And as long as you have the offer laid out correctly, it's really not that complicated. But with a business, it is more complicated. So what I realized is I'm like, okay, we're going to find the businesses who want to do it, who aren't doing it. And this comes back to the employee who's within that business, because they DM me all the time. Then we're going to teach them how to do it. We're not going to try to, we're not going to be a production company. We're not going to try to sell them editing. They can already, that's, I wouldn't even, our editing is expensive. You can do it with us. Some companies choose to do that. But now it's all democratized, right? Upwork and fiber. And, you know, there's however many audio engineers in the US that are trying to charge 200 an hour and they're just, it's not going to happen. You have to go work, you have to go be a, you know, a bartender or sell cars or something, right? So I see that writing on the wall. And a B2B company, here's the thing, guess what you should probably do? You should probably do it internally. And you should hire somebody like us to skip the learning curve just to teach your people because you don't have time. They don't have time to learn it. You don't have time to teach them how to do it. So to round that answer out, I found, or I made it a mission to find companies that believed in that, even though I was turned off from it early on, it's just a harder fish to catch. And it's a more rewarding fish also, I would say longer term, they think much more long term. Yes, 100% in that case, you have a creator or solopreneur, you know, like they're on one day, they're off the next, they say, hey, so this happened, I skipped an episode, but like I get it, it's life. I had a, yeah, I've been doing it for six years too. So I get it, you know, but yeah. It's, but not only that, it's when you're working with these long term companies are looking the long term, they're looking at the five, 10 year, because unfortunately solo is like, we look maybe a year. That's our biggest point. We're like, if we can make it to the end of the year, yes, we can go another year, yeah, year by year, month by month. And then finally, then we're going to go maybe two years. And then then we start building up when we start getting that accrued income. But with these companies, I think in five, 10 years out, when you're planning the strategy, like you're coaching their employees, you're showing them like, hey, here are the tips and tricks that will streamline will cut out from, you know, I remember when I first started editing episodes, you should take me an hour for an hour episode, you know, and now it's down like the 15 minutes, thankfully, because you got all the tips, tricks and shortcuts. Do you see a lot of the companies coming back to you and going, okay, we want to take something else, we want to learn to the next level or along those lines, or once they finish their training with you, they're kind of like, bye. No, I mean, obviously it's a mix, but it depends on their goals, but I would say, yes, they do. Many of them do want to continue, right? We worked at one company for like two months, and then they're like, we need you for six months, at least, right? And so then we do the six month contract. And that's because in those first, that first month or two, you know, four to eight calls, it's just there's not much you can get done. The strategy might take a month. And so that's why I don't base anything on hourly, like I don't look at it that way. It's a very, very limited way to look at things. It's more so sure timeline, but also just getting things done, like this may take four calls or it may take 30 minutes. It's okay, no matter what. And so I'm now working with companies who understand that. And that's in to bring it back, we just start with the strategy. So every so month eight is determined by what we do in month one. So yeah, we have a two month minimum, but like, what are we going to get done in two months? Anything that if you want this to be meaningful? I mean, here's the outcome, right? Instead of making a post on a company page of a quote of a CEO that nobody cares about that gets three likes. How about we put that seat? Say, the CEO doesn't want to be on camera. Okay, VPCMO CEO CXO CTO. I don't give a shit. It doesn't matter. Take somebody with a personality and put them on video and make that a one minute clip. But since we designed the podcast to do that, then all of then you get 10 clips per episode and instead of one. And so that's the, those are the companies I work with, the companies who would rather have content that actually does something rather than just checks a box. And that doesn't, that always takes more than a few months to put together. Yeah, it's, it's, you had the planning, you have to figure out, you have to training as well, because even if you have a great personality, on camera is completely different than standing in front of an audience or standing in front of a board. It's just to get at ease, because I feel sometimes when you're talking with people who are just starting on their podcasting journey, they're very rigid. Oh, yeah, they're so nervous. Incredible, actually. Well, you know this too, right? Say you'll do a pre-call, like we didn't do a pre-call for this, but we don't, we didn't need one. I, I figured a podcaster would have an idea of how a podcast would work. Right. So I've done this a couple hundred times. Um, you know, you do a pre-call and it's like, oh shit, it's so cool. We got, oh, that story's great. And then you get on the podcast. Yes. So when I entered the corporate world, and it's just like, yeah, just relax, man. So that was the person before. Yeah. Yeah, man. So it, but that's everybody. That's, I always say that, you know, um, that's why testing is, is very important. That's also why we don't do hourly, right? Because you could take a month, imagine this, you spend like three grand, you take a month to record three or four different episodes, one solo, one co-hosted, one interview, one round table. You spend the money to do the coaching and then to do the production. And then you look at all those objectively and go like, which one's really our shit? Okay. These two, we're going to do co-hosting because these guys have great energy. And then we're going to do a solo because this one guy, he can just go off. So, so imagine you do all that. So then once you get a year down, you're not, you didn't create something that is not even working for you. And then you have to come back to us anyway. You know, so I say front load at all, do all the testing, all the comfortability, get that down up front, then we roll. Because with a podcast one, it stays forever. It's always on the internet. So you want to make sure that the content right off the bat is at least passable. You want to start a passable and then you can build on that. So and that takes training, you know, you have to teach how to ask the questions, how to, you know, formulate the questions, how to come up with the questions, how to keep the conversation going. I know I'm working with a new company that their, the knowledge base is huge, but it feels scripted. When, and it just feels like they're just reading bullet points and it's like, now you got to, you got to put in the inflection in your voice. Yeah. I tell every corporate video, right? Yeah. It's like, we are revolutionary technology to overcome like, it's incredible, man. That's why I tell everybody, I tell everyone when they, they start to model William Shatner from Star Trek as Captain Jane Stieker, because he just puts pauses randomly. Man, that's a good actually. That's really good. Yeah. Because that's how I, that's how I learned to slow down my speech, because I used to speak really fast out of fear that people wouldn't hear me. And then one of my friends was like uber confident and he just goes, pretend you're Captain Kirk. Just simple like that. Just pretend you're Captain Kirk. And I was like, and then I started like putting random pauses in my speech and people were like hanging on to every word. And I was like, shit, this thing works. The power of the pause. That's what it's called. Yeah. We're, we're, the podcast obviously deals with investing in yourself. So I'm going to ask you something about investing in your, your time and in your journey. What do you do to like, invest in your growth, your education, self care, other forms of personal development, and how has it paid off in your career? Because obviously you're, you're a few years into this amazing journey as a podcast strategist. What have you done to investing yourself to keep yourself growing? Yeah. So I have a friend that I was, I'll say this first, I was a very skeptical, skeptical of life coaching. I thought that was kind of a weird concept. I also think that like, your mindset didn't matter that much. Like it's just like, you either do what you have to do, your don't and your mindset is what it is. Right. And so now I've came full circle on all of these things. So I've, I do believe mindset's important. Number two, I do have a life coach. We, we worked together for about a year and a half. Now it's just kind of once a month check in. But that, that helped a lot. And it took him probably three years to finally get me to the point where I was like, Oh, I do want to work with you. Like I see what you're talking about. Whereas before I didn't, right? So that's one. And I'll say, let me try to base this in reality. A life coach just adds a per adds perspective, right? They just ask questions that you're just never going to think to ask yourself. And then the answers to those questions are important, but you would never know if you didn't have somebody else. So it doesn't have to be a life coaching and just be your friend or honestly, I would say somebody who's not involved in your life, somebody who doesn't know your friends, they don't know your family, they don't know, they don't know you. That's probably the best version of a life coach or a coach, right? Same thing with content, same thing with business, right? And so nobody's going to be able to figure you out anyway. Also, moving on from there, self care, right? Yeah, man, meditation every day, five days a week. I mean, you know, that's what it could be five minutes could be 20. I did 20 today, I did 10 yesterday, it just depends, guided non guided, I can give you recommendations for for for guided ones. That's something I've been doing for since, I don't know, five years, six years, probably longer. Damn, now I think about it probably longer than that. And then I'm obsessed with fitness, man. So I have a trainer, he was a guest on my podcast. Now he gets to send me workouts. And I stick to the workouts. And my problem, you can see the progress, like in the pictures, it's crazy. And that is another passion of mine. So I'm not, I don't have a problem. I'm interested in too many things. It's really the problem. It's a good problem to have. Good problem. Good problem for sure. But it also stretches you thin often. And when you know, I'm in a relationship, I've been together for years, you know, we're gonna get married eventually, we're gonna have kids eventually do all that stuff. So that's something that you got to think about where it's like, I am glad I did a lot of all these things a little bit early on. But also, but coming back to it, finally, I would say just hobbies, right? Like I golf, I'm so bad at it. You know, I'm really bad at it. But I like, but I like that. You know, like, I hate it, but I also like it. So just those types of things, you don't, I mean, I know there's like an Alex or Mosey tech bro, like version of life where you just like work is like, I agree with that. I agree with the fact that if work is your life, just do that all the time. And nobody should be able to tell you or stop you. But there's sacrifices to that. So just as long as you're willing to accept those sacrifices, you're good. For me, I'm not willing to work 20 hours a day every day, right? It's like, I have these other things that I'd like to focus on and do. Also, I have another business. I have an entertainment company too. So that's a side business that I do on the side, you know? So it's like, I have all these, these things, I have my main focus, and then I have a few sub focuses below that. And then I have hobbies, you know? And so, yeah, it's, it's hard to, there's, I still think, I even ask Gary V about this. He's like, balances is, is not real quote unquote, right? There's no, there's not an achievable state of balance, right? But you do have to find what works for you. And I would say that's the number one thing I've tried cold showers every day. It's not for me, right? And, and it's all good, right? It's like, I've watched Alex Hermosi. Okay, I'll take 10% of that. I've listened to Tim Ferris. I'll take 10% there. I'll listen to Rogan. I'll take 10% there. And then you find what works for you. I love that. I love how you, you're, you're saying, final works for you. Because that's the only way you all ever find, right? Where there's 8 billion people on the planet. There's not one perfect fit. Even though they say the hat, just one size fits all. It's not true. Someone with a gigantic or ginormous head is or a super small head. It's not going to be able to wear that hat. No. So I love how you say, just take 10% here, 5% over there, maybe 20% from someone else that works. And got to try it. Like, got to try it. Like, I started writing a book, like you mentioned, you were starting to write a book, and I stopped writing it. And it's okay. Because it doesn't matter. Like, it doesn't matter if I write it or I don't write it. Like, it doesn't change. Like, I'll be okay either way. If I want to come back to it, then I'll come back to it. But here's the thing, I can't be mad then I'm not a best-selling author. Right? So it's like, that's the thing. So it's just determine people have pro level ambitious goals with amateur level ambitions. That's where people get caught up, right? And listen, that's been me too. I thought I was going to be world tour rap star. Because I made a few albums and I got on stage and like, I'm good at it. I can do it. I've got made to do it, all that stuff. But like, you got to just, you got to know where you're at. You know, you don't have to stay in your lane, but at least know which lane you're in. Yeah. Know your lane, be able to play outside your lane, but know what lane you're is super comfortable in. I want to come to this strategy part of a business because it is important. Can you elaborate on some of your key concepts and components of a successful podcast strategy? Yeah. So starting with the question of what do you want this to do for you the most selfish answer possible? Because if nobody answers that, that's the thing. They end up interviewing 100 people and they go, yeah, I haven't made any money. Well, yeah, you made 100 people money. You gave, you made, you told all the people that know you how cool these other people are. So maybe it makes sense you didn't make as much money off of it, right? So it's coming back to and starting with that hard question of like, selfishly, what do I want to happen? Number two, does this make sense for your life? Do you see yourself sitting down for 30 to 60 minutes a week and then maybe having a team around you to do the rest? Or would you, are you somebody who's just like, no, I'm really good at writing video and talking doesn't come as naturally to me? Okay, so then let's figure that out early, early, you know, and or maybe you are an introverted person. So then an interview show would make more sense, right? So the guest gets to talk more, right? Whatever that is. So the podcast strategy starts with you. I, you feel me, anybody in the world will never be able to understand your business like you do ever. It's impossible. It'll never happen. That's not what we claim to do. And if somebody does, they're lying. They're probably an Instagram guru. So chill. Let's start with the hard questions. Let's talk about you first. And then, then we're going to start the strategy from there. How many leads do we expect? Oh, this isn't a bad lead. It's more of a brand play. Okay, good. So let's figure that out. So if it is a brand play that that means we need bet. We need a different logo. We need, right? So it's like the answers to the first introductory questions, create the strategy from there. And then, you know, I can give you the step-by-step of how we do it, but I don't know if that's as important. No, it's, it's, I think the first, what you just said, the first question, what is it for you being super selfish is the most important question, because once you figure out what you want from the podcast, it's then it's just a nearly a cookie cutter outfit, because there's not too many strategies that fit every single selfish answer, you know, like if I want leads, you're like, okay, then we're going to focus on this type of podcast, like it's a solo podcast, yeah, because that's the best way. Or if you do the interview podcast, where you interview your ideal client, you know, there's different strategies like that. We are coming today and I hate it because I'm having, I just love talking with another podcaster, right? Because it's like we can geek out. But I want to know, first of all, we got Wilfredo asking where in Jersey you're from, because he's in the, he's, he lives in the Pocono Mountains. Oh, okay. Yeah. So yeah, so I'm from Huntington County. So that's on the border of, I guess, I'm pretty sure it bucks County PA. So not far from you, man, that's where I'm from. From like, yeah, 45 minutes, 35 minutes from Stroudsburg, I don't know where that's at. But I live in South Jersey now, so I live near Philly by Cherry Hill. So I've been in North, I've lived in far north, I live in Deep South, now kind of in the middle. There we go. I want to know, I have your 10 year old self here, Ryan. He's been wrapping crazily, kissing me massively. And I feel inadequate as a human being from your diss track, your 10 year old diss track. But what advice would you love to give to your 10 year old self? Man, and that is a hard one. My girlfriend's a teacher. So she would have probably better advice. I would say stay, continue to go with your gut, right? Because kids don't have the indoctrination of life and reality, where they don't have the standards that have been set. But they're about to, like if you're 10, you're slowly getting into the, you know, rigid ideologies of everybody around you, but you still have that. So if you want to make some music, you know, ask your parents to buy you a little drum set, you know, I had the little, you know, first act guitar and all that stuff, right? So like wherever your curiosity goes, you know, do it. There's just try it, right? Like, if you see someone on TV, you see someone on YouTube, you think it's cool? Okay, go try it, you know, so that's what my advice would be. I love it. It's great advice too. Just try it, just go out and do it, see what happens. You're 10. Nobody's stopping you. Like nobody's not like your, or your parents going to be like, no, you know, we don't think you should learn the drums at Penn. Like, no, I can, I can see some parents name, not wanting to have the noise. Definitely, obviously, but it depends who they are. It's true. It's true. But most likely most parents are. That's why Uncle Sully over here is really trying to give you the real advice. I'll buy a drum set. There you go. Yeah. The uncle is always, the phone call is always the best. Right. I'm going to jump off stage here. I want you to let my audience know where they can connect with you if they're looking, if they have a business to business, business, if you will, and looking for some help with the podcast and that. So the floor sir is yours. Thank you. I appreciate it, man. Yes. So you can find all of our information at podcastprincibles.com. The main platform for social media is LinkedIn, but I also have Facebook and Instagram and all the rest of them. So you can connect with me there and I'll say two things. If you're window shopping or, you know, maybe you have a podcast, but you're not ready to invest further into it, I have a podcast that talks all about podcasting. It's called the Ryan Sullivan Show. It's about how to use your podcast to grow your business and vice versa. So you can go there, check that out. Ryan Sullivan Show, you can Google that. All the links will come up also on YouTube. Then if you are willing to invest and you're like, listen, I need a little bit of help, but I'm not trying to drop like thousands and thousands of dollars. We have a group coaching program and that's ending at the end of the next week. So that'll be May 31st, 2024. So if you are somebody, we're going to take eight people in that program. This is after 50 to 100 podcasts we've worked on. If you're at that point in your end time and you're saying yourself, you know what? I am ready to go to the next level. Then that might be something that's right for you. So Phil, appreciate you, man. And that's all I have to plug. Ryan, I appreciate you coming on. Will saying we're putting out great content. So if the Elhefe himself, Alfredo is saying we're putting out great content, you know we are. So Ryan, I want to thank you so much for spending 40 minutes with me developing, just sharing knowledge and geeking out over podcasting. I love it. It's my favorite thing to do. I could go for two hours, man. Would love to do it again. Appreciate you, Phil. Thanks for doing this, man. You're very welcome to my audience. Make sure you check out the show notes down below to connect with Ryan because it's worth your time. He's the podcast strategist. What else can I say? If he hasn't, if he didn't convince you on this, maybe jump on a free call and see if he can convince you there. Why not? I'm pretty sure he has. I want to thank you all for listening, Ryan. You've been a great guest. Keep doing what you're doing. And always remember to invest in yourself.
