305. Using your podcast as a business development tool feat. James Orsini

Learn how to use your podcast as a business development tool & repurpose your content

I keep talking about the power of the podcast and how it needs to be seen as a business development tool rather than a content or marketing tool. This conversation will prove and explain my point. James Orsini is the president of the Sasha Group, a VaynerX company that builds businesses through education, consulting and marketing. He is a dear friend and I always pay attention when James gives advice because of his real world experience. He is a leader in every sense of the word and I look up to him.

In this episode you will:

• Learn how to get your team to create content and reels for you
• Understand Gary Vee took 1200 people company virtual overnight
• Learn to pivot with the market and create for what the market responds to
• Take a deeper look at the Sasha Group by VaynerX
• We answer a question about how to produce content for your audience
• Rethink your content strategy by asking better questions
• Understand how brands are built on social
• Hear us talk about branding and marketing – why you need both and how to incorporate them
• Learn how the foundations of how being responsive to new trends
• Think differently about using your podcast with Web3 and NFTs
• We talk in-depth about how to repurpose your content for different situations

All this and more, on this week’s episode of  Should I Start A Podcast.

Make sure you listen to the end … I’ll break down this episode to give you 3 small steps you can execute right now to help you take this listening experience into execution experience. Also, if you know a business owner that needs to hear an episode about why a podcast is the best business development tool, please share an episode with them.

Pretty Please. Enjoy the show.

After you listen to this episode I would love you to take these 3 small steps that will help you use your podcast as a business development tool:

1. Who is your audience
2. Who have your audience
3. How do make your podcast appealing to the people that have your audience

What you pick as your strategies to grow will depend on where you are at in your business. Pick the right strategy for where you are at and not where you want to be.

These are 3 small steps that if you execute, irrespective of where you are at in your business and podcasting journey will make a huge impact on your making your podcast more profitable & more impactful.

If this is the first episode you’ve listened to all the way to the end or if you are a regular, thank you … I love that you are here. Check out our back catalogue on  ShouldIStartAPodcast.com, subscribe to the show and give me a review and rating, it really helps us get found more.

If you are a business owner podcaster and want to join others just like you in a group where we share tactics & ideas on what’s working (or not) for us when it comes to using our podcast in the best possible way. For more on that go to wearepodcast.com/group … it is free.

We Are Podcast 2022 – It is happening this year. For the latest announcements on Australia’s first podcasting conference for business owners, join the free group wearepodcast.com/group

Stay tuned next week when we going to cover podcasting hosting & launching with Podcasting Hall of Fame Inductee Rob Walch. We cover lots including the right hosting for your podcast and the real way to launch your podcast. So, don’t forget to subscribe to the show to get that episode as soon it gets released. Until then, much love.

 

Having worked with thousands of business owners to create a podcast for their business, I’ve created The Recurring Results Roadmap for Podcasters™.

It’s a step-by-step guide to growing your business to 7+ figures using your podcast.

Importantly, it removes the guesswork so you know exactly what to focus on at all times to generate that recurring revenue.

The best part? It’s personalised, free and it lets you get started straight away.

Download The Recurring Results Roadmap for Podcasters™ here.

If this is your first time here, this is Should I Start A Podcast. I’m Ronsley Vaz. Each week you’ll hear me, and a star-studded guest lineup, dig deep into the podcasting process. We’ll bring you tactics, tips and tricks to use in your own podcasting journey. We’ll teach you how to build an audience. And we’ll show you how to keep them coming back, show after show.

So if you want to start a podcast, or expand your current audience, this is the show for you.

Here is the transcript of the entire episode for those who like to read …

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, content, podcast, business, sasha, brand, gary, creating, talking, business owners, virtual, client, piece, offerings, hear, world, great, interesting, ticket, thought

SPEAKERS

Ronsley Vaz, James Orsini, Anna Vocino

Ronsley Vaz  00:08

indicator one, this is launch control. Please advise when pre flight checklist is complete with indicator one flight is complete. All indicators read Green.

Anna Vocino  00:20

This is should I start a podcast, a show for business owners looking for tips, tricks and ingenious hacks when it comes to growing a business using their podcast. This is your host Ronsley. He’s interviewed more than 1400 people and has been listened to over 5 million times in 133 countries, a TED speaker, author and a podcast purist who believes that we can use our voices to grow our business and our influence, you know, because every conversion in any business always happens in a conversation. And now Ronsley.

Ronsley Vaz  01:02

Thank you, James for the time and making the time for me and giving me the space and to have this interview I, I’m always amazed that I can do these things. So it’s a bit surreal for me to be in the building. So thank you. What I want to start with, you know, march 2020, march 2020, was a big turning point, I actually witnessed probably one of the best lessons in leadership while I was here and watch, because I had a meeting with Gary on the 12th of March right before everything shut down there and correct. Gary made the decision to stop all external meetings. And I was one of them, and only go internal and make sure that his team has his time and had his year. So I found that extremely useful as a leadership quality. What was like from the inside with all these people all over the world going virtually overnight?

James Orsini  01:58

Yeah, what was interesting, because, you know, Gary runs what he likes to call the Honey Empire, empathy, first people before profit. And it was really interesting to see that dynamic when everybody else was a prophets first, how are we going to keep the blood flowing? He was more like, how do we do what’s right by the people first, and what they’re dealing with there? You know, there were some more on the super cautious side, there were some who were dealing with real major family tragedies, or people in hospitals and people dying. And he leaned very heavily into that first and foremost. And then we went into okay, how do we sustain the business that we’re in? How do we introduce new products and offerings that are right for what’s happening around us? So I can speak to the Sasha group directly? Right. So you were in four days, it was only a live event, the whole beauty of it was being in the office and walking the hallways and taking your pictures in Gary’s collectibles, office and everything. And now we had to birth this virtual zoom type offering, we adapted the pricing significantly less, but you still got your FaceTime with Gary, and what have you, we went to virtual solution session. So we used to do whiteboard sessions. And as you can see the whiteboard here, right, where we’re going to hammer out ideas, we learned how to use particular software’s like mirror boards and things like that, to actually bring the solution sessions, so are these whiteboard sessions to life through a virtual setting, we developed what we call mixed tapes and offering which basically live production shut down. So give us 10 pieces of content, give us $10,000 Give us 10 weeks and we’ll remix your existing content and make it look fresh and new as if you went out shot new stuff. So you know all those types of offerings that came about and then we quickly realized that you know what, as the world opens again, those offerings are still right for some people. The virtual for these opened up a world of international for us we never have a virtual for you that doesn’t have at least two international people right? Probably couldn’t afford to be here the time wouldn’t have allowed it. So even though live for these are back on virtual never went away. And now we do it. Every other one is a virtual.

Ronsley Vaz  04:25

So it’s not a hybrid version is either virtual version or in person

James Orsini  04:29

virtual versions, shorter, less content, less money for it’s the old day. And by the way, if you do a virtual and you want to upgrade to an order, they will give me some credits back as well for something like that as well.

Ronsley Vaz  04:40

Got it. You mentioned Sasha group and for this the context of this recording. Let’s talk about the objective of the Sasha group. And how maybe that has changed from day one to today.

James Orsini  04:52

That’s evolved to as you said, this conversation with Gary five o’clock last night. Yeah, because we’re now really on Sasha 2.0 originally The birth of the company was as a result of Gary coming to me and basically saying, Hey, I’m on the cover of Entrepreneur Magazine, I have 30 million followers. And we built a company and service fortune 500, I don’t have anything for small and medium size businesses or challenger brands. So when we started that we were 35 people in year one did a little under 10 million in revenue. And off we went, Well, today, we are now 100 People strong will likely do a north of 18 million in revenue. And what we build is for anything that is not fortune 500. So it opens up a much bigger landscape than originally the footprint that we had. And we’re fortunate that we still have some entrepreneurs and CEOs as our clients. But now we do have several brand managers with budgets, that was not something that took place early on in its existence.

Ronsley Vaz  05:52

Interesting. So how has the marketing or how is the sales changed? Because talking to a founder is very different to talking to a brand manager and has those conversions change the conversation? So unfortunately,

James Orsini  06:03

the core and leadership of the Sasha group has been with Gary on average, eight years. So we like to say that it’s entrepreneurial DNA, but it’s infused with Fortune 500 experience, right. So we spoke to a spiked tea brand yesterday as an example. And the gentleman that spoke to her, ran the Diageo portfolio in these hallways for five years. So we kind of know that the beverage and I have the gentleman that ran the Budweiser portfolio, I have the woman that ran the Quaker portfolio and the woman that ran the chase portfolio, they’re all part of the Sasha group now. So when we’re doing a regional bank in northern Texas, yeah, we would never have the person that worked on the chase business. Yeah, servicing that small client, we were working with an airline recently who doing some stuff in and around Alaska as a destination kind of place and just creating the awareness of all the things that there are to do there, right beyond just the Northern Lights, and the fishing and boating and skiing and the hiking, and just bringing that awareness to people who might not have thought about that the community in Asia who wants to find a way to the United States, but would they have thought to do that through a state like Alaska, maybe not. So just opening up the doors, and there’s a lot of windows and doors to enter. That’s the beauty about social media is the personalization of it. Okay, what resonates with me may not resonate with you. And that’s okay, we’re gonna put out so much content that one of these things will resonate with you. It’s not about just creating a single television commercial and hoping that it sticks as they throw it out there. But rather creating all these multiple pieces of content, and watching who engages what and doubling down on the stuff that works and walking away from the stuff that doesn’t. So

Ronsley Vaz  07:58

really good point, because I think that business owners nowadays, when they first get into making content, they kind of want to look good, while they’re making the content. And they feel like they got to get it right and perfect. From day dot, they don’t even post the stuff the data

James Orsini  08:14

because perfection is the kiss of death and social media when you’re striving for you’re not producing enough. And for us, it’s more about the volume of the content, and then watching it, we’re looking at the analytics, seeing how people are engaging with it, we were just talking the other day with our analytics department and how we can be duped right, because hey, this piece of content got 300,000 views looks like a good piece of content. This one only got 50,000 views. Yeah, but wait a second 50,000 views and 10,000 likes and 5000 comments and 300 shares, that’s worth more than just this 100,000 view that nobody engaged with understanding how that works, along with the algorithms that move it up into the food chain of the platforms.

Ronsley Vaz  09:00

So we touched a little bit on how the landscape of marketing has changed. But let’s go deeper into that. Because there are the business owners that know how to get clients, they’ve been in business for ages. When a prospect comes to them. They know how to talk to them, they know how to convert them into a client. But today’s will with content, you’re not really creating content for your client, you’re creating content for a community that ultimately might become a prospect. And the landscape has changed. How do you explain that to a business owner who maybe has not been in the content game? How do you get them to understand the difference between the two audiences? Let’s

James Orsini  09:43

talk about one who has actually been in the content game and there’s more to learn right? So you just saw I was in that room. I walked out a gentleman in there doing a lot of work with Orthodontist has a big community all right, and asked what the number one challenge was number one challenge was really Finding dental assistants to work for him. And we asked, Are you producing content around that? And you said no. What do you mean, I produce content for orthodontist and ortho printers as he calls them? Right? Oh, interesting. Well, what are you doing to try and find these dental assistants? Well, you know, I’m going to indeed, running ads, I’m okay. So you don’t want to re else does? What do you think is so great about this? Well, you know, where else can you not go to college and work arm and arm with a doctor and being a doctor’s office, and it’s great for single moms, you know, who need flexibility. And it’s a wonderful experience for those who are tired of the virtual world and want to be an in person setting and meet different people. And I’m like, great, you need to produce content around that to attract these people. How about using the two or three that you have to give testimonials? This is why I like working in the doctor’s office, I get to pick my kid up in the afternoon because the doctor’s office closes at three and I have two weekends to myself, because we’re you know, we only work until noon on a Saturday and it’s so good, great. The doctor would all that education becomes like my own personal confidant. I’ve talked to him about mortgages. I’ve talked to him about car loans, I’ve thought like, this is a guy who is creating content, but just didn’t think of how far reaching content can be with this particular sliver that’s targeted to people with his called 18 to 20 something demographic and talking to them specifically about why this is a profession you might want to consider.

Ronsley Vaz  11:35

So playing devil’s advocate, there would be a percentage of business owners in that position that would say, why would I spend money on content that does not give me customers? Because the client is where is where the money comes into the door? Right? It’s the very short term thinking of because I get this a lot, right. I have business owners that come to create podcasts and they go, well, where’s the ROI? If I don’t see the ROI from day dot, then I don’t want to kind of do this. But they’re not thinking about the community that they’re going to create other new listeners that they’re going to create or the new audience that they’re going to make. How is that explained in today’s Well,

James Orsini  12:14

we explain it as brands are built on social and branding is not selling however, a great brand will outsell the best salesman tend to one. Okay? So it’s not an ad or it’s an and and you should be doing some things that are building your brand. And you should be doing some things that are creating sales, okay? It’s an ad and it’s just not an andorre. But recognize that the branding stuff is more longer term by its nature, but an established brand will keep selling what makes people pay six bucks for Starbucks coffee when you can get a coffee right next door at a deli for $1.50. Well, there’s something about that brand, there’s something about that brand experience. There’s something about how that brand makes me feel. So my time and Interbrand really taught me the power of branding and how important it is to really take some time to establish your brand. And that’s what we’re doing. Now at the Sasha group. Now we’re a young brand, okay, but we are riding the coattails of the halo of the Vayner X brand was established 13 years ago. And early on, it didn’t have any brand recognition. It was not run by an advertising guy like Ogilvy was or Leo Burnett was or Saatchi and Saatchi was it was worn by a retailer who then established his own notoriety in the advertising space. Now 1800 people across the world doing 300 million plus in revenue, got some street creds.

13:52

Hey, this is Elizabeth McIntyre. I’m the CEO of think brick Australia, host of our podcast and leader of amazing humans. I’m on the inside of we are podcast members, or as we like to call it the way Emily, if you are thinking about growing that business using your podcast and your online presence. Come join us on the inside. I would love to meet you, James and Ramsey coaches to get those recurring results in our business. If you want that roadmap, which we all follow to get those recurring results you can download [email protected] are podcast.com. Now back to the show.

Ronsley Vaz  14:31

Lot of people talk about COVID being the big disrupter. And it being the thing that stopped businesses from doing business. But there’s the other kinds of businesses that actually flourished during COVID. A lot of us flourished during COVID. And maybe it came down to the pivot. Do you feel like that was the response? Is that because there was Yeah,

James Orsini  14:55

look, I think there were a lot of things a lot of opportunities came out of it right so the There’s a lot of horrific events that occurred from a global pandemic. So I don’t want to take anything away from that. But there were opportunities and opportunities that are not going to go away. Right? So, so cleanliness is not going to go away, it’s not like we’re gonna go back to being dirty. Okay, customer service, curbside service and delivery space, the resurrection of QR codes have been around for 20 years, they were non functional, okay? Now, even the elderly know how to use QR codes. So therefore, they’re moving beyond flip phones now, because they’re so used to a scan and read write, recognizing that you better pay attention to your website, because that’s how people are finding you now, right? People who didn’t update it for a decade, social media, your handles and your, your pages that you own, and your profiles, very important, because people were not driving into your store. They’re just kind of looking online. So it created that awareness now that I don’t think it’s gonna go away.

Ronsley Vaz  16:04

So it’s almost like it accelerated the next version of the web. And maybe we’ll talk about Web 3.0. Now, because how would you explain that to a service based business or a product based business that? How would you explain web 3.0? And what’s coming? Let’s use the podcasting world as an example, if I may. So people are creating content, people are creating new ways of getting people into their world, can they take advantage of the web 3.0 by the creativity that they show,

James Orsini  16:35

there’s a gentleman in the room next door, which are working with celebrities and influencers to NFT their content in some way, shape, or form. But now, the question is, what is the value that it brings? So let’s think about it they use the example of will Pharaoh right, so there was a clip for will pharaoh that these people buy NFT for but maybe they’re gonna sell 20 of those clips as an NFT. And then somewhere down the road, those 20 holders we can authenticate through the blockchain. We know who owns them. Yeah, you get to have dinner with Will Ferrell. Oh, shit. Now that’s the value of that piece of content that I saw on the internet. It will you saw it on the internet, but you’re not having dinner Will Ferrell, you didn’t buy the NFT version of that podcast. So what is that intrinsic value? Gary originally wants to be friends, everybody is going to have a ticket to V con for the next three years. And then of several months into it. He says, You know what? Every ticket is going to be an NF t. So now you thought you bought one NF T. And we’re going to make every ticket being an ft. Yeah, well, what’s the value of that? Wait a second, if you came to the first recon with this NFT ticket that you had to attend, to come in. I’m doing something special with Snoop Dogg. For those first V con ticket NFT holders. Now all of a sudden people walk in and buy used NFT tickets to V calm because something’s coming out with Snoop Dogg. That’s going to be a value. It’s amazing how what was disposable? Yeah, one and done has lasting value, depending on the author, now guy will be the first to tell you 90% of them are going to be worthless, because the people are not thinking about the underlying contract the long term nature of it, they’re looking to flip and get out. But if you’re looking for legacy, he says the V friends will be the most important thing that he does for next 40 years. He’s thinking about how do I become that Walt Disney the next one, the next time I read really interesting, hard to understand is three dimensional chess. You know, we’re kind of looking down here and pieces are moving up here. But once you grasp it, then you quickly realize and there could be collaborations.

Ronsley Vaz  18:53

At the start of the conversation. You mentioned the 1010 10 and taking content that people already had and repurpose and repurposing in for today. How is that happening? Like we already have content? How do we renew our view of that content for today’s world? Well,

James Orsini  19:09

it can be simply repurposing existing content for something different. We have a client right now who is a CPG client and you can place the products in haircare, you can take that out, put it here, you could place the products in cocoa butter, you can take the product, what do you hear? Now I placed that product in Vitamin E category. Alright, so it’s the same product depending on where you put it is how you sell it. So you could just change the content a little bit, right? It’s a shampoo. Right here. You’re talking about hair. Here. You’re talking about the effects of cocoa butter here. You’re talking about the importance of vitamin E, same product depending on where you put it. So that’s the same thing that you could do your content. You’ll see that oftentimes from Gary he’s repurposing content all the time. Right. He’s repurposing content all the time. He just said today he’s putting out a Quit with David Letterman and the Microsoft founder Bill Gates, okay. And in it, Bill Gates talks about how he was listening to a ballgame on the internet. And David Letterman’s like you never heard a radio, like joking like, Well, why don’t you listen to it on the radio, but he was trying to make a point. Like, I’m not only listening to it on the I’m engaging with it on the internet. I’m commenting, I’m talking, I’m sharing. I’m doing some stuff that I would never be able to do on the radio. Yeah, could listen to it on the radio. But this is the next version of it. Yeah. So he’s trying to demonstrate like, well, this is what’s going to happen on the web three Oh, stuff. So

Ronsley Vaz  20:38

that’s insane. I hear a lot of talk around the place about, hey, that will make a great tick tock around Boehner X. Are there directives for the team here to think about everyday scenarios? Or what’s happening in the business so that they can create content from there?

James Orsini  20:56

Yeah, well, we’re leaning in heavily where there’s still organic reach, right. So tick tock and LinkedIn are platforms that still have ample organic reach with it. We’re constantly testing and learning, right? We talked about it being a fail fast, fix fast, learn fast kind of adopt atmosphere where we’re constantly optimizing testing, learning, and we encourage everybody to participate. So unlike my time at Saatchi, where, hey, the creatives do that. Okay, here, account people are making tiktoks creative people are applauding. They’re not saying, Hey, that’s my job. Why are you doing that was a media person who did a tick tock that took off the other day. He’s standard by media on social platforms, but had an idea and used it. So I think that’s one area where good ideas come from anywhere. And we want to be able to accept that right? So I was just looking at a particular property piece of real estate that I saw on tic tac, and it was an intern who posted it. And I’m like, that’s an interesting property, pay that kid 20 bucks an hour and now may get several $100,000 sale from crazy. Yeah,

Ronsley Vaz  22:05

absolutely insane. I want to end on a couple of like questions for business owners. The first is what our business is not doing right now that you think that the Canon really need to get their heads are in the game.

James Orsini  22:19

Yeah, they have to have somebody producing content for them. Either external agency, internal employee, somebody has to be picking up this mantle. It’s underpriced attention. social platforms have leveled the playing field. And if you’re a small founder brand in the beverage space, Yes, you too, can compete with the Pepsi’s and Coca Cola this world by making sure that you’re out there talking to an audience.

Ronsley Vaz  22:48

You’re talking about content. And you’ve had a lot of experience in podcasting. And when people talk to a group has a podcast, and you’ve been on a whole bunch of podcasts, what are you seeing in the world of podcasting, it feels like I’m really encapsulated in it. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on what you’re seeing from an account perspective, from a branding perspective. Yeah,

James Orsini  23:08

so something interesting recently where I was interviewed on a podcast, and there was a particular topic, okay. And today’s topic is perseverance. And we’re going to interview three different people on the same podcast and just all talk about what your definition is of perseverance and how have you persevered in your life and tell your story. I thought that was really, really interesting. Were the hosts kind of teed it up. This is why this topic of perseverance is important to us. Yeah, here’s an athlete. He is a businessman. He is a scientist, and all three of us progress. I thought that was pretty cool and interesting way to, and then they sent me my little clip piece of it, which I put out onto my social channels to get people to it. I referenced Hey, if you’re remotely interested, 16 minutes into 30 minutes in Yeah, yeah. And that kind of stuff. So

Ronsley Vaz  24:04

you mentioned how important content is, and I’m very biased on this, obviously, because I’ve done this so many times. But I feel like a podcast is probably the easiest way for someone to show up, get the content, but not only show up and get the content, but it can be their business development tool right out there. And then do you see better ways other ways that people can produce content quicker and easier? And I could be entirely wrong on this, but maybe there’s things that I don’t

James Orsini  24:33

think it’s an andorre I think it’s an and and Gary recommended to every person in that room that the podcast, every one, there were three different businesses represented by eight different people in that room. And each time he’s like, oh, okay, so that’s your value. So you need to podcasts on that. You need to drive the people to the value and knowledge that you’re bringing then you could bring in sponsors then you could drive them to a website then you could do something different but you need the Trojan horse of Oh, your community, very narrow community of orthodontist is only that great. You need a podcast that speaks to that narrow community so, and he still does his podcasting. And now we as the Sasha group, as you know, because you helped us produce it early on, do our version of podcasts. And now, what’s interesting is, and part of what I had to come back to was, hey, do we have a purpose to pocket? Is it merely just to inform? Is it to attract new business? Is it to attract talent and staff? Because how do we want to massage the messaging to be able to do that? We’re a combination of featured guests who are clients and not clients? Yep. Okay. What we’re finding is that nobody really says no, everybody says yes to one to be on a podcast, because, you know, get you out there. So we’re actively asking companies that fit our demographic that are not currently our clients. So let’s get him in there. Let’s show him our smarts. And you know, that kind of stuff. And we’ll see where it goes.

Ronsley Vaz  26:02

Like I said, I mean, the podcast is the easiest business development tool, primarily because you get to have conversations with people that are potential customers, or potential partners, that probably would not give you the time. But I appreciate your time. And I want to be respectful of it. So thank you for the time. And thank you for the conversation and the space.

James Orsini  26:24

Well, and thanks for looking me up when you came all the way across the pond here.

Ronsley Vaz  26:29

It’s always a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Ronsley Vaz  26:39

All right. So you still till the end, you found this useful, and you have a business and you have a podcast and a business. And you kind of want to make it work for you and grow your business using this podcast will. You know what, that’s something that I have helped 1000s of people do and 1000s of businesses do in different forms, through an agency in a one on one fashion through a conference in the group and obviously in courses and stuff. So please, I want to be able to give you something that you can use to get recurring results in your business using a podcast. We call it the recurring results roadmap. It is years of putting this in practice. It is the blueprint to get results in recurring results using your podcast if you’d like that, send me a message [email protected] I want to hear from you. I want to hear your voice or I want to hear from you. So if you’ve listened to this and you want that roadmap, please send me an email [email protected] I want to hear from you. Much love. I’ll see you in the next episode.

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