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The Transcript

Two Components of the Perfect Online Business Model

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free, 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Jerod Morris: I’m recording as well.

Brian Clark: Right, Jerod’s got it because I can’t get out from under this towel. That’s staying in.

Jerod Morris: I’m multi-tasking under a blanket and recording.

Brian Clark: I’m in a closet. I’m under a towel held up by a robot piece of bound material art.

Jerod Morris: There is no glamour in podcasting.

Robert Bruce: Wait a minute. I thought this was a phone call. We’re recording this?

Jerod Morris: I ve been recording.

Robert Bruce: You re recording? I retired two episodes ago. And now you drag me back in.

Brian Clark: Nice work.

Robert Bruce: This is ridiculous.

Brian Clark: I knew you couldn’t stay away.

Robert Bruce: Oh I’m staying away. I’m here for, let’s see, 20 minutes. And then I’m retiring again.

Brian Clark: Which means 45.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, if I know anything about you.

Brian Clark: You never ever, ever accurately predicted the length of the podcast.

Robert Bruce: Right, right. Jerod’s here with us too, right?

Jerod Morris: I am. I’m here.

Brian Clark: All right. So this is what I’ve resorted to only one week into my revolving co-host thing. We make Robert come back and the drive poor Jerod in as well.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, nice work there.

Brian Clark: Whatever it takes, you know. You leave me on my own — I really can’t be choosy.

Robert Bruce: Brian, if you could have any business/revenue model going in the world, what would it be?

Brian Clark: The one I have.

Robert Bruce: And?

Brian Clark: Oh, would you like me to elaborate?

Robert Bruce: Maybe, since this is a podcast, that might be — yeah, please do.

Brian Clark: I would say, sitting here in 2015, that a recurring business model selling some form of digital product or service is the Holy Grail. Now, I’m not the only one who feels that way. I’ve spent the last six weeks talking to various people with large amounts of capital who don’t even want to hear about something that’s not a recurring subscription model. Which is odd, because that’s not — think about the history of business: someone has something, you’ve got some money, you give them the money, they give you the thing.

All of a sudden, that is completely unacceptable. Even though that’s still the vast majority of business as it’s transacted today. But that’s what people are obsessed with. Because recurring revenue is so much more stable. It’s predictable. You can extrapolate into the future. You’re not hunting and gathering constantly each month just to try to meet or exceed where you are at.

But think about it, this wasn’t a thing. Now we all pay for Netflix recurring. And maybe you’re a member of Dollar Shave Club and you get your razors that way because you’re too lazy to go to the store. What do you think about this?

Because when I was a kid utilities were the big recurring things. If you didn’t pay your water bill every month, you didn’t have water. I think the biggest shake-up in my childhood in my childhood years in this regard was cable TV. Not only did you go from paying for something that was free, but you paid for it every month or you didn’t get your MTV.

Robert Bruce: Jerod, I know you’re only 19 years old. We were talking earlier today about the Columbia House CD subscription business.

Brian Clark: Jerod, do you remember that? You know, when you were four?

Jerod Morris: I do actually. Yes, I do remember that.

Brian Clark: That was the irresistible offer, right?

Robert Bruce: It really was. That big fat catalogue —

Jerod Morris: It was like 10 CDs for a cent.

Brian Clark: Or 10 CDs for a penny. And this was pre-internet, so you had to tape a penny to a cardboard thing, find a stamp, drop it in the mail and you were never more excited than that. Because you were just cleaning up on Columbia House. Of course, that’s not how it turned out.

Robert Bruce: You were too young to read the fine print and the 25-page —

Brian Clark: Well, no, I knew the deal. What I was not old enough to have a feel for was my own lack of follow through. So you were committed to buy x amount of CDs in the future and I’m a music junkie so “Hey, no problem.” But then they send you that card in the mail every month and you had to open it up and look at it and see that it was Debbie Gibson and say, “No, hell no,” find a stamp and send it back.

Robert Bruce: It’s all right, you got the Debbie Gibson, it’s fine.

Brian Clark: That’s later. If you dig through my CD collection — “What’s with the Abba and Debbie Gibson,” and I’m like, “I didn’t return the card, okay?” And you know, contractually, if you didn’t return the card and it showed up, you had to pay for it. Now I’m sure there were people, just like there are now, who would send it back anyway. But that’s even more work than sending back a postcard.

But that wasn’t recurring revenue necessarily, it was a recurring obligation. Even then, the whole idea we kind of thought of as somewhat shady. It just wasn’t the norm. And now that’s the first thing — whether it be a fellow entrepreneur, a VC, or a private equity person they’re like, “Recurring revenue? No? I don’t want to talk to you.” As if there aren’t other valid business models. But I do have to say, it is one half of the Holy Grail of business models.

Robert Bruce: So back then — Columbia House, you’ve also got newspaper subscriptions, you’ve got magazine subscriptions, cable — it was not a prevalent model. Then we move in to the early days of the internet where it’s easier and easier to distribute digital goods, namely like ebooks.

The Legitimization of Subscription Revenue Models

Brian Clark: Yeah. So that’s the second half of digital, but before we leave the recurring thing, it really was the internet that exploded the concept. All of the sudden the precursor of what we now call the sharing economy was kind of predicted. I read this great book called “The Age of Access” that totally called all of this. The end of ownership and the rise of the Age of Access which you would pay for one-off or on a subscription basis. And now we have Uber, and we’ve got bike sharing and all of these things the kids are into these days. I still like to own my car.

Robert Bruce: It’s a pretty natural shift because you think back to the Columbia House, we had to have a lot more patience back then. We were willing to wait on the mail and send them back postcards. With the internet, it’s like our expectations have shifted. So we want access and we want convenience, which is why we’re willing, I think even as consumers to pay on this more recurring model. Because I want stuff when I want it and I want exactly what I want. So the trade-off is instead of paying one off, you’ve got to pay on a recurring basis so it’s there when you need it because you can’t predict when you’re going to want it.

Brian Clark: But think about Columbia House. It was such a fantastic deal that I got 10 free CDs so I could buy bad CDs on accident. Now, for ten bucks a month, I get pretty much every song in the world on Spotify and yet it’s still hard for someone my age to just … The first time I think, “Hey, I used to have that CD or LP or 8-track.” Robert, how’s the extensive 8-track collection of yours going?

Robert Bruce: It’s somewhere in a box in some storage unit.

Brian Clark: I still have that. I shifted, obviously, to iTunes early on. But my first impulse still, and I’ve done this many times, is I’ll say, “Man, I haven’t heard that Ramones album in forever,” and I go buy it. And then I’m like, “That’s on Spotify, oh my God.” It’s hard to shift, but the millenials in our company are like, “What are you doing?”

Jerod Morris: So both of you are still buying files? For music?

Brian Clark: I’m weaning myself of it. It’s just tricky because that’s your impulse that you’ve always — and I buy a lot of music, I buy a lot of books. I can’t train my brain. It’s not like I’m not paying for Spotify, I am. I just forget.

Robert Bruce: Jerod, are you buying files?

Jerod Morris: No, I stopped a couple of years ago and it just became all on demand. In fact, I had a really extensive collection of songs on iTunes and I was recently cleaning up my computer because I had memory issues and that was one of the first places I went to save room. I just said, “Well I paid for these, but I don’t really need because I don’t really come here and — ”

Brian Clark: You deleted your music? I could not do.

Jerod Morris: Yeah.

Brian Clark: I just buy another hard drive.

Jerod Morris: That was another option that I might have considered, but I figured I’m never in there listening though.

Brian Clark: So did you miss anything? Did you find everything on Spotify then?

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I mean, for the most part. I’ve never —

Brian Clark: Yeah there’s only a few, like AC/DC, and even I think they gave in. There’s a few holdouts and they’re all kind of coming in. But the internet is made for recurring. I can remember, when I started my real estate business, I was paying recurring for my email service. Email software as a service — those were the earliest models of that, at least at our level. I remember I had to pay a monthly subscription to get IDX which is how you display MLS listings on a website.

Businesses today are built around APIs. Mine was built around these recurring subscriptions that were really — even if it was a hundred bucks a month, that was nothing compared to the revenue that you could generate from those tools. It’s really kind of extrapolated from there.

Anyway, long and short, before we shift over to the second part. If you can devise a recurring revenue model, whether it be a membership site of some sort, whether it be some other kind of innovative subscription — all these things now that you can buy in a box. What is up with that? “You can’t dress yourself because you’re a man so here’s an outfit in a box,” and they send you a new one every month.

Robert Bruce: But that’s it. You take the thinking out of the equation. Same thing with razors.

Brian Clark: It is convenient..

Robert Bruce: Who wants to go to the store and buy razors? Whatever, it’s not that big a deal, but —

Brian Clark: You have wine clubs, where you subscribe —

Robert Bruce: — coffee. Well now Amazon has developed — I don’t know if it’s even still going, but a few weeks ago they announced that push button thing. A literal — they’re giving you a button —

Brian Clark: I made three purchases in the last week where that was an option. They are things that you run out of — whether it be facial cleanser or shaving cream or whatever. And there was that, “Every three months,” you get to choose a recurring interval. I just didn’t do it because that’s just another thing I’m going to have to adapt to, but I guess it makes sense. I even bought oil changes on subscription, basically. Like you buy a certain amount of oil changes at a bulk rate. Does that count?

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Digital Goods: from Dubious to In-demand

Brian Clark: All right, so we’re talking about a bunch — from Columbia House to ham in a box — we’re talking about physical stuff, and that’s kind of a hassle. Because, again, if I wouldn’t return a Debbie Gibson CD, then I’m not the type who wants to pack boxes. Of course, they have fulfillment services and what-not, but I have to say that the fact that we also deal in end-to-end digital products and services, that to me is the second part of the ultimate business.

Robert Bruce: So what does that look like then? What types of things are we talking about? We talked ham in a box and all that. What types of things are we looking at on the digital side?

Brian Clark: Ebooks, online courses, software as a service, downloadable software like the Genesis Framework plus the themes that work with it. Even our hosting division is an end-to-end virtual transaction. Nothing shows up at your house. No one comes by. There’s no physical aspect of it because it’s a web service. But those are the big ones. It’s anything that can be digitized and/or fulfilled online. Reflecting back on all of our various lines of business, they’re all digital.

So there’s two things that have happened that I think a lot of younger people may not really appreciate because they just live this way. They’re digital natives. And we were talking about this earlier, that all of us on this podcast are digital natives even though we’re of another generation, but because we were weirdos. In the late 90s — early 2000s when I’m online all the time, do you think my friends thought I was cool? No, they thought I was a crazy person. But I’m laughing at them now.

Here’s what’s changed. I’ve been talking over the last few episodes about how online education has gone from this thing that was an outlier, not really trusted and greeted with skepticism, and now it’s a $15 trillion a year — trillion, that’s not much of a jump from billion! You know, when you’re at that level —

Robert Bruce: Hyperbole …

Brian Clark: But still, $15 billion is quite impressive. It’s a mainstream thing. I think we’ve hammered that point home. But so are ebooks. I mean, back in the day, an ebook was a shoddy .pdf that some internet marketer tried to scam you with. That’s a generalization, but that was the perception.

Now, ebooks are a huge publishing industry sector that’s growing much faster than the traditional book industry. We’ve got dedicated file formats. The Kindle Store on Amazon is just killing it. You’ve got entire legions of authorpreneurs. So again, that’s a legitimate thing that used to be illegitimate, kind of like online courses. There’s been downloadable software forever, but it was a highly geeky thing about 10 years ago. It was only the devs, and the coders, and the hardcore internet people that would dare whip out a credit card and download a piece of software that didn’t come on a shiny little disc, or a floppy disc before that.

That’s another thing. What about the attitudes about using credit cards online? I don’t think my parents will do it — they’re in their seventies. And yet, we were talking to our resident millennial, Caroline Early earlier — our associate producer, “Hi Caroline” — and they never think about it. They are the true digital natives in that they don’t remember pre-internet. Do you guys have any reservation whatsoever about using a credit card online?

Jerod Morris: Slightly, but not really. Kind of like we were talking about earlier, not like on Apple, Amazon, the big sites. No, none at all. But then, if it’s on an individual site it really just depends on how they’ve built the trust within the design and how much time I’ve spent with them. If it’s my first time there, the design looks a little shaky, I might feel a little shaky about it. But for the most part, no.

Robert Bruce: Yeah I’m the same. And Brian you brought up a good point. If I find something I want, what I’ll do is usually go try to find it on Amazon or iTunes or whatever —

Brian Clark: Yeah, absolutely. This is why another rule to take away here is if you are selling a commodity product that can be found elsewhere … So let me give you an example. I almost feel bad about this. There’s this doctor, he’s an MD. He’s a content marketer. He gives fantastic non-scammy advice, solid stuff. I was doing research on a certain supplement, and there was a link to buy the product that I wanted through his online store.

Now, I should be showing appreciation to him for educating me, especially given the business I’m in. But it was a supplement that can be found anywhere, and it was on Amazon. And this is the truth — because I can hit one click, and my credit card’s already there and, my shipping and billing information’s already there. I’m just lazy. That’s terrible, but I am. So we never sell anything that can be bought exactly the same elsewhere. Unique products and services. Amazon can’t take that away from you.

Jerod Morris: And as to quote Chris Garrett, “Whoever gets the credit card stored wins.”

Brian Clark: That’s true, that’s absolutely true. I think we’ll see — even on our end on the Rainmaker Platform — everything from social logins to payment options. You have to work to streamline that on behalf of you guys, our customers. So that, as long as you’re satisfying the other criteria of selling unique products and services, the barrier to transaction is as low as possible.

Robert Bruce: One thing — it’s a side note, and it’s probably a whole other episode — but in the future too, as we move towards things like Apple Pay where it’s, as far as we know, secure place where your … I have not jumped into this by the way, because I m kind of a freak.

Brian Clark: I use it for Whole Foods all the time, I love it. It’s weird, but it’s cool when you get to do it.

Robert Bruce: Your payment, essentially, at least in the perception of it, is in one place, right? Yes, you’re being charged by Whole Foods, you’re being charged by Starbucks or wherever you go. But the actual vehicle for the payment is in just one place. Much like swiping a card, it doesn’t take that out of it. But if, for instance, your doctor that you were getting this information from in the future wrapped his product or payment system in with Apple Pay, you might not have cared. You probably would have just done it right there.

Brian Clark: Oh of course. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to buy from him because of course I would. It’s just that friction. And I think you’re right. Obviously Apple Pay at this point is a point of sale physical world type thing. But the digital solution for that should be certainly doable. With physical goods at Amazon, I still have to enter — I would imagine the payment technology would remove the billing address issue because they were being coded somehow in whatever it is.

Robert Bruce: Right, in that one place.

Brian Clark: So then it would come down to just, am I too lazy to enter my actual shipping address? It’s rough out there. I’m going back to the rule, which is “Don’t sell.” That’s the whole thing with advertising, AdWords, whatever. When you’re selling something that someone else is selling, it becomes a bidding war on two bad ends. Bid prices go up to AdWords, Google’s happy, and prices go down. I never want to be in that position.

I guess the whole point of all this is that, through the progression of time, things that were outliers like subscription business models and digital products and services, which were regarded as a little less trustworthy, are now actually the most desirable. That’s what people want.

Robert Bruce: Yeah it’s interesting that both sides want it. The bankers, as you mentioned earlier also —

Why You Should Aim for a Recurring Digital Model

Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s good business! If what people want is a subscription service that makes their lives easier, that gives you that amazing stability of income where your recurring revenue comes in every month. You get new customers. Some people leave, obviously, but you’re never just absolutely desolate the next month. So with that on one hand, and then of course we want instant gratification as we move more and more to a digital world.

I mean people are buying video game swords and gold. There are people getting rich selling digital goods inside apps and video games. What about Bitcoin? That’s a whole other can of worms that’s going to be something we all deal with. Can you poke any holes in my Holy Grail of business models?

Robert Bruce: Well I’m just looking forward to Bitcoin because that’s when I can truly disappear.

Brian Clark: Yeah, you keep talking about this and yet here you are.

Robert Bruce: I know, I know. I need a couple of years.

Brian Clark: You could be calling in from the Philippines, we don’t know.

Robert Bruce: You don’t know, you don’t —

Brian Clark: All right guys, thank you for filling the narrow seat of my revolving co-host. Mr. Bruce, it’s good to hear your voice again. I will trick you into coming on the show again despite your protestations.

Robert Bruce: Thank you, thank you for that.

Brian Clark: You’re Welcome. Jerod, you’re the man.

Jerod Morris: Thank you.

Brian Clark: Even though you’re only 19.

Jerod Morris: And even though it took two of us to not even equal one Sonia.

Brian Clark: Seriously, it’s a shame.

Robert Bruce: She’s smooth. She really is smooth isn’t she?

Brian Clark: Yeah, that’s why she always gets her way. Have you noticed? All right. That’s it for this week, people. Thank you as always for tuning in. If you’re digging what we’re doing here at New Rainmaker, a review or rating or both over at iTunes is much appreciated. Otherwise, we’ll be back next week. We’re going to talk more and more about subscription business models. We’re going to talk more and more about digital goods and services.

We’ve talked about it before, remember Robert? We did a couple of episodes on the whole digital commerce thing. It’s just kind of amazing to me reflect back on how things used to be — and I’m not trying to be nostalgic — I think this is an indication why getting in on something maybe before it’s a little too soon, or it is a little too soon, and yet you have a feeling. You can see that’s the direction things are going. Keep the faith. Stick with it. Build your audience. Do good things. Develop trust. And it could turn out to be a hugely winning situation for you. We’ll talk next week. Take care everyone.

Robert Bruce: Any of you are still listening here? This is Robert Bruce. I’m sneaking back on. Two new shows on the Rainmaker.FM podcast network. Check out MissingLink.FM, that’s Sean Jackson, our CFO. Brian, do you have any comments on Missing Link? I don’t know if you’ve gotten the chance to hear the first episode yet.

Brian Clark: Yeah, I did. And I called Sean today, no lie, and I said, “Sean, you’ve got quite the attitude on that show.” I think he’s expecting me to tell him to tone it down and I’m like, “No it’s okay, I like it because now the rest of the world knows what a jerk you are too.”

Robert Bruce: That’s MissingLink.fm, everybody. The other one we mentioned earlier: Jim Kukral is doing authorpreneur.fm. If you have a book, books, or want to write a book in the future. This is not about making direct revenue with your book — there is some of that in there — it’s more about what the book can do for your business as pure marketing and such.

Brian Clark: The ultimate business card, right?

Robert Bruce: The ultimate business card, as he puts it.

Brian Clark: Which I refuse to write.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, still. After all these years, nothing.

Brian Clark: At this point what am I going to do, backtrack?

Robert Bruce: That is a good point. One last note from Jerod, you got what from Sean on Missing Link?

Jerod Morris: Oh, a text message.

Robert Bruce: Sean’s shaking stuff up over there.

Brian Clark: He is. He explained how this works and it’s pretty cool. I’m not a big texter myself, but if we’re talking about a mobile world, what’s more urgent to you, an email or a text? I don’t know. I do know that because I don’t text a huge amount that I’ll notice and look at a text immediately, because it’s probably my wife with shopping instructions.

Robert Bruce: Right. Did you feel that way with Sean’s text coming up there?

Jerod Morris: Yeah. I checked it immediately. We were doing this so I couldn’t listen to the episode right away, but yeah, there’s an urgency to it. I’m the same way.

Brian Clark: It’s interesting. We are, as always, experimenting on ourselves first. Figuring things out. I’m not advocating that anyone leave email anytime soon. It’s still the transaction engine. It is where we expect for business to be conducted. This is not a transactional text, it’s a “Send a text to a certain number in order to receive a link to a private group that is made up of all my linked Missing Link listeners.” So I’ve got to give it to Sean. And I’m just joking about him, he’s a wonderful guy. He’s just got some attitude worked in. He’s having way more fun than he should.

Robert Bruce: He’s a classic AM radio host —

Brian Clark: He’s Rush Limbaugh.

Robert Bruce: He is Rush Limbaugh. That’s what it’s going to break out to, and it’s perfect. All right, sorry for hijacking things here. You can find all of our shows of course at rainmaker.fm and I’m going to shut up now.

The Transcript

Is Creating Online Training Programs a Viable Business Model?

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

Brian Clark: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the show. I am Brian Clark, founder and CEO of Copyblogger Media. This week, instead of flying solo, I’ve decided to start at least a one-week tradition of having a rotating co-host. Today’s victim is Sonia Simone, chief content officer of Copyblogger Media, longtime co-conspirator way before we actually formed the company in 2010 — going back to Copyblogger, Teaching Sells, and all of that good stuff. Sonia, how are you doing today?

Sonia Simone: I am fantastic. Thank you for asking.

Brian Clark: It is wonderful to hear your velvety voice because you also have a great voice. That guy who also has a great voice

Sonia Simone: That traitor.

Brian Clark: Yeah. I don’t know how many weeks I’m going to keep talking about him ditching me, but it could be quite a few.

Sonia Simone: I think you could milk it. I think you are not even close to saturating that.

Brian Clark: Yeah, I feel that way, too.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Brian Clark: It’s evergreen really.

Sonia Simone: It is.

Brian Clark: All right, so as you know, your Copyblogger post today linked to my last podcast. I was honored.

Sonia Simone: It did indeed. Yes, it did.

The Prediction about Online Education That Came True

Brian Clark: Online courses, online education and training — obviously, we always love to tell the story that how we met was you were one of the first people with your credit card in hand saying, “Go ahead and sell me something already,” back in 2007.

Sonia Simone: That’s right.

Brian Clark: That was Teaching Sells, our instructional design meets direct marketing uber course. Do you remember that it was actually that course where someone gave us a review and they said it was ‘Internet marketing for smart people.’

Sonia Simone: I do.

Brian Clark: Not as a compliment, but we took it as a compliment because we were like “Yeah! Smart people only, please.”

Sonia Simone: You know what? You’re right actually.

Brian Clark: Instead of feeling shame and dumbing it down, we actually co-opted that, created another course called Internet Marketing for Smart People, which I thought was so us.

Sonia Simone: It is us. It’s a little offensive, but not very offensive — snarky.

Brian Clark: If you’re playing the populous card, like a lot of the Internet marketing crowd does, because, of course, they’re going, “You can do it.”

Sonia Simone: Right, and we’re like, “You can do it if you’re smart.”

Brian Clark: You ‘can’ do it — just like you can graduate from college — but maybe not if you can’t. It’s just amazing to revisit slightly to see the mainstreaming of this. I don’t like to sit there and say, “Hey, I called it.”

Sonia Simone: You did, though. You did call it, actually.

Brian Clark: It’s still one of those things where you’re right and you’re like, “Wow, I didn’t know I was going to be this right.”

Sonia Simone: I know. It’s true.

Brian Clark: It makes sense because on-demand — reacting to trends, to market, fluctuations, to disruptions — everything’s moving so quickly. I don’t think academia could keep up 10 years ago, much less now. That’s what’s really driving this, and it’s only going to accelerate. The whole concept in that Fast Company article — I don’t really like the terminology. I think it’s pretty weak. I think this futurist guy is dead on about this is a real gig. It is now, but only more so by the time we get to say 2020, 2025. The whole concept of the ‘freelance professor,’ how does that strike you?

Sonia Simone: I don’t love ‘freelance professor’ for a lot of reasons. I like your old term ‘entreproducer’ because I think you want to not forget that this is about a business. It is about teaching, but absolutely, equally, it is about business and about producing a result somebody else wants. Also, maybe because it’s just because too many people called me ‘Little Professor’ when I was a child. I have trauma from that, so that could be the source.

Brian Clark: Is that why you call me ‘Professor Clark’ when I get too esoteric?

Sonia Simone: It is. That’s right.

Brian Clark: That’s not a compliment, either — just in case there’s any confusion.

Sonia Simone: No, you have my story. That’s my story.

Brian Clark: Yeah, it is a business, and I did like that he said you need course materials, a plan, and a marketing plan. That’s what really set me off on this. You’re not going to get away from understanding the marketing component of it. The big thing about Teaching Sells, which was amazing to me when I was creating it, was that the intersection of direct marketing principles — which everything you sell online is direct marketing. Don’t think about junk mail. That’s not what it means. It means direct to the consumer, or customer, or client.

The principles, especially of copywriting, are applied in instructional design because that’s what gets adult learners to pay attention, to retain information, to stick with it — all of these things. Even if you say, “I don’t want to be a marketer,” or “I don’t care about selling,” creating great training is a component of exactly the same elements of retaining an audience and their attention in order to actually get some value out of it. It really is doing a great job of teaching people that builds your business in the long-term.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, most, maybe all smart marketers and salespeople have known for a long, long time, well over 100 years, that in order to have something that is marketable or sellable, you need to have a transformation that you can offer the person you’re selling to, while teaching has the transformation baked into it. The whole point of teaching is to create a transformation. That’s one of the reasons it’s such a strong model. It’s very easy to explain to somebody, “I am going to teach you to do something you want to know how to do.”

Brian Clark: Also something we talk about a lot, ‘baking in’ — it’s not just knowledge. It’s the benefits.

Sonia Simone: The benefits of knowledge, yeah.

Brian Clark: Guess what? Those are the same benefits that go on a sales page.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Brian Clark: You really can’t separate the two. I always was proud of Teaching Sells and how well it integrated it together because humans just naturally compartmentalize things. “This is that, and this is the other.” No, it’s really one thing, and it’s all related anyway.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Brian Clark: You and I have created many courses together. I still remember that time we created that freelance X Factor course, and I had to rent a room in Durango, Colorado, because I was there for the summer. My kids were little maniacs running around the place we actually were staying in, so in order to have quiet

Sonia Simone: You were in a closet in an office building or something crazy.

Brian Clark: I know. But, hey, we got it done.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, that was a good course.

Sonia’s Move from Freelance Copywriter to Course Creator

Brian Clark: Many years of education courses and all that. I want to talk to you a little bit, because you created in the time that we’ve known each other — this was before Copyblogger Media, though — you created your own course called Remarkable Marketing Blueprint. Is that correct?

Sonia Simone: That’s right.

Brian Clark: Oh I got it. You did that all by yourself. I remember you just went off, and then a long time later it was done.

Sonia Simone: I did, yes.

Brian Clark: Talk about that process as tackling what was a really big project. That was a good-sized course.

Sonia Simone: It was. What I wanted to do when I left the corporate world — and I have talked to other places about my serious post-corporate traumatic syndrome — I left the corporate world. I needed to make money. My husband stays at home full-time with my son, so it was all on me. My idea was I was going to be a freelance writer. That was okay.

I did moderately well at being a freelance writer, but I hated the ‘you don’t kill, you don’t eat’ mentality. It was not emotionally a great fit for me where I had to close all these new clients, and I was always prospecting. It wasn’t well-suited to me, so I did take Teaching Sells. I was one of those people who messes up your server by refreshing the order page two times a minute trying to wait for it to open — don’t do that, guys. It’s annoying.

I put this course together to teach people some of the things that I had, had to teach myself in order to be a good marketing writer — how to market stuff, how to sell things if you’re not the $10 million marketing budget company. It was revolutionary for me. It completely transformed who I was as an independent professional. Instead of constantly prospecting and talking to people who weren’t ready to move forward and closing people and all this stuff, I said, “Here’s a thing. Here’s what it will do for you. Here’s what to do next.” A bunch of people bought it, and then they gave me whatever it was, $27 a month.

It was a great deal. It really changed my business. It really changed my relationship with my customers. They created this whole identity. They called themselves the ‘Remarkables,’ and the first group were the ‘Remarkable and Originals.’ That was an identity that they had that many of them carry.

There will be people listening to this podcast who’ll say, “I’m a Remarkable.” It was really a great experience professionally and personally in terms of satisfaction, in terms of my ability to help people. It was just cool, and fun, and awesome.

Brian Clark: I remember the community you built there

Sonia Simone: It was intense.

Brian Clark: was rapidly pro-Sonia.

Sonia Simone: As they should be.

Brian Clark: You have that effect on lots of people. You come across so nice, but behind the scenes

Sonia Simone: Brian knows how evil I really am, but I do get [inaudible 0:11:22] very nice.

Brian Clark: When Sonia goes on a rant, just duck. What was the hard part about it? Again, it seems to me the content was so right up your alley. Was producing it the biggest challenge?

Sonia Simone: Producing it was great. I had to get my act together, but that was fine. That was all good. The site was really tough. I’m still so grateful to this day for the wonderful developer who was able to help me out with it. But even so, I think it took us about two months to get the site together before I could make any money. I was spending money.

Brian Clark: This was WordPress plus plugins?

Sonia Simone: WordPress plus proprietary membership plugins was what this was.

Brian Clark: Yeah, we won’t name which one.

Sonia Simone: No, we won’t name. There were a couple at the time. They all had issues, and I encountered the issues. It took a long time to get it together. During that time, I was spending money developing the site, but I wasn’t getting any revenue. We had security issues. Some kind of creepy Russian hackers were putting porn into my member library. I don’t know why. To this day, I’m not sure why — “Why are you doing that?” — but they did. That was great. We were playing whack-a-mole with security.

It didn’t work the way I wanted it to work. There was a lot of manual work to make sure that, if people left the course, like stopped paying for it, that we would stop giving them access to it. Just things like that, that today we have some tools — you know, cough, Rainmaker Platform — that make that really easy. It was not easy.

Brian Clark: That’s such a familiar story. When it was just me and Tony — and then later you joined us with Teaching Sells — Tony was gluing together, duct taping. No one would ever tell me just how fragile these sites were. They looked pretty, but they were built out of all these different parts. Also, in the original version of Teaching Sells, remember how Tony had to try to teach people to build an LMS out of what was it, Joomla and Moodle?

Sonia Simone: Moodle, right.

Brian Clark: Later we could finally get it done with WordPress, pretty much with the stuff you use, but of course, there were issues. People were always asking us, “Oh my gosh, you’ve taught me things that I didn’t even imagine I could know about creating instructional content and about marketing it. Just give me the technology platform.”

Sonia Simone: Right.

Brian Clark: That’s going to take a while. In fact, it took, oh, I can’t even do the math, seven years.

Sonia Simone: Yeah. There have been platforms, and those platforms had issues because it’s hard. It turns out when we set out to build it, it’s like, “Oh, this is actually really hard.”

Brian Clark: It took a while. It either takes a ton of money or it takes time. We were bootstrapped, so it took some time. Anyway, I mentioned that last week. At least, at this point, Rainmaker takes care of those headaches, and now it’s become essentially a part of the Teaching Sells experience that we’ll be doing next month.

Sonia Simone: Yes.

Brian Clark: Anyway, I think one objection people have when they hear us talk about creating the marketing blueprint, or a Copyblogger course, or even the New Rainmaker training course that is a lead generator for Rainmaker.FM. Like, “Yeah, that’s fine. You’re selling courses, marketing about marketing, blogging about blogging, content marketing about ” — you know, very meta.

That is something we’ve been dealing with for a long time. Sometimes it’s frustrating to always feel you’re being self-referential, but the real opportunities, business is going to remain a very big on-demand training realm.

I remember back in 2007 when we talked about the three big areas. They were business, personal development, and technology. I think that remains the case today. There’s so many other topical areas that people are making not only money, but a living, a good living.

Sonia Simone: A good living, yeah.

Brian Clark: Yeah. You’re like the curator of online education and membership sites that shouldn’t work — or at least that they’re real topics for real people that don’t involve this meta aspect to it. Give us a few of your favorite examples.

The Improbable Sports Training Program That’s Killing It

Sonia Simone: One of my favorites, he was a member of one of our early communities, The Third Tribe. That was the first marketing thing he ever bought, so I claim all credit for his success. That’s not fair or reasonable. I’m just making a joke. His name is Will Hamilton, and he has a site called FuzzyYellowBalls.com.

The thing I love about this site is it was a long-time truism in direct response that you could sell all kinds of things to golfers, but there was no money in tennis. You could not do tennis education. You couldn’t do tennis direct response because tennis players didn’t spend money. Will’s doing unbelievable things with this site. It’s opened all kinds of doors. He makes a great living off this business.

Brian Clark: It’s always the one that I’m like really? Tennis?

Sonia Simone: Yeah. Since Will showed it could be done, I think that other people have come up as well in tennis, but really remarkable story with that.

Other Examples of ‘Non-Meta’ Training Programs

Sonia Simone: Another one was one of my Remarkables, a woman named Wardee Harmon. She put together a natural cooking site. She had a real interest in — very on-trend today, she was ahead of the curve at that time — organic food and respecting the dignity of the food.

Brian Clark: I wouldn’t be surprised if my wife was a member.

Sonia Simone: Yeah, and if she’s not, she should be because it is so up her alley. But she did this natural cooking class online, and we all thought, “Well that’s a good idea.” From the beginning, we were all a little startled at how well it did. People were waiting for it. She was an early presence, and she just destroyed it with that.

My friend Ruth heads an institute called the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine, so straight-up, hardcore Internet marketing, right? They do extremely well with courses, and Ruth — I know Ruth, she’s a friend of mine — has a very businesslike approach to teaching courses in behavioral medicine. She just did a course on meditation with Tara Brach, who’s a wonderful meditation practitioner.

They just do really, really well with these courses with a businesslike approach to teaching. It’s a combination, in their case, of professional development for therapists, but also, a lot of non-medical professionals like me will take these courses because we want to know more about trauma or the science of the brain or meditation.

Membership Sites for Kids? (It’s All About the Parents)

Sonia Simone: I’ll wrap up with one that my son encountered that was very cool, which is a company called Youth Digital. They teach kids my son’s age — my son’s almost 10 — how to code in Java in order to make Minecraft modifications.

Brian Clark: Yeah, my kids, I don’t know if it’s the same course, it may be. But both of my kids all of a sudden have figured out that you can make the stuff that is Minecraft.

Sonia Simone: Right.

Brian Clark: They’re just fascinated by it. It’s like Legos in digital world.

Sonia Simone: Yeah. That’s a real case where people would tell you, “Oh, you can’t make any money with Minecraft education because there’s so many YouTube videos.” These guys, I don’t have any connection to them other than my kid is a junky for this course. He can’t wait to get home and start learning Java, but it’s very well done. It’s done for kids. It’s got great sense of humor. It’s comprehensive. They have good support, and they’re just selling the heck out of this course. I think it’s $200 a pop for something for kids, so kids can play with a toy.

Brian Clark: It’s educational and that type of purchase — this is valid actually because learning to code is awesome — but we all bought Baby Einstein CDs to make us feel better about parking the kids somewhere. You’re selling to the parents.

Sonia Simone: Yes, exactly. You’re saying, “No, it’s a good thing that they spend all day every day on Minecraft. It’s education.”

Brian Clark: I will say that out of all the games my kids try to play, Minecraft is actually probably the best for them.

Sonia Simone: Yeah.

Brian Clark: I’m telling myself that story.

Sonia Simone: Yes, I am, too. I’m right there with you.

Brian Clark: Alright, I don’t know, Sonia. You being on here made this very easy. In fact, easier than Robert. Now I’m going to just change my story and say good riddance to Mr. Bruce. I may just hit up Sonia Simone. You’re like, “Wait, what?! You’re giving me more work to do?”

Sonia Simone: Bring it, bring it.

Brian Clark: We’ll see. If I can’t find other victims, though, you’re going to be my default.

Sonia Simone: I’ll be the default victim. That seems congruent with my general role in the company.

A Free Webinar for Creating Online Courses

Brian Clark: So you and Chris Garrett have a webinar coming up. Is that related to

Sonia Simone: Yeah, the webinar, it is an educational webinar designed to give you what you need to know to become a customer. I’m not going to hide that. That would be silly. It’s a webinar about the things that we have seen — Chris also was an early Teaching Sells customer — but we have been teaching people for quite a few years now how to do this.

It’s a webinar-based on some of the things we’ve seen people do that slow them down — so mistakes people make when they’re trying to build an online product or an online service. The things people do that make it very unlikely that they’re going to be able to have this popular, successful, easy, fun, sustainable business. We’re going to be talking about the mistakes people make when creating products online. It’s going to be, well, it’s coming up, so it’ll be June 16th at noon Eastern.

Brian Clark: Well, we’ve got still a couple of weeks, but we will put a link to that in the show notes, so you can sign up from there. That sounds pretty interesting because the webinar, of course, is going to give you a lot of high-value content with respect to things to avoid, especially if this is your first rodeo in this arena.

Sonia Simone: Right, right.

Brian Clark: Whether you decide to go with Teaching Sells or not, it’s going to be solid, but of course, I’m sure that the benefits of the whole course will be demonstrated at some point.

Sonia Simone: Exactly.

Brian Clark: All right, Sonia, thank you so much for coming. Enjoy the rest of your day, and to all of you out there, thanks for tuning in. If you have a chance to drop by iTunes and give me a review or a rating, you can even talk about how much cooler Sonia is than me. I will take it as long as it’s on this show. Thank you very much, Sonia.

Sonia Simone: Thanks. It was fun. Thank you.

The Transcript

The Transcript

Behind the Scenes: Authority Rainmaker, the Next Wave of Rainmaker.FM Shows, and the Departure of Robert Bruce

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

Robert Bruce: Sometimes I think I’ve had it with this computer stuff.

Brian Clark: It’s going to make your job difficult to do.

Robert Bruce: I know. That is the only problem. I got an email from somebody this morning saying something. Then an hour and a half, two hours later, I got another email from this person saying, “I know you opened my email. Why haven’t you written back?”

Brian Clark: Seriously?

Robert Bruce: Yeah. It’s one of these tracking things. These little tracking dots that everybody uses now.

Brian Clark: That’s awful.

Robert Bruce: I’m sitting there thinking, “How, in what universe do you think that makes me want to email you back now?”

Brian Clark: Exactly.

Robert Bruce: Right? I don’t know.

Brian Clark: Do I know this person?

Robert Bruce: No. It was something else. Someday I am going to end up in the mountains of the Oregon Coast Range. Well, we can take it offline, but we need to figure out how to do that.

Brian Clark: Well, do they have Internet in the mountains?

Robert Bruce: I’m sure they do. I’m sure it’s expensive, but I’m sure they do.

A Look Back at Authority Rainmaker 2015

Brian Clark: I think it’s doable if that’s really what you want. You’re not worn out from sharing emcee duties from last week’s event are you?

Robert Bruce: Oh yes. I’m running on fumes.

Brian Clark: I’m a little, definitely felt good that Saturday morning. I woke up at 5 as usual. I’m like, “What are you doing? Go back to bed.” Next thing I knew, it was 9:45, which never happens. But I didn’t feel as bad as last year when I did it all myself, so thank you, Robert.

Robert Bruce: You’re welcome. It’s odd because it’s not like breaking rocks, obviously, but it’s the intensity of always waiting for the next thing. Wanting to do a good job, hoping you can pull it off, but you’re sitting back there waiting for your next queue, thinking about what you’re going to say — all of that stuff. Everybody is running around. It was fun.

I felt bad, though, because throughout on both days, I’d be running through the lobby or whatever and someone would stop me, and we’d get into a brief conversation. I was like, “I’m sorry. I got to go. Literally, I got to be backstage like right now, or somebody’s not going to get introduced.”

Hopefully, those of you who were in Denver, first of all, thank you for coming. Secondly, if I seemed rude — hopefully that was not the case — but I was being called backstage at all times for two days straight.

Brian Clark: You also were probably exhausted from the intensity of laughter after you watched Michael King try to slide across the stage in his socks and then wipe out — five seconds after I said, “Michael, don’t wipe out.”

Robert Bruce: Yeah, that was something. You called it.

Brian Clark: You got the video. It’s hilarious. “I got it, I got it. No problem.”

Robert Bruce: That’s the only reason I saw it. It was your video actually because I was coming on as he was actually doing it. I was in the wings when he went down.

Brian Clark: That was so great. Thank God he wasn’t hurt. He did break his mic pack or whatever, but that was one of the many highlights. But, yes, let me thank everyone who came out. It was a whirlwind, but it all just seemed positive. People were happy, and Jessica and Kim pulled it off without a hitch. Dan Pink was amazing. Sally Hogshead was amazing, Chris Brogan. Then, of course, Rollins comes in at the end. It was so interesting to see the mixed reaction of the crowd. The reaction was uniformly the same, but it depended on who you were.

The Amazing Henry Rollins Experience

Brian Clark: If you are a Henry Rollins fan, a Black Flag fan, a Rollins Band fan, whatever the case may be — like me — then you knew what you were in for, yet your expectations were still exceeded. I thought it was more amazing to see the people who were like, “You know, I knew who he was, but I didn’t really get it. Of course I was looking forward to hearing it because everyone said how awesome it was going to be.” Those were the people whose minds were blown.

Robert Bruce: Then, of course, his epic after greeting time. I think it was two and a half hours — I think it went, somebody said almost 8:00 — he was out there.

Brian Clark: I couldn’t believe it because I figured we got to get him backstage and get him to a car or whatever because the poor guy is going to get mobbed. Nope, he announces from the stage. “I will be out front, and I will talk to every single person who wants to talk to me.” I got to escort him out front, and I’m like, “Here we go.”

When you and I walked down the hall, we’ll constantly get stopped, and that’s very flattering and everything. But this was an entire mass of people. I got him far enough to where it could reach critical mass, and he’s just sitting there holding court — signing autographs, taking pictures.

He even for one guy, he said, “Record a message on my phone for my kids.” It was just the most perfect Rollins message. It said, “Don’t follow the rules, and do what you want to do and make your dad insane.” And the dad was like, “That’s the coolest thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Robert Bruce: That’s great.

Brian Clark: I’m like, “Are you sure?” Overall, it was a good thing. The first year we did it had this kind of special thing to it. In part, I think because we tried to produce a different event from the larger, multi-track events. We have a flare for theatrics this year with the stage setting.

The comments we got all the time were, “You are playing the coolest music throughout the entire show.” A little bit of that was me, but a lot of that was just Jessica. You can’t really touch her. She’s a former DJ. She knows her obscure hipster music fairly well.

I’m still reflecting on it, but it’s been cool to see various people doing wrap ups and reflection pieces. It’s all got that same vibe. People kept saying, “I found my people.” We heard that the first year, but to put on a little bit bigger event and have, still, people come away with that feeling I think is pretty cool. I think I need to do some thinking about how big do we ever want to make this thing. Do you at some point you lose that? What would be the point?

Robert Bruce: Yeah, because you hear it all the time. Things get too big and unwieldy and out of control, and people longing for the good old days when it was a small deal.

Brian Clark: We don’t do it to make money. I’ve said that over and over. We do it to break even, if we’re lucky, because we don’t skimp on food or AV or the experience at any case. If it’s really just to have people have that feeling of “I belong here, and that was fantastic. I’m inspired to go take it to the next level.” It seems to me that it makes sense that we don’t let it get too much bigger.

Anyway, I’m trying not to think about it right now. I can’t think about next year right now. I’m thinking about summer. I want to sit down. I want to stay at home. I want to write. I want to record. I want to create. And, of course, that’s how you set the stage for next year. That’s what you do, but it’s time to lay some new groundwork. I feel that way, and that’s, in part, coming away from my own conference as inspired and fired up as anyone. It’s not like I’m immune from it.

The fact that I got to drive Rollins the next day from Denver to Boulder for his show at the Boulder Theater. Me and Jerod and his fiance got to be Henry’s guests in the VIP sections. Only one there, velvet rope and everything, and you think his presentation at Authority Rainmaker was amazing. He went two and a half hours at the Boulder Theater. I don’t think he took a breath, and it was hilarious. When he’s unrestrained topically, he’s hilarious. He just meanders, tells stories, but it’s all perfectly orchestrated.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, it is incredible. I’ve never seen him live, but I’ve seen various versions of his shows over the years — the ‘talking show’ as he calls it — and it is really incredible. He’s got a really great thing going now because he travels the world. He has all these experiences. He sees all these places, and he goes to some pretty incredible places — both in the sense of culturally, crazy political things going on.

He doesn’t call himself a journalist. But he comes and he reports back, and he uses all that material in these live shows. But you’re right, to go two and a half hours without a stop, it’s just like a freight train.

Brian Clark: He doesn’t even really move. He stands in one place. He’s got the microphone cord wrapped around his hand. Anyway, let’s move off of this, but one last thing. During his presentation at the event, he made a reference to Henry Miller and said, “This guy just lives life and then writes about it.” And that’s what Henry does.

When I’m in the car with him for 45 minutes and he’s telling me stories about David Lee Roth and the Ramones and he’s got this great Guns N’ Roses … Black Flag loaned Guns N’ Roses their PA equipment. He said they were the most scruffy, attitude-laden, smelly people he’s ever met in his entire life. And he said 15 minutes into their set there are 35 people in the room — he said they’re going to be huge. I think he was right a little bit about that one.

That’s his whole life. What he does becomes his material. He just delivers it with a lot of amazing wit and showmanship that I don’t think people realize — just go online and look at Henry Rollins’ Spoken Word, and you’ll get some videos. I suggest the one where he talks about trying to compete with Iggy Pop on tour. That’s the funniest thing you’ll ever hear.

A Quick Rundown of What’s Coming on Rainmaker.FM

OK, what else do we have today? We’re already talking 10 minutes, and we haven’t got out of the intro. We’ve got more podcasts coming to Rainmaker.FM. Why don’t we talk about that?

Robert Bruce: We got a whole list of stuff. So right now we have 13 distinct shows live over at Rainmaker.FM, and that is not including, of course, the crowd favorite, the all shows feed. Yeah, we’ve got a number of things coming up here. I’m just going to list them out. We can talk about it, talk about the hosts a little bit, and then keep going.

In no particular order, we’ll start with Andrea Rennick is going to be doing a show called Humans of WordPress, and this will be interesting. A little bit different than anything that’s on Rainmaker.FM right now, but she’s going to be talking about WordPress, talking to big WordPress people, what’s going on in the WordPress universe, and as that relates to, of course, the DIY side of our business with StudioPress and all of that.

So that’s coming up. All of these, actually, this whole list is going to be coming out within the next month, month and a half, but that’s Humans of WordPress with Andrea Rennick. Then Mr. Sean Jackson– I think you still call him Action Jackson.

Brian Clark: Action Jackson. Absolutely.

Robert Bruce: He’s doing a show called The Missing Link. This is something that we went back and forth on, and you hit upon this idea of Sean — true to his nature and his interests — really focusing on the LinkedIn experience and as it relates to digital marketing and talking to people within LinkedIn, talking about strategy, of course, and using it. We’ve often said this is one of the most powerful social networks in the world.

Brian Clark: It really is given that it’s the only one that’s primarily business focused. I keep looking at LinkedIn. I’m seeing more and more original content being published over there. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but the smart ones are always pointing back to home base.

Really, it’s guest posting, yet instead of doing it at Forbes, Entrepreneur, or Inc., what have you — nothing against writing there, obviously — but it’s within a social network where people congregate to get smarter about their careers and about business. Then you’ve got all these content. Then, of course, that content is fueling the traffic back to their own site. It seems to me to be a fairly direct guest posting strategy. I’m looking into it more, but obviously I’m going to be listening to Sean’s show.

Robert Bruce: Jessica Commins and Kim Clark are going to be doing a show called Misbehavior. Love this show title. Jessica is a serious data nerd, and Kim is on the support — many, many different sides of this — but mainly the support side of our business. She runs things over there.

They’re going to be talking about all things data as it applies to business. One cool little tweak is, on a regular basis, talking about how deceptive certain statistics or certain numbers can be or the way in which people use them and what things really mean when it comes down to business.

Brian Clark: Lies. Damn lies and statistics.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, correct. That’s exactly right. It’s been around for a while. There’s one here that I’m not going to talk about, Brian. The only reason I’m not going to talk about it is because you, just a few moments ago, told me not to talk about it. Anything you want to say about that thing that I won’t talk about?

Brian Clark: Yeah, why do you always do that to me?

Robert Bruce: Wait, we’ll come back to this.

My New, New Podcast (Yes, I’m Starting Something Else)

Brian Clark: I am working on a new project, everyone’s like, “Wait, didn’t you just do that Further thing?” Further to me, at least now, is like my once a week personal blog. I’d write it if no one were paying attention because it helps me learn. Thankfully, I’ve got a nice email list that pays attention to me, but I have no idea about selling people anything or whatever. I hope to demonstrate the Rainmaker Platform a little bit more with my ideas that I have over there. Hopefully, again, this summer, I’m going to have the time to implement that stuff.

I think there’s something that’s more congruent with what I’m really good at. What do I have actual expertise in that I really want to do another podcast on. It’s not about just marketing. I really just intellectually need the ability to address a greater range of topics that are still relevant to the people I want to talk to — people like me, at whatever stage you’re at, that is essentially entrepreneurs of all stripe.

I’m not one of these people that thinks, “Well, freelancers are some lower life form compared to a ‘true entrepreneur.’” That’s BS. Anyone who’s making a living outside the system, they’re an independent economic agent. Hey, you got my respect, and 15, 16 years ago, my first success alone without a net was really a freelance attorney when you want to think about it. They don’t call them freelancers. But a solo attorney, it’s basically the same thing. You’re a gun for hire.

Now, somehow, I’m the CEO of an eight-figure software company. That seems like a gigantic leap unless you lived it, step by tiny step by tiny step. Anyway, I’m doing a podcast for those people. It could be a much larger project than that. I’m working out some details, so how about, I’ll talk to you guys about that one-on-one in a future episode.

More About What’s Coming on Rainmaker.FM

Robert Bruce: Books, books, digital books, print books, this idea of putting a book together to build your business, we have touched on this topic throughout the years, of course, but we’re bringing somebody in, a gentleman named Jim Kukral, which many of you will know. You guys go way back, Brian, I think.

Brian Clark: Yeah, I’ve known Jim forever.

Robert Bruce: I’ve known Jim for a couple of years. He’s going to do a show called Authorpreneur, focusing on the book business and as it applies to building your business with digital marketing from that angle. I’m looking forward to that one. I actually got a thing for some of these book podcasts that are going around. Of course, it’s been a number of years now, but with the ongoing evolution of the self-publishing revolution, as it relates to ebooks specifically, is really cool.

It’s kind of neat to see. It reminds me of the whole Napster era of everything in music changing. It’s now taken a few years — and it’s been going for a number of years, of course — but we’re still right in the thick of everything, of all of these changes happening in the book world. So Jim is going to do that one.

Then a friend of yours from Boulder, a gentleman named Doyle Albee, who I just had the pleasure of meeting a couple of weeks ago. Then I got to briefly meet him, sorry Doyle, a couple of times in Denver this last week — really, really cool guy, interesting guy. He runs a public relations company there.

He’s going to be doing a show called PR is Dead, which will be another of the great show titles in the Rainmaker.FM podcast network. Let’s talk a little bit about Doyle’s story, Brian, since you know him much better than I do.

Brian Clark: Doyle is like an old school. He’s been in the PR business forever, but of course, over the last five or so years, he’s really embraced content, audience, being able to circumvent the media by becoming the media. He’s actually going to write a book called PR is Dead: Long Live Public Relations. That distinction is the relations you have with the public is because they’re your audience, right?

When I first met him, I said, “You know, man, we never get mainstream coverage.” And he’s like, “So what? You have 300,000 people that pay attention to what you say. My clients would kill for that.” Of course, that doesn’t make me happy because I want everything.

Robert Bruce: You sound like a Millennial.

Brian Clark: But that’s the point. Of course, that’s been the point all along. Yes, we get ignored by the tech press because we never took venture capital. It’s just the way it works, but does it matter? Did it stop us from growing to $10 million a year? No. Anyway, that’s going to be a great show.

Robert Bruce: He told me he’s going to be looking at what PR means in this century and in the next decades coming up here because, traditional PR itself, the game has changed in terms of what is working and what people need in that context. I’m really looking forward to that one.

Scott Ellis, he is coming on to do a show called Technology Translated. Scott and you go way back as well, Brian, right?

Brian Clark: Yeah. He was in Dallas, or still is actually. He was always doing stuff on his own. I remember he came to our AgentPress workshop and he now has his own hyperlocal site. He worked with the people over at GeekBrief — Cali Lewis and John P. when they were working together. He’s highly steeped in serious media production from the video angle with GeekBrief and just from the hyperlocal text angle. All of that stuff, and he does great consulting work as well.

Robert Bruce: Next up is our very own Lauren Mancke. She runs things over at StudioPress. She is one of our great designers between her and Rafal Tomal. The title we’re still working on, but the concept is, again, the idea of the DIY side of our business, StudioPress synthesis, hosting your own site using WordPress and Genesis in a StudioPress theme on the Synthesis side.

She’s going to be talking about digital DIY issues, running a business, which she’s done for years, and putting the pieces together to do it yourself in the context of digital business and digital marketing. Of course, there’s going to be a lot of design-related stuff in there and how to make things work with your website, but mainly that big idea of doing it yourself online. This is kind of a recurring theme. There’s more and more of these shows popping up and interest in these shows. I’m looking forward to that one.

Our two friends, Tim Hayden and Greg Hickman, are going to be coming together to work on a show called Mobile Friendly. That is something that we’ve been working on for some time. Greg actually started this show, and they’re going to bring it into the network and work together on it. I’ve got a few things to work out there, but this one has the potential just because of the topic to be a pretty big show, and both of those guys know what they’re talking about.

Brian Clark: Yeah, it’s not, “Mobile is coming.” Mobile’s here, and it’s rolling over everyone. To a certain degree, responsive design and being mobile friendly to your users is a criteria that they’re going to judge you on. Google now judges you on it, but I think there’s a whole lot. You talk to Tim Hayden — he just lives and breathes thinking about the consequences and the ramifications of mobile first — and it will blow your mind. I’m serious. This is going to be a great show that I’ll definitely be tuning in to.

Robert Bruce: It’s been Rainmaker.FM all the time for some time here, at least you and I Brian, but we are getting to Copyblogger. We’re bringing Copyblogger over here in the form of what we’re calling The Portable Copyblogger. This is an idea that Pamela Wilson brought up. I think it’s great. We’re going to take select Copyblogger posts from the archive and newer stuff. We’re going to record them. Basically, do a voiceover, but we’re not just going to just do a quick and dirty thing.

We’ll rework those posts so that they actually work for audio. If it is something from the archives and stuff needs to be changed up or updated, we’re going to be doing that and putting it into a nice audio format. I like to think of it as hyper-mini audio books maybe.

Brian Clark: Hyper-mini.

Robert Bruce: Maybe something in there. Super short, because a lot of these, a thousand words can be read in what, seven, five, seven minutes depending on the speed? This will be a cool one. For those of you who would rather get Copyblogger native material in audio form as opposed to text, this one will be for you.

Then we’ve got a couple that will be a little bit later, probably the next two months or so. There are actually a number of these, but I’ll just go through one or two here.

The FAQ, this is something we’re just going to do a basic, really simple Q&A. We’re going to set up a system by which people can either call in or leave messages, leave questions for — somebody will host this. I don’t know yet who — but leave your questions for basically anyone in the Copyblogger organization. We’ll do quick Q&A show there.

Probably the big one of all, which I hesitate to even mention, but we’re going to do it in one form or another, the Rainmaker Roadshow. That’s going to have its own channel on Rainmaker.FM, but basically live shows. We haven’t worked out all the details yet, but we’re talking about basically sending shows out on the road to do live in very small places, live venues.

Brian Clark: It’s interesting because there was a podcasting table set up right in the front of Authority Rainmaker. What was his name? Clark something. Nice guy. Then, of course, we had Kelton and our video crew set up on the side of the house doing high-production video interviews, professional lighting, all that. It’s completely doable. Even if we — the conferences we go to — just set up shop. Talk to who’s there. I don’t know.

It’s an interesting concept. Again, I can’t think about going on the road right now because I don’t want to. Eventually, that will change. It is an interesting thing. We’ve been talking about this for a while. We just haven’t figured out how it’s going to work, but of course, it’s doable.

Robert Bruce: Yep. Then there are probably another ten or so in various forms of gestation shows that are coming up, but that puts us right between 25 to 30 shows. Frankly, that is about where I think I want to be for the moment — and really for the foreseeable future. Things will change. New stuff will come on, and as we get to moving toward — we’re not even close to it yet — but the one-year mark here, we’ll see where we stand in all kinds of ways. But that 25 to 30 number is pretty good.

You and I haven’t had that conversation yet. In one sense, it’s arbitrary. In another sense, I really want this first six months, even year, is to get to a really foundational, stable place with the network. Then, of course, along the way, but also you at some point really want to slow down, see where you are, and make those shows even better, the shows that are there. That’s the conversations I’ve been having with Jerod on the host relations, talent side and then on the production side with Kelton. There’s a lot of moving parts.

Brian Clark: We’ve only been doing this two months so …

Robert Bruce: Has it only been two months?

Brian Clark: It feels like a lifetime, doesn’t it?

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: Just two months. Finding things out just like we always talk about. Put it out there. See what works. See what doesn’t. You expand. You retract. The answers will make themselves.

I tend to agree with you at least for phase one, 25 to 30 really solid shows — that’s quite an achievement, and it’s a lot to choose from. From people we’ve already seen that some people are like, “I want to listen to all of them, but there is too much.”

I didn’t really anticipate that because the reason you have all these different niche topics and slightly different position shows is that you find the handful of them that really work for you. It’s a testament to maybe we’re hitting it pretty well and that we’ve got people who really do want to consume it all. And that’s hard.

The Showrunner course — just in its short pilot program — it did exceptionally well. I think our other theory that, yes, people want portable, on-demand podcast-level education, insight, advice — all that good stuff. But they’re also very hungry for in-depth, highly detailed, dripped-out courses that really drill down, take it to the next level where it’s not about, “Oh, that’s a good idea.” It’s more like, “Oh wait. OK. I got this blueprint for how to do this.”

It made sense to start with podcasting, especially with the experience Jerod and Jon have. I would expect to see more of that because we’re already getting requests for it.

Why Robert Is Betraying Me and What I’m Doing About It

Brian Clark: OK, so we only have a little bit of time left. I guess we should close with a dramatic announcement that you are a quitter.

Robert Bruce: Dammit. I was trying to do a drop the mic sound effect. Maybe I’ll drop something in there. I’m out.

Brian Clark: You are really taking my advice to heart. You’re just like, “I’m a producer, dammit.”

Robert Bruce: That’s right.

Brian Clark: “I m behind the scenes, I make more money than the talent. Therefore, I will not mingle with you little people anymore. ” Is that where you’re coming from with this?

Robert Bruce: Almost 100 percent wrong. No, actually it will be more. I’ll be mingling more with, as you say, the talent and the hosts. What was I thinking the other night? I feel like I’m more Rick Rubin than I am Jay Z these days. This whole putting this thing together …

Brian Clark: You actually look like Rick Rubin.

Robert Bruce: Well, I need to grow the hair out again, but maybe we can work that out — and the beard, too.

Brian Clark: I would agree with that. Yet, at the same time, listen to that voice. Listen to the insight, so your whole argument that, “I’m not good at this. Blah blah blah.” I don’t buy that at all. I, of course, do respect your wishes, but I can’t believe you’re leaving me to fly solo. All right, here’s the question we need to ask the audience.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, shoot. Oh, the audience — you don’t care about asking me anything.

Brian Clark: You’re gone. What do I care? Going forward, I can either just fire up Garage Band and just sit here and talk — which I find very difficult. We’ve talked about this for years. If it’s just me, I have a very hard time starting this show. I know we did it a year ago January when we started this podcast, and it was challenging. I think the output was good. We’ve had lots of compliments over time. I either go back to that, or I get another co-host. I’m not sure who that would be given that everyone is just as busy as anyone else. Maybe we should take comments on it.

Robert Bruce: Can I give my two cents here? Definitely take comments.

Brian Clark: Here’s your last meaningful statement on my show, Robert.

Robert Bruce: I think you could go either way. But I’d like to see you try the short-form monologue bit for at least a good number of episodes.

Brian Clark: We’ll see. Okay. This is my request to the audience now. Since Robert is ditching me and making my life more difficult as he always has, but not to this degree. I’m really going to ask that you go over to iTunes, give me a rating or a review as encouragement to carry on, feeling a bit weepy. Did that sound sincere at all?

Robert Bruce: Not at all. I was going to ask if you needed a hug, but that wasn’t going to come down sincerely, either.

Brian Clark: Okay, anyway. I’d still appreciate a rating or review.

Robert Bruce: You’re fine.

Brian Clark: I will be back next week without the traitorous Robert Bruce.

The Transcript

Will Millennials Kill Email Marketing?

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

How to Be in Two Places at Once

Brian Clark: Robert, you realize as this show goes live, you’re probably standing on a magnificent stage in Denver, Colorado. Dan Pink just left, and you’re introducing Scott Brinker. Yet, here we are in your ear.

Robert Bruce: Don’t you want to know how I’ve accomplished this amazing feat?

Brian Clark: Well, I know how.

Robert Bruce: How? No, it is extraordinary. It’s an extraordinary thing, Brian. We’re in Denver, and we’re also in your ear.

Brian Clark: On the air.

Robert Bruce: On the air.

Brian Clark: It s the magic of on-demand content. Who knows when we recorded this?

Robert Bruce: You think there’s some appointment viewing going on?

Brian Clark: Appointment viewing?

Robert Bruce: Listening, rather?

Brian Clark: I don’t know. I do know that as soon as it hits the feed, there are listeners, but usually the big chunk of people come when we send out an email. The conference will be long over by that time.

Robert Bruce: Yeah. Speaking of appointment viewing, listening, and things like that, you sent me an article this morning, and it has to do with one of my favorite people groups, which is our dear Millennials, and their email habits.

The Key to Email Success with Millennials

Brian Clark: Yeah, absolutely. I saw I think Ann Handley, another one of our conference speakers — this is all getting quite congruent — but she Tweeted this. It’s a Marketing Profs article, and the title is Your Email Marketing Campaign Isn’t Attracting Millennials (for Good Reasons).

Now, I click over, hoping that this isn’t one of those silly pieces about how Millennials don’t use email. Thankfully, that is not even addressed, because that’s ridiculous. Millennials do use email, and they are power users, actually, of email compared to older generations. I think our habits as online people, publishers, and marketers, are more similar to Millennials than, say, some of our peers. Does that make sense?

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: We’re constantly plugged in, and of course, we’ve been talking about lately how that’s probably not even a good idea for us. Anyway, so I Retweeted this article, and it got a lot of interest, but like clockwork, someone responded with, They don’t use email.

But it’s not true. They do use email. They’re checking their email constantly throughout the day. Here’s an interesting, fascinating statistic: 38 percent of all Millennials are freelancers. Is that amazing or what? Are you telling me that these people are doing business as freelancers of whatever stripe over WhatsApp, or text messages?

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: No. Email is the medium of business, which I offer is the reason why it remains and will remain the primary sales channel for online. Because that’s where people go to do business.

Why the Logged-in Experience Is the Answer

Robert Bruce: Yeah. That’s not just some abstract philosophy. Think about it. What is the one thing you need to sign up for WhatsApp? Certainly, there’s some different login options now. Sometimes, you’ll run into something where it’s only by Twitter or Facebook login, but the vast majority of services and products and business services that we use, you need an email to log in. Those services, those hot social services, all are run on email.

By the way, for those who think that Millennials are lost down the rabbit hole of the app economy forever and email marketing is irrelevant, just remember that email, on the phone, is an app.

Brian Clark: Email s always been a software application.

Robert Bruce: Right.

Brian Clark: On the phone, you’re right. It is an app. You can use whatever one is standard with your iPhone or your Android, or there are other email apps out there. Yes, it is an app, but that doesn’t mean that they’re not using email messaging. Because again, to interact with the world to any degree, but especially in a business sense, you have to use email.

The difference, or at least different from perhaps other generations for the most part, is that Millennials are constantly checking email as part of their daily life workflow. It’s more of a mash-up than a segregation between life and work. I think you and I probably resemble that, again, just because of the type of business that we’re in.

The Absolute Necessity of Mobile-Friendliness

Brian Clark: One of the primary reasons that’s pointed out in this article that people are not being affected by email marketing among other things, is that they’re not mobile responsive. We’ve talked about this before — that Google had to swing the big bat of Your rankings are going to drop in mobile if you don’t become mobile-friendly. Again, what is the actual point? The point is user-friendly so that people can actually consume your content and your messages. The fact that you had to be threatened with a ranking penalty doesn’t make any sense. The problem is that people can’t interact with your content in their preferred way.

Email Marketing 101

Brian Clark: According to the article, the Millennials are constantly on their phone. They’re constantly plugged in looking for relevant messages to them — not to you — to them: Marketing 101. Yet there are a lot of people that are still doing the spam-and-jam thing. They’re buying email lists. They’re sending unsolicited messages.

One thing that the article talked about that I don’t know is as crucial as they’re making it — and you kind of alluded to it — is consistent delivery, always showing up at the same time or scheduling an appointment.

Do Consistent Email Delivery Times Make a Difference?

Robert Bruce: Yeah.

Brian Clark: How do you feel about that?

Robert Bruce: I may be too old for this because now, all this talk of appointment viewing and the reality of the world we live in with Netflix and Amazon and iTunes and being able to watch what I want when I want, maybe just kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I have no evidence of this.

Rachel Burger, who wrote this article, is saying — back to your point, 38 percent of Millennials are freelancers — but of those working regular hours, 89 percent check their email long after the workday has ended. They’re practicing what she calls work-life blending, mixing play and work, so they become almost indistinguishable.

She makes a connection there that Millennials would prefer to have their emails delivered, that they have signed up for, consistently at a specific time. I don’t know about this. Consistently, obviously, is huge in anything you’re doing, but the specific time thing I guess I could see it, so I’m not going to rage against it.

Brian Clark: I know we aim for it. Of course, sometimes messages come when they come because that’s what needs to be communicated at that time. As far as content, for example, with the Further newsletter, I’ve never missed a Monday. I aim for around 10:00 a.m. Mountain time. But, for example, the last issue was a little bit later than that just because I’m abnormally busy right now in the run-up to the event and a lot of other stuff that we’ve got going on. I haven’t received any complaints if there is a window of time. I would imagine if I just totally missed a week or showed up on another day, people might start to wonder. I’m not convinced, necessarily, if I think that’s a good sign.

This is really going to get to the heart of the matter. If your content, your email, whatever the case may be, is anticipated, that is a damn good thing. It’s when something keeps showing up and it never gets read and finally they’re like, Uh, I’ve got to get off this list. It happens. You’re never going to connect 100 percent with people, but by and large, you know if your unsubscribe rate, your open rates, et cetera are healthy or not. That’s the key. What are you sending to people, Millennials or not, but especially, I think, Millennials? It’s interesting reading this article because I feel like it could be speaking about me.

We are digital natives of the first generation, even though we are older people now. Millennials are digital natives by birth, and that’s the difference. I don’t feel alien or very different from a Millennial in my online practices. It’s the same thing. If I’m seeing messages that I consider to be spam, or just not useful to me, yeah, I’m unsubscribing. That’s how it works. We people who have spent a lot of time online are very savvy about avoiding or routing around the damage of the Internet, which has been referred to in terms of censorship, but it’s also in terms of spam. We know how to avoid it.

Going back to the theme that we’ve had about creating an experience, specifically a registration and access, logged-in experience, which lends itself to all these great personalization techniques that Millennials also appreciate. People appreciate a more targeted one-on-one, feeling type message, right? Isn’t that just human nature, Robert?

Robert Bruce: Yeah, and this goes to one of the core issues of business and life in general. It s Ms. Burger’s number three. Don’t assume you know someone, right? When we make assumptions about somebody’s life or somebody’s story, we are prone to make grave errors, both in business and in life.

Brian Clark: Has there been a more stereotyped generation than the Millennials since Generation X was stereotyped?

Robert Bruce: Right, slacker.

Why Millennials and Gen X Aren t So Different

Brian Clark: We were stereotyped. It happens to every generation, but I think more than anyone, the Millennials have been unfairly characterized in a stereotypical fashion. You’re right –that is the death of audience. That is the death of business, when you think someone is, some very shallow transparent stereotype, instead of a richly nuanced human being. We have generational characteristics. I argued that the Millennials are more like Gen X than people would like to admit — or is that the right word? I don’t know. All I know is that we went through a recession, and we were all upset and angry, and that’s where grunge came from. Then the Millennials have a recession that makes ours look like a day at the beach.

They should be the ones who are angry. I admire them because they’re optimistic to a degree, but they’re savvy, too. You know what I’m saying? They’re not going to put up with your BS, but they’re not necessarily raging angry about everything either. I think serving any generation, but especially the Millennial generation, well is just truly understanding who you’re trying to talk to and providing real value and experience. Whether it’s an educational, Here let me teach you this and I’m going to need you to register for it and you’re going to come back here into this training area, which is becoming ubiquitous with these larger learning programs.

I’m going to deliver you something that you value, that you look forward to. I’ll do my damnedest to be consistent and show up on the same day and time or whatever the case may be. I think if they’re anticipating hearing from me, or the organization as it would be, I think that’s the win.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, right.

Brian Clark: If someone is looking forward to getting your email and you’re a few minutes late, I don’t think they’re going to get mad at you, but I think when you show up randomly with a message that isn’t anticipated or desired, that’s when you get marked as spam because it’s just easier.

Robert Bruce: The newsletters that I want to get, trust me — I always read them. It doesn’t matter what time, what place. But I think this is a good point: consistency, scheduled time, and specifically within the context of talking to Millennials. You’re right. If it’s something that I want, I’m going to read it, no question.

Brian Clark: Yeah, and that’s the secret. I don’t know how many times lately I’ve said it: It’s simple, maybe just not easy. It is simple. Everyone wants to take shortcuts, or they just want to send as many unsolicited spam messages as possible and hope something sticks.

Robert Bruce: It’s all about relevance.

Brian Clark: Yeah, and it’s interesting, because I talk to a lot of people that are in more traditional business sectors, and they don’t understand. They understand the concept of, if you have a bunch of people that you can reach by email, that’s a good promotional tool, but what they don’t get is actually how valuable that audience is and how much you should be focused on delivering value to get the sign-up in the first place. Being consistent with value is more important than being consistent on time. Isn’t that really what we’re both saying here? You’ve got to nurture that list. You’ve got to earn the right to send that offer.

Robert Bruce: No, it’s real simple. You’re right. It is simple, but it’s not easy. You’re sending really great education or entertainment, or whatever your thing is, to people that want to receive it. You know what? That can be a long, fruitful relationship for both sides, but then as you mentioned before, when the unsubscribes do come, you look at that as feedback, really.

Unsubscribes are a great thing because it tells you something, sometimes. You’ve got to look at the context of why and how and who. Don’t fear the unsubscribe because that person has decided at this point in time to take off. Well, they weren’t going to do any kind of business with you anyway, so it’s a good thing.

Brian Clark: Unsubscribes are a natural part of the process. What you look for is an alarming rate of people marking you as spam instead of scrolling down and hitting unsubscribe.

You may say that people just don’t care and they’ll just mark it as spam to get rid of it faster. But I’ve found that when a complaint happens, I’m always shocked. Like Really? Come on now. That was a pure content email. But it’s so rare that you don’t even think about it. That was just a person taking a shortcut. If you saw a lot of that behavior, that’s feedback you need to pay attention to, but unsubscribes in the normal course, as long as you’re not losing half your audience every time you mail, it should be a tiny percentage. But the bigger your list gets, the bigger that number is. It’s okay. It’s normal.

Let me leave you with this. Think about what kind of experience — educational, motivational, what have you — can you offer that is above and beyond just Sign-up for my newsletter. Even something like Further would benefit from me creating a front-end experience, a goal, a challenge of some sort that, Oh, and also you will continue to receive this great content weekly.

That’s the way to do it, and that’s the next step. If I make it through this conference alive, I may have some time this summer to do some projects, and we do have some stuff coming? Right.

Robert Bruce: Yeah we do. Let’s do this. Go to NewRainmaker.FM. Sign up for the email list there. You won’t miss a thing in terms of what’s coming.

Brian Clark: All right everyone, thanks for tuning in, and if you did happen to make it to Denver, you’re not listening to this right now.

Robert Bruce: You better not be.

Brian Clark: I will be talking to you in another context.

The Transcript

Does Audio Create Authority Faster Than Text?

Voiceover: This is Rainmaker.FM, the digital marketing podcast network. It’s built on the Rainmaker Platform, which empowers you to build your own digital marketing and sales platform. Start your free 14-day trial at RainmakerPlatform.com.

Robert Bruce: I’m recording this, Brian. Are you going to cough? Do you have a cough button?

Brian Clark: No.

Robert Bruce: Because if you cough, I mean, I can edit it out later.

Brian Clark: Wait, is this the opening of the show?

Robert Bruce: This is the opening of the show. Because here’s the thing.

Brian Clark: That’s wonderful.

Robert Bruce: We’re a week away from Denver, from Authority Rainmaker, and you’re sitting here coughing on this recording. It’s making me a little nervous.

Brian Clark: Yeah. I’m not sure what’s going on. You know, I got a Tweet last week. Someone said he didn’t like all the chitchat that you and I engage in. This is probably going to really impress that guy.

Robert Bruce: Wow.

Brian Clark: Yeah.

Robert Bruce: It s like a minute, compared to other things. Let’s just keep chit … No, we won’t keep chitchatting.

All right. Does audio create authority faster than text? Interesting question you’ve brought up here. What are you getting at with this question?

Brian Clark: When I write the Further newsletter, I’m constantly reading geeky psychological articles, which I enjoy quite a bit. I came across this article that said that the human brain detects confidence in the voice of a speaker in less than a blink of a eye — like two-tenths of a second, that fast. It was really interesting to me because basically, in this research study, they taped 64 electrodes to each subject’s head, and then they had people make statements. They were designed to either be neutral or unconfident, mostly confident, and then confident, and the brain activity spiked, just lit up, when confident speech was heard.

It was almost instantaneous. Nearly confident speech took a little bit longer to process. If you’re not quite as confident, it’s harder for people to assess. It was something like 130 milliseconds later. It’s just kind of fascinating to me that we’re hardwired to give our attention and to attribute influence to people who speak confidently, even though there may be plenty of people out there who know their stuff, but they don’t have that level of confidence. I can certainly see that coming in to play with podcasting.

The flip side to this is coming from a medium that’s been text-heavy since the beginning of the Internet, a lot of people don’t write with a voice of authority or confidence, even if they are. It made me think. Is podcasting or audio content really the cure or an enhancer of authority if in fact you know what you’re talking about and you can deliver it confidently? It’s an interesting question.

The Maddening Path to Mastery and Confidence

Robert Bruce: Yeah. Very interesting. It’s a tough one because — we ve talked about this a lot — the idea of turning on, sitting in front of a microphone, hitting record, is a completely unnatural act. Therefore, it can erode any confidence that you may have in the subject, even when you are an expert and when you are working on these things day in and day out over a period of years and talking about them.

Brian Clark: Yeah. In the research I did subsequently to finding this article — how do people become more confident — it s kind of like this chicken-and-egg situation. Become confident to do things that you’re not confident about. The only way to become confident is to do them anyway, which I think drives everyone crazy, but it’s true. For example, I was deathly afraid of public speaking before I started doing it about seven years ago, and you know from our private conversations, I dread it every time. I was like, “Why did agree to do this again?” Then you said, That’s what you said last year and the year before that.

I still get nervous but here’s how I get over it. Number one, I stick to topics that I know, obviously. No one wants to hear me talk about something I don’t know what I’m talking about. Even the minutia or the anecdotes or music references, I will go and research to make sure that I don’t get even the smallest thing wrong, because I don’t like it. I don’t like to make mistakes, even though they happen to everyone.

Finally, the finally component, if I can refer to our friend, Mr. Henry Rollins and his Writer Files interview, you remember the two words that he said were his favorite quote?

Robert Bruce: Oh yeah, right. No. Can we say it? I’ll have to bleep it out, right?

Brian Clark: Yeah, well, Eff it. That’s ultimately what I say in my head when I go up on stage. What’s the worst that could happen? Do your best. It’s always fun. When I get off stage, I’m exhilarated and I feel good, but what I found looking through the research is that you kind of just have to say, if not eff it, then What’s the worst that can happen? In making mistakes, it’s feedback. Right? You tried something. You fail. You learn. You try again. But if you can’t take that mindset, then confidence never really develops, because you’re always afraid of failure as if it’s going to physically hurt you, and in most cases, that’s not what’s going to happen at all.

Robert Bruce: It’s the old thing with podcasting in particular. How to get better, how to become comfortable, and yes, confident behind the microphone is to do 100 episodes. It s just to keep doing it, as painful as it may be. The question, too, becomes, though, is it something that you want to do, versus something that you think might help — whatever — your goals or anything? Because if it’s something that you’re not too sure about, obviously that’s going to affect how you do the thing. Maybe commitment is a part of that, as well. If you’re going to do it, you might as well do it, and then that becomes the long-haul-over-100-episodes thing.

How to Learn Any Topic at a Deeper Level

Brian Clark: Right, and the process of doing it, that’s so important. You’ve always said — go back to our first episodes of the podcast back in 2010 — we were terrible, and I take your word for it because I’m not going back and listening at this point.

Here’s something else that’s really amazing: when you are expanding your knowledge on a topic, let’s say you’ve got some baseline knowledge because you’re in this particular industry, in which you’re always learning new things. The best strategy for a podcast or a blog or whatever is to share what you know as you’re learning. You don’t have to hold yourself out as, I’m the premier expert on this.

No. Here’s what I know, and I’m sharing it with you so you know it. But there’s an interesting thing about that process. The process of learning and then explaining it to people means that you internalize that information at a much higher rate. It’s called elaboration. It’s a retrieval process. If you really want to learn something, you need to force yourself to retrieve the information. One way to do that is through quizzes and testing. We think about the test as determining what you know, but it’s actually a learning aid. The act of being tested and retrieving tells you what you don’t know, what you do know, and it solidifies the material for you at a higher level, which is pretty cool.

Through the years of Copyblogger and explaining deeper copywriting principles and content marketing, thinking deeply, and trying to learn more, I realized a long time ago that that was what made my game elevate much faster than if I were just a practitioner. The act of explaining forces you to understand the material at a higher level. You truly do become an expert, and your confidence level goes up. It’s maddening, but you’ve got to do it in order to increase your confidence, which increases your authority all in one big package. It’s kind of amazing, but the only way to get by it is to do it.

Now Robert, beyond this — just showing up and doing the work, which is simple but not always easy — you’re a trained actor. You’ve done voice work. You’ve done all sorts of stuff that perhaps the average person who’s thinking about getting into podcasting hasn’t done. Do you have any tips in that arena where you can enhance the confidence that comes across in your voice, or is that even possible?

4 Quick Tips for More Confident Speaking

Robert Bruce: Oh yeah, it definitely is, and I think it s my former life as an actor. There’s a couple of things. I’ll list off a couple of things and describe them briefly. The best thing to do is to go to NewRainmaker.FM, and I’ll leave a bunch of stuff in the show notes for this episode. The episode is titled, Does Audio Create Authority Faster than Text? Four quick things.

One is preparation. All of these are going to be obvious — I think relatively obvious, anyway — but in the context of podcasting and doing content — audio, video, whatever it is — preparation. Yes, in terms of the content itself, either making notes, or sometimes you want to script something out completely. The general idea here is know what you’re talking about. If you’re not an expert, necessarily, know the subject that you’re interviewing, which is another way to approach all of these topics and to slowly gain confidence in front of the mic or in front of the camera. Preparation, that’s number one.

Number two is to breathe. We’re not going to get into yoga and all of that stuff, of which I know nothing, but there are some basic breathing techniques that can be surprisingly helpful in terms of how it affects the voice. The one quick thing is you may have heard, Breathe from your diaphragm. What the hell does that mean? It’s this kind of weird statement that you hear every once in a while. The thing that helped me understand it was, as someone once told me, as babies, we breathe properly from our diaphragm. If you look at a baby in a crib sleeping, naturally their stomach is going to be going up and down, up and down.

If you don’t think about it, which is impossible now that I mentioned it, as adults, somewhere we transition to this idea of breathing more shallow and breathing from our chest. Our chest goes up and down as you take a breath in and take a breath out. When you’re on stage in front of the microphone, in front of the video, breathing obviously is the mechanism by which your words are delivered in that sense. You want to breathe from the diaphragm. One quick cheat on this is the next couple of breaths you take, when you inhale, expand your stomach. Inhale through the nose, expand your stomach, force it, even fake it, exhale. The stomach goes down. That is breathing, essentially, from the diaphragm. Again, I’ll leave a few notes on here.

It s kind of a weird deal, but it’s a physical act that enhances the speaking ability, and this is going back forever.

Brian Clark: Yeah. I had issues with proper breathing and too-shallow breathing. It’s kind of strange. You have to train yourself to pay attention to the breath, which I suppose meditation helps with to a certain degree. But it’s really when you’re in the act of your day-to-day life that you need to make sure that you’re properly breathing, and that can be challenging.

Robert Bruce: Yeah, and you’ll notice in the context of this conversation, that your voice will become deeper and stronger in a sense when you’re breathing from the diaphragm. Again, more on that in the show notes.

One quick thing in terms of enunciation and pronouncing words properly and clearly. This one is a little bit of a catch-22 in the modern age. It’s Demosthenes’ stones. No, not those stones. It was — how far back are we going, back to ancient Athens? Demosthenes was a gentleman who grew up with a speech impediment, and through a series of events, he wanted to learn how to speak better. It’s a great story, I won’t tell the whole thing right here.

He put into his mouth a number of stones. Of course, if you’re going to try this, be very careful. You could easily get in to trouble swallowing stones. He spoke with these stones in his mouth, forcing his mouth to speak through them, and this helps with — over the long term — enunciation. You can use a cork from a wine bottle, any number of things that kind of obstruct the mouth and force it to work harder as you speak. Simple things like that can really help.

The one thing you want to be careful about this, though, is that we are in an age where the Shakespearean actor, though alive and well on stages around the world, in popular culture really does not hold the weight that it once did. A great example is Orson Welles. If I were to come on here and talk like Orson Welles — not like I’m talking like him now, I sound nothing like him — you would be disturbed and probably click off and run away. Now, you can see it.

Brian Clark: It’s more like, you have to be confident but you also have to be authentic. That s the balancing act.

Robert Bruce: Just look at television. Acting is a great corollary here because if you look at television these days, actors are more subtle. They’re micced, so they do not have to project to the back of a theater, but that is also affected the style of acting, which we’ve all become accustomed to and love in these shows. It’s very low-key, a lot of times, and sometimes you can’t even see their mouth moving in some cases, or understand the words they’re saying, I ve found recently. You want to be careful with using techniques like putting rocks or a cork in your mouth or something.

The last thing, number four, I’ll say, is mic technique. There are ways to approach a microphone that are very helpful in terms of sounding good. I’m still working with this. We all are. But I’ll drop a few notes in on that, but just simple things like talking around or over your microphone, not directly into it, speaking at a certain distance or distances, depending on what it is you’re trying to affect with the microphone.

That’s four things: preparation, breathing, Demosthenes’ stones, and mic technique.

Brian Clark: Just try saying Demosthenes over and over.

Robert Bruce: I know. That’s bad enough.

Brian Clark: Tough enough. That’s probably all you need to do.

Robert Bruce: Let me add a fifth one real quick here, Brian, which is the biggest one of all, which is editing.

Brian Clark: Yes.

Robert Bruce: You can take out all those screw-ups – ums, uhs — you don’t hear all this stuff because we take a lot of that out for your benefit, dear listener, but editing is a great benefit in confidence, as well. It helps to know that while you’re talking, while you’re recording, Oh, okay, this sucks. This whole section that I just spoke was horrible. I can take that out, which can help with confidence, as well.

Brian Clark: Yeah. That took me a long time to really realize that the magic happens in editing, and you can just completely screw up. You just can’t let it shake you, and start over again. Just pause, take a breath, and start over. The final product is really all that matters. No one has to know how many things ended up on the floor, metaphorically.

Robert Bruce: That old cutting room floor.

Brian Clark: All right. Well, this is an interesting topic. This is kind of fun to geek out about, but podcasting — as we’ve discussed over and over in the New Rainmaker free training — it’s the perfect source content because you get it out there. You get your expertise out there. It can be repurposed in to other formats as desired or applicable, and it’s completely doable.

But we had Jerod talking about the connection that you make with people when they can hear your voice and the nuance that can come across or gets lost in writing, or just, again, that a lot of people are not confident in their writing, and they tend to just slip into the passive voice and then come across as wishy-washy when they’re not at all. It’s just that not everyone is writer.

Anyway. If you’re on the fence about starting your own podcast, don’t let a lack of confidence stop you because the only way you’re going to get there is like us, maybe doing 20 terrible episodes. Who cares?

Robert Bruce: And twenty terrible more.

Brian Clark: What’s the worst that could happen?

Robert Bruce: No more chitchat.

Brian Clark: That’s right.