Welcome to the six Figure Business Mastery Podcast, where every week

Kirsten and Jeanie dive into the essential topics to fuel your business

growth, from copywriting to course creation mindset, to video marketing.

They've got you covered.

Tune in for expert guest interviews on all things marketing and

business, and learn how to work on your business, not just in it.

So get ready to unlock your business potential and take it to the next level.

Welcome everyone to our newest episode.

We're so excited to have you here, and we're excited to have Seth Donlin.

He is visiting us.

He is a marketing and communications coach with over over 20 years of expertise in

storytelling and strategic brand building.

So I'm excited.

We're gonna talk today about leveraging other people's audiences.

So welcome to the program, Seth.

We're thrilled to have you.

Thank you.

Thanks to the both of you.

I really appreciate being here.

I'm excited.

How did you kind of learn the secret of leveraging other people's audiences?

Well, you know, it was something that I think I, I partially fell into.

Wait a minute, this is fantastic.

As I was looking for more opportunities to speak publicly, I like getting

on stages and speaking in front of people and, you know, some

people make a great career at that.

That's not the focus of my career.

I, I speak a lot, but I'm not.

My career isn't as a paid speaker where I'm, you know, solely focused on that,

but I wanted more opportunities to do it and I realized that podcasting would

be a great, or guesting on people's podcasts would be a great way to do it.

So I started doing that, and as I started doing that, I realized because

I had been thinking about starting my own podcast, you know, many.

People who guessed do, or many people that aren't even guessing and thinking

about it, it's podcasting is hot, right?

So I've been thinking about doing my own show and thinking about the work

that was gonna be involved in growing the audience of the show and so on.

And you know, it dawned on me, it's like I'm going on these other

people's shows and they've been.

Their podcast has been going for a year, two years, three years, four years.

They built this great audience and I get to just step onto that stage and

speak to 400, 500, a thousand people.

And I haven't had to do any of that work to bring that audience together.

I've gotta do the work to get myself in the show.

And there's some work involved in that, right?

But that's a lot less, in my opinion, that's a lot less work than building an

audience of seven or 800 people that are gonna listen to me on a regular basis.

Right?

So I just kind of.

Fell into it, but as I got going, I realized there's a lot of power in this

for people that are looking to, to grow their audience and, and build their

brand and do it in a really targeted way.

Because of course, as we all know, podcast audiences tend to be very niche.

And so if you are somebody that wants to.

Really be as, you should really be speaking very specifically

to a specific target audience.

Podcasts are a great way to do it, and using somebody else's hard work

and the audience that they've built is a really efficient way to do it.

I love that.

Yeah.

My VA books me on average.

Oh, probably two podcasts a week on average.

So I love guesting.

And then of course, Jeannie and I have two podcasts.

We record five episodes a week.

Of course we have a team that takes care of all the editing and social

media marketing and all of that.

But how amazing is it that we get to get up and have just incredible

conversations with people like you and our guest earlier.

And Regina and I always learn things.

We end up working with some of the our guests.

Some of our guests end up working with us.

It is really powerful.

I also think people who enjoy podcasting as a whole really

do believe in collaboration.

Have you found that to be true as well?

Oh yeah.

Undoubtedly.

It's not rare at all for the host to say.

Okay, recording stopped.

Hey, that was a great episode, blah, blah, blah.

And this thing you said was, was fantastic.

It got me thinking about something.

We should schedule another call where we talk about like, maybe you

can, we've got a webinar coming up.

You would be a great guest for that.

Maybe we can pitch a product together or a service to, you know, like these types

of conversations come up all the time.

Or I offer something to an audience at the end of a podcast and then the

host recording is finished and the host says, Hey, I might take you up

on that free offer that you just made.

You know, so those relationships that are built between the host

and the guest are often very.

Lucrative, whether they're immediately lucrative or whether that just

relationship that gets built over time ends up, uh, resulting

in referrals, flying in either direction and so on and so forth.

It's, it's hugely beneficial for my business and most people that I work

with, they find that it's really beneficial for their business as well.

I love that.

So is that the medium that you recommend to your clients to get them

in front of other people's audience?

Is podcasts or, or are there other things?

You know, I'm not ignore everything else.

Only go on podcasts.

I mean, that would be foolish, but yeah, that's the, that is the primary.

Focus of my practice when I'm working with people to help them build

their brands, which is primarily what people are coming to me for.

I mean, some people may be coming to me because they say, look,

you know, I'm interested in your guest success accelerator.

I really want to become a great podcast guest.

And that's their focus is just, you know, kind of like you would hire somebody

to be, if you're gonna be a keynote speaker, you hire a public speaking coach.

Right.

And you think about it like if you, if you were.

Keynoting 40 times a year, 50 times a year, you would

hire a public speaking coach.

You wouldn't just bumble your way through that.

And it's really easy to guess on 40 or 50 podcasts a year.

And so it makes sense to have coaching for that, right?

So people come to me for that coaching, but if when you really

dig down into it, well, why is it that they're on these stages?

Podcasting being a stage, right?

Why are they on their stage?

They're not.

They're on it to, to build their personal brand, right?

And to grow their business.

So ultimately, you know, you dig down deeper, they're really coming

to me for personal branding help, uh, through the medium of podcasting.

And so, you know, I try to, to approach it a little more holistically.

One of the great things about podcasting is it is it lends itself to repurposing

whether you're actually editing clips and posting them on LinkedIn

or wherever it is that you're posting them, or whether you're using it.

I think that podcasting is a great way to kind of be efficient in your.

Researching of your target audience.

Because for many people, particularly starting out, if they don't already have

a large audience that they can pull and they, like, their email list isn't huge.

There may be whether they're starting out in a kind of a, they've had a

career pivot or they're launching a new service or product or something like

that, and so they, they don't have a long history of getting feedback from

their, from their customer base, their client base on what they're offering.

Well, how do you go out and find like.

What are people's real pain points?

What are the things that really resonate with them?

You as the expert have a lot of information and oftentimes it's the

thing that you think isn't going to be all that exciting that you, you

say to somebody and they're like, oh my God, that just blew me away.

Like, that's exactly what I needed to hear.

Right?

But you get on a podcast.

The hosts start asking you questions and you give an answer, and then the

host goes, oh, okay, wait a minute, I'm gonna write that one down.

That was actually good audience.

Are you paying attention?

And it allows you to say, okay, now I have validation that that's a good

thing that I need to be focusing on.

Right?

And if you're podcasting regularly, you get this kind of feedback

regularly and it helps you to, to have a better understanding of what

your audience needs to hear from you.

So when you're crafting social media content and other things, when you're

writing something for your email newsletter, when, whatever, however.

Whatever other channels you're using, the information you're gathering through your

podcasting recording sessions is helpful.

And also just in terms of if you're doing this regularly,

not everybody's the same, right?

But certainly there's that group of people, and it's not a small group

that want to generate content on a.

Pretty frequent basis, but they have a hard time because one, maybe they've just

been doing it for a long time and they feel like, ah, I've asked, uh, you know,

like, I've written about this before.

I've asked this question before, whatever.

And being on a podcast again gets you exposed to people asking you questions

about your expertise, and maybe they ask it in a slightly different way and

that triggers something in your head and you say, oh yes, I'm gonna write

about this for my newsletter this week.

Because that was a great, that, that question led to a great

discussion on the podcast.

And it, and now I can like, maybe.

Go a little bit deeper into it or take it in a slightly different

direction for this other medium.

So I, you know, podcasting I think is just super helpful in building your

brand for, for helping you generate content across all your channels.

Seth, you're so right because, you know, sometimes I'll, you know, get

off of a podcast interview where I'm the guest and I'll reach out to

Jeanie and say that they asked me this question and I answered it this way.

So sometimes.

Our messaging, we have a way of, we don't mean to box ourselves in,

but our brains box ourselves in.

Mm-hmm.

And so when someone asks you a question in a different way,

you have these aha moments.

So I feel like you're right.

Guesting allows you to really think about your, your messaging and

answering questions in different ways.

And it's also interesting, you know, I, I feel like as a guest, I'm

always learning things from the host.

It inspires me to try to be a better host.

And when we're hosting a podcast, I'm always learning from the guest.

So it, it just gives you this great loop of how we can improve ourselves

and there's so many different styles of hosting and there's so

many different ways to be a guest depending on what that host, you know,

how they conduct their interviews.

So it really is a fun and sometimes challenging thing to do, but you

do get so much content out of it in so many great relationships.

Do you feel like it's really important for someone to use podcasting to really build

their authority and their brand identity?

I mean, your question is, is, is it, is it important for them to use it?

I'll say you don't have to.

I mean, certainly people have built brand identity.

Without using podcasts.

Mm-hmm.

I think that you'd be missing out if you weren't putting that

podcast guesting into your mix.

It helps particularly for one reason.

It's because there's very few, I mean, being brought on a stage

is a similar type of thing.

There's different skill sets involved, which most people don't

realize, but it's a very similar kind of relationship to the audience.

On a podcast, like a stage, you aren't just wandering onto that

stage and saying, oh, hey, I'm Seth.

Let introduce myself and.

I came on your show and you all introduced me as an expert to that stated or implied,

you see value in what I'm bringing to your audience or you would not have

brought me on your show and your audience.

You have taken the time to build the audience to build

trust with your audience.

Your audience sees you as experts and sees you as people that are knowledgeable

in the field and and trust that you're going to bring experts onto your show.

And then I show up on the show, it gives me instant credibility with your audience.

That would have otherwise taken me a long time to generate.

So in terms of getting that, like building that authority, you have

an instant injection of authority.

I'm essentially borrowing or stealing, not stealing.

'cause it, it's not being reduced from you, but I'm borrowing

from your authority, but I don't have to give it back at the end.

It's like I get to keep it.

As well.

Right.

So it's hugely useful in terms of helping to build that idea of

expertise and authority in the audiences that you're speaking to.

Yeah.

I love that.

But I've heard you talk about how an alter ego can help you free your authentic self.

Can you speak to that a little bit?

Sure.

Yeah.

Well, it seems right.

I, I love talking about this because initially most people see it as being

very, uh, counterintuitive, right?

Well, if, if it's an alter ego, then that's not really me.

So then how is it authentic?

And a year or so ago, I went.

To the grocery store late at night.

I live in a pretty small city and there's this little boutique kind

of family owned grocery store that I like to, to, uh, patronize.

And I went there like, you know, probably 20 minutes, half an

hour before they were closing.

I was almost the only person in the store.

I'm zipping around the store, grabbing a few things, getting to the line to

check out, and they're the type of place that still has bagger and, you know,

it's a really nice, uh, grocery store.

And so the checker in the bagger and I are having a fun conversation.

And the, the checker.

Turns to the bagger and says, see, this is why he's one of our favorite, uh,

customers because he's always so fun to talk to and like raises our mood and, you

know, he's always in such a great mood.

And, you know, obviously that made me feel like a million bucks and

I left there feeling pretty good.

I. The funny thing is, is since I was a teenager, I've suffered from depression

and anxiety and the whole reason I was at the grocery store was to buy soda and ice

cream so I could like pump a bunch of like food generated endorphins into my system.

'cause I was really feeling pretty depe depressed that evening, but I didn't

get into the line and act depressed with the people at the checkout counter.

I. I make it a a point in my life, there's something going on with me, I'm not

gonna push it on to other people, right?

So I kind of like put my game face on for them.

And the nice thing is we had a wonderful interaction and I left

feeling great about it, right?

So there like there was an investment on my part and I got back something from it.

But even if that hadn't happened, the point is is that I am, even though I

suffer from depression and anxiety.

There's plenty of times that I'm really cheery and happy and in a great mood.

It's not inauthentic for me to be, to put on my cheery persona for, for somebody

in the public, in this case, these people at the grocery store, because I'm not

pretending to be something that I'm not.

Naturally, I'm naturally a cheery person and I'm naturally

a depressed person at some times.

Right now, if I'm getting on a stage to keynote, if I'm coming

on your show, I mean, truth be told, I had a stressful morning.

My, my daughter was, you know, I'm not gonna go into details,

but it was a very stressful kind of emotionally draining morning.

But I'm not gonna come onto your show and be like, oh, it's such a rough day.

Right?

You're, you expect something from me.

Your audience expects something from me, right?

So I'm gonna bring that version of myself.

I. That can provide the value that you are expecting and your audience expecting

in that I'm expecting of myself, right?

For now.

That's a little bit of alter ego work, right?

I'm bringing my super confident, super charismatic, hopefully su, super

positive minded version of myself.

And for some people that's kind of, you know, I find that

easy to do to kind of like.

Code switch, let's say.

Um, some people have a harder time doing that maybe because

while they're confident, sometimes it's not the majority of time.

So they have, they have a hard time like bringing that.

Part of themselves to the forefront.

And with those people I work on helping them generate a, um, an alter ego.

And lots of super successful people have done that.

Beyonce is famous for doing that.

Bo Jackson was famous for doing that.

Kobe Bryant is famous for doing that.

Tons of baseball players would say, you know, when they step up to the plate,

they get in a totally different, you know, they're not themselves, they're there.

Alter ego that they've designed for themselves to help protect

them from the stress and the fear, the nerves, the all the things

that could possibly affect them.

And if, you know, they're not able to concentrate properly and hit that

ball well, they, they're gonna lose their job next year and not make

millions of dollars or whatever, right?

So the idea of an alter ego is not that you pretend to

be something that you're not.

It's not that you.

Build yourself an alter ego around something that you've never done or that

you're not good at, or that you can't do naturally, but you build yourself an alter

ego that takes your natural strengths and just elevates them and drops away.

Some of your weaknesses so that you can really bring your

strengths to the forefront.

And, um, yeah, it can psychologically be a, a really helpful trick.

Again, it takes some, it's not like magic.

You have to work at it.

You're not necessarily gonna get it right the first time.

But, you know, bringing back the baseball analogy, I mean.

Baseball players, they spend lots of time in a batting cage swinging,

you know, they miss the ball, they hit the ball, and it's a foul.

They would, you know, it's not every time it's a line drive

triple or whatever, right?

But they won't get line drive triples if they're not in the cage constantly

swinging, swinging, swinging.

I don't think we think about it that way, but we all do that.

And you're just talking about how to develop it even further to build your

confidence and allows you to put yourself out there even more than you are now.

So that, that's brilliant.

Uh, this next tip that you have, I love, which is, in order to attract

people, you need to repel people.

When you're working with a client, how do you explain that to them?

It's a difficult concept.

For some people to wrap their minds around, right?

Because we all want to be liked.

We've all sinned for tens of thousands of years ago, right?

If you were not liked by your tribal group, they literally kicked you out

and you died in the cold or whatever.

Because we couldn't survive on our own, right?

So we are very fine tuned to, to want to make sure that we.

Are as widely liked within our network as we possibly can be.

So to hear somebody say, Hey, you actually want to be pushing some people away,

seems ver can seem very frightening and seem very counterintuitive, but you have

to remember that to be successful at what you want to do, for most people.

Broad support is not what you're looking for.

You're looking for deep support in a, in a narrow channel of your ideal

client, your ideal customer, right?

So when, when I was a kid and I'm, I'm dating myself, um, you know, I was

born in 72, so when I was, you know, towards the end of grade school, we're

talking about the early eighties, the last not quite decade had been.

Was obsessed with truckers long haul trucking.

There was smoking the bandit any which way, but loose trucker, convoy,

all of these Hollywood movies.

You know, truck drivers and their friends and stuff.

And my best friend, Keith and I, were absolutely obsessed with trucks.

We would argue, which is better.

Mac Peterbilt.

I was a Mac guy.

Keith liked Peterbilt, and anytime we would get an opportunity, we

would pack our backpacks full of like peanut butter and jelly and bologna.

We'd get our little.

Uh, Cub Scout canteens and fill it up with water or some juice or whatever, and

we'd hop on our bikes and we'd Dr. And we'd pedal down to the local rural route

and we'd stand on the side of the road.

Keith and his John Deere trucker cat me in this Vietnam era helmet.

That was way too big for me.

You couldn't, you know, probably couldn't even see my eyes.

And we would just stand there all, you know, for hours pumping our fists as the

rigs would drive down this rural route and they would blast their air horns for

us, and we were absolutely in heaven.

Now, if you think about it on, you know, if you're familiar with

what a rural route is like, yeah, there's truck traffic, but there's

cars, there's pickups, there's vans.

It was the seventies.

There were station wagons, right?

And we're out there pumping our fists and there was a lot more vans

and station wagons seeing us pumping our fists than there were trucks

pump seeing us, pumping our fists.

But we didn't like get small with our fist pumping because maybe a car was gonna see

us pumping our fists, or we didn't like.

Honk.

You know, like, give us a horn honk.

We didn't care.

We didn't want horn honks.

We want air horn blasts, right?

And so.

What people have to realize is that when they're speaking to their audience,

they're like, Keith and I when we were kids, you, you care about the rigs

coming down the road and your message is you're pumping of the fist and you

don't worry if the station wagon is not responding to you pumping their

fist station, wagon's not gonna respond to you pumping your fist because

station wagons don't have air horns.

And so you don't care about station wagons and you're not sitting there saying.

Oh, but what?

What does the station wagon think about me?

If I pump my fist, maybe I should change my message so that it also

appeals to the station wagon.

No, you pump your fist and the station wagon sees you pumping your fist and says.

I get it.

This is not for me.

I'm gonna go pay attention someplace else.

Right.

And that's what we do with our audiences.

We, we speak on a podcast, we write on our social media channels, in

our email, newsletters, whatever.

We speak and we write in a targeted way.

We're not repelling people by being a jerk or being like.

Confrontational or like, you know, being argumentative or something like that.

It's just that we are targeting our message to a certain group and

that's naturally going to repel Some people, I mean, I'm sure you

know, you see it in your social media, like you get con comments.

It's like, why are you always saying this?

Or Why don't you write more about this?

Or whatever, and it's like, well, 'cause you're not my audience if

you're asking me that question.

It's because you're not my audience and like, I'm happy to have you here.

Maybe you'll respond when I post a picture of my dog.

And that'll be nice.

And like, you know, and, and having some people that aren't the ideal

customer in my social channel doesn't hurt because then their

second and third degree connections and stuff maybe sees my content.

But if we think about something like an email list, anybody on your email list

that isn't really a good customer for you.

Is hurting you, it's hurting your open rate.

It's hurting like you don't want them on your list.

The more you can actually get them to realize, oh my God, I open up

this email, it never has anything for me, I'm gonna unsubscribe.

That's absolutely what you want because you want to keep

your list targeted, right?

So, you know, just remember station wagons don't have air horns.

Get out there, pump your fist, and don't worry about.

Whether people are like, what are those goofy kids doing out there?

You know, that's, you're doing, you, you are doing exactly

what you need to be doing.

I think that's so true when we're talking to clients, you know, who are

nervous about starting their YouTube channel or starting their podcast,

it is that fear of rejection and it's basically saying, you know, with us

it's what you see is what you get.

If you run into me on the street, you know, I talk with my hands.

It's just, that's just how it goes.

And so if I'm not.

You know, your ideal person to work with or you don't like the way I

deliver information or what I'm teaching you isn't in alignment with, you

know, your values or what you want.

There's someone else out there better to serve you.

But it doesn't mean that we should be afraid to put our content out there.

And I think for a lot of people when they understand, you know, you're not

trying to get, you know, the 1 billion people on the planet or whatever.

You're trying to get the clients who really resonate with you and who

connect with you and your messaging and your values, and I think it's

so important to realize that.

By showing up, you know, as yourself consistently, whether it's hosting

your own podcast or guesting and just getting the message out there,

the right people will find you.

But if you're too afraid to get your messaging out there,

no one's going to find you.

Mm-hmm.

So I, I love that the Air horn story was fantastic.

So that, thank you so much for that.

I, this great visual.

It was like you just totally pulled me into that story.

So you and Keith must have had a lot of fun.

I can imagine some other adventures you went on.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you for saying that.

I mean, people really resonate with that story and people resonate

with the story that I told earlier about the, the grocery store.

I mean, people can relate to that, right?

And the reality is that some people don't relate to that.

Luckily, I've never had anybody say this, but I've certainly seen people

say similar things to other people in my LinkedIn or Instagram or wherever,

where you post something vulnerable.

Like I said, look, I've suffered from anxiety and depression.

There are people that are like, this is LinkedIn.

It's a professional network.

I'm not here to hear about your depression and anxiety.

That's your business or whatever.

Okay.

That's fine.

Like you and I clearly are not gonna work together.

You would not like working with me, and that's okay.

You're probably a great person and there's somebody that's

gonna help you and that's fine.

Right?

But I'm not gonna not be me and talk about the things that I think are important.

And be vulnerable for my audience because I feel that that helps

my audience and, and helps them to be able to be vulnerable.

And I believe that a certain degree of v vulnerability is really useful in, in

making connections with our audiences.

So I, you know, that's, that's fine.

That person's a station wagon to me.

Okay.

You know, that's okay.

There's nothing wrong with station wagons.

They just don't have air horns.

Right.

So that's fine.

Like, you know, they can go, you can enjoy your wood paneling, you know.

That's great.

Oh, the wood paneling.

So true.

Well, Seth, this has been so fantastic.

We so appreciate you coming on and sharing your stories and talking to us about

air horns and, and uh, station wagons.

Um, I think our audience is just gonna love.

The analogies that you've provided and, and all the

great information you provided.

So when, um, when they wanna reach out to you, what is the

best way for them to do to that?

Yeah, well, I would say, you know, LinkedIn is my favorite.

I spend too much time there.

So I would say, I mean, I have a, I have a website and I'm sure you're gonna have it

in the web, in the show notes, but I would say, you know, come find me on LinkedIn.

I, I post on there all the time.

I, you know, have some great offers.

I, and I would say if you're, if you're interested in getting into podcasting,

I would like to make an offer to your audience, which is, if you're doing it

already or you're thinking about doing it.

You feel like you could use a little help in getting better

at, at your guesting game?

I offer a free podcast guesting audit.

You can, um, go to LinkedIn, get into my dms and say that you're interested.

And all you have to do is send me a link of a show that you've been on

and I will, uh, give you an audit of what your performance was like.

And hopefully, you know, I, I send out a, a written.

A little written report and also, uh, we'll send a little video like

a, a loom, a short kind of like to, to summarize it and have a

little more human, uh, interaction.

But, um, hey, anybody listening is more than welcome to avail themselves of that.

I encourage you to, that is so generous.

Thank you so much, Seth.

And it's been just a delight, like I said, um, to have you on our show.

So we will put, as you said, um, all the links in the show notes below.

And um, and thank you again for joining us today.

Well, thanks for having me.

It was a great time.

I really appreciate it.

I'm honored to be on the show.

Thanks for listening to the six Figure Business Mastery Podcast.

If you enjoyed listening to this episode and you are ready to leverage video

marketing on all online platforms, or maybe even start your own video

podcast, then you need to check out the Done for You and Done with You program

at the marketing va advantage.com and take your business to the next level.