Kalli
Welcome to Ask Us Marketing. We are live which means anything could happen like me stumbling over my words or awkward silences or maybe even a verbal fight. I'm your host Kalli Fedusenko of Kalli Collective a digital marketing agency serving financial advisors.
Have you considered starting a podcast or maybe you have one I feel like it's falling flat or maybe you're curious what the heck
influence marketing is... well, buckle up friends, today we are talking with Matt Halloran co-founder and chief relationship officer of ProudMouth about increasing your influence through podcasting and how to lean into just being yourself.
If you've joined our live stream before you know the drill. I start us out here with some of my own questions, but please ask your questions in the comments. We'll see them on our end and answer them as they come in. If we get more than we can handle, we'll reply in comments after the event.
Matt, welcome, I am so excited to have the voice of podcasting on our live stream today. So thank you so much for agreeing
to answer all of our burning questions.
Matt
Yeah, I don't remember changing my name to "woohoo," but I'm happy I did that.
Kalli
That is awesome. Well, my uh first question is going to be a really easy one...
um what is your favorite brand of beard trimmer? I'm asking for a friend.
Matt
Yeah, so it's a wahl, w-h-a-h-l I think is what it is, yeah, but I actually go to a barber, so I actually have a guy who does this that I see every two weeks like clockwork so.
Kalli
That's amazing!
Matt
Yeah, he said he shapes it. It's pretty neat, man so yeah.
Kalli
He does a really good job.
Matt
Well, I can't grow it anywhere else sister, so I gotta go where I can.
Kalli
Well, originally, I was going to ask you about podcasting which I still am, but podcasting is just the how of what you really do, which is influence marketing. Uh, so how do you define Influence Marketing and does it mean you're going to make me an Instagram influencer?
Matt
Well yeah, I think that's a huge misconception. What we're talking about when we're talking about the word influence is for you to become much more influential to your ideal target market that you're their go-to person. That's the ultimate goal, and you can do that by creating great content that talks to them directly. We're really content media agnostic at this point. I mean, yes, are we a podcasting company? Yes, absolutely but listen, here's the deal if you want a Blog, if you want to shoot video, if you want a podcast, if you want to do interpretive dance, I don't care. It's whatever is the most ideal for your perfect client and how they want to consume that content that's what you really need to create.
Kalli
That is great. Um, how do you use it? I mean, it seems pretty straightforward this next question for you, but how do you use podcasting to build that influence?
Matt
Well, the reason there's a couple of reasons why we really focus on podcasting. The first reason is, uh, advisors talk for a living, Kalli. I mean, that's just it's just that simple they don't write for a living. They don't shoot video for a living. They literally talk for a living so when Kirk and I created this company, that was our just the easiest go-to. The other thing is people consume podcasts very differently than they consume other forms of media, right? So the ideal podcast length is 27 minutes, and we know that there's actual research behind that because that's about how long people exercise is about how long people take to cook dinner it's about how long, um, uh, people go ahead and get ready for work, and then the last thing is it's
about the average commute, and so you're taking something that's extremely intimate and portable because it's like, um, something that your subconscious is processing, so you're driving, you're listening to a podcast that filter of um resistance is gone same thing with exercising, you're sweating, and you're on your exercise bike, but you're listening to a podcast there's a different level of connection with that content so that's why we've really been focusing on podcasts, but we do video podcasts now we do video snippets. We've got friends that we refer a lot of video business, too so so yeah, that's really fascinating about the time and it's like there's you've got the science behind it where you've studied it, I love that.
Kalli
So at Kalli Collective, we offer this content package that we call the Full Monty, and it includes the four P's of content plan, produce, posts, and promotes um, which we do with content for our clients, one thing that we do not touch however, is podcast production um, but a lot of our clients produce their own podcast, and I get some frequent questions that we'd love to hear your wisdom on. So the first one is do I need equipment or can I just use my phone?
Matt
I really recommend that you get equipment now you do not have to spend a lot of money on equipment and everything the internet tells you to buy is wrong what you need is a directional condenser microphone it's the Samson q2u is the microphone that we recommend. It's $59 on Amazon. I mean, if you want to upgrade so, so here's the reason why Kalli and this is super important. I was just driving around. Uh, my son and I play a super nerdy miniatures game on Friday night, and we were talking about the podcast that he listens to, and he's like, Dad, if the audio quality sucks. I just stop listening to him, and so now you don't have to have a setup like me with a $500 microphone and a $600 mixer I'm a nerd. This is what I do for a living, but that one Samson microphone that's a USB plug-and-play mic will make you sound like a pro because it'll do this, and for those watching they'll be able to realize microphone way, you can hardly hear me at all it's a directional microphone, so you don't have to soundproof your room you don't have to do any of that stuff. I'm sitting in a 10 by 16 wide open room here. There's no echo. Yeah, it's because I have the right microphone, and I know how to use it.
Kalli
That is amazing thing. Uh, you said it was a Samson? Samson q2u?
Matt
You know what? While you're asking me the follow-up question, I'll put a link in the perfect here.
Kalli
Uh, well, my next question was going to be, do you offer equipment as part of your
process.
Matt
We do. So um, there it is.
All of our clients, uh, we actually buy them their equipment uh and if you go to Pod Rocket Academy, which by the way, is free, and go to podcasting101 um, you are going to have the opportunity to.
All right, let me see how I can chat it. How do I chat it to everybody, your sister, you click on chat um, and you should just be able to type a message in there all right well I'm going to type it into the private chat because it seems that you're the only person who can put the chatty Chat thing there so, got it all right, so there's the link.
Um so yeah, so we talk about all of the equipment that you need all of this the ways to build a podcast uh is all in our free podcasting 101 course, including a whole um, list of equipment um not just the microphones but ring light can we have cameras we've got like cheap, which is the Samson we got like the mid-range which is a Yamaha ag06 with a shure sm58 microphone, and then if you really want to go crazy like me then this is like the bee's knees and microphones this is what everybody who's like a professional on TV and stuff used and this is the shure sm7b, which is what we consider the gold standard of podcasts.
Kalli
So it's kind of like, hey, if I'm working with Matt, I have three options to pick from?
Beautiful.
Um, what about those little tiny mics that you can plug into your phone?
Matt
So yeah, I don't actually have mine with me, um, well, I do, but it's actually in my go bag for travel. There's another great thing.
You know what? I'm gonna pull it up here, and I'll send you another link because send this to people all the time, uh uh wire less my phone, so so um, mic,
So this microphone is unbelievable Kalli, like honestly if you're just gonna use.. oh my god it's super on sale I'm totally gonna skip this everybody who's listening to this listen here's the deal yeah just just just just buy this um if you have to have an iPhone for this one, but they do have whatever the other phone company is um.
But um yeah so this microphone is crazy good it plugs into the bottom of your phone. It's a Lavalier mic, so it sits on your lapel unreal, unreal I can't tell you, so all of the live Twitter videos that I do, which many of your audience, I hope they've seen, um, I'm using those microphones, and they're just phenomenal so.
Kalli
Um, okay, so I've got my mic, got my lights. What do I talk about besides interpretive dance?
Matt
Right well, interpretive dance would be a magnificent podcast. I happen to be a big fan of dance myself, um, but uh, really what, what just happened in your last client meeting? Every, you know, advisors overthink things because that's what advisors do, right? The personality traits that make for great marketers are, sorry great advisors don't make them great marketers, which is why and I have a wonderful job, Kalli right, um, because the skill set that you need to be to be an amazing advisor is not the skill set that you need to be and make an amazing marketer, but it is the same skill set to create amazing content because if you just said okay what did you just talk about in your last client meeting well gosh Matt you know they were asking me all sorts of stuff about multi-generational wealth and 529 plans and that we talked about life insurance okay there's three podcasts right there so um the other thing that we think is really important is that they're not monologues very few people can hold somebody's attention for 27 minutes so we really do recommend that their interviews which is another part of our manage influence service we provide professional voice talents to help with that.
Kalli
Should they be interviewing uh other clients or other centers of influence?
Matt
Yes, if they're an RIA, there's a very specific disclosure that needs to go at the beginning of the podcast, it basically says that this client was not paid in any way, shape, or form for this testimonial because it's considered a testimonial. Um, that's it, then you move on, right um, if so, if you're with a broker-dealer or you're FINRA regulated, you can't really do that at this point, or you whatever we're working on that, um, then you need to interview your centers of influence your estate planning attorneys your CPAs, and then at the end, you'll have the same sort of disclosure that will say listen, this is for educational purposes only, we do not provide tax or legal advice, and if you can tell I've read a thousand of those disclosures, and we actually do that custom for every one of our clients but you don't have to just your compliance department you're going to say, Kalli. You have to read this four and a half-minute disclosure at the end of your show, and then you just add that in what we refer to as post-production got it.
Kalli
Um, do you ever get pushback from advisors, uh, like, hey, I feel kind of nervous, asking my client and how to do you kind of how do you coach them through that?
Matt
To ask them to be on the show?
Kalli
Yeah, like, uh, you know, I don't know how my clients will respond.
Matt
Well, first off, it's you get yeses so fast. See, podcasting is still really cool, and most people haven't been on a podcast, and it really is all in the positioning on the front end like okay so, so Kalli, you were on our show, uh, and I asked you to be on the show in the way that I positioned it was you're a thought leader in our industry you do something that's fundamentally unique and valuable to our audience and number three you've got a great personality in my audience who's gonna love that you didn't even hesitate yeah right your clients aren't going to hesitate either. The only thing that they might hesitate on is the level of how personal you get, and you cover that by saying look, we're not going to talk about your assets under management. We're not going to talk about your risk tolerance. We're going to talk about you as a client having the Halloran wealth management experience.
Kalli
That is beautiful!
What about scripts? Do you submit a script to compliance before production, or is it kind of because you know I like to ad-lib sometimes when I'm doing this? I'm sure that happens. Uh, how does compliance uh react to that?
Matt
Well, it's entirely dependent on the compliance department so the majority of so we've done about 7,000 episodes now um we have our clients submit talking points on the front end, and so it'll be anywhere from five to seven talking points that they will get pre-approved as an overarching topic and then we just go, yeah, so we have three areas of redundancy it's very important to have compliance in mind and I know business you know advisors of business prevention department I don't believe that at all I believe that there are bad players that we have to make sure aren't putting their information out there so you as a good player the people who are listening to this have that opportunity so so during the podcast itself why have professional producers who say nope you're getting too close to that line and number two we transcribe everything we have a scrubber that goes through the transcription to look for very what we call no no words and then the third thing is compliance itself, and so if you're if it goes through all three of those things and then we publish it after we get compliance approval you're clear, um but listen, um don't don't read a script. We've had advisors we've worked with um third-party money managers and stuff Kaylee, yeah and uh or Kalli, I'm sorry and um they read the whole time it was a snore right I mean we were just like oh my god nobody's ever gonna listen to anything what happened nobody did yeah so, but they're regulated differently so.
Kalli
All right, next one, what do I name my podcast?
Matt
Yeah, so what a this is? This is why I would lean on an organization like yours to be really honest, I mean you, one of the neat things I love about your firm is the level of creative, um like just muse ask sort of energy that you bring to relationships, and because of your background and the team that you've built, you have a great creative solution for that so uh for those of you who already you know members of the collective and really want to go ahead and start a podcast just just lean on Kalli and her team uh that's absolutely fantastic you know we have this we have some of the same sort of people so I actually have a creative team that helps them come up with podcasts but one thing that you have to do is you can think it's the greatest podcast name in the world, but you have to see if it's taken and or trademarked, so we had a client who had recorded six episodes, uh and then got a cease and desist, uh because this is so crazy his trademark approval was denied seven times for being too broad and somehow the eighth time it got approved, yeah and so and how we do trademark searches, we didn't even find it because it didn't qualify under what normal people would qualify um so you just have to double check that if not, you know you can put a lot of work in and then have to change everything on the back end.
Kalli
Yeah that would be that'd be rough, so they got it from another podcast, name someone saying hey, stop using my name.
Matt
No, actually, that's the craziest part about it; it wasn't even a podcast. Uh, they had trademarked the three words and two words as part of an educational thing which, again, we could have our client could have fought it, but sure why? I mean, right lawyers, you know.
Kalli
Um, all right, I got my got my equipment. I know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about things from my meetings, um, I've got a great name now. How do I get followers?
Matt
Yeah, so that sucks. I'm just being honest, right? So the problem is unless you have so, you said your four Ps right that fourth P in place which we don't do, you are not going to grow as quickly as you want. Now most people have terribly unrealistic expectations about their numbers anyway. You're never going to get 10,000 people that are going to download your show. I'm just telling you that right now, it's not going to happen, so we have a client, um, who's number five in all of retirement podcasts. He doesn't even get 10,000. You were in the top one percent of all podcasts. Whatever it is, seven million podcasts at 10,000 downloads, you're going it; it is a momentum game, and actually, you and I talked about this on the top advisor marketing podcast. It's about creating momentum. Your first place that you're gonna go to is your clients. You have to talk about your podcast with your clients. If your clients are fans of yours, they're going to tell other people yeah but think about it how many people do you really need to listen to your show to be able to pay for all of the production of that show in the time that you're putting in one new client.
Kalli
Right great point yeah I think yes setting expectations is huge uh which can be hard to do, um, we did create a benchmark PDF, although we didn't have anything on podcast about Hey, here are what you can expect for organic numbers, so if anyone's interested, that's under our Savvy Advisor platform.
Matt
Yeah, we shared the heck out of that, just so you know, so yeah, that was good stuff.
Kalli
Yeah, um, just like you said, hey podcast, you can't expect ten thousand, uh, downloaders.
Matt
Nope.
Kalli
Um, that's crazy, so which podcast platform should I post to?
Matt
So that's another compliance question, so wow, you're asking some good questions, and I'm sorry I keep saying compliance, but you know that's why we have a job is I'm actually the chief compliance officer here. I just met with another huge organization last week um, they will only allow their advisors to post to Spotify in YouTube because you can turn off all likes ratings and comments okay um I said that wow that was wildly short-sighted and while you're really interpreting the FIRNA regulation incorrectly, in my opinion, I was talking to lawyers they love that stuff so we argued back and forth for about 20 minutes but um, so if you're an RIA or if you have a compliance department that actually has read the regulations and interpreting correctly you can actually really post everywhere so iTunes, your Spotify, Google, uh Pandora, IHeart Radio all of those places but Spotify and YouTube number one and number two in podcast players so you have to be there.
Kalli
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I know I can speak from experience, my husband uses YouTube all the time for podcasting.
So um, one thing that we talked about a couple months ago with Laura from Idea Decanter was how videos have a long shelf life. Yes, um, you know, you might have someone reach out to you about a video that you created a year ago, and a lot of this has to do with the way that YouTube search algorithms work, and I would imagine especially since podcast is going on YouTube podcasting is very similar uh so does podcast have a long shelf life and what would you estimate it to be?
Matt
So podcasting actually has as long of a shelf life as video does, uh it. I mean, we're 415 episodes into the Top Advisor Marketing Podcast, and I will still have people say oh my God, I just listened episode 122, and it was amazing right, um just like video, what's going to happen is people are going to binge it right, and so once they know you've got 15 videos, and by the way we love Idea Decanter they're a partner of ours we send a lot of business their way those women are brilliant, and if you want to use video and do highly produced video they are the best of the best, um, but anyway, I'm sorry, digress um so, so you just need to create a library. That's why you know it's a momentum game. It's the same thing that you do with content, right? You want to have a large content library so that when you hook that person, they're going to want to consume a lot more of your content podcasting in the same way, yeah.
Kalli
Uh, do you suggest recording things in bulk like hey, I'm gonna record four episodes today, and then I'll be good for the next month.
Matt
Um, so that's a performance question, uh, people, we have something called a perfect podcasting formula, so it's storytelling education, entertainment, call to action. You have to bring a very specific level and performance component to a great podcast, and if you can do four shows back to back, good on you, yeah, right? Most people can't keep that energy up, so I podcast on Wednesdays is my day that I record podcasts. I think the most I've ever done was six, and I was wiped, right?
Kalli
That is a lot!
Matt
It was a lot, so that's just something to keep in mind um, no, I think you can do that with video a little bit easier because I believe video should be three to five minutes max. I three is better, so you can just hammer out like specific individual points on video, but the longer form podcast does it's, its performance. I mean, you're performing for 27 minutes, um, and that takes a lot of energy.
Kalli
It does and coffee.
Matt
Like coffee, yeah, and a glass of water because your mouth's gonna get dry.
Kalli
Okay, so long shelf life. What about ROI? How long, uh, would you say it takes to see a return on investment, and what kind of return on investment should someone expect?
Matt
Well, so this is a really, really loaded question that most marketers love and I you and I've had, uh, beside conversations about this, we think that there's really five aspects of ROI when it comes to any media, so this is not just podcasting, so first off, they're great client communication retention tools that's it, great content, great blogs, great video, great audio, great social media posts is going to help you retain clients none of you measure that yeah yeah so there's number one number two it's easier to refer somebody to your content than it is to call my person right so nobody's going to call your financial advisor and say hey Jane, uh you know John told me to call you nobody does that anymore they're going to Google the hell out of you so you have to have that social proof number three um centers of influence right so if you actually do the systems that we teach on our Pod Rocket Academy then you have the opportunity to interview like a CPA that CPA shares your podcast with their whole audience in Kurblingo. You just gained a whole bunch of new followers and listeners. Um, number four, it's easier to sell existing products to an existing client or a new product to an existing client than it is to get a new client so you can get greater share of wallet. My very, very quick story and overrun out of time here, uh, we had a guy who interviewed a trust attorney. The trust attorney said I have a whole desk full of trust that hasn't been funded, you know, and he's like, you know, do you help with that, and he's like, well, I do. He got a call the minute that podcast came up, and I have over 250,000 sitting in a bank CD right now. Can you help me put that to work? That's 250,000 management, yeah, and last but not least, what everybody's looking for is actual in that new assets, but you have to ask the questions. I've got a really good friend of mine, Jimmy Williams, who's done a podcast for longer than we've been around. He actually doesn't use us. He just does all adult. He has a whole his own team. He brings in a million dollars a month from Prince Podcast specifically, and he tracks it because he does what you and I, Kalli, wish everybody would do, which is actually asked secondary and tertiary questions, but how did you hear about us, yeah and that's where he finds out that they googled him and he they saw a review and they listen to his podcasts and all of that stuff so.
Kalli
Yes, yes, I think that's one of the hardest parts, uh, getting asked ROI question is, well are you tracking where they're coming from? Yeah, because we don't. We can't do that for you for obvious reasons.
Um, tell me a little bit about Pod Rocket Academy. I know we've brought it up a few times, and there's some great resources in there, but uh, let's give the audience an idea of what they can expect when they sign up.
Matt
Yeah, so there's two things that we'd really like to have everybody do. So there's a QR code that just showed up on the screen right here, which is a QR code to take our free five-minute rocket booster influence assessment so that you can find out how in how much influence you have today. You have to know where you started you have to know where your gaps are, and then you can join the Pod Rocket Academy for free go to podrocketcademy.com like all of the questions that you just asked about podcasting is in our course podcasting 101. It is free! I recorded hours of content it's probably about an hour after editing that walk you through everything from how to come up with your name to scripting to all of those things that you talked about today and so that you can by the time you get done with podcasting 101 guess what, you even know how to do it in post-production I teach you how to edit the damn thing. Oh wow right and so we gave it all away is really where we want everybody to go. This is, uh, in podcasting 101, it's only one course that's in there, uh we've got about 40 courses in there now, about seven of them are in our free version the rest are in a paid version and if you go into the paid version you get eight hours of office hours with me and my other influence engineers every month where you can come in and ask questions have us review stuff and we want to be there for.
Kalli
Wow, is that a one-on-one thing?
Matt
Yeah yeah, experience whoever shows up, so uh, you know, I just did one today for a strategic partner. It was at 11 A.M, uh basically, and I sat there and waited for people to show up. Sometimes five people show up, sometimes nobody shows up, sometimes one people show up, and then one person shows up. Guess what? They've got our time for a whole hour, so exactly.
It's fun.
Kalli
Um, that's awesome. I think everybody should go sign up, especially if you're considering podcasting.
So we're just about out of time here, so I want to say thank you, Matt, for everything uh sharing with us, all your wisdom and experience. It was a great episode, um, and yeah, thank you for that, and for everybody watching, we've got the uh QR code that will take you to Matt's influence marketing test and also the link if you want to go find out more and sign up for Pod Rocket Academy which you definitely should. Um join us next month to talk about what your clients talk about when you're not
in the room, that's right. We're interviewing Angela and Elyse from Custom Strategic Marketing for Wealth Advisors uh, thanks for joining, and if you're not already, get Savvy at the following.
