Business Systems Explored

Vinay:

Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Business Systems Explored. We have a really exciting episode today, where I'm here, obviously, with my co-host, Tony.

Tony:

How's it going, Vinay?

Vinay:

We have Jon, from Hack the Entrepreneur.

Jon:

Wow. Thank you so much for having me.

Vinay:

No, really excited, Jon. Thank you so much for being here. Awesome to do a follow up episode, after our episode where you interviewed me on your podcast, Hack the Entrepreneur. If anybody hasn't listened to that, you can go and find it on Jon's website. Excited to get you on this time, and talk about actually some of the processing systems that you use to create, manage, and run a very successful, high-trafficked podcast. I think that's a growing [idiom 00:00:42], everybody loves it. Obviously, we're on it right now, we're making podcasts. I think a lot of people are interested in the space, and I think that there is a bit of a gap when it goes to initially thinking, "Oh, I want to start a podcast," to the realization of how much work it actually is.

It's not just as simple as recording something and whacking it up on iTunes. There's a lot that goes into it. I think that a lot of people don't really expect the amount of work that's going to come with creating a podcast. Then they quickly either kill it, and basically say, "This is too much. This is more than I expected," or they figure out processes and systems so they are able to actually consistently scale it and produce it on a consistent basis. Obviously, you're one of the people that have figured that out. You've got a very consistent rate. You do an episode every week, is that right?

Jon:

I do three episodes of Hack the Entrepreneur per week, and I do one of The Show Runner.

Vinay:

Wow. There you go.

Tony:

Pretty intensive.

Jon:

Yeah, I forced myself to have to create processes. There is no way you can do that many shows and not have processes in place. It would just ... There's no way.

Vinay:

For sure.

Jon:

You kind of force your hand when you do it.

Vinay:

Why don't you just start by quickly telling us a little bit about the two podcasts you run, what their theme is. Then maybe a little bit about your listener base, and/or your team that's involved in actually creating that.

Jon:

Sure, yeah. Thanks. Hack the Entrepreneur started last year, 2014. I launched September 5th. I had absolutely no audience at the time. I had a software business that I had been running for a couple years. I had some time, and I wanted to see if I could build an audience and take advantage of this whole podcasting thing. Plus, I just love talking business with people, so it made sense. Obviously, I had to fit the market in a way that would make me stand out, because there is obviously people interviewing entrepreneurs already. What I found, was that almost all of them across the board talk about tactics. Specific tactics that you can do within your business to grow it, which is excellent. Or, to market it, or to create products. Perfect. That's awesome, but I needed to be unique within that space.

I decided not to talk tactics. I decided to really just talk about the entrepreneur themselves, and really dive into the mindsets and the psychology of dealing with running your own business, starting your own business, and going out there and doing these things. Showing that we all have the same fears, doubts, wins, and losses. From the outside, it looks like we're all successful and do all these things, and we have no problems or issues with it at all. I know that's not true, so I tried to bring that to people.

Tony:

Bring some reality to the glitter and glamour.

Jon:

Exactly, yeah. I was just trying to create a show that I would like to hear, and that I didn't see that it existed at the point. I started with zero audience. It grew really slow. The first month was terrible. Then it took off, and started taking off at that point. When I look back now, it's like, "Wow, that was still tiny," but to me, it was big. Then, I ended up interviewing the founder and CEO of Copy Blogger Media in February. The second we were done, that interview, we were still on the call, and he told me about this podcast network they were creating, called Rainmaker.fm. It was going to come out in the next month or two. Asked me if I'd like to join the network, so I said yeah. I get to control my show. I get everything, basically. I just get access to their audience. There is no conflicting show with me, so I said, "Yeah, of course." It didn't really seem like a question, actually.

I joined them in March. That's where The Show Runner Show came out. It's a podcast about podcasting, so they thought ... They wanted a show about podcasting, because their audience was asking about it. Since I was outside of the company, and I literally had just created a show with no audience, no list or anything to start with, just from zero, to where I got to, they wanted me on the show. I said yes, of course. Then, a few weeks later, it was offered to create a podcasting training course that we promote to Copy Blogger's audience, which is massive. I did that as well. That turned into a whole, quite profitable side business-

Vinay:

Yeah, I bet.

Jon:

That we've been running, which is excellent, but it also, it was a big strain on time. I started with one episode a week of Hack the Entrepreneur. I think week seven was when I really started to take off. I realized that I need to go all-in, if I'm going to go for it. I went to three a week. Then, when I went to another episode a week with Show Runner in March, and then, creating a course, it got really busy. I really had to start working on systems and putting people into place around me to help out because, there was just no way I could do it. If I did try and do it all, without systems, then my content and my actual episodes would start to degrade in quality and my audience would hate it. Everything would fall apart.

Vinay:

For sure. Just a couple of questions, I don't know if you share this data or not, but could you give us a scope of the size of your podcast listener perspective?

Jon:

Yeah. Right now, in podcasting, when we say download or audience numbers, the general consensus is that it is from 30 days after the day you publish. Obviously, people can keep listening, and they will forever. For advertising and stuff, for CPMs, for cost per thousand, we only count that. Right now, my average episode, or the 30 days after publishing, gets just over 11,000 downloads. Which is awesome, yeah. Now I'm breaking well over 100,000 downloads a month. I'm at, I think, 1.4 million total, the last stats that I checked. It's not even a normal ... It's exponential growth. You'll find these things, and it's not just me. My first four weeks of the show, terrible. The next month, I think I did like 10 times what I did the first month. Then, I did like 10 times that again. Then, it all fell apart. I did almost as much I did the first month for about ... It's just hilarious.

The way these things work, they don't work as it's not just a nice, natural ... It's like any business, right? There's massive highs, and you're doing great. Everything is, you're on top of the world. Then, everything falls apart. You've changed nothing, you have no idea what happened. Then, it starts to come back. If you push through those, as Seth Goden would call them, they're the dip. You have to push through those, because on the other side, there's this massive audience waiting for you. It's hilarious to look at my stats over the last 15 months. Just massive drops, then it comes up, and it goes way higher than it ever was. Then, it drops again. I don't understand why that happens, but right now, we're at a peak. This is the highest I've ever been.

Vinay:

There you go. Congratulations?

Jon:

Thank you.

Tony:

When you first started out, I'm assuming it was just you by yourself, handling everything, doing all the recording, the editing, the posting. Am I right in assuming that?

Jon:

Yes. I did every single ... I refused to put money into it, until it made money. It's just how I was.

Tony:

Definitely, I agree. I know what it's like to be a lone podcaster, in terms of wanting to make it profitable. Also, in terms of quality assurance, with the editing process, it's something I've found difficult to give out to somebody else, until-

Jon:

As soon as you do, oh man! That's when it really-

Tony:

Yeah. Why did I hold onto that for so long? What I wanted to ask was about the time scale. At what point did you say, "I can't do this anymore."?

Jon:

At week seven, there was literally a weekend where I was like, "Okay. My audience is good, my audience is there. I'm going to go find a sponsor." That Monday, I literally got three emails, from three different companies, asking if they could sponsor my show. At this time, it was weird. My show had done really, really well. I was literally at the top of business, I was at the top of marketing. I had five or six episodes in the top 10 all the time. Something just happened within iTunes. It just loved me, and they just pushed me up, so I got huge amount of notice. Three companies approached me, I went with one of them, and I made a deal where I would only go with one company, and they'd get full sponsorship. I would talk about them. It was Freshbooks, they signed on for six months, actually. They paid me in advance. It was more of a partnership, because my audience was still not huge, but they knew it was growing, and they wanted part of it. Actually, my show that came out today, actually, still has Freshbooks on it, to this day. Now, they pay-

Tony:

They probably got a pretty good deal on that initial sponsorship.

Jon:

Yeah. They got an amazing deal, and they knew it. It's also kept up loyalty, because we dealt with it as a partnership. They knew I was growing, they knew they were paying a bit more than they should've right then, but they also knew that in six months, they'd be paying the same, and they'd be getting way more. That's how it worked out. Then, they signed on again. We worked out a deal, but now, they just pay actual going rates. They still buy an episode, one episode a week, they're still buying from me, to this day.

Vinay:

You got that cash injection, and you're like, "Okay, this is time to..."

Jon:

The moment I got that, yeah. The moment I got that, I hired an editor, and I hired a VA that exact same day, because it paid for it. It made sense. As soon as I let go of that editing, one thing I realized that I was terrible at it. I thought I was really good, because I'm really, really into music. I play in bands, I thought that I knew what good sound was. I would play with it forever, and do it. Then, soon as this guy did the first one, it took him like two hours, I was like, "Oh my God, that sounds so much better!" We don't edit anymore, we don't edit out "ums", "ahs", we don't take out anything. Unless one of us coughs or something, I'll edit it out. Otherwise, we just leave it in. It makes the conversation flow more natural, and the audience likes it better, because it's like they're part of a conversation. It not only made it free up for me, but it actually made the show better. That was-

Vinay:

Have you tested that? The difference between editing and not editing, and the difference in results?

Jon:

I used to edit, and I would get 800 downloads per episode. Now, I get 11,000. Now, I'm far into the podcasting world, at this point, and I'm in the top ... There's not a ton of shows that get 11,000 downloads an episodes, that are real, actual downloads.

Vinay:

I'm sure, especially not in business.

Jon:

Exactly. There's so many of them that come in. I'm part of midroll.com now, which is a massive advertising network. There's only, I think, five business shows on there. John Lee Dumas is on there, Pat Flynn is on there, I am on there, I think Planet Money is on there, massive shows. They asked me to join it. All I can assume is that this works better.

Tony:

Some of the systems you actually use now to produce and promote the podcast. How did you initially get those two employees set up? How did you offload the work to them, and start creating the process for them to help you with each episode, on a consistent basis?

Jon:

With my editor, I mostly left it up to him, because he knew what he was doing, and I didn't. I sent him, or gave him access to, episodes I had done, just so that he would know intro music, how the little hack thing at the end works, there's sound effects that I use that are all the same. I just told him, I said, "The first one's going to be hard for you, because you have to setup a template. Then, literally nothing changes. We just change out the content in between." It was a Dropbox folder with all of those things, because I had a Garageband template I had made for myself. I output it all to AIFF file, I think, and put it in a Dropbox, gave it to him.

He would send me back a file, and I'd be like, "Oh no, you actually have the sound effects reversed." Just tiny things like that. Then, once that was done, that was it. Then, still to this day, I use, made by HubSpot, it's called Sidekick for email. It's a Gmail attachment, and it allows you to make canned responses. I literally just have an email called hteeditor. I click that, and it has bolded of guest name, episode title, show, where the hack is, any editing notes, all that stuff. I just fill it in and send it to him. He has access to the Dropbox folder, so as soon as I've finished doing my end, it just uploads right straight to there. He gets an email, and he knows what to do with it. Then, he forwards it back to me the next day.

Tony:

Is he full time, or is he a freelancer?

Jon:

He's totally a freelancer. I found him on Odesk. Now Upwork, but it was Odesk at the time.

Tony:

What does your VA do? Is that your current team now? Or, has it grown?

Jon:

There's a full-time VA, the same one I've had since then, and this editor, who does the three episodes a week. Now, I use Design Pickle. They do my artwork for all of the episodes. At this time that we're talking about now, back then, I was still doing everything ... Actually, up til, I think June of this year, I was doing everything in Canva, all my episodes. It looked okay, but then once I got onto Rainmaker, Rainmaker redesigned my whole website for me, gave me a whole new site. Then, it was like, "Whoa, those Canva ones look terrible now! They looked great on my original site, because it looked terrible." Then, we hired Design Pickle actually, after I interviewed Russ from Design Pickle. Then, we went to Design Pickle, and now, they do all my artwork. That's done with my VA. When she's doing the show notes, she knows the title. She sends it off to them, they send it back. She posts it to the show. It's done, it looks better, and it's out of my hands completely.

Vinay:

I'm just looking at Design Pickle right now, and it looks actually awesome. I'm in the process of interviewing and screening designers, and deciding if I want a full-time, cheaper designer, or a part-time, more expensive one. This seems like it's a good-

Jon:

It's a service where they have a whole bunch of designers. You can submit unlimited small jobs to them throughout the month, and you pay one monthly fee, which is like $300 a month now, or something.

Vinay:

Yeah. 370 I'm seeing here, yeah.

Jon:

Yeah. I actually pay almost half of that, because I got in soon. They keep raising the prices, and they keep lowering the quality. Sorry Russ, but your service isn't doing as well as it should've. It was amazing. It was brilliant at the beginning, and now, everything changes constantly. It's good, in the fact that you don't have to have your own designer on board, or a freelancer, because that can be a pain.

Tony:

In terms of the production process, once you stopped that recording for that interview, you've exported that file, and you sent it over to your editor, what's the next thing you do, in terms of that process?

Jon:

That's a great question. That's actually changed from now. I still do everything into Garageband. I record my ad spots, do the hack, and do the intro. It's all uploaded to Dropbox. Then, I go into Asana, or Asauna, whatever you call it. I make a post there about the episode, so it has who the pre-roll ad spot is, who the mid-roll spot is, if there is any editing, which times to go in, what time the hack is at. It's all the information for my VA, and also for the editor. I post it there, and they both get it. Then, he knows to take the files, and he knows the hack. He knows everything he needs. Plus, my VA sees it, and she also has access to the Dropbox, which was where the guest intro is already written by a freelance writer I have write the intro.

She just grabs it from there, and she makes the show notes out of it. My VA listens to the rough audio of just the interview. She doesn't need to listen to the intro and the ad spots, it takes too much time. All she has to do is listen to the interview, and make the show notes, the bullet points of what is there. Then, anything we talk about, any links that have to be put in. She adds all that stuff, then posts it to my site at the same time, when she gets her artwork made. Then, she posts that. Then, when the editor is done with it the next day, or the day after, he posts the file back to Dropbox. Then, drops a link for her into Asana. She takes it from Asana. When she takes it from-

Tony:

Have you stipulated a turnaround time, in terms of when you want these files back, or when you expect a completed file to be returned?

Jon:

Yes. Every email, actually part of it says what time, in my time zone. Typically, I'm actually really far ahead of this, but I'm in the process of just finishing up writing a book, as well. I've been way behind, so I'm literally a day ahead only. It's literally, if it goes in today, which actually, an episode has to go in after I do this. I have to finish up an episode, and it will need to be done tomorrow morning, by my time 10am. He is always bang-on with it. Typically, in the next few weeks, I'm going to be at least a week ahead again, and possibly two weeks ahead of schedule. With my network that I'm on, the publishing dates are already set. We know when things are going out. I can't keep up the volume right now of getting my actual recordings done, because I'm doing a thousand other things right now. The bottleneck is literally me recording, at this point.

Tony:

I'm assuming you're batch recording? Am I right?

Jon:

Yeah. I have a ton of interviews. I have a ton of interviews done, but I have to go record the intros, the outros. I have to do two ad spots per show, based on Midroll and what they send me. Then, I have to pick out the hack and do. There's extra stuff to it, it takes me about 45 minutes, after the interview, to get my recording done.

Vinay:

Interesting. I was going to ask that, as well. That's a big blind spot that a lot of people don't notice. It's not just recording the actual episode. Then, you have to do all this surrounding recording, intros, and ads, et cetera et cetera, as well. You've got the podcast, it's edited. You've got the show notes written, they're in Asana. Then, what happens? You post it on your website? Do you also do a post on Copy Blogger's website, as well?

Jon:

Yeah. I do a post ... As soon as we publish it, or even ... As soon as we schedule it to be published, whenever the episode's going to come out, then we have the URL for where the file sits, and where the actually show notes will sit. Then, my VA goes into my email inbox, and she uses Sidekick again. There's another canned email in there for Rainmaker. Theirs is actually interesting. It's a Trello board email, so there's certain spots where we fill out all the pertinent information, with links and show notes. It literally get posted to a Trello board automatically, by them. I think they use Zapier, and it goes to Trello. Then, each person, like the person who posts the audio, the person who's going to create their artwork on their end, all those different people get their notifications. I can see them all. There's like 12 people on this Trello email. That's just done on my end. Right after we set ours to "published", and we have that information, we send it off to them. Then, they set it to "published". We tell them which date, all the information about it, and ... They use the exact same show notes as me, everything. They publish usually just a couple hours after we've published on mine. I get the SEO juice, because it's my site first. Then, they do some SEO thing that tells Google that it's actually my content.

Vinay:

Yeah. We were just talking about that. I think it's called a concatenate URL-

Jon:

Canonical? Is that what it is?

Vinay:

Canonical, yeah. Canonical.

Jon:

As soon as I heard it, I see them talk about it all the time. Then, they also take usually one of my episodes a week, or two if it really fits their audience, and they post them from Rainmaker.fm to copyblogger.com to branch it out to even a further audience. They don't do that with all the episodes, because I think there's 18 shows now on Rainmaker.fm.

Tony:

I was going to say, I know on the actual Rainmaker podcast itself, they do a full transcription, or at least the last episode I listened to, there was a full transcription. Do you have one created for your show, as well?

Jon:

I was doing that for the first 55 episodes, I think, of my own show. Then, I joined Rainmaker, and Rainmaker took over that. Then three weeks ago, maybe four weeks ago now, they stopped doing that. Now, there's a gap, again. I don't have somebody doing transcripts, but they are super, super valuable. With Rainmaker, it's just it didn't make it ... They're expensive. They were paying a lot of money, they were doing 25 or something a week, or 26 full transcripts of some hour-long episode. It was crazy. They had to stop doing it, but I need to get back into it, because, as I said, I'm writing this book, and 75% of this book is literally based off rewritten transcripts being written with a writer.

Tony:

That's a [inaudible 00:23:19] idea.

Jon:

The re-uses of your content is amazing. Once you start to figure that out, and you start just pull out ... I already pull out the hack thing for my show, so that hack can then ... You take 10 of those, and you turn them into a PDF, you turn them into a slide deck. These are all things that my VA then does. She doesn't have to choose what the content that's good. I've already done it. Now, it's already been written out by somebody who's a great writer, and we have that. One thing, we get Google more SEO juice for posting it on the site. Then, we can cut that up and just disperse it so many different ways, and attract such a wider audience. It's just really taking advantage of all of this content that we're talking about all the time. I strongly recommend transcripts for everyone. They're hard. They're really hard to do well.

Vinay:

We were actually just talking about that in another episode that we were doing, where we're talking about the content promotion process, and how re-purposing your content can be really valuable. That's interesting. That's pretty much the next step that you wanted to talk about. Now, you've got it live. It's live on your website, it's like on Rainmaker. It's maybe on Copy Blogger. What do you after that? Do you do anything to stimulate distribution? Do you email your list? Do you contact the guest? Do you post it around places? Do you re-purpose it? What do you do after that, over the following months with that content, to get additional views?

Jon:

As I said, we do the follow-up. Again, it's a Sidekick canned response follow-up email to the guest. Once it's been published on Rainmaker, and my site, we do that asking for them to share it. Really, that's when we leave it, at that point. As much as I want to do all of this other stuff, I can't always do it. Some episodes, they'll end up in the top 10 list, or they'll end up in a PDF download. Or, they'll end up in a book, but not all episodes. Only certain ones are going to end up, depending on how the conversation went, depending on how I can fit it into other stuff, I will use that. Every single episode doesn't get that. It just can't. I think there's too much. The biggest growth for podcast is, no matter how you slice it, it's iTunes. iTunes still drives 80% of my traffic, in all aspects. That's where people find shows.

No matter that I do, no matter how much I hammered Twitter ... There's ways to [cheat 00:25:46], and you can ... There's shows out there that do their whole Twitter-bombing thing, they call, where they're getting fake downloads by just spamming Twitter with 25 different accounts for their shows. It's not really helping you, it's not doing anything for you. That stuff all aside, when it get published on my site, it automatically gets Tweeted out. I'll go back, and we'll buffer [app 00:26:12] a few things here and there. For the most part, it's other people doing it. It's listeners going out and tweeting things. Then, when the one episode a week gets put onto Copy Blogger, it can get shared anywhere from 400 to 1,000 times on there, which really helps a lot. My focus is taking some of that content, fitting it into different packages, and then putting that out in different places to get people back to the whole show, not to the specific episode, if that makes sense. That's-

Vinay:

A couple of things that I think that could be worth testing for you, is just getting another VA on, just to do promotion on the episodes. A couple of easy things that I think that they could do, that will give you a positive ROI on the cost of that VA, would be doing outreach. Basically, everybody that is mentioned in the show notes, not just the guest, send them an email and say, "Hey. I mentioned you in this podcast. Let me know if you have any feedback." That can generate shares, backlinks, and stuff like that to your podcasts. It's a pretty easy job for a VA to do.

Another one is basically just taking those posts, you have an episode on three different websites. You have it on your site, on Rainmaker, and on Copy Blogger, and basically putting it in a schedule for over the next three months, or whatever, to submit it to the entrepreneur subreddit. Each of those three posts. Month one, to the entrepreneur subreddit, on your platform. Month two, to the entrepreneur subreddit on Rainmaker. Month three, to the entrepreneur subreddit on Copy Blogger. Then, the same thing. If it's somebody talking about marketing, then you can also do that same strategy for the marketing subreddit, or for growthhacker.com, or inbound.com, which are other [sociable marking 00:28:02] platforms. Just having one VA, who just basically did that, just did outreach, and then just submitted the posts on the three different sites, and make sure that every episode at least got listed on the major sociable marking sites, I think that can give you a nice boost in traffic, and definitely make more than the cost of the VA.

Jon:

That's awesome. Is there a company that has this process laid out within it?

Vinay:

Yeah. I know a company, there's one called [Camarko 00:28:28]. I can introduce you. That's one thing. Also, we have a process in Process Street that's a template that you can just get and give to a VA.

Jon:

That's what I was getting at, that's what I was getting at. I was hoping you were going to promote yourself.

Vinay:

That's the simple way. The way I have it setup is you can setup a Zapier, you mentioned Zapier before, that basically every time you publish a new episode, say, on your blog, it automatically fires a checklist in Process Street, and that gets assigned to your VA, that basically says, "Month one, submit to these subreddits, and email everyone that we talk about in the show notes. Month two, submit the Rainmaker post to these subreddits. Month three, if there is one, submit the Copy Blogger post to these subreddits", or whatever. That's pretty much it. There's a few other things that you can throw in there, but I think if you're doing four episodes a week, that's pretty much a full-time job for a VA, just to cover those main points.

Jon:

That's smart.

Vinay:

Cool. That's pretty much the whole process, then. That was a really good breakdown on how a really successful podcast is run-

Tony:

Jon, you've got your guest on. You hit record, and you start recording. However, we know, and we're going through this at the moment, [inaudible 00:29:35], in terms of this process we're going through, is getting those guests. I'm sure there's a lot of work that takes place beforehand, to actually get those guests. To do the outreach, to schedule, to make sure everyone's times matched up, getting some pre-interview prep involved. I'd be interested to know what the process is there, and how much time is spent doing that.

Jon:

The first process for her was finding guess, which has been optimized down to every Tuesday, she sends me a list, or posts the list, actually, to Asana. It's 10 potential guests, based on the criteria we've found that works best for my audience, and based on who we already have booked for the show. I try and not put two people that are running tech start-ups that are valued at $100 million each, back to back. That's just not what my audience wants. They want diversity, so they want the solo entrepreneur, and they want that $100 million start-up. We have to keep playing that game. Between male and female, we have to keep it equal. She does that. She finds the 10, I go through and just say no to whatever one, two, or three that there might be no's to, and then why.

Then, we add that to the list, for next week, of how we choose these ones. Then, she literally goes into my email. Again, Sidekick, there's a canned guest request email. She fills it all in. It's literally just putting the person's name in, and that's it. Then, it just goes off. We track it to see if it's been opened. Then, I actually used to get her ... She would book that person. That person's, say, interview is today with me. Yesterday, she would've created me ... She would go to Wikipedia, she would go to LinkedIn, and all-about-the-persons that I could have this. Now actually, I find something called Charlie App-

Tony:

Yeah. I was literally going to say that, Charlie App.

Jon:

Charlieapp.com. I've been using it for months now, it's amazing. What it does, is it actually goes out, it's called your personal assistant, and just brings their Twitter to you, brings their LinkedIn, brings their bio to you, all into one form, and you just have it. Then, I've created a PDF now that I print out for every single episode. It's got the guest name at the top, what they do. There's spots for edit, like where I could be times in, if there's editing. There's times for potential hack, so throughout the conversation, at 13:12, or whatever, I can put in where I think, so I can go back. Then, I just take notes. That keeps everything organized, all based on what Charlie's told me about this person. I have it right in front of me. There's no research, really, on my part now. People are like, "How do you research these people? It sounds like you know them?" It's like, "Yeah. Most people, I have no idea even what they do, until 10 minutes before the episode." It's just optimized. CharlieApp, fill out my form, and I'm good to go.

Then, I also keep a couple of their screens open, so their LinkedIn, and their business websites usually open on my screen in front of me. I have a picture of the person, so it looks like I'm talking to them. I get a feel for what they're into, and how I can push the conversation. Then, after that ... I guess the booking, I missed the booking process. The booking process is done by Meet, me.so, which is another service. I think pay $10 a month, and it's literally in that email that's sent, that canned email, there's a link in there that has the times that I allow for schedulings of my interviews. They literally just pick a time. It sends a form that has my Skype name in it. They have to sign off on the terms and agreements of being on my show, so it's all done right then. It's not back and forth.

I've seen people try and do this with me, like booking a show. It's like, "Can you do next Tuesday at 2pm?" Then, it's like you're back like, "Yes, I can do 2pm." Then, you find out you're in different times, like what are we doing? This should really be just a scheduling link, and I can choose based on my calendar, and it's all automated. You have to do that. Then, the only follow-up after is, again, a canned response by my VA, after the episode's live, that you're live on HTE. Here's the links to the show, and please share. That's the follow-up, that's the whole process.

Tony:

Excellent.

Jon:

It gets easier. Unfortunately, it's one of those things where, when I'm starting out, it was really, really hard. Now, I guess that other process of my VA now, she has to go through and just clear out requests to be on my show. I get multiple requests a day. PR companies, everybody trying to get people onto my show, which is awesome. Once or twice a week, it's like, "That person's actually really cool." It's just a really cool thing that I wouldn't even have heard of them, or thought of them. I don't have to do any outreach, it's literally just like yes. When my VA just sends back, here's the form, and it's literally that canned response that has the booking link in it, and everything else taken care of. It gets easier the more shows you do. Then, people want to be on your show.

Vinay:

That's a really cool system. Another tool that I really like for scheduling is x.ai. It's where you can basically schedule things, but it happens all inside email. Instead of them needing to basically click on a link, and go and find a time, you just include amy@x.ai, which is your robot assistant, and she just sends them an email with the times. She does all the communication through email, instead of pushing someone off to a different UI.

Jon:

I really make people now though, they have to check a box that says that they've read the terms and agreements of my show. Those terms help to push my guests to step up their game, and want to do a better show. They know now that the chance of them not making it on, after doing the interview, is actually pretty good. Not everybody makes it. Just because you record an interview with me, doesn't mean I'm going to publish it. Then checking that box, to me, it helps. It really sets the expectation of professionalism, and the fact that, "Wow. This is an actual published podcast. It's not just some dude who just started, and I'm going to waste my 30 minutes, and he's going to publish it out with terrible graphics, terrible everything. It's going to go to 80 people." It really feel like, "Wow, this is professional. You must have a big team." It's like, "No, I just have canned responses, some $10 software, and a VA that does it all."

Vinay:

That's the beauty of good processes. It makes people think that you're bigger than you are, right?

Jon:

Totally, totally.

Vinay:

I'm just interested, for [inaudible 00:36:35], but is there any kind of disclaimer, or content assignment rights? Like, "Anything that you say on this podcast is now owned by us, and we can distribute it and do whatever we want with it." Just signing off on that. Is that included in it?

Jon:

Yeah, totally. I'm trying to see what the link is. It's right on my site. When you go to sign off on it, there's a link there. It says, "You should read this before coming onto my show." Right on there, it says that we can use it any way, we can re-purpose it, we can use anything you've said kind of thing, all that stuff. Basically, I can put it into a book a year later, if I want to, and sell that book. Which, I'm going to do. Also, put it into slide decks. I think it's important, and I'm not a lawyer in any way, and I don't even mean from a legal perspective. Again, I think it raises your level of professionalism. When you raise that level of professionalism, one thing more professional, more important people that you want to talk to actually see it. When they're going to think of booking, they're like, "Wow. This one looks so much more professional than this other 10 people that asked me. I'm going to go with this one. I don't even know who this person is, or what this show is, but that's pretty impressive." They have actual disclaimers, and they have actual, "I've got to check a box and agree to this. Plus, I might waste my time. He might not even publish it, if I don't really sit up and actually take it serious."

Vinay:

[crosstalk 00:38:04]

Jon:

Yeah. It's a bunch of all that stuff put together that really helps elevate the show to another level.

Tony:

Do you include any sort of quality standards, in terms of the expectation of the system that the potential guest would use? Things like you've got to have some headphones in place, you must wear a headset, et cetera. Do you try to educate them, at the front-end, to make them sound as good as they can on the show?

Jon:

I actually don't, only because it has been such a small problem. Maybe it's because I'm in business, I'm in the entrepreneur space, and most people, I'm not their first podcast they've ever been on. I still get people, like we start the conversation before we're recording, and there's a giant echo. I'm like, "Do you have headphones on?" "No." "It's okay. Do you have headphones? Reach into your bag, pull out headphones." They do, and it's perfect.

Vinay:

I think that happened with us. I was in a different room, yeah.

Jon:

Right. To me, it's something, if I over-complicate it, if I make the invitation email too ... Not only do you want me to give you a half hour of my time for free...

Vinay:

Yeah, you want me to read all this shit.

Jon:

One thing I know, when I get a big email from people ... I get 100 emails a day. I only have so much time, and it's me not being organized enough. As soon as I open up an email, and it's got a giant, long request, I just close it.

Vinay:

Too long to read, archive.

Jon:

Yeah. Or else, I might boomerang it if I really think, "Okay, I want to read this later." I'll probably end up boomeranging it three or four times, and then deleting it. I really try and lower the barrier to entry for my guest. In it, it clearly states it's Skype audio only, so that they don't have to respond back. I've optimized it so it's not like there's any questions they could possibly ... I don't get responses like, "What about this?" It's all answered within, I think it's about six lines, my email, or seven lines. Super short, but it answer every sort of question. Usually, that email goes out, and within half an hour, that thing is booked. If it's not, they're probably not even going to book with me. That's just how it is. Otherwise, they're booked instantly. It's like, "Wow. That works so well!"

Tony:

Are there any guests that you've really, really wanted, and you haven't been able to close a deal?

Jon:

Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary Vaynerchuk has been booked three times on my show, and through no fault of his own, he's a hustler. He's always out there just going for it, and they get cancelled by his assistant literally half hour ... It was like, "Gary is totally on an airplane still, blah blah blah." I actually just got an email from Gary himself, I think it was last week. Yeah it was last week, sometime. Then, he CC'd his guy Alex into it again. He was like, "Alex, you got to get my on Jon's show." Then Alex responded, but then he refuses to use my booking link. There's a couple people like that. It's like, "Dude, just use this." Like, "No. When are you available the first week of December?" It's all in there, just take it! It's back and forth with dates. There's no way I could do that with everybody, but for Gary Vaynerchuk, I'll do it, obviously. Right now, he's the one, just because I've been chasing ... He actually bought ad spots on my show last year though, which is funny, right around the first time he was supposed to be on, but it never worked out. He did buy the spots, though. He did pay me, so I'll give him that.

Tony:

Excellent. Call Gary, get on the show.

Vinay:

Yeah, guy. If you're listening to this, get on our show, too.

Jon:

I think the first week of December, it looks like we're going to get the first week of December. One of those days, I don't know which one, but that's in two weeks. I look forward to it.

Tony:

I'm looking forward to hearing that hack, definitely.

Vinay:

Yeah, sure-

Jon:

Yeah. Thanks.

Tony:

Hack that guy.

Jon:

I will, yeah. It'll be fun.

Tony:

I wanted to ask, in regards to the book, you mentioned your book a few times. We all know the process of writing a book is a serious endeavor to take up. What are you doing, in terms of your whole process there?

Vinay:

Yeah. Tell us about the book quickly, and tell us about your creation process for it, quickly.

Jon:

Awesome, cool. The process is, I broke it down exactly how, when I created the Show Runner podcasting course, I'd never written a book, and I'd never created a course. I struggled with the course, until I figured out, just Post-It notes on my desk. Then, once I organized it all how I pretty much wanted it, I moved it to a Trello board, which was movable. The book is 50 hacks from the 155 interviews I've done. I took 50 of them, based on people I wanted in the book, and then also, it's broken down into five categories, again, to simplify the process. There's five categories: getting started, mindset, ideas, being wrong, and growth. There's 10 per each, so it was a game of Trello reading the hack, and then being like, "Oh, but I'm short in growth. I need three more." It's like, "Well, this one could be here. I have extras." It was literally just a Trello game of moving it all around, and then looking at it and being like, "Oh, there it is. Perfect." Then, I hired a writer in Australia, who's super awesome. She took my transcripts, she read all of my newsletters that I write every week, to get my voice. She read all 52 of those, and she took ideas from those, and then the transcripts, and she turned them into essays. The essay I do after the hack are good, but they mostly sound like me on a podcast.

Vinay:

It's conversational, yeah.

Jon:

Exactly. She took them into an actual mini essay. Short, but they're just little, mini essays. Then, I would go back through them and like, "No, I would never say it like that." And just change stuff. Then, she would edit it again, then put it all together. It's 50 hacks, buffered all by essays with me tying it all together with getting started in business, all the way through dealing with the ups and downs. Then, at the end, finding absolute growth in your business, all based off 50 brilliant entrepreneurs and their ideas. Then, I've book-ended it with a full intro, setting them up for the book, and setting them up for starting a business. Then, ending it off with a kick in the ass to go get it done.

Vinay:

Very cool. I like that. That's a very process-driven writing method.

Jon:

It's the only way, man. I'm going to say for the last eight months, I've been getting emails from listeners, like, "You have to write a book based on these things. You have to write a book!" People started laying it out for me, just with ideas. Then finally, it got to the point where like, "Okay, no." It made sense. As soon as I could picture it on a Trello board, the Trello board wasn't ready, but I was like, "No, this is anything. If I can process this out in such a simple way, that literally, I just have to grab that Trello, and we have to make sure that that hack is done, and the essay is written. Then, if it doesn't make sense there exactly, we'll just take that Trello, and we'll move it. We'll just keep piecing until now, it makes complete sense. Now, we'll just bookend it with intros and outros, and I've got my first book.

Tony:

[inaudible 00:45:37]

Vinay:

Love it!

Tony:

[Pretty 00:45:39] cool.

Jon:

Don't tell anybody, edit all [inaudible 00:45:41].

Vinay:

No, I love it. It's your content. It doesn't really matter how it get on the book. It's still you creating that core content, so it's still yours. I think of it, every book that's every published is not edited by the writer, at least 99% of them. That's really awesome, and I think that we got a really good breakdown of your podcasting process, and your writing process, which was really cool. There's a bonus one in there. I really, really appreciate you on the show, and looking forward to the book. Any last thoughts for us on systems that other entrepreneurs should be using, or any last questions from you, Tony?

Tony:

I wanted to say it was real privilege for me to have the opportunity to hack The Entrepreneur Hacker.

Vinay:

Reverse hack.

Tony:

That's it. We've reverse hacked. It's been good. Lots of valuable stuff in there. Probably in closing, I would say what, out of all the tools and resources you mentioned today, which one's key to making the magic happen in your process?

Jon:

In my process, I'm actually going to have to say Trello, at this point. Even though it's not used in the actual final processes, it's the beginning, and it's what actually makes me understand and appreciate the fact that I can create a book, or I can create four episodes a week. Or, I can create a course. Or, I can create a new product because I can lay it out in a Trello. From there, those steps have to be broken down, and then processed out. I don't think you can just start with processes, you've got to start with whatever it is you're going to create. Trello, to me, it's free, and it's the most amazing tool for that, and empowering for me. Trello, all the way.

Vinay:

Yep. I love Trello, as well. It's an amazing tool.

Tony:

I'm sat here, looking at a Trello board right now, as we do this interview.

Tony:

Excellent. Listen, Jon, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Keep hacking, my friend. Keep hacking.

Jon:

Oh, thank you. I will. Thank you so much for letting me on the show, guys. I appreciate it.

Vinay:

[We 00:47:51] appreciate having you here. Have a great day.

Jon:

You, too.