#75 LinkedIn Strategy, Podcast Guesting, and the Metrics Nobody Tells You — with Sam Swirsky

[Speaker 2] (0:02 - 1:48)
Welcome to the Podfather podcast. You can find all our episodes on podfather.me. Our guest today, Sam Sworsky. I hope I did that justice.

Perfect. Thank you. Known online as the mayor of LinkedIn and founder of Hilltop Media Partners, Sam spent time as head of LinkedIn and Facebook at Alex Himozy's acquisition.com, where in just three months, he was the only person on the media team to lead two social platforms at once, generating over 50 million views and 200,000 followers. Before that, he was LinkedIn brand strategist for Alex and Leila Himozy directly, breaking Alex's all time views record in his first week. And he's also worked with Justin Welch and Taslim Ahmed, Fatih, the number one ranked LinkedIn creator in the world. Sam now helps founders sharpen their LinkedIn position and build an actual content funnel, turning attention into something worthwhile rather than just a noise.

So welcome to the show. Thank you. Good to be here.

I appreciate it. I mean, I think everybody would be, well, when I say everybody, a lot of people would be familiar with Alex Himozy because of his hundred million books. I mean, I think I have the three of them and now I see he's a business partner in the school because I've got three school communities.

We see him a lot. So I suppose maybe kind of start there. What was it like working with him?

[Speaker 1] (1:49 - 2:39)
Yeah, that was a unique experience. I was working for Taslim, who you just mentioned, who previously was one of the top, I think, ranked five creators on LinkedIn. Taslim had a community and I was a community strategist for Taslim at the time.

And one of the recruiters for Acquisition.com reached out to me and just kind of out of the blue. And they were asking like, hey, do you know of anyone who could be in this position? Are you like maybe interested?

I was like, what an amazing thing to hear because I had heard of the job, but I had not considered really applying to it. I thought, oh, you know, this is probably a little bit out of my purview. This is for this company.

And so before he had ever even reached out, if you don't mind me going into the story a little bit.

[Speaker 2] (2:39 - 2:40)
No, I'd love to.

[Speaker 1] (2:42 - 4:01)
I had seen the job. I thought this would be a really cool job for one of my connections because I wasn't really looking for work. I was doing my own thing.

And so I made a post about it. I tagged a bunch of people and the post did pretty well. And so the recruiter reached out and he said, well, are you interested or do you have somebody that you know that might be interested?

Because he saw that I was in this LinkedIn community. And the job title at the time was LinkedIn content manager or something like that. And so I thought, well, I can go ahead and apply to the job, but I've got a rare opportunity here to do a favor for Alex and Leila Hormozy.

So I went through my connections for about a week and found people that I think could do the job really well. I reached out to them. I said, hey, are you interested in this job?

I've got the recruiter reaching out. I can recommend you. And so I recommended around 10 to 15 different people, qualified people from my connections that I knew for the job.

And then I went and applied to the job myself and beat out everyone for the job. So I don't know if they knew that was coming, but I figured that was kind of a good way to go about it. And long story short, I got the position and ended up working with them in Las Vegas for a while.

[Speaker 2] (4:03 - 4:13)
And because, I mean, I've seen a lot of his courses. Is he full steam ahead all the time? Or is that just when he's creating content, what's his kind of been?

[Speaker 1] (4:14 - 4:31)
No, he's pretty full steam ahead all the time. I mean, it's pretty accurate how he displays himself online. I mean, when he's working at home, he's just in that little closet working away.

And when he's at the office, he's working really hard as well. It's not just a persona for sure.

[Speaker 2] (4:32 - 4:38)
So let's go back a bit. It's kind of how you got into all of this, what you studied, what kind of the first few jobs that you were doing?

[Speaker 1] (4:39 - 6:06)
Yeah, that's a good question because I didn't really study any of this. I don't even have a college degree or anything like that. I was working for a company where we were doing consumer surveys across the United States.

And that was a fun job. I'd get to travel across the country and do surveys with people. And I really enjoyed it.

And then COVID hit and literally within a month or so, everyone in the company was laid off. And it was just this thing of like, oh my gosh. Right before that, I had started getting involved in LinkedIn based on the suggestion of a couple of my brothers.

They saw that I was getting involved in social media. They said, you should check out LinkedIn. I'm like, I don't come from a corporate background.

What am I going to add? How am I going to connect with people? And so I just started exploring the platform and it really interested me.

It's the algorithm, the community. I think LinkedIn's got probably the most supportive social network of any social media site. And so I just started kind of plugging away there and it just led to bigger and better things.

And I was just, I was thankful to kind of catch the wave in 2020, right when everyone started getting involved on the platform. But I think it's a great place to be. Thanks.

I appreciate you asking.

[Speaker 2] (6:07 - 6:32)
I mean, I've been an early adapter in LinkedIn, I don't know, 15 years or so. I'm not sure how long it's around, but I think before, because Microsoft bought it, I'm not sure when they got it, but it wasn't originally the creators, but I've seen it kind of evolve. But now it's like, they're trying to sell you everything.

Everything is going to turn to, do you need all these things that they're trying to sell you where they're telling you, hey, you're going to get 6x, 7x and all this.

[Speaker 1] (6:33 - 7:53)
You know, that's a great question. I think that those figures can be a little manipulated because I think it's, you know, is it correlation, causation? Like what's the rule on that?

I think people that are more involved in LinkedIn and who are taking it more seriously, they're just going to naturally get some of those services. It's not, oh, I got the service or I upgraded to this thing and now I'm doing so much better. It does seem like maybe if you have some kind of premium account, you might do better than the platform.

There's been kind of debate among that, among the nerdy LinkedIn scientists and all of us. But I think most of the time you don't really have to upgrade. It's more about adopting their features.

And so some features you only get through a pro account. So any social media platform, if they see that you're using new features that they're kind of updating and rolling out, I think it's going to be a sign to them that you're more involved and they're going to promote you a little bit more. But yeah, 15 years is really amazing.

I talked to other people that were kind of around LinkedIn in those early times and I get the feeling that it was very, very different than it is today.

[Speaker 2] (7:54 - 8:34)
Even simple things like, you know, if you're inviting people to a group, like it used to be 250, now it's 50. And then you're scrolling and then you have to load more, load more. It's like they put in kind of silly things that why would you load more instead of just scrolling to invite the people that you can do.

If we kind of go into it, because, you know, there's different people kind of looking at LinkedIn and some people they post stuff and get massive engagement and others might have incredible content and there's crickets. Can you give us some tips what people, you know, especially podcasters, because they're trying to get so many balls on their shoulder and they're putting stuff out there.

[Speaker 1] (8:35 - 12:15)
You know, I find 90 plus percent of the time, you know, all the platforms are different. You know, YouTube is very different than LinkedIn. Instagram is very different than X.

So what I find is that oftentimes people are kind of used to the social dynamic of another platform and then they come to LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is a platform where you really have to engage with people to get a lot out of it. And sometimes when people just start, they will start posting, they'll get some views and then they'll wane.

And what's happening is, well, if you just start, then yeah, LinkedIn will often give you kind of more views and impressions. But if you're not engaging with any of those people that are commenting or anything, it's going to be quite a bit harder over time. One of the other things that I've seen pretty often is that people keep their content almost too professional to the point where it's a little bit boring sometimes.

And I think humor is a great resource. It doesn't, not every single post has to be a laugh track. Right.

But to use a little bit of, hey, here's this, you know, a serious point that I'm making, but here's kind of a funny meme or gif or something like that. Because that's probably the biggest area of content, kind of strict professional business posts. But people feel a little bit shy of like, well, if I put in humor or maybe too much of a controversial opinion or something like that, then somebody is going to judge me for my content.

It's like, well, there's a small chance of that happening. But what's more likely to happen is that people will see that you have personality and they'll start to engage. I'm not saying for you, Roy, I'm saying for the average person.

But I think that's kind of been a little bit of an issue. But yeah, if you just try to say, I have a rule that occasionally as well, content should hurt and it should hurt in one of two ways, not every single time, but this kind of goes back to what Alex Ramosy does, where he gives away so much value. Number one, it should hurt because you're giving away so much value.

And I'll do the comparison of there's opinion posts like, hey, this is my opinion of how you should do this or what really matters. And then there's instruction based posts. Instruction based posts are, OK, if your audience needs something, what are the exact steps to achieve what they're trying to do?

And so most people never think about the distinction between those two. Instruction based posts are much harder to write. It's hard to get AI or a ghostwriter to write them for you because it's such specific industry knowledge.

So if you do instruction based posts, which are a little bit more rare in LinkedIn, you'll tend to stand out better. And then the other side is it should hurt because it's something vulnerable that you're sharing about yourself where you're maybe a little afraid of what people are going to think of you. And it doesn't always have to be this big shocking thing, but we all have insecurities.

We all have failures. We all have things that we're trying to kind of get better at. And if you never share any of that stuff, then your content is going to come across as a little bit inauthentic.

But that's an advantage of having something like a podcast where you can get into that stuff much more easily.

[Speaker 2] (12:16 - 12:41)
I mean, I put up, I'm sharing stuff. I've got automatic shares on this stuff. It's strange.

I've one short that actually gets a good bit of engagement, some not so much, but I'll always comment if somebody comments, I'll do it. But I know that you can kind of upload the shorts as well directly onto it. I don't know because there's so many different platforms.

As far as I know, LinkedIn is like 15 minutes limit video. Would that be correct? Is that right?

[Speaker 1] (12:41 - 12:41)
That's correct.

[Speaker 2] (12:41 - 13:32)
Yeah. So I can't put up the episodes as such. Well, technically I can with some of the, like I've got one that they're kind of five minutes or the language ones that I could put up.

And I know that that gets better because they want to keep people on the platform, but then it's not connected to your RSS feed. So then you're not really tracking, but does it really matter? Because you're trying to get the eyeballs.

But like what you were saying, I think coming up, I don't do that, but I see a load of people doing it where I know the information with a lot of the podcasts that I'm doing is incredible. But if I just came on and done it as a live or just put up that part, like where I'm recording me just specifically for the audience, I know it gets 10 X or a hundred X, but then you're trying to be everywhere and everything. But I suppose for LinkedIn is really the professional place.

So for getting clients, it's probably worth the effort and actually doing it on that platform.

[Speaker 1] (13:34 - 16:06)
Yeah. I mean, I think keeping variety is, is going to be a big help as well. So I'll see some people doing, sharing their podcasts and they're only ever kind of sharing the video, but they have the text part of the post, of course, which you have to have.

But using the transcript, I think, and kind of putting that dialogue in the, in the text of the post itself, I think that tends to do pretty well. People like, it's almost like reading a book. You're, you're seeing the different characters interact.

So there's a lot you can do in terms of just kind of cutting up a podcast and, or any kind of video really in sharing the transcript, you know, putting maybe a quote into a graphic, something like that. But I, it's, it just, it takes a lot of trial and error and there's no one way that a hundred percent works. And sometimes it's just your personality and how people are going to connect with you.

So I don't think there's really, as long as you're, as long as you have intent on finding out what connects with your audience, there's no failed posts. There's just, there's just learnings that you're going to get from each post. Like, okay, well, I've put up, one thing that I think people do too often is they try to glean information from posts where they haven't done enough of those posts.

Like, well, I've put up two of these videos and nobody's connected to these videos. So I guess they're not going to work. Not saying you're doing that, but just as an example, it's like, okay, well, you probably need to do it five or 10 times to really get some kind of good analytics from it.

And then, okay, well, if that's not working, let's try something else. One of the things, you know, this is kind of a tip that, that I've used with people is that if you can make your own GIFs. So, excuse me, you can take a video and if you see like there's a point in the video where it seems like it can kind of loop a little bit, like maybe you ask a question and they respond and you're kind of just responding back as well.

Then you can, and if it's in about three to seven seconds or so, you can take that clip out. You can put it into say Canva and download it as a GIF. And then you have a, you have a custom GIF that you're able to share.

That's a really cool kind of unique piece of content that, that people see. And it's kind of unexpected because they see generic GIFs, but you almost never see somebody who's made their own GIF. But so if you can do something like that on occasion, people seem to really like that.

[Speaker 2] (16:07 - 16:36)
Excellent. Yeah. That's a, that's a good one.

What I've seen as well is there's some people, they're taking other people's content that's actually doing very well. And then they share that, but they put their, and I see one guy, he's getting like 60,000 that I know that he's in my group. He's getting like 60,000 views.

And it's kind of, it's different if it's relevant to what you're doing, but he's just kind of doing it for stuff that's popular, which I.

[Speaker 1] (16:36 - 21:09)
Yeah. Yeah. I know what you're talking about.

In fact, I just had a conversation with a gentleman. Great guy, actually. I'm not trying to throw any shade on him, but he is using a technique where I think he's getting something like 3 million views a month where he's, he's kind of taking like popular videos on Instagram or YouTube or TikTok or whatever.

And he's resharing the videos and he's getting tremendous amounts of outreach from it in terms of followers and likes and everything. But he's told me that he hasn't gotten any business from it. He's been doing it for several months.

He's gotten zero business from it. It's just really interesting. He's like, man, I would love to get 3 million views a month.

That's, that's incredible. I don't have anything close to that. But it's, people, there's a, people don't understand the distinction between different kinds of social media growth.

So, you know, I really think there's kind of two main categories and the most popular category is entertainment based content. So like MrBeast, you know, biggest YouTuber in the world, he's doing that. You know, KSI, just different, you know, different kind of YouTube celebrities, what they're doing is they're trying to make content that's so entertaining that people will follow them and they'll kind of get the ad revenue from it.

They can do sponsorships and all that. And so people see that. And I think even from the business perspective, they think that's what I want.

I want this huge brand that I can kind of just do anything with. Well, having a brand that's doing that is very different than a business based brand where it's not all about the views, right? It's people seeing your expertise and reaching out to you and wanting to work with you.

And so oftentimes if somebody's focused on that, I mean, you can have, you know, just a few thousand followers and getting maybe a few hundred likes, sorry, a few hundred views per post and be doing very well in your business. There's, you know, lots of stories of that. And I think that you're probably, I imagine you get more views than that, but I think you're probably an example of that.

You've got a very successful business where people are wanting to work with you, you know, all the time. And I know your podcasts get a tremendous amount of views. So that's probably a little bit of a different story, but that's a different thing.

So some people often haven't thought of those two things like, okay, I'm not in this group. I'm in this other group. And unfortunately, if you don't know that you're going to, you're going to try to work and continually get likes and views.

It's addicting. I've been caught in that spiral too, where, oh my gosh, I've got all the content that's just doing so, so good. But then it's like, oh, okay, well, I'm not actually getting results from it.

And I've heard that from a lot of people. They're like, oh, I've been doing these posts. They're getting tons of views.

I think I need to get more views. I'm like, no, no, no. You're focused on the wrong thing.

You don't need more views. You need a better, a better funnel basically. Right.

And I don't love the word funnel, but it's, it describes if you can put yourself into the audience's shoes, which I think is a good kind of way to look at funnels. Like if your audience reads your posts, what's the next thing you want them to do? Maybe follow you, maybe connect, something like that.

And if they go to your profile, what are the instructions on your profile? For a lot of people, they're, and I need to ask you some questions doing all the talking here. But for a lot of people, they've got a very friendly looking profile.

They look like a great person, but there's not really instructions to what they need their audience to do next. So if you want people to get on a call with you, put, and I'll say that right now. If you want to connect with me, Sam Swersky, connect with me on LinkedIn, you can go to my LinkedIn profile, but people on their profile, they can say, okay, here's what I want you to do as your next step.

You can reach out to me. You can DM me this. You can go to my newsletter.

You can set up a call with me, like whatever, you can sign up for my newsletter. Whatever that thing is that you want people to do, make it very clear to people. So you can list it over and over and over in the profile.

I say, put it in the banner, put it in your headline, put it in your feature section, put it in your about section. And it'll just make everything so much more clear from there. So that's a very long answer to whatever your original question was.

[Speaker 2] (21:09 - 21:25)
It's great advice, because I'm thinking now as you're saying that, I'm going, I've got all my bells and whistles, everything I'm doing, but do I have my way of booking a call with me? I don't think so. So that's something I have to, they can go to my website and sign up.

[Speaker 1] (21:25 - 22:39)
Yeah, absolutely. You'd be surprised by how often people just forget to put like a booking link or something. Sometimes people don't want a booking link.

Sometimes people are really good at maybe selling in the DMs. If that's your skillset, then tell people that, like, hey, DM me, something like that. But if you imagine somebody has multiple different profiles pulled up and they need somebody with your expertise, well, it's, yes, the best offer is going to win, but it's also the most clear offer. Nobody wants to be made like, to look like a fool.

Nobody wants to think I'm going to reach out to this person and maybe they're not going to respond or this isn't really what they're focused on right now. Excuse me. Got a bit of cold today.

So you want to make it really clear, like, okay, if I reach out to this person, which he or she has instructed me to do, then I know I'm going to get an answer. That gives people a lot of reassurance with all that. Yeah.

But maybe after the show we can go through and I can do a kind of a video of your profile and offer a few suggestions. Not to say that I don't know everything, but that would be fantastic.

[Speaker 2] (22:39 - 23:13)
Yeah. And like, I mean, I, I've had on, um, on my speaking podcast, I've had a few people that have written books and done LinkedIn and one even went through and done profile, but what I see, cause I'm just looking at everything. They're not getting the massive views.

So I think they make it look pretty. And there's a big difference between looking pretty and making something work that you're actually, it doesn't like, as you said, it doesn't have to be, you know, millions of views. If you're not converting it, you can get a couple of hundreds and you could be getting clients, but I think you have to be strategic and basically combine both.

[Speaker 1] (23:14 - 26:00)
Absolutely. Yeah. That's, that brings up a really good point because what a lot of people do is they have a good description kind of of what they do, like in their headline, they'll say, Oh, I'm the CEO of this company.

And I have experience in this. And for a lot of folks that have their own business, their LinkedIn still reads like they're trying to get a job offer somewhere. And the way a LinkedIn profile looks for someone who's running their own business and for an employee is very different.

They should look very different, but a lot of people, um, have worked really hard and they've, they've found that success as a business owner, but they haven't quite switched their LinkedIn, um, over to kind of look like that. And so oftentimes it looks as like a description. It's like, Oh, this is a description of what I do, but there's not really a strong offer in it.

So you need to have a strong offer. Um, not just a description of what you do because the description is not that compelling. And I use the example of think of someone who says, well, I'm a family.

They describe themselves as I'm a family therapist. I help families, um, you know, do better or something just some generic, I help families communicate better or something like that. Well, that's a description of what you do, but that's not an offer.

There's no elements of an, you know, an offer has elements to it. And if you've read a hundred million dollar offers is I'm sure you have, uh, we were talking about that. Um, and for anyone listening, it's an excellent book.

Then you'll realize there's elements that have to be present inside of an offer. So something that could be, uh, an offer just like a better description, um, to kind of start people down that road. So they see it in your headline and then they'll read further in your about section where you can expound a lot more.

So let's say that the example of, Oh, I help families communicate better as a, as a family therapist. Okay. Well, that's kind of a vague description and you may have a lovely profile picture and it's clear that you're a good person, but that's not super compelling.

What's more compelling is I help parents heal from their own childhood trauma so they don't have to pass it on to their children, sign up for my 30 day workshop, something like that. So like 30 day program. So you can have like a much more clear offer and it's going to intrigue people more.

It's going to say, okay, now there's, I need, it's not just, maybe I want to work with this person in the future, which in case they'll follow you and then probably never come back to your profile. It's okay. They'll remember you with a specific offer in mind.

So, okay. Yes. I want to work with that person because they can achieve X, Y, and Z or Zed, however you say it, uh, for me.

Yeah. Excellent.

[Speaker 2] (26:01 - 26:01)
Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (26:03 - 26:17)
Sorry. I was hoping to ask you a few questions about podcasts because you are the podcast guy. Um, and I'm starting to kind of get more involved in podcasts.

Do you mind if I, I was actually going to transition to that.

[Speaker 2] (26:17 - 26:22)
Oh, we're going to transition. Perfect. Yeah.

Your business, because now you're helping people get on shows. Yeah.

[Speaker 1] (26:23 - 30:07)
Yeah. Yes, sir. That's right.

So, um, I've worked as a LinkedIn coach and a LinkedIn ghostwriter for several years. And one of the problems that I continually have with my clients is that I don't have a lot of good source material to use for people. They'll say like, Hey, I need somebody to write for me.

What's pretty common right now is that people will use AI. AI has a lot of benefits. One of the problems with AI is that, uh, people in general don't love AI generated content.

And there's been several studies about that. And I think people thought it would probably catch on more and it has in certain areas, but not so much on LinkedIn. And so they'll use AI, but AI doesn't do a great job of knowing who you are as a person and kind of the intricacies about who you are and translating that into posts.

So I'll have to try to figure out some kind of way to get what I call source material from people. And so I'll say, well, they're like, well, I have these random notes or I've done this one, you know, thing this one time. And I'm like, ah, it's just, it's like pulling teeth to get enough information about some, somebody that I can really kind of share their own perspective.

And so I started thinking about, I was like, well, I've been on plenty of podcasts as a guest. That's a great way to get information. So, uh, so I started telling my clients, I was like, you should really go and become a podcast guest on different shows because they're going to ask you unique questions.

We can use the content from it. We can use the ideas. And the response I got from that was like, yes.

Okay. That sounds great. Help us get on these podcasts.

I was like, no, no, no, no. You misunderstand. I, I didn't say I would do it for you.

I just, I just mean that it's a good idea for you to go do. And so that kind of like slowly over time as I got kind of more interest from that, because I think it's just, I mean, it, I think it's an overpowered um, technique for, for everything you're building connections with the podcast hosts, you're getting the actual content, you're getting a unique perspective of somebody asking questions about what you do. I think it's, I mean, even people who are, you know, in it professionally, um, you know, I, I think sometimes they don't even understand the power of everything that they have with that.

So I started telling it, selling this and then eventually transition. I think there's enough demand in this for me to get into this more full time. And I really like, I still be doing the LinkedIn, you know, stuff probably forever, but there's so much more networking in this ghostwriting is a little bit cloak and dagger where I have to be behind the scenes and people don't always want to leave reviews.

And this is a little bit more public where I think I can kind of, um, be more public facing and, and, and use some of those networking skills that I've developed over time. So, um, but the reason I want to talk to you about that is because you, uh, the pod father have so many podcasts and, and, um, I think you could teach me a lot about kind of getting into this, uh, into this business. One of the questions I have is, um, I think from studying a little bit about kind of my competition, even though I'm new in this space, so the competition may not even be the right word.

Um, it seems like people are kind of using this spray and pray method where they're sending out as many, um, inquiries as possible. And I've seen the numbers and it's pretty staggering about how ineffective it is. And I don't want to go too much into that, which is before getting kind of your broad thoughts, but what do you think about this industry as a whole and people reaching out?

What are some of the mistakes that you're seeing?

[Speaker 2] (30:08 - 33:42)
Well, one people know we're using AI. So you're getting an AI email, which straight away is an all for me. It's like, and the other one is you're getting a pitch that says I've listened to episode this, that, or that, and they're too lazy to take out the dashes and the exclamation marks and nobody writes an exclamation mark.

So they're just pretending that they've listened to an episode to do it. And I think, you see, it's a catch 22, because if I'm, because I go on shows myself and I've got some of my clients, I've got some people on 250 shows. You can't listen to the show because it's depends on the conversion rate.

You know, you might be lucky. You might get one in three, some people, one in 20, you know, so you couldn't physically be listening to all the episodes, but you can listen to a few seconds or something and straight away, it'll tell you, okay, this person doesn't have quality. You can be researching the podcast to see the audience and stuff, because there is a few fraudsters out there and they're telling they've got, you know, a combined millions.

And they have like one, one of the guys only charging a good bit for people to come on. But he had done a YouTube thing before on products and his episodes are not really doing very well at all. But people just based it on the information he's given them.

So you have to make sure that the numbers are correct as well. It's not that everybody, I mean, I don't give out numbers. I mean, if people ask, but I mean, it's just a case of, for me, it's the message is right.

But when people are kind of making it, that they're looking for big books, I mean, some people are charging, you know, three grand, 10, even 10 grand to come on a show. And if you're doing that, you need a really good return on investment for the money that you spent. I mean, if you're selling high ticket items and you can sell, you know, say you're selling 10K stuff and you can get 10 sales, spending 10 grand, you do it all day.

It's fantastic. But there's a lot of people, and they'll even tell me like they spent money and they got crickets. So it's kind of, and the other thing then is if they look at the guests, cause there's some guests come on, they listen to an episode every time I'm a guest because they know we've agreed to go on a show.

I listened to the podcast, then I know their style. So I understand it. So I'm coming in exactly known the law of the land, as opposed to some people, they don't, they come in and then it's all about building a relationship as well.

And, you know, like, I mean, we're talking about the LinkedIn and everything. I mean, I'm tagging people and they're sharing it and everything. And a lot of people do that and it really helps.

And we're both kind of commenting and that gets the algorithm working. And there's others, you're just finished the recording in there, they're gone. And I send them all the links, nothing.

They don't comment, they don't do nothing. And they're going on to the next one. And what's happening, like, I know that's not going to happen with you, with the agencies, but I keep telling like, say the agencies, I want the person to fill in the form and they go, I'll put the arrangement in.

And there's a reason being is you're creating all the content for the person. And especially if you're helping them on say the LinkedIn and everything and doing it, because you've got that skillset. What they're doing is they're cutting and pasting.

So every single form is the exact same. They're getting the same questions. There's nothing different.

So you can have loads of content with all the same crap, just a different podcast host. It's no good to no one. So, but when you're filling it out yourself, everyone's evolving or they're thinking of something and they're looking at their show and they can write stuff specific, which makes it more interesting.

And that way then there's a lot more content and everybody benefits.

[Speaker 1] (33:44 - 36:16)
Yeah. I was just sitting here thinking I could just listen to you talk. I think the entire rest of the podcast, you've got a great voice and cadence.

Yeah. It's, I think it's a learning curve because if you're a podcaster, you've done so many shows and you kind of know how it should go and you know what your guests should kind of do and everything. As a guest, I think it's just one of those things where people don't think about it.

They're just, there's kind of crucial things they need to consider. And I'm sure I've messed up on this as well, where, oh yeah, you know, sharing the content. Of course.

Why wouldn't I want to do that? That's going to help me and it's going to help the podcaster and it's going to develop that relationship. I think the most important relationship, the most important contact for a person, for a podcast guest, I don't think is the potential clients that they're going to get from the show.

I think it's the relationship they're going to have with that podcaster. Because you have multiple shows, you have so many guests and you're the first best connection that I'm going to have. I mean, I don't know if you'll ever refer me or not, but you have so many business founders and entrepreneurs and people that you work with and having a good connection with you, a good reputation with you is kind of the first best thing.

And I think if, about this a little bit before, I think guests don't understand that the podcast host, and even as I kind of develop my business and think about what the focus should be, the focus should be on the podcast host. They have spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours building up their podcast and especially to be a podcast that stands out, it's hard to build a podcast that really stands out compared to other podcasts. And so if you're on a podcast that is doing, in some ways metrics, in some ways maybe networking, whatever it is, and is doing content quality, things like that, is doing something to stand out, then you shouldn't have this mindset of like, oh, I'm this guest and I'm helping out the host.

No, the host is helping you out. I kind of see it as it's the podcaster's world. We're all just living in it.

So we need to adapt to the podcaster and not kind of the other way around. I'm curious as to your thoughts on that.

[Speaker 2] (36:16 - 38:34)
What you've said is very valid. I'll give you an example. One person, I was on their show and then they were on mine and they requested that I'd be their coach.

So I was their coach and just clicked and just like I do coaching a bit differently. Not only I'd have calls, but I'm accessible on WhatsApp as well. Because sometimes you go through something and then you go into panic.

You don't be waiting until the call. So I'm always, they leave a voice message and I respond. So we had that.

Then I have a virtual assistance business and they got some of our services for that. And that's just gone back a few years and they're still doing the VAs from us. They've recommended clients for us on the VAs.

Then recently they said, I want to do a podcast with you. And I said, don't really have the bandwidth. But then I went back and I said, look, if we can do something that's short and we can do a lot, a batch of them together, then I could do it.

And we created different points and it's doing very well. It's basically, we have one question, we both answer it and that's it. And it just goes over and it's like, it's taken off.

And then I formed my own private members group that with another person, and we've got so many different things for helping speaker. We're basically making people experts in their field. She's joined that.

And then she's referring people and like with my podfather network, she joined that. So I'm helping her podcast. So I'll give you an example.

She was getting after five years, 23,000 downloads. She's at Nairleague. She's with me about three months now.

She's at about 600,000. She's constantly in the US and a few other countries and other clients. But then she's referred clients to me as well from that.

So just from her being a guest on my show, and then me being a guest, there's so much business and collaborations. And we're going to do a book as well on the different points. And that's it.

That's in the process as well. We've 75 episodes recorded. When we get to a hundred and they're released, the book is going to be released.

So that's just one example. And that's happened a few times with different people that I've either had a guest, I've been a guest, and there's so much that happens that people don't even realize, but there's others that just come in and they're just trying to, what can I get out of the person? And they miss it.

They don't understand what you've just said previously.

[Speaker 1] (38:35 - 40:48)
Yeah, that's incredible. I mean, and the fact that you have multiple examples like that. One of the things that I think is really cool, and this has happened, I think to me once, is if you can be invited back as a guest.

I feel like that's kind of the gold standard is if you can make such an impression on a podcast host that they want to have you back and kind of like almost a friend of the show kind of thing. Because the podcast hosts, oftentimes they have a website, they have social media. They're probably going to share your podcast in kind of the normal way, but they have the choice of highlighting which shows.

So if you want to have an even better experience, then it's like, well, this isn't anything guaranteed, but you want to really make that strong first impression and it can lead to so many other things. It's such an interesting field. The deeper I get into this, I feel like every two weeks I'm realizing that there's new levels of strategy within kind of the podcasting space.

The numbers are interesting, how many downloads, which is often hard to tell, how many social views, things like that. But there's other metrics that people don't consider. So I'd love to talk a little bit about that.

What you've kind of seen where, okay, maybe this show isn't one of the top five or 1% shows or something, but maybe it's within a specific niche where, hey, they only get 50 downloads per episode, but it's so specific, it's accounting for dentists or something where it's like, it doesn't matter that they're not a top 1% marketing podcast. That is the show that you need to be on. Or in the case of yourself, you're such a good networker that, hey, even if you, Roy, were getting like zero or five or 10 views on your post, it's obviously worth it for somebody to give you their time and to foster that relationship.

So I'm just a little curious what you think about being on shows where the metrics don't always tell the full story.

[Speaker 2] (40:48 - 44:39)
There are a few things on that. One, and it's even people that want to start a show. I tell them, you don't need to get millions of views because sometimes you're getting past the gatekeeper by having a show on a specific topic and you can invite potential clients to be on your show.

And that way you're getting to know her, to have a even longer that could end up being a six figure client. So there's ways strategically to do that. Regarding the metrics, nothing is accurate.

I mean, there's so many different things out there telling you. I mean, I do YouTube bits of rumble. Sometimes the YouTube stuff can do okay.

Other times, not really. I've played around with so many different things. I mean, one might get 10,000, one might get Turkey.

But what I've realized is, and most people don't know that it's like 15 to one. And when I realized that there's more listening to the audio and I kind of was like, okay, that's interesting. So then I shifted.

And for me, it's more about the ads and where's the people listening the most, America. So I was in 150 countries in most of the shows and it's still in a lot of countries. And I guess I'm in the charts constantly every day.

Most of my podcasts are sometimes in 10, 15 countries. But like my Spanish one, which is a new enough one. Last week it was number one in the US in education, number one in the UK and number one in- Wow.

Yeah. And I even got an email from Apple that says here's some graphics to share and tag us and everything, which was kind of, I know I've been number one in all the countries, but never together the US and the UK, which was kind of decent. And yeah, I think people get rhetoric.

There's listen notes, which will tell you what percentage it's in the thing. But even them things aren't accurate because I'm constantly improving every single show, my numbers. And I've had four that were in the top 0.5% and none of them are in the 0.5%. No, they're 1%, let's say 2%. And yet they're maybe four or five times the numbers that they were before. And I know some people, they had a podcast five years ago, they'd done 10 episodes and they're still shown as the top 10%. And I've said the Spanish one, oh, that's not showing up in that.

And then if we go to all Rumble, Bitchute, my Awakening has something like 600,000 views on Bitchute. Nobody's calculating that. So the averages, I'm calculating the averages on everything that I'm doing.

And sometimes I go into some of the things that show the stats and they're nowhere near it. Sometimes they'll show the charts, I'm in the charts, which kind of helps. So the thing is, each platform doesn't want to share.

I'll give an example. I'm on Podbean and with one of the shows it's shown maybe 50, 60,000, but I can see over 50,000 on Spotify alone. So I know that none of them, even the platforms that you're hosted with, they're all lying.

I've had Spotify years ago that I was like, there's no way this is right. There's too many people reaching out to me. And then I said to them, they go, oh, sorry, next to Jumps 5000.

What's going on here? So it's like, even the platforms that you're with aren't really showing the right numbers. So there's things like Retric, I think it's called, the other ones, you pay a hundred bucks a month and they're kind of telling you, yeah, we've got the numbers.

No, they don't. No one has the numbers because everybody, like Spotify is competing with Apple, everybody's holding their deck of cards and they're just kind of drip feeding things. So I think the most important thing is just look at the engagement.

The charts kind of help. You can see, if you're daily in the charts, you go, at least I'm getting out there and you see some engagement as well. So it's a kind of long-winded.

[Speaker 1] (44:40 - 46:55)
No, I totally agree because I've been looking through the shows and I mean, everyone wants to think it's just downloads. Oh, how many downloads are you getting? Well, number one, it's not reported on most shows.

And then there's also, there's listens versus downloads. Somebody can listen to the show without downloading and that's often not getting counted. And then social media as well.

I've seen shows that they, sometimes I'll look at ratings, especially on Spotify is kind of what I'm learning because Spotify groups it from everywhere. I'll tell you a funny story. I was, as I get into this and I continually make new amazing mistakes, I was looking at these shows, I think in Australia, because I have somebody that I'm working with who wants to get on shows in Australia.

And I was looking at these shows on Apple and I was like, oh, these shows, none of these shows are getting any kind of reviews or ratings there. They must be doing terrible. Well, if you look on Apple, it's going to show you your own country's perspective.

So it's showing you, okay, well the USA Apple ratings are, you only have five ratings and they have 200 episodes. Well, what that's all about. And then you go and you got to put in the AU for Australia.

And then you're like, oh, it's a huge show. Excuse me. But it's just one of those things where you have to actually kind of look at it from the right perspective.

And I was like, oh my gosh, I had to go and change all my data information. And suddenly people that I thought, oh, they don't seem to be that hot. I was like, oh, this is a huge podcast.

And then the other thing from that is the social media. Somebody can be getting almost no downloads and almost no YouTube views, but then they've got 200,000 Instagram followers. And they're posting clips from the podcast into Instagram or TikTok or threads, you know, just some Pinterest, some random platform.

And they're huge on that platform. But 99% of the time, people aren't going to do the research to see, oh, hey, this person has a real audience. It's just not how it's traditionally perceived as an audience when it comes to podcasts.

[Speaker 2] (46:57 - 48:14)
No, exactly. And that's the thing is I kind of say to people is find which one works for you. Because I mean, I've had so many different guests.

I mean, I've done over 2000 interviews and it's everybody's got something that works for them. And as you say, a Pinterest, it could be the TikTok, it could be anything. And as long as that's working.

And what happens with a lot of people is they try to be everywhere and then they're nowhere because they're putting their energy just spread out. And that's what we kind of done. I was like, OK, what's the main one?

OK, stick to the platform for the audio. That's the main one. And then walk on the next one and the next one.

I mean, with TikTok, I get removed because they don't like my content. I'm exposing fraud and corruption with the one there with the Awakening. So when I say something that's like I had three channels removed.

And same with crypto. They've removed YouTube channels from me on that. And now my Facebook is kind of like just I'm not even allowed to invite people and I can't post anything.

And it's like, yeah, but I don't mind. It's like what I did is on my YouTube, when my Awakening was removed, I took a screenshot, I posted it everywhere and I said, all right, I'm on Bitchu. And it worked.

People just kind of, I used it against them instead of getting upset because it is what it is.

[Speaker 1] (48:14 - 49:52)
Yeah. You know, you bring up a good point because I've seen that, too, where people come to me and they'll say, hey, I want a million followers across platforms in a year and help us do this. I'm like, well, they're skipping ahead of several steps.

Number one, they don't even really understand their own brand and their own positioning and what makes them unique sometimes. And then they don't know how to connect to their audience and they don't have that experience of connecting to their audience. So if you choose one platform, whatever it is, and you and you work in that platform now, if you've tried it for a while.

Right. Like if you let's say you you're going to try TikTok. You're like, well, I've put up a ton of different videos on TikTok and for six months and I just feel like I'm getting no traction.

It's like, OK, well, at that point, try another platform. But if you can grow on one platform, then you're going to get so many great conversations and so much great insight into your audience that then you can start to take that and to put it on other platforms. But people want to do mass distribution right from the get go.

I say no, no, no, just just choose one, maybe two platforms, grow on those platforms first, learn from your audience what what they're kind of expecting of you, what they what they're learning from you and then grow on other platforms. But it's there's so much pressure, I think, from people just to have kind of an overnight success. It used to be it was a normal thing.

Like, yeah, you start in your first year on YouTube, you have one hundred and forty seven subscribers. And then as you grow, it gets better. But now people are like, oh, I just want to get huge numbers of followers right away.

It's like, oh, you know, you don't have to do that.

[Speaker 2] (49:54 - 50:37)
And the thing is, as well, I've seen some because I'd go into like all the different socials and actually so many people, they would have massive numbers because they'd done it 10 years ago when they set up their YouTube. And now it's like, you know, the eight or 10 or 20. And I mean, that's this happening as well, that when you had both, you're competing with a 10 year old who's actually doing a video and doesn't know what the everybody's creating content.

And like, it's it's a kind of shame in a way, because there's people using the or they're taking someone else's content and they're putting it on, say, the TikTok and they're taking revenue compared to the content creators that are actually creating real value. And a lot of people, their money kind of disappeared over a year.

[Speaker 1] (50:39 - 52:18)
Yeah, you know, you bring up that. So kind of going off of that, if somebody has a platform that maybe grew by a whole bunch 10 years ago, and I see that with Facebook, I feel like more often than any other show, but with any other platform. And that happens with LinkedIn as well.

It could have been that they had put a ton of effort, they had gotten a ton of followers, and none of those followers are really engaging with them now. But sometimes people use those numbers and justify, hey, pay $500 to be on my show. I have 300,000 subscribers.

It's like, well, correction, you have 242,000 subscribers on one platform. And on that platform, you're getting essentially no engagement. And then you have it scattered across platforms.

And you're just using that number to kind of, I don't want to say extort people, because they did do the work of getting those subscribers in the first place. But it's often not translating into the kind of value that you're maybe promoting to people. So you've got to be pretty careful.

I'm not against podcasters charging to be on shows. I think there's a lot of stigma around that, as I've seen it. And there's so much work that goes into a podcast.

I think to have some kind of fee of like, hey, this is just a fee that kind of helps me cover the basic expenses or whatever. I think that's awesome. And if you're a huge show, and you can choose from thousands of guests, then maybe have some kind of fee as well.

But there's definitely a lot of people who have kind of figured out how to game the system without actually delivering any kind of results for their guests or even really for their audience. I think. I don't want to go too far in that.

I'm new in this space.

[Speaker 2] (52:18 - 53:14)
No, but you're right. No, no, no. That's the way it is, unfortunately.

But I mean, there's times I've seen people have paid and have got decent clients from it. But the other thing as well, then, is they kind of need to be cautious as well. Because sometimes people, they might bring incredible value, but they're not actually giving anywhere where they can find them or not trying to have a call to action.

And they feel kind of maybe, and that's okay to do that. Because at the end of the day, when someone's coming on, they're providing value. So they deserve to let people know where they can find them, or if they've got an offer, got a landing page or a book or whatever that people then that listen and like to take up.

But some people don't, they feel kind of, I don't know, are they shy about it or they don't feel. And they think by just giving the information, people will come running from them. That's not the way it works.

You have to look at how they're actually kind of doing the close as well on a show.

[Speaker 1] (53:15 - 53:57)
Absolutely. Can I ask you one final question? Absolutely.

Okay. So just kind of viewing this from a bird's eye view, as I'm kind of working through this and talking with new clients and things like that, there's, I think you can probably step over a line, but for a guest, how should they approach kind of making an offer on a podcast where it's not just a blatant advertisement where it's distracting from the show? Should they do it at the end of like, Hey, this is what I'm doing right now.

Should it be the offer? Should it be more follow me? Should it be kind of in the middle?

How do you think works in a way where it benefits the guests, but it's also not distracting for the show in general?

[Speaker 2] (53:58 - 54:54)
Well, I mean, sometimes people are telling them where they can find them. What I've seen is, for example, somebody say, like you could say, Hey, I've got this kind of 10 step on how to improve your, your LinkedIn based on all the people I've worked with, I've worked with the best in the world. And you just tell them where to go.

And then people are giving your email and then you can follow up with all the different things, or you can put them into a kind of funnel and stuff like that. But if you're providing something that people go, Oh, that sounds interesting because you can say the website, but maybe some people will go across, but if you're providing value, then people get that. And then they go, wow, that was really good.

I want to work with you. And I think I've seen people that are kind of giving something that it gets them in the door. And then you've got the conversations to kind of move it to the next level.

It does, obviously you're working on percentage and the funnel, but I think that's the best way to do it. Okay, great.

[Speaker 1] (54:54 - 55:12)
So if I were to say, for instance I'd appreciate if people follow me on LinkedIn, as I'm building up this new podcast guesting business, I'm sharing my wins and my failures along the way. I hope you can follow me on my journey. Would that be appropriate?

Yes. Tongue in cheek.

[Speaker 2] (55:13 - 55:22)
But that's the way to do it. No, that's excellent. I totally enjoyed it.

And is it just LinkedIn or do you have a website as well where people can find it?

[Speaker 1] (55:22 - 55:37)
LinkedIn is the main thing right now. I just started a YouTube channel, which is a whole conversation for another day, but I'm taking clips from my own podcasts, guest appearances, and putting them on YouTube. It's been a lot more effective than I thought it would be.

So, but right now, for right now, just LinkedIn.

[Speaker 2] (55:38 - 55:55)
Okay. And I make sure I put the links and, you know, you were talking about sometimes getting back. I'll definitely have you back because you shared fantastic information.

So as you're building this YouTube, we can discuss that as well, because I know that all the information is going to help all the podcasters and most of them have a, you know, site business or coaching or they have something. So thank you very much, Sam.

[Speaker 1] (55:55 - 56:04)
Yeah. Thank you, Roy. This has been one of the best conversations I've had in a long time.

It's just so enjoyable. You're, you're so naturally good at this. Thank you very much.

[Speaker 2] (56:05 - 56:29)
So that's all for the Podfather. You'll find all our episodes on podfather.me. You'll find everything about me, scan the QR code or go to roycoughlan.com. You'll find my 10 podcasts.

I've got two private business networking groups. You'll find information about that as well. And if you're looking for virtual assistance, go to va.world

Don't forget to give us a thumbs up, five star rating, share with your friends and make sure you connect with Sam on LinkedIn and just reach out to him because it'll work. Until next week, take care.