How To Become The Celebrity You Always Wanted To Be | Small Biz Marketing Specialist
How To Become The Celebrity You Always Wanted To Be

How To Become The Celebrity You Always Wanted To Be

How do you become an in-demand expert to showcase your expertise and establish yourself as a celebrity? “Small Business Stacey” interviews Adam Homey to find out the answer.

Episode Transcript

Hello and welcome everybody. Small Business Stacey here. Now, I have a question for you. How would you like to be known as the celebrity in your niche or your industry?

That’s what we’re gonna be talking about today. And I am so excited to have my special guest today, Adam Hommey, who is the expert and gonna be sharing with you how you can do just that. How to become a memorable, in-demand expert by getting booked on podcasts, live streams, webinars and more. Welcome to the show Adam.

Always a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me. This is gonna be so much fun.

You got it. You sent me a bio. I don’t read bios. I hate bios. So let me see if I can do you justice, and then you can add in anything important that I’ve missed. I do know a little bit about Adam because he and I are in the same Mastermind and coaching group.

What I do know is that he is a brilliant business builder and marketer. He has at least two businesses. One is the Business Creators’ Institute, and the other is In Demand Expert, which we’re gonna be talking about today. He is a highly sought after speaker on numerous business building and marketing topics. I’ve heard him speak on things like fixing your funnel and launching your best-selling book, those kinds of topics. And speaking of that, he is a best-selling Amazon author. What is it, Groundhog Day is Not An Event. No, Groundhog Day is an Event.

Groundhog Day is an Event, Not a Business Strategy.

There you go. And he has two beautiful felines who I think run the day-to-day operation there.

Am I right Adam?

They do supervise the office.

Okay. What else did I miss in that introduction?

I think that covers the large and the small of it. That should give people at least enough of a framework for us to get started.

Okay. So, that’s the professional stuff. But, you know what, no one really cares about that. They wanna know the real Adam. So I have some questions for you. You ready?

Sure. I’m born ready.

All right. Since you did write a book on Groundhog Day, I do have to ask the question. Spring or fall?

Spring or fall? Well, I moved to Las Vegas so that, that wouldn’t really be a major issue either way you look at it. But if forced to pick one, I’m gonna go with spring because that’s when the groundhog comes out of the burrow and when we have the opportunity to grow the greener grass on our side of the fence.

Well, Punxsutawney Phil did not make me happy this year. We’re having six more weeks of winter.

Well, here’s what folks need to understand about Punxsutawney Phil. He said spring would come early. He did not say it would come immediately. So this weather that some folks are having right now, we’ve gotten some interesting things happen in Las Vegas as well. This is just winter getting it out of the way early ’cause they know they don’t have as much time this year.

There you go. All right. So next question. Would you say numbers or letters?

Wow, this is quite an interesting-

I know. There’s no right or wrong answer, but I love the way Adam answers these questions.

Okay. I think I’m going to go with letters because I was never much good with numbers. I understand addition and multiplication and division when I have to, but when it comes to geographic, trigonometric, physical, what have you, I don’t know how to measure and isosceles trapezoid or solve it for x.

Well, the good news is you don’t need to know that for what we’re talking about today.

Thank goodness.

And the next question is so easy. Jello or pudding?

Neither.

Oh, really?

Yes.

Is it a texture thing?

The Jello has gelatin in it, which I don’t want. And pudding, I’ve just never had a taste for.

Okay. Well, let’s talk about what you do have a taste for today. And that is content marketingHow To Become The Celebrity You Always Wanted To Be. Now when you say this word, content marketing, small business owners, you can just see their brain sort of sizzling. We’ve heard this saying, content is king. But give your definition of that. When it comes to content marketing, where should a small business owner start ’cause it can seem so overwhelming?

I think the first thing that a business owner or an entrepreneur or business creator needs to understand before they even get into content marketing is how to make discussing your business part of what you do and who you are. Now Stacey, you mentioned that you and I belong to a Mastermind together, which is true, which would be Jim Palmer’s Dream Business Mastermind. You and I have been to Dream Business Academy together where we’ve heard Jim share on the topic of what’s known as seed-based marketing. There are other names for this exact same thing, and I’ve heard other people speak about the exact same concept, but we’ll use Jim as an example ’cause we both know him. And it’s just the idea that you work in references to what you do on a daily basis.

So if you were to say, “So Adam, when you find yourself feeling a little bit blue, what do you do?” I might say something like, “You know, it’s funny Stacey, you should bring that up. ‘Cause just the other day it was a typical Monday morning, I had three coaching calls with my top VIP clients for my consulting business, and then I was working on doing some outreach to hosts to get some people booked for my podcast booking agency, In Demand Expert, and I noticed it seemed like, wow, it’s a lot of effort. And sometimes it seems that the rewards don’t come immediately.”

But here’s what you have to be aware of as a business creator is that the long game always wins. I’ve been around in this industry for over 15 years. I’ve served in a variety of different ways. I’ve had a variety of different clients, scores of business creators we’ve worked with, and what I’ve ultimately discovered is there have been so many flashes in the pan that have come and gone. So many instant, overnight, magical things happen that have then disappeared. But when all is said and done, it’s the ones who are playing the long game, the ones who will still be there, who will still be steadily growing their businesses, who will be establishing their memorable in-demand expert profile, who will always be the mainstays and the go-to’s, the names that will keep coming up year after year after year. So did you see what I did there?

Yeah. I love that.

So just answering the question, what do you do when you have a bad day, I worked in so many references to my business, so many business lessons, and it doesn’t always have to be that extreme. I came up with a bit of an extreme example, but just to get your audience thinking about how can you just integrate casual references to what you do and the value you bring to the world and how you serve from your intersection of your brilliance and your passion into your everyday conversation with people so that speaking about your business and telling people about your business just becomes a natural part of your everyday conversation. So it never really feels like pitching, or you never feel like you have to switch into sales mode.

Adam, that’s a great point because most small business owners probably don’t think of themselves as memorable or as a celebrity or in demand, but yet whether it’s a realtor, the individual small guy on Main Street or a large tech company, a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker. Everybody out there really is an expert, so how can this small business owner sort of leverage their expertise?

Actually, let me ask the question, why would a small business owner wanna be memorable and be the celebrity in their niche?

How To Become The Celebrity You Always Wanted To Be

Because when you’re the memorable celebrity in your niche, what it really comes down to is instead of you writing up these so-called proposals and doing follow-ups and doing incentives to get people to put down deposits now, what you’ll have instead are your prospects actually selling themselves to you, asking your permission for them to give you money in exchange for what you give to the world. Where rather than hoping to close the deal, it’ll rather be the situation where you’re gonna be making decisions, do I actually wanna take this person on. And that’s a very nice place to be.

Wow. So when it comes to content, you know there are different ways you can do that. You can sit and sort of bang out a blog post, or you can maybe leverage other people by having them interview you, like I’m bringing you on my show today. Is there a difference? Is there a preference? Does either help you in any better or any worse?

They kinda work together when you think about it. I went through a period for about three years … And you were familiar with at least some of this because I would occasionally bring it to our Masterminding calls … and I’ve mentioned this so many times on the Business Creators’ Radio Show, which is my podcast, which has been on the air for five-and-a-half years … that I went through a period in my business and my life for maybe about two-and-a-half to three years where I didn’t really know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I had come so far down the road, and I recognized that this wasn’t really where I wanted to take things, but I didn’t have the answer, what’s next. What was great about hosting the Business Creators’ Radio Show and my availability to be a guest on other people’s shows for the topics around which I had brilliance and passion is that was a key piece of my marketing that allowed me to keep my hand in, to regularly deliver top content to my audience and to my tribe, and to make powerful connections that led to additional client engagements, additional speaking opportunities and other things that were necessary and fun to keep the business going even while I figured out this question.

In fact, the opportunity to explore through this form of marketing helped me find some of the answers possibly sooner than I may have otherwise. What’s really great about hosting a podcast or being a guest on a podcast is you don’t have to actually sit down and write anything. As the host, usually you ask questions and they answer. Or you get a conversation going. As a guest, you come prepared with an outline, you give that to your host, and generally speaking there will be some adherence to that.

I know that you’re kinda doing things a little bit differently than what we had suggested. And as the guest or to be memorable, it’s my responsibility to know my topic inside and out so that I can be prepared for any situation. You may be thinking to yourself, “Aha, I’m gonna ask Adam questions about spring or fall and groundhog versus cat and things like that,” but no, I’m prepared for it. You’re not really going by the suggested interview questions that we gave you and you know what, that’s great. The reason being is because it gives me the opportunity to explore for myself a little bit further and see what new opportunities are out there to show the world my combination and my intersection of my brilliance and my passion.

Okay. Well, let’s dummy this down just in case people in my audience, they may not know what all these terms are. A podcast, a livestream, a webinar. Can you go through the different types and what you most recommend for a small business owner?

How To Become The Celebrity You Always Wanted To Be

All right. Let me bifurcate this. Let’s start with … What we’re doing right now I believe is basically a podcast. We’re doing an interview. You’re gonna put this out on your website. You’re gonna put it out through your social media channels. You’re gonna put it out through networks such as iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify, BlogTalkRadio. I’m not sure exactly which ones you’re on, but those are some of the examples. Also you have iHeartRadio, and I could go on and on down the list of various different distribution feeds for podcast material, which can be either audio or video. I believe, if I’m correct, there’s gonna be both an audio and a video version of this?

Yep. My videos are purposed in multiple ways, but we do the podcast via Podbean.

Okay, great. Yeah, that’s another example. So that’s a podcast. Now a livestream is where you use a platform like Facebook Live or YouTube Live, and I believe LinkedIn’s about to get into this game as well, where you actually go live and have a live interview where you can have a discussion going on right next to it. You see this all the time with experts who do weekly livestream shows or even daily livestream shows. You see this a lot with political figures who regularly interact with their audience. You see it with authors. You see it with radio personalities will sometimes be doing their radio show, and at the same time they’ll have a camera on them, and there’ll be a live chat going on. So they’re simultaneously hosting a radio show, which will then be put out through podcast channels, and at the same time it’s being video live streamed. By doing that, they’re actually accessing three different avenues of communication at once.

Wow. I could see how that then helps position you as an expert because when people are searching for whatever topic it is that they’re looking for, boom, you could show up via podcast, you could show up via video, you could show up … yeah, all these different formats.

Right. And you also mentioned the term webinar. Webinar is more of an educational thing. We do help folks get booked onto webinars as well through In Demand Expert. Think of the webinar as a model where it’s either for members of your Mastermind or your coaching program or you put it out there that people are gonna enter their name and email address on a form somewhere to show up at a specific date and time on an app such as GoToWebinar or Zoom or Everwebinar or something like that.

And they’re going to receive a presentation, which will usually be done using PowerPoint slides where they’ll get about 20 minutes of education, 20 minutes of inspiration and 20 minutes of enervation in the form of a sales pitch or an opportunity brought to them. I am just gonna use the term sales pitch because we’re in business, and it’s our responsibility once we’ve given people great information, we’ve given them an inspiration, that they can take things to the next level, that they can see themselves experiencing greater results that up until now didn’t seem possible, then we show them a way that they can do it if they wish to. So people say, “Oh, I should never pitch. I should never pitch.” Well, here’s the thing. When you’re a guest on a podcast or a livestream, typically you should not actually be pitching.

And this is where seed-based marketing, which we covered earlier, comes into play. It allows you to plant seeds about the value and your intersection of your brilliance and your passion. It allows people to make their decision to know, like and trust you, and to consider working with you. But it’s not like you’re constantly spitting out URL’s or saying, “Come to my event. Come to my Mastermind,” or things like that. Typically, at the end of shows like this, you may offer some sort of opportunity to people to join a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group or to opt in to download something. That’s typically what you see on things like podcasts and live streams.

If it’s a webinar, you may outright offer them the opportunity to join your Mastermind, download, buy your home study course. So it’s environment dependent. You have to think about where your audience is, what their relationship is with you and the form and the venue that you’re on. All that being said, once you get that worked out, as far as people who say, “Well, you know you should never pitch anything,” I say, “Get over it.” The fact is, especially if you attend a webinar, you attended that webinar for 45 minutes. You got great value. You got actionable steps you can apply to your business right now and get results. If that person has given you value, and you feel that you’ve been moved at least half a step forward from where you were 45 minutes ago, then as I see it that host has earned the right to show you an opportunity. But you can decide of your complete free will if you wish to participate in that or not.

Absolutely. And if somebody has been watching for 45 minutes, chances are they wanna know more. They wanna know the next step. They wanna do more with you. Absolutely. What would you say to a small business owner then who’s saying, “Wow, Adam. You just went through all this content. This seems really overwhelming. I’m not really sure this can work in my industry or niche.”

Okay. Are we talking about the idea becoming a memorable in-demand expert on podcasts, live streams?

Exactly.

Et cetera. Well, we’ve identified 18 different ways that being a memorable in-demand expert can benefit you, your business and your brand. And we’ll probably identify more as we go along, but right now we have 18. I’m gonna throw just a few of them out there. You may find these interesting.

I’m gonna throw in one or two just for laughs as well. But at the same time are very serious. One of which we kind of already covered is selling without selling. It’s the idea of modifying your language and making speaking about your business part of who you are and what you do that injects the value and your brilliance and your passion into your conversation so people can start to make those decisions for themselves.

Another example is to nurture your clients. When your existing clients see that you’re constantly being interviewed, you’re constantly being featured as the in-demand expert, they know they’re working with a winner. And that makes them a lot less susceptible to the pitches of the Johnny-come-lately who’s going to do it for half price. You’ve never heard of this person, you don’t know who they are, you don’t even know if they even understand what these terms mean, but they’ll do it for half price. It helps to build that fence around your customers so that they’re more likely to stay with you ’cause they see that you are the memorable in-demand expert, and they’re already working with the star of their industry.

Here’s another example. Let’s say you wanna fill an event. I know people who do annual events where, like a live event, so when they’re getting ready to promote that event, they will commit to being a guest on at least 100 podcasts and live streams. Here’s the reason why, and this goes to another reason.

You have to think about who your number one listener is when you’re a guest on a podcast or a livestream. There’s one person who’s gonna be there for the whole thing. There’s one person who’s getting a full understanding of your message. There’s one person you’re gonna get to have a one-on-one conversation with, and that is your host. You get booked on shows with the following things in mind. You think about is this somebody, this host, is this somebody who I think might make a great attendee for my event if I need a speaker? Could they be a great speaker? If they have a network, would their tribe be a great potential audience for people to come to my event? And I know people that fill their events almost exclusively by guesting on podcasts and live streams. So it is very possible.

How To Become The Celebrity You Always Wanted To BeAnd I’m gonna give you one more for fun. Protecting your precious time. Now you know me well enough to know that if somebody says they’d like to meet me for coffee, I’m gonna say two things. Number one, I don’t drink coffee. Number two, I don’t meet. Because it may be an hour to meet for coffee, but the fact is you’re actually giving up half your day minimum. And here’s the reason why. And there are actually scientific studies to back this up by the way, and I cited similar studies inside my book, Ground Day is an Event, Not a Business Strategy. That to take an hour out of your day, you have to factor in not only that hour, you also have to factor in travel time, you have to factor in ramp down time when you have to ramp out of your work before you get ready to go to the meeting. Then after you come back from the meeting, you have to factor ramp in time because you’re not just gonna dive in and go full steam ahead. Usually, unless you’re on some ridiculous deadline, and you have an hour to do three hours worth of work. You’re gonna need some time to sort of mentally ramp yourself back into work.

All that being told, that’s about half a day to slurp on coffee while your paying clients are waiting. What I say is … Somebody says they wanna meet for coffee, they wanna pick my brain, my very first question’s gonna be, “Got a podcast?” And if they say yes, I’ll say, “Great. Well, tell you what. Why don’t you put me on your podcast and I will give you not only my good stuff, I’ll give you my great stuff. And you can have 45 minutes or an hour or however long your show is to pick my brain as much as you want.”

Here’s the benefit of that. They’re gonna give me and my business some free publicity because they’re gonna share with their tribe that that episode’s gonna be airing. They’re gonna put it through their channels. They’re gonna put it through their distribution networks. So I’m gonna have the opportunity to make my case to their audience. At the same time, the fact that I’m on their show gives me leverage ’cause I’m gonna share it as well, so there’s gonna be a mutual benefit to them. And in exchange for them picking my brain so to speak, they are going to … I’m gonna get some great publicity. I’m gonna get some great opportunities to get my brilliance and my passion out there, and all they had to do for that was show me a little bit of love. And the best part is, is the only thing I have to do is ask them if it’s gonna be on video so I know if I have to fix my hair.

Oh Adam, you look great all the time.

Well thank you.

Well, you brought up a great point because you do always hear the small business owner is so time-starved. In the three hours, like you said, to go get a cup of coffee, you could be on three podcasts sharing your brilliance.

You could do five depending on the length of them.

Journalists have linked this online podcasting boom to the ubiquity of smartphones, time spent in transit, and online music services. Others attribute it to the brain- stimulating and addictive effects of audio learning, or the multitasking potential of listening. The beauty is in the overlap.

Jeff Desjardins Editor-in-Chief of Visual Capitalist

Exactly. But what about the small business owner who now sees, yeah, I could be great in-demand expert, but my expertise doesn’t … where do I go to find these shows? How do I get booked on them? What do you tell somebody like that?

Here’s the first thing you have to bear in mind. According to some recent studies, there are as of December 2018, an estimated 630,000 active podcasts today. And between those active podcasts … And I mean these are ones that are actually putting out episodes today. Not ones that somebody started in 2015 and dropped after a year but all the episodes are still live. I’m talking about active podcasts where they are booking guests right now and they’re doing episodes right now. And between those 630,000 there are an estimated 19 million episodes online today. There is a podcast or a livestream for pretty much any topic you’re looking for. Sometimes you may have to dig a little bit deeper. That no matter what your niche is, there’s a very good chance you are going to find either your exact topic or something that is relevant to your message.

The other thing you have to bear in mind is that 48 million people in the United States, estimate, listen to podcasts at least once a week. What’s interesting about these listeners is they tend to be loyal listeners. They tend to be affluent listeners, and they tend to be educated listeners. Where else are you gonna find this quality and this size of an audience with this many opportunities? And the best part is you usually don’t even have to leave your house.

That’s right. And you can have your two feline friends join you as well.

Yeah, they’ve been actually very good. I’ve had instances where Princess Alessandra’s knocked down my webcam. I’ve had Stella jump on my keyboard. But they’re being very well behaved today. I think it’s because you’ve met them before through some of our private conversations so they don’t feel the need to introduce themselves. It also could be because they interrupted something else I did earlier.

Let me make a point about that by the way. What’s great about being a memorable in-demand expert is you also get to show a little bit of your personality. And the fact is, I’m a guy who works in my home office and sometimes I work from a cigar shop, sometimes I work from sitting out on my balcony. I move around in terms of where I actually work. I do have an office, but I do move around. When I’m in one of the places in my home where I would work, I’ll have my cats kinda swarming around all day.

The bottom line is they are the office supervisors, and they have an interest in keeping me in line. So it is their job to make sure that I stay focused and I keep looking forward because they know that’s where their premium cat food comes from. So cats are part of my personality. They are gonna walk in front of the camera. Just the other day I was on a livestream actually … About a week ago I was on a livestream for a Mastermind group where I was being interviewed and Alessandra went right up the camera, and the next thing you saw is you saw her nose right in the cam with her eyes up real close like she was inspecting the camera. And there were a couple of reactions and in the chat people typed, whoa, what was that? And oh, there’s a panther coming after me.

Great. So you’re saying just be yourself whether on a podcast or a livestream.

Well, I don’t really like the phrase be yourself because what if yourself is a repulsive, nasty individual? What I say is be an authentic, be authentically you in a positive way because yourself might be something you need to work on. But if you’re authentically you and you do it positively, it’s very hard to fail.

Okay good point. Now you were throwing out some big numbers with lots of zeroes on there based on how many listeners, how many shows are out there, and my motto has always been, do what you do best, outsource the rest. You know your stuff. You are an in-demand expert, but getting on these shows with all those numbers, do you wanna look through 800 million or whatever you said, shows? Do I understand that you help people get booked on shows and/or create their own shows?

Absolutely. And when we speak with people who are considering joining the In Demand Expert program as guests who wanna be featured and become memorable in-demand experts, one of the most common questions I get is, “Wow, this doesn’t look so hard. Can’t I just do this myself?” Well, I’m gonna quote a friend of mine. A gentleman named Marty Higgins. He’s the owner of a company called Family Wealth Advisory, I believe it’s currently called. A leading financial advisor. He was a client of ours for a while and he’s a fantastic guy. His father was also a salesman, and he remembered as a little boy when people would come to his house and they’d sit down with his Dad and they’d be getting ready to sign on the dotted line, they’d turn to his Dad and then say, “Mr. Higgins, can’t I do this myself?” And Marty, his Dad would say, “Sure you can. But how much doing it yourself have you gotten done thus far?”

Here’s the reality behind getting booked on podcasts and live streams. Number one, to get five bookings you can count on doing an average of 30 to 50 pitches. You have to look at this by the numbers. And here’s the reason why. Because we have had a shift in the industry of podcasting ’cause everybody’s gotten excited about podcasting and being a guest. That from the host perspective, and I’m a host and you’re a host too, we’ve moved from being so starved for guests that sometimes we have to call up our buddies and say, “Hey, I really need somebody to pitch in for me on my next show. Any chance you can jump in and do an interview the day after tomorrow?” We want a backlog of people who’ve applied to be on our show that we actually have to book time to go through them and vet them before we decide we’re gonna let them on the show. Just for my show, Business Creators’ Radio, I’ve gotten three pitches this morning that I’ll be looking through this afternoon. And I’m gonna be vetting them and getting back to our referring sources.

Just this morning in fact we’re in the process of getting one of our newer clients booked into a very unique niche, and just during the time that I’ve been on this interview with you, I’ve had two hosts that we pitched yesterday … we pitched our client to … who have just gotten back and said, in one case, I can look at the emails right now … one said, “Hi Adam. Confirming your receipt. We’ll take a look and get back to you this week.” So I’m gonna have to make sure to follow up on that. I’m gonna have to put that in my CRM or my contact management system …

So I’m gonna have to put that in to make sure that I touch base with it in case they don’t get back to me ’cause hosts get very busy. And then I have another one that said, “This is great. We have to run this by our producers. They’re out this week, and can we touch base in two weeks?” So I’ve just reached out to them to confirm that date and time to have a follow-up call on that. This is just based on efforts we started just yesterday with this client as a matter of fact.

So you can see that there’s sometimes a time and a lot of moving pieces. And I just gave you two very quick examples. Two out of 30 pitches we did for this guest just yesterday. Those are two of the responses we’ve gotten so far. And you see how each one is gonna have follow-up steps. Imagine doing this for yourself as a part of your business. You would have to hire an assistant just to do it for you. Why not work with a firm that already has the contacts? We already have a network of shows and guests that are ready to book you. We have a process in place where we reach out to at least 25 new podcast shows every day to inquire as to where there are openings and what kind of guests they’re looking for so we have a network ready when you come on board.

We have people who we’ve spoken with who have indicated an interest in getting started in maybe April or May of this year, and even though they’re not officially our customers yet and even though we’re not gonna actually be pitching them yet, we’re already building networks of available shows where hosts are booking guests that will be able to accommodate folks like our prospects so that when they do come on board we’re able to hit the ground running.

There are a lot of moving parts to something that’s very simple. Correct. It is very simple to do once you have a good one sheet put together with your bio, your topics, your suggested questions, you have a good headshot, you have your contact information laid out and you have a good email to go with your pitch so that you make your best possible forward presentation and make yourself memorable to the host even before they decide to book you. That’s all well and good, but imagine doing that 100 times to get 10 bookings.

What we also have, and this is another reason you wanna work with an agency is because if I have a relationship with a host or I speak with a new host and they say, “Yeah, we’re looking for guests,” I can put forth four or five guests at a time and get four or five bookings real quick. In fact, we did one of those just yesterday where I was chatting back and forth with a show host on LinkedIn, and he got back to me and he said, “Sure, we’re looking for somebody. Why don’t you send that person over?” And I said, “Actually, I have four people.” So my assistant sent the pitches over, he got back to her about three hours later and he approved five out of six.

So just like with printing, if you’re having a printed newsletter done or you’re having a printed periodical done, you look to do … I don’t know the technical terms for this, but it’s the idea that you get your print job rolled in with somebody else’s print job so that you get bulk discounts. We can get you bulk results.

Yeah. And I can totally see the benefit of that ’cause even for LinkedIn for example, you get these plain vanilla outreach emails that everybody’s sending. And what do you do? Delete, delete. By working with you on getting pitched, you’re not sending these plain vanilla emails. You know what to say and how to present somebody and best present your guest, this memorable in-demand expert, so that all they then have to do is focus on presenting their amazing content.

Let me add something here. Actually, the approaches do look like they’re plain vanilla. Let me say that slowly. Look like. On the surface. But there is a strategy and a tactic to how you phrase this stuff to get the host’s attention. This is part of the process of being memorable even before you get booked.

Well, Adam, you have some good secrets. You’ve definitely made the case today for why small business owners should definitely consider one, being an in-demand, memorable guest expert, and using content such as … what did we talk about … podcasts, live streams and webinars. Any last parting words to the small business owner?

I’m gonna give you a little tactic. If you’ll allow me to actually end this with a little bit of a tactic that your audience can take away and use right now.

Great.

You’re in the digital marketing space. Am I correct?

Yep.

And between you and I, just within Jim Palmer’s Mastermind you and I can probably rattle off four names who are also in that space.

Yeah, right.

Who even though their mix and match of services are a little bit different than what you do, basically you’re competitors. But you’re all in that same space and there seems to be plenty of business for all of you. Now if we just knew you by your names and your business names and your list of here’s what we do, how would you really stand out?

You’ve gotta differentiate yourself by this content. Exactly what you’ve been talking about today.

Let me give you an example. I’ll get up on stages … I’m a platform speaker … And I will find a way to work this into pretty much any topic I present. There are a few where it’s just a little bit too far outside, but in almost every case I can work this in where at some point I’ll get up close to the audience and I’ll say, “You know something. I’m not sure what other people have told you, but I’m here to say right now that the very last thing that you need or want in your business … in fact, if you have this in your business you gotta get rid of it ’cause it’s killing you. You do not need or want traffic to your website.” They will look-

That will get their attention.

Whoa. It’s kinda saying that the earth is flat. So we’ll pause. And they’ll lean in a little bit. And they’re waiting to see where I’m going with this. I’ll say, “Think about it. Let’s look at that phrase, traffic to your website. When I think of traffic, I think of our antiquated roadways that were designed to handle 5,000 vehicles per hour that are being forced to handle 15,000 vehicles per hour. Everybody’s running late for the office. Nobody really wants to be there. Everybody’s tired. Everybody’s frustrated, and you’re gonna hit the ground losing when you finally arrive after being caught in traffic. That’s what I think of when I think of traffic.”

And when it comes to people visiting websites, it’s kind of the same thing. You have all kinds of people trying to force their way into the website. Number one, do they belong there? Do they need to be there? Are you helping them find the fastest path to what they’re looking for when they get there? Is that an about page? A sales page? A podcast page? A product page? A contact page? Privacy policy page? Homepage? Recommended resources page? Blog page? Podcast archive page? I could go on and on and on and on and on. Every single one of those things can be a website, and a website can contain all of those things.

Rather than drive traffic to your website, we’re gonna change the language. And instead, we’re gonna focus on getting you visitors to your web page who are pre-qualified meaning right message, right audience, right time. Pre-qualified, prepped, which means that email, that social message, that tweet or what have you, has them knowing exactly what they’re gonna get when they click on that link and pumped so that once they click on it, hopefully, your website or your web page loads fast. So that they can get right to a page that’s gonna make it easy for them to get exactly what they’re expecting. Whatever it is.

While everybody else is talking about traffic to their website, I’m just simply renaming it. The part that makes me memorable is I’ll say, “The last thing you need or want is traffic to your website.” And that gets people’s attention ’cause that’s what’s known as a pattern interrupt. Another example, as every marketer out there talks about, know, like and trust. I frequently refer to and depending on the context. I’ll refer to the sales conversion conversation or the website conversion conversation, which is the process of helping people get to know you so they find their reasons to like you and make the decision to trust you enough to consider investing in you. So I just take a step back and put a label over the entire process.

So this is what your listeners can take home or your viewers can take home is that sometimes simply by renaming that thing that you do that everybody else does and putting your own brilliance and passion into the explanation of it, you can create for yourself a number one position within that niche just because you’re saying it differently.

Wow. What a great ending take away Adam. All right, so I already see the hands raising up. People like, “Oh my God, Adam’s brilliant. I can see why he’s in demand. I wanna talk to him more. I want him to start booking me on shows. How can people learn more about you and get in touch with you?

Oh, it’s real simple. Go to our website, which is www.indemandexpert.com. That’s indemandexpert.com and go to the bottom of the homepage. No matter how many iterations of the site we go through or how many new sections we add to it, I’m gonna make the commitment this will always be at the bottom of the homepage, is the opportunity to scroll down and book an introductory conversation with us. So if this is something you’re really interested in, I’ll give you 15 minutes, let’s have a conversation. We’ll break the ice, and we’ll see what synergies exist. No obligation. No fee. Let’s just have a conversation, as I said, break the ice, find out where the synergies are, and see if there’s a place we can move forward.

Great. Well thank you-

Again, www.indemandexpert.com.

Great. Thank you so much Adam. You’ve been so gracious with your time and sharing your expertise and really giving some real nuts and bolts tactics of how small business owners can become the in-demand expert in their niche or industry.

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About the Author smallbizmarketing

Stacey Riska, aka "Small Business Stacey" is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about saving small - and not so small - businesses one marketing plan at a time. She helps business owners become a #SmallBizMarketingWiz by teaching them marketing strategies that get MORE: MORE leads, MORE customers/clients/patients, MORE sales, and MORE profit. Stacey's in-demand "Small Biz Marketing Success Coaching and Mastermind Program" is transforming the businesses - and lives - of those who want wealth, freedom, and market domination. Her highly acclaimed book "Small Business Marketing Made EZ" lays out the 6-simple-step plan to get your marketing into ACTION - literally and figuratively. Stacey is also the creator of Cups To Gallons, the place where independent coffee, smoothie, juice bar, ice cream, dessert and snack shop owners go to learn how get into lucrative catering so they stop selling by the cup and start selling by the gallon. In this program she teaches from experience, as it was the key strategy that transformed her coffee and smoothie business from being $500K in debt to a 7-figure profitable business. When not saving the small business world, she enjoys sipping red wine, eating chocolate (who doesn't!) and spending time with her amazing husband.

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