Welcome back to the Authentic On-Air with Bruce Alexander. Today's show is brought to you by my new digital course. Nine Ways for the ADHD Dad to Radically Improve Communication. Do you ever struggle to communicate with your spouse or your family in a way that feels meaningful? Have you found yourself consistently taken advantage of at work in your personal life? Because no one seems to care how it affects you? If that sounds familiar, then you have a communication problem.
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That is all available at daily WW authentic Identity management dot com for its last nine steps hyphen special offer again that is WW authentic identity management dot com for its last nine steps hyphen special offer. You can also just click the link in the show notes and now back to the regularly scheduled episode Welcome back to Authentic on Air. I am your host, Bruce Alexander. The podcasting platform provides access to so many different versions of success.
Mark seven has accomplished many of these degrees, and I'm so excited to share his story after today's reflection. What is your capacity to say no and your work, your life, and in your relationships? Are you able to define and enforce your boundaries? I have always been great at saying no. I thought. But I reflect on my life and I realized something.
I was terrible at setting boundaries and enforcing them in almost all areas in which I might have had my values violated work, relationships, family responsibilities. The reason I thought that I was so good at saying no is because I was actually a provider. I could hide from opportunity all day long. Opportunities to engage in deeper connection with people I was interested in. Nope. I don't have time for that right now. Conversations do enhance my understanding of my spouse.
I'm actually busy watching golf for like 6 hours straight right now. This is my pattern for a long time because I didn't want anyone to see through the facade. I poured all of my energy into maintaining and I doubted if my coward flaws could work in all circumstances. Meanwhile, you need to stay late for work. Yes, sir. I need you to miss that event you told me about because. damn, that sucks. Okay. You need to take care of all the cleaning duties by yourself today, because. Dot, dot, dot.
Well, that doesn't seem fair, I would say with a rag in my hand on the way to fill the mop bucket. It wasn't until a few years ago that I started to prioritize myself and my growth in determining my nose. And only a couple of years ago that I started to defy my boundaries, to reflect my core values and beliefs. My know isn't about hiding anymore.
It is about preserving and upgrading my mental stability, valuing and honoring my valuing and honoring my authentic self and showing up as my best self for my wife and children. Tell me about your You're no capacity on the episode Reflection on Threads, Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn at Authentic Identity Management.
I can help you increase your capacity for know by working with you to identify your core values and beliefs and tailoring my coaching program to leverage your unique power and step into your authentic life type capacity. In the comments that I will DM you to set up your free No comment discovery Call answering your questions and detailing how I can help you live more authentically.
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This is another one of those life affirming moments that fills providential nature marks of what is a highly sought after podcast consultant and host of the After Hours Entrepreneur Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally of all podcast. That means his podcast is in the top 30,000 of over 3 million active podcast. Mark is passionate about the power of podcasting to change the world. He is also avid about his desire to not sacrifice his position as a father and a husband to make it in this world.
He is an absolute inspiration to me and a great candidate for mentor. If he's looking for any willing and hard working students, my guest today stumbled across me, grinding away on my social media, trying to make a dent in all the noise swallowing up my podcast business. I posted a story about reaching 1000 downloads, a very proud moment, a huge milestone. It reached 14 accounts. Somehow, Mark was one of those 14 and he liked my story.
So not getting a lot of engagement at this point on social media. I went to his profile to see who he was. I found him engaging and interesting, and as HD ADHD ears are going to ADHD, I went down a rabbit hole watching his content on reels deep, diving on this page and all the typical things I do with a new fascination. He appeared on the reels of multiple other podcasts and I was enthralled. I also thought how lucky all these other podcasters were that he was willing to guest on their shows.
A funny thing happened when I started hosting this podcast. I started to dream, and when I dreamed, I stopped being frozen by possibility and started acting. I started shooting shots. More often than not, I was making them too, so I decided to not be scared. Of his 20,000 plus Instagram followers or his top 1% podcast ranking, and I just DM'd him telling him about my podcast and what a great pleasure it would be to have him, as you might be able to tell.
He obliged and his recording remotely and the On air Studio I welcome today. Mark seven Welcome Mark. Ruth Thank you for the intro. Honored to be here, brother. Absolutely. Man So like to start off, what I usually like to do is get your definition of authenticity. Then starting with the simple questions here. I mean, one of the things that's interesting, we talk about social media, you talk about looking at the things that we prioritize.
And I think being authentic means I. I think being authentic means being clear on where you want to go and then being as transparent as possible on the road to get there. In a world where everyone's taking fake pictures in front of lambos and on yachts and then running on onto jet runways, take pictures like don't be that guy or that girl, you know, Absolutely. And I think, you know, for me, authenticity has been a been a huge deal on my podcast itself, the after hours entrepreneur.
I actually post all my income reports every month. I'm posting an income report, an entire episode that just talks about this, how much I made this, how much I didn't make this, how much I spent here. These were the problems I encountered. And, you know, those have become my most popular episodes. It's not the episode with Patrick that David or the episode with Neil Patel or Jazmin Starr, Pat Flynn. It's the episodes where I'm real and I'm authentic. I open up the books because people don't.
We just don't live in an authentic world anymore. It's all smoke and mirrors. And I think, you know, being different and being true to yourself is, is is by far the greatest skill in the greatest the greatest thing we can do for ourselves and for our families. I absolutely agree. I actually did skip one step. Usually, I like to ask in your own words, can you tell the audience who you are?
Like what the what you spend most of the time, most of your time doing, and why you think I invited you on the episode? Well, I mean, you did it. You really do. You do a great intro, Bruce. You kind of got me going there, but I consider myself an entrepreneur, a husband and a father, and it's kind of funny. I don't know how people get into this, but I spent the first 35, 40 years of my life just about being an employee.
When I wish if I could go back, there are all these clues that that would have told me that, Mark, you're not going to be a good employee, bro. What do you do? It with you? I remember sitting on the sidelines for baseball and for basketball is like, I'm way better than these other kids. Why am I not on the field? I just couldn't stand having my destiny dictated by another person. And that's part of the beauty of entrepreneurship, is there's no excuse. There's nowhere to hide. It's. It's on you.
You will you are on the field every single day, and you're going to score goals based upon the effort that you put in. And so that's taken over a major part of my identity. I left my job last year, just a year ago, and now the podcast agency is growing, my mastermind is growing, my air consulting business is growing. So I just feel really honored to be in it in the place that I am in it in. But I just it's just kind of I'm kind of for clipped.
I've kind of lost for words here because of how I mean, I used to wake up every day bru staring at the ceiling like, I do not want to do this today. I do not want to go to the office. It's going to suck. Is it Friday? But now none. I don't wake up like that any day. Every day is like what's going to happen today? This is going to be exciting. I'm going to get to meet people and they get to do something.
So that perspective of going from employee to employer has been one of the biggest positive changes in my life and my family's life. Although it hasn't been easy. I've never nobody ever said it was going to be easy. But it definitely, you know, I'm still early in the process, but I'm trying to do the same thing. And I had the same problem of just like I do not want to go to work. I hate working for these people.
I hate being told that the way that I'm being successful, which I was, is the wrong way to be successful. Like, that's that's the wildest thing to me is like, that's not how we do it here. Well, maybe you should change. Yeah. Or, you know, if you're in a situation, like you said, Bruce, where they're not going to change, you have to change. We need we are, you know, we need to be responsible for ourselves. Like, I don't know where this whole idea of.
Well, the whole world needs to change for me and my personal identity or purpose or desires. Like that's not the way that the world works. Now, you know, I, you know, we should never sacrifice who we are as is people. But we have a really unique there's a really unique time in human history happening right now where opportunity abounds. It abounds in it. You know, look, it took me five years to actually leave my job.
I mean, all these people who say it's easy to make enough money and have all this stability and it is not easy. It is not easy. It takes it takes the hard work. So that's why I think being authentic and being transparent about my journey and the months where I make 15 grand in profit are awesome. The months where I make a thousand are not so hot. Where's the difference? Why did that happen? And I think people really respond to that. On the After Hours Entrepreneurship podcast.
Yeah, I, I listen to probably ten episodes after we talked and I really enjoyed the content. I think it's I think it's really great and I like that it's a it is niche as it is. It also hits a variety of topics that interest me. And so like, you know, I appreciate what you're doing as well and I love that about podcasting.
Is that just because I'm a podcaster doesn't mean I can't love your podcast as well and love this podcast as well, and want all these people to succeed because the whole scarcity mindset doesn't fit here. Like there's just, you know, there's literally 3 million different podcast. And if you put out good content people are going to find you and you're not going to take somebody else's audience. It's just it's just not how it works. No, not in podcasting.
There's there's, there's strength in numbers is strength in in supporting. And I think also I'm reading Thinking Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill right now. And I think that having a mindset of, well, I hope that person doesn't do well. I hope that person fails. I don't think that that's a healthy type of mindset to have. It's physiologically going to impact you negative ways. If you're thinking if you're walking through life saying, how can I help this person?
Be amazing, that is going to the universe. God is going to pay you back tenfold if you're going through life saying, Gosh, I hope that person screw them, they got that guess. But gosh, I'm so jealous there. That is a that mindset is a killer to growth. Killer cannot support one another and and try to give value. I know that's kind of cliche, but the more you give, the more you receive.
And it's not just that physical what you do in front of other people, but it's that emotional, the thoughts, the the the way that your brain functions and thinks about people and about where you want to go. That's the way that I like. I try not to be jealous of anyone for that reason. Yeah. You know, and obviously there's stuff I see. I'm like, holy cow, I wish I was doing that. I wish I did that.
Like, I'm not perfect, but the more I'm focused on someone else, the less than focused on my own personal game. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that, you know, there's a difference between like that comparative behavior of saying like, they have that I want that, so they need to not have it so I can want it. That's that's not healthy. But saying like, I'm really happy that they've got this thing. But I would also like to get that thing too.
So let me let me earmark that as something that I want to try to build towards and then to where I'm able to gain that thing as well. I'm going to take it from them. I just also want to get that thing, you know, it's a different. Yes. Yes. Yeah, exactly. It's never enough. You're always going to be looking to take something from someone else.
Like you're never get like, why do you even want to do that If the goal is to have self-fulfillment and happiness, that is that never it's never going to get you there. You need to find what motivates me, what gives me purpose, how can I help others? And that's that is a recipe not just for future success, but for current success. Absolutely. So I read on your website that this quote, during the coming months and years, customers are going to crave authenticity from brands.
What makes you say that? Well, a lot of reasons, but like you said, we need to be different. We need to stand out. The last thing I want to do is walk into a room and just be a number. I want people to look at me and say something different about that. Do I want people to talk to me and be like, there's there's something something in the air here?
This guy, there's something different, you know, And I almost do that purposefully if I'm in a room and, you know, I will find ways to disagree with the room, right? If 99% of the people in the room are saying one thing, I want to be the 1% that's saying something different. Right. And it's not necessarily to argue just for the case of arguing, but you you know, you just don't want to be like everybody else. Right.
So that so that's a because and I think that that when it's done properly leads the authenticity that makes people remember you that refer business to you, that come back to you a year after being a guest on your podcast or a year after meeting you and say, Hey, Mark, now I'm ready. Take my money so we can get this thing done, you know, because the person that does that just agrees with everyone all the time. You end up being forgettable, right?
So I think finding places to disagree and give personal experiences is better than a big part. And I think that that goes a long way towards authenticity. Right? So that's kind of half of it. The other half is that we're moving into a world in that I'm a big part of, which is driven by AI and automation and content. It's scale blogs. It's scale creative work at scale.
And so we need to find a way to get our voice out there and rise above the noise, to find a way to leverage these tools, not to drown out our individual voice, but to magnify our individual voice. And so things like chat bots and A.I. A.I. automations are really powerful way of getting there. It's unbelievable what's happening. It's just it's just shocking. I know that I'm definitely having listen to your your content. I know I'm not relying on it enough.
I do like I use chat occasionally for like it's idea generation and like I have a virtual assistant for show notes and stuff like that. It happens to be my wife also, but it is pretty lucky thing to have in the house. But like, you know, I was listening to one of your clips talking about Zapier to chat and I was like, I don't know how to do that. And it's not that I couldn't learn. Like, I know I can learn anything if I just take the time.
I'm just I'm almost afraid to take the time to learn how to integrate all these things because I you know, I'm so focused on trying to to keep building things. And, you know, it's funny, as I say that it's like, well, that would be building something too. So maybe I'm being a little a little stuck in my ways. Yeah. You know, I'll give you a perfect example because that's what I love about tech in AI. It's like you build it once and then you can continue to build your stack on top of it.
But I'll give you a perfect example of how an integration like Zapier and Chatbot are so powerful. I was working with a client of mine who was like, Mark, I'm overwhelmed. I can't keep up with all these guests. There's too much work. I said, Let's look at your workflows. And and I had recognized in, based on our discussion that he was spending a ton of time filling out forms and getting just prepared for episodes. He's like, takes me at least an hour and I got to do this.
I could do that. And I said, Listen, let's reframe the whole thing. So what we did is we created a calendar booking system for him. So when a guest wants to be on his show, they fill out a form and it and they answer multiple questions. They'll do things like upload a headshot. What's your bio? What are three things you'd like to talk about? What are all the links in it? And it kind of breaks that all that down that we use Zapier to send all that data over to chat.
CBT and chat CBT will not only format it all in a nice way, but it'll give ten example questions to ask that guest and it also writes out a thank you email so that you can simply send an email. You've got a custom email that was written by chatbot that looks great and now you can send it out there. It also puts that person's name into a spreadsheet automatically and creates a Google Drive folder for that for that person.
I mean, so you could start to see once you start implementing Zapier, all of this is completed just because someone filled out your calendar form. Wow. And there's I mean, over the over the coming weeks, months and years, we'll be just blowing that up from maybe four or five integrations to 10 to 20 integrations. It's obscenely powerful once you start to connect the dots.
So like, I didn't even think about this when I was writing for this episode, but, you know, talking about integrating AI into all of our all of this to, to magnify our unique voice, do you struggle at all with with keeping your identity while using those products? Like, does it you know, do you feel like there is some like convolution there between is this me or is this the AI? And you know, what's your what's your kind of conflict with that? I don't.
And there's a couple reasons why I'm very transparent. You know, everywhere you look, whether it's my podcast, my website, like I'm very transparent that listen, we're we're future we're thinking differently over here. We're using AI in trying to implement AI and automation at every step of the process, every step of the podcast process. We want it we want it to be all automated, right? So, so that's part of it. But being transparent about using it helps.
And but, but what it also does, Bruce, is it frees up my time to do more, come have more conversations like this. Yeah, you know what I mean? It helps me to, to, to meet more people and to shake more hands. Right. So I think in some ways it helps. It actually helps to scale that. And you know, the other piece is that I'm I understand and I'm transparent that some of this stuff isn't going to work.
You know, I'm trying it because out of ten ideas that I try, one one tactic or system is going to be a hit, and then I can share that out with my audience and in a powerful way. And then if one eight, 10% of the audience is like, Wow, that's great, I have a fan for life,
You know what I mean? Yeah, I am starting to think about the authenticity piece when it comes to A.I. a little bit more is I know if you saw this open, I just had their developers day and they're basically making it much easier for us to create quote unquote teas, which are A.I. chat bots if this is going to change everything because you can make A.I. chat bots now, but it's it's a little clunky. It's a little bit complicated.
With opening AI, you're just going to be able to upload a bunch of PDFs, a bunch of workflows, systems. Maybe it's a book you've written, maybe it's podcast monologues that you've read, upload them all to chat you. You can create your own bots and then maybe, maybe you can create a bot for customer service, for example. So, hey, coaching client, you have a question. I'm not going to be free for next 12 hours, but you can talk to Bruce Scott.
I and it's been programed with hundreds of hours of information. It can help get you to the next level, you know. So that's something I think about, about losing authenticity when we start, you know, using A.I. chat bots as stand ins for us. But I think that there's a lot of power there when it comes to engagement and sales and additional support for services and so on and so forth. So I saw an ad for Air AI. It set an example of kind of what you're talking about.
I'm not familiar with with that. Again, this is what I'm specifically talking about is opening AI, which is chat. GPT Yeah, the opening ISE is the creator of chat GPT and so they're going to allow you to program your own chat bots to solve specific specific problems. Like example, it could be launching a podcast, doing the laundry, vacationing in Italy, it could be any, any specific topic that you want to devise a chat about on.
So yeah, I saw this I think yesterday or the day before and it was, it was a, it was a chat bot that had a, an actual voice sounded extraordinarily human. And you know, they put an actual call that was with the client who was, who had like they put a they Apple vision pro and they're like in their cart and then like had left and so they called this I bought and talked to the guy and he then they about made the made to sell like it was it was insane.
I like I could not wrap my mind around the fact that it has gotten this advanced this fast to where now it was. I mean, there was a little bit of a pause, but, you know, as it was like calculating the next statement. But it actually works as a sales technique. Silence is like actually a powerful thing. So I was yeah, I was really taken aback. Amazing. That is amazing. And you know what's great about that example, Bruce, is that is infinitely scalable.
Yeah. Program the A.I. and then, you know, anybody that puts something in their cart and then leaves, well, guess what? They're getting a call. They're getting a text from your eye bot, you know, like that. And that guess what? That bot never sleeps. It's so it's open all the time. It doesn't get sick. It never takes vacations. It's there. All that. It doesn't require health care. It doesn't. It doesn't need a41k, It's just they're working all the time.
I guess my biggest fear is that I'm not going to be able to adapt fast enough. Like, you know, I'm sitting here trying to build my business out one person and I don't have like, you know, a lot of money to put towards it. So anything that I'm going to be able to get is going to be pretty do it yourself. And as I've previously stated, I'm ADHD and some of these processes, if they don't, if they don't catch me pretty quickly, they become hard to follow through with.
You know, there's a lot of steps to the first setup and that's, you know, that doesn't say anything bad about AI. It's just, you know, it's a little scary because it's developing so quickly that the industry is going to, you know, leave me behind if I'm not able to, you know, to catch up.
Well, frankly, the fact that you are even aware of that AI sales bot tells me that you're ahead of the curve, quite frankly, because most people you know, most people have no idea that that kind of thing is happening. You know, and, you know, as is a Christian, I don't you know, Jesus tells us, you know, don't worry about tomorrow, you know, Right. But start planning, start preparing. You know, we got it. You know, you you want to have food in your stores.
You want to be be ready for what happens. Because my you know, I don't want to worry because I just said don't worry. But I am concerned. I am concerned when, you know, the World Economic Forum talks about 800 million jobs being displaced by 2030, that's a cause for concern because how do you help all these people? They're displaced. You know, you're probably going to be okay because you're talking about it. You've got a media presence, you've got a podcast.
You're probably if you haven't already, you're going to start experimenting more with chat CBT, you start experimenting more with AI text, and you're probably using AI tools to edit videos and stuff. So, you know, you're probably ahead of the curve in that regard. But there's a lot of people that aren't just a lot of people that want to work 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, and then on the weekends they're going to drink beer and they're going to watch football.
And then one day their boss is going to say, Hey, everyone, we're going to be implementing this new I bought and we're letting go of 60% of the sales staff. And then what is that person going to do? Yeah, if they haven't been sharpening those skills, you know, or at least developing some degree, then it's going to be pretty hard to catch up. And that's scary is it's not just the sales staff, it's the customer service staff, it's H.R., It's it's the McDonald's down the road. It's it's.
Logistics. It's, you know, shipping. It's all of that stuff as they're figuring out how to apply it to it. And, you know, it is a little scary. But there's also so much of it is it's the the little, you know, minutia that nobody actually really wants to do. Like, nobody really enjoys doing those things. They're just, you know, they're just doing them.
So, like, I definitely encourage people to kind of find the thing that they actually want to do that they're passionate about because you can't I don't think I can take over passion like it can't. I can't provide that for people. So you're unique. Voice is going to matter if you find that thing that you're passionate about and you're trying to share that with the world because air is not going to be able to do that. Yeah, I don't disagree with that. I mean, air is not emotional, right.
Which is one of our greatest strengths and weaknesses. But I mean, how many We do all kinds of things that we don't want to do. That's important. That's important. If we didn't do things we didn't want to do, we would just we wouldn't do anything. We just sit around watching Netflix. That's true. You know, So like, I don't have an exact number, but I think the vast majority of people don't like their jobs. They probably, in a lot of cases hate their jobs.
They don't like their boss, They don't like waking up early, but they do it because they know they need to put food on the table. Yeah, I mean, the overriding thing is like you like putting food on the table. That's why you keep going to the jobs. Even though you hate the job you like providing for your family more. So, you know, there's a constant give and take of, you know, balancing all those things out. And we could talk about air alone all day.
But like, I want to move on to a different topic because this is a question that I think I can only ask you. So I try to pitch my show on the back end to guests to get them to publicize their episodes, because obviously I want the show's reach to grow. When I do try it, like I try to make it clear to people that people are interested in people and stories and them sharing their authentic stories is going to help drive interest in their associated business or cause or whatever.
But only a few guests have really shown a real urgency and willingness to use my platform for the effective tool. I think it is. What would you guess I'm doing wrong? Well, one of the biggest challenges we have is getting guests to customers, clients, friends, family. To do something is we make it too complicated, there's too many steps. So I think one of the biggest challenges of getting guests to share is you're giving them too much to do. Yeah, I'm busy.
I have I've already got I wake up in the morning, I've got it. I've got an inbox of 50 emails I got to respond to. There's a problem with Bob's podcast. One of my team members is on vacation. I've got to record a YouTube video for the day. Plus I need to make sales calls, so I'm already really busy, you know? So when I get that email from Bruce, it's a I'm just speculating here because I haven't even seen what the follow up looks like.
But I get an email from Bruce and Bruce is like, Hey Mark, your podcast is live, here's a link to it. Make sure that you share it on your email and on Facebook and on LinkedIn and on Instagram. Plus, I've got a bunch of clips here. Go through those and check it's like all of a sudden you just give me another job. Right? I've just, you know, in addition to all these other tasks I have now, I have the task of promoting your your show.
I do like the way that you kind of stated that, like this is actually going to help you. So that that's part that that's a better way of pitching it. Because honestly, we're humans are selfish. We do things that are best for us. Yeah, generally speaking, we don't do things because it's good for someone else. We do things because it's good for us. And sometimes that's that's like, for example, Mr. Beast is is trying to give water to half a million Africans and people are angry at him for that.
It's like, it's like you're just doing it for views. It's like you just you get a clean water to half a million people. Well, the thing about it is he sure he's doing it for views, but those views have given him a platform to do this thing that this the views that he gets from this thing will allow him to do something even bigger next time. And he, like he gives all the money he makes away almost completely, like he's always just giving away everything that he's bringing in.
Like, I think that's just crazy. Like, it's just nuts. He cures blindness for a thousand people and people are angry about like. you just did it for the views. They're like, Well, yeah, they can view now. They can see. So I'm happy about that. Yeah, right. So I mean, I guess my point there is, you know, we can never make everyone happy, but if you want to get people, more people to share our work and we need to frame it around, this is going to be good for you. This is how it benefits you.
A and B, we want to make it as easy as possible. You know, if you're asking someone to share, share one link, maybe you've already written out the copy for them so they can just copy and paste the whole thing and and place into Facebook into their email. Typically what I, what I do is I just make sure I tag the person on social media, right? So they're getting tagged. So instead of asking the guest to like, type up and send out and do all this stuff, all they need to do is hit, accept.
Yeah. Reshare, retweet. And that that dramatically increases your chance of getting of getting shares. That's why I found it. And then the third piece of that, Bruce, is the content has to be good. You know, I remember, you know, a couple of, you know, two and a half years ago, I was starting at my show and I was sending out clips, and the clips were like, they just weren't that great, you know?
And so asking someone who's spending a lot of money on clips to share clips is harder when your clips are either not the same branding or maybe the quality isn't as good or they're different. So these are all things to keep in mind. But generally speaking, what I found in business is keep it as easy as possible. And in make it as beneficial to the user as possible. Yeah, I think that I've done a pretty good job of keeping it pretty simple, but like I know that I want too much.
I guess, you know, that's part of who I am is that I expect everybody to want to do what I would do for them. So it's like if I, you know, if I come on somebody post, if they like, which I usually do, is like I send the episode artwork out, you know, I say, Hey, you can post this, you know, whatever you want to if you want to. Here's the here's the artwork, here's the link. And then also, like, just be on the lookout.
I'm going to tag you in some stuff and, you know, be aware of the Instagram tag for the collaborations because I'm going to send that out to. And some people will, you know, will accept the collaboration and that's it. Some people won't even do that. Like some it's not. It's too much. And then I had like a a really big local celebrity on and I was like really, really happy about that. I was like, this is really going to help me grow like this, going to help expand our reach.
And he shared everything I posted, but I sent an email explaining all those things that we talked about, and I was like, All I ask is that you just add like your own words to like to the post, like just share it and just like a couple of words about your experience. And I had gotten none of that and I was like, Damn, So. So his audience didn't care about the post because it was just my post on his page. I needed it to be his post on his page.
So then people actually they were they bought in and unfortunately it didn't happen. But I'm you know, I'm trying to grow and learn and like how to help people understand that. I want people to get to know them because like, I enjoyed the conversation and I think your audience is going to love getting to know you better. Like, it's definitely selfish, but I also think it's great for the people who come on my show. I don't disagree. I don't disagree. But, you know, the shorter the better.
It's been my experience. I've performed hundreds and hundreds of interviews and getting guests to share is really challenging. It just is. It just is. As a podcaster, I try to be better about it, but I do ask when hosts send me like a wall of text with three or four links and then customize graphic images, I'm like, just Hackney.
Yeah. Just tag me and then I can reshare it with with my own words or something, you know that that's what I, that's what you know, both, both personally and professionally. I do. Because it just we want to I get it. You take all this time to schedule and record in the money and the time of editing and producing and all of that. All you're asking for is 10 minutes of their time. Yeah, but that 10 minutes is it's, it can be elusive.
Yeah, I, I totally get that and you know I appreciate your candor on that and that whole thing because I know that it is just a matter of not maybe asking too much, just expecting too much. Like I don't think that I'm asking too much. I think that I'm like expecting people to, like, follow through to the letter is expecting more than I should. Just like, hey, for sure. I'm going to ask you to do this.
If they don't, I just need to be okay with it because like, that's, you know, that's kind of my entire platform is like give people all the information to work with and they can choose to meet you where you're at or not. And then you just have to be okay with it. So, you know, sometimes it's just applying your own advice to yourself. Well, and I found it, you know, like it's it's about giving people the right information, like It's really hard.
Human nature, right? I don't I've become unemotional about this type of things because sometimes what I expect, like, it doesn't it just doesn't happen. It just doesn't manifest in the way that I would then I would expect would. Why not? Why are people not jumping on this offer? I had, you know, in the mastermind group that I lead a few months ago, I dropped the price down to ten bucks a month and then you get time with me. You get time with other members.
We're reading books together and with like the it just I was expecting I'd get dozens of people. I didn't see that. So I have you know, I'm just thinking a lot of people. But it was just it was like, you know, a few people trickled in. I was like, wow, I'm spending all this time and energy trying to bring people in for ten bucks a month. Why don't I just And so I just raised the price to 100 bucks a month.
And now it's much easier for me to find one person than it is to find ten that, you know, it's much easier for me to provide value to one person than it is to provide value to ten. Yeah. So it's just it's just kind of it's kind of weird. But I think being, you know, what I found is like, you know, don't get emotional about things that people aren't doing. If I aren't if people aren't taking the steps that we desire, that's on us. Yeah, how can we change it?
The last thing that I the worst thing that I hear from someone is when someone says something like, Mark, you're amazing. I love what you're doing. Gosh, you're showing up all over my newsfeed. You're so great. And how. What do you do exactly? I'm like, It's all f from there. It's all screwed. They're seeing all the wrong stuff, dammit. You know that's on me. I'm not laying out a clear enough message. How do I prove that? I definitely agree with that.
So I talk to my wife about my business and my podcast a lot because she offers me a fresh perspective and often sees what I'm missing. I told her that you were coming on and that I was afraid I was going to lose sight of generating concern about authenticity and I was going to turn it into a coaching session. And all her wisdom, she told me that it is okay to accept help and then I'll have to try to do everything all by myself.
So I will ask you this one like right out or sorry, outright Podcast consulting question. What is the one obvious key thing that I'm not doing that I need to be doing to increase my reach and grow my audience? So there's that's a tough answer. There's a lot of things, okay, There's a lot of things. But I think the most important thing that we can do to grow our audience is to the most important thing that we can do to grow our audience is to make noise, is to disagree and be okay with it.
The vast majority of people are going around just agreeing with everyone. The vast majority of podcasters are just sitting there nodding their heads saying, I agree, I agree, I agree. I want to disagree. I want to find things that you've said that I don't agree with and doesn't mean I don't like you. It doesn't mean I don't respect you. It just means I disagree on this particular topic and here's why. So that is, I think, a really important
skill to master because we want to be respectful of our guests. But at the end of the day, people really like conflict. But yeah. It's pretty popular. And I love you'll see. Well, some of the you know, I don't get a whole lot of feedback on my show, but like some of my friends that listen, one of the comments I got was like, man, you had a it was like, Derek, Sire. We had a little bit of a disagreement on episode four and he is like, I love the way that you navigated that.
Like, you didn't you didn't like sacrifice your position, but you were so respectful. And this is a person that I know hates conflict, like he hates it. It's like he tries to avoid at all costs. And so he was like, I was afraid I was going to have to turn it off.
But the way that you navigated it was was so great and so like for him to have spoke up and commented about that kind of it kind of goes to your point and says like, yeah, that's a that's a pretty big thing that people do want to hear is I don't think they want to hear us, you know, on a a CROSSFIRE session like just everybody going at each of the entire time. But I think having some some healthy disagreement is is great. It's really important.
And then finding, you know, those particular points that you're unwavering on because, I mean, listen, if we don't if we stand for nothing, we fall for everything. So again, it doesn't mean that we're you know, we go running around like a jerk with people. But if someone says something, I'm going to challenge them.
I talked to a lot of app developers, a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, and there's some times where they'll tell me something that's like super generic or it's like, Yeah, that worked five years ago and like, like, Bro, stop playing. Give me give me something that actually means something. Don't just tell me like, people like I'll ask like, how can I grow my podcast, for example? And people be like, Well, you want to share your clips on social? Me? I'm like, Shut shut the hell up, man.
Don't give me that share Cliff stuff. Give me something different. You only say I can. If I wanted to chat, get answer, I would go to chat. If I want you as the expert to give me something that's. That's hot. Yeah. You know, so I think being able to do that is good. I'll give you another tip too. On how to grow a grow a show that I think is important and that's understanding, getting an understanding of like what the market wants.
Okay. Like Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan to get punched in the face right in. You know, when you start a podcast, you have this huge vision of like where it's going to go and what the show is going to be about is that the way that it plays out, you know, you know, do people want to listen to it? I'm just putting this out there because I don't know. I haven't looked at and the two people one listen to and an hour long podcast asked about someone's authenticity.
Do they want that or maybe do they want a 20 minute podcast on how to create vision? Or maybe it's a ten minute quick hit solo from like, we don't we don't know. So I think trying different things is helpful. And then another thing I recommend leveraging is YouTube. I'm using it, but man, I, I'm not using it. Well, I'm trying. YouTube is not like me so far. I'm going to give you a strategy for YouTube. I call it the ten by ten strategy.
Easy to execute in insanely powerful getting insights on your audience, because that's one thing that YouTube does well. It's give you analytics and data. So basically you look at, Hey, what are what are topics that I feel very strongly about? It could be authenticity, it could be entrepreneurship, family, you know, try to find those overlaps in your show because your show is not just about one thing. It's going to be about Bruce.
It's going to be about ten different things, right? Yeah, what you said. And then what you want to do after you've taken those ten subtopics of your primary topic, break those down into ten more subtopics, right? So if it's authenticity, it could be or let's say let's take entrepreneurship that's a little bit easier.
So if if you take entrepreneurship that could be coaching ecommerce, you know, you keep you, we keep breaking it down and then you start to generate list like ten reasons you should quit your job or ten reasons why you should tell your wife you love her more, or men versus women who is more self-conscious or whatever it is, right? All these different topics. And then you start plugging. Then you want to keep them as short as possible, as close to 10 seconds as possible.
You record all these short videos. They're designed specifically as YouTube shorts. We post them to YouTube as shorts and you see, and then we watch what happens. Right? Because there's going to be certain YouTube, there's going to be certain shorts that a lot of the shorts probably won't do great, you know, reach a hundred people or something. But some of those shorts are going to hit. You're going to reach 2000, 5000, 10,000 people.
Now you have some real clues as to where what the market wants and places where you might slide into that into that slot. It's going to give you insights into what type of copy is moving people to action. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. That's a great piece of advice. I've got another question I want to ask you. I know that we're kind of running close to your next meeting. So you had the opportunity to interview Christo last year.
He is literally the number one reason why I'm sitting in this chair. First, thank you for being on my show, because there's now one degree of podcast separation from me and my literal like little podcast royalty. Second, what was it like for you to interview a figure who is who was and is a genuine graphic design trendsetter, industry disruptor and extremely established podcast host at a time when you didn't quite have the clout that you have now?
Man, some of the interviews that I've had, like, I've done a lot of interviews, hundreds and hundreds of interviews, but some are special and Christo is special. Pat Flynn was special. Sean Kanal was really a special moment. Neil Patel But, but Christo is very special because he's awesome. The future is awesome. I buy courses of his and that's one of the benefits I think that we have with podcasting is just like, like we've been talking here, you know, the, the podcast, you know, you can use it.
It's almost like a personal consultation in ways. So I was able to ask Chris, you know, some of the, some of the questions I ask her specifically with the goal of how can I clip this up for some interesting clips, which I think is important. But other parts, you know, we're just like legitimately asking for advice and hey, I'm having a hard time closing my sales, you know, What do you think about this? We think about that normally he's going to charge
thousands of dollars for that sort of a session. Yeah. Were you in the podcast or. Were you intimidated by by sitting down with him? I was not part of. That's just because of the way that, you know, he interacts. He's very like, you know, even if he's worth millions, if not millions of dollars, he like he has a way of like connecting. So I wasn't. But also, I think, you know, after you've done hundreds of interviews, like, I don't know, like for me, Bruce, I mean, this might be a person thing.
I don't really get starstruck. We're all just humans. At the end of the day, we all have our own bullcrap, you know? And, you know, the problem with humans is we will let you down 100% of the time. We're not going to be perfect. We're not going to let you down. We all have our own our own issues. So I, I, I have a tendency not to get too starstruck, of course, like sometimes I do to an extent, but, you know, I wasn't that intimidated for for Chris.
Frankly, for most people, I don't get that intimidated. I just have a lot of self-confidence, probably, which was nurtured into me at a younger age. Yeah. You know, And then, you know, every morning when I wake up on my mirror, I've got a I've got a visualization statement that I read out loud to myself. And I read that every morning, every night, I visualize myself being successful. I visualized myself in the right rooms. I visualize myself in my optimal studio, my optimal state.
And I think that having that mindset, having that vision, it allows you to avoid the insecurities that can come sometimes come with, Do I deserve to be sitting on this call with this person? Absolutely. I want to. I've really. Gosh, this is Chris. Do I deserve, though I do deserve to be here because this is what the hell I'm doing. UMC thing. It's that kind of that shift in perspective that comes from nurturing the brain day after day. And I would love to have him on my show.
Like that's, you know, when you when you get into podcasting, you kind of just start to dream about kind of your bucket list of things that you'd like to do on your show. And my show being the way that it is and kind of being about people, having the person who kind of inspired this journey for me on the show is definitely at the top of my bucket list and I would love to make that happen. I'll give you another quick tip here.
One of the ways that I've been able to get on people's radar, get get people into my show, into my ecosystem I wouldn't normally have access to is I invest in them. And one of the best ways to do that is to join their mastermind group, their pro group. Chris has a great group. Pat Flynn has a great group. Evan Carmichael So if there's people that you really. Patrick that.
David if there's people that you really want to get on your show, one of the best ways to do that is to invest in them, to join their programs. The other benefit of being in their program, in addition to getting them on, is a guest, which is obviously not guaranteed, but increases your chances tremendously. Yeah, that's for sure. You're meeting a bunch of people that are like, like you.
Yeah. So you're growing your network, you're building new opportunities and you're being you're putting yourself in a position to work with someone that you'd love to work with. That's great advice. That's 1,000% something I'd considered the future pro group. But I think I did like an assessment that kind of said that what I'm doing right now doesn't really fit what the program is for because I'm not giving like I'm not selling an actual product.
Like, you know, I sell a coaching package like there's no there's no actual graphic design that goes along with that. There's there's no end product except for the coaching service. And I think because of that, I wasn't really a fit for what they're doing right now. But I would still think about it if I once I get a little bit of extra income, I would I would love to get closer to that whole.
His mindset is really it really is kind of what helped me, established my baseline for what it's like to just show up as yourself. He's the same dude on every episode, like nothing like he does. He doesn't change for anybody. And I and I just absolutely love that you get to talk for like another two questions or so. Yeah, I've got about I got five, I've got 5 minutes and I got to get prep for this next call. Okay. So we talked about you leaving a pretty cushy insurance.
What convinced you to start honoring yourself and your core values? And was there a defining moment that led to that? There were a few. There were a few moments, Bruce. There wasn't a specific moment, but I honestly I think having kids really changed my perspective on things because up until having kids, like, I felt like I was able to kind of coast things were good, things were cushy, you know? But having kids made me want to have something more for my life, want to meet.
I want to create legacy. I was tired of waking up miserable on Mondays. That's the worst. I would not suggest that to anybody. If you're waking up miserable Mondays change something you can do it. I also saw the writing on the wall. Being in the insurance industry. Month after month, more and more sales, more and more customer service was being done by a 24 hour support center. More sales were being done online. And I said, Well, where does this leave me?
And this is even before I was was as big as it is now. So I looked at future prospects. I look I looked at current happiness and I made the call that I'm going to start trying different stuff in Bruce I tried a lot of different types of businesses, everything from mattress warehouses to vending machines to financial advisor, and I ended up starting a podcast because I enjoyed it.
And now five years later, I own an agency and I host one of the top ranked global shows in the space I lead, a flourishing mastermind of 30 entrepreneurs, and I just feel very blessed that I could to be in the place. So when I was listening to the After Hours Entrepreneur, you talked about your commitment to authenticity and your relationship to the degree that you have actually brought in a third party to improve your communication. Is that something that you can tell us a little bit about?
You're you're married, you'd mentioned I married. I've been with my wife for 17 years. We've been married for almost ten. divorce rates are approaching, if not over 50%. Now in the United States, depression is at an all time high. Suicide rates all time high, fatherless homes. One of the you know, even Barack Obama mentioned that if you're in a fatherless home, like, the chances you're going to be successful are greatly diminished.
You know, if I lost, homes are one of the biggest it is probably the most insidious, biggest problem that nobody talks about is fatherless homes and the lack of men to step up every quite frankly, every single married couple, every single serious couple should have counseling. They should have an intermediary, every single couple in. You know, that's early. Not once you've had a problem, it's before you've had a problem.
I Think honestly, I think before you even get your marriage license, you should be required that you have premarital counseling. I think that there should be a requirement that you do a checkup annually with your spouse with a neutral third party. It should be mandatory. It changes communication because the reality is, Bruce, you need somebody to tell your wife when she's wrong. That's what you need. I do that all the time, though. Because it it doesn't hit the same when it comes.
You know what I what I found is that it's not even that she's wrong or that I'm right. It's just that we don't speak the same language. We don't speak the same language. And whenever you're trying to speak to each other in different languages, it's really helpful to have somebody who can translate like that's certain. But there are certain communication skills. Like when we my wife and I were going through it.
Our relationship is better than it was beforehand when when I went from employee to employer, when I made that shift and I left my job, it caused some friction in our relationship. I won't go into all the details now due to time, but you know, there were just certain problems that I hadn't accounted for. There were certain issues revolving around travel and finances and and work hours. There were things that we hadn't sorted through.
And so having a neutral third party to help us develop communication skills was incredibly important. And upon, quote unquote, completion of the program, our our coach was like, okay, you've gone through that, you're done. And we're like, what? We still want to check in with you on a biweekly or at least a monthly basis. And so we still do that. We have like upkeep because, you know, despite how lovely everyone else is, relationship looks just like I said about people.
Everyone's relationship has has garbage to it. And you should not be allowed to get married and get all the tax benefits unless it start a family, unless you're going through the process of of. Definitely putting in the work to try to make sure you're communicating on that level. So I know that you're on a tight schedule, but I want to make sure you have the opportunity to talk about what your what you're giving back to the world. So for the next few minutes, Mike is yours.
You can plug your products, talk about your mission, your podcast, whatever. Yeah, I help it. Thanks for having me on the show. Bruce. My name is Mark seven. I help thought leaders launch and automate podcasts. I do that through through personal coaching. I do that through my Mastermind program and I do that through fully done for you services. And you can find me at Mark's, not Mediacom or Mark Savant Media. Going to drop your social so the audience can follow if they're interested.
You can find Mark's vaunt media on your every every social wherever you're on I'm there Mark's a multimedia. Thank you so much for this opportunity and for sharing your authentic journey with us to my authentic audience. Thank you for listening and I hope you enjoyed the conversation much as I did having it. If you enjoyed today's episode, please, please, please leave a review on iTunes or Spotify. I really appreciate the feedback and it really helps me get heard by more listeners.
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Contact me on social or email. Bruce at authentic. I didn't need management dot com to set up a free 30 minute discovery call to answer your questions and detail how I can help you step into your authentic life. That is it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening. Until the next time be yourself and love yourself. Bye for now. En