[00:00:27] Jay: Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast today. I am lucky enough to be joined by Adam Adams. two first names from grow your show. How are you, buddy? Nice to have you.
[00:00:36] Adam: I'm doing awesome. Thank you.
[00:00:38] Jay: So we're talking a little bit. You're in Denver. mile high area. how do you like it out there?
[00:00:43] Adam: Well, actually, I love Denver. I'm just a little bit up the mountain from there. So, the last few years I've been at 8, 300 feet instead of 5, 280. so, which is helpful, I think for, I guess, what is it? White blood cells or something like you, you just, you can heal faster. Like the Wolverine, if you are used to being up here, but I really like being able to do mountain biking, jeeping.
there's just tons of trails and just not a whole bunch of stuff to do on the water, but there is some rafting that's, it's not too far. So I really love it. I'm an outdoorsy type of person, so it's a really good place for me.
[00:01:21] Jay: I can tell your setup looks very it looks like you may be in a outdoorsy location. I like this. so Tell me a little about where you grew up, and did that have any impact on your entrepreneurial journey?
[00:01:32] Adam: I grew up in Utah, and I would say if it had any impact, it would really just be my stepdad because he was real estate investor and an entrepreneur. And he read the book Rich Dad Poor Dad. I think it came out in like. I could be wrong, but he read the book as soon as it came out and he really resonated with it because he had already been doing some of that stuff and it was him in Utah that ended up basically making me start a business, making me invest in real estate.
So he bought me a piece of land, a cabin lot, when I was in college and I sold it right before graduating and, made a bunch of money on it. And that's when I as a dyslexic person and him always telling me I should read the book. I put it off just because I didn't reading was the worst thing that I could do.
But after selling that and making a bunch of money more than I could make in my first year using my degree. I just ended up saying, you know what, I'll go ahead and read that book. And that, so that's basically how I learned more about entrepreneurship and everything. and started my first business while in college, right after reading that book,
[00:02:53] Jay: And what was that?
[00:02:55] Adam: the business.
[00:02:56] Jay: Yeah
[00:02:56] Adam: All right. So I was trying to become a, real estate investor. So I thought I'd need to learn real estate. So the first thing that I did kind of as a contractor or an employee was managing property for a guy named Rick Reed Quinn, who had a few properties and managed all of them for him. and the actual first business stemmed from that because I kept having, he would ask me to get like three quotes.
For everything like the swamp coolers on the roof or whatever needed to be done. He would ask me to get three quotes and I started to kind of learn how to do it. that's. how my mind kind of works. And I just kept wondering why are these people charging 400 for something? It takes like 15 minutes.
Like that's just insane. So, one day I decided, I said, Hey, read, this person quoted this amount, this person quoted this amount. This person quoted this amount. I think I can do it for this amount. If you want me to try. So that's how I got my very first customer ever in my whole life. he, I already worked for him and he was on his 18 unit and it was the swamp coolers.
There were six of them on the top of the roof and we just got outrageous pricing. And I was, I think I was getting paid like. 10 or 12 an hour, like whatever close to minimum wage was what I was getting paid and, and I ended up making something like 40 an hour after on that quote, and it was like less than half of what anyone else was charging.
And so it was a really good deal for me. It was kind of how I started. And then I started becoming a handyman. Which was that company for other people in the neighborhood, people that went to the church that I lived by and stuff like that. They just started referring me and that business kind of started to grow until 2008.
The crash of 2008 and 9. it really hit me bad because all the other, contractors and. and handyman, it got so that there was a lot more competition, a lot more people because they weren't building houses anymore. And they weren't, they just didn't need the top high level people and, and also people were, they stopped, they slowed down spending money.
they were like, okay, maybe we should put off that renovation. So I went from doing really awesome. I think I was netting 20 grand a month in college. Which, just felt so surreal, it felt really amazing, until I, that kind of, crashed so much that I just, I went from 13 employees to one, 13 full time employees to one part time employee, and then I went back to bartending, I started, tending bar and managing my company, trying to give just that one person as many hours as I could in 2009 and 10.
[00:05:54] Jay: So what'd you do between now and then? How long before you started to grow your show?
[00:05:59] Adam: I did a couple of things. I've always done real estate investing since 2005, since my dad bought me that property. I've been doing some real estate investing. and I've got a couple of apartment buildings and a couple of small houses as well. right now in that. So I still do that. but what had changed is I went full time.
I did bartending from like 2000, Ten ish, nine ish, when that happened until about 2014. And then I started managing projects for, as an employee, for reconstruction. Basically, that's when I moved to Colorado, it was 2015. so I moved in Colorado and my first thing, I started working for 11 months.
I worked for this, family member who owned a construction company. And so we would do like multi million dollar roofs and stuff like that. And I would just drive to the different projects and make sure people had what they needed and make notes and things like that. And this is actually kind of funny because she said to me one day, my buddy came into town to Colorado from Florida.
I lived close to him in Florida and he's like, Hey bro. I'm never, I've never gone skiing. can you teach me how to ski or snowboard? I'm going to be in your town. And, can you get a day off? So when I started working for that family member, she said that I would probably. So she should probably only have to work, 30 hours a week usually.
And sometimes I would have to work, you know, 40 or 50. So I ended up be, I ended up working 72 hours a week for her, 12 hours a day, six days a week. And I asked for a Friday off and I worked 60 hours that week. Cause I worked 12 hours a day for five different days. And when I got my check, I got four fifths of the money that I was supposed to get because even though I worked 60 hours, even though I worked on a Saturday, she had this random thing where she thought that I needed to only get paid for it.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and whoever, she had to replace me had to, she had to take my money and give it to them. So I was pissed. so basically I was doing real estate investing at the time as well. And I just said, I'll just go full time real estate. so I started just doing tax liens and tax deeds, just buying properties, buying rentals and, ended up the started a podcast on real estate.
In 2016 and started doing coaching and mentoring for real estate investors, hosted conferences, hosted events and things like that. And, I had a knack for podcasting, so I helped just a couple of people. To learn how to grow their shows. Cause my show got huge. And so I, would just pour into friends for free.
I mean, I didn't think of it as a business at the
[00:09:02] Jay: mm hmm
[00:09:03] Adam: but, In 2019, it was July of 19, clearly remember I. Didn't, I thought that there was gonna be a real estate, a market crash come in the next few years. I said, you know, probably by 2023 there's gonna be a huge crash. And and I didn't wanna be investing with new properties when I didn't know when that would happen or even if it would happen, but I figured when. so to answer your question, I was in a mastermind group and in that group, I told everybody, I don't think that, I don't know if real estate sustainable right now. I feel, cause I was in the crash of 2008. I owned property back then too. And so I, I was like, I feel like it's not sustainable. Something might happen.
I don't want to be caught with my pants down. And so they, I was like, what else do you think? Could do what else would I focus on and literally everybody in that said, you've, you can't imagine how many people in this mastermind. Have you helped with their, with their podcasts? we think that's your knack.
You obviously have a passion for it. and so you should do that. So it was July of. 2019 and when I first launched the company and, my first step, which goes along with your podcast was how do I get clients? I'm doing something completely different. So I reached out to a real estate friend who is my perfect avatar.
I believe if we have a podcast, we should have a, one person that we've worked with or know of that should be our perfect avatar. So I reached out to him first. His name is Corey Peterson. And my first step was just to let him know that I am going to start editing and doing post production for podcasters.
And just basically said, let me know if you want to see what we do and how much it costs. And so Corey was like, I'm all in. I don't care what it costs. I'll pay you. And so, that was how I got my first client, for Grow Your Show, the podcast agency.
[00:11:07] Jay: Got it. The friends and family plan is very prevalent on this show. It's a very good way for anybody to test an idea to get that first client. I think a lot of people are maybe hesitant of they don't want to be that salesy guy you know they don't want to be annoying to the people they know in their network and that probably pulls them off from asking the people that are right around them but those may be your first customers you know like you said that may be the guy who says absolutely sure I'd love to do that so what is podcast marketing to you?
Like, what good to podcast do for somebody who run a business that's not in podcast and it's just a regular business? what does that do for those businesses, you think? in 2023 when there's, you know, plenty of podcasts out there,what good is it to start one today?
[00:11:55] Adam: Yeah. Well, I think there's two ways to answer the question, because podcast marketing, the first thing that I thought of is how to grow a show. That's the first thing that I thought of, but it sounds like you're really talking about how to grow a business through podcasting. and so I think of it as the top of the funnel.
It's a place where you can stay in front of your perfect avatar. And a good analogy would be the squeaky wheel gets the grease. the open mouths get fed. So if you're, finding a way to stay in front of your person, your perfect avatar, I know that you're going to be more likely to actually, turn that relationship into.
customer relationship where they hire you. And so with like my podcast and your podcast, we're constantly, adding value to the right person. We're constantly adding value to the person that we could work with. And that person comes and consumes the content and sure. A good amount of them never will call.
They'll just consume the content and we'll hope that they at least do something with it. but they just, they won't call either because they don't have the money or because, they don't have the time or because they're not really truly interested in the thing. or for some weird reason, they don't believe in that person.
They don't believe in me
[00:13:19] Jay: Yep.
[00:13:19] Adam: so it just becomes a way to stay in front of people. and one of my favorite ways to talk about a thought leadership platform, like. A book or a podcast or a YouTube channel or something. One of the best ways for me to explain it. Is that it helps you. It helps other people talk about you when you're not in the room.
So, and by saying good things, you know, they're talking behind your back, but in a good way. and what that is, is that they share the content they, they have you ever heard of? And some of the people that do this best are Grant Cardone and Gary Vaynerchuk. there's a lot more, but I think.
Thank you. For the most part, your listener probably has heard of one of those two guys. and what they do is they're constantly putting out content. they, in some cases they have daily episodes every single day, where the publishing. What that does, like I said, squeaky wheel gets the grease it's because.
Your person constantly is hearing you and I think, to go just a little bit deeper and I believe this is important to, to sometimes your listener, they won't make a change unless it hurts. For example, it's, it might be hard to give them a vitamin and say, Hey, this is good for you, but it might be a little easier if they've got a headache to say, Hey, here's a Tylenol could solve your problem.
And so to go through it in that wayuh, something that your podcast can do for you is. If you don't have a podcast, this is the Tylenol version. If you don't have a podcast, what is happening now is people are consuming their content on podcasts and YouTube. They're consuming that content on reels. And so if you are off of social media, if you're not willing to have a thought leadership platform, a few years ago.
I think I started consuming his content in 2015 when I was mad at my family boss, right before I quit. and he was saying that. If you're not on social media and if you don't have a podcast by the year 2022, I think it was, you're going to lose in business. And I remember it was that same year 20, it was just a couple of years after it was 2019 in November.
I had started my podcast agency, but I was also hosting a real estate conference. There was 617 people there, for a three day conference. And a guy came up to me. an Indian, man, a guy from India and he comes up to me and he's like, Adam, I really need your help. It was called the raising money summit.
So I was teaching people how to raise capital. so at the raising money summit, this Indian man came up to me and he's like, Adam, I really need your help. I usually am able to raise all of this capital so easily, but right now I can't get the last 2 million for my deal. And I was like, how much is your deal?
And he goes, I only had to raise 3 million and I usually do that really easy. But I'm behind the gun. I'm behind the eight ball, under the gun behind the eight ball. and like, I'm freaking out because I'm going to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars of my earnest money. earnest money, meaning the money you put down on these things, what it generally will go hard, when it goes hard, that means you can't get it back.
So you put down money in earnest to buy a multi million dollar project, let's call it a 10 million dollar project, he's got to put down 3%, so maybe it's 300 grand, 300, 000, it's just sitting there. He doesn't want to lose it, and he's raised a million of his 3 million, he's got 2 million left, and when he was telling me... About the people that he is always worked with, but no longer can raise money from them, even though he had more of a track record. He was better at it. He had been doing it longer. He had a better relationship with them. He told me that all of his passive investors, his, LPs, limited partners. Had the, that the commonality was that they kept telling him that he was, that they put their money in with a new podcaster that they just started listening to. so he, he was like, well, what do I do? And I was like, well, you know, you basically have to have, you basically have to have a platform as soon as possible. It's like planting an apple tree. I told him it's like planting an apple tree, because the best time to do it would have been 20 years ago. Like you should have gotten on that podcast bandwagon years ago.
He didn't think he needed to because he could always raise the capital, but because he's not always in front of his perfect avatar with content and these brand new podcasters that have almost like no business in some cases, no business doing what they're doing. And in many cases, just no experience.
They're taking all this capital. That used to be for his deals and he can't do it anymore and it's only because he didn't do with what Gary Vaynerchuk said, I think it was 2015 or 16 where he was like, if you're not, if you're not doing this by 2022, you're going to lose in business. Well, that guy was already losing in business.
In the year 2019.
[00:18:46] Jay: Mm hmm.
[00:18:46] Adam: so anyway, the point being that having the, having this opportunity to stay in front of your people, to have them share your stuff with other people, talk about you when you're not in the room, grows your influence in a way. it's. I think of it as no, like, trust it. we all know that we got to know, like, and trust people to do business with them.
The, this is the no part. This is how do we get them to know who you are? And that's because they share the content. They continue to stay in front of you. they're consuming this. It's in front of them all the time. And they can eventually like, and trust us down the line as well. If we're doing the right things on those on our shows.
[00:19:28] Jay: Got it. And similarly related to that, I do a show for founders and for, you know, business owners.
Do you think you have to do a show directly aimed at your avatar to be effective, or do you think some of that carries over by just being on their feeds and being relevant, even if you're not talking about the things you're trying to sell them, right? Because I sell to CTOs and to, you know, CEOs of software development companies, which may not necessarily be the exact target audience of this podcast.
You know, personally and for the audience. Can you do a podcast and still kind of reap the benefits of your awareness for your target avatar even if you're not directing your content right at them?
[00:20:20] Adam: I love the question and I think it needs to be carefully answered because the answer is, it depends. Like, that's what the attorney answer all the time and everybody hates it. the politician, it definitely depends on who you are, what your product is, who your avatar is. But to go a little bit deeper, what I think is a bad way to do it is to add value to person A and to really serve person B, where it's a completely different person.
Another thing that is challenging is to try to offer services like on a podcast, for example, to person A, B, C, D, E, and F, and to over here to serve, person C.
[00:21:07] Jay: Right.
[00:21:07] Adam: Because... Here's what we're thinking. If you ultimately are serving person C, you want to make sure that you're adding as much value to C all the time as all the time, as much as possible. Additionally, if you speak to everybody, you really speaking to nobody. So if you're trying to have a general. a generalized podcast where it's just open to everybody. You're just trying to bring everybody, let's say, because we've had clients come, they wanted to launch a podcast and they would start by saying, I don't want to leave anyone out. And so I'm going to, this is going to be so awesome. I'm going to have four episodes a week. Or maybe they might even say four episodes a month. I'm going to have four episodes a week. One of them is going to, one of them is going to be about mindset. The other one's going to be about real estate. The other one's going to be about entrepreneurship and the other one's going to be about health. And then I'm like, you dummy mother. I start cussing at them. some people are interested in health. Some people are interested in real estate. Some people are interested in, entrepreneurship and others are interested in mindset. And in some cases. a person is interested in two or three of those, but in very much smaller case, is somebody going to want to go for all four of each of those things?
If they're in real estate, they want, they're coming to you because they want you to be the expert at real estate, not the expert at mindset and health And so you get people that don't care about health, not all of them, but you get some people that don't care about health that want that one thing from you.
You get some people that don't care about mindset, but they still want that thing from you. So when we try to wrap it all up, I really think it's going to be most beneficial. If your perfect avatar is the same person on your podcast and your business, I think it's going to work a lot better. But to go with what you were saying, can it work?
I think that's the true question. Can it work if I'm doing it a little bit differently? I think that the answer is yes. And I recall, I recall I had a free meeting. we would meet every Thursday for lunch. And so I'd have like, it was called a meetup group. And one day I wanted, I decided that I wanted to start a mastermind. Now, none of those people had ever talked about masterminds with me. I had been in a mastermind. I may have mentioned it a couple of times that I was in one, but there was a day that I said, I want to launch one. And, and, let me see, I'm probably going to have like 60 people at lunch this week and I'll mention it to them.
And hopefully I can get, 10 to 15 of them to be, founding members of this mastermind group. And what ended up happening is I sold, I oversold the mastermind group because I wanted to have. 24 people and I sold 32. So a little more than half the group. And the two things that I think had happened.
One is everybody in that room knew, like, and trusted me because they were around me for a long time. Number two, I have been giving them free stuff for so long. And this, this beta launch of the mastermind was, was in a way their way to feel that law of reciprocity. Where they could also give back, where they're like, he's done so much for me, this is a drop in the bucket.
I think I wanted to charge 3, 500, but I said for the first... 12 people. it will be 8. 95, I think was the price 7. 95 or 8. 95. And before I knew it, 32 people had all joined. It was way more than I even wanted, but I, it happened so freaking fast that I wasn't able to count. I wasn't like, I just said, Hey.
This is open to 12 of you right now. And I thought to myself, I'm probably got more than 12. and yeah, we just sold way more. And I guess the point is to go back with what you said. Is it is absolutely possible to sell something to somebody that you hadn't really talked about as long as they know, like, and trust you. But if you can niche it down to the one topic and you can try to focus on that, and that is also your best, avatar, your best perfect client for your business that you serve on your podcast. I think it'll work better.
[00:26:10] Jay: Love it. great story and great point. I love that. let's switch gears. I have a mystery question I ask every, every episode. Non business related, since you've done a lot of things business related and had a lot of success. What's one thing that you would do on Earth if you knew you couldn't fail?
[00:26:34] Adam: I mean, I would want to fly like a bird probably.
[00:26:36] Jay: Alright, I mean, there's no balance to this question,
[00:26:39] Adam: If I can't
[00:26:39] Jay: answer it however you want to answer it. I mean, that's fine.
[00:26:42] Adam: Okay.
[00:26:43] Jay: That's fair enough. Fly like a bird. That'd be my first fly like a bird. I've heard, you know, fly fighter jet or hang gliding, but fly like a bird, we will accept that answer. Adam, how do people find you?
How do they find Grow Your Show?
[00:26:56] Adam: Perfect. it's grow your show and it'll be grow. Your show. com is our company. And also we have a podcast. So if they just want to listen to free content, it's the podcast on podcasting, and we can give you a link in
[00:27:12] Jay: Yeah, we'll put everything in the notes, man. Well, you're awesome, Adam. I love your story. Well, let's keep in touch. I love your mastermind group idea. I love all the things we talked about so Enjoy the rest of summer. Don't catch on fire out there. Keep a bucket of water nearby and We'll catch up to you soon.
All right, Adam
[00:27:30] Adam: Cool. See you soon.
[00:27:31] Jay: Thanks, man. See ya