Ep #71: Building Your Platform with Ben Krueger

Welcome to the Brainfluence Podcast with Roger Dooley, author, speaker and educator on neuromarketing and the psychology of persuasion. Every week, we talk with thought leaders that will help you improve your influence with factual evidence and concrete research. Introducing your host, Roger Dooley.

Roger:        Welcome to the Brainfluence Podcast. I’m Roger Dooley and today with me I have Ben Krueger. I’m excited to introduce him. He’s been instrumental on getting the Brainfluence podcast both off the ground initially and keeping it on schedule for more than 70 weekly episodes. He’s a world traveler and a proponent of location independent businesses with his own being an example of one. He’s an expert in building reputation as an expert and in becoming an authority in your field. He’s the founder of Cashflow Podcasting formerly Authority Engine. Welcome to the show Ben.

Ben:           Roger, thanks so much for having me on and I’ve got to say that it has been an absolute privilege being a part of Brainfluence and being able to support you this last year. This has been absolutely fantastic.

Roger:        Great. What we’re actually going to do Ben, we just had a conversation where you interviewed me about my podcasting experience and we’re going to chat together here for a few minutes and then we’ll kick over to that segment for my listeners because I think they might find that my experience is interesting as you man should draw them out of me. First Ben, how did you get started as a business nomad?

Ben:           It’s a really good question. I actually got a very off the wall opportunity to go to the Philippines and do the online marketing for a resort in exchange for room and board and I know that that sounds absolutely and completely off the wall but at that time, I was working for a small marketing agency in the US and I was just dying to go out on my own. I knew that this whole working for other people thing was just not my jam and I really wanted to not only do it on my own terms but I also wanted to have some fun with it.

I got this incredible opportunity to go to the Philippines and applied for it, spent my absolute heart was poured into this application and I got it and while there, I met quite a few podcasters as interesting as that sounds other nomadic business owners that were podcasters and they all kept telling me how big of a pain podcast post-production was. All the editing and show notes writing and all that stuff. Ding, ding, a little light bulb went off in my head and I was looking for an opportunity so I made a couple of quick deals and had my first client or two right there in the Philippines.

Roger:        You find that pain point and figure out how to relieve it.

Ben:           Absolutely. In high school, I did some studying on video production. I had never done audio production prior to that to be honest and I figured well, how much different could it be? Yeah, that was where it got started and as I got more into podcasting, I started to see the impact, the marketing impact and potential that the medium had and that’s when I really got excited and really took this whole business really seriously and evolved it from, “Hey, we do your podcast editing to a one stop shop for driving business results through podcasting.”

Roger:        What do you mean by that?

Ben:           Yeah, so with podcasting and as you’ll see as a listener tuning into the next segment of this when we’re chatting with Roger about what impact podcasting has had for his brand. There is obviously a lot of moving pieces to it but when it comes down to it at the end of the day, podcasting is a content marketing strategy and so my focus has been working on figuring out how to make that as effective a strategy as possible and in three main areas, one in building the authority of the host and the brand associated with the host. Two is building the audience growth and the list growth and the exposure of that individual and part in doing so also growing their authority.

Number three is actually driving and tangible bottom line results. Whether that’s booking speaking gigs, whether that’s signing high end consulting clients or bringing people into a membership site type of a program that you may have. That has been my main focus for the last year or so is taking the medium of podcasting and doing all kinds of different tests and tweaks to figure out how it can be most effectively used as a business tool.

Roger:        Do you think the podcast base is getting too crowded Ben? It seems like there are a lot of launches these days and I think maybe one little bit of irony copyblogger.com which is really specialized in a written or digital word if you will since its inception has been so focused on copywriting and headline writing and everything that goes along with that. They seem to be abandoning the written word if you will for podcasting which really surprised me.

Ben:           I think it’s a really good question Roger and I get it quite a bit because podcasting has been talked about a lot in different online marketing circles and in different content marketing circles because it is seeing a really big wave and I don’t think that it is flooded or oversaturated for a simple reason that right now there are and I don’t have the exact stats on the top of my head but the number of blogs out there and active blogs not just the kind of sites that your cousin started once back in 1982 and then left sitting there with one blog post on it. The number of active blogs in comparison…

Roger:        That famous Hello World post.

Ben:           Yeah. Everybody’s seen that a couple of hundred times. The number of active blogs in comparison to the number of active podcasts is still something like a thousand to one as to where there are just so many more blogs than there are podcasts. I don’t necessarily mean to say that there should be as many podcasts as there are blogs. I don’t mean that in any way. What I mean is that there is still plenty of room to grow and as somebody in the podcasting profession and space, we actively launch podcasts for clients and I would say about every month I work with an individual who there is not a podcast in their market space yet.

There’s still a lot of uncovered ground in podcasting plus, even if there are other individuals who are podcasting about your topics, there’s still always value to be had by making it yours, by sharing your personal opinions and experiences in building an audience around you as opposed to trying to scrap it out with other podcasters and being competitive about it. I found that podcasting is a little bit more supportive of an environment and a little less competitive and that may shift moving forward as bigger and bigger brands get into podcasting but for now it seems to still be a nice place to play.

Roger:        I’ve got my own thoughts on this question Ben but I’ll ask you since you’ve worked with so many different podcasts, what’s the secret of getting great guests?

Ben:           That’s a really good question and I think it depends on your industry and the types of guests that you want to bring on. I think the real secret to creating great content with guests is to get guests that will have very unique and specific ideas that are highly valuable to your audience. I think a lot of people skip right over that part and think who are the biggest names that I can get on my show. That’s my first piece but when it comes to getting those higher level guests and those higher level names, it comes down to being somebody who is willing to give and being somebody who’s there to support the industry and there to support the guests that you bring on the show.

People can smell somebody that’s just in it to access their list or their audience from a mile away. You really need to be very altruistic and really believe in supporting the industry that you are creating content for and creating these guest interviews for. I realized that that’s a higher level philosophical standpoint but if you are committed to being that individual, then it’s no big deal to connect with bigger name influencers every once in a while via different social media platforms over time and build a connection as well as we talk about in this interview segment, as you start bringing on people who have larger names, larger audiences and more influence, it becomes much more easier with that social proof to climb the ladder one rung at a time and get into the big name individuals because you’ve built a foundation of really strong content as you grew.

I would love to hear how that ties in with your thoughts on that Roger.

Roger:        I agree. As we get into a little while here, I’ll talk about really being of service to a guest as well because it’s important just both as a person but also from a practical standpoint, there’s actually some research and I don’t have a citation and maybe I can find it and put it in the show notes page but when people who are trying to contact well known influencers for articles or podcasts or various other types of contact to that nature they found out that these very visible people are not totally altruistic and are that in fact are the same what’s in it for me principle applies to them as to many other situations.

You can understand that because if you look at the number of requests that a prominent author gets for everything from, “Hey, I just need a quick interview. You need to answer these questions. Hey, I need a blurb for my book. I need this, I need that.” They have to be pretty selective even if they’re really nice people and I think that most of the folks that I have spoken to have been really pretty nice people but just from a practical standpoint they have to limit the things they engage in.

If you can help them get some value whether it’s with a book launch or in exposing a new idea that they’re promoting or something like that, they’ll be much more receptive than it’s just, “Hey, you want to help me out on podcast?”

Ben:           Yeah, I think you hit the nail right on the head there with that and I like that you said that most people you talked to are in fact really nice and very altruistic individuals but the end of the day we’re all human and even if you were the must altruistic person in existence, you still need to take care of yourself first. In order for people to do that, you need to appeal to them in a way that lays out clearly what the value is for them as the guest.

Roger:        Right. One author that I spoke with I won’t name him and this was awful, I wasn’t on a podcast but he said he has put up a sign on his wall across from his desk that says, “Just say no.” And I was merely a reflection of the fact again, a very nice guy but reflection to the fact that his job is to create content if you will and do things associated with that process and if he responded to all the requests that he got, he simply wouldn’t be able to do that so … I think that that may be more extreme but it’s certainly is something that I think every one of these prominent individuals goes through.

They simply have to throttle their responses to emails, their interview request and so on just so they can actually do what they do for a living.

Ben:           I think I might take a page at his book.

Roger:        It’s not a bad idea.

Ben:           I’m going to frame it just say no.

Roger:        There is a business opportunity there, put it on Etsy or Zazzle or something, just say no.

Ben:           Yeah, there we go.

Roger:        Anyway, what I’m going to do now Ben, I’m going to give you a chance to tell folks where they can find you and your stuff online and I’m going to remind our audience to stay tuned because immediately after this, we’re going to segue into Ben’s interview with me where we’ll find more about podcasting and how I found to be valuable. Ben, how can folks find you online?

Ben:           You can find me over at cashflowpodcasting.com that’s where we have our own show where we talk about using podcasting as a marketing tool and that’s what we dive into for all the episodes. I would say the number one resource for if you are interested in using podcasting though I kept getting tons and tons of questions about using podcasting as a business tool so I created a really quick like 10 video mini-course that answers the most prominent questions about actually using podcasting as a marketing tool.

People can find that at cashflowpodcasting.com and that’s the best way to get some quick answers because it ties back to the author that you mentioned that just say no I got so many questions and I found myself answering all them all via personal email that that is going to be the best way to get some quick answers for you but of course you can always connect with me directly at cashflowpodcasting.com.

Roger:        Great and we’ll have links to Ben’s site in the show notes page at rogerdooley.com/podcast and stay tuned but for now we’ll say goodbye to Ben and thanks for being on the show.

Ben:           Thank you so much Roger.

Ben:           Hey there listeners, I’m here with Roger Dooley, one of the clients of cashflowpodcasting. He’s been with us for a little over a year now and I wanted to feature and highlight his story and his experience as a podcaster because Roger is a speaker and an author. Somebody who’s been in the public spotlight for multiple years now and I want to share his experience with podcasting from a realistic standpoint of what it actually has impacted for his business, for his brand and the upsides, the downsides.

Take a good look at how podcasting has impacted and directed his business so Roger, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your time with us today.

Roger:        Well, happy to be here Ben.

Ben:           I want to start with when we met a little over a year ago, your main brand and your entire platform you had a couple of different spots one based off of your name and some consulting and speaking, another online with your book and with a lot of the content that you were putting out, you were putting on a lot of thought leadership information on neuromarketing and persuasion and I wanted to just start by giving people an idea of who you are and what it is that you have been sharing with people for these last couple of years.

Roger:        Sure Ben. Actually I’m a serial entrepreneur. I’ve been in a fair number of spaces over the years but for the last few decades there’s been a very prominent marketing theme and in particular quantitative marketing. I was a direct marketer that is to say a catalog marketer for many years that morphed into a digital marketing business that involved both SEO and some other activities. I built huge community website to sell that a few years ago but for the last 10 years, I’ve had this ongoing focus, a small portion of what I was doing at first and now it’s just but all that I’m doing and that focus has been the intersection of neuroscience in marketing.

Back in about 2004, I saw these two fields coming together and I did what a good web entrepreneur would do, I registered the domain neurosciencemarketing.com. That was a time where keyword domains were considered cool and or at least useful and then I started writing there and initially there was perhaps a bit of a content ploy just to get some content on that domain but I found the field to be so fascinating that I spent more and more time writing there and that culminated in my book Brainfluence from Wiley that came out in 2011 and that’s now been translated into about eight different languages it’s in audio formats and condensed formats for executives.

It’s really about an interesting writing I have been doing more and more speaking both in the United States and globally since that time. That’s where along the way until I picked up a column at forbes.com which is the brainy marketing although now that title’s been de-emphasized I guess in their way of doing things at Forbes and it’s just easier to find by me Roger Dooley there. That’s what I do and much of what I do is focused on content creation of various types.

I’m now on about the 70th podcast episode it’s one per week and that was an important addition to my content stream.

Ben:           Yeah and I’ve got to ask Roger, what brought you to number one even hearing of podcasting and then number two thinking, “Hey, this could actually be something that I could utilize in my own business.”

Roger:        Well, I’d be hard-pressed to give you the exact origin of that but I guess I’ve been a podcast consumer for years and the field was not quite as crowded but there have always been some good podcasts I think of Mitch Joel who’s been on the air so to speak for many years and I just thought there was a great format where instead of just pushing words at people you can have a conversation with somebody else who is a smart person and has something to say, create this fun interaction not just Q & A perhaps.

Just have that conversational feel. I think that my own skills are probably were somewhat rudimentary to begin with but I keep striving to do a better job and turn those into good conversations that the listeners will say, “Wow, I really enjoyed that and got something out of it.”

Ben:           Yeah and I think that’s the perfect mind set. I feel like a lot of folks get really … They get frozen in this feared assumption that if they put together a podcast that it’s got to be studio quality, radio quality type of stuff and I think everybody that gets into podcasting if you go back to their first couple of episodes, it’s really encouraging to check out somebody’s first few episodes of a podcast because it’s … Everybody’s winging it unless they came from a radio background, most of us are just getting into it and trying out this cool new medium and having interesting valuable conversations and wanting to share them.

To start, there’s always a little bit of feeling out the medium and trying to get grips on how this thing works and make sure that it is super valuable and I like that you shared that and one of the things that you talked about before we hit record here was we were talking about what podcasting has done for your brand and the impact this had overall. Would you mind giving us a quick rundown of the real highlights of what not necessarily measurable but what like real effects has podcasting had for your brand that you’ve been able to see over the last year?

Roger:        Right, it’s a great question Ben and I think that since my monetization is primarily from speaking, the … That’s such a chunky business where the small number of gigs and it’s often times you’re hard priced to figure out where they even came from, how they discovered you but to me the big benefit has been networking with some really interesting people and not only interesting but folks that you might have an opportunity to help in the future or be helped by in the future and I think it’s got to be a mutual thing.

You can’t go into this as the taker and you really have to deliver value not just to the audience but not to your guests as well. One thing that struck me, this last south by southwest, I was invited to an author’s dinner it’s just a small private, about maybe eight or nine people and I realized that of the guests who are invited and I was just randomly invited at the last minute about three or four of them had been on my show already. I was so bizarre that I actually knew these folks and folks like Dan Pink and Noah Fleming, Nir Eyal and I forgot who else.

Dorie Clark who is the organizer of it and there was a subsequent guest on the podcast and I know it’s such a great experience to be invited to this event and know those folks going in where had without the podcast I would not have been connected with them in any way and just be a stranger. That was great and I think the other aspect is being able to have interesting conversations with people that you normally wouldn’t. Today, I published my conversation with Nobel prize winner Al Roth.

He won the Nobel prize for economics in 2012 and he’s a really nice guy and probably he’d have a conversation with me if I really tried but it’s really tough you just out of the blue call up and say, “Hey, you want to shoot the breeze for half an hour to a prominent author much less a Nobel prize winner?” And the podcast provides a vehicle for delivering value to the guest whether that’s promoting their book or helping them get their ideas out in a positive way. They’re much more likely to cooperate with you.

Ben:           You said you’ve got the opportunity to connect with some really interesting folks, a Nobel prize winner, multiple prominent authors, are there any other folks of interest or comedy that would be really interesting to point out here?

Roger:        I bridge the space between psychology and neuroscience in marketing. Some of the folks that I spoke with, now I’ve had Nir Eyal, well known for his Predictably Irrational book and subsequent books had Robert Cialdini who has sold countless millions I think of his book Influence and one of the highlights of that was I got a chance to ask Bob if he would 30 years later or however exactly much it is if he would want to increase his six principles in any way whether in the subsequent years he discovered seven or eight.

His answer was, “No.” The six still seem to be encompass just about everything as far as he could tell but it was really fun to be able to ask that kind of question and get it answered because again, normally even if you bump in to somebody at a conference or something like that you just don’t have that kind of conversation.

Ben:           With the podcasters almost a free past to talk about a little bit more deeper conversations or have those deeper conversations whereas even if you did bump in to somebody in a conference really it’s tough to break past the surface level, hey, how are you going type of stuff.

Roger:        Normally there are maybe … If you’ve got somebody who is a well-known author you may have six people in line to talk like if … It’s just very common or even if you’re at a reception or something they’ll be surrounded by a little lot of people waiting to talk so you can’t be rude and monopolize that person. You’ve got a … Perhaps say a few words and so on. It really gives you a chance for a one on one.

Ben:           One of the other things that you had mentioned was the podcast as a content multiplier or that the content that you create for the podcast can be multiplied and distributed on multiple platforms. Can you talk for a second about what you meant by that and how you used that approach?

Roger:        Sure. The podcast is often where it originates. In other words that’s the first piece of content and so we record the roughly 30 minutes or so for the Brainfluence podcast that’s turned into a written transcript as well that makes multiplying that content a little bit easier and so for example when I had Guy Kawasaki on the show he was discussing his new book at that point and I was able to turn that into a book review at forbes.com and produced some quotes from our conversation as well as a blog post at neuromarketing my other blog, my oldest and primary blog and they in turn really serve to form a traffic wheel if you will.

In other words the mention on the other blogs would drive traffic to the podcast and vice versa. Not every podcast does turn into multiple pieces of content. Sometimes you’re lucky if you can get a good podcast out of the conversation. I’m sure you’ve had a few of those over time where but often it does and it’s again great from both party standpoint because if somebody is busy as Guy Kawasaki invests half an hour or 40 minutes of his time, he’s getting multiple benefit from that.

Ben:           Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Whenever you’re reaching out to other people to have potentially prominent names on your show you then have something really valuable to offer as supposed to just doing the classic, “Hey, do you want to come on my show?”

Roger:        Definitely. There’s definitely a social proof effect where as you collect a more prominent list of past guests it makes it easier to get new guests and also you get more outreach from either potential guests or more often their PR firms and whoever is helping them with the book launch and that sort of thing.

Ben:           Okay great. I really love that. Let’s say folks out there listening they are authors and speakers similar to yourself probably in a different topic area, what would you recommend would be important for them to consider if they were thinking about podcasting whether it be a mindset or whether it be a different strategy or tactic of some sort. What would you say is important for somebody who’s considering podcasting as a business tool to help them make that decision and move forward one way or the other?

Roger:        Right. Well, at first I would have realistic expectations if you’re launching a brand new podcast. Chances are unless you’ve got an enormous platform already, you’re not going to get tens of thousands of listeners on your first episode or two it’s like you’re launching anything else whether it’s a new blog, a new website you have to work at it. I think that one thing that is an interesting lesson to me is the regularity of schedule and that’s when something that your company has been helpful with Ben is saying, “Okay …

Ben:           We’re the whip drivers.

Roger:        Right. This is the schedule, this is when we have to have the content in by and so on and with that impetus, the production then proceeds on schedule and then the release occurs at the same time which I think is one of the key things, one of the success factors for podcast is not to release episodes randomly but to give your audience the content at a predictable time, predictable day of the week and so on. I know that Mitch Joel always launches his on Sundays … Monday morning when I’m in the gym, that will be the first place I go.

I typically launch on Thursday morning so presumably my audience when to expect that and tunes in then so I think that’s good but it just getting on that schedule is really important so that you can first of all get ahead of the game and have some episodes in the bank so to speak and not be under pressure to get, “Man, I got to get a recording in the next four hours.” And you’re randomly posting tweets or calling people up saying, “Hey, you want to do a podcast?” Fortunately I haven’t been quite at that space and I have filled in a few myself with solo podcast which actually got a pretty good feedback and so I’m tempted to do that a little bit more although I’ve had such a really interesting guest and I think that that’s probably the next value for the audience.

Ben:           I like that even though you are doing them solo you’re getting a good feedback but hey, you enjoy the ability to connect with more people and they get more out of it and the audience gets more out of it so I really like the … It’s just a win, win, win situation. One thing that you mentioned in that is that you look forward to on Monday mornings the podcast that came in on Sundays when you go to the gym and it’s literally part of your weekly routine now and I think that that is, that’s one thing that I’ve talked about a few times is with consistency of a podcast or really with any kind of marketing but especially with a podcast because people can take it with them you start to become part of someone’s weekly routine and you literally get integrated into their life’s routine.

I think that’s when the barrier from, “Hey, I’m just checking out this person to see what they’ve got to share to like I am part of their true 1,000 person audience and with an audience of those type of individuals that you are part of their routine. It’s really tough to go wrong.” You’ve got that platform that you can always release stuff to and as long as you’re doing it in a valuable way, I think that you’ve built yourself an incredibly valuable asset for the long term. I want your thoughts on that Roger.

Roger:        I agree. I think that one thing that’s improving for all podcasters is that the ease of consumption is increasing. I remember when I started listening to podcast, it was actually not always easy to do you’d be like downloading mp3 files and then copying them over to a device or something like that. The subscription mechanisms that were out there were kind of wonky and sometimes they would deliver the content and other times they wouldn’t and now it’s really simple.

There are some great players out there that can automatically download your content. I’d consume podcast in the car now because my own vehicles don’t have this but when I travel, some of the newer cars that I were in have Bluetooth connections so it’s so easy to pair up your phone with the car’s audio system and even when you’re on navigation you’ll be driving from the airport to wherever you’re headed and you can be listening to the podcast but then if it’s going to be the time you turn to left, the navigation will cut in, will tell you to turn left and then the podcast will resume right where you left off, the ease of use today is just so much greater and for my own vehicle I use a little FM broadcaster gizmo that I plug into my phone and get pretty much the same effect. Not quite as elegant as Bluetooth pairing but that works fine too.

Ben:           I love when we piece together our own technology systems. It’s always entertaining to me to see when there’s a challenge, people are going to figure out a way around it whether it’s elegant or whether it’s duct tape and bubble gum. Roger, this has been fantastic and I really appreciate you sharing your experience over the last year with podcasting and how you feel it’s impacted your brand and what it’s done for you personally and the platform that you’ve been building.

Where can folks find out more about neuromarketing, about Brainfluence as your book is titled and the podcast is titled and essentially how to integrate maybe you can describe it better than I can but psychology into marketing and persuasion.

Roger:        Great. The place that I’d recommend for jumping off point is rogerdooley.com. There, I’ve got links right in the homepage to my neuromarketing blog at neurosciencemarketing.com to by Forbes blog, to my book and so on. Of course the podcast itself. The podcast is actually located at rogerdooley.com too so that’s really a good jumping off point and on Twitter, I am @rogerdooley.

Ben:           Perfect, perfect. Thank you so much Roger. Really appreciate you coming on and playing along today and really excited that we’ve got to give folks a good little view of what podcasting can actually do for a speaking an author based brand so thank you so much for coming on, really appreciate it man.

Roger:        Thank you Ben, it’s been a lot of fun and I appreciate the good work you guys are doing.

Ben:           Hey, always happy to do it man. Always happy so thank you so much and we’ll chat soon.

Roger:        This is Roger Dooley and you have been listening to my conversation with Ben Krueger of Cashflow Podcasting. You’ll find links to everything we talked about as well as a transcript of both our conversations at rogerdooley.com/podcast. Just look for the show notes page. Thanks for tuning in.

Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Brainfluence Podcast. To continue the discussion and to find your own path to brainy success, please visit us at RogerDooley.com.