19. Fashion Forward: PANGAIA, a Material Science Company Disguised as Fashion Brand

[00:00:00] Lucas: you've probably been on a sales call before where you've been sold to, it's like going to the dentist.

[00:00:04] Lucas: Nobody wants to go to a sales meeting. It's like horrible. It just sucks, right? So if it's that bad, try to make it better for the prospect by giving them something that they actually want and then starting off a really solid relationship from there.

[00:00:17] Lucas: what's up to his fam? So I wanted to make this video all about why podcasting is one of the best ways to get new meetings for your business, to grow your brand, to grow the brand of your sales reps, and how it's helped our brand grow over the last year and a half to two years since we started doing podcasting.

[00:00:34] Lucas: We're almost up to two years now, so it's been a little bit over a year and a half. So for those of you who are just tuning into the podcast for the first time, my name is Lucas James. I am the CEO and co-founder. twi.io, which is a software product and also a marketing services company. We do lead gen and SEO for businesses.

[00:00:50] Lucas: I wanted to show you exactly how I use podcasting to grow my agency slash software business. So I actually have this podcast, how to scale an agency, which is picking up a lot of steam. It's been really excited me on the show and doing this for and with all of you guys. But I actually launched a separate podcast as well called How to Scale a Business.

[00:01:10] Lucas: And the thing about both these podcasts is that. When I get the guests on my show, a lot of the times it's a way to get more virality for my brand because the person who is on the show as a guest ends up sharing that episode with other people. So that's the first way that it benefits my business.

[00:01:26] Lucas: The other way that it benefits my business is that about 90% of the people. Who come onto the podcast actually opt into a free training after the podcast, and I'll break down for you exactly how I do this. Now I have started to shift this a little bit. So at the beginning when I started to do my podcast and everything, I would have all types of agencies and then also businesses on the show.

[00:01:50] Lucas: And. Because of that, I would, I would have anybody opt into the free training. But now I'm doing a little bit differently. Where the main podcast the How to Scale Agency Pod is predominantly for people who do over a million dollars a year in revenue and their marketing agency. So I might not ask every single one who does that to opt into my free training, because I might wanna do more of a partnership with that person.

[00:02:10] Lucas: But for your average business that I have on my show, on the How to Scale Business Podcast, what I'll do is I'll promote them, I'll give them free advice, I'll give them free training. After the podcast, but I'll promote them for free. And the reason, and it this works is because one, you're actually giving them something and that's the key.

[00:02:28] Lucas: A lot of people, when they're sending out messages and sending out emails, they're trying to get prospects to. Work with them. All they're doing is sending spam. And when you do this, it actually limits the potential of your lead gen campaigns because they are actually being burned by you every single time because they think, oh wow, this is a company that just sends spam.

[00:02:47] Lucas: I don't wanna associate myself with a brand that just sends spam. . Right? And if they perceive it at spam, at spam, then you're already starting off on a bad foot. And so the thing with the podcast is that you start off on the right foot with them by giving them some sort of value. And when you give them this value, then they're more likely to opt into something like a free training.

[00:03:05] Lucas: So basically what I do on the How to Scale Up Business podcast, which I just launched, is I'll have the podcast, I. , it'll last for about 15 minutes. And then I, there's no strings attached. I give them the podcast I posted on our website. This is purely legit in terms of how we do this. But then after the interview, I'll casually bring up, Hey, by the way, we have this free training if you wanna opt in to just do the training.

[00:03:30] Lucas: We'll show you how to get over a million views. For your brand like we've been able to do with Twiz are you interested? And again, 90% of people say, yes, I am interested. And that's the thing you have to. . Once you start to realize that if you can get somebody to know about you, like you and trust you, which are the three pillars of marketing, then you can pretty much convince them to do what it is you want them to do as long as it's actually a good thing for their business.

[00:03:56] Lucas: And you're not trying to pull a hood over their eyes or anything like that. So my whole point with this diatribe is that. The reason podcasts work as a way to get sales meetings is because they start off by establishing a good relationship, an honest relationship, and a giving relationship with the prospect who you want to opt in to your actual sales call afterwards, right?

[00:04:19] Lucas: And if they don't, you don't use any pressure sales tactics or anything like that. You just know your numbers and you just move on. So it's a way for them to get something. They get all this exposure from your brand and that'll continue to build up over time. And on top of that, you immediately switch theminto a sales meeting after the podcast interview.

[00:04:36] Lucas: So that's how I do it, and that's how I tear my sales reps and where this gets really exciting. Is you can then build a brand around each one of your sales representatives and turn them into an influencer in a unique niche that they wanna dominate. So for example I have one contract that just got started with me.

[00:04:53] Lucas: Her name is Bridget. She's fantastic. And she is actually professional musician. And because of that, she wants to focus on working with businesses in the music space. So we launched a podcast called Behind the Music, and that podcast actually is going to highlight all the business leaders in the music space.

[00:05:10] Lucas: And we've already, within just 48 hours of launching this outreach campaign via email and cold calling to get people on a podcast. I. Already booked over five meetings. And on top of that, already got one proposal out. Because what happened was when we started to reach out to people about the podcast, one of the people actually went to our website, looked at it and said, Hey, I might need them for marketing services.

[00:05:31] Lucas: Reached out to me directly and said, Hey, Bridget contacted me about the podcast, but I might actually be interested in your marketing services. And so that's the power of the podcast because the large majority of most. ,lead gen efforts that people do when it comes to outreach and, basically spamming people.

[00:05:48] Lucas: The large majority of that is trying to find the person who is willing to buy and is in the market to buy and getting them at the exact right moment. But the problem is that most people are not hunting to go buy something. So you're basically gonna get a one in a hundred or a one in a. Optin rate, like that's mostly gen companies and some people will tout that they have better metrics and things like that, but that's just not really true.

[00:06:11] Lucas: So you have one, a hundred, one in a thousand, something like that. And because of that, it's significantly lower than what you could do with something like a podcast. When you reach out to people, say, Hey, I wanna invite you on a podcast, an industry specific podcast. You might get 10 out of a hundred people saying yes, that's pretty normal for us.

[00:06:28] Lucas: And if it's 10 out of a hundred, even 20 out of a hundred, if you're really. Then if 50% at minimum opt into a sales meeting immediately after the podcast, and they actually show up to that sales meeting, then you have,10 to a hundred times maybe the amount of sales means you'd get from just a.

[00:06:44] Lucas: Cold direct sales pitch. And so I didn't, you know, come up with this method on my own. I actually learned it from doing podcast interviews. I interviewed one of the CMOs of a company called Scorpion. If you go to about six episodes back, he was the c M O for about six years, and he. Grew them from 20 million a year in revenue to 150 million a year in revenue.

[00:07:05] Lucas: He did it through giving stuff like either gifts or podcasts or things like that. And he knew that if he gave them something first, like their prospects, they'd be more likely to wanna work with them. Right. And that's the key with all of this is you have to give something first before you expect something in return.

[00:07:19] Lucas: If you focus on giving. It's just a natural human emotion and tendency for them to, like you, trust you and wanna work with you. So you want to establish that first, that solid ground, which starts with giving people stuff and then you can ask in return for something, right? And so that's the basis of a good relationship.

[00:07:36] Lucas: when you do a direct sales pitch, it's just so draining on them. The churn is high because, like in terms of their burnout, because they get really tired, you don't want that, right?

[00:07:45] Lucas: So ultimately you want people to be very motivated and if, if at the worst case scenario, your brand can turn them into an influencer in a space that they actually wanna be an influencer in. So if they're into fashion, they wanna be a fashion influencer, or they're into music, they wanna be a music influencer or a SaaS influencer, that's the worst case scenario for their brand.

[00:08:02] Lucas: So you could build them their own custom website, you. Get a specific podcast set up just for them. And then as long as it's authentic, it's also increasing your brand because all the people that come on the show will share the link to the podcast. And if you host the podcast on your website, now you have all that traffic coming to your website.

[00:08:18] Lucas: So you're basically going viral within your niche and you're getting podcast guests to turn into sales calls. And again, it's all opt-in. It's all based on you know, just having a good enough ask. And that's it. Just literally the ask is so amazing. I think just in general, I mean, just to put it in perspective, I mean, we used to pay about $150 per meeting when we were scaling.

[00:08:40] Lucas: When we first hit $200,000 in sales, we were paying about 150 bucks per meeting, and that's how we were able to grow. Now we're getting about 50 or $30 per meeting. Because we've just optimized it and figured out that by giving someone something, they're way more likely to reciprocate and want to give us something in return later.

[00:08:57] Lucas: if you've been involved in this community and you've been listening to my podcast interviews over the last year, Year and a half. You probably heard me go through a lot of phases. I initially sort of tested my initial hypotheses, which was, you know, the direct sales pitch.

[00:09:10] Lucas: This was back when we first started with the community and that I, I saw all these agencies use it. I got it tested in real time based on how successful mine was, and I saw, hey, This actually is not necessarily as good as I thought it was. I mean, it's getting people results, but there has to be a better way to do this.

[00:09:24] Lucas: And then I went from a direct sales pitch to try before you buy, which was telling everyone, Hey, you should give them a little piece of your service. And then hopefully, if you know they say yes to that little piece of your service, let's say a free blog or free website page or something like that. Then they'll often for the full thing.

[00:09:39] Lucas: And that did work for some people. the problem is that sometimes people's freebie is not cool enough or unique enough for a business for them to actually want to take you up on it. And that's an issue. So not everyone had a smashing success with that campaign. But the one thing that has worked every single time is podcasts because everyone wants to be on a podcast.

[00:09:59] Lucas: Everyone wants authority. Everyone wants that. There is, another way to do this, which I can talk about in a separate episode, which is starting a partner network where you send and receive deal flow and you try to facilitate things that way. It's another great way to get leads, but just for standard purposes, the podcast has been fantastic.

[00:10:16] Lucas: It's been the number one performing. I literally have clients getting 50 meetings booked a month from the podcast and in just one month of launching, it's pretty crazy. Whereas that kind of consistency among campaigns doesn't really exist with the direct sales pitch, because you have to get lucky, essentially.

[00:10:32] Lucas: You have to assume that somebody's gonna have the30 seconds to read over your email or hear your, voicemail or your, cold call and immediate. Like what you have to offer, which is pretty rare. Not very many businesses are able to do that. For example, I have a client that has 4 million followers on TikTok.

[00:10:48] Lucas: When we wanna get them a sales meeting, we'll just call up a business and say, Hey, we have 4 million followers on TikTok. Do you think we could talk some time about your short form content? , that's a good offer, right? Because it's something specific and everyone can understand it in less than a second.

[00:11:01] Lucas: If they have 4 million followers, probably means there's someone I should talk to, right? So that's a bit different. Most businesses don't have that immediate grasp that someone can latch onto and say, oh my God, this is so cool. I need this. Right? So you might have to do something like a podcast at the beginning.

[00:11:13] Lucas: To actually get that ground, to get that traction, and then you can expand into other direct pitches over time. So hopefully this has been helpful. Twist fam. I know it's a lot of information. I plan to do a bit of a presentation, breaking this down step by step with all my screening shots, scripts, everything like that pretty soon.

[00:11:29] Lucas: But in the meantime, hope you enjoy this video and I hope that you launch your own podcast. And I hope that you actually see it as an opportunity to get sales meetings in a way that's, Threatening to the prospect because again, going to a sales call for most businesses, and you've probably been on a sales call before where you've been sold to, it's like going to the dentist.

[00:11:48] Lucas: Nobody wants to go to a sales meeting. It's like horrible. It just sucks, right? So if it's that bad, try to make it better for the prospect by giving them something that they actually want and then starting off a really solid relationship from there. That leads to a lot of different things. Plan on getting my meetings up to about a thousand, 2000 meetings a month from this method, and I plan on bringing a bunch of contractors on board that can go and book a bunch of meetings in variety of the different podcasts and have a whole podcast network of 10, 20 different contractors and just booking hundreds of meetings a month.

[00:12:20] Lucas: That's sort of the next step for us because we've finally realized that this is the most efficient out of everything, and for anyone who, again, is just tuning in, I've been doing this now. Five years, right? And this is definitely the most effective of all of the different methods that I've tried so far.

[00:12:35] Lucas: So hopefully you guys find this valuable. If you like this episode, feel free to share. Rate us, you know subs. Subscribe to future episodes. And you guys mean the world to us. Thank you so much for tuning in. We really appreciate it. Bye.