How Tom Lucas of Docta Is Helping Medical Practices Simplify Their Office Procedures By Providing Cutting Edge Software

[00:00:00] Hector: , M Y P fam, what's going on? My name is Hector Sania Steon, and I am your host. And this is the show to give you everything that you need to go out and successfully grow and market your podcast. And today we're gonna actually talk about something that a lot of hosts are into, or a lot of hosts are interested in, and that's monetization.

[00:00:19] Hector: And one of the biggest things that a lot of hosts struggle with is how do they monetize their. without sponsors, because sponsors can be its own thing and sometimes it may not even be worth the squeeze. But with that being said, there is a way that at least most podcasts can find a way to monetize their show without needing sponsors and without needing, needing to necessarily sell anything to their audience.

[00:00:44] Hector: And so my friend Lucas, and so my friend Lu Lucas Capstan, and so my friend Lucas Capano. . And so we actually had one of my friends, Lucas Capano, come to a virtual mixer that we hosted for podcast AMA and talk about his strategy for doing exactly this. And so I'm not gonna get too much into it cause he does a great job explaining it.

[00:01:06] Hector: But it is so simple and I think it really revolutionizes where it can revolutionize what a lot of people do, what a lot of people are doing with their podcasts and how they're monetizing their show. So it's a, so it's a quick ish, I. So it's a quick ish interview. This is, like I said, something that we did at the beginning of our virtual mixer, but I know that it's gonna be valuable.

[00:01:25] Hector: So I wanted to get it here for you guys in the fam, because I want you guys to start making money with your show as quickly as you want to. So I've been talking too much. Let's get into this quick interview with Lucas Capano.

[00:01:41] Hector: So

[00:01:42] Hector: welcome man. I'm gonna let you go. Do you do the introduction cuz I might miss some stuff. I'll try and I'll try and give you guys a, a broad overview. I got connected with Lucas, uh, a while ago. Uh, much in the same way that we get connected with a lot of you guys on LinkedIn, um, and Twitter. And one thing that I was really drawn to is, is Lucas and I both kind of came in from the, the marketing space.

[00:01:59] Hector: We also went to the, to the same college. And he has, uh, created a community of, of business owners that. and, and he's built it on, you know, kind of on the back of a, of a podcast and he is, you know, Ran a successful podcast and, and what I really love about this is that if you were to look at the podcast, you wouldn't necessarily say, Hey, this guy is monetizing his show.

[00:02:21] Hector: There's not a bunch of sponsors coming in. He's not like selling, you know, I. . It's a very, it's done in a very, very unique way. So, Lucas, why don't I throw it to you? Why don't you give us kind of a little bit about what you do and then also kind of how, how you think about the podcast and how the FO podcast fits into kind of your general business ecosystem that you've got going.

[00:02:43] Lucas: Yeah, definitely. So, um, can you guys still hear me coming in? All good. Okay, awesome. So, uh, a little bit of backstory myself. I started my marketing agency almost five years ago now. So we launched in 2018. Uh, started out my college dorm room, like Hector said, out of Loyola Marymount University. I wasn't really paying attention.

[00:03:02] Lucas: Uh, senior year I was kind of checked out, so I just started running my business, started scaling it up. And for the first three and a half years, we didn't do any, um, content at all. It was just all focused on, uh, delivering for our customers, growing our business. and from, we got new customers primarily from word of mouth and from reaching out to people, uh, we were able to grow that business pretty quickly.

[00:03:24] Lucas: Um, and because of the growth of that company, I took it upon myself and my business partners to launch a podcast called How to Scale an Agency. And that podcast is pretty self-explanatory. We share stories from top agencies on how they are able to grow their business. And so we highlight agencies, you know, who are just starting.

[00:03:46] Lucas: All the way up into 150 million a year in revenue. That's the biggest one I've interviewed so far. The company's called Scorpion. I had a chance to interview their, uh, chief marketing Officer. And primarily for me, what's been the biggest takeaway is the level of access that we've gotten from the podcast.

[00:04:02] Lucas: We're pretty much able to get in touch with practically anyone. Now at this point, I've had the opportunity to interview, uh, for example, like Andrew Gki, who, if you guys are familiar with mi micro acquire.com, it's now acquire dot. He's the c e of that company, or, uh, if you guys have heard of gmas, um, he's a agency owner turned software entrepreneur who has 1.5 million users on their software product.

[00:04:25] Lucas: They actually reached out to us because they wanted to be on the show, uh, after hearing about us and everything. So, That was a really cool experience as well. His name's AJ

[00:04:34] Hector: Lucas. I wanna, I wanna top in because I think that you're hitting on something that I, I hopefully we don't glaze over cuz I think you Right.

[00:04:40] Hector: Uh, you talked about access and Yeah. And you, a lot of people, I talked to someone today who, their thing is their, they see the show as the product, right? The product is what they're selling. You are, you see the show as, as kind of a, a different thing in a way. Can you talk more about this whole access thing and how you leverage AC that access to actually turn into dollars?

[00:05:04] Lucas: Yeah. So, uh, And, and it's really good you're bringing this up because once I realized this is the way to do any kind of marketing, it sort of, it sort of changed everything for our business. Um, so I'll give you a little story of how I learned about this and, and then I'll tell you about how I apply it to the podcast.

[00:05:21] Lucas: So one of the interviews we did was actually with that company I mentioned, uh, scorpion, the c m o of that. His name is Corey Quinn. He's a really cool guy, and he told me that the way they got business was they would do podcast interviews with attorneys who are their prospective market. And they wouldn't start off with a pitch.

[00:05:39] Lucas: They, they do seo. They wouldn't start off with the sales pitch when they reached out with people. They would instead say, Hey, I'd love to get you on our podcast and interview you. And then what ended up happening was that company ended up getting their prospects. Know about them to like them and to trust them, which as we all know is the three pillars of marketing.

[00:05:59] Lucas: It's a much better way to meet prospects than if you just randomly call them and say, Hey, I'd love to sell you all my services. It's just not as salesy. People like you better, and it ends up being a much better introduction. You're also giving them something of value. So when I, he heard that from him, it, it totally changed my perspective on how to actually do business.

[00:06:19] Lucas: And I realized after looking back at all of the good business decisions I might have made in the past, uh, it actually always came from whenever we gave value on the front end. But whenever we tried to be too salesy, it usually backfired. Uh, and that's when I would, I would deter, I would decide those were sort of my bad decisions that I made in business.

[00:06:37] Lucas: And so now all that we do is lead with value. And so I talk about access and I talk about getting. From the people who are on the show, it's not a forced sales pitch. It's not a bait and switch. Literally all we do is we give them value by having on the show. We're now in the top 5% of all podcasts globally, according to Spotify.

[00:06:56] Lucas: And since they're on the show, they get a product from us and they're much more likely to want to ask us about what we do and want to work with us. We don't even have to push the sale on them or anything, but because they actually know about us now and they like us and they trust. Then they're more willing to actually work with us.

[00:07:13] Lucas: And so that's why it's how we've been primarily able to scale now this year and going forward, that's what we plan to do as well. So, so

[00:07:22] Hector: if anybody has questions now, feel free to raise your hand there. Um, if, if anybody has any like, hot questions that are, are going on, what, so I I, I have a quick

[00:07:31] Lucas: one, Hector.

[00:07:32] Lucas: Sorry. Go ahead, Jennifer. Yeah, yeah. Um, so Lucas. Um, how many, I have two questions. One is, how many followers did you have? I mean, obviously you have traction. Yeah. Right. So if you're just starting out, how does this philosophy apply, do you think? It's a great question. Um, so there's two answers to this. Uh, the first thing is when we first started, uh, we were able to get in the room with a lot of people, uh, mainly because we had a business that already was doing well.

[00:08:04] Lucas: So yes, we already had a company, we didn't have any followers, but we had a good story cuz we could say, Hey, we have a scaled up agency and now we're documenting these, uh, other agencies. And so that was one definitely easy way to get it. Um, the other thing is, yes, obviously once, once you've built some traction, , then it does make it easier to get the bigger guests.

[00:08:22] Lucas: But I will say, and this is what a lot of people sort of miss with podcasts and where I kind of see the opportunity is podcasts are one of those, uh, channels right now where you don't necessarily know how big a podcast is, uh, when you go on the show because some podcasts have a lot of ratings, but a lot of them don't.

[00:08:43] Lucas: We got into the top 5% of our podcasts, and we only recently. Start to get any ratings. And to be honest, we don't have that many. I never really asked the audience to give us ratings. I was pretty happy to find out that we had a lot of five star ratings, but it wasn't until recently, right? So we started to get thousands of people actually downloading it a month before we even had any ratings.

[00:09:02] Lucas: So without the ratings, there really is no way for someone to know how big your podcast is, and they almost really never mention it or ask it from my experience. So the biggest person I was able to, I. before these bigger ones that we have because of the following, was doing like 54 million a year in revenue.

[00:09:19] Lucas: So you can still get in touch with some really big companies before you start having to go for those major businesses, which do really want to see the other following. But at the beginning, you can definitely get in touch with people who have 10 million, 50 million a year in revenue. That's, that's very doable.

[00:09:34] Lucas: Um, so I think it's a huge opportunity right. Lucas,

[00:09:37] Hector: I think you might have mentioned it, uh, that or I dreamed about our conversation, but you have a very specific like protocol in terms of turning the interview into some sort of, of, um, sales opportunity, right? Yeah. If I'm not mistaken, can you kind of walk through what, what those kind of basics are?

[00:09:56] Hector: Cause I think they're super easy, but also like super, I.

[00:10:01] Lucas: Yeah, a hundred percent. And what I'll do, actually, um, if anybody wants to dive deep on this, I'm gonna share, we have these, uh, this free training on our, um, on our website. Uh, if you go to this link, you can find a couple of different, um, blogs on podcasts.

[00:10:18] Lucas: And there's one specifically which I will send, uh, which is called Podcast Conversion Script. And I wrote this and it specifically lines out minute by minute, how you go through every single. Minute of the podcast to get them to convert into some sort of achievable, uh, outcome. So for some people that could be, um, a demo for other people.

[00:10:39] Lucas: Let's say they're launching a software, it could be get them on a wait list. Uh, there's a lot of different ways you can convert them, but the idea is after the podcast is done, and, and for me, I usually try to do podcasts that are 15 to 20 minutes long. I don't try to do long podcasts. I, I call 'em. You know, breakfast pods or or coffee pods where the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee is the time it should be to record the episode.

[00:11:00] Lucas: And then after that, the next 30 minutes is actually just getting to know them. And the way that I get them to a sales, I just simply ask them, Hey, do you actually know what it is that we do? We do. Have you heard about us or anything? I know you're on the pod, but like, do you actually know where our business does?

[00:11:13] Lucas: And a lot of the times they'll say, I kind of. , but I'd be open to hearing more. And then at that point I hit them with another offer, which is a freebie. And I'll say something like, Hey, this is totally optional, but our business actually gets a million, uh, views a year to our brand, over a million views a year.

[00:11:29] Lucas: Uh, we doing this training where I can just show you how we do it. Are you interested in learning more? Right. And then I can measure how many people say yes. And you'll notice that if you take the rate of people that opt into a cold sales pitch, let's say it's like one in a hundred or one in a thousand to some salesy outbound.

[00:11:45] Lucas: Let's say you then lead with a podcast instead, and you get, let's say 10% of people that opt in on a list of a hundred, if 50% of those people that opt in at the, um, at the list of a hundred for the podcast, and then 50% of those 10 opt into the sales pitch. Now you have five out of a hundred, which is 5% opt-in rate on a list of a hundred, as opposed to some Randy Spa random.

[00:12:08] Lucas: that might be like one in a hundred or one in a thousand people saying yes, which is what most businesses do. Right. Lucas, that's, this is,

[00:12:13] Hector: this is brilliant. I get it, but I, I. I'm a marketer, so I know, I know what you're talking about. But for the people who are not, not the salesy, I wanna, what you're saying is, is you're, you're, you are inviting people in with the podcast interview, which is way more inviting than, than just, you know, any other sales thing.

[00:12:31] Hector: And then you're actually offering something of value at, on the backend of that. To, to make it, you know, even more, even even easier. Right. Even more accessible. Um, so that way Yeah. By the end of those pr that by the end of those two steps you already have someone who's, who's kind of willing and open for, for whatever you're gonna offer

[00:12:50] Lucas: them.

[00:12:51] Lucas: Yeah. Once you realize that most businesses, including probably your own, cuz I was in this category two really just sends. Like, if we're being honest, it's just spamming people. Uh, it'll change everything for you because all you have to do is just not send spam and you can actually get them on the calls with you.

[00:13:10] Lucas: Uh, you gotta build a relationship first. You gotta do demand generation first before actually trying to get them on a sales call. It's like if you walk into a party and you just start handing everyone out your business card, it's very unlikely anyone's gonna be interested. But if you go into a party, you pick a bunch of really good brownies, they, they know you as the brownie.

[00:13:26] Lucas: If they want more brownies, they're probably gonna wanna talk to you and you'll have a lot more fun. Right. So that's the way I look at it, is it's a different, um, change than I guess how most businesses think of sales. So

[00:13:37] Hector: y you also approached the, the interview in a really unique way, in a, in a different way than I had had.

[00:13:44] Hector: Um, Had suggested actually, which I think, uh, which I think is great. Can you talk about how you like, try and really elevate the, the guests or try and elevate the person and what you see that that does?

[00:13:57] Lucas: A hundred percent. So, um, this is another principle that I try to live by, uh, which I think everyone should hopefully aspire to as well, which is, Your business will only ever grow past, uh, like 2 million in revenue a year.

[00:14:12] Lucas: Uh, which is kind of where we're at now. It'll only ever grow past that point. If you go viral, and I don't mean viral as in getting millions of views on a video. I mean, viral in your network or whatever drives sales. Right? And if you think about it, the cool thing about a podcast is at. Is a great lead magnet and it probably will be for the next five years at minimum, until, until we hit a point where everyone's offering businesses to come on a show for a podcast, and they eventually realize that while there is no catch formally, there is definitely a way for that person to get business.

[00:14:43] Lucas: They'll probably start rejecting it at some point, but for now, everyone is saying yes. They really, everyone wants to be on a podcast. It's really hot right now, right? So it's gonna be this way for like the next five. But it's a great lead magnet. And if you add in to your calendar, which if you go to another one of the articles that are on the website, I have Why you should start a podcast, and it shows screenshots of my calendarly and exactly the questions that I ask them.

[00:15:06] Lucas: And one of the questions I ask is at the end of the podcast, are you open to sharing this with your network? Right? So then that drives more visitors to your website and it helps you go viral. So you actually have like a viral mechanism. in your business. So not only does it get you business, but it helps you get more business.

[00:15:21] Lucas: And at the end you can also ask them, do you know anybody who also would like to be on the show who's in a similar business as you? And then now you have another guest and another potential sales call and another relationship you can build. So yes, I think in terms of answering your question about virality and how you can actually go about making the guest look.

[00:15:39] Lucas: you need to do a really good job at amping them up and, and making them look like an amazing company in a genuine way by highlighting the greatest parts of their story so that they're more likely to share it. No one wants to be, no one wants to share an interrogation , right? No one wants to share like how one company, uh, miserably failed at growing their business.

[00:15:58] Lucas: Nobody wants to share that. They wanna share how this company, uh, is changing the world, and you highlight the best parts. This isn't a journal. Yeah, exactly. It's not, yeah. Unless obviously your angle is to like do journalism, which is not what my podcast is for. I'm not, I, I never tell anyone. This is a journalistic thing.

[00:16:16] Lucas: I say we're just documenting stories of people. That's it. Unless you have like a journalistic angle and you should be true to that journalistic angle, obviously don't like, Uh, purposely amp someone up who you need to be more critical about, obviously. But if it's just to share stories, right? And that's all the podcast is for, then do your best to actually make them look as good as possible.

[00:16:36] Lucas: Right? All we're talking about is how to scale an agency, so it's not like really intense subjects or anything that requires hardcore journalism. It's just, uh, sharing their business, right? So, yeah.

[00:16:47] Hector: This is great guys.