Living Authentically in the Modern World with Scott Groves

[00:00:02] Hector: Hello, and welcome to another episode of podcasting success secrets. My name is Hector Santee Stebon, and I am your host. Well, kind of today's a little bit of a different episode. I'm actually on the other side of the table, and I'm going to be interviewed by Scott Groves. It's a great conversation. He's a good friend of mine, we recorded this live in person for his show.

[00:00:20] Hector: It's actually a two hour conversation where we got into all of the different parts of podcasting and AI. And it was a really, really just fun conversation that we don't usually get to on this show. I know you're gonna love it though. So We're breaking up into three parts. Today's the first one where we kind of go into lay of the land when it comes the podcast industry and some of the things that are possible.

[00:00:39] Hector: So stick around, y'all. It's gonna be a good fun episode. Let's get into the conversation with me and Scott Groves.

[00:00:53] Scott: Welcome to the on the edge podcast with your host, Scott Groves. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm here with my old friend, Hector. I'm going to let him tell you what he does, because I still don't understand what he does. But he works in the technology field of podcasting, in the production field of podcasting.

[00:01:13] Scott: We're old friends from the Leap Mastermind Group. this podcast not officially sponsored by El Pollo Loco, but we stopped at El Pollo Loco So, uh, you are going to see here free advertisements for you El Pollo because I love your chicken chipotle avocado burrito But Hector and I go way back, to the miracle morning days when Hal was still running his mastermind group I think we were like part of the inaugural class since then we've run into each other at Front Row Dads You're a father, you're a business owner.

[00:01:41] Scott: You're dealing with all the same bullshit. I am as an entrepreneur, trying to attract clients, trying to keep clients, trying to grow your business. And, uh, yeah, man, the first podcast we did, it's like one of 150 where the audio didn't work out. I was like, here I am interviewing a podcast guru and I fucked up the audio.

[00:01:58] Scott: So I was like, Hey, next time you're in Vegas, let's get together here. We are, it's Vegas, it's sunny out. We're smoking a lot. Hence The glasses, we'll just leave it at that. And, uh, how

[00:02:06] Hector: the hell you been man? how have I been? I guess that's what we're here to talk about, right? it's been a wild ride and the last several, several years have been a lot of life and I'm, grateful to have you alongside.

[00:02:15] Hector: So grateful to be here.

[00:02:17] Scott: Thanks, man. So first of all, tell me, what are your kids into these days? Cause we've got kids that are both like two years apart, a boy and a girl, right? And there are a couple of years younger than mine. So are you and the kids into these days?

[00:02:27] Hector: I've got a four and a five year old and they are my little guy.

[00:02:31] Hector: I'm forcing him into jujitsu. We've talked about that a lot, but he, he's been, I'm not going to say who said it, but he could use a little toughness in his life. So it's going to be good for him. And it's been great to see his growth over the last. Few months, staying consistent with it.

[00:02:44] Hector: Cause like really over the last couple of weeks, he got a little aggression out of him. So it was, it was, it was good to see it was vindicating for me as a dad. my daughter is, a little, acrobat, we've been trying to get her in gymnastics, but for some reason, it's like a pain in the ass to find good, simple gymnastic program for, a four year old.

[00:02:59] Hector: Everybody's like, There are some nationalities out there that are trying to take over the world and they're there's these crazy intense gymnastic teams. but that's her thing. She's a little bit of a performer and

[00:03:08] Scott: like gymnastics and sheer.

[00:03:09] Scott: If you're not willing to be like, Hey, 18 hours a week, we travel on the weekends. We're driving to Barstow for a competition. I'm like, dude, she's five. I don't need my five year old wearing a mid drift and makeup and the hair. And like, I just wanted to learn how to.

[00:03:23] Hector: We're just trying to get energy out and that's all.

[00:03:25] Hector: Yeah, exactly! We're just trying to get them to go to sleep at the night. It's all, like, we don't need to be hopping on buses yet. We don't need to be driving cross country quite yet. Yeah. We just want to be home and, get to bedtime and make

[00:03:37] Scott: it that easy. It's kind of like the college thing. Like, there's some schools, especially private schools right now, where it's like, you have to be on the Harvard track team.

[00:03:43] Scott: And I'm like, no, I just want my kid to not pee his pants, tie his shoe, maybe learn his alphabet. Like we're not thinking about Harvard yet. There's so many programs now where it's like, Hey man, like my kid's not going to be an Olympic athlete. that's just not in the cards for our family genotype.

[00:03:58] Scott: So, uh, how about you just help me exactly get some energy out of them, get them to bed.

[00:04:01] Hector: Yeah. Let's, let them be kids still. We're talking all the way over here. my parents did the, the afterschool run around. And so, you know, there was times where I was playing three or four sports at one time and it was just, I thought it was normal, but looking back on it, There was no time to or to decompress it was just constant going and I also don't know if I was doing it because I wanted to do it or because they just said that this was the thing that I was going to do and it was the next kind of thing to sign up for I go down that track and you're, you 20 years down that path only look up like, well, was I actually spending time doing thing?

[00:04:31] Hector: You know, I'm five, six. What am I doing? Playing basketball? Why are you putting in basketball? And it's not like you look at my parents like, well, maybe he's going to hit a growth spurt. There's no shot. Yeah. so my thing with my kids is like trying to figure out what are they drawn to?

[00:04:48] Hector: what are we not going to have to force them into? And the jujitsu thing is one thing, but I feel strongly that boys should be able to defend themselves and they should have those sort of skills that you kind of developed through martial arts, but also I want to get, you know, he's an artist, he's an engineer, he's, you know, we want to get him into art schools getting him doing, you know, painting and doing all that shit because that's what he can just do forever.

[00:05:07] Hector: he'll knock out 30 or 40 pictures, here dad, I made another one for you. I made another one for you. I made another one for you. It's like, I love you, but let's make a pile. For sure. Like, like, why don't you stack them all up and then bring them all to me when you're done? Cause then, cause otherwise, we're going back and forth the whole day.

[00:05:22] Scott: It's so funny, man. Cause like, it's like a yes. And we want our kids in swim lessons. We want our kids in jujitsu. We want them doing the Kumon school stuff and like consistently getting better. But then sometimes I look at my wife and I'm like, Hey man, like just, can we just put them in the yard and have them play in the dirt?

[00:05:38] Scott: Cause like one, I think that's good for them. And two, I just, I can't, I can't think right now. Like I've been thinking all week. I've been podcasting. I've been doing loans. I've been doing coaching. Like, I just want to sit down and watch stupid YouTube videos. , and so it's, very interesting to see what we do for our kids and the sacrifices we make.

[00:05:53] Scott: And then really, are they just as happy playing in the dirt if we just leave them in the front yard for a couple hours? Probably. Right. Yeah. So tell us about your business, man. So I've got a podcast production company. We produce, what does it even mean? Like that wasn't even a job like five years ago.

[00:06:06] Hector: Yeah, no, it wasn't, uh, we produce podcasts. So much of like this, there's a lot of people who they want to but a lot of people have this misconception that podcasting is hopping on and recording and just talking just hopping on and talking and everybody.

[00:06:19] Hector: Seize this and then go fucking scotch, just smoking a cigar, shooting the shit like I could do that, but they also don't know. We just spent 20 minutes dealing with cameras and dealing with mics and there's all this, internal stuff that goes along with it. And then you also have, you know, like six other businesses that you're running.

[00:06:32] Hector: And so the podcast is, uh, there's a lot of pieces to it. And so we handle all the pieces in the same way that you know, the actor isn't making the movie. You know, he's got someone else to kind of make the movie. He goes and provides the talent. we're kind of the backside of that.

[00:06:45] Hector: We do a lot of the production and the editing, the publishing, making sure that it gets out. So our, our clients, they just hop in and talk and then they do just shoot the shit and we handle the rest.

[00:06:54] Scott: And do you come in? Right? Because I'm thinking like this show was really easy because it was like COVID.

[00:06:59] Scott: We were printing money in the mortgage space. I didn't have to monetize the podcast, which it is not monetized. Anybody watching this, if you could leave a couple hours up on YouTube, just playing in the background, I would greatly appreciate it. but. I just did as a passion project. Like let's talk to some libertarians, let's talk to some, uh, whoever, like I'll literally talk to anybody.

[00:07:15] Scott: The weird thing is I can't get a lot of liberals to have good conversations. I've invited everyone from progressive to communist, to liberal, to like blue dog Democrat. none of them want to come on and talk, so whatever. and I'm not like trying to be like, I gotcha. I want to really hear what the other side of the aisle has to say.

[00:07:30] Scott: I've had one girl. Allison Gilbert, shout out to Allison for being brave and coming on. And we had a great conversation. But, anyway, I just wanted to talk to people. I had no plans, but I have to think most people that are putting the time and energy into a podcast, they have to have a result or they have to have a goal or there has to be a business thesis or something.

[00:07:46] Scott: So are people,

[00:07:47] Hector: you're bringing a practical perspective to it. Some people, they, they do it for vanity. Because they're like, Oh, that's why I do it. It's fun.

[00:07:54] Scott: And it's, vanity.

[00:07:55] Hector: they do it because they think it's easy, they think that there's not a lot to it, not easy spoiler alert.

[00:08:00] Hector: the other side of it is that some of them are artists, they have message to get out. And I think that during COVID, a lot of people didn't have shit to do. And they were sitting there thinking about do I care about? And how can I get this out to the world?

[00:08:12] Hector: No, I don't have anyone to talk to. So let me talk into this microphone and let me kind of get it out to the world. And so that's when I think it like really caught on that, that this whole podcast thing became, I mainstream. We're all sitting around the clubhouse was all kind of happening.

[00:08:23] Hector: But yeah, what happened to clubhouse, man? I mean, people went outside again. Yeah. You know, it's that works. Everybody's sitting at home, but who wants to sit at home and just stare at a bunch of people's profile pictures, and listen to one person talk. I mean, it's, cool given the circumstances, but I think it had a shelf life.

[00:08:40] Hector: even kind of Twitter spaces started to do that for a little bit, and that's kind of dwindled because people just have shit to do, right? You know, there's so much shit to do that to ask someone to show up for anything is a big ask. to answer your question, though, a few years before this, probably back in 2016.

[00:08:54] Hector: I was looking for anything under the sun ways to make money online. This was kind of maybe a year or two after we had met. And I had a marketing agency for real estate agents and realized that I did a lot. They're great people, but that was not the market or the niche for me. And so kind of moved on from that and was looking what to do.

[00:09:11] Hector: And I had, um, nonprofit reached out to me and we started working on their podcast. And then I had another, He was plumbing business. He coached plumbing business owners, kind of similar to coaching loan office, but it was just for plumbing. Super niche. It's very niche. And. teaching business tactics and that side of it.

[00:09:27] Hector: And he reached out and he was like, Hey, can you make those clips for like, we don't have the time to make all these little clips on social media. And Instagram was just started to allow video. And they're like, can you make those clips and add those little captions and, you know, make it all snazzy stuff because similar, He wanted to sit up there and talk.

[00:09:41] Hector: He was good at talking, but he didn't, nor did his team. And they didn't have the support to do all the editing and the video and shit. And so, I said, yeah, I can do that. And I had another person actually, you know, that we had the front row dads. they were one of our early clients and we started making videos for them.

[00:09:53] Hector: And, had another one. And I just, I was like, this podcast thing seems to be like, Something that's happening. so we just pivoted and started serving that space more. And then when 2020 came around, were kind of ready because we had been doing it for a few years and we started off doing a lot of the marketing promotion of it.

[00:10:09] Hector: And now we do all of the editing and production and even the show design and show development as well.

[00:10:15] Scott: So I don't want to go into like all 400 steps that happens after a podcast is done But give somebody a lay in the land because I think people are like, well, I'll just record it and post it It's like oh no because there is a different way to post to anchor versus youtube versus instagram versus always frustrated because some of our best clips are two and a half minutes Oh, but instagram only allows 90 seconds.

[00:10:35] Scott: I mean, there's so many little Intricacies, so can you give a rundown of like, okay after the podcast is done? You You can go do all this yourself, or you can gimme a couple grand and I'll do it all for you. give us like a rundown of like the dirty, dirty.

[00:10:47] Hector: So we take the podcast today, it's rather easier.

[00:10:50] Hector: I don't wanna say it's easy, but it's simpler to clean up a lot of the stuff. So we'll take, we take out all the ums and, and clean up all that sort of stuff. So make someone sound, much, much better than they actually might be recorded. we'll edit it up and do all the normal stuff that you might think will go along with audio editing.

[00:11:02] Hector: and I guess the magic happens when we go and we upload it and one shot it goes out to, you know, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, the different podcasts. There's a dozen of other podcast places, and then we'll take the best clips and get those out to LinkedIn and all that sort of stuff. So you can essentially hop in for an hour, talk for an hour, and then you've got A week or two weeks worth of social media content posted, you throughout it.

[00:11:24] Hector: that's kind of our goal is to create what we call a pillar piece of content and then be able to break those into different splinters or splinter those off into blog posts or social media posts or YouTube videos or

[00:11:35] Scott: linkedin newsletters, those sorts of things. So something I've been thinking of, and you just reminded me, as a matter of fact, because we haven't been posting our stuff to linkedin.

[00:11:43] Scott: Is there a saturation point where it's like, Hey, if I've got a rumble account and a LinkedIn account and a, a locals account and then YouTube, there's 90 different competitors to all of these different pillars that we know of like Instagram, Tik TOK, Facebook, those are probably the big three, but would you take the time and energy to be like, well, I don't know, maybe my audience is living on locals.

[00:12:03] Scott: com or it's living on rumble or something like that. Do you, do you recommend that? Posting it on all of these different sites, or is it like, no, man, Scott, done a market analysis, loan officers and realtors are gonna be on instagram. Let's really just lean into instagram or like how are you advising the business side of it?

[00:12:18] Hector: I it's important to separate what you said, like pillar and splinter sort of content. So you've got these places like, rumble and youtube. And I would even say that, like, Apple and Spotify, you can put them over there. I would say with those, if you have the bandwidth and you have the know how to be able to upload it, a lot of times it's just a couple of extra button clicks.

[00:12:36] Hector: It's two or three, you know, there's a initial setup with the account and then maybe you've got to figure out where to put stuff. But generally you're copying and pasting and using all much of the same media and assets. That you would be for all of those things. So there's, there's very little changing.

[00:12:49] Hector: It's, very much copy and paste. So I would say as wide as you can go with those pieces, it makes sense. where I don't recommend that is with splinter piece. let's call it like the social media parts that you could spin your wheels in places that don't make any sense, you know, linkedin being one of them for certain audiences and similarly instagram for for other audiences.

[00:13:07] Hector: You've kind of got to figure out where you can go. It doesn't always make sense to you. do the Grant Cardone sort of strategy at first, which is, be everywhere all at once because those platforms require some nuance and they require some adjustment and the captions should be different for Instagram than LinkedIn and, you know, all these different places.

[00:13:25] Hector: So

[00:13:25] Scott: kind of how we approach them. So a demographic thing is like. I don't know how to explain this. is it like, the tick tock demographic is much younger, so the captions have to look different and stuff. Is it that, or is it just like, there's nuance in how you post and build an audience there?

[00:13:41] Scott: have, very surface level. I've watched a couple of videos on like, Posting on TikTok versus Instagram. it is different. Like the in tool editor is completely different, which means the look and feel is different. So it's like, you can kind of tell when content is bastardized from one platform to another, but does that really matter?

[00:13:57] Scott: Like, does it really matter if I'm watching an Instagram reel that has like the TikTok watermark in the bottom? Like, I don't really care. I just think it's funny.

[00:14:03] Hector: Obviously good content is going to just be good content. So that's going to outweigh everything. But when we're talking about the margins here, the only thing that's definitive is that.

[00:14:12] Hector: Instagram knows when you're posting stuff from TikTok and vice versa, and they actually reward you, for spending the time to use their features and they're monitoring how long it takes for you to post a video. So if you're just re uploading it from TikTok, you're not adding any of their features.

[00:14:29] Hector: You're not using the Instagram tools. They're going to know that. And they're going to assume that it's probably posted from somewhere else or what they do is they. Conversely, favor the videos a little bit that do take the time to do that. So in the data that they've kind of shown, or like the studies that I've seen, like you get like a 1.

[00:14:46] Hector: 2 X bump. If you use their features, and so there's all these sorts of things that they found that you can increase your likelihood of getting reach on a platform by doing these things for instagram. And then there's this other set of things for, say, tiktok or linkedin and, you know, kind of every platform has these almost unique set of checklists that make posts more likely to go viral.

[00:15:07] Scott: think about this because, like, obviously, for so many of these platforms, the holy grail is like, Virality, right? Because it's like, okay, you want more people to see your stuff and maybe buy more of your content or get more familiar with you, but we have a mutual friend, Mike Eaton, comedian, hilarious guy, really like up and comer in the whole Austin scene.

[00:15:25] Scott: He's done his first couple of gigs at like Joe Rogan's thing, and he's, he's getting good. I saw him deliver his first full hour set, and it was tight. He's gotten so much better over the last five years. but he had this one, Comedic real where he was talking about some movie with like little people that Matthew McConaughey was in that like nobody knows about this movie and he was talking about that and the real was well edited.

[00:15:46] Scott: believe it got tens of millions of views and he picked up like 12 followers from it. So he's like, all right, well, great. I went viral, but like, I rather have 20 rockstar fans that saw me at a show, interacted with me, followed my Instagram versus like, all right, cool. I got 30 million views on this video and I picked up 12 followers.

[00:16:07] Scott: Like it, it just seems like the math is, not predictable when it comes to social media, for sure.

[00:16:13] Hector: I mean, I don't know if the platforms have said it, but it's essentially, A slot machine. I mean, they like in posts and reels, especially to a slot machine in that they've even shown that you post the same video.

[00:16:24] Hector: Twice two different times and it just one performs better for no other reason than it just got a better luck of the drop because the way that it works is that the way that these, these kind of shorts and we're specifically talking about like YouTube shorts, short material, tick tocks is they'll send it out to, Say a hundred people.

[00:16:40] Hector: Okay. Every, every video will be a hundred, you know, it'll go through the first a hundred people they'll gauge whether or not the video is engaging, if it's engaging enough, then it'll go to, they'll go to a thousand people. Okay. And they'll, they'll amp the sample size up and they'll say, okay, if it still continues to perform with that thousand, then we'll keep, bump it up to the 10 and to the whatever.

[00:16:57] Hector: And so, if it reaches these points, if it passes, the algorithms test of whether or not it's, engaging enough. Then it'll shoot it to the next stage in it. The challenge is, is that when you're brand new, if it's only shooting it out to a hundred people, if you don't have a lot of followers or your new new reel or whatever, maybe.

[00:17:14] Hector: you're shooting in the dark. And so the algorithm misses with those 100 or those 100 have no idea who you are and they don't engage. I mean, then there's your likelihood, know, it goes down. And so if you've got a large following that helps because that first 100, they're going to send it to your followers.

[00:17:28] Hector: It's gonna it's gonna naturally kind of do what it does. So that's why it is slot machine like effect because you don't know who those first 100 or those first 1000 and unless the algorithm knows who to send your material to. It's just guessing.

[00:17:41] Scott: Yeah. So I'm gonna here's the stats on this video.

[00:17:43] Scott: And, When Chris is going back and editing this, I'll have them insert the video. It's this Mike explaining the movie tiptoes with Matthew McConaughey, where he's from a family of little people and his wife doesn't, or his girlfriend doesn't know. And it's hilarious.

[00:17:55] Scott: He got 13. 3 million views. 600, 000 people liked it. 680, 000 people reshared it or sent it to somebody. 3, 000 comments. And he picked up like 12 followers. Now, in my mind, if I watch a whole 60 second video, and especially if I share it, and it's a comedian and I know they're going to be putting out more content, like I'm giving that guy a follower, a follow, right?

[00:18:17] Scott: Like maybe I'm in the minority. Like people are so jaded, that they just don't want to follow people. But I'm like, bro, right after I saw this video, catching fire, I'm like, Oh, here's like your moment where you're going to pick up 10, 000 fans that are now going to see your future stuff. And like, You're just like three months away from a Netflix special and he's like nah dude picked up like 12 followers and i'm like damn That's so that's so unfair.

[00:18:40] Scott: I was just I don't know I was just frustrated for him one because I want him to succeed and two everything is political these days You're way more likely to get an instagram or a netflix show if you've got 200 000 instagram followers who will Watch the Netflix show. Right? So it's like, I just want him to succeed at such a high level.

[00:18:58] Scott: I was pissed for him that the virality of that reel didn't do more for his career.

[00:19:02] Hector: reality is that we're probably judging it too soon because we'll probably look back and we'll see that that was the first one of these things, because what the algorithm also is able to do it's also pretty good at facial recognition and all the sorts of stuff.

[00:19:15] Hector: So if Mike puts out more videos and more videos start to catch a little bit more fire. It doesn't even have to be posted from his account. The algorithm will start to know that this person likes Mike just because they, they're spending time watching a video with his face on it.

[00:19:27] Hector: that we'll start to kind of gather. So I think we'll probably look back on it and say like, Oh, that was the one. you know, there's usually one that unlocks The algorithm, if you will, because now algorithm knows and has sample size or a data set of people who they know are likely to interact with this stuff.

[00:19:41] Hector: So they're going to push it to those people first before just guessing with some other, person.

[00:19:45] Scott: Yeah, one of the things I like about you, because, Chris and I did a console with you to kind of get some ideas. And, you know, if Chris ever got hit by a bus, which I don't want to have happen, then you would just step in and replace them overnight.

[00:19:56] Scott: But one of the things that I really appreciate about you, much like our friend Chandler Bolt, who runs self publishing school, he tells people like, Hey man, just to be clear, nobody makes money off of books. Nobody, unless you're JK Rowling or Stephen King, nobody is making a living off of writing books.

[00:20:09] Scott: But what you can do is a book is an amazing business card, or it's an amazing lead magnet for a coaching program. Or, you know, if that guy you were mentioning writes a book on growing a plumbing business now, all of a sudden, like, No one's going to, no one who's a plumber is going to throw away that book.

[00:20:23] Scott: It might be two years before they crack it open and read it, but it's just a tool for other business development. And similarly, when you and I talked, you're like, Hey man, almost nobody monetizes their podcast. Very few people get sponsorship money. Very few people ever recoup the cost. On the podcast of making the podcast, but here's the other things you want to be thinking about in the business development realm, because you have a podcast.

[00:20:45] Scott: So can you kind of walk us through what you're telling your clients when you're like, Hey man, what you're going to pay me plus the equipment plus the time investment. You're never going to make that money back on, monetizing YouTube. But what you could do is XYZ when we think through like growing your business with a podcast.

[00:21:00] Hector: Yeah, I think a lot of people want to be like next Joe Rogan.

[00:21:03] Scott: mean, it wouldn't be a bad

[00:21:04] Hector: gig. No, no. But what I also don't realize is that he's, 1300 episodes in, he started back in what, 2009, I think something like that, you know, if you listen to his first episode, it was horrendous. He was, he was sponsored by a flesh fleshlines.

[00:21:18] Hector: You know, it was his first sponsor

[00:21:19] Scott: fleshlight for those of you that don't know what a flashlight is, Google it when you don't have children in

[00:21:23] Hector: the

[00:21:23] Scott: room.

[00:21:24] Hector: Yeah. And then just watch your ads for the next little bit. so I think that a lot of people, they think, Oh, that's the model, Let me come in and let me get a bunch of sponsors or let me try and make the show the business.

[00:21:34] Hector: And to your point, the show is a, great, Yeah. I think it's gone the business card lot of people leverage the book to do this, but the same way that someone might write a book to establish themselves as the person in an industry, podcast similar way to do it. It's just great for people like to talk instead of right.

[00:21:50] Hector: there's three core things that we're looking to do. The first is we're looking to get them introduced to people who can actually drive them business, potential clients, potential partners, industry organizations. one of the shows, actually a mutual friend, Matt Drinkon, on one of the first, I think it was like episode eight, eh, maybe episode nine, something doesn't matter, an early episode, we had no listeners, no following, we had Mark Victor Hansen on, guy who wrote Chicken Soup for the Soul , for and him and Matt, Hit it off and they started doing some business together.

[00:22:15] Hector: He signed a huge coaching contract with Mark's company and started coaching their company. They continue to develop that relationship. And I believe next week he's publishing his book that Mark is publishing for him. And so that, relationship started. On the podcast, right? They hit it off on the podcast.

[00:22:32] Hector: And so that you can't trace that to a download. You can't trace That didn't come directly from a sponsor, but it came from the connections that come from, you know, being able to sit down across the table from someone for an hour or across a zoom or a video, wherever it is that you're doing so. a business https: otter.

[00:22:47] Hector: ai networking from connections for from that sort of stuff. If relationships are valuable in a certain industry and obviously I think they're valuable in any industry, but there are some where that's a bigger lever to pull than others. It can really, you can really help. the second thing that we look to do is the easiest way to call it is like thought leadership.

[00:23:02] Hector: But what the fuck does that actually mean? Right? The way that we think about it is can we get Industry organizations, people who have, audiences, or not even audiences, just organizations, communities of people that they need to give value to. we launched a show recently. I

[00:23:14] Hector: it's a mutual friend of ours in the front row dads. And, uh, we launched with a show for him and he had another industry organization that had like a coalition of, I don't know, 700 people in the industry that were kind of paying members. It was like an industry association.

[00:23:26] Hector: And they needed to do some training on a particular sort of thing. And they're like, Hey, we, you just put out a podcast on this exact topic. Can we pay you like 70 grand to come, do this coaching that you're already talking about? And amazing. And you know, I think we're like, once again, like 10 episodes in, but in that short amount of time, you can kind of establish a solidify yourself as someone who is, you know, Um, obviously you got to know what you're talking about, but if you do and you can explain it well enough, well then the show becomes a great thing to do that.

[00:23:54] Hector: It's also great. I know a lot of loan officers or maybe real estate professionals are listening to this. It's a great way to. Handle objections or stay in touch with people throughout. You know, we have a lot of sales professionals that will record podcasts on a particular objection or a particular issue or a challenge, and then they'll send that to their prospect and it's so much softer of a landing than, Hey, listen to this webinar or even listen to this loom or listen to this, whatever, because they're listening to it on Spotify because of their listening to on Spotify or their Apple podcast or whatever, all of a sudden their guard drops a little bit, and then you're.

[00:24:27] Hector: I don't know if prestige, but your sort of branding is kind of elevated because they're hearing you on Spotify and it's the same place. They listen to Joe Rogan or whatever, right? So there's some sort of association there. Yeah,

[00:24:37] Scott: there's a little that network effect, right? It's like if I trust Joe and Scott has a podcast that's like now showing up underneath Joe.

[00:24:43] Scott: that's the thing, right? I've got a friend, she's like, Hey, I, ran across the fact that you have a podcast. And I was like, Oh really? How, how did you do that? You see that some of that social. Um, She's like, no, it was the weirdest thing. Like my algorithm must know that you and I talk, you know, there's like some IP address cross coordination or something.

[00:24:59] Scott: And, um, I listened to that serial killer podcast all the time. And all of a sudden right below it is like on the edge podcast with Scott Groves, and I'm like, Oh, that's pretty cool. Cause cereal has like, uh, I don't know a billion downloads and I have like a hundred, so that's cool that I showed up next to that person and you got to see that at podcast.

[00:25:14] Scott: Now, unfortunately the topic she happened to run across on my podcast was not somewhere where we align. so that might've done more harm than good, but it was kind of cool to see that. And you know, that's interesting. I didn't really think of the education. We have a mutual friend, John Israel, that has keynote on this framework called lead.

[00:25:29] Scott: And it's about how humans can stay out ahead of. AI or online service providers, or just basically humanize things. So you're not getting wiped out by tech. And his lead framework is you can lead, you can educate, you can advocate, or you can delight. So like, as this pertains to loan officers, the only way we can stand out against rocket mortgage is we can lead the client to the promised land of owning a house.

[00:25:52] Scott: We can educate them. We can advocate for them during the deal, like to help get their offer accepted and we can delight them. We can make the process a little bit more entertaining and maybe throw out a, an appropriate level joke sometimes, but that education piece has always been hard for me because it's like, Oh man, do I really want to spend half an hour?

[00:26:09] Scott: with every single client explaining to them the chart of how home ownership is the number one wealth creation tool in America. No, I don't have the time 80 clients a month who were pre approving to do half an hour. Like that'd be a full time job. But if I can record one podcast and send it out as a like, Hey man, I did this podcast a couple of months ago about how to like basically obtain wealth through home ownership.

[00:26:31] Scott: You know, we were talking about a family member of yours who bought in Santa Monica a long, long time ago. I don't know if you feel comfortable sharing any of those numbers, but like, I'm sure that family member acquired a lot more wealth owning a home in Santa Monica for 30 years than they did You know buying silver or gold or whatever else they would have done.

[00:26:46] Scott: So I don't know It's it's that's a really interesting angle. I hadn't thought about

[00:26:50] Hector: we love podcasts and industries where I don't know if I would venture to say, mortgage officers are commoditized but I would. Okay. I just don't want over 70 boundaries. But in those, trust me, it's in those industries, you know, even accounting real estate professionals, agents, you know, even lawyers to an extent, what separates somebody other than what they know, obviously them as a person interpersonal relationship you have with them, but sans that, if your loan officer has a podcast and you're listening your way to work to your loan officer, like all of a sudden that connection that you have with them goes way deeper.

[00:27:24] Hector: I was talking with actually, producer Kevin today and we were talking about how sometimes shout

[00:27:29] Scott: out Kevin standing in for

[00:27:30] Hector: Chris when we talking to our clients that we have to like remind ourselves that we know them way more than they know us because we've listened to. all these episodes I'm sure people who listen to show feel like, Oh yeah, I know Scott.

[00:27:43] Hector: And if they were to show up, maybe you have a connection with them, but they probably know way more about you than you do about them. Because, happens in this kind of what's called a pair of social relationship. And I think that that is not being leveraged enough in these commoditized industries because they're out there trying to send out emails or trying to have coffee dates or kind of do all these things that happen.

[00:28:03] Hector: Sure. Like a scale, the unscalable things for sure, but also why not leverage the things that you can easily scale?

[00:28:09] Scott: Yeah. You know, what's interesting where this shows up is, when I was in my twenties, so this is pre podcast, pre social media. I run into magic Johnson at a Lakers game. And growing up, the Lakers were the one thing that like my mom would let my dad do without bitching and complaining about him.

[00:28:24] Scott: It's like, okay, this is your one thing. You can watch the Lakers game. Right. And this is like Showtime Lakers, eighties Magic Johnson, Kareem Dooljabbar, James Worthy, Michael Cooper. Like, I mean, it was just amazing. So like running into Magic Johnson was as close as running into like the a plus plus plus celebrity.

[00:28:40] Scott: And I ran into him at the dessert cart, in the box section of Staples center. And I couldn't get a fucking word out because I'm like, this guy is such this unreachable superstar, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That was in my twenties. Fast forward to a couple months ago, I'm sitting at a barbecue joint in Austin and Daniel Cormier, who's like my favorite UFC fighter of all time.

[00:29:02] Scott: One, because he's a little chubby, two, he came from a wrestling background and basically parlayed that into a massively successful championship UFC career. I've heard him on so many podcasts and so many shows. There was no like weird. I was star struck. We just happened to be sitting next to the table next to him.

[00:29:17] Scott: I'm like, Hey, Daniel, huge fan. I actually think you're even better in commentator than you were fighter. And we got up and we had a chat with him and we took a picture and it was more like talking to a friend. And I mean, this guy doesn't fucking know me from Adam. He's never going to remember this random dude who wanted to take a picture with him at some barbecue joint.

[00:29:33] Scott: But there was, there was no apprehension in talking to him because I'm like, Oh, I know this dude. I listened to his, it's not his podcast, but I've heard him on a million MMA podcasts. And I'm like, that's kind of a weird, reality shift in the modern day. but it's exactly to what you're talking about.

[00:29:46] Scott: What'd you call it? A para called parasocial really parasol. Yeah, no, we're not that smart. but yeah, talk a little bit more about that. Like why? Because the other side to that coin is this poor motherfucker can't eat barbecue without five people interrupting them. the obvious

[00:30:01] Hector: example, have you seen I think she's Chinese, but she's like the Chinese, uh, live streamer where she only displays a product for like three seconds and she like holds up a shirt and just throws it. Have you seen that video? It comes across. I'm gonna, I'm gonna see if I can pull it up here, but I think that it's evident of where we've kind of gone with this, whole parasocial relationship.

[00:30:18] Hector: And the reason I say that is because people trusting things. there's so much information out there that in order to parse through it, we need to have people that we can trust. And so we, that's why we look to influencers. That's why we look to people to see what kind of products, should we buy?

[00:30:34] Hector: literally all she does is they send her a box down like this table. She holds it up for three seconds. She sends it away. And she made like dozens of millions of dollars, through the sponsorships and such, because people, they see that they trust her.

[00:30:46] Hector: They know that, you know, she's got millions and millions of followers or whatever it is. and it moves money. You know, so it's like, that's like the end of it where I think obviously can be used for good. If you use for evil, but I think really people don't, know what trust.

[00:30:58] Hector: there's no trust in the system, right? So they're looking for anything that they can latch onto and, people are the most relatable. And so they're looking for these people that are, relatable or that they can relate to and telling, basically what they should think, telling them what they should believe.

[00:31:13] Scott: You know, it's interesting. You bring up the trust thing, a friend of mine, and I won't use his name because we're in a business professional relationship, but my agreement with anybody, whoever wants to argue about politics or libertarian stuff or what I was like, Hey, let's do a book swap. I'll send you a book.

[00:31:25] Scott: You send me a book. we'll read it. We'll check it out. Very few people ever take the take me up on this because they don't want to read a book of a difference of opinion Right, but shout out to my buddy who did and he sent me a book called the I think it's called the death of expertise and or the death of the expert or something like that and it was basically because Information is so ubiquitous and you can do all of your own research and, and the media has been caught lying to us once in a while.

[00:31:50] Scott: You know, the experts have been caught lying to us once in a while. Like there's just this real death of expertise or this death of like the expert, which in some ways I think is super empowering. And in some ways it's like. Kind of scary. Cause like the dude setting up, I don't know, the next roller coaster, my kids are going to go on.

[00:32:06] Scott: I kind of want that guy to be an expert in structural engineering. Right. so I don't want to have to question that guy. I just want to know that he knows his fucking job, but it was an enlightening book in the sense of like, Oh yeah, you can do a lot of your own research and it was a terrifying book in the sense of like.

[00:32:20] Scott: Ooh, do we question people too much that now we're not even going to get a good product or a good service out into the Market because everybody questions the expert it was really interesting and you know He sent the book to me for one reason I ended up really loving it for another reason but it was an interesting thought of like Can we now do too much research and can there be influencers online who are just uneducated morons where they're taking away from what should be the gravitas of like a real expert in a subject?

[00:32:47] Scott: And I don't know how to square that in my head of whether it's a good thing or a bad thing.

[00:32:50] Hector: Well, yeah, the expert has lost. I'm not gonna bring up any names, but shout out to all the experts who blew it. . Right. them who ruined the trust for everybody.

[00:32:58] Scott: there may be a few people that work for the CDC and the WHO who may have ruined it for a lot of, there are, there are a few individuals, a lot of good intention people Yeah.

[00:33:05] Hector: In that regard. and what happens though is now you swing so far, the other way that I see these things on Instagram where. People are making these, they're just giving advice, and it's not based in anything other than what they think people should do, whether it's nutrition advice, or relationship advice, or dating advice, or funny, they're just spewing shit out of just whatever they want to say, the challenge is because if they can, create a bad guy with it, then all of a sudden they can get people on their side, There's this kind of dark side to the parasocial relationship too, because when you don't use that power for good, you can lead those people, a stray, right?

[00:33:40] Hector: I mean, look at like the crypto market, right? Or that, you know, the FTX thing, all, all that stuff that happened because, Tom Brady was out there saying, go, this is legit. And all of a sudden, see what happens there. And so I think that the chat, there's a lot of responsibility and kind of what we do, being able to put out content because, if we don't, then, then I don't think people will be able to have faith or trust in quote unquote experts.

[00:34:03] Scott: Yeah. You know, what's interesting. think there is a, division here. You bring up the Tom Brady thing. It's like, okay, if I want to learn how to throw a 10 yard, like outpass. okay. Yeah. Tom Brady's my guy. if I want financial advice, Tom Brady, not my guy. you lost a lot of money in a crypto scam.

[00:34:20] Scott: You lost your wife to a jujitsu coach who everybody with half a brain could tell that Giselle was going to leave you pretty quickly once she starts rolling around with a hot Brazilian dude on the mat three hours a day. like I'm not taking life advice from Tom Brady. And the funny thing is when I hear people criticize, and we'll just continue on the Joe Rogan example, one, Oh, yeah, Joe Rogan.

[00:34:37] Scott: He's just this meathead, you know, UFC commentator. Why would you trust him? It's like, well, I don't really trust him on his opinion. I trust him to interview people with respect to pull out the opinion of other experts, right? Like if I want to know about, uh, I don't know, AI engineering, Lex Friedman, probably going to tune in and hear what he has to say.

[00:34:56] Scott: But his real superpower is he now has access to all of a sudden Interview Jeff Bezos, Musk, you high profile politicians and whatnot. And it's like, that to me is the beauty. I think some people confuse the two where it's like, yeah, I'm not going to listen to the 23 year old life coach. I won't listen to the 23 year old life coach either.

[00:35:15] Scott: But if the 23 year old life coach can interview some experts and draw great information out of them, that's what I think the beauty of like a long form podcast is. Yeah.

[00:35:25] Hector: Well, you need to talk about what are the things that we, over. With our clients. One of the things that we kind of think through are these archetypes, right?

[00:35:32] Hector: And I don't know how much you've gotten into storytelling, but I think actually at the mastermind that we're at, we talked about hero's journey. I think someone came in and talked about that, but within, within podcasting or really within kind of storytelling, there's these archetypes and one of them being the expert, the other one being like a, like a journalist.

[00:35:50] Hector: Yeah. Yeah. that's kind of what you're talking about. That if that 23 year old isn't coming in saying they have the answers, but if they're coming and saying, I'm going to find the answers for you and get, you know, help you find them, then all of a sudden I don't know, it gives it space there, but, but that's different than that.

[00:36:03] Hector: 23 year old coming in and going, I have all the answers. This is, the way to do it. and so I think that People just have to kind of make decisions and some people are, more clear on what kind of role they're playing. Some people play both. But I think that that's, that's kind of what you get into in those situations.

[00:36:19] Scott: Yeah. when you're talking to people that are, I'm guessing it's mostly business owners who you're doing podcasts for. Correct. So when you're talking to him, like, let's say there's some guy, he's in an industry, just use a realtor, right? a good friend of mine we had her on the podcast and he and I become really close actually, business wise, his name's Joe Benavides, former UFC fighter, lightweight, just a total bad ass.

[00:36:41] Scott: I don't know. I think his three losses were like all in championship fights. Really awesome, dude. Well, he's transitioned because one of the things that's really saved his life is when he was making money in the UFC, he and his wife were smart enough to invest into real estate. And so he's super passionate about working with young fighters, And young athletes to, Hey man, you get a fight of the night, you get 50, 000.

[00:37:03] Scott: Don't go blow it on a Rolex in a new car, buy an investment property so that at 34, when your body gives out on you, you can't fight anymore. You can't play tennis anymore. You can't play basketball anymore. You've got, you know, six rental properties spinning off. positive cashflow, super passionate about that.

[00:37:18] Scott: If you were advising him to start a podcast, what kind of things would you be talking to him about? Right? Because he's obviously got a big social media following. His wife has a big social media following, but he's passionate about real estate and building wealth through real estate.

[00:37:32] Scott: pretend he's, a client of yours or a potential client of yours. What would you be telling him? shout out to our other friend, Lawrence Dunning. similar to what he's done is he's created a show around. which are real estate, investing, MMA and, and jiu jitsu.

[00:37:46] Hector: And, and You know, one, strategy, if you will, one path is to be super niched and super narrow and to be, you know, just the real estate kind of guy. And if it was just a, I don't want to say a regular real estate agent, but if it was a real estate agent without the past and experience of someone like Joseph Benavidez, I would probably say, let's, let's stick to real estate and let's stick to real estate investing.

[00:38:03] Hector: And let's, take that expert path, if you will. But for him, he's probably got more of an opportunity to get for people to get to know who he is, because most people only see him as the fighter. And obviously, he's a badass. And you know, he's a killer there. but to be able to do that with his wife and that sort of stuff, there's a different level of intelligence and a More depth there that you can really start to see in a podcast.

[00:38:24] Hector: And so I would, I would try and help him figure out, well, what are the topics that, that are really, that he's really into, you know, I would imagine MMA or fighting or whatever it is

[00:38:33] Scott: ironically right now, not MMA right now, it's pickleball. Okay. So,

[00:38:36] Hector: there it

[00:38:37] Scott: is super competitive and pickleball because he's like.

[00:38:39] Scott: I can't get back on the jujitsu mat. I can't get back on the wrestling mat. I did that as a living for too long. He's like, I'll get back into it one day, but for now, I just want some distance from it. I'm like, so what do you do for like physical fitness? He's like, bro. I'm out there getting my ass kicked every day by the old guys at fucking pickleball.

[00:38:54] Scott: There you go. I'm like, how funny is that?

[00:38:56] Hector: the unique thing about that is it's going to be, it's going to be, you know, it doesn't need to be a pickleball show, but if he talks pickleball, he's going to start to bring in an audience that resonates with it. And some people will be there for the pickleball stuff and some people will be there for the investing stuff.

[00:39:09] Hector: And, and as long as you're authentic and very much in the way that this show is kind of played out organically. You know, it's just been about what, what someone is interested in. that's the path that we like to take with someone who's got depth of experience to share that hasn't been been shared, yet there's a lot of times where we're working with a, a CEO who's kind of coming from behind the curtain and their past and their experience and their interests aren't as important as their knowledge and maybe their experience within the business and that sort of stuff.

[00:39:39] Hector: So we tend to focus there.

[00:39:40] Scott: And you know, when you're talking to that CEO, which I know you've done, you're talking to that coach who has access to CEOs, you're talking to somebody like me, right? Where it's like, I know 100%, especially with COVID where I started to be more vocal because I was living in LA, I was not happy at all at the lockdowns.

[00:39:58] Scott: Like I kind of give, when was COVID, uh, beginning of 2020, I kind of give everybody a pass until like. July of 2020. I'm like, okay. Yeah. Everybody was just doing what they thought was right with limited amount of information after like July of 2020 when we knew, Hey man, this really affects elderly people.

[00:40:15] Scott: kids do not die from COVID period. End of story. the fact that they were still doing school shutdowns and stuff. I was pretty vocal about that. And I know I alienated a lot of my like realtors and referral sources who are tend to be in LA more far left, more progressive. And I tend to be far right libertarian.

[00:40:30] Scott: To me, I know being vocal about my stuff, has cost me relationships, maybe we'll go into the Instagram example we were talking about when we were having lunch, but, how much do you recommend people really share of themselves? Right? Because if it's Joseph, who cares, right? Like he knows his market of where he's going to make money is other fighters that, need to buy real estate.

[00:40:49] Scott: You know, he was probably not worried about pissing somebody off if he says something wrong, but if you're the CEO of a company, All of a sudden you have a responsibility to that company, to the shareholders, to your employees. and like really frustrating somebody or saying something that doesn't land with them correctly could cost you business relationships, whatnot.

[00:41:06] Scott: So if you're talking to somebody who's doing a little bit more of a business centric podcast, like how much of themselves do you recommend they bring to the show?

[00:41:14] Hector: Sans you, I would say like, can we avoid it? But if I know someone's like you were it's going to be inauthentic. to avoid, you know, to not now, if this show was, was, mean, maybe it is a consolidated coaching show, then maybe that's not the place, right?

[00:41:29] Hector: It's like it's time and place sort of thing, right? so that's what I would recommend. But I also, I think there's so much to authenticity and because people are going to be sitting with you for sometimes hours, I mean, they can smell through that and the moment it gets, becomes inauthentic, People don't want to be around that.

[00:41:42] Hector: And that's, that's really, I think at a, whether it's a conscious or subconscious level, people are drawn to that ability for people to be authentic in the conversation, because just think they don't see that very often, or that's not very prevalent.