How to Build a Successful Internet Marketing Business in 2022
I've been really consistent with the podcast lately, showing up to all my scheduled interviews -- 6 this week.
The real secret to creating a successful podcast that doesn't simply fail, is to interview other people. You create a Calendly account (free), to setup a special link with your "office hours" -- your future guest submits their bio to you and it adds the meeting to your Google Calendar. When the meeting times rolls around, you click the one button to open your Zoom room, have a discussion with your guest for 20 minutes, and that's an episode. We explain this inside our Podcast Crusher system and we have a monthly service called DFY Podcast where we do all the tasks for your podcast like editing, production, publishing to all the channels, marketing like writing your promotional emails, social graphics, etc.
When most people think about a "podcast" they think about sitting alone in a room for hundreds of episodes on end, or maybe with the same host every time. Instead, network with other people in your industry or even a little bit outside your industry... they give you content, traffic, and "networking"... and you even pick up all kinds of cool ideas for yourself.
For example, yesterday I interviewed Smooth Sailing Captain Lyndsay Phillips (the "other" Capt. Phillips) who delivered this juicy morsel: create the occasional blog post or promo email that's a "round up" or "curation" of some of your recent podcast episodes. We haven't premiered the episode yet, but that's what I'm doing now!
What's interesting about this idea for YOU and your podcast is that you can "string" together a little bit of an action plan. For example:
Website Rental Local Lead Generation Side Hustle
I was really impressed with guest Luke Van Der Veer's "Website Rental" idea. Click here to listen to the episode. His concept works like this:
- choose a service-based industry located in your local area, like "garage door opener repair."
- create a landing page to collect leads, optimize that page for Google ranking, use your internet marketing skills to start sending traffic
- while you're waiting for those steps to pay off, monitor social media -- I'm talking about Facebook groups focused on your geographical area, NextDoor, places like that -- proactively looking for people seeking garage door repair
When that "local" lead seeking garage door repair comes in, perhaps someone you found on social media, you now call around your local area to locate that garage door repairman, and land them that new business for free.
Repeat this process until you are consistently finding garage door repair leads and hooking them up with a solution that same day. By this point, you ideally get some consistent traffic, and perhaps you rank highly in Google for "[city name] garage door repair" at which point, you can charge that garage door repair client a monthly fee in exchange for the leads your landing page is bringing in. It's a cool "side hustle" of an idea that could grow into a larger business for you.
Charge What You're Worth By Working Less
Mike Killen, author of Five Figure Funnels, was also an extremely impressive guest you should check out. His idea: you're working too hard. Instead of scrambling for low-ticket clients, Mike says you should work backwards...
- Let's say you want to earn $100k per year...
- Cut this up into landing four $25k clients
- Spend each quarter marketing your $25k package with the goal of landing one sale
It's an interesting way for you to stop "scrambling" so much and to simplify what you do.
Make Sure It All Leads to Something
Finally, another guest that completely blew me away was John Warrillow, from "Built to Sell." The usual paradox with selling a business is: in order to find an excited buyer, the business has to be on its way up (instead of something you're tired of), and consistently making money.
John's answer to this is: you should make the steps to sell your business anyway, so that you'll have more freedom. If someone buys your business, you can use that money to retire OR buy a new business and repeat the process.
The overall strategy with selling your business is sort of like "e-myth on crack." The point of The E-Myth is that you're probably doing all the work in your business, so you should systematize what you do into a repeatable checklist, and then act as the "Manager" who tells the "Workers" what tasks to complete. Then, hire a "Manager" (or many managers) to tell the workers what to do, making you the "Boss."
John says that you should continue this process until you pay a "Boss" to run your company, making the hierarchy Owner -> Boss -> Managers -> Workers.
Your sole job as the "Owner" is no longer to run the company, but spend all your time finding a buyer.
I am more than willing to introduce you to any of the guests from my podcast as guests for your show, if you're in need of content, connections, and traffic. The secret to you creating a podcast is just getting started (our DFY Podcast team will setup your podcast for free) and the secret to continuing your successful podcast is to delegate the "hard" technical work. Just show up to your interviews so it's not a time suck or a "beast" that requires you to learn -- and perform -- a ton of tasks. Just show up to your podcast as the "talent" and let our team do everything else.
Filed in: Archive 4: 2020-2023 • Round-Up