Dan Sanchez's 3 pillars for audience growth

[00:00:00] Audience Growth with Dan Sanchez

Ramli John: Imagine a world where your next job finds you and new people are eager. 

Dan Sanchez: To connect with you. 

Ramli John: And promoting your business doesn't feel like you're doing a sales pitch, but having a conversation. 

Ramli John: That's the power of audience growth, and no one knows it better than Dan Sanchez, or as he's affectionately known Danches, as the Director of Inbound Marketing at Element 451, danches has grown his LinkedIn followers to a whopping 25,000 in just few years. 

Ramli John: Today, he's here to share his secret sauce, his three pillars of audience growth. 

Ramli John: In this Marketing Pops episode, you got first, the importance of audience growth and how it can transform your career and business. 

Ramli John: Second, how to leverage social media platforms, particularly LinkedIn to build your audience. 

Ramli John: Third, the power of learning in the light and how sharing your journey can attract and engage your audience. 

Ramli John: And fourth, how Niching Down has excel in Danchest audience growth. 

Ramli John: Before we start to help you apply Danchet's three pillars of audience growth, I created a free Powerups cheat sheet you can download for free marketing powerups.com. 

Ramli John: You can find the link in the show notes and description.

[00:01:01] Audience Growth Conversation with Dan Sanchez

Ramli John: Are you ready? 

Dan Sanchez: Let's go. 

Ramli John: Marketing powerups ready. 

Ramli John: Go. 

Ramli John: Here's your host, Ramli John. 

Ramli John: Let's talk about audience growth. 

Ramli John: I know that's something that you've been really big on, specifically on LinkedIn, like, you're posting out like, a lot of great videos, I think by now. 

Ramli John: Thank you, Dan, for being on the show. 

Ramli John: I think it makes sense. 

Dan Sanchez: You find out more about Dan marketing. 

Ramli John: On Why and Twitter free Courses available.

[00:01:34] The Importance of Audience Growth for Careers and Businesses

Ramli John: Audience Growth School I'm curious just for my audience, just to be clear, why are you such a big audience? 

Ramli John: What is LinkedIn, Twitter, anywhere, but particularly just audience growth as a means for your career or your business or anything else? 

Dan Sanchez: Well, usually starts with a story, and that story started with some freaking pain. 

Dan Sanchez: So I became the best customer of audience growth because I desperately needed it in a certain time. 

Dan Sanchez: Because honestly, I was that marketer that just loved running paid media, landing pages. 

Dan Sanchez: I was freaking good at it. 

Dan Sanchez: I was working for a college, and it was a small college, and I started there as a marketer of one. 

Dan Sanchez: And I grew it to tripled the enrollment of the school and grew my team up to 27, like, three staff members, a huge team of students helping me do everything from blogging and design and running ads and had them all trained up doing all kinds of things. 

Dan Sanchez: But most of the growth didn't come from any of the organic stuff and came almost all from Google Ads and Facebook ads. 

Dan Sanchez: And we rode that rave hard in 2015, back when they were just starting to put ads in the feed. 

Dan Sanchez: We hit it hard and we were following Ryan Dice and trying all the new stuff coming out of what was it? 

Dan Sanchez: Perpetual traffic, if you remember that podcast, right? 

Dan Sanchez: Yeah, dude, we were taking all his best stuff and being the first ones to try carousels, the first ones to try retargeting on Facebook and all that stuff. 

Dan Sanchez: And it panned out. 

Dan Sanchez: And we were able to drive a lot of cheap traffic to some landing pages, split test those landing pages, built an email follow up system. 

Dan Sanchez: It was beautiful, man. 

Dan Sanchez: I built a money making machine for them. 

Dan Sanchez: But then something started happening. 

Dan Sanchez: It became less effective over time because guess what? 

Dan Sanchez: Facebook started getting expensive, man. 

Dan Sanchez: And all of a sudden, I was getting like, $3 leads to $5 leads to $10 leads. 

Dan Sanchez: Wow, $20 leads. 

Dan Sanchez: And I'm like, oh, no. 

Dan Sanchez: And Google was kind of slow and steady and also becoming more expensive, but I was like, enrollment starting to dip. 

Dan Sanchez: This is a problem. 

Dan Sanchez: What else do I have? 

Dan Sanchez: So that was my paid media game. 

Dan Sanchez: And in higher ed, I didn't have any Facebook. 

Dan Sanchez: Instagram was my option. 

Dan Sanchez: I was doing some stuff in Pinterest. 

Dan Sanchez: I was trying YouTube, not getting a lot of traction there. 

Dan Sanchez: I just kept digging back into the paid media well and pulling up a dry bucket, man. 

Dan Sanchez: And it was getting hard. 

Dan Sanchez: So I was like, well, okay, I'm a marketer. 

Dan Sanchez: What other okay, we got paid media. 

Dan Sanchez: We got earned media. 

Dan Sanchez: I don't know crap about PR. 

Dan Sanchez: I tried that. 

Dan Sanchez: Every time I go to PR, I get burned. 

Dan Sanchez: Just put it that way. 

Dan Sanchez: So I was like, well, I don't have any owned media. 

Dan Sanchez: How do I get some owned media? 

Dan Sanchez: I got into SEO. 

Dan Sanchez: Actually did pretty well with SEO, and that's why Sweetfish picked me up. 

Dan Sanchez: And it wasn't until I really worked at Sweetfish that I really started learning how to do social well. 

Dan Sanchez: And then I really started taking off with SEO and obviously learned the game of podcasting, since Sweetfish is a podcast agency. 

Dan Sanchez: And that's how I was like, I'm never going back. 

Dan Sanchez: Because once you have an owned audience, once you've experienced that goodness, you're like, you can always turn the paid media faucet back on. 

Dan Sanchez: That's always there for you. 

Dan Sanchez: You could turn that on tomorrow. 

Dan Sanchez: Okay, maybe not tomorrow. 

Dan Sanchez: It takes a while to plan the campaign, but it's fast. 

Dan Sanchez: But it's fast on, fast off. 

Dan Sanchez: There's only so much you can go with so far. 

Dan Sanchez: You can go with paid media, but owned media, it can go really far. 

Dan Sanchez: And what I found out is that good owned media leads to the best earned. 

Ramli John: Yeah. 

Dan Sanchez: Like, it's not because of what I'm doing with paid media or earned media that I'm on this show today. 

Dan Sanchez: This is earned media for me because of what I'm doing with owned media. 

Dan Sanchez: So it ends up working out way better than I thought. 

Dan Sanchez: And it makes the whole wheel, like a marketing wheel, fly so much farther. 

Dan Sanchez: So that's how I got into audience growth as I started discovering its importance, because I'd been burned on it in a previous life, doing everything else. 

Ramli John: I love the stories. 

Ramli John: I love that particularly because that own media is really about building good relationships with people. 

Ramli John: I think there was a video you shared on LinkedIn around how to win friends is really, like, a great way, and that audience building is like relationship building. 

Ramli John: And you're making friends that can refer your business or get you on the show because they've seen your content and you seem approachable but as well as open up doors in terms of career because they like you as a person based on the stuff you're posting up on. 

Ramli John: Social is exactly what I'm hearing here as well. 

Dan Sanchez: Absolutely. 

Dan Sanchez: That's how it starts. 

Dan Sanchez: In the beginning is kind of like one to one and I'd say probably it carries through obviously as it scales. 

Dan Sanchez: You can't do it as well or as much, but I don't know. 

Dan Sanchez: It's my goal to do it as well as I can until you can't. 

Ramli John: Right. 

Dan Sanchez: But in the beginning when you don't have an audience, you kind of do. 

Dan Sanchez: Everyone has an audience, even if it's just friends and family. 

Dan Sanchez: It's the people who want to hear from you and somebody out there wants to hear from you. 

Dan Sanchez: Even if it's only your mom, it's an audience of one. 

Dan Sanchez: So you just have to do the friends and win friends and influence people thing. 

Dan Sanchez: Like be interested in a lot of people instead of getting them interested in you. 

Dan Sanchez: Right. 

Dan Sanchez: And then you'll start to build an audience slowly but surely. 

Dan Sanchez: You can take that same playbook and just do it on social media instead of doing it in life in person. 

Ramli John: There's this advice that I've heard to be yourself on social. 

Ramli John: And I was having a conversation with Tommy Walker. 

Ramli John: He's the father of the content studio or of how sometimes being yourself on social you should be heightened version. 

Ramli John: Of yourself, in a sense, where you're doing a lot of videos and you must pump up your energy because your excitement gets communicated through that as well.

[00:07:13] How to Build an Online Audience: Advice from Dan Sanchez

Ramli John: Would you agree with that, that the advice yourself might not be always the best advice when it comes to really starting to grow your audience online. 

Dan Sanchez: I really don't like the advice because it's not very actionable. 

Dan Sanchez: People are like just be you. 

Dan Sanchez: And you're like, who's me? 

Dan Sanchez: I thought I was? 

Dan Sanchez: What does that mean? 

Dan Sanchez: Do you want me to be the me from the past? 

Dan Sanchez: The me I think I am in the future or the me I want to be in the future that I'm still chasing down? 

Dan Sanchez: Which me? 

Dan Sanchez: And is it me at work or is it me in personal or somehow there's so many different aspects of you and it's so hard to analyze who is Dan Jazz? 

Dan Sanchez: So what I found out is actually it's better just to start posting and sure, try to be you. 

Dan Sanchez: Honestly. 

Dan Sanchez: You might even emulate other people. 

Dan Sanchez: Like a lot of us that started off emulating Gary Vee and kind of getting in some reps that way and maybe even regurgitating some of the material. 

Dan Sanchez: Honestly, I think it's okay because some parts of that become you become a little like him in your way. 

Dan Sanchez: But you're still you you still have different interests than Gary. 

Dan Sanchez: There's a lot of things that I disagree with Gary Young right. 

Dan Sanchez: And I actually think you discover yourself in the process. 

Dan Sanchez: As you grow an audience, the community starts to help you understand where you have value, what they like about your personality that you didn't even realize you're like. 

Dan Sanchez: You know, you do this funny thing you're like I do. 

Dan Sanchez: Oh, I didn't realize that was a thing that people enjoyed about me. 

Dan Sanchez: I didn't realize that was a gift that I had. 

Dan Sanchez: So now I'm going to lean into it because I've gotten feedback that that's something I can use about myself to offer value to people, whether it's entertainment value or just knowledge that I have. 

Dan Sanchez: And I think that happens to everybody in community. 

Dan Sanchez: If you're digging into it, it doesn't just happen on social media, but it absolutely happens as you're growing an audience for your personal brand on social, like, listen in to their comments, try to be the most helpful. 

Dan Sanchez: And as you're being helpful, they'll give you feedback on what's helpful and what's not or what they like or what they don't like. 

Dan Sanchez: And that's how you start to come out of your shell and actually highlights the best parts of and then you become uniquely you. 

Ramli John: That makes sense. 

Ramli John: I love how you're really focusing on helping. 

Ramli John: I feel like that's all connected to building that relationship at scale. 

Ramli John: It's like when you help people, they feel good about you. 

Ramli John: They're like, oh, man, Dan just is helping me become a better podcaster or a better marketer or a better person. 

Ramli John: And as because of that, he's part of my journey to become better. 

Ramli John: I trust him more. 

Ramli John: And that's, I guess, like the first initial stage of really building out your audience. 

Ramli John: Like, how do you help people and maybe even sharing tips or sharing your own story? 

Ramli John: Is any other thing do you have any other tips for people who are like, I'm just starting out. 

Ramli John: I'm not sure what to share. 

Ramli John: You mentioned a few things there about share stuff that's helping you already that other people might be able to do or share what's helped, maybe some tools. 

Ramli John: I'm not entirely sure if you have any advice for people who might just be starting out in this journey of audience growth. 

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

[00:10:36] Learning in the Light: Strategy for Building Personal Brand

Dan Sanchez: So let me steal a question I know you have saved for the end, and maybe I'll give a different answer at that time, but I know one of your questions coming up is like, what would I say to my past self? 

Dan Sanchez: Yeah, this is what I would say to my past self because I was always concerned about not being an expert in a thing that I wanted to talk about on social, right? 

Dan Sanchez: Specifically, like LinkedIn. 

Dan Sanchez: What do you say when you're just starting off, you're fresh out of college, but you don't know crap yet? 

Dan Sanchez: Now that I've been on Social and I've bumped into a few college students and I've played around with this, there actually is a playbook for when you're not even an expert yet. 

Dan Sanchez: You're not even in the profession yet, so you're not even a professional. 

Dan Sanchez: And the way to be helpful to others is to just open up your journey and be honest about just starting out on LinkedIn particularly. 

Dan Sanchez: It's really helpful. 

Dan Sanchez: And the way you can be helpful is just share what you're doing along your journey. 

Dan Sanchez: I mean, obviously, Gary Vee calls it documenting, but I think it's even more specific because what you can do is ask for help on Social, get some feedback, and then post what you're learning about it along the way and tag the people that gave you the feedback. 

Dan Sanchez: Be like, hey, I was asking about how to get my first job. 

Dan Sanchez: And so and so posted about reading this book and talking to people in this way. 

Dan Sanchez: And so I read that book and I did that thing, and this is what I learned. 

Dan Sanchez: I learned that this part was actually spot on, and this part I was confused on. 

Dan Sanchez: So I actually found this workaround. 

Dan Sanchez: And as you're posting it, not only are you solidifying the lesson, so you're learning more, that should be kind of the key goal at first is to learn through posting because you know how you really master something once you teach it. 

Dan Sanchez: So even if you're regurgitating, it's still useful. 

Dan Sanchez: Even if everybody's like, oh, I've already heard that a million times. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, yeah, but have you written it down before and posted it? 

Dan Sanchez: Because you're still learning something, so it's still helpful. 

Dan Sanchez: Over to you. 

Dan Sanchez: But if you kind of I call it learning in the light. 

Dan Sanchez: Like, if you learn in the light, let's just say you're coming out of school, you got your marketing degree, and if I had known more back then, I would have picked a niche and just started going into it. 

Dan Sanchez: So maybe you just pick a niche of, like, marketing manufacturers for whatever reason. 

Dan Sanchez: Maybe your dad was a manufacturer. 

Dan Sanchez: Just start asking questions and then posting the books about the things you're learning and how it applies to that industry. 

Dan Sanchez: And if you learn in the light, like, literally share your learnings as you go, the books you read, the people you talk to, shoot. 

Dan Sanchez: If you start a podcast and just start interviewing people in the industry, you're sharing lessons as you learn. 

Dan Sanchez: If you learn in the light where everyone could see you learn and start to actually share some things that you're winning and learning about. 

Dan Sanchez: They'll know what you know. 

Dan Sanchez: They'll know that you're becoming an expert in it. 

Dan Sanchez: So two years from now, they'll be like, oh, well, so and so is obviously a manufacturing marketing person. 

Dan Sanchez: And then a few years after that, you'll be an expert because they've watched you grow from very beginning all the way to becoming an expert in it. 

Dan Sanchez: I mean, you could probably get there pretty fast too, if you're just being consistent and sharing your learnings there. 

Ramli John: That's so good. 

Ramli John: I feel like that's really the whole movement lately around building public with SaaS entrepreneur entrepreneurs in general. 

Ramli John: It's like how people can apply people can apply that to their career. 

Ramli John: You're like, learn in public, learn in the light. 

Ramli John: That's exactly what and it instantly makes you relatable because certain people are not attracted to those personas who I know everything, which Gary Vee has done a good job of having that persona for himself. 

Ramli John: But there's also that instant relatability where I'm just in a journey trying to be better, and won't you come along and learn with me along that way? 

Ramli John: It's exactly what I'm hearing with this. 

Ramli John: Is that what I'm hearing here? 

Dan Sanchez: Even more fun if you try to make it a challenge. 

Dan Sanchez: You take Justin Welsh, right, and you're like, hey, I'm going to execute the Justin Welsh playbook in three days. 

Dan Sanchez: And then you just post about it along the way. 

Dan Sanchez: You just try to do something ridiculously hard in a short amount of time. 

Dan Sanchez: And then if you win, great. 

Dan Sanchez: If you fail, then it still makes for great content. 

Dan Sanchez: Just do that over and over again. 

Dan Sanchez: And I'm pretty sure you'll build an audience quickly and you'll learn faster than everybody else because who does that? 

Ramli John: That's so good. 

Ramli John: That's actually a really great example with when by doing that, if Justin Walsh sees this and like, cool, you're applying my concept, he's more likely to share. 

Ramli John: You're kind of stroking his ego with this way we're like, look at this guy who applied my concept and now he's successful or it didn't work and how he could be improved. 

Ramli John: So I think that's a good strategy. 

Ramli John: Have you tried that yourself? 

Ramli John: Like this approach? 

Dan Sanchez: I did that one in particular this March. 

Dan Sanchez: I tried to launch a course in a week. 

Dan Sanchez: It ended up taking two, but it still got it done in record time. 

Dan Sanchez: Yeah, I don't think I ever got him to comment on a post because he's popular enough now that it's pretty hard to get his attention on LinkedIn. 

Dan Sanchez: But I've done it before and I've gotten other people's attention that way. 

Ramli John: It's a great strategy.

[00:15:38] Understanding the concept of audience growth ceiling with Dan Sanchez

Ramli John: One problem that you mentioned before we started recording is when people hit this audience growth ceiling where like, sure, they're starting to post up and often they hit like a plateau. 

Ramli John: Can you talk a little bit about what is this audience growth ceiling and when does it happen? 

Ramli John: Is it because they're still consistent? 

Ramli John: Is it because maybe the audience have gotten tired of their content? 

Ramli John: Or maybe it's something else of why this problem occurs. 

Dan Sanchez: Everybody has an audience growth ceiling, even those who have grown at some point. 

Dan Sanchez: Usually the first problem of hitting your audience growth ceiling, which is your total reach, is that you're just not acquiring new audience members, right? 

Dan Sanchez: So it's kind of obvious. 

Dan Sanchez: You have a small audience of five people, or if you're on LinkedIn, you probably have an audience of 300 to 400 connections, so you're not adding new ones. 

Dan Sanchez: And therefore your audience reaches whatever your active contact connections are actually logging onto LinkedIn regularly, right? 

Dan Sanchez: It's probably just 100 of your 350 or less. 

Dan Sanchez: That's your audience ceiling. 

Dan Sanchez: But most people don't only become aware of it after they've grown. 

Dan Sanchez: To a certain point, they're growing, growing, growing, and then it plateaus. 

Dan Sanchez: They hit a new audience growth ceiling because now they're not running into an acquisition problem, necessarily. 

Dan Sanchez: They're running into a retention problem. 

Dan Sanchez: I discovered it after running a model because I was the Director of Audience Growth for Sweetfish for three years, and I was doing a paid audience acquisition model on Excel, just trying to discover, like, oh, if we can pay to acquire an Apple podcast subscriber for $5 a subscriber, which we figured out then how does this work? 

Dan Sanchez: And if I'm doing this every single month at the sound of like 1000 new followers a month, I'm like, okay, well, we're going to run it to Churn if provided Churn is this, and we're adding this many. 

Dan Sanchez: And I started running the numbers in Excel, and I'm like, oh my gosh, actually, this doesn't go up and to the right forever. 

Dan Sanchez: It actually plateaus out because of the churn rate. 

Dan Sanchez: And to make it simpler so that you can kind of see it in your own head, imagine I'm adding 100 new audience members to whatever platform a month, and I have a churn rate of 10%. 

Dan Sanchez: Where is my audience growth ceiling? 

Ramli John: In that case, you're losing ten people. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm losing 10% every month, and I'm adding 100 every month. 

Dan Sanchez: I max out at a number. 

Dan Sanchez: It's 1000 followers, right? 

Dan Sanchez: Because 10% of 1000 is 100, and therefore I'm losing 100 and adding 100 every single month. 

Dan Sanchez: So that's my new cap happens to people all the time. 

Dan Sanchez: So your churn rate, eventually, when you're just starting off in the beginning, you don't really have a churn rate because all your new audience is excited about you. 

Dan Sanchez: But after you've been going for a know you've been going for some months or some years, you probably had a good rhythm of what you were talking about. 

Dan Sanchez: Just like Justin Welsh, a lot of us got excited about him three years ago. 

Dan Sanchez: I've been following him for a long time, but then it kind of gets old after a don't. 

Dan Sanchez: I didn't unsubscribe, but what happened? 

Dan Sanchez: I stopped engaging with his posts. 

Ramli John: Yeah, he became right. 

Dan Sanchez: So while technically I'm still a follower, I'm not engaging, which means his reach is limited to it. 

Dan Sanchez: Now, for him. 

Dan Sanchez: He's still growing. 

Dan Sanchez: He's still acquiring faster than his churn rates. 

Dan Sanchez: It hasn't caught up to him. 

Dan Sanchez: But look at Gary Vee. 

Dan Sanchez: Gary Vee has millions of subscribers on YouTube, only tens of thousands of views per video. 

Dan Sanchez: So you could say his current audience ceiling on YouTube is in the tens of thousands. 

Dan Sanchez: Mark right. 

Dan Sanchez: It's not millions. 

Dan Sanchez: Which is why when you see someone posting like Casey Neistat, who's actually getting reached at his subscriber level, you're like, Dang, that's a serious ceiling. 

Dan Sanchez: Yeah, that's the ceiling. 

Dan Sanchez: And that's the problem.

[00:19:31] 42 Agency: The Strategic Partner for B2B SaaS Companies

Ramli John: Before I continue, I want to thank the sponsor for this episode, 42 Agency. 

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[00:20:16] Ramli John Discusses Riverside FM as the Preferred Video Podcast Recording Tool

Ramli John: Thank you. 

Ramli John: Also to sponsor for this episode, Riverside FM. 

Ramli John: Riverside FM is my go to video podcast recording tool. 

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[00:21:00] Applying Customer Retention Strategies to Audience Growth

Ramli John: Anyway, let's get back to our episode. 

Ramli John: This is like near and dear to my heart because I talk about churn and losing and retention, but in terms of SaaS and users customers. 

Ramli John: And you talking about it in terms of audience, it's like the same thing, right? 

Dan Sanchez: Exactly. 

Dan Sanchez: Part is all the same principles you learned about customer retention. 

Dan Sanchez: Yes, dude, just take that same playbook and apply it to your audience. 

Dan Sanchez: How did that great book Never lose a customer again? 

Dan Sanchez: Almost all those principles. 

Dan Sanchez: Just apply it to your audience growth and it works remarkably well.

[00:21:35] Breaking Through Audience Growth Stall with Dan Sanchez

Ramli John: Yeah, I guess I feel like that's leading into your core pillars of audience growth. 

Ramli John: I don't want to spoil it, but what is that and how can it help break through and really break through that audience growth stall. 

Dan Sanchez: Since you've last heard I was talking about it on stacking growth of four. 

Dan Sanchez: I've actually refined it down to three because I'm writing a book on the topic and my book editor is grueling me, trying to simplify the book because I'm like classic author. 

Dan Sanchez: I want to add way too many chapters, right? 

Dan Sanchez: He's like, smaller, nice, simplify the concepts. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, god. 

Dan Sanchez: So we're getting in there and now it's down to three and it's the one everybody loves and everyone knows around audience growth is audience acquisition. 

Dan Sanchez: But then the one we just talked about, audience retention. 

Dan Sanchez: And the third pillar is audience elevation. 

Dan Sanchez: Okay, so acquisition, we kind of know how do we get more people in? 

Dan Sanchez: Because the higher the acquisition rate, the faster we can grow. 

Dan Sanchez: And to kind of break down like, okay, well, Dan, how do you acquire more audience? 

Dan Sanchez: Well, just kind of organize them into your typical marketing buckets. 

Dan Sanchez: We're just going to borrow Philosophies from other place. 

Dan Sanchez: We're going to borrow how can we acquire followers from paid media? 

Dan Sanchez: How can we acquire them from our owned media? 

Dan Sanchez: Leverage. 

Dan Sanchez: That better. 

Dan Sanchez: How can we get some earned media, right? 

Dan Sanchez: And then you just take your normal marketing segments that you would use to market your product and start thinking like, oh, well, how do I use these tactics now to grow my audience? 

Dan Sanchez: How can I use LinkedIn ads? 

Dan Sanchez: How can I use Facebook ads? 

Dan Sanchez: How can I use my owned media? 

Dan Sanchez: Do we have an email list around? 

Dan Sanchez: How are we maximizing our website to grow our audience already? 

Dan Sanchez: Should we plug in the newsletter or more spots or have pop ups on the blogs or slide ins or something? 

Dan Sanchez: How do we leverage our own media better? 

Dan Sanchez: And then earned media? 

Dan Sanchez: I can't say I'm very good at earned media, so I just double down on owned and paid. 

Dan Sanchez: But honestly, if you're building good relationships, then you can ask friends that, you know, have podcasts, be like, hey, I have a thing coming out, a free thing. 

Dan Sanchez: Like, I just launched audience growth school so I could go and ask people friends that I have about talking about that more if I wanted to. 

Dan Sanchez: Yeah, so that's acquisition retention. 

Dan Sanchez: I mean, like I just said, you could take Joey Coleman's book, never Lose a customer again and just apply that book. 

Dan Sanchez: But to simplify it a little bit, I think about it as activation. 

Dan Sanchez: When you first start the relationship with them, how do you onboard them? 

Dan Sanchez: Well, right, I know you're all about onboarding, so you start applying that playbook to audience growth. 

Dan Sanchez: Yeah, just take a lot of those principles and it works remarkably well. 

Dan Sanchez: And I usually think about it in terms of newsletter. 

Dan Sanchez: That's probably the easiest place to do it because there's a curious sign up point. 

Dan Sanchez: Then you can do the automated emails to introduce someone. 

Dan Sanchez: But how do you onboard them into your values, into your other channels, into what to expect and build their expectations accordingly so they know what to expect and when to expect it, so that you deliver on it and then over deliver on it, right? 

Dan Sanchez: Which is just I mean, customer retention, people think about those things all the time. 

Dan Sanchez: How do we maximize that initial experience? 

Dan Sanchez: Because we know there's probably going to be a fallout within 30 days of that, right? 

Dan Sanchez: So audience retention is about activating, right? 

Dan Sanchez: And then increasing frequency. 

Dan Sanchez: Like, how do I get them to see more frequently so it's usually posting more? 

Dan Sanchez: And then how do we get them to consume them? 

Dan Sanchez: How do we get them consume the post longer? 

Dan Sanchez: So going from short form content to long form content, going from LinkedIn to listening to or reading a newsletter, to getting to a long 45 minutes podcast, right? 

Dan Sanchez: So thinking through all the tactics to do all three of those things, and you start to develop a retention plan because you're driving all the behaviors that gets audiences to consume more. 

Dan Sanchez: And then the third pillar is audience elevation, which is where the fun begins. 

Dan Sanchez: But I think of it as engagement. 

Dan Sanchez: How do you get them to engage with you more in the comments and conversations? 

Dan Sanchez: My newsletter, I just want people to reply. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, I want to start conversations there. 

Dan Sanchez: I don't do the no reply thing. 

Dan Sanchez: I want people to reply and I want to start conversations. 

Dan Sanchez: I usually so good, like we'll send back loom videos and stuff just to get the relationship to go deeper. 

Dan Sanchez: How do you actually help them become more successful? 

Dan Sanchez: The more you can help your audience become successful on what you're trying to teach them, the more they're going to become raving fans of you. 

Dan Sanchez: So, again, you got to stairsteps, you got to get them to engage with you. 

Dan Sanchez: And then you have to actually have to hone your craft and what you're teaching them and how you're teaching it to them. 

Dan Sanchez: It's not enough just to say the thing. 

Dan Sanchez: How well are people receiving it, understanding it, and then applying it so it actually becomes good teaching principles so that they're actually successful. 

Dan Sanchez: And then how do you get them to start promoting it? 

Dan Sanchez: Honestly, if you take care of the first two, you'll probably get them to start evangelizing it themselves. 

Dan Sanchez: But then how do you stoke the flames? 

Dan Sanchez: What tactics can you use to actually get them to evangelize a little bit more and a little bit louder and that becomes elevation. 

Dan Sanchez: I actually think there might be even a fourth one of graduation, like not a fourth pillar, but I would probably put this in elevation because maybe people don't need to be in your stream forever. 

Dan Sanchez: Yeah, maybe you've kind of learned Justin Welsh's thing and you're ready to graduate. 

Dan Sanchez: Maybe a few people get there. 

Dan Sanchez: But honestly, I'm starting to wonder. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, should we. 

Dan Sanchez: Have, like, a cradle to grave strategy. 

Dan Sanchez: It seems like every business goes there eventually. 

Dan Sanchez: That was MTV's thing for a long time. 

Dan Sanchez: That was literally their strategy called Cradle to Grave. 

Dan Sanchez: That's so good. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, should we actually do that? 

Dan Sanchez: Maybe we should just kind of be honest about where we fit into the journey and be like, hey, now that you've graduated, you should go talk to this person. 

Dan Sanchez: They're way better.

[00:27:16] Discussion on Audience Growth School and Serving Your Audience

Ramli John: That's a really interesting concept with graduation, I think, as a business, as a person, you might I'm not entirely sure I struggle with that too, because, like, Russell Brunson talks a lot about the value ladder, where I'm sure you can offer them a next thing to that, those people who have graduated. 

Ramli John: But the question is, do you want to, or are you the right person there? 

Ramli John: So you're right. 

Ramli John: It's something that you want to think about that's like the plan churn, where you expect them to churn because they're ready to move on to the next step. 

Dan Sanchez: You think of, like, employee building, company culture. 

Dan Sanchez: And I used to think retaining employees was the ultimate goal. 

Dan Sanchez: So I would work really hard at retaining employees. 

Dan Sanchez: And I've retained a few employees, probably past where they should have been, and they missed opportunities because of it. 

Dan Sanchez: And their lives are good now. 

Dan Sanchez: It's not like bad things happen, but part of me is like, maybe I need to graduate them out of the company sometimes. 

Dan Sanchez: And now I've started thinking about it that way, like, when can I graduate people out? 

Dan Sanchez: But I think it could happen the same way for your audience, so that when you leave, you leave with a really positive feeling about the place you just left. 

Dan Sanchez: Like, I left Sweetfish, but now I can't stop talking about them because I had such a great experience with James and Sweetfish. 

Dan Sanchez: I talk about them on every podcast I get on, apparently. 

Ramli John: That's so good. 

Ramli John: That's true. 

Ramli John: You're right about graduation. 

Ramli John: What I really love about this framework is that it could be a flywheel, where as you elevate more people, they're actually bringing on more people to acquire. 

Ramli John: So it's just this cycle of loop where the more you get people to the last one elevation, you're actually fueling the acquisition part, which gives you more tests. 

Ramli John: They can give you more testimonials, which makes your ads more effective. 

Ramli John: So it really is like this virtuous, happy cycle of audience growth, essentially, to be a flywheel. 

Ramli John: Did you see it that way or you saw it more like, I guess like a funnel? 

Ramli John: It's almost like a funnel, essentially like a classic marketing funnel, where, like, position activation and then retention and then all the way till the very end for all. 

Dan Sanchez: Yes, definitely a funnel. 

Dan Sanchez: Obviously, nothing's ever as clean as a funnel, but it's still a useful visual, in my opinion. 

Dan Sanchez: But hopefully owned Media, I think owned media is the best flywheel that businesses can build even people. 

Dan Sanchez: Like, having a personal audience has made a massive difference for my life, for my career. 

Dan Sanchez: And I know it's only the beginning of it, too. 

Dan Sanchez: So even now, I'm like, I'm not going to charge for courses. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm just going to put them all for free in audience growth school, because the audience is so much more valuable than any dollars I could currently make selling 3700 $200 courses. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, let's just go all in on building an audience because I've found it to be so much more I mean, it's more lucrative in different ways, and honestly, it's way more meaningful. 

Dan Sanchez: It's way more impactful to be able to help people and serve people and build, like, real meaningful relationships. 

Dan Sanchez: And I'm like, I think I just want to go all in on this. 

Ramli John: That makes sense.

[00:30:31] Building Personal Brands Within a Company

Ramli John: That's an interesting take where you're talking about building an audience, like building somebody. 

Ramli John: Is that something that I'm seeing more and more where B, two B companies, instead of them building an audience for their brand, they're building audience with somebody within their company, like a person. 

Ramli John: It could be the founder, it could be a marketer. 

Ramli John: It could be the CMO or the Chief Product Officer. 

Ramli John: I'm seeing this trend, and I'm curious what your take is on this. 

Ramli John: You probably are like, this is a great idea, or you're totally on contrarian. 

Dan Sanchez: Like, this is a terrible idea. 

Ramli John: Curious what you take us on. 

Dan Sanchez: That what I think about building a personal brand versus building, like, a company brand. 

Ramli John: Like a company selecting a few people within the company to build their personal brand, to kind of elevate the company with it along with them, essentially. 

Dan Sanchez: No, I think it's a total valid play. 

Dan Sanchez: I mean, it's what we did at Sweetfish. 

Dan Sanchez: We went out and built personal brands, and it happened to build Sweetfish's brand, too. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm even doing it at Element 451 right now. 

Dan Sanchez: We called it the Evangelist Program at Sweetfish, but it was so successful because we just launched it with James Logan and I, and then we broadened it out and then we opened it up to the whole company. 

Dan Sanchez: And a lot like probably 1215 people involved at a time when we'd onboard them for a quarter and then offboard them or sometimes. 

Dan Sanchez: But we made a formal program out of it and it worked well. 

Dan Sanchez: So many personal brands because people will talk about their own little personal interests and what they're into could be like gardening, could be yoga. 

Dan Sanchez: But I guarantee some of your buyers are probably interested in that same stuff. 

Dan Sanchez: So they would connect over yoga. 

Dan Sanchez: And then because that one employee is connected to other employees, well, you start seeing more of the other employees because they're all engaging with each other. 

Dan Sanchez: And then they start getting pulled into, like the I called it the Sweetfish Vortex, man. 

Dan Sanchez: They'd get hit by Logan. 

Dan Sanchez: And because Logan and I are interacting all the time they'd start seeing my posts, and then they'd engage with me, and then they start seeing five more Sweetfish employees and James. 

Dan Sanchez: Right. 

Dan Sanchez: And then before long, because we all have a little design going, a special design going around, our little profile, they could see every time they saw a Sweetfish employee go by. 

Dan Sanchez: We dominate, like, half their feed, man. 

Dan Sanchez: They're just like, I just can't get away from Sweetfish. 

Dan Sanchez: But I love their content so much. 

Dan Sanchez: So many people have said that to us. 

Dan Sanchez: And I'm like, this is a thing. 

Dan Sanchez: This is working. 

Ramli John: That's so cool. 

Dan Sanchez: Just overwhelming people with unique perspectives and personalities and value. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, this is the way marketing should be. 

Dan Sanchez: Let's make marketing a dignified profession and just lead with value and real people and authenticity. 

Dan Sanchez: So I'm loving it. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm doing it at Element now, just starting to spearhead that program this last two weeks, and we're in the early stages of it, but I know I have a couple of employees at the company already that are like, oh, wait, bring me in on phase two. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm ready to go in.

[00:33:25] Building an Evangelist Program for Better Engagement and Growth

Ramli John: So cool. 

Ramli John: You're talking about where you're working at, building south. 

Ramli John: I'm super curious of how this did you select a couple of folks to just test it out first or what is your game plan of how you're building out this evangelist program? 

Ramli John: Is that what you're calling it there? 

Ramli John: Yeah. 

Ramli John: Curious what that game plan sounds. 

Dan Sanchez: Funny enough, people have asked me about this program now that it's another course that I'm working on. 

Dan Sanchez: Totally behind the wall. 

Dan Sanchez: Yeah, I'm working on it. 

Dan Sanchez: I got the first part released, and I'm kind of building this one in public as I go along. 

Dan Sanchez: But there's kind of three phases to the program. 

Dan Sanchez: The first phase, you need your few best people because you need at least one of these three people to go the distance and become somewhat influential. 

Dan Sanchez: You need momentum. 

Dan Sanchez: You need at least one of the three to have some substantial momentum on LinkedIn because it makes the difference for the rest of the crew. 

Dan Sanchez: So you pick people. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm usually looking for people based on two qualities. 

Dan Sanchez: Are they already active on LinkedIn and already have momentum with just being in the habit of posting? 

Dan Sanchez: Because if you've never done that, it's really hard to get started, right? 

Ramli John: Yeah. 

Dan Sanchez: So you want to have somebody that has some consistency already, even if their content is not good. 

Dan Sanchez: And then do they know a lot about the topic? 

Dan Sanchez: Right. 

Dan Sanchez: So if they have some subject matter expertise on the thing that the buyers care about more. 

Dan Sanchez: So not just how do they do the thing if they're an accountant, which isn't bad, we can bring that in later. 

Dan Sanchez: But do they have expertise on the thing the buyers care about and do they have that post rhythm going? 

Dan Sanchez: So I kind of rank them on those two things and then I pick the three from there. 

Dan Sanchez: Usually it'll be like the founder, like a VP or subject matter expert or something. 

Dan Sanchez: So you launch with those few. 

Dan Sanchez: I am actually a fan of engagement groups. 

Dan Sanchez: I know people on LinkedIn freaking hate me for that. 

Dan Sanchez: Look, there's a good way to do it and there's bad ways to do it, right? 

Dan Sanchez: James taught me the good way to do it. 

Dan Sanchez: And you might say there's no good way to do it, that's fine. 

Dan Sanchez: But what I do is I just curate people that are already like on LinkedIn that are also speaking to that audience and that you're already kind of commenting with already and maybe people like them. 

Dan Sanchez: And you curate a small group of about ten to twelve people and you throw them in a freaking group and slack or in a DM group and LinkedIn and you just have a basic understanding. 

Dan Sanchez: I find if you just say, like, hey, for the next three months, we're going to post our posts in here and we're all going to engage with each other's posts. 

Dan Sanchez: That's engagement groups, engagement pods, whatever you want to call them. 

Dan Sanchez: That's how it works. 

Dan Sanchez: Because we all know that initial engagement when you first post is what ranks your posts better. 

Dan Sanchez: And especially when you're dealing with an evangelist team of people that have only hundreds of followers. 

Dan Sanchez: It is helpful if they all go in together, if you have three at a time, but if they can get some momentum from other people that are engaged in LinkedIn, it really helps them launch out. 

Dan Sanchez: But after I only do that with phase one to kind of get the initial crew going in, phase two, you broaden it out and those initial three become the accelerants for everybody else. 

Dan Sanchez: Maybe you just do an internal engagement, your own company slack, and it's just in house instead of the outsiders with it. 

Dan Sanchez: But engagement groups, it's such a good way to build relationships with people because if you're commenting on a small amount of people's posts every single time, you end up getting to know them. 

Dan Sanchez: Some of my best LinkedIn buddies came out of engagement groups from three years ago that we're still tight today. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, Dang, I don't know why people hate this so much. 

Dan Sanchez: They're like, well, you're gaming it and LinkedIn doesn't like it. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, screw LinkedIn. 

Dan Sanchez: LinkedIn's gaming you, bro. 

Dan Sanchez: Stop hating on it. 

Ramli John: You have a game, there's a game. 

Ramli John: Don't hate the player, hate the well. 

Dan Sanchez: So that's phase two. 

Dan Sanchez: And then phase three, you just kind of open it up company wide. 

Dan Sanchez: You have to have more policies in place for what it means and all. 

Ramli John: That stuff too, right? 

Dan Sanchez: Yeah. 

Ramli John: It's also important. 

Ramli John: What I heard around that engagement group is making sure that they're already talking about something that they can relate. 

Ramli John: So I've been part of an engagement group, like three years ago where there's somebody talking about leadership, somebody talking about NFT, somebody talking about marketing, and I can't comment on that's. 

Ramli John: Really weird for me to engage with that. 

Ramli John: So it's super important to make sure it's around a problem or a topic that is related to what you're already talking about. 

Dan Sanchez: The quality of the engagement group depends on the quality of the people you select and curate to put in there. 

Dan Sanchez: James was extremely thoughtful about it when I watched him do it, and some of them were personal friends of his. 

Dan Sanchez: So, like, he curated people that actually posted good. 

Dan Sanchez: You don't want to bring people and they're posting stuff like, what did you eat today? 

Dan Sanchez: And you post, like, a poll of, like, cereal. 

Dan Sanchez: You're like stupid. 

Dan Sanchez: Stop. 

Dan Sanchez: Right. 

Dan Sanchez: Just pumping the engagement machine. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, no, we don't want that. 

Dan Sanchez: Right? 

Ramli John: That's so good. 

Ramli John: I'm super excited for you. 

Dan Sanchez: This is part of your book. 

Ramli John: I feel like it should if it's not this phase three phase. 

Dan Sanchez: Because this is something where evangelist program yeah, no, it's not even in the book at all because the book just covers the pillars. 

Ramli John: Because it goes from the pillars. 

Ramli John: It's about you doing it yourself, but where it can be interesting, especially with AI and Generative Search, I feel like they're going to value authority and expertise even more. 

Ramli John: They're already doing that, but even more so in the future. 

Ramli John: We're like, how can you trust content from this brand or this blog? 

Ramli John: Because it could be written by AI, but somebody who is already talking about that, they can elevate that. 

Ramli John: I feel like that's how we'll win with search in the future, potentially with experts and curated content from people with authority. 

Ramli John: So maybe it should be part of the problem.

[00:39:08] Expanding Brand Presence through Audience Growth

Ramli John: I think you talked about Sweetfish doing this and you're building this out. 

Ramli John: Are there any other companies you've seen doing this really well? 

Ramli John: Them picking a few people to build it out for me personally, I've seen Gong do it really well, where they've identified a few folks. 

Ramli John: But I'm curious in your eyes, I'm sure you've seen, wow, what they're doing is cool. 

Ramli John: And people listening and checked out what they're doing. 

Dan Sanchez: I mean, Refined Labs did a remarkable job and are still doing well. 

Dan Sanchez: Another company that did well and then just disappeared off the face of the map was Gravy. 

Dan Sanchez: Do you remember that? 

Dan Sanchez: Casey graham was freaking hot on LinkedIn. 

Dan Sanchez: He started bringing in tons of employees. 

Dan Sanchez: There was gravy was everywhere on LinkedIn for a while, and then I don't know what happened in that company, but, like, just disappeared and no one heard it from them, where I don't know what they're doing now. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, Are they still in business? 

Dan Sanchez: They still around. 

Dan Sanchez: Yeah. 

Ramli John: That's funny. 

Dan Sanchez: They were doing it really well. 

Dan Sanchez: Vidyard does pretty well, but they have a lot of cool audience growth things going on. 

Dan Sanchez: In fact, that's probably one of the companies, I think, doing audience growth the best right now. 

Dan Sanchez: Vidyard, they have sales Feed is their I mean, if you're a marketer listening to this, you probably don't know because they're more sales focused, but they have Sales Feed and they kind of raise up influencers within their own organization. 

Dan Sanchez: Are probably hiring them now, but they have a whole newsletter and a TikTok and YouTube channel and all that kind of stuff. 

Dan Sanchez: And they probably have an audience of north of 100K now. 

Dan Sanchez: And that's an audience that's like a separate brand, Sales Feed, but then they sell personal video to it. 

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, yeah, that's what it's made out of. 

Dan Sanchez: I think what works best is if you have a separate media brand like Sales Feed and Sweetfish has B, two B growth, have a separate media brand that's broader than the positioning of your corporate brand. 

Dan Sanchez: And I feel like personal brands become the accelerants that can kind of play between both. 

Ramli John: Interesting. 

Ramli John: That's really like another gold mine there. 

Ramli John: Specifically. 

Ramli John: I'm just looking up sales feed right now. 

Dan Sanchez: That's another podcast to cover. 

Dan Sanchez: That. 

Ramli John: So good. 

Ramli John: Thank you for sharing that once again. 

Ramli John: I'm checking it out right now. 

Ramli John: I'm going to explore it much later. 

Ramli John: This has been a great chat around audience growth.

[00:41:26] Career in Marketing with Dan Sanchez

Ramli John: I actually want to shift gears and talk about career career path, specifically in terms of your career. 

Ramli John: You've been in marketing for, I think, almost two decades. 

Dan Sanchez: I checked out your LinkedIn profile to. 

Ramli John: Figure exactly you've had stints as an ad designer, social media manager. 

Ramli John: Now you head of inbound marketing at Element 451, as well as like, you're building out your own courses and things like that. 

Ramli John: I'm curious, what's something a power up that's helped you accelerate your career and helped you level up as a marketer, as an entrepreneur, as a creator. 

Dan Sanchez: We were joking about this at the very beginning, before we started recording it's like, oh, which one? 

Dan Sanchez: Because there's so many different little things that made a massive difference. 

Dan Sanchez: Right? 

Dan Sanchez: But the one that I'm like, this has made the biggest difference. 

Dan Sanchez: But I only just applied it recently and I'm like, I wish I would have known. 

Dan Sanchez: I've gotten taste of it earlier, but when I started doubling down on just essentially Niching down, it's so scary to niche down. 

Dan Sanchez: But I'm like, if I would have just stayed steady with the thing, I was probably like pivoted five, six, seven times. 

Dan Sanchez: And I don't mean from graphic design, from marketing, even within marketing over the last couple of years, I'm like, I think I'm going to be all about at first I was home video studios. 

Dan Sanchez: Hence, if you're watching the video, obviously that nice. 

Dan Sanchez: Yeah, it's still part of the story. 

Dan Sanchez: I had a whole blog about that and I was getting traffic. 

Dan Sanchez: I had 20K page views and starting and then I bailed on that and went after nonprofit marketing. 

Dan Sanchez: And then I bailed on that and went after thought leadership. 

Dan Sanchez: And then I bailed on that and went after something else. 

Dan Sanchez: And now I'm finally doubling down and staying consistent with audience growth. 

Dan Sanchez: It has made such a freaking difference. 

Ramli John: Yeah. 

Dan Sanchez: To just kind of like pick a lane and just hammer that lane. 

Dan Sanchez: It is a little hard because you have to find a lane that's like slightly large enough but not too narrow. 

Dan Sanchez: But honestly, I'm starting to think like, that's cool. 

Dan Sanchez: Even if it's too narrow, you're wondering if it's too narrow. 

Dan Sanchez: If you're wondering about it, it's not. 

Dan Sanchez: Just stay in it and just post about that, learn about that, learning the light through that niche. 

Dan Sanchez: It won't be long before you become that. 

Dan Sanchez: Go to expert on that. 

Dan Sanchez: And honestly, I've heard a lot of other people give the advice and now I'm giving it to pick a niche and you might even go niche down twice because what you've niched down into was still too big. 

Dan Sanchez: And just start becoming known for that one thing because that becomes way more powerful than the generalist. 

Dan Sanchez: You can actually be a good generalist, but still just known for the one thing. 

Dan Sanchez: That's what I discovered. 

Dan Sanchez: Be a generalist. 

Dan Sanchez: Be freaking good at a lot of things, but be known for one thing that's so good.

[00:44:07] Understanding When to Switch Niches: An Insight From Dan Sanchez

Ramli John: In terms of, like you said, you switch a few times in terms of niche. 

Ramli John: There might be a few times where it's time to switch something. 

Ramli John: Maybe the audience has shrank or trend has gone down. 

Ramli John: I'm curious for you, how did you know when to, I guess, switch, so to speak? 

Ramli John: Or should you continue sticking with that? 

Ramli John: Do you have a suggestion of how long you should stay until you get signal it's time to switch to another one that might be more lucrative or make more sense for you. 

Dan Sanchez: I think if you've been hammering it for a long time and you're not seeing any traction and I mean, like you're at least 100 posts into the thing and not like 100 LinkedIn posts like whatever that long form channel is you're trying to do. 

Dan Sanchez: YouTube, blog, whatever, you got to get at least 100 in before you can even bail from. 

Dan Sanchez: So do it for a long time, 100 posts, maybe two years, like something that's not just a couple of months. 

Dan Sanchez: If you have a few core people that you really trust around you and they're all kind of saying something similar or you're getting similar tones from them about you sticking to the thing, then maybe you should probably consider switching that's. 

Ramli John: So it's so good that you're like how trusted advisors are on you, but like having a longer timeframe. 

Ramli John: This is YouTuber. 

Ramli John: I follow Matt DEVELLA where he called it the three year rule. 

Ramli John: If you're going to stick with something, stick with it for three years and then see where it goes from there. 

Ramli John: And I feel like that's often the true for myself and maybe for other people who might get caught up with the excitement of NFT AI and the new thing, stick with it for longer than you think and you might see more from that.

[00:45:50] Interview with Dan Sanchez on Audience Growth

Ramli John: It's a great piece of advice in terms of one final question. 

Ramli John: Know we're talking about advice right now, but like a level asking if you can give your younger self piece of advice. 

Ramli John: A younger dancess, somebody who might be starting out in marketing and they're trying to figure out he's trying to figure out exactly what to do. 

Ramli John: What would be your piece of advice that you would give that younger person. 

Dan Sanchez: Dang, other than that niche down advice? 

Dan Sanchez: Start a freaking podcast. 

Dan Sanchez: So good start. 

Dan Sanchez: That, dude is the last channel I picked up. 

Dan Sanchez: I felt like I'd done every other channel by that point. 

Dan Sanchez: Like SEO, email marketing, PPC, like I'd done the whole list of digital marketing tools. 

Dan Sanchez: Podcast was last stupid. 

Dan Sanchez: Like, I wish it had been first. 

Dan Sanchez: This is why it needs to be first, okay? 

Dan Sanchez: Because one, you pick your niche, right? 

Dan Sanchez: Or even if you don't, if you just come up with the podcast right now and you do it for free on anchor and sign up for a free Zoom account and just call it a less than 30 minutes show and record the episode and throw it up for anchor on free. 

Dan Sanchez: So you could literally just do this all for free and pick a bad cover art, it doesn't matter. 

Dan Sanchez: And just interview the people that you want to get to know that are in the positions that you want to be in and just start reaching out to them. 

Dan Sanchez: They'll almost always say yes and you can start asking them. 

Dan Sanchez: It's like having your own personal mentorship group because you get to go and talk to all the cool people. 

Dan Sanchez: Dude, you know how many books that I've read? 

Dan Sanchez: And I've reached out to the authors and be like, hey, do you want to do an interview? 

Dan Sanchez: I loved your book. 

Dan Sanchez: They almost always say yes unless they're currently heads down on another book project, especially Business book. 

Dan Sanchez: I mean, obviously you try to get a hold of a major famous author, it's harder. 

Dan Sanchez: But Gary Vee right, he's hard to get him. 

Dan Sanchez: But most authors don't get requests for podcasts and usually they're hustling trying to get on podcasts so they usually say yes. 

Dan Sanchez: So imagine being able to read a book and then talk to the author. 

Ramli John: About what you thought about it. 

Dan Sanchez: You could do that with the power of a freaking podcast because everyone says yes. 

Dan Sanchez: People won't give you five minutes for coffee even if you buy the coffee. 

Dan Sanchez: That's kind of annoying. 

Dan Sanchez: But if you ask them to be on a podcast, they'll give you a whole hour. 

Dan Sanchez: It's amazing. 

Dan Sanchez: It's one of the best life hacks I've ever learned is just start a podcast and use it to learn and grow into any topic. 

Ramli John: It's like accelerating your learning, essentially. 

Ramli John: And that's what I'm doing here as well, learning from other folks some of the stuff you talked about audience growth, specifically that advice on do a challenge and tag someone really unique and stuff like that. 

Ramli John: I would totally double click on this advice to start a podcast sooner. 

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