In this episode, Theo will be talking about branding and specifically going over how to nail your podcast interview. He will be giving tips from his experience in interviewing dozens of guests on our show.
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To listen to other Syndication School series about the “How To’s” of apartment syndications and to download your FREE document, visit SyndicationSchool.com. Thank you for listening and I will talk to you tomorrow.
TRANSCRIPTION
Joe Fairless: There needed to be a resource on apartment syndication that not only talked about each aspect of the syndication process, but how to actually do each of the things, and go into it in detail… And we thought “Hey, why not make it free, too?” That’s why we launched Syndication School.
Theo Hicks will go through a particular aspect of apartment syndication on today’s episode, and get into the details of how to do that particular thing. Enjoy this episode, and for more on apartment syndication and how to do things, go to apartmentsyndication.com, or to learn more about the Apartment Syndication School, go to syndicationschool.com, so you can listen to all the previous episodes.
Theo Hicks: Hello, and welcome to the Syndication School series, a free resource focused on the how-to’s of apartment syndication. As always, I am your host, Theo Hicks. Each week we air two podcast episodes that focus on a specific aspect of the apartment syndication investment strategy, and for the majority of these episodes we offer free resources; these are free PDF how-to guides, PowerPoint presentation templates, or Excel calculator templates, things that help you along your apartment syndication journey.
Today we are going to talk about branding. We haven’t talked about branding in quite some time; I believe the last time we talked about something directly related to branding at least was back when we were doing the 10 or 11-step process for doing an apartment syndication, and did an 8-part series on branding… So I thought right now would be a really good time to refocus on our branding. I’m actually taking some copywriting courses right now, so I’ll definitely be talking about the information I’m [unintelligible [00:04:48].27] in those courses in the future… But also, since you might not be doing as many deals as you were doing previously, instead of not doing anything, you can refocus on building your brand, whether that means creating your brand in the first place, adding to your brand, or just making your existing platforms a little bit better.
So what we’re gonna talk about today is how to perform well when being interviewed on other people’s podcasts. Obviously, one way to promote your business is to create your own brand, and one way to promote both your business and your brand is to be interviewed on other people’s podcasts or YouTube channels, be included in their blog posts, things like that. So just getting your name out in front of a new, but similar audience is very powerful when it comes to branding… So I wanted to give you some tips on how you can adequately prepare for that podcast, so that you’re able to get the most out of it, so that you’re able to maximize the number of people who will listen to that podcast and say “Oh, wow, it’s Theo. The guy is interesting, smart, and I think I want to learn more about him at his website, or his blog post” or “I think wanna sign up for his newsletter.
So I’ve got four tips I wanna go over today. The first one is to ask yourself why people listen to that podcast. I’m not gonna talk about how to get on podcasts here. We’ve already talked about this. We’re not gonna talk about best practices, tactics during the interview, what to do post-interview… We’ve talked about all that before on the podcast. I wanna talk about specifically how to actually just high-level nail your podcast interview.
Before you get on the podcast with whoever is interviewing you, you wanna ask the host or whoever is responsible for scheduling why people listen to their podcast. You’re gonna want to do this before the interview starts; ideally, a few days prior to the interview, or technically you could do it the second you’re scheduled to be on the interview. You wanna know why people listen to the podcast, because then you’ll know what you should and shouldn’t talk about, as well as how to cater the conversation.
Let’s just use this podcast as an example – people listen to the Best Ever Podcast because they want to hear best ever advice that our guests have about how to be successful in real estate, but they want it in a short, no-fluff format. That’s why all of our episodes are no longer than 30 minutes, unless I’m doing Syndication School or Follow Along Friday and I’m yapping for a long time… But typically, they’re gonna be shorter, concise, to the point episodes where a wide range of real estate investors give their best ever advice, so that you can take that advice really quickly if you’re really busy, and then implement that into your business.
We also do them daily, so that there’s gonna be constant content coming out. So if we’re interviewing someone that you don’t think would be a good fit for you, you can skip it and have a new option the next day.
On the other hand, let’s take Bigger Pockets, for example. Their podcast is a little bit different, because their podcasts are a lot longer. They’re an hour, an hour-and-a-half, two hours… They’re a lot more casual, so it’s more of a back and forth conversation, where the Bigger Pockets guys talk some, and then the guests talk some, whereas on our podcasts it’s mostly just us asking questions… And I got this from the Bigger Pockets Podcast description – they chat about the failures, successes, motivations and lessons learned. So if I was being interviewed on the Best Ever podcast, I would cater the conversation differently than if I was being interviewed on the Bigger Pockets podcast.
First and foremost is the time. So if my plan is to get ten important points across to my target audience, I’m gonna get those ten points across a lot faster if I’m being interviewed on the Best Ever show, whereas I can elaborate – at least on a few of those – on the Bigger Pockets podcast. So overall, if I was being interviewed on this podcast, I’d keep my advice very concise and to the point, whereas if I was on the Bigger Pockets podcast I would give advice as if I were talking to a buddy, or a friend; a more conversational, coffee shop-type environment.
Now, some people will listen to a podcast for very specific, niche advice. Bigger Pockets and our podcast has a very wide range of niches. We kind of cover everything. I’ll talk to someone who’s house-hacking a single-family home, and after that I’ll talk to someone who’s got 10,000 multifamily units. Also, then I’ll talk to someone who invests in notes, and then someone who invests in condos… So it’s kind of all over the place. Same with Bigger Pockets, it’s exactly the same way. They kind of hit all different niches. But there’s a lot of podcasts out there that focus on specific pieces of advice, specific real estate niches.
Let’s take, for example, Gino, from Jake & Gino, who I actually interviewed last week – they have a podcast called Wheelbarrow Profits Apartment Investing, where they talk about apartment investing. You’ve got someone like Kevin Bupp, who has a podcast called Mobile Home Park Investing.
So if I were to go on Gino’s podcast, and if I were to ask him, “Hey, why do people listen to your podcast?”, he would say something along the lines of “They want to learn how to invest in large apartment buildings.” So if that’s the case, I’m not gonna go on there and talk about my first house-hack story. Whereas if I’m on Bigger Pockets, then it’s something that’s interesting, to hear my first house-hacking story, and then how I got to where I am today.
Same with Kevin Bupp’s podcast. If I don’t know anything about mobile home parks, then I’m probably not gonna be a good fit for that episode, and I’ll have to talk about something that’s’ likely not related to real estate, and maybe more personal development, or business, or sales or strategy side.
Overall, you wanna make sure that you know why the audience is listening to that specific podcast, and then make sure that you are catering your advice to fulfill their needs, and then don’t talk about anything that they’re not gonna be interested in. That’s number one.
Number two is to have a call-to-action. At the conclusion of most podcasts, the host will ask you, the interviewee, to tell the listeners where they can learn more about you and your business, or they’ll offer you some sort of opportunity to provide a call-to-action. It’s okay to say “Just email me or call me”, but to take it a step further, ask yourself what do you want people to do after listening to your amazing podcast?
Again, it can be something as simple as “Email me in the questions that you have”, but again, the idea is you want to send people from this podcast to your business, whatever your hub is going to be. So you’re gonna want your call-to-action to include that hub. Again, that can be as simple as asking them to send you an email, or you can create an actual landing page and send them to that landing page. That landing page could capture their email address, for example. It could take it a step further and it could allow them to have access to your newsletter.
To take it a step further, you can have a landing page that captures an email address, and then in order to convince them to give you their email address besides your amazing podcast interview is to have some sort of free item to give away. An eBook, or maybe one of your most popular blog posts that goes more in-depth into the topic that you discuss on the show, or again, it could be something as simple as a subscription to your newsletter.
So if you think about this from a process standpoint, you ask “Okay, why do people listen to this podcast? Okay, they wanna know about apartment investing. Okay, well I know about apartment investing, so what specifically do I wanna talk about for apartment investing?” Maybe I wanna talk about my top tips for hiring the right property management company. I’m going on the Best Ever Show, which is a little shorter, so I’m gonna go over my first five tips of how to find a property management company. At the very end, I’ll say “Hey, those were just actually five tips. I have ten more tips on top of that, so 15 total tips. If you wanna know my next ten tips, go to www.theorocks.com and enter your email address and I’ll send that to you for free.”
So just being super-prepared for the podcast – that’s actually a lot better than going over all 15 tips on the show, or just going over the best five tips and just saying “Hey, go to my website and check out more content that I have.” Again, that’s fine, that’s a decent call-to-action, but a better call-to-action is one that hits all of those steps – it sends them to the landing page, and it actually gives them something that builds on what you already talked about in that episode.
Obviously, by having a call-to-action that captures email addresses, another advantage is that you can see the effects of the interview. You aren’t gonna have access to the interviewer’s analytics for the show; you’re not gonna know how many people listened to the episode. And even if you did, you’re not really gonna know how that compares to other episodes, because you don’t have access to that, but you can ask them “Hey, do you mind sending me the analytics for every single episode you’ve ever done?” So the best way to gauge the success of the podcast, if it was worth your time, is to actually capture the email addresses, and then you can determine how many people clicked on that link, or inputted their information. It’s a really good way to gauge how successful the interview was.
Tip number three is to have prepared stories. So you know why people listen, you’ve got your topic, you’ve got your call-to-action prepared, now you need to figure out what you’re actually gonna talk about in regards with that topic… So make sure that you have an interesting story to tell about whatever that topic is. Don’t necessarily force it into the conversation, but at least have a few stories ready to tell, and then try to implement them or add them in very naturally, so that it flows properly. Because at the end of the day, people really love stories.
Let’s say for example you are asked about your first deal. Don’t just say “Oh, well I’ve found it on the MLS, and I bought the deal for $100,000, and then I’ve put $50,000 into it, and now the value is $200,000. It was a really good deal.” That’s good information to include, but it’s not enough, and it’s quite frankly kind of boring… So instead, have some interesting story to tell about your first deal. Or you can give them the numbers, but then follow it up with something funny that happened, something unexpected that happened, or some interesting story that you learned, or some relationships that you’ve created… Some sort of story that’s going to make it interesting, make it entertaining. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about entertaining people. That’s what people want to do. So educating and entertaining, as opposed to just educating. So have a prepared story for whatever topic you wanna talk about, and then figure out ways to naturally bring those up.
And then the last thing is to focus on lists. What’s the title of this episode? Well, I don’t create the titles, but it should be something along the lines of “Four tips to nail your podcast interview.” People who listen to real estate investing podcasts and read real estate investing blogs, they love lists. So whenever a host during a podcast interview asks you a question, try to give your answer in the form of a list. For example, if they were to ask you about the lessons you learned from your first apartment syndication deal, a really good reply would be “Well, I’ve made a lot of mistakes on my first apartment deal, so here are actually five. Number one is blah-blah-blah. Number two is blah-blah-blah. Number three is blah-blah-blah.”
After that, you can say “Here’s five things that I did to fix these mistakes.” Or “Here are the five things I do now to avoid making these mistakes.” So list form, as opposed to saying “Oh, yeah, I’ve made a lot of mistakes… I did this, I did this, I did this…” But just let them know kind of going in there “Hey, here’s a list of five things.” So they can say “Okay, well I can make a list. One, two, three, four, five. Oh, he only said four? What’s the fifth one?” You’re kind of confused now.
So people love lists… That’s why I didn’t title this “Tips to nail your podcast interview.” People are gonna want to know “Well, how many tips? Is it one tips, is it two tips, is it ten tips? How many tips?” So definitely try your best to lead off your advice with “Here are the X number of tips.” And if you don’t really know — let’s say I am doing this podcast off the cuff, and I say “Oh, here are three tips to nail your podcast interview. Number one, why do people listen? Number two, have a call-to-action. Number three, prepare stories. And guess what – I’ve got a bonus tip, which is number four.” So if you make a mistake, just always toss in the bonus tip. Or “Here’s another bonus tip.” Or “Here’s an additional bonus tip.” So always underestimate the number you think you might do, or — obviously, if you know what the list number is, you can say that; but if you don’t necessarily know, go on the low-end, and that way you can say “Well, here’s a bonus tip.” Because I think the one thing people probably like more than lists are the bonused tips.
So those are the four tips to nail your podcast interview – number one, why do people listen? Number two, call-to-action. Number three, have stories prepared. Number four, people love lists.
Thanks for listening. That concludes the episode. Until next time, make sure you check out some of our other episodes on the how-to’s of apartment syndication. We have a lot more Syndication School episodes on branding, so you can definitely check those out. Also, check out the free documents. All that is available at SyndicationSchool.com.
Thank you for listening, and I will talk to you tomorrow.
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