From Local to National: Unlocking the Secrets of Business Success

Intro: [00:00:08] Broadcasting live from our flagship studio in Atlanta, Georgia. This is scaling in public. The next 100 Business RadioX markets, featuring founders Lee Kantor and Stone Payton, along with some of America’s top coaches, helping them grow the network with real strategy, real lessons, and real accountability all shared in public. To learn more about the proven system that turns podcast interviews into a perpetual prospecting pipeline through generosity, not gimmicks, go to Burks Intercom and download the free Business RadioX playbook. Now here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:55] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of scaling in public. Stone Payton Lee Kantor here with you and today’s coach, please join me in welcoming to the broadcast Todd Howard. How are you, man?

Todd Howard: [00:01:10] I’m good. Stone. Good to see you again.

Stone Payton: [00:01:12] Well, it’s a delight to have you joining us. We’re looking forward to great things. I’m going to turn it over to you and let you do your thing, man.

Todd Howard: [00:01:20] Okay. Well, good. Well, in preparation for this, I’ve, got I got caught up on all your documentation. Stone, you and I had half an hour to, uh, talk through things. Lee, I’d love to start with you, because I’m just now meeting you on this show. And I’d love to hear from your perspective what you’re trying to accomplish this coming year and and growing your business. And then kind of as a bonus question, what you think your biggest challenge is going to be in pulling that off?

Lee Kantor: [00:01:56] Well, uh, to answer your first question first, what we’re trying to accomplish this year is to grow the network and put in place a replicatable system that, puts the right people in front of us that want to partner with us, that kind of believe what we believe, that it’s important to serve local communities that might be struggling with prospecting as their issue in whatever their day job business is. And we’d like to get more people to be aware of how our service, uh, not only helps them with grow their day job business, but also serves and makes them an important component of the business community that they live in.

Todd Howard: [00:02:39] Got it. So what I took from that, check me on this, is I heard a couple things. One is you want a system that will attract the right people to you, a replicatable system, and then similarly to that idea, but a separate point. You want them to be aware of how you can help them.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:02] Right. So it’s we believe we have a business that helps people position themselves as a leader in their community. And the activity that they’re doing to demonstrate that is by being kind of the pro-business media outlet in their community. So if you do that work relentlessly, you get to have you get to become the media. And being the media has some benefits, and we like to show our partners how they can leverage the benefit of being a Business RadioX in their local market to help them individually grow whatever it is their day job business is. And on top of that, unlock some revenue streams. That being the media allows.

Todd Howard: [00:03:59] Gotcha. Okay, that’s a great answer. Thanks for that. So, Lee, what keeps you up at night when you think about trying to climb that mountain, what do you think is going to be the biggest obstacle or or challenge here for you?

Lee Kantor: [00:04:12] Well, the challenge, the challenge is that our our business organically grows locally and it’s organically grown locally by us doing the work pre-pandemic. We’ve been doing this for 20 years. So pre-pandemic we had studios in. We had we started with a studio in Atlanta, Georgia, where our guests would physically come into the studio and sit around a table and we would interview them about their business, and then just doing that activity face to face in person, looking each other in the eye. We were able to kind of generate, uh, other business people were saying, how do I get one of these for myself, and we get to show them how they can have their own show and how that would benefit them. And then by doing that over and over again, we got some folks that lived far, far enough away from Atlanta. As you know, you live here. You can get anywhere probably in 30, 45 minutes, but you’d probably rather not a lot of times. And you’d rather stick around your own, uh, suburb. And what we found is there’s some folks that live kind of far away, uh, just far enough away that they could do what we were doing in Atlanta in their own kind of exurb or suburb. And then we started having entrepreneurs partner with us and set up studios in and around kind of the outer perimeter of Atlanta. And and that was working great. And then Stone and I said, how about, you know, trying to get people all over the country to do this and replicate it and scale it. And that has been a challenge. We haven’t figured out how to do that efficiently or effectively. And that is really the thing that keeps me up at night, because I feel like we have a great service and we deliver great value, but we’re just not able to attract folks from outside the metro Atlanta area to understand the value that we deliver.

Todd Howard: [00:06:15] Got it. Okay, excellent. That’s going to be a nice segue into what we’re going to talk about today. So, the challenge that. So first off, just for the sake of, well, us and then listeners who may be following along to understand the context of where we are, uh, I believe I’m the second coach that you’ve worked with, Tricia being the first to kind of get you guys started. And what you identified in the first conversation is that one of the filters that you need to add as you’re talking to prospects is that you want to look for people who are part of a larger organization, because when you do that, you potentially tap into a larger pool of like minded people. That makes logical sense that that would bring you more candidates faster. So if you have an opportunity to talk to two people, one of them is in the middle of nowhere, Idaho, with no friends, or you’ve got somebody else as part of a large, thriving network. It’s an easy choice to say, let’s opt for guy number two, because there’s opportunity within his network to reach more people. So starting out, that sounds from what I’ve seen, from what Trish wrote up the starting point on how you guys can go from I believe it’s nine studio partners right now to the goal of 100.

Todd Howard: [00:07:47] So what I’m going to do is I’m going to help you think about your ideal client profile. And I may say ideal client profile. I may say ICP for anybody listening. That’s just the acronym I’m using. But I want to help you think about who these people are, because if you understand who these people are, you can find them more easily. And I realized that sounds so simple and so logical, but I can’t tell you how many times people miss this step of really identifying their ICP. And instead what they do is they spend a lot of money on sales and marketing to try and be very sexy and appealing to a bunch of people, hoping that if they can cast a wide net and look really attractive, that just by the sheer numbers game, they’re going to reach their goal and and bring all these clients to them. So to to boil that down even further, they they think it’s a sales and marketing effort. If we can just get sales and marketing right, we’re going to get the people we want. We have a quality product. The people are out there. We need good sales and marketing. That is a recipe for disaster in my mind. This is why people don’t like sales. People distrust marketing is because they believe that sales and marketing will solve this problem for them.

Todd Howard: [00:09:12] They invest all this time and money and it doesn’t produce results and they get frustrated. Now, the reason they get frustrated is because they’ve missed a step and that’s defining their ICP. So we’re going to spend our entire call today talking about how you can identify your ICP. If you do this successfully. Sales and marketing is relatively easier because it allows you to go to a marketer and a sales team and say, I work with that guy or that woman. This is where they’re at. This is the situation they’re in. This is their need. The more information you can give them on your ICP, the better chance they’re going to find it. But of course, if you don’t have your ICP and you walk in to a sales and marketing team, you can pay them all the money in the world. They’re going to have a hard time finding your ICP. So what we’re going to do is talk about how you can find your ICP. And if we can accomplish that, or at least get started in that, and you can really define that you will be successful as you go into sales and marketing. So let me take a breath right quick and make sure that all came across well. Does that make sense or do you have any questions about that before we get started?

Stone Payton: [00:10:32] I don’t have any questions. It works. That sounds good to me.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:35] Yeah. I mean boldly forward.

Todd Howard: [00:10:37] Okay. Let’s roll. So, first off, let me tell you what a little bit about what an ICP is. So one moment I’m getting my notes up here because I’ve been, uh, thinking through a couple ideas as we, as we get together. So your ICP, your ideal client profile is not just someone that you find attractive. Your ICP is someone that finds you attractive. Specifically, that means three things. They will buy from you. They’ll be able to use your product without difficulty, and they will quickly get the benefits that they were promised. So those are the three things I want you to have in mind. They buy from you. They can use what you have without difficulty, and they quickly get the benefits that they were promised. Now let’s talk about why these three things are important. If all you do is find people that want to buy from you, but six months later, they have difficulty working with your process, then here’s what’s going to happen. As you march towards 100 studio partners, you’re going to get about 20, and then about the time you’re selling the 21st, the first one you sold is starting to complain about something.

Todd Howard: [00:12:04] And after a while they may drop off because in the process of using your service, they’ve run into difficulty. And so now for every person you add because you’re very sellable, people are buying what you have. You’re losing somebody on the back end. And so in the march to get 100 people, you get to about 20 and you stay there and you’re turning over 20 people every few months. They buy, they come in, they can’t use it, they bail. And that’s where a lot of companies find, uh, find themselves. And the reason is because they thought about their ICP as just a buyer. We don’t want a buyer. We want a buyer who can use what you have without difficulty and quickly see the benefits they were promised. If they buy what you have. They use it with ease and in a short amount of time they see the benefits they were promised. They stick. And as a result, you’re able to line up 100 people and hopefully keep most of those 100 people. Make sense?

Lee Kantor: [00:13:11] Yeah, and I feel pretty confident that we have something that’s going to deliver in the manner you described.

Todd Howard: [00:13:17] Yeah. Yeah, I do too. I think that you guys have been doing this long enough. You’ve worked out the kinks. I think that that part is, is probably pretty solid. Okay. So let’s talk about how we define your ICP. There is one. Well, let me back up and say most people really struggle with this because there’s never been a methodology to find your ICP. Most of it is anecdotal. Most times people will say, you find your ICP by looking back and figuring out who has purchased from you in the past, whoever purchased from you in the past and stayed. They must be your ICP. That’s kind of a weak logical argument that we could dismantle if we had enough time. The past is not a good indicator of future success when it comes to ICP. There is one thing that I have found that allows you to find your right ICP, and that is a unique approach. If you have a unique approach at solving a problem or creating an opportunity, and that unique approach matches the situation of a certain subset of the market, that subset of the market will buy from you. The reason that they will buy from you, that they will easily implement what you have and see the benefits, is because the approach you have developed fits their situation. So it all comes down to this. In order to find your ICP, we need to understand what your unique approach is. Once we have your unique approach in hand, we will easily be able to figure out who your ICP is because it’s the people who get the biggest benefit from your unique approach.

Todd Howard: [00:15:23] Now, I’m going to give you two examples of this so that we can really solidify this idea. And then we’re going to move into figuring out what your unique approach is. The first person is somebody I’m sure that you’re aware of. And I told Stone about this when we met earlier. Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek is wildly successful. We all know who he is, and the reason we know who he is is because we know his unique approach. Simon Sinek is the leadership and development coach. There are millions of leadership and development coaches over the past several decades, but Simon stands out because he’s taken the approach. He believes that inspiration is what moves people. It’s not the carrot, it’s not the stick, it’s inspiration. And if you can find out what’s inspirational about you and tell others about it, they will follow you. They will buy from you. And that’s what makes good leaders is the ability to inspire others. So Simon Sinek doesn’t come out and say, I’ve been doing leadership and development coaching for 25 years, or I really believe that people could be good leaders. He doesn’t waste his time saying any of that. He spends all his time telling us about his unique approach and as a result, anyone who believes there’s something inspirational about what they do says, I want to work with Simon.

Todd Howard: [00:16:50] I will pay five times the amount of money to work with Simon because his unique approach fits me. Non-profits do this. They believe there’s something inspirational about them. Non-profits are in Simon’s ICP. Interestingly enough, so is the US military. Us military, especially certain branches of the US military believe there’s something very inspirational about what they do. And so Simon works with them. So what I want you to notice there is that Simon has made a decision not to get out and talk about how he feels about US leaders, or his years of experience or anything like that. He talks about one thing his unique approach and people whose situation fits his unique approach are his ICP. They present themselves. Once he knows his ice. Once he knows his unique approach. I’ll give you another example. There’s a financial planner. I’m sure you’ve heard of Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey is again a financial provider in a world full of planner, financial planner, in a world full of financial planners. But Dave Ramsey has put together a unique approach which has made him quite famous. He put together his baby steps. Step one you do this, step two, you do this, and so on. You’re probably familiar with some of them. Now, the reason that that approach is so impressive is because when he did that, he removed conflict. From people trying to figure out what to do with their finances. Financial conversations are conflict oriented by nature. You get two people in a room and you say, we got to clean up our finances.

Todd Howard: [00:18:41] What do we do? You got two different answers. So what Dave Ramsey does is he comes in and he says, I don’t care who you are or what you do. I want you to put $1,000 aside for an emergency fund. That is step one. And then step two and step three and so on. And when he does this, he removes conflict from the conversation. Now, who are Dave Ramsey’s ideal clients? Young married couples. That’s why it is very typical for a church or an organization full of young couples to run a Dave Ramsey course, and that session to be full, because young couples are prone to conflict when they talk about finances. And so Dave Ramsey’s approach removes conflict and gets him on the same page and moving forward. As a result, everyone knows who Dave Ramsey is, but you’d be hard pressed to name two other financial planners. So that’s how a unique approach works. Dave Ramsey and Simon Sinek didn’t sit around and say, well, I’d like to work with these people or I’d like to work with those people. They put that out of their mind because that’s a wish list. We don’t want to deal with that. And instead they worked on developing their own unique approach. Once they had their unique approach, they were able to see who their ICP was. And when they went to talk to that ICP, they were able to convey what they needed to to get that ICP to buy from them.

Todd Howard: [00:20:20] So, Lee, I asked you at the beginning of this call, what do you believe are your, your biggest challenges? And one of the ones that you, uh, that you told me about is reach. You’ve grown locally, virally to some extent, because people saw you do what you did and they liked you. They liked it. And so you went from Atlanta to outside Atlanta and you’ve kind of gotten that far. But what you need is something more portable so that you can talk to somebody in San Diego who’s never been on Business RadioX, never seen it. How do you get that person to buy? The way you get them to buy is that you develop a unique approach. Once you explain your unique approach to them, they’re able to say, that fits the situation I’m in, I want to buy. So again, let me take a breather for a minute because I want you guys to be able to ask questions. But the main point that I wanted to bring this to so far is that the unique approach is what you need to develop in order to figure out who your ICP is. If you don’t have a unique approach, then no one has any reason to choose you and therefore you do not have an ICP. So ask me any questions before we start taking a look at some of the information you guys have sent over.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:01] Would it be useful if we told you what our approach is? And then you tell us if that’s unique?

Todd Howard: [00:22:09] Absolutely. So I have you guys have sent over a few bullet points in email. Is that what you would tell me about, or is there something else that you’d describe as your unique approach.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:25] Well, I mean, let’s define unique approach a unique approach to what?

Todd Howard: [00:22:31] Okay. Unique approach to creating the value proposition that you were offering. So you have a value proposition that at the end of working with you or as a result of working with you, someone is a studio partner. They’re developing relationships. They have multiple income streams. Those are fantastic. People are really going to enjoy that. However, it could be argued that many of those bullet points you sent me on email could also be accomplished through podcasting or potentially something else entirely. So tell me about the unique approach that you take in accomplishing those goals that would make someone say, oh, that approach fits me really well.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:20] Stone, do you want to take this or what do you want to do?

Stone Payton: [00:23:23] I mean, yeah, I can get this conversation going because I do feel like we do things a great deal differently than most people who are trying to leverage this platform to help people and make money. You know, I’m in Cherokee County, Georgia, a little town called Woodstock. I have a feeling it’s like this all over the place. You can’t swing a dead cat in Cherokee County without running into a podcaster. And so I have conversations with them. Of course, we have a lot of brand equity here. You know, in Georgia, I guess you would say for sure. And as I get to talk, they don’t do anything the way we do it. They really do. Like they try to go out and get a big audience, and they take great pride and continue to strive to get people to download the shows. And they count the the downloads and the views and all that stuff and like, just just right out of the box, you know, Lee and I from day one, it’s certainly what I found inspirational when I jumped on his coattails. What is it? It was all geared toward genuinely serving the person across the desk.

Stone Payton: [00:24:27] We weren’t doing virtual stuff back then at all. Uh, and and building a real relationship with that person. And, uh, even if they weren’t a prospective client. Just when they came in to be interviewed. Just doing everything we could to support and celebrate that person. And then because of that, the people who could benefit from from what Lee had set up, you just had such a you had such a deep, genuine, authentic relationship with someone so fast, like every other way I’d ever seen anybody try to build relationship and serve. Not that it wasn’t valid, it just took a long time. And this, I mean, so much so fast. So everything we’ve built is around that ethos of genuinely trying to help the other person, supporting and celebrating them. And then and then teaching them the mechanics that we employ, which are apparently a great deal different than the mechanics that most people employ. So I mean, just right out of the box, I would say our relentless focus on relationship as the foundation for growing your business and helping your clients grow their business. Would you agree with that, Lee?

Lee Kantor: [00:25:38] Yeah. I mean, the premise of our business is to help our clients get one more client. Like, that’s what the objective is. So what we do is help our clients build the relationships they need with the people most important to them in an elegant, non salesy way that starts with service, that ends with service, that it’s all about helping the client or the person we’re working with get the outcome they desire. And we use podcasting. We use having a studio, we have certain tactics we deploy in order to do that, but it might look to the outside person as, oh, we’re a podcast production company, or we are a podcaster, and that is how we do what we do. But it isn’t the why we do what we do. We the why behind our business is helping our clients become that trusted authority, that go to person, that mega connector in their community to help them get the outcome they desire, whatever that might be.

Todd Howard: [00:26:54] Okay, okay. Those are really good. So you guys are are relationship oriented. Uh, it’s very clear that you’re helping people develop those relationships. I like the one client at a time thing or the next client. However, you said that those are all very valuable. Uh, I’m going to say something that is going to be a little painful and I don’t mean it to, but it’ll help to just kind of cut to the chase, because I want to help you guys get to the other side of this. Those are indefensible value propositions. In other words, a podcaster could say the same thing. Now, you might be able to look at them and say, oh, but we mean it. We know we’re we know we’ve internalized this. We’re good at it. Our clients see it. And other podcasters, they can’t pull it off. But on the surface, from a marketing and sales standpoint, many other companies can say what you just said. So what I’d like to do is I’d like to try and create a defensible position for you by enhancing part of your approach so that you can say something. And others would say, yeah, no, we don’t do that. That is absolutely them. We do not go to that extent or that trouble to do any of that stuff Us. If we can do that, create a defensible position for you. Now we know what is going to attract someone to you versus others who will say the same things you are saying. So, I forget which one of you said it, but I think it was Lee. I think it was. You said mechanics. You guys have certain mechanics in place that allow someone to pull this off. Tell me a little bit about the mechanics that you train them on or introduce them to, or maybe do on their behalf that allow them to build the relationships in the community and all of that.

Lee Kantor: [00:28:53] Well, one of the things I think one of our strong suits is that our brand of Business RadioX. So, like, say you’re that person. I think you use San Diego as the as the kind of, okay, this is a person that’s outside of our network that doesn’t have any ties to us at all. And I can show you how they would benefit from being part of Business RadioX rather than being, you know, Bob’s podcast in San Diego. So if they’re Business RadioX in San Diego, we create a web page for them on our website that when they invite a guest to be part of the San Diego Business RadioX show, they’re going to a page that has just hundreds of thousands of business interviews from people all over the place. So they’re going to have instant credibility when they just turn, flip the switch to be the San Diego Business RadioX studio partner. So they get credibility a go. They don’t have to kind of build any authority. They already have it built in by being affiliated with the brand. We look the part of a business kind of talk network because we are one and we’ve been doing it for 20 years. So they get that at go and they also get kind of our methodology at go to, they don’t have any more learning curve of how to go about and approach a, uh, prospective guest for their show. And they don’t have to convince a prospective guest as much to come on this show because it already looks the part, as opposed to if they are starting from scratch, they are going to have to kind of earn their way up the ladder to get in front of people that they want to get in front of.

Todd Howard: [00:30:50] Got it. So two things I wrote down there is one, it sounds like you have an infrastructure. You listed several things. I just had time to write down. You you have land. What I would consider landing pages built out. So there’s the opportunity to have templates and just technical assets in place from day one. So that is significant. That is something people won’t easily get somewhere else.

Lee Kantor: [00:31:15] And they’ll also get administrative help in executing the show. So they don’t have to have any technical expertise other than, you know, talking to people. Uh, Stone likes to say all we want our partners to do is just make friends and press record, and then we’re going to take the rest of that, uh, technical lift off their plate and also insert them into a platform that already has distribution. It has everything in place in order to execute, uh, the show that they’re trying to execute.

Todd Howard: [00:31:49] Got it. Okay, okay. That’s three. That’s excellent. So I’ve got you have an infrastructure, a ready made infrastructure. A ready made infrastructure. Instructions on how to get a guest. So it sounds like in my mind that means a bulleted list of step one do this. Step two do this so that someone has a script on how to go get a guest. It’s very effective. And then the third one I’m hearing you say is administrative help on the back end. So they hit record. They have a conversation, they go to lunch and ta da! At the end of it, there’s a show. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:32:33] And then we also give them instructions on how to create the bridge from the show to getting the client that they’re trying to get at the end of the day. So it’s kind of A to Z methodology from who do I. Who would I like to meet. What kind of people do I want to meet more of? Here’s a roadmap to meet those people and a system that helps you meet and serve those people, and then also a bridge to help them go from that meeting to a conversation about why they should pick them for whatever it is their business is.

Todd Howard: [00:33:09] Got it? Okay. Okay. That’s effective. There may be some more, but for the sake of time, those are four really good ones. So I’ve got a ready made infrastructure. Instructions on how to get a guest, administrative help on the back end to relieve the technical burden, and then a bridge to take them from being a guest to a client. And that’s where you get that multiple income stream, uh, value prop that you were talking about.

Lee Kantor: [00:33:38] Did I leave anything out, Steph?

Stone Payton: [00:33:39] No, I don’t think so. I think it might be possible if someone were listening to this and trying to figure out, like, hey, what’s so great about Business RadioX it? I mean, there’s a ton of stuff when we say infrastructure, we’re talking about workflow mechanics, hosting, mechanics, sales mechanics, all of that stuff. All of that has been baked extremely well in that recipe has been fine tuned over the last 20 years. This thing works. It always works. It never doesn’t work. If you follow our methodology. I don’t care who you are or where you are. If you will do it our way, it will work, you will build those relationships, and a lot of those folks will write you checks, and a lot of them will tee you up with people who will write you checks. So it’s all A to Z. I mean, it literally is. Every single aspect of it has been thought out, tested in the fires and and we have it.

Todd Howard: [00:34:37] That’s great.

Stone Payton: [00:34:37] I promised Trisha I’d take my sales hat off, but it really is very well baked, Todd. For the local thing. What we don’t what’s part of it is what’s frustrating for us, what we don’t have well baked is our thing to get more people to do it. But in any given community, I can drop us into San Diego and let us work with the guy. We’ll have him set, you know, it’s it’s.

Todd Howard: [00:34:59] Got it. And why is that? What’s missing?

Stone Payton: [00:35:00] The things you’re talking about. Okay. Being able to articulate an inspirational message that’ll have the San Diego guy get on the phone with me.

Todd Howard: [00:35:12] Got it.

Lee Kantor: [00:35:12] Right. So that’s the. I mean, that’s the heart of our frustration. If Stone and I believe if you just dropped us any. If you took either one of us individually and dropped us in any city in the country, he or I could do this. We feel probably 100% confident that in pretty much any market in a short period of time, by us doing the activity, we know it works. We would quickly become a go to business resource in that environment, in that city, in that town, anywhere in the country. If we know what to do, to insert ourselves into that market, to become known, liked and trusted in a short period of time just by doing the activity. We know that works because we’ve done it so many times.

Todd Howard: [00:36:03] Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:36:04] Challenge is to get a stranger to believe what we say is true. And I think it goes to your point of that bigger why about what is the thing that is going to kind of connect them to the mission more than the results. And they got to believe what we believe that it’s important to be somebody in a local market should be that evangelist for that local business community and be the one that’s telling the stories. And if you get to wear that hat, then you are going to benefit financially. It’s going to help you grow your day job business. And we haven’t been able to articulate that. Why? Uh, effectively.

Todd Howard: [00:36:44] Got it. Okay. So I’m going to back up a couple steps. I really like what you’re saying here. So what I what I’m hearing is that if you guys could get on a plane and go up in the San Diego market, great. What that tells me is that the magic of your company, your product, and therefore your unique approach is in your heads, and we got to get it out so that it becomes portable. And once someone once you explain to somebody what you do, they go, great, I want to do it. Where do I start? And they can take that step without you guys holding their hands. That is a process of enhancing your product so that it is ready for someone to grab hold of and go. And that is going to be a very important component in you guys growing to your 100 site goal. People will not buy your product because they believe the way you believe. Now, I’m not I’m not gonna I’m not gonn, sit here and argue with Simon Sinek. Finding your why is important. All that stuff is important. What I’m telling you is that’s what everyone else is doing. Everyone else is explaining why something is important, why they should step up and go after it and do it. What you guys need is not a belief, it’s an on ramp. You need a very practical product that allows someone to go from zero to step one to step two on their own, independent from you. I think that’s the thing that’s missing. You guys are high on belief, but low on a tangible product that someone can operate without you. And as a result, it’s going to be very difficult for people to grab hold of what you’ve got and stick with it. If you go back to that definition of what an ICP is, it’s someone that buys your product but can easily implement it on their own and see the benefits in a short amount of time. So I have no doubt that it works and you guys can do it. But can the guy in San Diego? It sounds like that’s the rub.

Stone Payton: [00:38:58] Well, I mean, well, we got nine people in Georgia. Well, we got seven in Georgia and one in Arizona and one in Houston. That can do it using all of our stuff. So is it articulating the one? I wonder if it’s not more articulating or making available more details about the on ramp.

Todd Howard: [00:39:18] Because it’s probably a function of both.

Stone Payton: [00:39:22] Okay.

Todd Howard: [00:39:23] You guys are now forced to do something you haven’t had to do before. You’ve always been in the room with somebody, with the exception of your Houston studio partner. Now you’re trying to roll this on a larger scale. What you guys have to do is enhance your product, enhance your approach with additional details and information so that someone can grasp this, understand, oh, this this works really well for my situation. And then start working with it on their own and make progress. And that is a function of enhancing and developing your unique approach. I think conversationally you have a unique approach, but when it becomes something tangible, then someone can take action. So I’ll go back to the two examples I gave Simon Sinek. He talked about inspiration and we all went, oh wow, that’s great. And then he said, I want you to find your why. And he did a real deep dive. He said this is step one. Find your why. And when he did that people took action. Dave Ramsey same thing he was. He wanted people to get out of debt, get your financial house in order. And everybody went, yay! We like that a lot. What do we do though? And he said, baby steps put $1,000 in an envelope. And everybody went got it.

Stone Payton: [00:40:43] And it was saying a lot. He’s saying a lot of those things. And Simon is saying a lot of those things before they ever write a check. It’s just as a result of making that information available. Then they’re drawn in to writing a check to get the real system and all. Is it? So I’m I’m sensing that some of these things that we’re saying are so great that we put together, we got it all figured out. It sounds like we may need to consider making more of that public available here. Have this. You’re going to be a lot better. You know, we got we have cracked the code on this thing. And here’s our baby steps or here’s our thing. And then that draws them in close enough to have a real conversation about setting up a shop in San Diego, as opposed to having that wall there. Am I hearing that right?

Todd Howard: [00:41:26] That is exactly right. You need to be able to explain your unique approach. That will allow people to go, I can do that. That fits my situation really well. I don’t have much time. The fact that they have a technical team that publishes these things after I get done recording, fantastic podcasters don’t have that. The fact that they have instructions on how I Acquire clients. Well, that’s a big time saver. I’m intimidated. I don’t even want to try and figure that stuff out. The fact that they can bridge people over to a long term, uh, sort of sub client who’s running a show out of my studio, that’s fantastic. All of these are elements of your product, and collectively they describe an approach that allow people to say, I like that approach. Of all the approaches out there that put me on a microphone with a person, I like Business RadioX approach. So yeah, it’s Tony, you’re exactly right. You have to enhance this stuff, clarify it, and then you put it out there for free in your sales and marketing so that your ICP can see your approach and say, they’re the ones for me.

Todd Howard: [00:42:44] Okay. Once you have this unique approach, really well understood, It’s rather simple to back into who your ICP is. And I just gave you a couple of, you know, pieces right there. If you guys have administrative help on the back end. This tells me you are not going after one of the geeks that says, oh, I want to know what kind of mic to buy. No, you want somebody who wants to be told what kind of mic to buy. They want somebody else to publish the show for them, build the templates for them. So this is probably somebody that has thought I’d get into podcasting if I didn’t have to geek out and learn all this crap. And you come in and say, well, let us tell you about our approach. And they realize, oh, you guys have all that figured out. And it’s beyond mikes and lighting. It’s instructions on how to walk into a networking meeting and attract a client, and then roll them into a long term show client. Now you’re speaking my language, and now I’m starting to understand who your ICP is.

Stone Payton: [00:43:50] Okay.

Lee Kantor: [00:43:52] So we’ve been focusing and maybe this has been the wrong approach on people. We in our minds, the problem our system solves is the prospecting problem. The the the kind of foundational thinking that launched the company was people have a hard time having that first conversation with someone that’s important to them. And we developed a system that allows them to elegantly have that first conversation with the people they most desire to meet in an elegant, non salesy manner. That’s that’s the premise of the entire business. And we do that through, you know, doing our interviews and we created a playbook to that end where we say, hey, do you have a problem reaching the people that are important to you? Do these steps, and then you’re going to see that if you do these steps, this is going to solve that prospecting problem. Not only will it solve it once, it’ll solve it forever. Because as part of our methodology, each of the people that raise their hand to say they want to be interviewed, a good a high percentage of them are going to refer you to the next person. That might be a good person to be interviewed, which all should be somebody that’s a prospect for you in some form or fashion. So we have a playbook that kind of delineates that. But what I’m hearing you say that maybe the prospecting, the person with prospecting challenge isn’t the right person, that it’s more the person that is the aspiring podcaster. Am I hearing you wrong or what’s your thinking there?

Todd Howard: [00:45:43] The based on what you just said, the ideal client that you’re looking for is somebody who needs that easy on ramp to have those initial conversations and then take their client through the phases of being the initial being, uh, showing up for an initial show and then moving them to a long term client where they have their own show within your studio, that playbook, that’s where your magic is. It’s that stuff that I think you guys have sort of committed to memory and internalized, which is why if we could drop you in San Diego, you’d pull it off. But if it’s not portable, if you can’t, if you can’t lay that approach out for somebody very clearly so that they can do that on their own, they’re going to struggle.

Lee Kantor: [00:46:34] So what is the what is the challenge that this person is having before they should hire us Or at least learn more about us.

Todd Howard: [00:46:44] Yep. So let’s take a look at the four mechanics that you laid out a while a while ago, and think about who needs that. So ready made infrastructure. I wrote down landing pages, but you said quite a bit of of things that you guys have ready made. To me, this is someone, uh, your ICP has no technical, technical talent or interest. The fact that you have something ready made is very attractive. They’re probably the opposite of a geek that would enjoy learning all that stuff. They don’t want to learn all that stuff. Okay, let’s do the second one. Instructions on how to get a guest. This is someone who’s not a natural salesperson. Yes, sales is part of it. Sales probably intimidates them. So if you can appeal to the fact if you can, if you can help them understand that the fact that they don’t like sales is actually a strength in this case, because it is relationship oriented. Here are instructions on how to get a guest via relationship, not sales. That’s certainly a one liner that they that will appeal to them. And so now there’s a bunch of people sort of on the platter of potential ICP that we can just wipe off the list and go, nope, we don’t want those guys that are out, you know, wheeling and dealing. It’s the other guys administrative help on the back end. This is another piece of evidence that this is someone that does not want to get involved in the technology.

Todd Howard: [00:48:24] They want the outreach without the pain and effort of figuring out how to do it. This is probably someone who is not involved in social media, but they know they should be. If you were to add a social media element to what you do. They love it. They know they need it. They just don’t want to learn it. Distribution, wider audiences, all of that. These are things that just scare them. And then the bridge from the show to the client turning this into a long term value proposition for their client. That requires a lot of really good instruction. And if you were to enhance that. This is somebody who wants to not be in sales mode. They don’t want to be. They want to feel like they’re they’re doing these cold calls all the time. They want to build one relationship and see that relationship be incredibly fruitful over time. And you can easily delineate that from podcasting. Podcasting is find a guest, do a show, find a guest, do a show. You’re always shopping for guests. What you guys do is you find a guest, you develop a long term relationship and you help them find and keep people forever. I would emphasize the keeping part finding. We help you find people. We help you keep people. And this is somebody that sales makes them tired. They don’t want to do it. Relationships. They love that.

Lee Kantor: [00:49:58] So right now our avatar has been coaches, consultants, people in professional services. You know, the people that are kind of selling the invisible, selling more service than a widget. Do you think they were on the right track with that, or do we have to kind of segment that down even further?

Todd Howard: [00:50:18] I would segment that down even further. We’re getting into a bit of psychographics here, which you guys have given me, leads me to psychographic conclusions. If I had more information about your unique approach, we would probably get into some of the professional demographics. Off hand coaches are certainly primed to want relationships. If it’s somebody that’s coming out of corporate and what they did in corporate was not sales oriented, and now they’re in a place where they have to build those relationships, they will feel uncomfortable selling themselves. So yes, I can see a subset of coaches being a good a good group here. I do not see you as an alternative to podcasting on the surface. And so I would say don’t compare yourself to podcasters. I don’t. I’d rather you not be an alternative to podcasters, because when you do that, you all of a sudden make your ICP podcasters and you say, we’re an alternative to podcasting because we do it this way. I think your ICP never even thought about being a podcast. They probably listened to them. They might be developing a networking meeting, which on its own is a version of developing a community. But networking meetings are exhausting in their own way, and you might be able to say, okay, stop running your free networking meeting. Start doing this instead because it’s good for the people in your network that’s going to appeal to somebody who runs a networking meeting and is tired of it.

Lee Kantor: [00:51:54] Now, what we’ve been thinking lately, that like some of the, like you said earlier, that a point of leverage is maybe a larger person who runs a larger group, whereas access to a larger group, a lot of thes organizations that have larger groups, you know, business organizations, one of the things they recommend members do is kind of join those, uh, BNI type networking groups as part of their way of going to market. And we were trying to position ourselves, like you said, maybe not as an alternative to going to a BNI, but a different way of approaching those BNI where instead of going to the BNI and saying, hey, I’m Bob, I’m a CPA, you’re going and saying, hey, Bob, I’m uh, you’re going to the networking meeting and saying, hey, I run San Diego, Business RadioX, and I’m looking for interesting guests. So now when they go to those meetings, they’re positioned slightly differently in their ask is different. Instead of saying, buy my stuff, it’s more of, hey, I’m here to support and celebrate the ecosystem we’re all in, and I can do that because I, I’m a Business RadioX partner.

Todd Howard: [00:53:15] Okay. So you can you can see this for one of the people that run a BMI, BNI group or go to a BNI group for them to step outside of this and and do what you guys are doing. Is that what you’re saying?

Lee Kantor: [00:53:26] Well, that if you are a BNI, if you run the BNI group, you can use what we’re doing as a way to give voice and help every one of your members be more successful, because now you’re giving them a place, a platform to tell their story in a more public manner rather than in this closed group setting. Number one. Number two, if you are just a member of a BNI, now you can go into that BNI meeting, not just as a member that’s trying to create leads for yourself, but you can go in there wearing the hat of I’m the media so I can tell everybody here their story so I can help everybody here get the word out about the great work that they’re doing. Because a lot of folks, at least the ones that we’ve been interviewing that are in professional services, one of their pain points is they feel like they’re a best kept secret, that they do good work, but nobody knows they exist. So we become a vehicle to help them get the word out, to tell their story, and to tell other people’s story. Uh, at the same time.

Todd Howard: [00:54:41] Okay, I like that. So I think we’re a lot closer than we were an hour ago when we started with this. We’re now thinking in terms of your ICP is someone you find by looking through your unique approach. So now we’re really getting specific about what your unique approach is. And as a result, we’re starting to find potential candidates. That’s the direction that this conversation needs to go. And so I just want to capture that this is the right way to think. Even if we don’t land on the answer on the show, this is the right way to think about it. Lee, I really like what you just said. One of the things that I hear as we walk through all of this is that your product develops relationships. It sets a stage. It allows people to come in and sort of show what they’re. What they do is their best kept secret. But I’d like to take that deeper. And if we had more time, that’s what I would recommend is let’s go deeper into that. If you walk into a meeting and you say, well, I’m the media, join me because I’m the media and people are sort of and, you know, again, I’m, I’m shortening all of this for the purpose of this conversation.

Todd Howard: [00:55:59] But if people are a little starstruck, oh, there’s the media. I want to get involved in this. I like that, but it’s not a defensible position because others can do that through podcasting and and maybe in time, various means. But there’s something that you guys do around investing in people in the long term. And that to me is where the fork in the road happens. Podcasting is a one and done. You guys are investing. You’re investing in your clients and you’re showing your clients how to invest in theirs. And I like that a lot. And I hear that that is thematic throughout everything that we’re talking about. What I would challenge you guys to do is figure out how do we how do we enhance our product to develop? To invest, to show people how to invest in other people, which may even bleed outside publishing a show. It may be helping them create an identity. For example, right now you guys have a Houston, a Houston business radio show. That’s great. Can the Houston Business radio show be known for one thing in particular and attract, uh, clients and speakers that really talk around that one thing.

Todd Howard: [00:57:29] And as a result, the Houston Business radio show isn’t just the Houston version of a larger radio show. It itself has its own identity. And therefore, people who come guest on that Houston business radio show know that they’re talking to a market that’s been cold because of its identity. Now I’m just making this up. We can have a whole process we could go through and figure this out. We’re not trying to do this right now. What I’m doing is I’m probing. I’m listening to what you’re saying. I’m thinking about what’s defensible and what’s not. The fact that you guys have a lot of ready made stuff is defensible. But thematically, one of the things you guys do is you’re investing heavily in your clients. But the real magic is between your client and their client. So that makes me want, since that’s the more defensible position, I want to enhance that further. What can you do? To invest. Between your client and your client’s client to develop those long term relationships where both of them are, are receiving tremendous amounts of value? To me, that feels very unique in a world of one and done conversations.

Lee Kantor: [00:59:00] So what would our homework be for next week?

Todd Howard: [00:59:04] Okay, homework for next week. I would say, uh, go back to the bullets that you guys went through where I asked you what is unique about your business and just take a look through there. A lot of those things you can cross off the list now. They’re valuable, there’s no doubt, but they’re not necessarily unique. I want you to look for the strongest card in your hand to play. In my mind so far with this conversation, I’ve seen two cards that you guys have. One is the fact that you’ve removed so much of the burden off of people with your technical infrastructure, the back end work, and so on, things we talked about. The other area where you’ve got a really unique opportunity is in helping your clients invest in their clients to build long term relationships and create something where your clients clients get tremendous value. So the exercise is look through those things. Pull out the best cards. I just told you what I think the two best cards are, and then figure out how you can enhance those. Once you’ve got those as good as you can get them. Then I want you to go through the exercise that we went through on this call and say, who needs that? For example, now that we know that some that all the technical work is done, we know that we’re looking for somebody that does not want to do any of that technical work at all.

Todd Howard: [01:00:31] They have really no interest in podcasting. If they weren’t going to work with Business RadioX, they weren’t going to be a podcaster, but they might run a networking meeting. So it’s relationships minus technology. We just got closer to understanding your ICP, and the reason we did that is because we started with your unique approach. So Stone and Lee, I would say look to the list you gave me. Think about the notes from this call. Pick the best cards in your hand to play. Then ask yourself, can we enhance this further to find this even better for people so that we can explain it to somebody in San Diego? And then the third step is, once you have that in your hand, Who would benefit the most from this and you will start describing your ICP. Once you have that exercise complete, this is what you carry into sales and marketing and you tell them, listen, we are not a radio show. We’re not going against the podcasters. That’s not what we do. This is what we do. This is what makes us unique. And you lay those two cards on the table and you say, these two cards will appeal strongly to these people. Now go get them. And that’s the rally cry for your sales and marketing team.

Stone Payton: [01:01:56] Fantastic, man. Well, this has been incredibly helpful for me. Lee.

Lee Kantor: [01:02:01] Yeah. Todd, we really appreciate, you working with us here. If somebody wants to learn more about your practice, where should they go?

Todd Howard: [01:02:09] Go to grow a niche comm and you can check out what I do. There’s only one button on the site. Schedule a call with me. Uh, and if you want, I. I offer for free. An opportunity to go through a little version of what we just spent an hour doing. Somebody can describe their business to me, and I’ll help them understand what they need to do to be more unique so that they can find their ICP and go, go take care of them.

Stone Payton: [01:02:34] Thank you so much, Todd.

Todd Howard: [01:02:37] Absolutely welcome. Stone and Lee is very nice to meet both of you.

Speaker1: [01:02:42] Thanks for listening to scaling in Public. The next Business RadioX 100 markets. Are you ready to enjoy a steady stream of discovery calls and finally, stop being a best kept secret? It’s time to step out of the shadows and watch your coaching business grow. Let’s fill your calendar ten discovery calls in a month, guaranteed. Go to Burke’s to download the free Business RadioX playbook.