Perseverance

Crisis One — Being Prepared

Interviewing takes about an hour including travel time, but that’s far from the whole story. Like any effective business meeting, getting the desired outcome requires preparation. The first 15 interviews were easy, almost fun, because I knew the back stories of the business owners so the preparation part wasn’t onerous, after all, this was a casual chat. I think part of me wanted to do things differently from traditional media, yet in the back of my mind I also knew that preparation might have its place.

Serendipity vs Preparation

Up until that point, interviewing by serendipity had been deliberate, allowing the conversation to meander, uncovering topics naturally as we talked, as if we were walking through a nature reserve pointing out interesting flora and fauna along the way. If felt like there was rarely a moment when the interview took a wrong turn, or we paused on a topic for too long.

That changed shortly after, as I went into an interview unprepared and serendipity wasn’t available to me. I left feeling like I had only skimmed the surface of the talent in front of me, and I could’ve done much better. From that point, I started researching the interviewees, getting a feel for their business and for them as a person. However I wanted to keep the free flowing nature of the chat, that didn’t presume answers or direction. Back then it was difficult enough getting the introduction right the first time!

Selecting vs Nominating

If the first decade and a half of interviews were selected because we knew each other, the second fifteen involved a shifting of gears. This included simply calling or email people that I was curious about their story. Cold calling is mostly worthless in larger cities, but in Hawke’s Bay I factored in that I had met many of our business community already, and after all, this was an invitation to be part of something new.

I went in with the mindset that every business featured was getting all the value and shared what the value was over the phone and followed up by email (or sometimes vice versa), never trying to close on the phone, but asking to send them some information to consider the invitation. You can’t interview someone who is kind of interested in taking part, they have to be a willing party.

The 5 critical elements of the follow up email were:

Subject: Personalised Invitation, after all, ‘invitation’ is an email marketing power word.

Sentence One: why I’m doing this and what’s in it for them (WIIFM).

Remember, few read on if Sentence One excludes WIIFM.

Sentence Two: Demonstrate credibility through social proof.

Sentence Three: Cover off expected barriers.

Sentence Four: Make it easy to take the next step.

That was it.

More often than not, it got you a near instant yes or no.

Crisis Two — Life Gets Busy

Work gets busy. Inviting business owners to take part in something recorded is more than a casual meeting. This involves preparation on both sides of the table to ensure the best outcome. Meetings were getting rescheduled or cancelled last minute and it was eating into my own work time commitments. It was time to outsource.

What an Exec PA can do for you

Alison was a life saver. She took a spreadsheet of maybes and potentials into confirmed meetings, pre-meeting reminders and where needed, rescheduled. It also felt like it freed me up to focus more on the interview prep, the recording and the post production.

An unexpected benefit was Alison’s own recommendations helped moved the show in a different direction adding some names and businesses that I hadn’t heard of before. This added to my own excitement, because preparation for the interview became my only interview lifeline. Now it felt like real mental aerobics, thinking on the fly, keeping the conversation going and all the while nudging the conversation in a direction that unearthed gems for the listening audience.

Another unintended benefit of Alison’s contribution was the even-ing up of a gender imbalance of interviewees although this still hasn’t been fully resolved to my satisfaction. Around this time, Alison got the regular work she was looking for and rounded out her contribution to the project cleanly and it was back on my shoulders… still 75+ episodes out.

25 interviews. 6 Months in. Ready for iTunes.

This was a moment of reckoning. I was so excited to have reached the quarter way mark. What an achievement. But…. and there’s always the ebb and flow when taking on the impossible… and there’s always a but. But… I was 6 months in. This was not a 2 year project. It was a 12 month project. While that thought was gnawing away at my mind, I had figured it was time to make the show official and publish to iTunes.

I could have published on iTunes Day One, but that is unlikely to get your podcast to #1 because you’ve got no back catalogue, which means you won’t feature in the category you select and people are less likely to subscribe.

I had selected business as the category with the show title including marketing, and was hoping to be listed in the Top 10 for a week or so. I made sure than in that first week, I got as many people to subscribe and review the show as possible to build the credibility indicators on iTunes.

The Ryan Marketing Show came in at #3 and there I was, with a show right next to speakers who were my digital mentors.

It took six months, and here was a glimpse of possibility, yet time continued to march forward.