Secret to Closing Big Deals! 😮And why 1,000,000 Downloads Means Nothing! Jay’s SCOOP | Ep. 387

Jay Schwedelson: We are back for do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold. And today I wanna share with you why your company doesn't matter if it's a consumer brand, a B2B brand, a nonprofit, why your business needs to be putting out content that makes you have to interact with important. People, what does that even mean?

Jay Schwedelson: So this podcast just passed 1 million downloads this week. We've only been making it for less than two years, and this is not a, yay. Jay is great. Pat me on the back. Who cares? Who cares if we pass $1 million? It's a big, big deal, but who actually cares? I never started this podcast to get a boatload of downloads or sponsors or any of that stuff.

Jay Schwedelson: This is not about your business, just starting a podcast. It's not about your business, just having a newsletter. It's about having something like that that forces you to meet critical people. What do I mean by that? So you're out there like, well, I have a direct to consumer brand. I'm just trying to reach a lot of people that wanna buy makeup or I have a boring, you know, B2B brand and we're just trying to sell, you know, plumbing supplies to whoever, or I, I, I'm a nonprofit.

Jay Schwedelson: We're trying to get donations from whoever. I don't care about connecting with one person here or one person there. What I mean by connecting is having guests, having guests on a podcast, having, uh, people in your newsletter that you're interviewing, doing any kind of collaboration. That is why. I started the podcast, I could care less.

Jay Schwedelson: No offense. I want you to listen. Please listen. But I could care less how many downloads I actually get on this podcast. And you're like, what? Why isn't it all about downloads? No, it never was. The reason I started the podcast was that I view it and it is as the ultimate a BM play, the ultimate account-based marketing play where?

Jay Schwedelson: It's very hard. For example, sometimes for me to get somebody to take a call with me, I want so and so to have a call with me so I can figure out how to work with them. Right? And they would ghost me. They wouldn't get back to me. They went whatever. But when I started the podcast, and this is why I started the podcast, and I say, Hey, do you wanna come on my podcast instead of ghosting me?

Jay Schwedelson: They'll be like, sure. 'cause everybody has an ego. Everybody wants to be involved. Sure, I'll come on your podcast. And then the 10 minutes before and the 10 minutes after. Um, I do that guest episode with somebody. I befriend them and then I try to do work with them. I'll give you a secret. Shh, don't tell anybody, but for example, Gary V is coming on the podcast in about a week or two, right?

Jay Schwedelson: I wanna do work with Gary V and hitting Gary V up and saying, Hey, uh, let's do work together. That's crickets. Come on my podcast. Sure, why not? Right? And that's exactly how it goes down. And that is how I'm intentional about using this platform to meet the people that I want to meet. Right. Sophie Miller from Pretty Little Marketers, I'm a huge fan of, of pretty little marketers.

Jay Schwedelson: I want to do stuff with pretty little marketers, by the way. Follow them on LinkedIn if you're not already. And so she's coming on the podcast 'cause really, yeah. I wanna interview her. But what I really wanna do is talk to her, befriend her, and get a collab going now. This is what big brands do. This is why Whole Foods has a podcast.

Jay Schwedelson: This is why Trader Joe's has inside Trader Joe's. This is why the Skinny Confidential has one. This is why the Chief Product officer of Skims Kim Kardashian's brand has a podcast. This is what you wanna be doing with your newsletter. Forget about podcast. When you have a newsletter, say, Hey. I'm gonna do a one-on-one q and a with this big time person.

Jay Schwedelson: You reach out to 'em, you do the q and a in your newsletter, and then you befriend them. Stop thinking about the content you're putting out there as just entertaining, right? The audience that you are trying to communicate with, stop putting out there so you could just become a thought leader, okay? For people to respect you or for your current clients to like, oh yeah, they know what's going on.

Jay Schwedelson: No. Flip the script and get extremely intentional. About who you want to meet and then how that can change your business. Like, oh, if I can meet this one person and we could figure out a potential collab that can change the trajectory of your business, you literally only need a handful of relationships like that for your business to go to a whole.

Jay Schwedelson: Another level. It doesn't matter if you're a consumer brand, a business brand, a nonprofit, you need to think about the content that you are putting out that your company is putting out, not as a check the box. We got out our newsletter. Okay, we started a podcast. Let's make sure we get it out every week.

Jay Schwedelson: No, none of that. You need to say, okay, this is a vehicle for us to meet the exact right people and befriend them, and that is how we're going to win. So that's what I've done with this podcast. That's why we release a guest episode every single week, because I want to meet those people. Yeah, I try to make the episode not suck.

Jay Schwedelson: I try to make it useful. I try to get pull stuff outta these people that everybody can benefit from, but sh don't tell anybody. I'm really doing the guest episodes 'cause I want to meet those people. And this is how you grow your network in an awesome way, right? This is how you do everything. So reimagine the content that your company's putting out, the why and.

Jay Schwedelson: And don't focus on downloads. Yeah, please keep listening. I hope we still get downloads, but to tell you the truth, it was never about that. It's not about that. And that's not what should be about for you, for your newsletter, for any form of content that you're putting out. Same thing, by the way, for a webinar.

Jay Schwedelson: Same idea. Anyway. Alright. Let's get into, before we get to the ridiculous portion of this podcast, I want to let you know that this podcast is exclusively presented by Marigold. Now, Marigold has a platform, an email setting platform that I use called Emma. Your platform stinks. It does. This platform's awesome.

Jay Schwedelson: And just for listeners of this podcast, you could try Emma, this amazing email platform. It does loyalty marketing, does all sorts of stuff. You could try it three months, you get 50% off three months. This is a ridiculous offer. You go to J schon.com/emma, that is j schwa.com/ema for 50% off for three months.

Jay Schwedelson: Come on. That's awesome. All right. Let's get into, since you didn't ask. So, uh, I don't know about everybody else, but whenever there is a bug, a bug in my home, I lose my mind. Um, so we had a fly that got into our house and this fly was flying ever. I was chasing this fly. I think this was the fastest fly in the history of the universe.

Jay Schwedelson: I couldn't do anything to catch this fly. I named the fly Frederick, Frederick the Fly because I'm like, this is our new pet. Somebody get a collar, I'm gonna go walk our fly. And we couldn't find, we couldn't get the fly. Eventually, my son got the fly after like literally 24 hours. I was losing my mind, but I don't know what it is.

Jay Schwedelson: But when I see a bug of any kind, I can't handle it. Like my wife, she'll be like, oh, there's a bug. She kills it, throws it away. Whatever. I see a bug. I'm like, oh my God. If there's an infestation, even when I see one bug, there's an infestation. We need full military support. We need to bring in every specialist on earth.

Jay Schwedelson: And then I get really crazy. So I'll tell you, we had this bug in my home. My door's, like I'm gonna go kill it. I go, no, you have to capture it and put it in the Ziploc bag. This is what I say. She's like, what is wrong with you? And then I go and, and then I'm no life. I'm such a loser. So she put in the Ziploc bag, I take a picture of the bug and I upload it to Cha GPT, and I go, what the hell is this?

Jay Schwedelson: Do we have a major problem and it gives me back, it's probably this kind of bug, right? And then I call up, we have a pest control company, and I say, listen, I captured the bug. I'm leaving it on the counter. So when you get here, okay, I want you to make sure that we have no other bugs like this, and I want you to find their family.

Jay Schwedelson: I want you to destroy them. I want you to lock in. They're like, dude, what is actually wrong with you? And so every time there's a bug in my house, my family is like, oh no, don't tell Dad because he will go nuclear on the bug situation. But you know what I say back to them. I say, listen, you can make fun of me all you want with my Ziploc bags and uploading a chacha T but we ain't walking around here with, uh, uh, the ants, uh, marching around town.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay? So everyone could screw off. I'm not gonna change my, my, uh, focus on. No bugs. No bugs here. Although flies are the worst. Once again, no idea what we're talking about. Welcome to this podcast. Oh my goodness. Listen, um, you should register for Guru Conference. We are now fully in guru conference mode. It is our free virtual email marketing event.

Jay Schwedelson: We're gonna have 25,000 people there. Nicole Kidman's gonna be there. Lance Bass is gonna be there. Uh, it's gonna be wild. Guru conference.com. It is free. Go there, do that. And if you have a bug, call me. I will help you. Alright, later.