Transcript
WEBVTT
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Yeah,
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Hi everyone, welcome back to be to be
growth. I'm Olivia Hurley with Sweet
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fish Media and today I'm joined by our
very own dan Sanchez, Director of
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Audience Growth. How you doing dan? I'm
doing well. Thanks Olivia. Oh, awesome.
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So today I wanted to peel back the
curtain a little bit and look at sweet
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fish itself um and talk with you about
content creation and how you are
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building the plane while flying it as
the expression goes. So to jump right
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in, what are you currently doing to
create content at Sweet Fish Media were
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certainly well known for podcasting.
It's kind of our thing. We have this
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show that you're even listening to
right now and we're also well known for
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are linked in content and that's where
a lot of people discover BtB growth is
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because we are prolific creating
content for linked in all the time. So
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those have been our primary two
channels for years now. We're also
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slowly and surely building up our S E.
O. Contents. We still think um that
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search engine optimization, that
ranking on google is still a big part
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of B two B marketing. So while we're
still improving BTB growth for
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podcasting linked in, we're also taking
on extensive blogging. So why would you
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want to build an infrastructure for
content? What would this allow you to
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do? Infrastructure is to me vital
because otherwise you're just kind of
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winging it all the time and that just
slows things down. I've just worked at
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so many different places agencies even
that were like the experts, all the
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experts were in one room and it just
took forever to get a single blog post
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done because there is no system or
structure in order to get it done. No,
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like this is what a blog post should
look like every time it was just kind
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of everything was starting from scratch
um which made it so you can only
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publish a blog poster to a week and
that's just not fast enough if
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everything has to be checked so closely
because we're not even sure what we're
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checking for every time, then it just
slows the whole process down. And
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that's what creating systems and
processes are for is really speed. So
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you can do a much larger volume of
content. There's a bit of a debate out
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there in the content marketing world
and they say like, oh quality is more
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important than quantity and I'm like
what? No, it's the other way around
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quantity before quality. I'm like, it's
a debate, we go back and forth on it,
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on linkedin all the time. James and I,
and most of the sweet, that's the rest
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of the sweet fish Media team are on the
quantity side. We believe that doing
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more content is better because it will
lead to better quality and that's a big
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part of why process and why building
good infrastructure is so important so
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that you can deliver actually at a
consistently high quality while still
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putting out the quantity. And that's
why I get passionate about it because
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I'm not, I'm not okay with just a blog
post a week. I'm not okay with just
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even a few Blinken posts today. I'm
like, well, I'm a marketer if we want
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to grow more and want to grow faster
than more content is the answer, as
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long as it has a certain quality
standard that you're trying to hit.
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Yeah, so tell me a little bit more
about the cadence of quantity, how
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often do you think you should be
putting out content? Um, so it's a
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little bit different for every channel.
Every channel has like a rhythm to it
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and what can be considered too little
or too much um With podcasting like
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once a week is really the minimum. We
certainly have customers that are doing
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every other week and I I'm always on
their heels for that because it's like
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it's just too little, it's like the
minimum. But honestly we do a daily
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show here at G. D. P. Growth and the
reason why the be like our show is so
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large is because we have such a crazy
volume of episodes. I mean we've been
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open for 66 years. We have over 2000
episodes and that's generated over four
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million downloads and then an average
of 100 160,000 downloads a month. It's
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because of the volume or daily show
often multiple times a day with
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podcasting. I'm assumed. I think once
we probably hit like if we were
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consistently doing more than two a day,
that would probably be too much. And if
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we were consistently doing that and
still had more to push, I'd probably
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launch another podcast. Um, and still
do more. Like I would just launch more
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channels and just segmented out more.
If GDP growth couldn't handle all the
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content we could possibly put into it,
which we've gotten to that point before
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and then we've had to scale back at
some point to just be, to be growth.
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We've had up to five podcasts, but at a
time, so you can always make more
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channels and more podcasts, you could
essentially be wondering who has, like
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dozens of podcasts, right? And then
let's see other channels, like twitter
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can handle a lot Lincoln, you can only
do so much Lincoln, you could probably
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do max three max four posts a day, but
really to is probably the right right
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amount. That's why I'm excited. I
finally got stories, I was late to the
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game, everybody got in september and
then a few people like James and I were
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on like for the black list, we are on
the naughty list for some reason and
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only recently got it. I don't know what
the heck happened linked in if you're
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listening to this come on. So stories,
you can post a lot more as people used
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to consuming a lot more stories. So I'm
excited. We have that with blogging.
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Some people argue with me on this, but
I literally think you can, You could
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probably get away with 20-30 posts in
one website a week. If you can do it,
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if you can get up to that point, I've
gotten up to that point of getting just
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past 20 a week with one website and it
makes a huge difference. Then there's
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ways to do it and scale it. But it's,
it's a different kind of blogging model.
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You're essentially creating a library
of content rather than a subscriber
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base that's kind of like you're
shooting, otherwise you'd be hitting on
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with too many blog posts in a week.
There is a way to do it and it does
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make a huge difference as far as
bringing in a volume of content from
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google. Hi dan Sanchez here with a
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Well we could deep dive right into that.
But for the sake of this, this episode,
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curious now, what do you think this
infrastructure that would support all
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of this content creation look like? So
infrastructure looks like a couple of
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different pieces for me and you have to
roll it out in stages and there's
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actually a process for building
processes that I like to follow. I used
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to I used to hunt for this and then
finally like an old wise sage of
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business who used to work at Procter
and Gamble for a long time as a high up
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executive. Um I was in a meeting with
him when he was just there, like just
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blessing people with wisdom and I don't
know what why I deserve to be in this
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meeting once with this dude who was
just a wonderful and so so wise when it
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came to business and I wish I had
thought of the question, but somebody
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else asked him like what's your process
for building processes? And he like uh
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what he said, what came out of his
mouth like like marked me for like the
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rest of my career because now this is
my this is it's become my process for
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building process and I don't know where
he got it from. I'm sure someone wrote
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this down along like someone published
this a long time ago, Probably back in
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the 80s based on the kind of the
language of it. But since then it's
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been my my blueprint for building
processes And it's four steps, analyze,
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optimize, standardize and mechanize. So
let's walk through that analyzes
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actually just figuring out what is your
current process for executing whatever
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it was that if you are, are you making
blog posts, analyze what what's the
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current process people are using to do
it. It might be a complete chaos
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document the chaos kind of like bullet
point out what's currently going on And
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then optimize step two. How do you make
it better? What changes can be made?
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How do you make sure what's this,
certain quality metrics you want to hit
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what is a good blog post? And how do we
know we hit that every time? So
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optimize it come up with a better
process for doing it while you've
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documented what's currently going on
and they're still executing according
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to that, right? A better version of it.
And then you have to step three
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standardized like make sure that the
people who are executing this day in
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and day out your your blogging team or
maybe just one blogger. Maybe it's just
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you understands the new process and
that comes with actually just writing
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down like step one. This is what we do.
Step to like the more thoroughly you
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can document this and some kind of uh
database or even um we use train you'll
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hear at sweet fish but I've used
Microsoft one note you can use Evernote
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you can use notion any place where you
can keep your documentation. I prefer
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to not keep it in google drive. I don't
know why I just I find that things get
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lost in a cloud file storage like that
but most places work well. Um so that
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standardized and then step for
mechanize what parts can you automate
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what parts can you just make it so that
human doesn't have to touch it anymore.
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But it's gonna get done relatively well.
It's not always possible to automate
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everything. But if you can automate
some parts it goes a long way right.
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Maybe you just focus on like when you
publish a blog post for example, does
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it get sent to all the different social
media sites and maybe sometimes you're
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customizing how you posted something
like linkedin like we do. But in other
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sites maybe you just want to get it out
there. So you just need an automation
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so that every time it publishes someone,
a tool catches the rss feeds and then
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automatically just posted to twitter
because you don't care about twitter,
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but at least it's being syndicated
there. Right. Little things like that
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go a long way if you can automate it.
So again, the four steps that I've used
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to do this or analyze, optimize
standardized and recognize a few other
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elements that I make sure that I'm
building along the way is making sure
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that I'm touching like a lot of
communication is happening with the
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team because like you said like
building the airplane while it's flying
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or like the metaphor I like to use is
like changing the tires on the bus
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while it's running down the freeway.
It's really difficult. You just don't
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have the luxury of just stopping
production and then resetting it. So
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there's kind of like four major things
that I try to look at and talk
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extensively with the team on at once
and they kind of focus on. The process
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is essentially the step by steps, the
training like how do we, if we get new
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people into this position, like how do
we make sure they know everything they
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need to know. What are the targets?
What are, what are we actually trying
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to shoot for? How many blog posts and
how much traffic are we expected to get
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from these blog posts? If we're trying
to rank on google and how much of that
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traffic are we trying to turn into
leads and leads into pipeline? Like
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what are we generally trying to shoot
for? And then kPI is like, what are
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those things, what now that we know
what our targets are? What are we
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hoping to hit every week? Every month
so that we can kind of measure to see
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if we're offer on target And those are.
Again, I include the team on all of
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those early on. So that your making
those incremental adjustments over time.
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So now how are you going to build this
out or how have you been building this
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out? Well? And I think here's the key
while continuing to make content
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specifically at sweet fish. It's been a
challenge that sweet fish because
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there's been so much change over the
last couple of months. Two months ago I
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was a team of one. I was a marketing
department of just me. I was the head
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of marketing. I was also the marketing
specialist, the email guy, the ceo guy,
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the website guy. The web web
development dude. I designed my own
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little ads and was doing a little bit
of everything is fantastic. But now I
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have a team of four people, Uh five
including me and we're starting to get
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things going. Um and I had to shift a
lot of my priorities had to take a step
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back from some of the projects that I
was working on. So some things have
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been going slow, like RBB podcasting
courts, which just finally launched
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today. I just put it out. If you're
listening to this, go check it out.
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Just go to sweet Fish Media dot com
slash course and you can find it. Um
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That took a little while longer, like a
delayed it a month because we had had
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to stop a lot of what I was doing to
kind of on board the team again,
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because some processes had already been
put in place, but I needed to make sure
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to get some done sooner. And again, I
try to build out a picture of like
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what's ideal, like a snapshot of, like
ideally, what is it, what is a great
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blogging strategy look like knowing
that I can't get there now, but that's
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where we're going to. So now that I'm
working with our blogger, I can be like,
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hey, this is what ideal looks like, Do
you want to help me make this? Do you
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want do you want to work with me to
build this amazing blogging engine that
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produces fantastic results and paint a
picture of what success could really
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look like that we're working towards.
So casting vision for what a lot of
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these things can look like now that I
have people over individual aspects, uh
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some over branding, some over Arlington
content, another guy over building
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communities, um and trying to pit what
paint, what the best picture looks like.
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We'll also incrementally week by week,
building a little bit more process,
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getting a little bit more clear in the
KPI is like, we've only been working
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for Uh six weeks together now and
slowly, like this week or maybe next
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week, I'll probably have an Excel sheet
with some basic metrics that we want to
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track so slowly. I'm just adding
infrastructure that at the end of the
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day, like, I want to try to have so
much infrastructure in place that if,
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like I, like, God forbid I die like
everybody knows what they need, what
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they need to do when they need to do it
and for what reasons they need to do it
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and where we're all heading so that
somebody who maybe replaces me
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understands what the plan was, that
maybe they deviate from it. But uh they
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have something that's set up, they have
an engine that's running and the reason
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why I like to be able to have that kind
of infrastructure in places so it can
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run without me. It frees me up to go
and build more systems for new projects.
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And it also just delivers predictable
results. If you have a consistent way
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of doing things and it delivers
consistent results, then you can kind
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of better forecast And make changes and
maybe forecast is like, Oh, if we're
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growing 10% year over year, what what
tweaks can we make to the system to get
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us to 20%. It just makes it a lot
better. And we're taking small baby
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steps to be able to do that here at
sweet fish. Have there been any, I
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guess, downfalls or cons too? Taking
time away from just building content to
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build out the infrastructure? Yes,
there's definitely been small balls
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that have dropped like haven't we
haven't been producing quite as many
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leads as we would have hoped for sweet
fish media. And so that's kind of an
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awkward conversation at the lead team
every week where it's kind of like
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they're looking at SQL s, we have
enough like new business going on that.
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It's not a huge deal, but at the same
time, we all know, like, hey, if we're
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not bringing, don't see a certain
amount of people coming in and
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requesting information about podcasting,
uh, that eventually, that will slow our
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growth. And so trying to take, it's
always a balance of trying to deliver
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results now while also trying to build
infrastructure so that you can go
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farther faster in the future. And I'm
still having conversations with that
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now and it's mostly like our head of
operations who is much more aware of
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like finances and stuff, who is more
concerned about that James is the
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visionary is kind of like, it's just a
slow spot once we hit all these
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infrastructure, things will be golden.
You know, he's just kind of like, yeah,
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like it'll come when it will come. I
don't want to, I don't want to do some
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short term things that just land as bad
leads that will turn later anyway. So
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that's a conversation. I think
sometimes you just have little things
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drop. Like we usually be to be growth
is a daily podcast and there's been
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some days we've missed. We just haven't
produced the content because well I
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honestly didn't record it or you didn't
get our producer the thing that she
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needed on time. Like I have something
due to her right now that I promised
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her it's Wednesday. I promised her on
monday and I still haven't gotten it to
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her. So that's going to be an episode
that got delayed because while I took
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more time to work on an infrastructure
project instead. So it's a lot of
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juggling and sometimes balls balls drop
hopefully nothing like Supercritical
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though. Yeah. Isn't there that like
well well known plastic versus glass
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ball analogy. Yeah, sometimes you don't
know which ones are which until it's
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too late. I'm trying really hard. Your
best guess. Yeah, totally. So
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understanding that long term benefits
are farther faster for building out
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infrastructure, what are some of the
short term benefits of building our
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infrastructure while continuing to
build your content? Short term benefits?
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I feel like it's just for me personally,
i it feels really productive. Like I
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hate to be the person that's always
focused on the tyranny of the urgent,
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the things that are just happening all
the time. In fact, I'll give somewhat
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of a morbid story, but this story gets
me, someone told me that once long ago
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and it's always stuck in my head, so
now I'll tell it to you and you'll
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never be able to forget you already
gave the analogy or I guess the example
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of, well if I died. So this is yeah, so
let's just let's just start, let's do
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some more death, write the story went
like this. If a man walked up to a
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river and noticed a dead body and it
like the man naturally was alarmed and
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went and did everything he could and
pulled the body out of the river that
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was floating down and resuscitated the
person and got, got him back and was
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like oh my gosh, I'm so glad I found
you. I was so lucky that I happen to be
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walking by the river at that time. But
then he noticed something else. There
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was another body floating down the
river and he jumped in the river again
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and went to go find it and pull it out,
resuscitate. And then there was another
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body and another body. And soon enough
like the first person he had
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resuscitated started helping him
pulling the bodies because body after
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body kept coming down the river to the
point where the first person who was
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resuscitated like jumped up and said
like I've had enough of this and goes
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up up the river or starts hiking up the
trail that goes goes farther along the
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river. Meanwhile, the guy still like
frantically pulling bodies out of the
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world, Why did you leave me things?
Like, doesn't he see we have like we
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have we're saving lives, like I can't
believe. And then all of a sudden the
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bodies just stopped coming and he's
like, man, God, I don't know what, how,
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what happened there, I don't know what
caused that. And the first person comes
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back down and so like the bridge was
out, I fixed it, right? You're like, so
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it's all about context. So when I'm
building infrastructure, I know I'm
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building a bridge to keep the things
that are urgent, necessary and usually
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urgent necessary because we didn't have
process in there before to help keep
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those things from happening right?
Instead of chasing the tyranny of the
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urgent, I'm building infrastructure so
that the urgent things just don't show
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up anymore. But at the same time it's
like, well, bodies are coming down and
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like if I have a email from a customer
that's really urgent, I have to get to
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it at some point. Hopefully those are
the ones that I'm not like ignoring.
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But there's some things that while it
might be urgent to other people, I'm
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like, I'm like, let that one go down
the river, you know, I gotta get this
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bridge fixed and then it won't be a
problem in the future, right? So it's
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again, it's a balance. Um but it's
motivating to me knowing that I'm
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building things that keep the chaos
from just flowing down the river all
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the time. Okay, so short term benefit
is fewer dead bodies in the river, if
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you Yeah, and there's always some
things you can do that honestly don't
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take that long. That save a lot of
frustration later. So you try to build
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like little, you try to build it in
phases, little pieces at a time, like
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what little tiny thing can I build and
launch that start saving us time pretty
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quickly and then you do little pieces
at a time ultimately getting to what
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you know is the long term benefit, but
you don't want to work on something
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that takes a year if you can help it.
Right? Some things you take a lot of
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time, like we switched project
management systems, it literally took a
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year to roll out because we were so
invested in Terrell. Oh, and moving to
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a sauna for our company was like, it
took a year of planning and I'm glad we
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took a year to do it because it was, it
was really difficult and it went fairly
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having some bumps, but it went fairly
smoothly now where we work on a sauna,
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we don't touch trailer anymore. So some
things do take time. But honestly,
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there's usually things you can do that
save you time pretty quickly. So if
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somebody were just starting out and
they said, oh gosh, we have all this
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great content, but we need to build a
structure for our company moving
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forward. Do you suggest starting
looking at analyze optimize
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standardized mechanized? But you also
suggest starting with some of those
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short term or I guess those quick winds,
like doing those things that don't take
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a lot of time that make things better
or longer term projects. That's a
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really great question. I would start
1st 1st, you just need to analyze
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what's going on, what's the current
process and then it's in the optimize
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stage, you can write out all the things
that you'd like to change and have an
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an ideal world, but you're going to
know after building out your optimized
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plan which changes you want to make
that are going to take a like are just
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gonna take a long time and you kind of
have to like look at the optimize all
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of your, your optimization plan and
think like, okay, which of all these
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plans, which little ones can we do now
that have the biggest bang for our buck
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that save us the most time. Save us the
most money, help us improve the most.
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Like what are the little things we can
start changing now and work into the
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standardized phase faster? Yeah,
totally. So biggest takeaway for
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somebody from this episode, what do you
think? Definitely working through the
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analyze optimize standardized and
mechanized process. The process for
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building process I found is tried and
true. Um, A lot of people don't talk
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about it because it's just not a sexy
topic. But let's be honest, we all hate
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being that person like dealing with the
bodies coming down the river. That is
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never fun. Nobody likes it. So be be
the hero that goes up river and starts
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fixing these things. I honestly, I
promise if you're even if your entry
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level, this is how you get to like
director level. This is the difference
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between even a manager and a director
or manager is good at managing people
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and keeping those things running. But a
director, this is how a director thinks.
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A director is always thinking about
processes and systems beyond and of
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course leadership and teamwork to. But
a director is directing the department
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by building these things. So if you're
early in your career, you start
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thinking about these early, you will
get way farther beyond you most of your
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peers because most people aren't
thinking like this. If you're director,
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you're probably already somewhat
familiar with these. Hopefully this
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four step process kind of like
solidifies your own, you probably
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already have a process for this. If
you're a VP you've already done this
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before or you're really lucky. That's
right. That's awesome. Well dan, thank
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you so much for joining me today. Where
can people go to connect with you and
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where can people go to connect to a
sweet fish media? So sweet fish media
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is always sweet fish media dot com and
linkedin. You can find me at linkedin
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00:23:43.910 --> 00:23:48.910
dot com slash I. N slash digital
marketing dan. Please shoot me A. D. M.
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00:23:48.920 --> 00:23:51.860
With any questions you have from this
episode or anything related to
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00:23:51.860 --> 00:23:55.670
podcasting audience growth or don't
know. Marketing is like my favorite
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00:23:55.670 --> 00:23:59.060
thing. So I love talking shop with
anybody who wants to talk about
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marketing. So come and find me there.
That's awesome. Well thank you again
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for joining me on the tv growth. Thanks
for having me.
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00:24:08.340 --> 00:24:11.960
one of the things we've learned about
podcast audience growth is that word of
347
00:24:11.960 --> 00:24:16.650
mouth works. It works really, really
well actually. So if you love this show
348
00:24:16.650 --> 00:24:20.570
it would be awesome if you texted a
friend to tell them about it. And if
349
00:24:20.570 --> 00:24:24.900
you send me a text with a screenshot of
the text you sent to your friend meta.
350
00:24:24.910 --> 00:24:28.540
I know I'll send you a copy of my book,
content based networking, how to
351
00:24:28.550 --> 00:24:33.840
instantly connect with Anyone you want
to know. My cell phone number is (407)
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00:24:33.840 --> 00:24:37.270
490 3 3 - eight. Happy texting.