Ditching Hourly

[00:00:00] js: Hello, and welcome to ditching hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. And today I am joined by the G podcaster himself. Paul Boag. Welcome to the show, Paul.

[00:00:10] pb: Hello? Oh, gee, I, again, instantly, I'm now out of my depth. OG is not a phrase that I'm familiar with. What does OG mean?

[00:00:22] js: Original gangster.

[00:00:23] pb: Oh, that see far too far to other side of the pond for me,

[00:00:28] js: I'm. Sure. Yeah. So for folks who don't know Paul and Marcus, Lillington started a podcast in what year.

[00:00:37] pb: 2005.

[00:00:39] js: So that's crazy. That, and that was the first. Podcast I ever listened to. It's not the first one I ever heard of. I had heard of a couple of other ones that were like husband and wife talking about husband and wife stuff that like but somehow I got turned onto bowlegged world.

[00:00:57] I don't even know where I would have heard of it because back then podcasting, it was still like iPod era podcasting was before the iPhone. And,

[00:01:05] pb: you happen to get dot net magazine or whatever it was called? Something else back then? There was a web design magazine. They put us on the cover. They are there in the days where you had CD ROMs on the covers of magazines. And yeah we were on there for a while and I think we picked up quite a lot of listeners that way, but it's amazing.

[00:01:26] There were no other web design or digital related podcasts that just blew my mind. The fact that there was a podcast on knitting, but not on web design just felt really offensive. So I had to do something about it.

[00:01:42] js: Yeah. And boy, did you that was like I mentioned Bo Agworld and I got a bunch of email back. That was the first podcast I like fell in love with or whatever. I remember the intro, you guys changed your intro from time to time, but there was one where you had, you captured a guest who there's a snippet of a guest saying, I feel like I'm on Letterman.

[00:02:02] It was like that it was like that it was like the big show for web people and yeah

[00:02:10] pb: It was part of that era wasn't there there was a period of time when the web felt very rock and roll, didn't it? Or we'd like to think that we were rock and roll before, before it all became commercialized, man. And because there was such limited choice it became quite big quite quickly.

[00:02:30] These days it would be impossible to build a web design podcasts that, that kind of scale simply because there are so

[00:02:38] many of them there it's a bit like in the UK for my entire childhood, there were three TV channels and that was it. View a numbers on any particular program were enormous because people didn't have any choice.

[00:02:51] js: right? Yeah. Same here. So today we want to, I just want to catch up really, but also to get your I S it seems like every year is this is the year that podcasting really hits the mainstream, but it does keep growing like crazy. And I still think, even though it's much more saturated than it was in 2005, that people, businesses especially can get an enormous amount of benefit out of being in somebody's earbuds every week for now.

[00:03:21] What was

[00:03:22] pb: a really, yeah, it's a really interesting one. It here in the UK, it has hit the mainstream. And the reason that I say that with such outer confidence is because two weeks ago, I went to see a podcast live. There's a husband. The couple that do a a comedy podcast called shagged, married, annoyed which is enormous here in the UK to the point where I went to see them in the OTU arena, which is the biggest venue in the UK, 20,000 people in the venue all because of a podcaster.

[00:04:04] So yeah, it?

[00:04:06] can have enormous reach, but let's be realistic. Most of us are not going to be that. I was excited at the height of ours when we filled I don't a couple of thousand people in a venue. It's not going to get to that extreme, but, and this is for me, why podcasting has always had an enormous appeal.

[00:04:29] It's because it creates what has become known as an asynchronous relationship, which is a very fancy way of saying that people get to know you as a person they're there you can write all you want. You can write a book I've written six or books. I've been blogging since 2005, but when people listen to you, they feel, they know you, they feel that there's a relationship with you.

[00:04:58] And of course, if you're involved in any kind of sales activity that the number one thing that sells is relationship is trust and trust is built out of a relationship and a respect for somebody. And that's, I built my career basically. That principle that people know and respect me because they've listened to me and they feel that I'm their friend.

[00:05:24] I've had random people come up to me on the underground in London say, oh you Paul. And then they start chatting about aspects of my life. And I'm like, how the hell do you know that? Yeah. Same here. People will say someone will say something about one of my kids or something. It's whoa, what did I say? Yeah.

[00:05:44] js: yeah, it happens all the time. When shouldn't say all the time, but it is not uncommon for someone to be like it usually doesn't have an in person these days, but I'll get email or something.

[00:05:54] I saw you on this podcast or I listened to your podcast or whatever that's the thing, I don't really track the numbers, but just anecdotally, when people end up buying something from me and I usually have a question like, oh, do you remember where you heard of me? And it's almost always like some kind of podcast, either YouTube or a podcast.

[00:06:16] And yeah, so I try and get people to I teach people how to start their own podcasts. It doesn't in my humble opinion, it doesn't need to be hard. It can be very complicated, but I think for it to be effective and to get started in the best way to have a great podcast is to start a crappy one and make it better over

[00:06:34] pb: Oh, yes. yeah.

[00:06:36] One of my biggest shames is that my entire backpack back catalog of podcasts are still all available online. You can go back to number one and it is the most painful thing you have ever heard, but the.

[00:06:51] js: the same thing.

[00:06:52] pb: Yeah, it's the same with everything, isn't it? You've got to do to get better.

[00:06:57] And I think a lot of people get hung up on that. They think oh, I'm not good enough to start podcasts. We are never going to get good enough. Unless you start doing it. And the huge reassuring thing.

[00:07:07] is you couldn't start a podcast tomorrow and probably do a hundred episodes and be pretty confident.

[00:07:13] No one is ever going to listen to them because it takes a long time to build an audience and I think that's what puts a lot of people off for podcasting or to indeed any form of content marketing. Whether it be blogging, whether it be YouTube videos, it doesn't happen overnight.

[00:07:29] It's the consistency that makes it work. It's you becoming a part of people's lives.

[00:07:38] js: Yeah, it's the switching. It's switching your mentality from a hunter mentality to a gardening mentality and like hunters or hunters want to run out with their spear and boom, come back with a Buffalo and to convince them to switch to gardening, which isn't gonna produce results for six months at the earliest.

[00:07:55] They're like, oh I could have had five buffaloes in the meantime it's like, when are these tomatoes going to come out of the ground? I'm like, I'm hungry now. So it can be a tough, I get it. I understand why it would be like that. And my start podcasts.

[00:08:09] Heavily inspired by how much fun I had listening to your show. And even eventually coming on your show I started just a dopey podcast with one of my good friends and we would just banter and may try and make each other laugh some familiar. And and we just talked about nerdy stuff that happened at work that was we'd do shows about API APIs or like a bug and rails or something like that.

[00:08:31] And it was just like, nobody. I almost said nobody listened, but actually people didn't listen. I don't know. I don't know where they came from. I don't maybe must have tweeted about it or something. But w it was if the same thing, if you go back, that was my first show. And I think that was 2013 or 2011.

[00:08:46] Maybe if you go back and listen to it, it's painful. Like you said, it's just in the only way you get comfortable doing it, it's practicing. You're not going to you're not going to learn how to podcast. By reading a book any more than you're going to learn, how to ride a bike, playing a book or play guitar.

[00:09:01] Like it's a practice thing. So you might as well get started. Probably. No one's going to listen to anyway. And the other thing that you tell me if this happened to you there's this other benefit to it that is much more immediate, which is that you've got something to invite people to.

[00:09:17] So you can, if you have this podcast and you do an interview style show, then you can reach out to people who would never otherwise spend an hour letting you pick their brain and say, Hey, Seth Goden, could you come on and be the guest on our hundredth episode? And they might say, yes

[00:09:33] pb: And they did. I was gobsmacked at the people I remember interviewing, although admittedly, they weren't well known then, but in my first year podcasting, I interviewed the two founders of Twitter and actually the really bizarre thing is back then. They were quite, they really wanted to be on the show because they were trying to promote this new thing called Twitter. was really funny in hindsight. So yeah I, and I've spoken to all kinds of people that I would never have got to looking to otherwise, but I think there's almost a, another aspect of that, which is I became an expert via association. Oh if so-and-so yeah. And Seth Godin, for example, not that you ever did come on my podcast.

[00:10:22] I don't think I even knew existed for a long time. I'm a bit slow on the uptake there, but he if he'd come on the the podcast and I interviewing people start going, oh Paul must be on the same level as Seth Goden. There's this kind of expertise via association, which is incredibly deceptive because I had some brilliant people on the show and who were far cleverer than I've ever been, but Yeah it's the way the world works.

[00:10:50] js: Yeah, it's fascinating. Do you I expect the answer to this to be no, but maybe I'll be surprised, but I'm going to ask anyway so did you. Ever track, like direct. Did you ever like track okay let me back up a little bit. You guys had like a firmer an agency. There was a number of people, employees.

[00:11:11] I imagine that at some point the podcast took up a non-trivial amount of time and then you'd need to justify to yourself or perhaps partners that it was worth continuing. Did you, how did you track like downloads and say, or this much, this number of dollars from clients came directly from the podcast?

[00:11:29] Cause that's where they heard of us. Or did you just trust that this was a smart thing to do? Or was it a labor of love? What kept you going at the point? I'm assuming it got difficult at some point, but if it didn't then it didn't, but what kept you

[00:11:42] pb: No of course it did. Okay. There's a couple of kinds of issues there. There's the one of tracking and justifying it. And no, I didn't really do that much. We knew we didn't need numbers to tell us that it it was fairly obvious that the majority of new clients were either coming by referrals, which is the lifeblood of any business anyway.

[00:12:09] Or alternatively coming via the podcast, it was oh, the podcast and the blog combined cause the two web very hand-in-hand. And I was incredibly supported by the two other co-founders of head scape. Mark has been one but there's another guy called Chris and they just let me get on with it basically.

[00:12:29] But it sales really sales and marketing became my primary role when I was running that agency. That's pretty much all I did. I turned up at the beginning of projects, looked impressive, spouted, a load of BS, and then went away. Yeah so we we could see that the other aspect is what kept us going and to be honest, I think that is, was primarily down to. We liked doing it. Most of the time it did become hard work. And it especially with interviews and setting up things like this, you have to put some thought into it beforehand. This was before the days of Calendly where you could just go in and book it.

[00:13:11] So it was lots of backwards and forwards about calendars. And it, there was a lot of admin involved in it, which was a bit of a pain in the ass. But me and Marcus genuinely liked sitting down and talking crap for a couple of hours every week. And that was fun. We changed it up when we did,

[00:13:33] begin to get weary.

[00:13:34] So we went from weekly to doing seasons with the break in between each season, which helped a little bit there was and to some degree It's just stubbornness. I'm one of those people I somewhere very early on in the whole thing, I think it comes down to my favorite. My favorite quote is by a guy is by a guy like you're not going to know him is from Winston Churchill.

[00:13:59] So you might never have heard of him. He's quite an obscure leader over here. Yeah. So Winston Churchill famously said success is going from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

[00:14:10] js: It's such a good one.

[00:14:11] pb: And that's how I live my life. I will, I am very tenacious. And I'm not somebody that goes, this isn't working, let's give up on it.

[00:14:22] It takes almost to my detriment. I podcasted, I've stopped podcasting. Now. I stopped in March last 2020. And it took, I went on way longer than I should have. I should have stopped before that really.

[00:14:38] js: yeah. Just feeling like you're repeating yourself or you just didn't you're like, eh, this

[00:14:43] pb: yeah. Partly that and partly it wasn't about six, seven years ago. I stepped back from head scape. And I now work as an independent UX consultant. And when you do that kind of work by yourself, you've got to be very regimented about getting a return on your investment from your marketing activities, because any hours, hello, this is going to get into dodgy ground, but any hours you spend do marketing is hours.

[00:15:15] You're not billing. Sorry, we don't bill by the hours on this podcast. Sorry about that. But, Yeah. So you can see how in that scenario, you've got to make sure that the time you spend on marketing is not time that you're spending is time being well spent and the podcast wasn't performing as well as other things that I do for me now that the huge benefit is, or the huge success area is email marketing newsletters which I know you, you do as well.

[00:15:47] And that, that is, is far more successful because because of the overload of information out there who goes and looks at a blog these days, do you remember when we used to have RSS readers and we all used to subscribe to our favorite blog? I Nobody does it anymore. You search on stuff, podcasts, you see a lot of people still subscribe to.

[00:16:09] But again, I had just done it to death. I needed to do something different after what's it, 16 years of podcasts.

[00:16:18] js: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I do both. I think it's a good strategy to do both and I and yes, part of billing by the hours that you start thinking every hour, you're not billing needs to be justified somehow. It's oh yeah, I know I'm on vacation with my family, but I could have billed like $10,000.

[00:16:35] It encourages that kind of thinking because of your time is so connected to your, but the what have you let's see. At what point did you start with email marketing? How far back does that go? Where you doing that from the beginning of the podcast? I don't remember that.

[00:16:51] pb: no that came in. I don't know, actually when I started, but I've only got serious about it probably in the last couple of years, I've had an email list for ages it's one of those things that. you just randomly pick up somewhere a little bit the line. I don't know when but no, I probably only got serious about growing.

[00:17:11] A couple of years ago. And so Yeah.

[00:17:14] now that is, that's much more focused, but my, if my emails are they're still a podcast in a weird way. That every email I produce is also a video over. So you can watch the email, cause we all get so much email in our inbox if you can mix it up a little bit then.

[00:17:37] Great. And so I just record pretty much to camera. The me not reading cause I kind of wander offers as I do but essentially covering very similar content to two is an email just to give people an alternative way of consuming it. And that also then gets released as an audio version. So there is a kind of, I still am podcasting, but really it's reusing the same content in three different ways.

[00:18:04] And again, that comes back to needing to be efficient in the way that I work. So I'll take the same piece of content, our reuse it across different platforms so that different people who like to consume things in different ways can get the same stuff.

[00:18:19] js: Gary V would approve. So what's your workflow like there is the, is it the video first or is it the writing first or do you just have an, is the, is it like a transcript of the video or is it more like you write a thing and then you riff on it into the camera?

[00:18:34] pb: E I write it first. I do have a teleprompter. I say teleprompter. That sounds so. Yeah. I basically have a thing that sits on the front of my camera and has got my phone on it. It real cheap, nasty little piece of kit, but it does the job. So I've got it coming up. Sometimes. Yeah, I'm basically just reading it, obviously in a very enthusiastic and engaging way, but I'm basically reading it other times.

[00:19:02] I lose the plot halfway through and go off on something. It depends. So write it first, then record the video. So that when someone gets the email through, it says click here to watch the video and it goes off to basically a blog post. So it's also, you don't have to be subscribed to get the content of my newsletter with them as people do.

[00:19:23] And then also that I just rip the audio out of that and shove it on a podcast as well.

[00:19:30] js: And how much and no editing. Just here we go. Rough and ready. Yeah.

[00:19:35] pb: A little bit, there is a little bit of editing. Sometimes I screw up partway through and I can't be bothered to rerecord the whole thing. So you know, it my wife does that she had to take these days is very sophisticated set up. We've got so she tends to hack me around and spends most of her time pausing me on stupid faces and then calling me over and say look what you look like.

[00:20:00] js: True love. So I love that. I love this. One of the, one of my big themes is to not be so precious about the content marketing stuff, whether it's an email or podcast, which are my two favorite channels and just start doing it. Don't, there's 80% of the stuff that makes a podcast hard. You don't have to do same thing with a newsletter.

[00:20:20] It's just don't do it. Don't have ads. Don't even have guests. If that's a pain, have a co-host or just talk by yourself. And because of all the back and forth, even with Calendly people, cancel and reschedule and stuff, and. Just get it out there. No music. If you don't need to have music, you don't need to have all these things that you hear.

[00:20:38] What the important thing is that you're helping the listener. And if it, no one has ever complained to me that I don't have intro music at the beginning of this podcast, no one cares. Is it a branding opportunity? And does it, does, is it nice when you listen to a podcast that has a really cool song at the beginning?

[00:20:53] Yeah, it's nice, but it's not gonna make or break your show and it adds a lot of friction. So I'm for people getting started. I'm like, keep it simple recording, make sure your sound is listening able, right? Like you might sound like an idiot, but as long as the audio quality is good and it's not like things going on, cause people will not put up with that.

[00:21:14] pb: no.

[00:21:15] js: So a decent mic, maybe not your headphone mic, but a decent mic, maybe 50 bucks. It doesn't matter. There's tons of them just plug it into your computer and go for it. And and I love the I, so getting to the F the not frictionless, but the leverage piece is that you're reusing the content in three different ways.

[00:21:36] I would say you still have a pocket. I Technically you don't feel like you're podcasting be compared to what it was like before, but if it's published as an RSS feed that can be consumed in a pod catcher, then I would say it but in your mind, you're not podcasting, which I understand.

[00:21:50] So I love that. I have a couple of students who are super supernatural, like live streaming on YouTube. They're like, they grew up with it. They're much more comfortable with that. And they have this video first work. Where they get a question from someone or they find a question on core Reddit or something, and they'll just like, Hey, I saw this question online and it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:22:11] And it's it's right in their area of expertise. And so then they just riff on it for two minutes or three minutes or four minutes. And then that's the first thing. And then they take a transcript and they'll email it out and they'd rip the audio off too. And it's just it's really quick.

[00:22:27] It's really quick if you, and if you get into the habit of not editing telling the listener, you know this, but if you get into the habit of not editing and sending out your flubs and being embarrassed by them, you'll get better at not making flubs or covering them up or making them funny or doing, or you'll say I'm less.

[00:22:46] If you're not editing them all out every time. In

[00:22:48] pb: There's also there's a, there's another factor in that as well, which is that it's those things that make you human it's those things that build the rapport with the audience. And I remember very vividly, very early on not very early on, but we haven't quite reached the height of our subscriber base, but we were on the way up, there was a lot of people talking about us and I decided one show to go through the work act, accessibility guidelines.

[00:23:21] And I was going through this list and we hit one. I can't even remember when it was, but I, because I was trying to think ahead and I was doing too many things. I completely misread what it was about and went off on this huge tangent about something and we just published it. Didn't think twice, man, the amount of online abuse that I got.

[00:23:41] But.

[00:23:42] js: about that

[00:23:44] pb: Yeah, of all things. But it was Interesting.

[00:23:46] Because of the style of the podcast, because people got to know me, it wasn't horrible abuse. It was taking the Michael of me. It was and but believing that in it humanized me, it made me fun. It it became a standing joke.

[00:24:05] And did it undermine my credibility? Probably in certain people's eyes, but there's enough people out there that actually found it endearing and fun that it wasn't a problem. I think a lot of people are afraid of humor as well. And messing around and being seen as being unprofessional, but I always come back.

[00:24:25] My great example of that was the first ever tweet from the Sierra CIA. If there's ever an organization that you would say shouldn't use humor, it would be the CIA. But their first ever tweet is we can neither confirm nor deny that this is our Twitter account. And I just thought, that's great.

[00:24:44] If they could joke, then anyone could joke. I but maybe not, if you're a funeral home, that might be a step too far, but yeah. And I think that's a really sorry, I've just completely derailed what you were saying. You were making a really good point and I've just gone off on one, but That's the other thing

[00:25:01] is that I think a lot of people try and be something they're not on a podcast. There may be, you mentioned.

[00:25:08] Gary V earlier, right? Okay. He's incredibly charismatic and outgoing and you might think, oh, I've got to be like that. No, you don't. You've got to be you because I look a lot of people really don't Gary V he's annoying he's over the top. It's false in that. I don't feel like that personally, but I know a lot of people do. So you appeal to those, the people that like your kind of character, you don't need to put on a persona. And so many people feel like they do when they present themselves to the world. If you're a considered

[00:25:46] quiet person be considered and quiet, if you're someone that doesn't like speaking publicly on something like a podcast, then write a blog post instead Yeah. In fact, if you listen back to early episodes of somebody's first podcast, a lot of times, the reason it's cringy is because they're being a little bit professional or fake, or they're trying to, they're not being themselves and not being natural. It's almost like they're getting speaker's block. Cause they're trying to.

[00:26:15] js: Something, they're not if you listen back to the first people listening will be familiar with another show I do called the business of authority. And if you go Rochelle, Maiava co-host on that show. And she cannot stand listening to the first 15 episodes, because it was the first time she ever did a podcast in her head.

[00:26:32] It was a big deal. And she was nervous and trying to be very corporate. And she's like it's, I didn't think it wasn't that bad, but to her she's. Oh, can we redo those? It's really, it's not that bad, but in her, she she can hear herself being fake and she just can't stand it. It's that's the thing.

[00:26:50] And that's why you need practice to get through it. I was a musician I've been in, standing in front of a mic since I was 15. Speaker, musician podcast or whatever. And it didn't automatically liquid. The first time I heard my recorded voice on a cassette recorder, when that was a thing, it sounded weird to me.

[00:27:09] But after a while you get used to it, it just sounds like you, it doesn't sound weird to anybody else. It's

[00:27:14] pb: To be honest, I've I just don't listen to my own podcasts that solves the problem for me. I don't listen to be speaking or don't listen to me interviewed elsewhere. I just, I can't stand it. And so fortunately, Marcus always used to edit our podcasts, so I never had to listen to myself again.

[00:27:33] So I could I would be horrified, no doubt by what I say and do, but they go.

[00:27:39] js: somehow it worked right. So what's the, what's your direction these days. So you step back from head scape for the past. You said you air quotes stopped podcasting a couple of years ago, and we're doing more the newsletter. What's the newsletter about? Have you changed direction overall? You said your UX consultant, but

[00:27:55] pb: no did you sign, it came out of the fact that people's behavior has changed online. As I said earlier, but you know who people don't subscribe to blog posts anymore. They search if they've got a problem, but there are many topics of conversation in my mind that don't fit that format.

[00:28:18] You don't, for example you don't you never Google something like my last email that went out, you never would Google the subject. Why is UX consultancy so mad? Which is what I wrote about. Okay. Those kinds of opinion pieces and those bigger issues stuff, they're not the kind of thing that, that you would search on, but they're really important that they're discussed and talked about.

[00:28:47] And I'm writing another piece at the moment about organizing projects. Now you might Google how the projects work or how to run a project but you're not necessarily going to the thrust of the article is things like estimating time it's going to take to do stuff and how terrible that is.

[00:29:06] And so not all of these kinds of translate well into, to searchable, SEO, friendly. Content. So that's what led me then on to, onto doing email emails where people are subscribing and I'm building relationship with them. And then they're interested in these more, these broader issues still around user experience, design and conversion rate optimization and digital transformation, which are the three areas that I work in. But yeah, or a little bit more of opinion pieces. I there's too many people out there already teaching you, you know how to start a podcast a lot, how to format something in CSS. I don't want to get into that. After 27 years in the industry, you want to talk about more interesting things than that, yep. Yeah. So it's like that. It's just not tactical stuff. It's more strategic and like setting the goals and visions and yeah. Yeah. That's great. It gets, yeah. It's like how to, I don't know, use responsive images gets old after a while and it's done to death. But I love your point about the kinds of things you want to write about and the kind of the area where your expertise lies is not SEO friendly.

[00:30:19] js: It's not things people are searching for. It's like solutions to problems that they don't even know they have or don't they have, if you bring it up, but they're not searching for it. It's not like a, it's not like a splinter or a gunshot wound. It's it's more like creeping Malays. Ah maybe I should quit freelancing and just go work for Google or something.

[00:30:39] And it's what are they going to search for me? Should I quit and go back? That's exactly it there often it's the people don't always realize what the underlying problem is. They know their symptom, but they don't know the cause. And that can be a, yeah, that's a really complicated value based pricing is a great example of that. Actually. Yes, there are a group of people out there that are searching on value, price based pricing, but they're the people that already know that they've got a need for that. It's all the people that don't know they've got a need for it and would never occur to them to search on that. Don't get me wrong. I do see. My blog these days I basically, I every other week, so every week I produce something, so one week it will be a newsletter next week it'll be a blog post.

[00:31:26] pb: And I alternate between them. And basically the blog posts these days are the SEO friendly stuff. They're the how to things to do it while the newsletter is the it's that more, that deeper stuff. So

[00:31:38] js: Yeah. The bigger picture. It's you don't publish the emails on your website.

[00:31:43] pb: I do actually, but because of the way my blog posts as my website is formatted. They're not quite so prominent as the blog posts are.

[00:31:54] js: I see. It's so what's the, who's the ideal reader for the newsletter?

[00:31:59] pb: Or you see now that would imply that I've got some kind of marketing strategy in place?

[00:32:04] js: I'm sure from who's on your list, who had attracts

[00:32:07] pb: So I, that, that was very facetious. I am a little bit more organized than that. I've got two basic audiences that I cater for. Which are and it really, my business is built around these. So we've got the in-house teams which are typically they're working for a relatively large organization.

[00:32:27] I to know pure tumor or British petroleum or someone of that kind of size, and that they're usually in a relatively. Small digital team, or they might call them a UX team or whatever else. And they feel quite isolated in that environment. And they're having trouble getting the rest of the organization to take user experience seriously and they're struggling and that kind of thing.

[00:32:53] So I work a lot with people like that. So that's one half of my business and But I also do not dissimilar to you. I do a lot of mentorship for agency owners. So that would be my other group of people that, that I work with. So the newsletter really ideally I should have two separate newsletters, but I'm too lazy for that.

[00:33:14] I, and so there is one newsletter, occasionally. It's amazing how many of the conversations are applicable to both audiences. A lot of the things I talk about do impact both audiences, but occasionally I will do different versions of a newsletter for those different audiences. And I've gotten them segmented when you sign up, you say what you are and so I do adapt it, but basically it's that those are the groups that I'm talking to.

[00:33:46] js: cool. Yeah, that's great. Do you think

[00:33:52] here's my opinion? You can tell me what you think. I think that someone who's out there as a solo consultant they're implying that they know what they're talking about. You can be self-deprecating as you want, but you still need to be. Perceived as an expert at a particular thing or the authority in the space for something.

[00:34:12] And I think that you can't go wrong. Get if that's the kind of business you've created for yourself, like solo or very small, we are the principal. Maybe you've got a couple of helpers or something or your wife's editing podcast, but but it's basically like one person. And if that's the kind of business that you have, I think you cannot go wrong writing and speaking on a regular basis.

[00:34:37] And that for me, that's it used to be flying around and speaking that's the one time we actually met in person was in London at w. What was it? I don't even remember w DX or some web thing. And the, and that was fine at the time. But even before pandemic era, it was like, it gets old, especially when you start having kids and dogs and so forth.

[00:35:00] So I was like what am I going to do? So I stopped doing that when we had our second. And I was like, wow, what do you know? I'm not getting any leads anymore. I wonder if there's a connection. That's when I that's right around the time I started getting serious about podcasting, even if it was oh, hang out and have coffee with Jonathan and Eric. That's my wife with Jonathan and Kelly talk about rails or whatever. And what do you know? It started, things started to pick back up. And so I think, and I think, but I see them differently. I see podcasting creating the intimacy that, that sense that your friends and this is actually a, you probably know this, we've probably talked about it.

[00:35:38] There's something called parasocial relationships that goes back as something that's been studied as far back as the fifties. And that's why celebrity endorsements work and so forth. So it's real like it definitely. And I know that it's happened to me that it's probably the example I was talking about in the email about you, because you were the first like podcast, or I was just like, wow, this guy's like famous.

[00:35:57] And I know everything about 'em or you feel like, you know everything

[00:36:00] pb: Yeah,

[00:36:01] js: So that's one kind of trust. It's irrational though, because as soon as you think about it too hard, it makes no sense.

[00:36:08] pb: yeah. But that's the way the world we don't make decisions rationally,

[00:36:13] js: And then the, but then the writing, the regular writing and I do daily writing is

[00:36:19] pb: I do not know how the hell you do that.

[00:36:22] js: I'm telling you it's easier. It's I

[00:36:24] pb: isn't really.

[00:36:25] js: I swear it is. I used to do weekly. It was much harder. It was much harder to do weekly. Yeah.

[00:36:31] pb: is that because you're not, self-editing it you're not getting caught up in yourself cause you've just got to get something out.

[00:36:38] js: a little bit, but it's also that something happens when you've you're on deadline. So to speak something, something happens, it flips a switch in your head where you start seeing ideas everywhere

[00:36:52] pb: Yeah. No, that is true. No I've experienced that. I know exactly what you mean. yeah.

[00:36:57] js: And and I have a pretty relaxed schedule. So if I have an idea, I can just stop what I'm doing. And write it and it's just oh, that would make a perfect email and boom, 300 words later send, and I have a couple of little tools that I set up for myself to make it trivially simple for me to just rip open a webpage on my phone and type it in.

[00:37:20] Hopefully there's not too many egregious typos or bad auto-correct and just hit a couple buttons and it's published to my website and it goes out to 10,000 people or whatever. So I just made it really easy so that, and doing it every day, forces you to be like, oh, I really have to write some code to make this easier because those little points of friction really start to add up.

[00:37:41] So there's a whole combination of things that cause it to be easier than weekly. I promise you it is easier anyway.

[00:37:50] pb: yeah. I don't just don't doubt you hate, so it's just, yeah, I, that, that impressed me when I realized it was daily. You don't do weekends. Please tell me. Don't do

[00:38:01] js: Every single day. I haven't missed a day in six years.

[00:38:04] pb: flip it back. Good man.

[00:38:07] js: It's I'm telling you it's like my favorite it's my favorite thing to do. Like

[00:38:11] pb: I've got say I agree with that, but newsletter sitting down and writing my newsletter is the one thing in my, job that I enjoy more than anything else. So in some ways there is a part of me that's quite tempted to do the same thing go daily, but I don't think I'll, I think I, yeah.

[00:38:29] I've I need to balance things, but yeah.

[00:38:32] there is a temptation because oftentimes I get frustrated that I've got to wait another two weeks before I can send out another one.

[00:38:38] Cause there's something else knocking around in my

[00:38:40] js: that was another thing that, that was another thing that I found that I loved about daily was I didn't have to wait or even just like pragmatically, I didn't have to like, if I had something coming up that it was. And I like missed my weekly thing and I'm like, oh man, I was supposed to launch my new thing and I

[00:38:58] pb: Yeah.

[00:38:59] js: So now I have to email everybody on a Wednesday. And but now I just email people every day

[00:39:04] pb: Yeah, so problem.

[00:39:06] js: it solves the problem. And then in the, after the PS, I just throw a couple of links in there. It's Hey, buy my book or Hey, sign up for my course. And I don't even have to talk about it.

[00:39:14] pb: no,

[00:39:15] js: it's just in many, there's at least a half a dozen.

[00:39:17] I could probably come up with a dozen ways that it's way easier to do

[00:39:20] pb: yeah it does sound good. You're attempting may stop tempting me.

[00:39:25] js: I was dragged, kicking and screaming by a friend who had made the switch and said, dude, you're gonna love this. And and he, and I was like, no, how am I going to switch over? I've got all of these campaigns running and blah, and he's just scroll them up, Jay. He's not going to be smooth. And anyway, so we can talk about that offline,

[00:39:42] pb: Yeah.

[00:39:43] js: but.

[00:39:44] Okay. What I was saying was that there's this sort of irrational parasocial relationship created by the speaking stuff where people immediately know if they like you or click with you or don't click with you. And then there's the writing piece, which to me is where at least I find it's more of a rational appeal to the, it's more of a rational trust.

[00:40:03] Wow, this person really can explain this. They're really turning on a light bulb. I'm really thinking new thoughts here. Like you said, it's not gonna, it doesn't connect you with people the same way hearing them does. But I find that's the place where I develop new ideas and insights in the writing, and then all those are things I'll talk about later.

[00:40:21] Once I have my head around how to talk about it.

[00:40:24] pb: Yeah, I know. I totally agree with that. I think there are dairies and other aspect, the E do need to be. I I see some common mistakes I see is first that you get people that really are writing. I okay. I'm very pragmatic. And I'm very, I like to be very focused, so I'm beyond the point of doing any of this just because, oh, Ooh, Paul wants to be famous or I'm beyond that.

[00:40:54] I'm not criticizing people that are in that place because I had a moment of that as Well, but I want it to lead to more business ultimately. So I'm very pragmatic about it. First, a lot of people, I think spend too much time writing for their peers rather than their clients. Which is a huge problem.

[00:41:15] I think secondly, that the all they're doing is throwing up. But all posts, whether it be a podcast or whatever, they're thrown out up on their own site, nobody knows you exist and nobody reads it. And so it's very hard to keep momentum going in an environment like that when you know, no one's really looking at it.

[00:41:34] So I actually construct it as a journey. Or you could say a sales funnel, if you were w were particularly marketing focused. At the very top of that sets, outreach things, this, what we're doing right now is me doing that. I approached you because you said something nice about me. You suggested that we did this interview.

[00:41:58] So I'm now currently reaching a new group of people that maybe haven't heard of me. So my hope from doing that is that will. Send some people to my newsletter, to my website and on my website, my primary call to action is sign up to my newsletter. And then the newsletter is where I nurture that relationship, where as you say, they get to know me a little bit through the videos that I produce, but they also get to see my expertise in action, right?

[00:42:30] This, like you say, this is where they, hopefully people are going that Paul he's an okay man, instead of that, Paul, he's a British asshole. And that actually that then attracts them to my site. And then I get them signed up to the newsletter. And hopefully then they can intellectually see that I know my shit.

[00:42:50] And then after that, then hopefully they will hire me for something, whatever that thing is. And so it's a very structured journey of knowing that I need to get people's attention. I need to hold their attention. And I get people's attention through building some sense of relationship or connection. And I hold their attention by demonstrating value to them on an ongoing basis.

[00:43:14] I've now just totally given away my entire strategy that I want to convince people of on the that I'm trying to use on the people listening to this. All you need to do now is go to dot com slash subscribe and sign up for my newsletter.

[00:43:29] js: Yes.

[00:43:29] pb: You get the idea.

[00:43:31] js: yeah transparency is very popular these days. Let's call it that. Let's call it transparency. That sounds better.

[00:43:39] so the reason why that. Whether or not you talk about it, the reason why it would work or not work completely hinges on whether or not people spend time in pay attention, spend and pay their to your content and then feel like they got a positive ROI from it. And I don't mean they instantly made $10 more than they would a build, of course.

[00:44:02] But if my every time I write one of these emails and I have an idea and I write it down, my sole goal is to make the reader glad they read it.

[00:44:13] pb: Yeah. You're entirely spot on.

[00:44:15] js: Yeah. And I just trust that if I can do that every day for like thousands of people. I'll be fine. I'll be fine. I don't need to, I don't need to worry about anything.

[00:44:26] But it comes down to that like daily habit of making people glad they read that girl had, they spent the time to pay attention and it's if you can deliver a positive ROI there, maybe I should buy his book. It's only 49 bucks. And it's not like you're tricking anyone.

[00:44:41] Yes I recognize that I recognize that I have a funnel. You recognize you have a funnel, but it's I think educational content marketing, which I don't know if people still call it that or ever called it that, but it's, I just see it as helping as many people as possible at scale.

[00:44:57] pb: Yeah, absolutely. That is all that it should be. And I think a lot of people a lot of the agencies I mentor and I'm sure it's the same with you. You talk to these founders and they go, whoa. I don't really like selling myself or I don't really mark them like marketing. And I say to them don't do it.

[00:45:16] Just be a helpful, nice human being. That's all you ultimately need to do. And you do that by helping people out by giving them you're gonna get, not holding anything back. And that's the thing I think where some marketing people fall down is they go all, I mustn't talk about that.

[00:45:38] Cause that's my secret sauce that I sell. I talk about everything I describe in immense detail, how to do something like customer journey mapping. Yep. Customer journey mapping is the number one thing I get asked to do. And you think that makes no sense. Does it? I've just taught you step by step.

[00:45:58] Exactly how I do it. Why the hell are you then hiring me to do it? And it's because they're too busy or they feel intimidated by it. Or they just liked the idea of working with me because they've they've come to like me and it's okay, let's do this thing. I'm up for that time. I never hold anything back.

[00:46:18] And it really irritates me when people feel that they have to do that.

[00:46:22] js: yeah, I a hundred percent agree. I have a blog post from years ago called share, because I would get this question all the time. We'll like, I don't want to give away my best thinking. It's no, one's, you're just going to be invisible.

[00:46:34] pb: Yeah. Yeah. It's that you could be the absolute genius of the web, but if nobody's ever heard of you, what's the point? It's I always my, my daughter is a physicist and she gets really annoyed that everyone loves Stephen Hawking and Mitchell Kakkar and people like that or what's the Neil deGrasse Tyson.

[00:47:00] It's the other one. She despises that they get all of the publicity because she knows of these physicists that nobody's ever heard of that are amazing and do incredible things and all the rest of it. And it's that's the world we live in. You could be a genius, but if no, one's heard of you, it's worth nothing.

[00:47:20] js: another way to put it as you could be a genius, but you're not helping anyone.

[00:47:24] pb: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:47:25] js: So

[00:47:26] pb: That's a better, yeah. That's a bit like that. That's a better way of putting it.

[00:47:31] js: Yeah. Like Neil deGrasse, Tyson. It is popularizing interest in physics at least, or astronomy or whatever, and astrophysics. So it's yeah. Does he, is he the smartest guy out there? Probably not. There probably isn't a smartest guy or gal out there, like who I understand the, I th that your daughter's reaction is so common.

[00:47:52] You must have seen this. You probably were the target of this

[00:47:56] pb: Oh Bowlegs not that smart. I'm so much smarter. And why isn't everyone hiring head scape instead of us. And it's here's another one is I get this all the time where people are like, oh, sure, that works for you.

[00:48:09] js: You're famous. And I'm like

[00:48:10] pb: Yeah. That's another good one.

[00:48:13] js: Like I used to be just like you. And then I wrote an email every day for six years, and now I'm not right. So it's not it's it's they don't realize that. It's not chicken or egg. It's you need to start putting your best thinking out there.

[00:48:30] Why would you put not your best thinking out there? Put it behind

[00:48:33] pb: no sense. Does it? It's interesting mind this thing of that works for you, but it wouldn't work for me because I don't have your reputation. There is a degree for me at least of truth in that, that the way that the I built my reputation, I'm not sure would work in the same way anymore.

[00:48:55] Take podcasting, for example I became well-known for podcasting, not because I was doing amazing podcast, but because there were no other podcasts. And and then of course, once people get to know you, they get to like you and they see subscribed to you. So I actually think just copying what we did wouldn't necessarily work anymore.

[00:49:20] You need to adapt for the reality that you're in and in a much more constant content saturated market. I do think that there is a degree of, okay, you need to be a little bit more strategic in this me and Marcus just jumped on the mic and started talking absolute nonsense, that of whatever we cared about.

[00:49:40] I don't, I think you need to be more considered and certainly more considered about who your audience is and who you're trying to reach. And to identify a niche, sorry, niche that you are trying to reach these days rather than doing something a general as we did, because otherwise you're just going to get lost in the noise of the internet.

[00:50:01] So there is a degree of truth. And that just because it worked for us doesn't mean it's going to work for somebody else, but I do know what you're saying after the you've got to put the work in

[00:50:10] js: So let's I wanna resay that in a w with different language,

[00:50:16] pb: and in a coherent way is what you're saying. Yeah.

[00:50:20] js: like mapping it to things that I talk about regularly. So what Paul just said is exactly what I mean when I talk about niching down, which I do w we use the niche pronunciation here and yes. And because it is easier just because it's easier to be different if you pick a specific type of listener or audience member or customer or client or whatever, because you can speak to them more directly, which will make you stand out and you'll still attract other people.

[00:50:54] Oh, go ahead.

[00:50:54] pb: Sorry. I know you were trying to nicely summarize, but my Celtic style doesn't allow for that. So I have to talk all over you. But the other reason that I think you need should niche down. That sounds really cool. The way you say it sounds so much better is it's like I've got a tiny little pebble of marketing energy, right?

[00:51:18] I am a single person. And if I take that pebble and I throw it into the ocean of the internet, it's going to disappear without a trace. But if I take that pebble and throw it into a small pond of a particular niche, I can create ripples. And for me, that's the key. And what you want, ideally, is a niche where.

[00:51:40] It's a community of people that already talk to one another. So I've done it, for example, in the higher education sector where everybody who works in the higher education sector, they will just move around from one university to another. And so they take ideas and people and influences from one location to another.

[00:51:58] And so you can become very dominant in a sector with a relatively small amount of effort because they just pass you around. That doesn't happen if you don't need or not. Sorry. Dish down.

[00:52:12] js: Right or pigeonhole yourself as another thing I say, but so I love the ocean that you brought up the ocean metaphor because I, when people use a fishing metaphor around this, they say why would I fish with just a line, a hook and a line instead of a big giant net? And I'm like, that's the wrong metaphor?

[00:52:31] You're fishing with align either in a barrel of fish or in the ocean. It's not a net. Nike has a net, like Google has a net. They can spend massive marketing dollars and have massive Salesforce, but that you don't get in general being a generalist. Isn't a giant net, it's you in a dinghy in the middle of the ocean, trying to catch one of 3.5 trillion fish.

[00:52:54] Maybe you'll have a good day. Maybe you won't, but wouldn't you rather fish in a barrel that had or a pool that had a thousand trout flopping out of it. It's yeah, of course. Okay. So back to the tactics thing. So copying tactics from. 2005 might not, is probably not going to work.

[00:53:12] Like you said, doing exactly what you did. Just two guys in a room talking about random web stuff probably is not going to work. But if you copy the strategy, which is help as many people for free at scale, as you can, that strategy will work.

[00:53:31] pb: yeah. You're right.

[00:53:32] js: So if you, but the tech, the tactics might be now, you've got to go on Tik TOK to do it or Instagram stories, or it doesn't matter like that doesn't matter.

[00:53:40] But if you find the place where your fish are all hanging around, whether it's Tik TOK or Reddit, or a LinkedIn groups, or an IRC, IRC, or slack, or wherever they are go there and be helpful, and they might click on the link in your profile and go find out more about you,

[00:54:00] pb: can I give a real example of that? Something that I did. So I've mentioned higher education a minute ago. So we won our first higher-education client. I can't remember what I can't, I won't bother with the years, but a long time ago. And it was a university and we loved working with it and we got really, quite excited about the sector.

[00:54:19] We thought it was interesting. There was a lot to do so with that particular client I said whether you guys talk to one another what books do you read? What forums do you go to? What you conferences, that kind of stuff. And he was like, I don't really know. There is this mailing list I'm on called the WMW mailing list.

[00:54:39] The what? The institutional web managers workshop mailing list and when the most boring sounding thing ever. So I then tried to join it and I couldn't, because I didn't have. The UK equivalent of a.edu domain name. So I wrote to the guy who ran it and he said, very politely go away. We don't let commercial people on it.

[00:55:01] And I said look I'm just looking to learn about the sector. I don't want to, I don't want to sell, I don't want to talk about my services. I'm just trying to understand the sector better. And he said you can join it if you don't post. And you think what's the point of doing that, but I did it anyway, because I did want to learn about the sector and understand it better because I was talking about niching down to that sector.

[00:55:25] So I joined it and sat on there and it wasn't long before somebody posted something that I thought I could help with. So I wrote out. Offering advice and help on that issue. And I sent it to the guy, ran the list and he said, yeah, that's fine. Go ahead and post it. So I did. And then that happened again and again, and I kept offering advice and I kept sending it to the guy who ran the list and he kept saying, yeah, that's fine.

[00:55:50] So in the end he said, look, just stop annoying. You could post it as long as you don't sell. So that's all I did on the list was give good advice. And now eventually I discovered they also do a conference once a year. And I said, can I speak at the conference? And he said, no, because you're a commercial person, but you can come.

[00:56:11] So I went to the conference and I just hang out with everybody. I gave a bit of advice. I've bought them alcohol just took part and built a reputation. Everybody liked me and that kind of stuff. So the next year I said, can I speak at the event? And he said, all right, then, as long as you don't sell.

[00:56:30] So I went along and I spoke at the event and I didn't sell, and I didn't do an Ikea note. It ended up keynoting that every year for about 10 years, because they came to like my contract. I never once pushed my services. I didn't need to. They came to me. It was my, the way you push your service is by showing your expertise show.

[00:56:56] Don't tell.

[00:56:57] js: Yeah, that's great. Wow. I had, I'm so glad that went so far up like w that was like a full rags to riches, like success story of the way to do market.

[00:57:12] pb: Yeah. And we've done that. I've done that more than once. I did that in the heritage sector as well. And we got into a heritage sector. So that would be things like the national trust. So people areas of outstanding, natural beauty, national parks, old buildings, all of that kind of stuff.

[00:57:31] And we did it, it actually became problematic in that situation. We won something like 80 to 90% of every area of outstanding natural beauty in the country. We won everything. So it got to the point where people weren't hiring us simply because, oh, we can't hire a head scape. Everybody hires them.

[00:57:50] So that's when we moved on to H G because it was like we've saturated the market.

[00:57:55] I don't know how to go any further here. And yeah. And I've done it again in other sectors.

[00:58:01] js: that's great. I had a similar story. It didn't go to, I gave up on it for a variety of reasons that don't matter, but same kind of thing. I had a couple of clients in the credit union space and I was like, these folks are actually fun. They're like the hippies of banking. I dig them. And, but there's no, they're just not online.

[00:58:18] They're just not the kind of people that are there online. There's some the younger ones button, but credit union presidents were not hanging out on Facebook. So it, same thing I asked around, turned out there was a listserv of I don't know, 250 credit union presidents, all asking each basically saying, I need help with this.

[00:58:36] Do you know anybody? How did, how do you guys deal with this regulation? And I didn't say anything, but I'm like reading it and it was fascinating to me because. It was almost like I was reading their inner thoughts. So then when I would talk to actually talk to someone, I would be so up-to-date with what was going through their mind that I could almost read it it's, it was and I didn't end up keynoting it.

[00:59:00] Actually I did end up getting speaking gigs, not directly from the list, but but anyway, I ended up stopping that business any like in the middle of that experiment, but it was just like, oh dopey, old listserv, ugly like huge, massive email chain, but just amazing. Painstorming Amy Hoyt would call it.

[00:59:21] It's just like you just like getting their inner most like nightmares and worries and fears and dreams and hopes and all of this emotionally charged kind of stuff that you want to help with.

[00:59:33] pb: and that's why niching around an audience rather than rounded deliverable. A lot of people, when they nice they niche to a particular deliverable. We I'm going to do Ruby on rails or whatever. And that's their thing. And that does work to a degree depending on what the deliverable is, because obviously there are a lot of rails communities and that kind of stuff, but there is something about niching to a sector where they, that group of people are talking and sharing and interacting with one another.

[01:00:07] Some sectors don't work because they're highly competitive.

[01:00:10] js: plastic surgery.

[01:00:12] pb: Yeah so they don't talk to one another and then you've got a problem because you don't get that kind of echo chamber effect. But if you find a sector where they do, boy does that, that the possibilities are endless because you get to see and understand their pain points and their goals.

[01:00:29] And you get also the word of mouth recommendation around the sector as well.

[01:00:34] js: Yeah, it's amazing. So we could probably talk for four hours, but

[01:00:40] pb: Yeah. We've been going for over an hour already.

[01:00:43] js: no way. Oh yeah. You're right. Holy mackerel. Yeah. So I should let you go. I'm probably late for a meeting or something. I thought we would. but cool. This has been absolutely fabulous. We should keep in touch more regularly than once every five years.

[01:00:57] pb: Yeah, it does happen. Doesn't it?

[01:00:59] js: yes, time flies. So tell people one more time where they should go to find out more about all things. Paul Bo ag.

[01:01:05] pb: If you want to enter the Bo ag funnel you can go to, you could go to Bo ag, world.com B O G world.com. If you want to sign up to the newsletter, which to be honest, I have a look around the website. See if you liked the content, but really, if you want to follow me on any kind of long-term stuff, then the newsletter is the way to go.

[01:01:27] Ju that's Bo agworld.com forward slash subscribe. Hopefully you won't miss the massive call to action that I have plastered all over my website, but if you do, that's the URL you want, you can also follow me on Twitter, if you're so inclined, I'm not very good on Twitter these days. I got so much abuse.

[01:01:44] I've given up on it, but that's Bo Agworld. So yeah, have a look. See what you think and maybe give me a follow

[01:01:51] js: yeah, definitely check it out. Great stuff. Always. Great stuff. Love it. All right, Paul, thanks so much for joining us.

[01:01:58] pb: absolute pres thank you for having me.

[01:02:01] js: All right, folks. That's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Stark and you can join me again. Next time on