Podcasting in Professional Services
Get inspiration and new ideas to grow your business podcast. A few times each month, hear from business podcast hosts in professional service industries. Learn why they started podcasting, how they position their shows, how it connects to their business, and more. Hosted by John Tyreman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing.
Podcasting in Professional Services
2Bobs: Co-Hosted Conversations for Creative Entrepreneurs, with David C. Baker and Blair Enns
What do you get when two opinionated and well-respected business consultants record and publish conversations?
One of the top podcasts in professional services.
Since 2017, David C. Baker and Blair Enns have published value-rich conversations on the art of creative entrepreneurship through their podcast, 2Bobs. In their professional lives, David and Blair are competitors and collaborators, so their personal interactions can be a lot of fun. In this episode, you'll learn:
- The story of how 2Bobs began
- How David and Blair select episode topics and structure their show
- The benefits of co-hosting a podcast
- The impact of 2Bobs on each of their businesses
- And much more...
This episode was produced by Red Cedar Marketing. Need help launching and running a business podcast that actually produces results? Visit www.redcedarmarketing.com.
Welcome business podcasters to another episode of podcasting and professional services. If this is your first time here, this podcast features stories of experts and professional service providers who have created a business impact through the power of podcasting. I'm your host, John Tyerman. And if you're watching on YouTube, hit that like button, hit that subscribe button, if you're listening on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating and review, it helps grow the show. Today's episode features David C. Baker and Blair Enns. They are the co hosts of Two Bobs, a co hosted commentary style podcast that features conversations on the art of creative entrepreneurship. In this conversation, David, Blair, and I talked about the origin of Two Bobs, the role it plays in both David's and Blair's businesses, the benefits of having a co host, how they come up with topic without having guests and much, much more. More, but before we get to my conversation with David and Blair, imagine you're able to build trust with buyers. Imagine you're able to accelerate your network's growth and create endless content, all from a single source. Well, that's the power of podcasting. And if you're ready to explore this idea of launching a podcast for your business, I'm offering a free podcast consultation. Simply go to redcedarmarketing. com or send me a message on LinkedIn to get in touch. All right. And without further ado, here's my conversation with David C. Baker and Blair Enns. Today, I'm honored to have both of the two Bobs join me to share their collective podcasting experience. First up, called The Expert's Expert by New York Times, David C. Baker is the author of six books, including The Secret Tradecraft of Elite Advisors and The Business of Expertise. David is the practice lead of advisory services at Punctuation, the leading authority on positioning, Reinventing and selling firms in the creative and digital space. Also joined by his pot podcast, co host Blair ends founder of win without pitching the sales training organization for expert advisors and practitioners. Author of two books, the win without pitching manifesto and pricing creativity, a guide to profit beyond the billable hour, David Blair. Welcome to the show.
David C. Baker:Thank you. Thank you.
Blair Enns:Great to be here.
John Tyreman:I'd like to start at the beginning, um, would love to understand and share with my audience, the origin story of two bobs. Why did you decide to launch two bobs in the first place? What went into that decision? I guess, uh, David bringing the marketing perspective. Let's start with you.
David C. Baker:Well, it was actually Blair's idea. And so, yeah. Uh, the way I would answer that question is why did I agree to do it? Right? Because it wasn't my idea. Uh, we had quit doing an event together and Blair announced this to me during a break as he's likely to do like, with no advance notice at all. I still remember that. And I was so sad and I was thinking, man, well, what are we, what We got to do something together, right? But I hadn't thought of anything. And then Blair came up with this idea and I, which had not occurred to me at all. It never, I wasn't even a consumer of podcasts much at that point. And I thought, Oh yeah, that's a great idea. So Blair can answer probably why he came up with the idea. Actually, I don't know the answer to that question.
Blair Enns:Um, I don't remember. I, I was and remain a consumer of podcasts and, um, I, I think. I felt like, um, the event we were doing, we had done for many years. I felt like I was mailing it in. It was time to, I need to break myself free of this. Um, really the primary, uh, reason for the podcast was a reason for David and I just to have regular conversations. And, uh, why, why not record them? And we recorded, I think we started recording in late 2015 and we didn't really release the first episode until early 2017. So we recorded, if I'm remembering this correctly, that's the way I remember it, David.
David C. Baker:I do remember we did record a bunch before we released them. And now apparently that's not a necessary strategy, but we thought it was at the time.
Blair Enns:well, we threw a bunch away first. Um, and we thought, well, let's just do this. Let's record some conversations. We pick some topics. Um, we recorded the conversations and the first ones, it's like the first pancake. You throw the first one away. Well, we threw the. Through the 1st, a bunch away and then, um, yeah, we thought they were good enough that, well, let's release them.
David C. Baker:Yeah. Yeah.
Blair Enns:So we, we knew there would be some marketing benefit there. And we're both, um, fairly prolific creators of content. David more so than me, um, So we knew we'd have a lot to talk about it and it would be good to add to the marketing mix, but really the, the primary reason was, Hey, let's just find a reason for us to have a conversation every week.
David C. Baker:and that's a fine enough reason, I think to do a podcast. I don't think you have to have a better reason than that. But I, I do want to like, I guess, encourage people to not conflate the success of a podcast and the discoverability of a podcast. Right? I think 1 of the reasons why the podcast has done well is because Blair brought his audience the 1 he developed independently and I brought mine. And between the two of us, we already had an audience who gave it a choice. Now they kept listening because it was good, but I don't think they ever would have started listening unless they had heard about it through an email relationship that we had largely for both of us. And then of course, you know, author books and all that kind of stuff, which kind of. It's like when either one of us, or maybe both of us at the same time start mailing it in, then this will end too, right? It's just like people, an audience can tell listening to a podcast that people are mailing it in. I quit listening to one the other day because I just felt like. Man, these people are not into it. Like it's, there's no energy and so on. So yeah, it started just conversation with friends. Of course, most podcasts are different, right? They interview people over and over new, a new person every time. So that's a very different reason to have a podcast, but that's equally valid. Reason to have a podcast just because you want to have a conversation with lots of different people and you want to record it. I think I was kind of, I was dismissive of that idea at the beginning, feeling like it was a little bit disingenuous, but I've come around to the idea that. No, that's actually a pretty good reason to have one. Yeah,
John Tyreman:Well, I love, I've hosted four different podcasts, two of them were with a
David C. Baker:so you've gotten fired from three of them. That's really the point.
John Tyreman:No, I've got, I've moved on
David C. Baker:Oh, that's how we say it. Now. We don't say it fired. We say moved on. Okay.
Blair Enns:John caught in the crossfire.
John Tyreman:it's okay. I'm used to it. I've got some thick skin. Um, but no, I've, I've seen, um, kind of the both sides of the coin, right? So I've been on those interview. I've been a host of interview shows, but I've also been a host of some co hosted commentary style shows, and I do see the benefits of having a conversation with, you know, a co host. Um, I also see the benefits of being able to recognize patterns across interviews. if you do them, you know, consecutively and be able to kind of like see the different ways that, you know, people operate. Um, but I, I want to kind of dig into something that you both alluded to, which is you want to have conversations with each other. And I was doing some research and I found that only about one third of podcasts in the professional services space have co hosts. Um, most are run by. A single host and um, I guess I'd really kind of like to explore this concept of kind of like the benefits of co hosting a podcast versus doing it alone. Um, Blair, I'd love to start with you from your perspective. What are some of the benefits of co hosting a podcast with David?
Blair Enns:Well, I'll go beyond, add a little more nuance beyond just co hosting because I recently, for about a year, I co hosted another podcast that was an interview format and going into that experiment, which I was really happy to do, I'm really happy with the output. It's, it's no longer
John Tyreman:20%, right?
Blair Enns:Yeah, 20 percent of the marketing procurement podcast, super, super niche and I wanted to spend some time exploring that topic and I needed a co host because I didn't know much about the topic and previous to that, I. I could count on like one hand the interview format podcasts where there were two co hosts that I liked. I don't think, I don't think that format works well. Um, Ron Baker and Ed Kless do a pretty good job of it with their. Podcast the soul of enterprise where there's 4 segments and each turn take turns alternating. Um, but you have to be careful about your stepping over your co hosts. And when Leah power, my co host and I, I was in the early days, I was just talking too much. I was dominating. I, I was, it's. I was a seasoned podcaster and she was new at it. So I found myself just filling space and it was, it was very difficult to learn to do, but coming back to the two bobs format. Uh, I love this format because David and I know each other. And I think part of the appeal to people who know us have followed us for a while or worked with us is the, uh, the chemistry and the rapport. But, uh, I think. This format would get old quickly if we were not such prolific content creators. Um, I think I don't, I w it's not the format that I would recommend to people. I mean, I wouldn't just, I wouldn't dissuade you from trying, but I don't think it's the format that is kind of most easily adopted by others. I think the best kind of format to get started in podcasting is probably a solo person interviewing another solo person.
John Tyreman:It's an interesting perspective. David, what would you, what would you say to what Blair said?
David C. Baker:Uh, so advantage of having this format. Well, you only have to do half the work in essence. Although oddly enough, you know, you might think that it's more work to be interviewed because you're preparing, but I actually put more work into interviewing Blair because he'll send me something and I want to really get into it and understand it and be able to take it different directions and so on. So, but there's that in the variety. I think, um, it's so much easier to pull off. I mean. You know, you're not the logistics of coordinating with a guest and and dealing with their shitty audio choices. And, you know, um, I just think that part makes it a lot easier. I also think the quality of the episodes from episode to episode is not going to vary quite as much. So we, you may not like it, in which case you're just going to not listen, right? But if you're interviewing other people, every one of every one of those episodes is an unknown and you just, you put lots of effort into it because you don't know this person that well. So it's a lot more work and then at the end, you're just like, really? Like I don't even know if I want to publish this or that was much better than I thought and so on. Um, plus I think we don't have to deal with the, some of the awkwardness that comes with guests where you sort of want them to promote it and help your podcast out and like quit selling so much. And like, we've learned, we've learned that stuff about each other and we can make the handoffs really well. So it's just so much easier to not have a guest each time. That doesn't mean it's the right format. Like I agree with Blair. Like I wouldn't necessarily recommend this. There's one podcast I listened to. There's two podcasts I listened to that have co hosts and both are really, really good. Uh, one of them, because they have just figured out how to work with each other. The other one, because. It's a political podcast, and so they can always react to some nonsense that's happening that week. So there's always fresh topics for them. Right? And they don't run out of stuff that they can talk about individually. Like Blair and I are pulling stuff from what we've noticed individually. So,
Blair Enns:Yeah, I was gonna just add to that. That's an interesting point. Look, we purpose, purposely, uh, do not do timely content, like, not super timely. We don't talk about what's happening in the news. It's a lot easier to have material to talk about when you're talking about current events. Um, we're trying to talk about timeless. Some of these things evolve the tools that our audience use. So, um, we have to speak to that. We have to speak to AI, obviously, although we've resisted doing a topic specifically on AI, uh, because we don't want to get too timely on these things. So that's, that's where we're at. That's actually a lot harder from a content point of view. I don't think David or I find it particularly hard because we're, we have, you know, decades of experience of writing on these relatively timeless topics. But I think if you were getting started and you're wondering, you know, where's my content going to come from current events is a good place. And if it's not current events, then I think you already have to be a fairly prolific content creator, unless you are interviewing guests.
John Tyreman:you know, there is a lot of work that goes into an effective interview, right? You know, you don't want to just ask the same generic questions over and over again, because the chances are that guest has been on other podcasts and has already answered all of those generic questions. So you really need to go kind of a layer deeper and try to extract the value that's relevant to your audience. On a podcast is when you're, when you're doing the interview route. And then I love the thought that if you're going to do a co hosted commentary style show, then you really need to number one, know what you're talking about in order to be able to have those engaging dynamic conversations that people want to listen to. Um, But you need to do that with someone with whom you have chemistry. And so that's what I love about your show to Bob's. Um, and you, you mentioned, uh, Blair, I think you, you kind of alluded to, um, how, how you go about coming up with topics and, you know, making them more evergreen. I'd like to kind of explore that a little bit more. And so on your show, you take turns. interviewing each other, uh, David, you've been very vocal over the years about how you don't accept guest interviews on Tubob. So anyone listening, don't try to go pitch them to be a guest. Um, so can you talk about how you do generate topics? To talk about like, where do you turn to for those ideas? How does, how do those ideas come about? And do you have a system for maybe prioritizing or ranking them?
David C. Baker:Uh, my mind is sort of like, uh, like if it was on the battlefield, a lot of people would die on both sides. It's like, I'm shooting everywhere. It's like, it's uncontrolled
Blair Enns:David Baker listener is the metaphor king.
David C. Baker:Uh, so, It's a matter of like capturing an idea, right? And so when 1 comes and most of those to me come when I'm talking with a client or a prospect every once in a while on a drive, it's always at an inconvenient time. It's never when I'm sitting there like where I could easily right. It's always when I'm driving or what I'm on the phone or something. And then. It needs to sit for a few days and decide, well, that was a really stupid idea. Or I have no idea what I meant, or it's like, this is worth pursuing. And then I start to notice things about that as I go through the day, through the week, things I read, things I hear about maybe other podcasts I'm listening to, and I start to just throw things into that bucket and then it becomes. An option right for, uh, a podcast and some topics are not long enough for a podcast. Some kind of, I feel like they need to be illustrated. So they're not really good for that. Or some are just better for a podcast because it's something that you just need to talk a lot around. It's not just a 4 bullet point. It needs to be a conversation and so on. So when I'm, when it's my turn, right? Um, like we're going to record a podcast right after this. And it was my turn. I had about. I think 1100 things that I could look through and decide. And then after that, it's just like, what strikes me today? What do I want to talk about? Like, uh, I gotta be engaged in, it's gotta be something interesting. So that's how I decide. And then, uh, every once in a while I'll say, Hey Blair, I'm not sure about this one, uh, just tell me if you think it's not good, you know, or if it's self serving or whatever. And, uh, if it's no good, then I'll just start over and I'll just send it to him. It takes, you know, a page or maybe two pages. And that's how, that's how it happens for me. Hey, can I, before Blair answers that question, um, something's occurred to me. It's like the podcasting space. There's been a switch recently. I think in that hosts are not as much in charge. It seems to me like guests are more in charge. And so you have these people who they come to any podcast they're appearing on and they have got to get some message across. It's like. Hey, I'm, I'm releasing a book right now, or I'm, you know, and so it's almost like podcasts are these news shows in the morning and they are this. Agglomeration of what everybody else's agenda is. It's like it takes a really good host to wrap that up so that it's a fixed agenda for the listener and not being dragged in every direction by the, the guest who wants to get a message across. And I think that's 1 of the toughest things for great guests to do is to be stronger than the is for hosts to be stronger than the guests.
John Tyreman:It's interesting that you say that David, because I've kind of noticed an opposite trend. Um, where, um, there's actually significantly more people who want to be a podcast guest than there are podcasts who have interviews. And so, what I'm seeing out there in, is hosts who are being very, they're being much more selective. With who they bring on to their shows because there's so many people who are reaching out to them to be guests on their shows that they now have this influx of inquiries and they're, they're able to be more selective with who they bring on
David C. Baker:So we're saying the same thing, but you're saying that hosts are doing a better job than I think they are.
John Tyreman:perhaps. Uh, or maybe I'm just looking at different podcasts than you are.
David C. Baker:No, no. Interesting. Yeah.
John Tyreman:Yeah, that is an interesting point. Um, and it is, I think in, in that, that's why I'm so bullish on podcasts that we're not, we have yet to reach peak podcast. Is because it's, we're still emerging this, the, if you look at the growth trajectory of the total number of podcasts that are out there, I think there's only like 40, 000 active business podcasts out there. And that's across like all niches, right? And so I, I contend that if you stick with a regular publishing cadence over 12 months, then chances are, you'll be the top podcast in your niche. If you put provided you put out good content, right? Um,
David C. Baker:going to happen to the middle class of podcasts though. There's like millions of little ones that hardly anybody's listening to. And then you've got the really big famous ones. We're a middle class podcast and I feel like we occupy a very dangerous ground. It's like if we didn't have a huge audience beforehand, we wouldn't have a podcast.
John Tyreman:yeah, I think discoverability has, has changed the way that podcasts are being discovered has changed a lot within the last five years since COVID. I think that was a big accelerant to the market's adoption of being able to listen to podcasts. Yeah. Um, and so you're seeing distribution be kind of more of like on the forefront and podcasts are kind of like the perfect source of content because it gives you audio, video, text based content. You could take the transcript, run it through an AI and have a blog post draft in an instant based on a podcast episode. Uh, you can take, you know, all those interviews and you could feed it into a custom GPT and then query, you know, challenging, uh, questions. And then it would reference all the interviews that you do or all of your podcast content. So I think that there's new ways that podcasts are fitting into marketing strategies to sales strategies, account based sales strategies. Um, and, and I think businesses are starting to realize that and innovate on top of podcasts as kind of like this, um, the, a marketing vehicle just from like the audio perspective. Does that make any sense?
David C. Baker:Yeah. Interesting.
John Tyreman:Blair, I know we totally kind of like went off on a tangent, um, on that, but you know, it's, it's stuff that I love talking about, but what I'd love to do is kind of get your perspective on, you know, David shared with how ideas come to his mind for podcast episodes. I'd love to hear your creative thought process on. Selecting the topics when it is your turn.
Blair Enns:Um, I don't think per se about podcast topics. I think primary, I think first and foremost in terms of blog posts. So I write a blog post every two weeks. David writes one every week. We have recordings set for every week. Um, and then we bump about half of those recordings. So, uh, our, our podcast drops. Every two weeks, so it drops at the cadence with, at which I write posts. So that means every second, so I think of a post first and then of the two posts that I write in a month or publish in a month, I'll largely choose one of them as the, the podcasts on which the topic on which I would like David to interview me. So I'm not really thinking about podcasts when I'm thinking about content. I'm thinking about the written medium and then I'm choosing what I've written and, uh, and then choosing to be interviewed on that topic. Now, every once in a while, I do come up with a topic that I think, Oh, this would be good for a podcast for whatever reason. Maybe it's because it's something we haven't covered. I feel like I've written about it a lot, but we haven't covered it. Um, we haven't done an episode on it, but that's largely how I think about it. I think about. Content first, I view it as the written word, and then I choose from my selective written works, um, for a podcast topic.
John Tyreman:That's really interesting. I like that flow. And I suppose, you know, that, that works for you as a content creator. Like you said, you've been, you know, a writer much, you know, before you were a podcaster. Um, and then does, let me ask you, does writing like help clarify your thoughts? Would it be fair to say that before you kind of bring it to a medium where you are in a position to talk about it?
Blair Enns:Yeah, I think David and I have had this conversation a lot in private and sometimes a little bit publicly. We, we don't know how, um, Anybody can actually create content without writing because I neurologically, I know, I think through my fingers, I have to, I have to write about something to understand it because I think you don't, you don't understand something as well as you think you do until you have to write out. I think it's kind of beyond 900 words or so. Um, I think I used to say 600, maybe it's 600, but my motto was anybody can fake anything for 600 words. And then after 600 words, you kind of, you're getting to the threshold where you kind of need to know what you're talking about.
David C. Baker:I just released a blog entry. It was 480 words last night. Now I'm nervous.
Blair Enns:Oh, and I'm experimenting with a micro platform, like just like 200 words. Um, don't know if I'm going to launch it yet, but that's, that's actually one of the challenges because David writes weekly, I write every second week. I used to write weekly. I've written more frequently than that. I've written less frequently than that. I actually find the cadence of. Uh, biweekly to be too long. Uh, it's too long between posts, which the target length is around a thousand words, which might be a little bit long these days. Um, it's too long to get into the writing groove. And when I have a whole bunch of writing commitments over the short term, ideas just flow. You asked David where his ideas come from and he said. When he was on the phone with clients or prospects or driving that happens to me too, but my number one source of ideas is actually writing. So when I'm writing a piece of content, I get these tangential ideas and I just note those ideas and never note. That's my go to tool. And I just create a new tool. I tag it. Article is my tag, uh, subject, the, the heading, and then one, two, or three sentences. And then I go back to what I was doing. So the act of writing triggers ideas, new ideas. And if I haven't actually written anything in a couple of weeks, I actually find it hard to write again. So I'm working on increasing my cadence of content creation, which is going to necessitate that I shorten the length. Ha, ha, ha,
John Tyreman:And, um, I like, I like the way that, that, that you, you think about content creation through writing, um, and speaking of, you know, you both are, are authors. And, you know, I think this is a great segue. I'd love to explore the relationship between podcasting and authoring a book. If we look at the timeline of events, it looks like in 2010, you both. Released books when without pitching and David, your financial management of a marketing firm. And then 2015 was when you've recorded your first podcast episode. Um, 2017, David, you published the business of expertise, 2018 Blair, you published pricing creativity. And most recently, David, you published the secret trade craft book in 2023. Although you did have that written. Um, in 2019, did I, do I have that right?
David C. Baker:And it just wasn't the right time to release it during the pandemic. Yeah.
John Tyreman:Right. So, um, I guess let's, uh, David, let's start with you, I guess, from your perspective, what impact if any, has the podcast had on, I guess, marketing your books and then separately did those books have an, I mean, it sounds like they had an impact on the topics that, that you all select.
David C. Baker:It's hard for me to know how much our podcast has done to market the books. I'm sure it's had some impact. Um, I can track the impact of other podcasts that I'm a guest on for sure. I'll say to Julie, Julie manages our publishing side and I'll just say to her after I get off a podcast and say, Hey, I think that I think in three weeks we're going to sell this many books, right? You know, so I can see that. So I don't know about. Our podcast in terms of selling books, but I do know that the books come after the content creation. So I, I was laughing thinking Blair said that he thinks through his fingers and I do too, and I was laughing because it's like the people who think through their mouths are the ones who annoy me. It's like figure. Figure that shit out first and then let's have a conversation, right? But, um, I do, I think the same way. That's what made me think of that. And so a book is just simply where I've attacked a subject from all kinds of angles and I'm not finished, but I feel like, Oh, this is leading to something. This is leading to a book on this subject. I can pick out 30 things I've written out of. Out of 500, it's like, oh, that might be an interesting book. Only one time have I ever taken those articles and shaped it into a book and I had somebody else do that. That was a financial management book. But the rest of the time I start from scratch, but I've already looked like I'm going to take this castle here. And I have camped out for a week at a time from lots of different angles here and know exactly how to approach this. And then the books is just a natural thing that comes from it. But in terms of publicity, like I, I think appearing on other people's podcasts has been huge for my books for sure. Yeah. I wouldn't do it otherwise. Cause I don't enjoy it all that much, but that's the only reason I do it. And I think it's effective. Yeah.
John Tyreman:Okay.
Blair Enns:would second almost every, almost everything you said, you know, the, how, how good has our podcast been for book sales? No idea. Um, I think these people who, who buy the books, who listen to the podcast would buy the books because they're probably on our email list too, or at least some of them are. It's got to have some effect. Uh, I'm with David, um, launching a book. A great way to promote your book is to be on other people's podcasts. My next book is out in just over a month from now. I think David's next book is out a little bit around the same time or a little bit later.
David C. Baker:A little bit later,
Blair Enns:So that's why we're here, John. We both have books and we just want to skip to the end where you ask us about the books and we tell you where you can buy them. Just kidding. We're not that ready, but So we're not great markers of the podcast. David is, does a pretty good job of promoting it on LinkedIn. I'm on a small social media hiatus. Um, and he keeps cajoling me to get better at it. We, we, we, there's a lot of things we could be do could be doing about this podcast. We could do better about it. Especially on the promotion side, especially using the podcast to promote our own services. We don't do that. We could have our own ads just a little tag at the end. Some sort of mid roll. Hey, check out this service. We don't do that. It's just because we've never gotten around to it. It's only been 7 or 8 years. We just haven't gotten there yet. But what I will say is, I think David would echo this to almost everybody who comes into our training program, not maybe not almost everybody, the large majority listens is an active, listen, listener of the podcast.
David C. Baker:Yeah, me too, for sure.
Blair Enns:So, so we know it does something for business, but it's, it's pretty hard to quantify.
John Tyreman:that's, that's a common sentiment that I've heard is that it is hard to quantify, but there is this general kind of like gut feeling, this knowing that the podcast does have an impact on the business in a number of different ways. And that's, that's why I do this show is to really kind of pick a, pick that apart and try to understand that. Um, so it sounds like the podcast, its role right now from, Kind of like a, an impact on revenue standpoint is it, um, I guess you could say more upper funnel of your coaching programs. Was that, would that be fair to say?
Blair Enns:I don't know if that's true. It might be lower funnel.
John Tyreman:Yeah, I, I suppose it's, it leads into your coaching program. So it's, it's part of that customer journey. Per se, listening to the podcast gets you familiar with your voices, and then they're, they feel compelled to reach out and explore more of your services based on maybe the mere exposure effect, or just being familiar with, with you and following
David C. Baker:Yeah, it's makes sales so much easier. It's like when I have a phone call with somebody, there's really not much to talk about. They kind of know what I think about things. They know what I charge. It's just, is this a human who's not being propped up by a staff and needs to resign? Or is this, uh, is this a real person? Right? So, yeah, it's, it moves people through the funnel for sure. And it, I just love, I like, it's a zero sum game in my mind. It's like, the more stuff you put out there ahead of time, the easier sales is. So it's, it's a good thing to do. Yeah. And I, as Blair was listing all the things we could do, I just think, man. We are just so bad at this. It could be so much bigger. It's huge though for our businesses, but it could be so much bigger.
John Tyreman:It's funny. It's one of the top podcasts, you know, across all genres. Right.
Blair Enns:It's us and Joe Rogan,
John Tyreman:quite the feat.
David C. Baker:Yeah. And we're about to take that sucker down. He's got, he's, his, his days are limited. No, but you know, you were, you were, one, one thought I had is like, you know, when you do a webinar, the cool thing about a webinar is you can turn off how, uh, so that other people can't see how many attendees there are. Right. Same thing is true when you're, right. interviewing somebody for your podcast that you want to build a relationship with. They don't know how many people are going to listen to this episode, right? It's just, uh, there's no Nielsen ratings that anybody pays attention to for this stuff. So there's the audience building is important, but in some ways it's irrelevant. Like if you've got other goals for it,
John Tyreman:Exactly. Blair, you were going to say something.
Blair Enns:yeah, I, I think, you know, one of the benefits of the podcast medium is I think it is the most intimate mediums of all. More so than video, which obviously has an audio component, there's something about listening to a person's voice while not looking at them and hearing their voice for many hours. David and I, you've probably felt this too, John, or experienced this, where you meet somebody who's a listener and they geek out as a fan more than say, a reader of your book or somebody who's seen you interviewed on a big YouTube channel. Um, it's just something about your voice in their heads. So when they meet you as a professional. It's not, it's not so much star quality. It's, it's intimacy. It's like, they feel like they know you if they reach out to you after listening to their podcast, they feel like they're to David's point. There aren't a lot of questions that need to be answered. I know who this person is. Their voice has been in my head as what was this Dexter guff would say there. Their mouth has been on my ears, uh, for a long time. We have this intimate relationship. I think that's great for business. It's a great softener for, for the sale.
John Tyreman:I think I've heard to heard it referred to as a pair of social relationship where it's kind of like, it's like a celebrity. You feel like, you know, them, you listen to them, but they had, they don't know you from Adam. Um, so I know that, uh, we're, we're running up on our time. I do have one last question for, for both of you. I, I co host a podcast called Breaking Biz Dev with Mark Wainwright, and um, our premise is that there's a lot of business development practices out there that are broken. And we try to shine a light on that and beat them up a little bit. Um, and I'd love to grab some audio of each of your thoughts on that. Um, so my question is, and David, we can start with you. What's one thing you think is completely broken About the way firms go about developing new business today.
David C. Baker:well, there are a lot of things broken about how people go about new businesses. Like, where do you want to start? But actually, actually, I don't think that's where I would focus because. It's legitimately true that there are very different paths to the gold at the end of this. And that path needs to be fairly singular. It needs to be tied to your personality. It needs to be based on what assets you have, what kind of help you have, what kind of firm you have, and so on. So, I see lots more viable ways To challenge this than I ever have. I think the biggest problem is people don't develop a habit of implementing whatever that is. Like, if that's just outlink on linkedin out, um, outreach on linkedin, or maybe it's going to trade shows or taking people to dinner or doing an email list, whatever that is. It's like, I've learned to focus less on recommending a specific thing and just. coming up with something that becomes a habit for them. It's, it's the difference between eating differently and being more active after your heart attack scare versus just having a lifestyle that's active all along. And when people aren't doing new business, it's not because they haven't figured out what the right method is. It's because they just haven't been consistent with something. So that's what I would want to fix. If I could wave a magic wand.
John Tyreman:Consistency in that, that builds this, your skills around you, whether it's a publishing mechanism like blogs or, or podcasts, or whether it's kind of like doing that outreach and getting better at, you know, generating new business through, you know, making connections and asking good questions. Love that, love that. Blair, what's one thing you think is completely broken about the way firms go about developing new business?
Blair Enns:I think it's the stereotypes around the greater sales function. We don't even call it sales, right? We call it new business or business development. And there's a lot wrapped up in there. I've kind of built a, built a business around. On that, on that, uh, friction, you've got this expert advisor or practitioner of some kind of professional who, um, who's expected to show up in the engagement a certain way. And then when they go into sales mode or business development mode, they adopt a different personality. We're all kind of constrained by these fallacies of how we think salespeople should behave, like the salesperson should have the answer, not the question. That the salesperson has to be brilliant, has to always have the exactly the right, know exactly what to say. Um, there's just too many statements, not enough questions, too much pressure to be somebody you're not. So I, I see it as a David and I did a podcast episode on it. I've written a blog post on it. I call it the dichotomy of the expert salesperson. You're an expert first in a salesperson second, and then. You adopt these sales techniques that might be applicable in other domains and are not applicable. I'm not saying not everything, like there are some aspects of selling that are universal, but, uh, what's broken is the assumption that expertise of any kind can and should be sold the way, same way that products are sold or transactional services are sold, drop the salesperson persona, be yourself, do what David said. Which is like pick one or two things and just be consistent.
David C. Baker:Just like hosting a podcast, you know, when you're in a conversation with the host and it's a normal human, and then the audio kicks on and they start recording and they turn into some weird
Blair Enns:Hello everybody. Welcome to podcasting and professional services. I'm John Tierman. Yeah, that David and I have talked about that a lot. No, you don't do that at all. You are legitimately, you are yourself. You're the same person before we started recording as you were when we hit record. Um, but David and I have both been interviewed by people who we have this great conversation with a great human being, the record button, the record The red light goes on and they turn into a 1980s radio DJ. And then that slowly ebbs away after about five minutes, they're back to themselves, but they feel like they need to open that way. Okay. Is this, can we continue with the airing of the grievances?
David C. Baker:Well, that's, it made me think of that because that when you turn into sales mode, instead of being the expert mode, and, and this is what Blair's next book is about really the four conversations.
Blair Enns:plug each other's books here.
David C. Baker:God almighty. Now this, that was a cue you're supposed to.
John Tyreman:Well, that's the, that's the co host camaraderie like in action right there. I love it. I love it. Well, um, David Blair, I just want to thank, I can't thank you enough for sharing your perspective, your experience, um, and having you both on the podcast. I just, that's, that was important to me because I wanted to share that chemistry with our listeners and, um, highlight the benefits of co hosting a podcast too. So. Thank you both so much for your time. Um, why don't we, let's plug the books. Like where can you find your books?
Blair Enns:book, The Four Conversations, A New Model for Selling Expertise will be out at the end of September or early October. So around the time you're listening to this, you can go to my website, winwithoutpitching. com and find all kinds of different formats and places you can buy it. Or you can just go to Amazon.
David C. Baker:Yeah. Uh, mine will be out later sometime in, Probably November, I would think it's about selling a professional service firm and Amazon as well, or you can go to punctuation. com.
John Tyreman:Excellent. All right. For those that are listening, go check out Blair and David's books and listen to their show to Bob's wherever you get your podcasts. So thank you both for, for your time.
David C. Baker:Thanks,
Blair Enns:John.
John Tyreman:All right. Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with David and Blair. If you found this podcast episode insightful, please leave a rating and review, subscribe to the YouTube channel and follow along on LinkedIn. Happy podcasting.
