How to Get Ahead of 99% People in Podcasting

0:00Eric Siu:When a buyer asks AI for a solution like yours, does your business come up? Most companies have no idea. And by the time they find out, they've already lost the deal to someone who did. HubSpot AEO helps you show up in those moments with the right answers buyers are looking for. Before the first click, before the first form fill. That's the moment HubSpot AEO is built for. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Neil, you know what really grinds my gears? What? So, you know, typically when someone has you record on their podcast, for example, they'll give you the raw recordings.

0:37Eric Siu:Okay. Yes. If you ask for it. If you ask for it. Correct. Right. And so like whether, you know, when I did a podcast with Gary Vee, like I gave him the raw recordings. And then when I'm on someone else's podcast, they'll give me the raw recordings. Because if you do the raw recordings, what's going to happen? You're going to get a lot more reach, right? More reach than you would without having the other person take the raw recordings. Correct? Correct?

0:59Neil Patel:In theory, yes, because they'll push it and then you'll push it. And there's no rules on this, but I believe the common etiquette is when you take the raw recording, you tag them or you mention them in the social posts as well, which helps their podcast or their brand. So it's a win-win in theory.

1:17Eric Siu:Exactly. In theory, right? And so I remember when I did it with Gary, he took the interview and he published it to his channel too. And again, you're doing the podcast with the other person because you want to maximize reach, right? and when Neil talks about etiquette, it is kind of, at least in America, the etiquette is that you do that, right? And so recently I did a podcast with someone. It was a very high quality studio and then I asked her afterwards, hey, can I get the recordings? She said yes and then I thought there was gonna be no issues, right? All that to say is, you know, they've kind of reneged on the deal and then like, I'm just like, okay, let's just cancel the podcast and then that's when she got really pissed off and she sent like this long book and all that to say, guys, is if you're looking to do a collaboration with someone, you gotta think about the goal at the end of the day.

1:58Eric Siu:If the goal is to get reach, to drive reach, then maybe you should do the things that are in your best interest to drive reach. Otherwise, it doesn't make sense to handicap it, right? So all that to say is that's what really was grinding my gears before I started the podcast. I'm like waving this chomps around right now because it was really grinding my gears. So anyway, wanted to start off with that. Neil and I just came back from speaking. Let's go back to that, okay?

2:20Neil Patel:Okay. So you recorded the podcast. Did you tell this person beforehand that you wanted the raw recordings? I told her right after we recorded. I didn't say before. That's fine. I think it's common for if you ask, you receive. Did she say no? No, she said yes. Okay, but when you emailed asking, did she say no? In the email, it also said she agreed.

2:46Eric Siu:But you didn't get it. So why cancel it? Because she wanted to do all these other things around it where it's like, oh, we're going to give you the raws, but you can only publish three shorts. And you can only do this. And there's like all these conditions around it. I'm like, dude, man, come on. This is not like we're doing a deal.

3:03Neil Patel:This is too complex.

3:05Eric Siu:Yeah, just stop, man. Like this is the etiquette. And so I'm like, at this point, I don't want to deal with this. This is even a podcast episode for us. This is taking too much rent in my head. And I just like, just cancel it. Let's not do it, okay? This pisses me off. But I just want everyone else to know that, hey, if you're going to do these collaborations, yes, you should absolutely do them. Just be smart in terms of how you collaborate, please.

3:26Neil Patel:So a few lessons for anyone listening is, one, you should want to give people the raw recordings because the more people that have it, the more likely more channels and more people are going to post it to most social profiles, which means you'll get more views and branding for yourself. Even if you'll get an extra thousand views or 10 ,000 views, something is better than nothing. The second is never limit people on how many clips they can use. the more clips they take from whatever raw footage you've created. And hopefully they tag you if they don't tag you or do a collab, but you're still in some of the videos.

4:04Neil Patel:It's still branding. Again, something is better than nothing. And the more clips they use, the better off you are. Worst case, your podcast is getting branding. And the reason I say these two things is I think this person messed up in two areas. One is not understanding that giving more raw footage to other people actually benefits them. Do you have a larger social following than them, Eric, or a smaller one? A larger? Larger. So if someone has a larger one, those are the ideal guests you want because that's going to help you grow faster. And again, you would never want to limit someone with a larger following or even a smaller following to post more content related to your podcast or your business because it just helps you grow.

4:50Eric Siu:Yep, here's what I'll say. And so I'm gonna give my meta lesson and I'm gonna talk about the conference we went to yesterday. And then Neil, you can go do your thing. So what I will say is this, you ultimately want to be a, you wanna be a giver, not a taker, okay? So in this situation, and so the quote here from Zig Ziglar is, if you help people get what they want, you're gonna get everything that you want, right? The more that you give, the more that you get ultimately. And so that's why in the back of my mind, I'm always thinking, what is my give to get ratio? I want that to be at least four to one, hopefully even eight to one.

5:22Eric Siu:So every four gives that I have or every eight gives that I have, there's one get that I get from it, right? And so oftentimes I'm not really asking for much. I'm trying to, like even us doing this podcast right now, we're trying to give as much as possible. And so you don't want to be a taker, right? And in this situation, like the biggest lesson for me is that initially this person that asked me to be on the podcast, I'm like, okay, like don't really know who this person is. And then initially I had said, hey, can we record a studio that's near me for convenience, right? And this was like, no, you know, let's go record over here in downtown LA.

5:50Eric Siu:Like it was a bit of a, it took me like 50 minutes to get there in the morning. Right. And then 50 minutes back. So, okay. First you asked me to get on a podcast and you asked me to go in traffic. And then when I asked for the recordings, you don't want to give it to me and you make this whole ordeal. And so that's like so many levels of taking. And then even right after I recorded the podcast too, she had asked me, Hey, can you make an intro for a X, Y, and Z over here? I made that intro. Right. So I think it was like four takes. and then like, I don't know what I really got out of this and I was just trying to get the recordings to even promote the thing.

6:20Eric Siu:So in life, in general, this is the life philosophy that ties into all this is you wanna give much more than you take because when you do that, people will see you as a giver. If you just take all the time, people can pick that up very quickly and that's why I have no interest with working with this person at all in the future and we'll just move on from that. So anyway, that's the right way to do these content collabs to maximize views. Just be smart about it. Think about what your goal is ultimately. That's all it is. Give much more than you take, all right? So Neil and I, Neil went to get some water too.

6:53Eric Siu:That's very nice, very nice. So yesterday, Neil and I spoke at the social commerce summit in Manhattan Beach. So Stuart, our friend Stuart Johnson, threw the event, and he's gonna be doing a lot more of these. And so that was his inaugural event. Neil, do we wanna talk about any lessons or any things that came up from the speech? anything we learned there, because it was a quick in and out for us, but maybe there were some things.

7:16Neil Patel:There is, yeah. But first off, before we get into lessons, I had a question for you. Did the QR code work well for you at the end? I don't know. Let me check right now. Did it work for you? I have no idea, but I've been doing QR codes for years. I don't know when you started doing them, but it's been an amazing strategy for us to collect leads.

7:35Eric Siu:So I'll say this. When I did the one at HubSpot last year? Oh, I see the bump. Okay. Let me tell you. Okay. So I got, uh, 65 subscriptions yesterday. So, and in the audience, maybe how many people do you think were in the audience? Cause it was like a late night session. We did like a six to 8 PM or so. How many people do you think were in the session yesterday? Uh, I have no idea. You know, you got lucky like a hundred and something. So Neil and I were, were speaking, right. But then, um, there's only like one kind of main screen. And so I was standing in the middle the whole time. And so when I went to my QR code, so Neil went right after me, right?

8:12Eric Siu:I was like, okay, guys, scan the QR code. But then someone, like, I didn't realize I was blocking it. And then someone was like, hey, you need to get out of the way. So I had to squat. But then you got the learnings from that. So you probably got more opt-ins. But yeah, 65 opt-ins, which is pretty good from a session.

8:25Neil Patel:Yeah, no. Well, once you started ducking, people started scanning again.

8:29Eric Siu:Yeah, yeah. And so what I would also say, when I did the one at HubSpot, so basically Neil and I are talking about when we do these talks at conferences, we'll put the QR code at the end to say, hey, if you want the slides, get access. And neither of us really hard pitch at all. And I would say from the HubSpot one, I think I got like 500 or so from my session.

8:46Neil Patel:The question for you, what fields do you ask for when you scan, have people scan the QR code?

8:51Eric Siu:I forgot. I think it's, it's, we, this one, we made it really basic, but I think the HubSpot one, we did ask for revenue size and employee size as well and then the company url or the yeah it was a sorry not company url but but uh work

9:04Neil Patel:email yeah yeah we usually ask for a name email work email i mean sorry name email phone number uh website url uh employee count revenue numbers marketing budget so we're at seven maybe i'm missing one um you will get a drop off the more you ask we just find that the drop off quality goes up. The quality goes up and the revenue, we still generate more revenue than when we ask for less because it helps our sales team determine which ones to really double and triple down on where to spend more time. And the reason I say why, the reason I make this point is you have to remember, yes, a lead costs money, whether it's your time or you're going to a conference or you're paying to speak or you're getting paid to speak, but time is money.

9:53Neil Patel:Or if you're spending money on ads to get a lead. But people forget that when you have a sales team, it costs you money as well. Sure, you're paying for their salary, but if they're spending time on leads that are irrelevant and are never going to close or that aren't a good fit, you're just wasting money as well. So you had to keep that in mind. But I would say there wasn't really any big learnings for me. I did notice one thing that would probably make you more money. I can tell you offline if you want me to tell you offline but yeah I thought overall was a really good event good crowd what I do wish some conferences would do and this conference was great I think it was called a social commerce is they put the screen above you I hate when the screen is behind me because then I have to move back and forth to make sure people can end up seeing everything and yeah I did notice that because Eric went first and he was blocking a lot of his slides not intentionally there was just no choice because if you're standing on stage and the slides are behind you the monitors behind you you have to keep shifting back and forth yeah and because he went first I don't think he knew or realized and I kept walking back and forth to make sure that no matter where people were sitting in the room they could see the data You got the learnings from the evening.

11:17Eric Siu:So from me going first, you got the learning. Yeah, I'm like, dude, I got the guinea pig. You got the guinea pig off of me because you knew to get away from the QR code and then not to stand in the way. But that's the annoying thing too. When you're speaking at a conference, you don't want to be the one that's moving around all the time because you're going to get people to move their heads like this all the time. So that's why I tried to usually just stand in one place, but that wasn't ideal for yesterday. I will say though, I think Stuart and the conference organizers, they did a great job, especially it being an inaugural event.

11:43Eric Siu:I think there's something to be said that In 120 days, he put this together. 700 people applied. And I think that's a good way to put together an inaugural event. He had some amazing people there. I was spending time with the president of IM8, which is the David Beckham brand yesterday. So I spent like a good, probably, I probably talked to him for like 30 minutes, an hour or so. Danny, if you're listening to this podcast, Danny's the founder. Had a great conversation with David. It was cool. So yeah, you do meet interesting people. And then some people you're going to find time to spend. you're going to be able to go deeper on.

12:16Eric Siu:And those are the ones that you're actually, you should follow up with afterwards. One thing we did say, Neil, is one thing that AI is not going to take away is community. And I think having that type of community, you're able to network with other people, make friends and maybe start your own groups and hang out with these people more because it's very hard to find your own community. But nobody's ever, like once you have your community, your relationships, AI is not going to be able to take that away. Quick break for agency owners. You know the content bottleneck. Clients want more content, but writers are more expensive.

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13:09Neil Patel:Your ops team will thank you. Back to the show. Yeah, and some quick stats. We generated five book calls from the event. So 68 QR code scans of people filling out the form fields. I think we have like seven or eight fields. It's somewhere around there. And out of the 68 five booked a call, we only show the call booking to a qualified lead or lead that we think is qualified. So my guess is if we had 68 and you had five out of there, roughly 40 % of qualified leads book it. So we had somewhere around 12 and a half, 13, or let's call it 12 to 13, usually based on our existing numbers, 12 to 13 companies that are qualified of those five booked a

13:56Eric Siu:call. Yeah. So, Neil, my numbers are we had four people book a call. And one of these was a very large company. I'll just leave it at that in Asia. And basically four out of 65. So 6 % were qualified that book the call. So we're sharing those numbers. Yeah, very similar. But my offer is kind of different now, Neil. It's more on the implementation side on the AI piece. So it's interesting because yours is still, it's still, Neil's slide, just so everyone knows, was very data focused on e-commerce. And I think he did a great job. And mine was more focused on kind of theory around more so AI implementation and AI change management.

14:35Eric Siu:um so you know different but um both help business so yeah but i think you can clean up if you just

14:43Neil Patel:made one small tweak to your presentation tell the audience go do it okay so eric has a great presentation uh sadly yeah i was there in the audience i was sitting in the back oh very nice

14:54Eric Siu:i was watching your i was the guy you know what's funny i was the guy that said zero in your very first question. I know that.

15:02Neil Patel:So, okay, so Eric's presentation, do you want to give a context of your presentation on what it is? And then I'll tell you what I would tweak. Yeah.

15:11Eric Siu:So the context is, you know, a lot of people right now, like Shopify, as an example, they're talking about how they have this river that lives in their Slack, right? That's kind of an ambient agent that people can ask questions to, and they get things done a lot faster. Jack Dorsey from Block likes to talk about the world brain. We call ours single brain. And the whole concept is that you have all your data connectors tied into your Microsoft Teams or Slack and your team can just speed up things a lot faster in terms of getting the data that they need. Excuse me. And then they get executed a lot faster.

15:40Eric Siu:So that's kind of the premise of this unified brain, single brain thing. Okay.

15:44Neil Patel:And then within there, I'm assuming Eric, you know, he teaches how to end up doing it, right? He talks about quite a bit of theory, but he breaks down some of the ways that you can end up doing this. And other cool ways you can use AI. Like I know you gave an ad creative example as well. The presentation is great. The design is great.

16:05Eric Siu:I'm assuming you use AI to design it. You know what's funny? It was, I did the initial AI design using Cloud Design and then I handed it off to a designer and she didn't like using the Cloud Design piece, but it ended up becoming what it became. I thought the output was pretty good. I thought the output was great.

16:20Neil Patel:I had no real feedback on your design quality other than it was good. I think your stuff is ahead of its time. And what I mean by that is it's really good. Companies should be doing it. They're just not adapting as fast as you are. I'm assuming you would agree with this. Hence, you have the single brain division. So single brain is a spinoff of single grain. call it a sister company or a subdivision of single grain, where Eric's marketing agency now helps with AI implementation. When you're giving all the examples and theories, I would have a slide right then and there that breaks down how it was implemented in a company and the results.