The Podcast I Wanted to Listen To—but Couldn’t Find

0:01Hello, this is Mark Satterfield and welcome to the Velvet Rope Playbook. Tonight's chapter. The podcast I wanted to listen to, but couldn't find. You probably don't need another marketing podcast. In fact, if listening to one simply gives you 14 more things you're supposed to be doing, you might be better off not listening at all. Post more, send more emails, get on more platforms, create more videos, follow up more often, generate more leads. Before long, marketing starts to feel like one of those home improvement projects where you decide to replace a faucet and somehow end up remodeling the kitchen.

0:39So today I wanted to do something a little different. I wanted to tell you why I created the Velvet Rope Playbook, why I decided to make it different from most business podcasts, and most importantly, what I think you should get in return for the time you spend listening to it. Because your time has value. And if you give me 15, 18, 20 minutes of it, I think I owe you something useful in return. It started with a frustration. I spent a lot of years studying marketing, writing about marketing, and helping businesses figure out how to attract more clients. And I've listened to a lot of business podcasts.

1:15Some are excellent. But I kept running into the same problem. A lot of marketing advice is designed for people trying to sell enormous quantities of something. Get more traffic, build a bigger audience, generate more leads, increase your conversion rate, and there's nothing inherently wrong with any of that. But suppose you're a wealth advisor who needs another 15 excellent clients, or you design multi-million dollar homes and only need four or five new projects a year. Maybe you're an executive search consultant who could have a terrific year by landing eight major assignments. Or maybe you sell private aviation services, luxury real estate, high-end consulting, or some other expensive service where one good client can be worth tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars.

2:03Your marketing problem is different. You don't necessarily need more people. You need more of the right people. And I wanted a marketing podcast that started there, and I couldn't find exactly what I wanted, so I decided to create one. I didn't want another interview show, and there was another problem, because I didn't want to particularly create another podcast where I interviewed a successful person every week and ask them how they became successful. There are some terrific shows that do that, but I wanted something different. I wanted to put you inside the kinds of situations you actually encounter when you're trying to attract affluent clients.

2:43Someone tells you you're too expensive, a prospect seems extremely interested, and then disappears. You're getting referrals, but they're not the kind of referrals you want. You're generating plenty of leads, but most of them aren't qualified, or you're trying to break into a new market where nobody knows who you are. And finally, of course, you follow up with potentially a great client and wonder where the next email will move things forward or will it make you look desperate. Now, those are all very interesting problems. And I discovered a long time ago that one of the best ways to understand a problem is through a story.

3:20Suppose I tell you, don't immediately defend your price when someone tells you you're too expensive. First, find out what they actually mean. Useful advice. But now, suppose I introduce you to Nicholas Ferraro, a landscape architect in Greenwich who designs the grounds surrounding multi-million dollar estates. A prospective client tells Nicholas his fee is 40 % higher than another firm's. Instead of immediately defending his price, Nicholas asks, when you say more expensive, what are you comparing it to? Now, we're inside the conversation. We can see what happens. We can understand why the question works.

3:57And there's a much better chance you'll remember Nicholas the next time someone tells you that you are too expensive. That's why so many episodes of the Velvet Rope Playbook are built around characters and stories. The characters may be fictionalized, but the situations are very real. They're based on problems I've seen businesses struggle with again and again. Because I don't simply want to tell you what I think you should do. I want you to see what it might look like when somebody actually does it. And there's another thing I wanted from the podcast. I wanted it to occasionally make you disagree with me.

4:34I actually think that's important because some of the ideas I talk about run contrary to conventional marketing wisdom. For example, I don't necessarily think more leads are better. Sometimes fewer leads would dramatically improve your business provided they're better leads. I don't think the best way to get more referrals is necessarily to keep asking people for referrals. I don't think you should always overcome a price objection. Sometimes the right response to someone who says you're too expensive is essentially, I understand, maybe we're not the right fit. I don't think you need to be everywhere on social media, and I certainly don't think marketing should become your second full-time job.

5:14Now, you may disagree with some of that. Good, because my objective isn't to get you to agree with everything I say. It's to get you to think. If an episode causes you to reconsider something you've been doing for five years simply because everyone says that's how marketing is supposed to work, I think we've accomplished something. But there's a bigger test. Here's the standard I really want the podcast to meet. At some point during every episode, I want you to hear something and think, I could use that. Not someday. Not after you hire a marketing agency and spend six months rebuilding everything.

5:50Something you could actually use. Maybe it's a question to ask on your next sales call. A different way to follow up with a prospect. Something to change on your website. A way to make yourself easier to refer. A better way to communicate why you're different. An idea for getting in front of affluent prospects who have never heard of you. It doesn't have to revolutionize your business. In fact, I'd be suspicious of anybody who promised that every 15-minute podcast episode would revolutionize your business. But here's what could happen. One idea changes one conversation. That conversation produces one client.

6:25And if you sell a high-value service, one client can make listening to an awful lot of podcast episodes a pretty good investment. I also wanted to respect your time. And this may be the most important difference. I assume you have another job and you're not a full-time marketer. You're running a business, you're advising clients, you're managing employees, you're designing things, selling things, solving problems, or delivering whatever expensive service your clients hired you to provide. You can't spend your entire day figuring out what the Instagram algorithm wants from you, and frankly, I don't think you should.

7:01That's why I keep coming back to simplicity. What's the smallest marketing system that could reliably produce the clients you want? What's the easiest way to stay visible to people who could refer you? What's the one piece of content you can turn into five instead of creating five different things? What's the one change to your sales conversation that might improve your conversion rate? I don't want you to finish an episode thinking, great, now I've got 17 more things to do. I'd much rather have you thinking, there's one thing that I'm going to try. And there's one more reason I created this. Marketing can become strangely impersonal.

7:38Funnels, clicks, impressions, conversion, traffic, followers, open rates. Look, all those numbers matter, but there's something we can easily forget. At the other end of all those numbers is a human being trying to decide, do I trust this person? Do they understand me? Are they actually good at what they do? Are they someone I want to have a conversation with? And when you're marketing to affluent clients, those questions become even more important because the more expensive, personal, or consequential the decision becomes, the less likely someone is to make it simply because your funnel was cleverly optimized.

8:17People buy from people. They refer people to people. They trust people. And a lot of what I want to do with the Velvet Rook playbook is to explore how you become one of those people. The person prospects want to talk to. The person clients remember. The person other professionals feel comfortable recommending. The person whose name comes up when somebody says, do you know anyone who can help me with this? So, here's the deal. I'd like to make a very simple deal with you. Give me an episode, and if you finish it and don't come away with at least one idea that makes you think differently about attracting affluent clients, then, well, don't listen to the next one.

8:59Your time is too valuable. But if you do get one useful idea, subscribe and give me another 15 or 20 minutes next time. And if that episode gives you another useful idea, hey, stick around. That's the relationship I'd like to have with you. I don't need you to listen because it's my podcast. I want you to listen because every time you do, there's a reasonable chance you'll walk away knowing something that can help you build a better business. That's the podcast I wanted to listen to. I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, so I created the Velvet Rope Playbook. And since you're already here, make sure you subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode.

9:41And I'd ask you to do one other thing. Think about someone you know who's tried to attract more affluent clients. Don't simply tell them they should listen to the podcast. Send them the episode you think they'd find most useful. Maybe they're struggling with referrals. Maybe they hate follow-up. Maybe they're attracting too many of the wrong prospects. Maybe people keep telling them they're too expensive. Find the episode that addresses the problem they're dealing with and send it to them. Because if there's one thing I've learned about marketing, it's that people pay considerably more attention when something useful comes to them from someone they already trust.

10:19And if you'd like to go beyond the podcast, well, then visit GetWealthyClients.com. There you'll find my books, my programs, resources, and even information about different ways that you can work with me personally. that's getwealthyclients.com but for now subscribe to the velvet rope playbook give me another episode and i'll do my best to earn the one after that this is mark satterfield thanks for listening i'll talk to you soon bye for now