How to Take Advantage of Podcasts to Grow Your Influence

As an entrepreneur, I’m constantly studying how other successful business owners are doing and growing. That’s why I’m very excited to share my conversation with Daniel Gefen, #1 International Bestselling author of The Self Help Addict, host of the podcast “Can I Pick Your Brain?” (which has reached over 250,000 downloads and ranked in the Top 100 Business Podcasts on iTunes) and Founder and CEO of Gefen Media Group.

In addition to retelling his inspiring personal journey, Daniel discusses why speaking on podcasts is the fastest way to build your audience, create evergreen media exposure, and capture the attention of your ideal customer, all at zero cost. He also describes what he’s learned from interviewing millionaires and top business leaders and reveals the common denominator that all successful people share.

There are so many golden nuggets packed into this interview. I can’t wait for you to hear it.

Listen to the podcast here:

Download the audio file here.

How to Take Advantage of Podcasts to Grow Your Influence

Our guest is Daniel Gefen. Daniel is the Founder and CEO of Gefen Media Group and the number one international bestseller author of The Self Help Addict and the host of the popular podcast, Can I Pick Your Brain? which has reached over 250,000 downloads and ranked in the Top 100 Business Podcasts on iTunes. In this interview with Daniel, there’s so much to pay attention to as Daniel shares his life story and how much he learned from interviewing top billionaires and most successful people in the world of business. Pay attention how he speaks about what brings them all together, what he could share is the common denominator between all those successful people, how you have to make sure always to show up, the importance of podcasts and how you can take advantage of being a guest on other people’s show and instant reach of thousands of people. Finally, how he shares what is the best gift you could give yourself or to your spouse. Without further ado, here is my interview.

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Daniel, thank you so much for joining me.

I’m so glad to be on. Thank you for having me.

You and I go way back. I think it was at the time that you still lived in the UK. Now, you live in Israel. At that point, you ran a virtual call center. Since we also at PTEX have an in-house call center, we were talking and collaborated and we got to know each other. You evolved so much since. I would love to start sharing with the audience a little bit about your history, how you got into that business, what that business taught you and then how you evolved from there to what you’re doing now?

I’ll give you the overview, the bird’s eye view of it. We can go into anything that you think is interesting. I got married at 23. I’m originally from London. I married a girl from California. We met in Israel, so that was already our first compromise. We started on the right foot. I ended up getting a job in mortgages. It was going very well. When I started in LA, I was making six figures and we were living the dream. It’s the dream to live in a Spanish townhouse. We had our first child. Everything was amazing. Then 2008 came around and suddenly you couldn’t sell. You couldn’t give away mortgages. You’d have to pay someone to take a mortgage. It was commission-only. I wasn’t on that salary. For about four months straight, I was on the phone nonstop and not making any money.

I got a knock on my door one day and it was the landlord. She was this tall Russian lady called Olga. I look up at this huge, tall, Olga and she said to me, “Mr. Gefen, you need to leave.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “You haven’t paid the rent in two months and I’m evicting you. You have to get out.” I said, “I have a wife and a child. What do you mean?” “I don’t care. If you don’t go out, I’m going to get the bailiffs. They’re going to come in and they’ll force you out.” We had to leave. At that point, I was officially homeless, you can say. We had to move in to my in-laws, which was the only option we had. It was not a good option because for those who are married, having your in-laws for a couple of weeks is already a big challenge. To live in their house is a whole different story. That lasted about three weeks. I realized that it was either we move out and we try something else or my wife and I would end up divorced because it was not a good situation to be in.

I ended up doing something that I still remember to this day. It was very embarrassing for me and very difficult. I called up my father who. I always want to make my father proud. Like every guy, we all want to make our fathers proud of us. When I had this six-figure salary, six-figure job, making six figures and living in California and married with a child and everything else, it was a very proud time. To call up my father and tell him, “I don’t know what to tell you. I’m broke. I have no money. I have nothing. I’ve been kicked out of townhouse. I’m living with my in-laws. I need help.” It was a very humbling time. I asked my father if I can get a job with him. I had to persuade my wife to move to London. Thankfully, she agreed and we moved to London. I worked for my father in a grocery store, which was something I told myself I would never do, to work in a grocery store at a cashier because it was the most boring job in the world.

I had this fire in my belly that I wanted to be my boss. I wanted to do my own thing. For a year I was depressed. After a year, I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I came home to my wife and I said, “Honey, if I have to serve milk and eggs to one more person, I think I’m going to lose it. I’m going to shoot someone. I can’t do this anymore.” She was very supportive and she said, “I believe in you. You’ve got to start your own business. It’s meant to be. It’s what you need to do.” To cut a very long story short, I ended up starting the company which was the call center. It’s very difficult to grow and to build.

There were a lot of lessons I learned along the way. Essentially, I scaled it up. We’ve got a couple of hundred clients and I had a whole team, staff. Everything was going great finally. I had my operations manager who was in charge of running the whole company because I realized very quickly that I’m an entrepreneur and I’m very creative and I’m a great sales guy, but I’m not good at operations. I’m not good at managing people. I’m not good at systems. I barely remember where I put my car keys, I ask my wife. To run a company, you’ve got to remember a lot of things.

When I hired this operations manager, she changed the whole business. Everything was so smooth. Everything was running like clockwork. She would hire and fire. She would manage people. I dreaded the hiring process and the firing process because I got very emotional as we do. As entrepreneurs do, we get very emotional into our businesses. If someone does something wrong, we go, “What are you doing?” You can’t talk to someone like that. If you want to fire someone, “I don’t want to fire this person. How do I talk to them? How do I do it?” Her name was Stacy. I would always say, “Stacy, can you fire this person? Stacy, can you deal with this?”

[bctt tweet=”In the world of entrepreneurship, we need to constantly be creating and doing. It’s not enough to make some money and then sit back.  ” username=””]

Before Stacy, I remember I had a 65-year-old woman who worked for me and she was having a bad day. She was not very nice to one of the clients on the phone. She wasn’t polite, whatever it was. Because this is my baby, I’m passionate about this. I got very emotional and I told her off and then she started crying. I’m this 26-year-old little kid at the time and I’m making this 65-year-old woman who could have been my grandmother crying. I’m thinking, “I can’t do this. This is crazy.” I hired this woman, Stacy. She is amazing. One day, she calls me up out of the blue and said, “Daniel, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t come to work.” I said, “Is everything okay? Do you need a couple of days off? It’s fine. Don’t worry. Come back to work next week.”

She said, “No. I almost took my life yesterday. I’ve been depressed and suicidal. I went to see a psychiatrist and I’m not allowed to work for the next six months at least.” It was a massive bombshell. The thing is, and this is one of the big lessons I learned as well, she knew the business back to front. I did not know how to operate the business. I didn’t know anything. I was left without any way of handling the business. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know any processes. There’s nothing. For the audience, thank God she’s fine now. This is talking about a few years ago. At the time, I had no idea what to do.

I remember I ended up walking out the office feeling totally helpless. I went home and I called up my business advisor, my mentor and I cried to him. I said, “I don’t know what to do. My business is going to go down the drains. I have no idea how to do anything. She ran my business. I don’t know what to do.” After twenty minutes of me sobbing to this mentor, he said to me, “Daniel, here’s my advice. I want you to go for a walk and I want you to think about what you can do about the situation, not think about the problem. Think about the solution. What solution can you come up with? Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Just think creatively. That’s what you’re good at. Tap into that power of creativity and find a positive solution.” He put down the phone.

As I got up, I went for a walk. I started thinking, “What can I do?” I realized that all of my strengths, creativity, negotiation, sales, networking, thinking big picture, leading, motivating, all that stuff, was the stuff that I love doing and I’m good at. The stuff that I’m bad at, which is operations and dealing with staff, that stuff I didn’t want to deal with. I realized that I relied on one person to run my whole business. Then I had this crazy idea that popped in my head, “What if I outsourced the whole operations side of the business to a company? What company am I going to be able to outsource this to? What about one of my competitors? I’m sure they would be happy to make some extra money.” It sounded like a crazy idea at the time but I thought it could work.

I went on a hunt and I started interviewing some of my competitors. To cut the long story short, I found the right person. Until this day, we’re talking a few years later, his company does all the back end. I outsource the whole business. I haven’t been involved in that business for the last few years. The business is still running profitably. I ended up running the business at the time out of a hotel lobby. I fired all of my staff, I got rid of the office, I went to a hotel and I worked down at the hotel. Every day I would bring my laptop, my phone. I was there every single day for a year.

The staff thought I was the manager of the hotel because they saw me there all the time, pacing up and down on my phone. They would ask me, “Can I go for lunch break?” I’ll be like, “You can do whatever you want. I don’t work here, I work here but it’s not for the hotel.” Eventually, the real manager of the hotel came up to me after a year and said, “Excuse me, can you explain what you do here because you live in the hotel. I’m confused. I’ve seen you here.” I said, “No, I don’t live here. I have a wife and kids at home. I’m running my business from here.” He said, “Do you mind running your business somewhere else please?” That was the end of that.

I want to pause you over here and I know the rest of the story once you moved away from London to Israel. I got to know you a lot better and you run a very successful podcast. The reason why I want to pause, your earlier years and what you just shared with us based on my understanding has a lot to contribute to the growth of you as a person and ultimately the ventures that you ventured in. I want to ask you some specific questions if you don’t mind. First of all, let’s start from the beginning, which you hit that low in 2008, you were without an apartment. How much would you say as an entrepreneur that period of time in your life has contributed to that fire, so to speak, “I want to move on, I want to be successful?”

It’s everything because you can fail but as long as you still have a drive in you to succeed, you will succeed. It’s not about if, it’s about when. There’s no question about it. Anybody that you know that is successful, the only reason that they’re successful is because they refuse to give up. That was it. It’s that simple. The person who’s willing to keep going and keep fighting is the person that’s going to win.

Another lesson that I took out from one of your stories and I think which is a very important lesson we find a lot. Some people get into a mode of call it depression, call it upset on the situation, whatever it is. The only way they get out of that is if they find the perfect fit for what they wanted to do. In your case, you wanted to get out of your situation and even the next job is working in the grocery store, which means moving from California to London to work in a grocery. You knew from the get-go that this is not meant for you but ultimately, you have to get back into the workforce, you have to get back into the zone. At one point you’re stable enough to decide, “I’m comfortable enough to go back on my own as an entrepreneur.” I think the lesson here is so valuable because you cannot sit around and wait for the perfect opportunity. If you pair that up with a supportive spouse, nothing could stand in your way.

It’s very important to have a support group, whether it’s a mentor, whether it’s a spouse, whether it’s friends. It’s crucial.

Let’s fast forward. After this journey, what made you decide to move to Israel and how have you changed as far as now that you’re free, you outsourced your business, what came next?

[bctt tweet=”Ideas are welcome, but execution is worshiped. ” username=””]

The next stage, what happened was I realized that I could essentially run the business wherever I was in the world. The question I asked myself was, “If I could be anywhere in the world, where would I want to be?” I feel like we don’t ask ourselves enough questions about why we do things. We do them. We do them because we do them and we’ve been doing them for years. This is how everyone else does it. We don’t question and we need to question everything we do. We need to question it. When you ask the right questions, then doors start to open for you. For example, if people should question, “Why do I work this many hours? Why don’t I spend more time with my family?” When you ask those questions, you’ll find the answers. You find solutions.

For me, “Why am I living here? Where could I live? If I could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?” The answer for me was Israel. I’m Jewish and Israel is my homeland. I always wanted to retire there when I was older but I thought, “Why wait until then? I can go there now. I can run the business from there. Why am I here in England?” I went home literally that day that I had that thought. I went home and I said, “Lauren, let’s move to Israel.” We have three children at the time. They were in school. Everybody was happy. Everybody was great. My wife’s like, “Really?” I’m like, “Yeah, let’s do it. Why are we waiting? Let’s go.” She said, “Okay.” She’s a very good wife. We made a pilot trip to check it out. Two months later we were in Israel.

What happened was I started getting very bored because there was not much I needed to do in the business. As an entrepreneur, we’re very creative people. We need to constantly be creating and doing. It’s not enough to make some money and then sit back. We’ve got to do something. I remember I got a phone call from a good friend of ours who was a podcast host. He called me up, “Daniel, I heard you have an interesting story. I’d love to have you on my podcast.” Just like you, Meny, you called me up or you emailed me saying, “I’d like to have you on my show.” He called me up and said, “I’d like to have you on my podcast.” A few years ago, I did not know what a podcast was. I had no idea. I didn’t even have a social media account. I was not on Facebook. I don’t know if Twitter was around or Instagram, but I wasn’t on any of those platforms.

I didn’t know a lot of people. I lived in my little bubble with my wife, my kids, my friends, my community, my work is in my business but that’s it. I wasn’t out there. I had never spoken publicly either before. The most amount of people I spoke in front of was my classroom. I would get on the table and I would give my speeches on the table because I’d get into trouble because I was bored and I need to express myself. The teachers would always tell me, “Mr. Gefen, sit down and shut up,” the whole time. If you asked me, “Daniel, what did you learn in high school?” It was sit down and shut up. That’s what I learned in high school. I can remember from geography, math and science and everything is, “Sit down and shut up.” That’s it. Now someone’s telling me to stand up and speak. For me, this was a big turning point in my life because when he explained to me what a podcast was, he said it’s like a radio show. I thought, “I don’t know if I could do this,” but I’m always trying to push myself and push my limits and get out of my comfort zone. I felt that this was something that was right for me. I said, “Sure, let’s do it.”

I got myself a headset. I’m sitting in my pajamas in Israel and I’m talking to the wall. That’s what a podcast is. You’re not staging or anything. You’re just talking. Like here, I shared my story and the hour went by quickly and I had a lot of fun. I realized, “I enjoy this. This is amazing.” I said to him after, “How many people are listening to this?” I expected if he was to say 50 people, I would have been really, “Wow.” If he would have told me 100 people, I would have been like, “What? 100 hundred people?” He said, “Over a thousand people.” I almost fell off my chair, “What are you talking about? How can it be 1,000 people? No. Come on, you’re playing with me now. A thousand people were listening to me talking crazy?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “Where are these people?” He starts listing countries. He’s telling me it’s in Canada, Japan, China, Germany, England, America, New Zealand. All over the world. “You’re telling me there are people all over the world listening to me. I don’t understand. This is crazy.”

Podcasting: Every single person needs to be going out and getting on podcasts because it’s the fastest way to build your audience.

That’s when the light bulb moment went off for me. I said, “I need to get into podcasting. This is huge. This is massive. I didn’t leave my house. I was in my pajamas and wearing a headset and I’m talking to over a thousand people all over the wall? This is crazy.” That was a few years ago, I started my podcast show. I built it up. I didn’t know what I was doing. To the audience, I want you to read this. This is so important. I had no idea what I was doing. I was totally out of my depths. Because I consistently put myself out there and I just kept doing it, I went from interviewing, some people that I knew in my community to suddenly I’ve interviewed three billionaires. I’ve interviewed the smartest man alive. I’ve interviewed the leading hostage negotiator for the FBI. I’ve interviewed New York Times best-selling authors. It’s crazy. Every time I’m on a call with one of these people, I still have to pinch myself and think, “I don’t understand what’s going on over here.”

The podcast took off. It became a top-rated show. We did over 250,000 downloads. That’s what got me into the whole podcast’s space. What I started to realize is that when I go on other people’s podcasts, that’s when I started to grow the show. Why? Because to build your audience is very difficult. Any of you reading this, trying to build a list or a following on social media or client list is difficult. It’s hard. You’ve got to go out there and you’ve got to work hard to build that list and to build that audience. When you go on another person’s podcast like I’m doing now, I’ve come on Meny’s show and I have instant access to his whole audience that he spent years building. Meny spent years and years building this audience and Daniel Gefen comes along and within 45 minutes, an hour, I now have the attention of all the people who Meny has been working with all these years to grow.

When I realized that, I said to myself, “This is huge.” Everybody needs to be getting on podcasts. Every single person needs to be going out and getting on podcasts because it’s the quickest, fastest way to build your audience. If you want to build an audience, you want to build a following and get clients. This is the best way, hands down, no question about it. That’s why I started my agency, Gefen Media Group, where we help our clients to get on top-rated podcasts.

Daniel’s podcast is Can I Pick Your Brain, which also in the earlier episodes I was a guest on as well. I want to get into some of the podcasts you mentioned before, who you spoke to and what that gave you as insights. We want to go back to what you mentioned about our listenership and strategically which podcast to go on and what to say. You have interviewed billionaires and the smartest people and so on and so forth. You’re also a great interviewer. You ask the right questions. You get out the good story. I always say as a podcast host, the privilege I have is that I’m the first learning.

Listening to your story, I’m writing down notes. Why? Because I’m the first person that has the privilege of learning from the story and this is with all my guests. With your experience, you probably have those moments where you sit down and say, “This person said something so valuable that I want to do in my business or that’s why this makes sense. You connect the dots.” What would you say is something that you see a common trend or a common denominator for those companies or those people that are very successful?

I believe that a lot of the guests that I’ve had on my show, one of the things that they have in common is that they show up. They put themselves out there. It’s as simple as that. I’m telling you in the journey that I’ve had so far in business, I have seen the most successful people are the ones that are not trying to perfect everything. They’re going out and producing. We live in a world right now where there is so much information, it’s unbelievable. My 11-year-old can learn how to build a spaceship on YouTube. It’s a joke and I’m not even kidding. My kids have access to more information than I did growing up. You’d have to go to the library and read all the books. In literally with a few clicks of a button, you have access to an infinite amount of information.

[bctt tweet=”A lot of people don’t know who they are is because they’re looking at what other people think about them. ” username=””]

The positive side is that it means you can learn anything you want. The negative side is that we get overwhelmed and we don’t know what to do. We end up consuming. Tell me if this sounds familiar. You go and you want to learn about how to build a course. You go on YouTube and you type in, “How do I create a course?” Three hours later, you’re still watching videos and different videos, “Do I do it this way? Do I do this one? Do I use this platform? Do I use this? How long should the course measure? What price should I track?” What happens in the end is that after hours of learning, you do nothing.

You decide it’s too hard.

“It’s too much. It’s too many things I don’t know what to do.” You pick up a book and you start reading a book on how to sell, “I want to learn how to sell.” You read the book and suddenly you realize, “He’s talking about this other book. Let me get this other book.” The next thing you know you’ve got five different books. It’s like your computer screen. How many times do you look at your screen and you realize that there are twenty windows, “Why do you have twenty tabs? What are you doing?” “You click this and then suddenly you’ve got to click that and that person he told me to go there. Let me check this person out. His LinkedIn is open, Facebook is open, WhatsApp is open, this blog post is open, or someone mentioned something happened in the news, that’s open.” It’s crazy. We’re all over the place and we’re scattered. When you’re scattered, when you’re not focused, you can’t get things done. One of the biggest things I found in common with the people I’ve had on my show is that they’re focused and they produce and they get things done.

One of the billionaires that I had on my show, Jeff Hoffman from Priceline.com and Booking.com, those are his companies and a whole list of other companies that he’s built. The best line and I’ll never forget this, I said to him, “Jeff, what’s your secret? You’re a billionaire. There are only 2,000 billionaires in the entire world. What’s the difference between the average person and a billionaire? What is it? What is the secret?” He said to me, it’s very simple, “I have a sign in my office. It’s up in my office and this is what it says. ‘Ideas are welcome here but execution is worshiped.” The ideas are nice. They’re welcome. You tell me an idea, wonderful. It’s the person who executes at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.”

You could be the best writer in the world but if nobody reads your book, you don’t exist. You can be the best musician, the most talented musician in the world but if nobody hears your music, you don’t exist. You could be the best whatever it is, fill in the blank, but if nobody hears about you, you don’t exist there. There are average writers, average singers, average musicians, average everything but they know how to get themselves out there. They go out, people see them, they get the attention. That’s the book that you read and that’s the video you watch and that’s the person that you hire. That’s it. It’s all about who can get the most amount of attention.

What you shared is so valuable. I need to repeat it for our audience. If you didn’t pick up what Daniel said, I sit with business owners so many times and they would start comparing themselves to their competition and say, “They are growing so fast, we’re not growing, they’re doing this, that.” Many times, it comes back to showing up, which means you’re busy perfecting while your competition is eating that up for lunch because they learned what you are doing and they’re doing it and went out there, made sure people know about it. Your education is becoming their execution. It’s so important what you said to have the proper balance. I think this is going to go up on my wall as well, “Ideas are welcome but execution is worship.”

This leads me to the other question that I wanted to ask you. There’s a line that I use a lot when I speak to business owners is not every business is an idea. Not every idea is a business. People always try to, “I want to be the next Facebook. I want to be the next AI technology piece.” They’re so stuck in what they’re doing while the other person’s opening up a car mechanic or something else that already exists, there are a million of those but they’re executing better. They’re innovative. The innovation, how to deliver customer service, how to be able to go out to market and so on and so forth. How much have you seen from those billionaires or even everyday business owners out there that the product is a product? It’s not like rocket science or this massive innovation. Because they showed up, because they did it in a proper way, because they built the infrastructure around it, that alone has helped them grow where they were.

It’s a simple thing. Sometimes the simplest things are what get the attention and it gets out there.

I want to turn to one more piece, which I think our audience would very much appreciate. I know in your podcast and even on your book you launched, The Self Help Addict. I want to speak about personal development. I know you have worked a lot on personal development and as you transitioned from those different mindsets and where you are now, a lot of the guests on your show speak about personal development and not so much about business. What would you share on personal development, somebody who should be healthy as a leader, healthy as an employee, a good team-player, what would you say they need to focus on?

[bctt tweet=”Sometimes the simplest things are what get the attention and get out there. ” username=””]

It’s a broad question, I will answer it like this. When you’re flying on a plane, if God forbid the plane is going down, you’ve got to put the gas mask on yourself and then you can put it on your child, which seems counterproductive. You would think that you should put on your child’s first and take care of them and then take over yourself. It’s not. The reason why it’s not like that is because if you can’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of anyone. You have to invest in yourself before you invest in other people. That is the most important thing. The best gift you can give to your spouse is to work on yourself. The best gift you can give to your spouse and to your children is to work on yourself, to grow and to be healthy and healthy means not just physically but mentally and emotionally and spiritually. When you are healthy, emotionally, spiritually, physically and mentally, then you can give, then you are there for your children, then you’re there for your spouse, then you’re there for your clients, then you’re there for your friends. You’re there for everybody. If you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re going to fall apart.

What would you say when a person wants to work on themselves? You had a different guest speaking about different parts of that. The biggest problem I find is that people don’t know who they are. How do you get to the understanding of that person that, “This is who I am but this who I could become?”

It’s interesting because I think the reason why a lot of people don’t know who they are is because they’re looking out. They’re looking what other people think about you. “What does this person think about me? What does that person think about me? What does she say? What does he say?” We’re basing our whole self-identity on what everybody else thinks. It’s flawed. It’s total nonsense because nobody cares about you. That’s true. The truth is nobody cares about you and the reason why they don’t care about you is they’re thinking about themselves. They’re thinking about what are you thinking about them. We’re all running around worrying about what other people think when everybody else is worrying about what you think of them. What someone else thinks about you has nothing to do with you. That is gold if you can engrave that into your being.

What someone else thinks about you has nothing to do with you. It’s all internal. Everything that you need, you have. God gave you everything you need. He created you and programmed you with everything that you will ever need. All your answers, they’re all there. You have something called intuition. You have something called a soul at the deepest place within you. If you can slow down and stop worrying about what everybody else is thinking and be with yourself. Everybody’s trying to escape. Everybody’s running to this seminar and watching this and listening to that and try to come on, go on WhatsApp, Facebook, go through the feeds. You can’t even go to the toilet anymore without taking out your phone and looking at it. Relax. When can you sit down and just be? Go to a forest, go to a beach, go somewhere that’s quiet when no one’s there and be with yourself. You’re going to see that all the questions that you have that’s bothering you, they’re going to come to you.

This is gold and I appreciate it because people need to hear this more, especially now. We live in a world on social media. It’s something that I discuss a lot with some of the guests, even on the podcast as well. I wrote about it on social media as well. It’s known and this has been shared many times with other experts and we all know it. What you see on social media is only one hour of the 24 hours. When you get excited about somebody else, don’t get as excited. A more important message than I think needs to be spoken more, I think you speak about it and I think you’ve touched it within the last point is the word success has different meanings for different people.

When somebody is sharing their success online on a LinkedIn post, it might be the perfect success for that person, but it shouldn’t even be your dream because your needs are different, your type of person is different, your priorities are different. That person’s priority is not your priority when that person achieves their goal because they made it their goal. The word success needs to be defined. A person who has to ask themselves, “How does success look like for me?” All of those answers will come within you because it doesn’t take a lot of questions that you ask yourself in a quiet place where you get to those answers. I appreciate the way you articulated this answer because I think more of those conversations have to happen because there’s so much good talent that sometimes goes wasted because we look at what other people feel about ourselves not being true to who we are as a human being.

I want to go back to one question about podcasts. People are getting more and more used to podcasts, listening to podcasts. I’m amazed that even just our podcast how much feedback we get. Every episode that we launched, there are a couple of people that would email back and say, “This is exactly what I needed to hear at this time.” Going back to the concept of if you have a message, if you have a business you want to be a guest on other people’s podcasts, if somebody wants to start doing that, what would be the steps you would advise our audience on the show to start doing?

Let me first explain that the podcast is blown-up. A few years ago, it wasn’t popular at all. It started getting popular. For those reading, this is the beginning of a big wave that’s happening. It’s important to get in early because what happens is then it becomes very saturated. I’ll give you an example. A few years ago, if you remember, Facebook ads was cheap. It was like have anything to pay for a click. Now, it’s much more expensive. Do you remember Google AdWords? Remember when they were $0.10 a click? It was a joke. If I can go back now many years ago, I would invest everything I have in Google Ads because it was a joke. You can get the highest keywords for $0.10 a click. Now, the same keywords you’re paying $10, $20, $25 for the same thing.

Podcast right now is at that stage where it doesn’t cost money to go on a podcast. The host at the moment, most of them are not charging for you to be a guest. I think that anybody who’s not taking advantage of that, you’re crazy. You have the opportunity to be in front of thousands of people who are potential clients and subscribers and followers and you’re not doing that. Why? It doesn’t make sense to me. What’s happening already because we’re in this industry and we see what’s going on is that some of the top-rated hosts are now charging money for guests. For example, one host I know is charging $3,500 to be a guest on his show. Months ago, we were getting our clients on his show and it didn’t cost anything to get booked on there. Imagine how many people are kicking themselves now that they could have gone on that show and it would have cost nothing. Now it’s going to cost $3,500. That’s the first thing I want to mention.

I want to chime in. It’s there to stay. It’s a podcast, meaning that they don’t go away. The episode is there. People go back to old episodes.

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It’s evergreen content, which means I’ve had people say to me, “Daniel, I heard you on this show.” I was like, “I was on that show a few years ago.” I have clients who tell me that they get people reaching out to them and hiring them and getting them to speak or hiring their services. They say, “Where did you find us?” “I heard you on this and this podcast.” “I did that podcast a year and a half ago.” That’s crazy. That’s another big thing. The other thing as well about podcasts is that why do we advertise? What’s the whole purpose of advertising? Why do we spend money on Facebook ads and YouTube ads and Google ads and paper ads? Why do we do it? Essentially, it is that we want to get people’s attention. We want someone to see our ad and then call us up or go onto the website and sign up.

The big mistake is people don’t realize that reach isn’t attention. Being in front of someone’s face for two seconds is worthless. Just because I saw your Facebook ad, it doesn’t mean anything. You haven’t made any connection to me. Most of the time it’s got a negative effect because I didn’t ask you to be there. I don’t want you there. If I’m scrolling through Facebook and you suddenly popped up, I’m like, “Get off. Why are you on my Facebook?” Think about the last time you watched a YouTube video and you have to wait five seconds. The whole five seconds is like an hour in this world because if your internet is slow, we feel like the whole world is crumbling. I’ve got to count down five, four, three. In the meantime, my finger is ready to click that button, “Get lost, get out of my face.”

People are spending so much money on all these ads, but nobody wants to see these ads. It’s interrupting me, “Get away from me. I don’t want to see.” There are about 200 million people who have an ad blocker on their computer, which tells you something, “We don’t want ads.” How do you get people’s attention if you’re not interrupting them? The answer is on podcasts. You’re creating content. You’re giving value. They invite you into their ears. Right now, every single person that’s listening to this, they’ve invited me to their ears. They have come to your podcast because they want to learn. They want to gain something. I’ve been invited by you, Meny, on your show and so people who are listening to me, they’re not being interrupted, they’re listening, they want to hear it.

I’ve had their attention so far now for 30, 40 minutes or whatever it is. Do you understand how hard it is to get someone’s attention for 60 seconds? We get about 40 minutes. Try 40 seconds. Do you know what it takes to get someone to read a blog post for 40 seconds or watch a video for 40 seconds? You’ve got to do so much to get their attention. The average attention span is nine seconds. It’s one second more than a Goldfish. The average listener that listens to podcasts, over 80% listens to the whole podcast and the average podcast is 45 minutes. That’s gold. I’ve given you a stock that is going up like crazy and you need to be going and investing in that stock. You’re crazy not to invest in that stock right now.

Not only that, it’s not only you’re getting the person’s attention, you’re connecting almost on a personal level. People listen to a podcast and say, “This person is speaking to me.” I can’t count on my fingers how many times after I listened to a podcast, I reached out to the person thanking him for the content, “Let’s be in touch.” Some of them turned into a business.

It’s all about personal connection. It’s all about communication and intent. And that’s the other thing you can’t do in an ad. Even if you managed to get someone to watch a 60-second ad, they’re not having an emotional, personal connection to you. People buy on emotion. They don’t buy on logic and people buy from people. A brand is something different. If you noticed nowadays, brands are investing in personal brands. They need a face behind the brand. For example, Apple, you had Steve Jobs. People were obsessed with Steve Jobs because he was the face of Apple. We’ve gone past the stage of faceless companies. It doesn’t exist anymore. The faceless companies are going bust because we are in a generation where we crave personal connection. Especially because with the internet and everything else, it’s killed personal connections. People are craving it more and more.

What I would tell people is if you’re not listening to podcasts enough, just listen to podcasts, get familiar with podcasts of your industry and everybody has a story. You get on the podcast, you share your story, you speak about your company, about the industry. You can demonstrate your knowledge in your space and ultimately that will give you exposure and get your business. This has been great. If people want to do this through an agency, try to get your book on podcast, more strategically positioned, they can help you as well. Let’s close with a four-rapid fire questions. Number one, a book that changed your life?

There’s a book called The Master Key System, which is very rare. Most people haven’t heard of it. It is something that I highly recommend you get a copy of because it will change your life if you study it properly.

Number two, a piece of advice you’ve got that you’ll never forget?

The one from the billionaire that I mentioned which was, “Ideas are welcome, but execution is worshiped.”

Number three, anything you wish you could go back and do differently?

I would go back to my teenage self and give myself a big hug and say that, “I love you and you’re a good person. Don’t worry too much about what everybody else says.”

Number four, what’s still on your bucket list to achieve?

I’d like to buy a nice place by the beach. My wife wants a nice place by the beach. That’s something on our bucket list.

Daniel, thank you so much for joining us. I know your time is valuable and that is why in the name of our audience, we’ll forever be grateful for sharing some of your time with us.

I want to say one more thing quickly. If anybody has any questions, I know a lot of people listen to these shows and they think, “I’d like to ask him questions or whatever.” Please, I would appreciate if you could send me an email. I’m all about personal relationships. I can tell you to go follow me on Facebook, follow me on LinkedIn and all this. That’s not how you build a personal relationship. If you want to build a personal relationship, you’ve got to reach out. That’s how I’ve had guests come on my show is I’ve reached out to them personally. Please reach out to me. My email that I check myself is Daniel@GefenMediaGroup.com. I will respond to every email I get. I look forward to hearing from you and making our relationship then.

This is very generous. Thank you so much, Daniel.

Links Mentioned:

• Gefen Media Group
• The Self Help Addict
• Can I Pick Your Brain?
• Can I Pick Your Brain on iTunes
• Meny Hoffman on Can I Pick Your Brain episode
• Jeff Hoffman on Can I Pick Your Brain?
• Priceline.com
• Booking.com
• The Master Key System
• Daniel@GefenMediaGroup.com

About Daniel Gefen

Daniel is the #1 International Bestselling author of The Self Help Addict & host of the podcast ‘Can I Pick Your Brain?’ which has reached over 150,000 downloads and ranked in the top 100 business podcasts in iTunes. He’s appeared on over 100 top-rated podcasts & major publications.

Daniel was also named the top 25 most influential influencer by Influencive. After realizing the power of podcasts he launched his 6th child: Gefen Media Group.
Fun fact about Daniel: He eats eggs and baked beans for breakfast everyday.