Okay. Anything that your business does differently, anything that your podcast does differently, or anything that your meetup does differently, you got to have a why and a because. Welcome, everybody. Today I'm excited to have Adam Adams with us to talk about the three pillars of influence. He helps podcasters to get their message out, to get ranked at high levels, and to reach lots of people by producing greater content. Thanks so much for joining us today, Adam. Thank you, Wade. Good to be with you. There you go. It's a podcast host right there. Good to have you there. There we go. Awesome. Adam is the founder of Growershow.com, where he helps podcasters get their message out to the world. Their clients are getting ranked in the top 1% on Apple Podfest and other top charts, which, if you don't know, that's a big deal. It means you're reaching a lot of people, and a lot of people are looking to you for your input, your insight and your guidance. Can you Shark tank little bit just kind of how you got started with the podcast and especially this concept of influence? What really got you intrigued in that? A lot of people talk about it, but you and I talked in pre interview, and I think you have some unique insights. I'm curious what got you interested in that? Yeah, I love the question. What kind of got me interested? Initially, I still do real estate investing. In fact, this week I'm selling a property and last week I bought a property. So I'm always going to do real estate investing. It's always been like a side business since I was in college, which is a long time ago now. But the thing is, when I moved to Denver for the first time and I remember thinking, like, your network is your net worth. And I heard that it was like, implanted in my head and I had this bad feeling because I didn't really know anyone here yet. So I tried to figure out how would I know somebody? And in the beginning, I wasn't as intentional, I wasn't as completely thoughtful, although I think I did the right things, but I didn't have the strategy necessarily behind it. But I started a meet up group and a podcast, and the meet up would add value to a lot of people. It would allow me to network and connect with more people in the podcast would do the same thing. And my real estate business took off. And now I'm known internationally. It's insane. Like, a lot of people that buy apartments, they've heard of me, they've seen me speak at conferences and that kind of stuff. And it became so because of the meet up and the podfest and putting out value, adding value and doing some reciprocal interviews. And my influence in that space just grew so fast. I got really passionate about it. And as I wanted to ensure that my podcast was the right podfest for me. I noticed that I'm going to have to change a few things. Even though it was ranking top 25% in the world at the time, I needed to figure out like how do I make this something that I want to do? So to bring you to the place where I think you are really asking is I just started helping friends, I just started helping my friends and then I sold that podcast and started the podcast on podcasting and it was like this big turning point that I realized that 90% of podcasters don't make it past six episodes. And I try to figure out why is it that they are not making it past. I just worked on creating processes that would solve for those problems, mainly making sure they had a bigger influence so that they could impact more lives and make an income through their podcast in some way. And that's really what got me my journey to launching the podcast on podcasting and my company. Grow your show. Awesome. So question for you, you talk about the meet up group in the podcast and a lot of people, you know the phrase create value, create value. You hear that all the time in different ways. What would you say that you did? And I'll break it down if that's cool. First with the meet up and then second with the podcast. What would you say if somebody's thinking of starting a meeting up group or a podcast group? What were the specific things you did that differentiated yourself other than yes, having good content? Obviously the content has got to be good. You've got to have something meaningful to talk about. But what did you do that maybe you feel set yourself apart or really not just created value for them but helped them realize that oh wow, this is something that's valuable. Yeah, I love the question and that's going to add a lot of value to a lot of people. There is a couple of things that we can literally point to and I mean I didn't say this before but I ended up speaking at meetup headquarters. They flew in their top 150 meetup organizers around the world and I was one of six speakers. So I mean that in and of itself just shows like our meet up out of 225,000 meet ups in the world became extremely well known and meet up themselves flew me out. And I say that because these things I'm about to share with you are the differentiators that I think can get your meet up to the same place. One of the things is I did a little bit of recon ahead of time and I know that most people neglect it. They're told ready, fire, aim. They're told just start. They're told don't overthink it. And what I did differently is I just spent a little bit of extra time looking to see what else was out there. Now, some of the factors that I paid attention to were all of these other meetups in my space. Real estate was what I was doing, when do all the other meetups meet? Like what time, what day? And then I would look to see how active are these meetups, how active are these times, these times? And I looked and I did my reconnaissance on what are they titling each and every meeting. And I look to see how frequently they were meeting, what is their cadence? Is it monthly? Is it quarterly? And as I looked and researched all of these other different meetups, I also said, what do the meetups themselves call themselves? And there was some about this topic, this category of under real estate, and there was some under this category of real estate and there was some under this category. And then after doing all of that recon, I tried my best to draw a line in the sand to be different and to say, you guys can do all that stuff or you can come on this side. So I drew a definitive line in the sand and showed what was different about ours. And then I continued to use that language of what's different about us. Like Dave Ramsay, for example, if he didn't keep bashing everybody who wanted a BMW and said that a paid off mortgage is now the status symbol that is replacing the BMW, if he wasn't hurting all those BMW lovers'hearts, he wouldn't be drawing a line in the sand. And therefore nobody would follow him because they wouldn't have a reason to follow him because he wasn't saying anything different than their own mom was saying. So I start to determine, what are we going to do differently? And now it's step two. It's niching down. So during step two, a couple of things that I focus on for that meet up group is A, I'm going to have the first weekly meetup. Nobody else is meeting weekly, and so I'm going to be the first. And then I'm going to draw my line in the Asana and say why I'm meeting weekly. Another example is I'm going to meet at lunch. There is one or two breakfast clubs that get almost no traction. And then there's a whole slew of people that meet at 630 and I'm going to just try out lunch and I'm going to do it differently. And then I'm going to use in my language, in my influence, in my brain washing, if you will, to constantly talk about why we do it differently. And there are many other things that we did, like not having sales pitches, for example. So I'll just talk about those three unique niches. This is going to be really helpful for anyone who wants to start a meet up group, for example, or a podcast or a business. Really. It goes hand in hand with everything. So for the first one, it was that we were going to meet weekly and now I had to figure out how am I going to share this with other people? And I learned that it takes six times for us, up to 13 different times of seeing somebody's message, meeting them in person, hearing their, seeing their ads until we're finally willing to trust them, six to 13. And so I use that as part of my language. I said, hey, the reason we are a little bit different and we don't meet monthly is because I've learned that psychology shows that it takes six to 13 times. I don't want you to be taking six months to over a year just to finally do your first deal with somebody else in this room. So we meet every single week so that you can have the ability to accomplish this in just a matter of months, just a couple of months, six weeks, eight weeks, three months max. And you're there, you're at the place that you want to be. No other meetup can say that. And then I would use and that's why a lot of the people in this room keep coming back every single week. And then I would say, raise your hand if you've been here before. Keep your hand up if you were here last week. And anyone who's new is now brainwashed to say, oh, this is social proofing. Other people do come here regularly. Other people do come here every week. I need to be able to do real estate deals. So I guess I'm going to come next week. And the next thing was the lunch. So I had to figure out if we're meeting at lunch, why do we meet at lunch? Anything that your business does differently, anything that your podcast does differently or anything that you meet up does differently, you got to have a why and a because we do this for this reason. So talking about why do we meet at lunch? And I had to think about it and I'm like, oh well, here's the thing. At 630, anyone can be there. Like anyone in the world can go because they're off work and whatever. It's so much easier. And so you get a lot of newbies. And I've noticed when I go to these other meet up groups at 630, nobody's doing deals. Everybody wants to do their first deal. And so then I would just basically do this as well at the meet up in front of everybody. And I would just say, just so you know, one of the reasons we meet at lunch is because it's actually really hard to meet at lunch. It's actually a challenge to get here for 2 hours in the middle of the day. Some of you are driving an hour to get here and then you're here for 2 hours. Then you're networking with the people here for an extra hour after, and then you're driving home. This is an all day thing. For you. That's why we meet at lunch, is because we want just the serious people, the people that can make it here. So then I would have people raise their hand. And it was remarkable because it was always like 97%. I'd have people raise their hand. I would say so just to give you an example, in other meetup groups, you get maybe 510, 15% of people that have done anything besides their own primary residence. And then I would raise my hand and I would look around the room. I say, raise your hand only if, and I really emphasize that only if you've done deals outside of just your primary residence. And then a lot of people raise their hand and people look around and they're like, this is a serious room. That is the proof. This is exactly what he's saying. He drew his line in the sand. He explained it. And did you type down the third one? I have so many different things that we did. Did you type down the third one by chance? I did not. Okay, no problem. Another thing is not sales pitch. That's what it was, no sales pitch. All I would do is in the front and I would say, just so everybody knows, I have nothing to sell. I'm not a coach. I'm not a mentor. I just want to do business with a lot of good people like you. And then we've already explained those other two things. And then I say, and that's why you'll find that at our group, none of our speakers are allowed to sell. I don't make money from this group. I don't charge a dime for you to be at this group. I'm here to do deals. And so it's just another way of drawing the line in the sand because all these other meet up organizers at the time were so focused on use our title company or hire us to lend you the money for these deals or join my coaching program, our students get results. We didn't do any of that. So it was just kind of like a refreshing change. And there were so many other things that we did. But I want to be able to move on. If you want to move on, all good. Like I said, I really want to get to these. So you'd mentioned, correct me if I'm wrong, that this meeting in person is one of those three pillars of influence, of being able to connect with people. It seems more and more as somebody who's been in business for a while and been through different iterations of whether it's virtual a lot or working from home or working in person, it still seems to me nothing beats meeting somebody face to face. Not necessarily that you have to continue to meet with them face to face, but there's just certain things that can't be replaced by that. And I guess that also speaks to that drawing the line in the Asana who will come in person in the event versus who's only going to come if it's zoom or only going to come. Is that basically a lot of what was validated by the meet up and sort of fed that as well? Yeah. You're talking about the three pillars, thought leadership, meeting in person and social media. And thought leadership meeting in person specifically is beneficial. It's part of this think of it as a three legged stool, a bar stool, if you will. You'll literally fall over if you only have two of them. So you need all three. And most people are going to be like, I'm not sure about thought leadership, that's scary. Or I'm not sure about social media, that's annoying. But let's at least talk about meeting in person. The biggest benefit that you will get when you meet people in person, whether it's at other people's events, obviously when you're the leader, you get more credibility and more eyeballs, more knowledge, more exposure. But just meeting in person, like being on the ground, having a storefront, having a meetup, group, having a conference, going to a meetup, group, going to a conference. The interesting thing that happens is people can feel your voice inflections, they can feel your sincerity, they can see your facial expressions, and it builds the trust incredibly fast. So basically, this thought leadership, meeting in person on social media, another way to say this stuff is no, like trust. This is how you build influence, this is how you make more money, is by having the network, having the connections and having people know you like you and trust you. And meeting in person amplifies that trust factor. That's awesome and that's so true. I think about it. There is an outfit, a group called Podfest, they have an event in Orlando. And I had gone as an attendee back in 2019 and met some really cool people there. Very great community, all looking out for each other and really believed in helping people get their message out and didn't go in 2020 and then actually got connect with them, spoke at a few of their virtual events as a speaker. So it got in their community in that way. But it was only when I went back again in person and was there speaking and then seeing people in person, connected with people who had met in person, putting their name to a face, but also face to face, there's very few things you can do to compete with that. And it was interesting. Stephen, one of the people that was there, I was trying to make sure I got to all my friends talks. He's like, Wait, it's like, chill, you can watch the recordings of the talks. You want to talk with the people while you're here, you want to have the conversation. All of a sudden I realized I sort of checked in with a couple of friends, like, yeah, that's how you because I had only ever been really, for the most part, either a speaker and not a participant or participant and not a speaker. I had not been both at one of these events. And so, like, no, this is how you do it. You connect with the people. Yes, you show up, but at the end of the day, you can see the recording. You know these people, but it's those conversations one on one or one to three or one to five, that is where you really connect with people. And again, that's not on their podcast. And of course, the podcast part of it. It's not part of their YouTube video. But that's where it just clicked for me. I just turned 15. I didn't know this. I figured this out at 50, and it was like, wow, really? Just connecting with the people. And yet when I look back, that's where, like you said, the know, the like the trust that everything comes in. If it's cool, let's pivot from meeting in person. So a lot of people and I'm going to speak to even, well, I guess actually now, maybe between the millennials, the Gen Xers, the Gen Z and the Boomers, maybe there's even different stereotypes as far as who's most comfortable with which, but generally the older generations are more comfortable with meeting person because that's what we did. And we're kind of getting used to this either social media presence, but let's go to the thought leader, because we at least when I grew up, thought leader. There was only five to ten of them because there were so few channels. There was ABC, NBC, CBS, United States, and you were a Wayne Dyer or a Tony Robbins, and there was like maybe 50 to 100 of them, and they had huge presence. And so whether intentionally or not, it created this almost big divide between you and they and then or them, whatever the grammar is on that. But then this idea then saying, okay, well, I want to be the influencer for either this niche or for this local area or just my TriCounty area or whatever it is. I think people still have a hard time with that. Could you share a little bit about what you mean by thought leadership platform? Because that term is used a lot, and then what can that look like for somebody? Well, the main purpose of having your thought leadership platform, there's one big one and there's a couple more, but the biggest one is you want people to talk about you behind your back. You truly want people to share your content when you're asleep, when you're on vacation, when you're feeding your kids that ability to do something once, put it at one time and have people absorb it and share it with the next person. So if you don't have a thought leadership platform, some examples are a podcast, a book, a blog, a meet up group, a conference. If you're not the head of the show in some way, in some form, then you're not going to be able to grow your business. You're only going to be able to talk to as many people as you personally have time. That meeting in person, that was important, that helped build the trust. The thought leadership platform is your top of the funnel. It's the awareness part of the funnel, where you're going out to the most amount of people. They're sharing your content, they're listening to it for free. They're checking it out when they can't sleep. They're checking it out when they're on a vacation. There's so many things that can happen through a thought leadership platform that you would be missing out on if you didn't have one. And so the next question is, when we have a thought leadership platform, as you said, how do we make sure that we're not just thrown to the wayside? There's not just 100 out of billions of people now. There's millions out of billions of people. And so it feels a lot like we are being stretched in or that there's not enough of us to go around. And first and foremost, if you niche correctly, you'll find your people. That's like one of the big things. We talked about that when we talked about the meet up. Do your reconnaissance and then find your niche. If you're doing those two steps, your thought leadership platform, there's this book and I'm trying to remember who wrote it. I think it might be Malcolm Gladwell, but I'm sure that I could be wrong. And it is talking about you only need 1000 True fans. Grant Cardone probably has millions of people that know him and follow him. And that's not necessary. You don't have to go to the grocery store and just sign autographs. You should still be able to go to the grocery store and get your groceries. So 1000 true fans. Maybe it was Malcolm Gladwell. I'm not sure. But the point of it is, if you just know your niche and you add the most amount of value, like you understand your avatar, you understand what they're looking for, what they need, what they want, what they're trying to accomplish, what they're worried about, you can solve those problems. You can support them, you can help them get to the next level. And then you're more likely, because you've drawn your line in the sand, you're different. You've done your recon. You're more likely to have people saying stuff like, when you're dave isn't here, is he? Dave Ramsey is not in the room with us right now, but I keep mentioning him. You mentioned Tony Robbins. He's not here right now. And I'm going to say again, Dave drew his line to stand and says that the paid off mortgage is the new status symbol for the American Dream versus a BMW. With that said, your thought leadership platform, if you're doing it right, people are going to share your stuff. And then the other benefit that you get with your podfest. For example. Especially a podfest. Is that it's repeatedly you're staying in front of your avatar. You're able to continue to stay in front of your avatar and remember that six to 13 times. You're going to have the ability to get to that six to 13 times faster if you're doing thought leadership. Meeting in person and social media. So that thought leadership. And I can just give you one quick story. I was at a conference, like, we're talking about some conferences. It wasn't my own conference. And I met a passive investor, and I wanted private equity, I wanted private money for my real estate deals. And so this is perfect. I just met somebody I mentioned that I had a podcast. He said, oh, really? That's cool. You have a podcast. And I said, I'd be happy to queue up your phone. You've got an iPhone, right? I'd be happy to quickly queue this up. So I did. And then the guy called me a couple of months later. He's an engineer, so he's harder than everybody else. Like attorneys and engineers. They're going to be more skeptical. They're going to want to know every single detail. They're not going to want to make a decision until they fully know. So in his case, he called me a few months later and he said, I've listened to 60 of your episodes. I want to put all my money with you. That's what thought leadership can do. That's awesome. And that's so true. I think about when I first was watching a Brendon Burchard video 1314 years ago, and this is when launches were first coming out. It's like an 80 minutes first video, and it was just content and was this kind of weird way, guy didn't charge for this. He's just providing content and teaching. And it was such I guess then I think people appreciate it because when you look back again, going back to at least when I grew up, the idea of syndication was a big deal. The idea of being able to reach people, I don't know if people still fully get this. You can reach the whole planet. Now. You might not if your message isn't good enough or viral enough, and you might not want to reach the whole planet, as you mentioned, for sure, because you don't want to help everybody per se. You can't really help everybody to that high level. But the idea is that you can reach so many people. And when people have asked me about podcast, I'm like, look, I just know that, again, it's one of those there are very few things, I think, that are truly either passive income or passively doing stuff for you. But a podcast, it is doing the work. A YouTube channel, it's there, it's 24/7, it's available, and people can reach. You wonder if you could drill down on something and this is something I know. When I first started and I talked to a lot of people, they have this concern and you addressed this was this idea of wanting to be famous. And a lot of people do want to be famous, but then there are people that don't want to be famous. So for example, there's Tony Robbins, who is for a lot of people, a household name. Then there's dan sullivan, the gentleman who runs the strategic coach program. And they are, at least in my experience, have just as much connection with some of the top entrepreneurs on the planet. But Dan is more of a look, I don't want to be in the limelight of everything and yet he has that fame that I think a lot of people want, which is, I can go to the grocery store. The masses have no idea who I am. But when I'm in front of my peers, they know exactly who I am and they want to do business with me, they want to support me, they want to give me checks. How can people develop that? Because that seems to be and Dan Sullivan would always talk about this. He's like, that is kind of the Holy grail that when your group, your peers, your bumblebees I was thinking about the Blind Melon video and the girl the bumblebees and she finds her group, her crowded people at the end that are like her, they're bumblebees and she sees those are her people. When your people recognize you, but to everybody else they're like, no big deal, so that you actually can have a normal life. And I know some people fear that. Speak to that, if you don't mind, of how somebody can have that thought. Leadership, like the pros of it, without getting too caught up in what can be perhaps the negatives of it, even, let's say the guy or the gal that runs the local TV ads. Oh, there's the guy from the car ads that are really cheesy. Like, oh God, I don't want to be the guy with the car ads that are really cheesy even though it sells money or sells cars or whatever. How can people balance that and still speak specifically to their group and get. The bust out of that man? I think it's a pretty deep question and I'm trying to think of the best way to share how we can balance it. My thought is, if you want to be famous, like if you want everybody to know you, it's going to cost a lot of time and a lot of money. So I guess you should know that it's kind of difficult to get there without spending that time and that money. How long has Tony Robbins been doing this? Who was he connected with in the beginning? He didn't start last year. And now you know his name. He's been doing this for years and years and years. He's. Been consistent. And Tony Robbins, for example, he does events around the whole world. Like, he's constantly doing events. I don't remember what the stat was, but I think he's out of his home, like 300 days out of the year. It's like a totally different world. He's trying to be everything to everyone, right? When we're doing a podfest, our retention isn't to be everything to everyone. We're not supposed to do that. Fame isn't the goal of this thing. Maybe well known or well respected in your industry is the goal, but fame isn't. When it comes to podcasting for you and I have spoken at different conferences, and so people at those conferences know our names, right? Our people know who we are. But when it comes to the grocery store, it happens maybe once a month, maybe once a quarter. For me, in the real estate or the podcasting space, I can go practically anywhere and it's fine. But if I go to a conference in my industry, everyone knows me. Like, that's just how it is when you're doing this. That's how it is and that's how it should be, in my opinion. And so if you're worried about getting famous, don't. Because you're probably not truly going to be like that kind of famous by having a YouTube and a podcast. And if you're wanting to, I guess I would have to say there is a hard truth just to say that, look, you're going to have to go above and beyond. You're going to be having to work lots of hours, you're going to have to have a good sized team. You're going to have to be putting money into generating that additional influence outside your space. If you do it to something where people are looking for you and you draw your line in the sand, you'll find your people. Yeah, I think there's so much in there to unpack. And the main thing for me is just that idea of being intentional, because even fame doesn't necessarily mean money, or it might not. And again, money is not the only thing either. Fame does not equal money does not equal happiness. There are three separate things that you can have, all of them to some certain degrees. And I know I've seen people talk about, well, if you want to be famous and this and that, you have to work 60, 70 hours a week, and I'm not an advocate of that. If others want to do it, great. It's just for me, that's not my path, my journey, my pace. But again, there's different levels. Like you said, if I can go down to the I guess I don't cheers. If you can go to the local bar and that's where you want to hang out and people know who you are and you got your people, great. I think that's the part that, for me, is very interesting to say yes. Among the people to a certain degree whose opinions I do value, not because they're better human beings, but because they actually I don't know if you're a hockey player. Well, the opinions of hockey players who are really good are going to matter to you because you're like, for the most part, okay, these people actually can evaluate whether I'm good at what I do versus somebody might be a great athlete but doesn't know hockey. Okay, so now let's take in this third part. We're meeting up with people. We have some sort of platform, like you said, it could be events. And of course, there's that concept of you wanting to in somewhere, you own the stage. Actually, if you don't mind, speak to that real quickly, the idea of somewhere you being the main person owning the stage, hosting the meetup, being the podcast host. From an influence standpoint, if you were to put and I don't know if you might have metrics on this or not, but from, yes, outright power in the good sense of helping people, influencing people in a good way. So we're not going down a dark path, if you will, but how much more powerful, how much more potent is that when, yes, you are the event organizer, you are the host versus an attendee or somebody who's a regular on the show versus the guy or the gal that runs it? Well, I have to say that you'll get value just by meeting people in person. That is a given. It's 100%. It's going to happen. However, if you are running the show, if I'm the meet up organizer when other people come and I'm going to just use real estate investing as a thing. We're not teaching real estate investing today, but it's just something that I've been doing so long. And my meet up was about real estate investing. And there's this thing called off market deals, these coveted type of deals that aren't advertised to everybody, and everybody wants them, and they're hard to find because I was the meet up organizer of a real estate group, and everybody knew that I was closing deals. Everybody knew that I could do it. Look, lots of people in that room, as I just shared when we raised our hand, and I said, who in this room has done more than just their primary residence? And almost everybody raised their hand. It's clearly I'm not the only one that can do a deal. Clearly. However, I used to get off market deals from lots of people in that room simply because I was the leader. They just tried me first. I was their first thought. And so when they came in, there was this hoarder house in Westminster, Colorado, and this guy got it under contract for an amazing deal. He came to us and he said, hey, I want to keep this under wraps, and I want to make sure that a lot of people aren't seeing this because this lady is embarrassed about how her house looks. She doesn't want a bunch of people trampling through. So I just want to see Adam, you run the show. I just want to see if you would be able to close this deal. We end up closing the deal and making a lot of money on that property. And actually, if we would have held it one more year, we would have wade a ton more. But anyway, we ended up making a lot of money on that property and it came as a result of having my niche adding value, being at the front of the stage, not forcing anything down anyone's throat. So now I'm approachable. Now I'm the first person that they think of, and it worked out for us. I will also say what I'm about to share is not as hard as it sounds. So for the people that do what I do, we raise a lot of private money from other people. The first $4.3 million that I raised of other people's, money that just wanted to partner with me came between six and twelve months of running my lunch club, specifically, and only from the people that came to the lunch club just at lunch, $4.2 million in a six month span from the time that I said, hey, I want to start raising capital. If you are looking to put your capital somewhere and you want to work with me and sharing the equity, feel free to just let me know. No sales pitch, but just make you aware of what's up. And we raised from a lunch club, from a little meetup group that was meeting 2 hours in the middle of the day, hard to get to. We raised $4.2 million, which means, by the way, if we're closing on if we're doing 20% down, it's like, is that $20 million of real estate that I was able to buy without any of my own money just because of running a meet up group? And the same thing would happen. Regardless of what your business is, whatever your goal is, if it's off market deals, if it's private money, you're going to be able to strengthen your business by meeting in person. So that's just an illustration for your question. Yeah. And one of the things that comes to mind for me is something that I've heard it said in a couple of different ways. A lot of times people will say, well, I'd rather just pay for advertising, and I have no beef with advertising. But to me, what I don't love about advertising is you pay and it's gone. It's very ethereal. It's there the cost per click add shows and then it's gone. The flyers sent out and then it's gone. The postcard is mailed and then it's in the trash. Even to a point of the difference between only being a podfest guest, which there's nothing wrong with that, versus having your own podfest where you own some of the real estate you have a stake in it. And it seems to me that there's just certain things that you're getting from what you're talking about that you simply can't pay for the know, like and trust, you can't buy that. You can buy familiarity through repetition of ads. Yeah, this is a funny guy or gal, but that's not the same as no like and trust. And it seems to me that a lot of what you're doing is stuff that basically there really is no way to buy, as opposed to fame. Because now, on the flip side, when you talk no life and trust, it's not fame. It's almost the exact opposite. It's the other not quite the opposite, but it's a different end of the spectrum. It's actually no, I don't care if they're famous or not. This is Adam. I know Adam, and I have a one to one relationship with Adam. It might not be face to face, it might not be in person, but I know Adam and Adam knows me. That that's very different. How would you say then that the social media presence then capitalizes on those two and kind of ties them together? Because at the moment, meeting in person, thought leadership, someone might say, yeah, but there's still this other piece. How does that bring those together? Yeah, before I do that, when you have your own podfest, you just mentioned something about being on other people's podcasts or having your own podcast. If you have your own podcast, it's one of the best calls to action that you can have at the end of, like, being on somebody show. So, like, your listener now, they know I've got the podcast on podcasting and I don't know, maybe you have 10,000 listeners and seven of them will check it out. Who knows, right? It doesn't matter either way. But when I have a podfest and I come on your show and people learn about that, it is so simple to jump over because they don't have to download a new app, they've already got it, they're already listening. And so one of the best things you can share is, hey, if you like my content, if you like and enjoyed what I was sharing here on Wade show, feel free to check out my show. It's just so simple and easy and valuable. So if you have your own podfest, you're going to be booked on more people's podfest, you're going to be booked on more stages, just like Wade has been on a few stages, right, because he has a thought leadership platform. There's this thing where now he's the one that people know, like and trust, and they're like, hey, let's go with Wade, let's get him on our stage. Because he's a great guy, I follow his content. It's an obvious next step. So you get on more stages because you have your own thought leadership platform as well. And when you call it to action, you can bring them over to whatever you've got. So anyway, you were talking about social media and why it's important, and Gary Vaynerchuk is why it's so important. And a lot of people know who Gary Vee is. I've been knowing him not personally, never met him in person, but I've been following him since his wine times. I was trying to get into wine, which wasn't easy in the beginning because I was buying wine, and I was just kind of, like, following him, and he spoke my language, and so I got to know him really well. And then I found out that he kind of grew an advertising agency as well, like a marketing brand. And with him, one thing that he has said with his whole heart is he knew that if you were not active on social media by the year 2022 by the way, we're recording this in 2022, but he's been saying this for the last seven years. He's been continuing to say this, and he said, if you're not active on social media by 2022, you will lose in business. Basically, one of the reasons why you need a social media presence is so that people can know you're a real person. People today, they vet you by googling you, looking you up on LinkedIn, looking you up on Facebook. This is how they start to try to know if they should do anything at all with you. So if you're not active on social media, they're going to be suspicious or skeptical that you got something to hide, that you're not a real person, that they're going to lose their money by working with you. So you have to be, like Gary Vee said, active on social media by 2022. Now we're now here. It's that time. And so we've really got to get our butts in gear and to be able to be on social. Some of the reasons why that's so important was the first one that we mentioned, people are going to search for you. The second one is that people want to be able to see that you're a real person. So a lot of people are listening, and they may be thinking, man, I don't know about all this. Adam had a lot of really good knowledge about thought leadership. I might start a podfest. I'm not sure. Meeting in person okay, I'm definitely going to do that. Social media, though, it's just not me. I'm just not cut out for it. I don't want to put myself out there. And the other thing that they'll say is, I don't want to shove my business down people's throats. You don't have to shove your business down people's throats. Your social media isn't meant for advertising and spamming people. It's meant to show who you are to the core. You love your kids, you go on vacations, you drink wine, you share that stuff. You love CrossFit. You put that on your social I'm a mountain biker, and I go mountain biking, like when it's summer, twelve times a week. Twelve times a week. On my social media, I'll constantly make posts about mountain biking that I fail, that I enjoyed it, that I got a new PR on this mountain. I'll constantly just be excited about the things that I'm about. And one interesting thing about that social media, just not trying to shove your business down people's throats. But what's interesting is I just started talking about me mountain biking because I love it so much, and there was this highly wealthy individual who was trying to decide which real estate investor to put his money with, but he couldn't connect with any of them. After about three months of me posting, like, different things that I would do mountain biking, this guy Facebook called me. Like, he phoned me, but through Facebook's app, the messenger app. And I'm like, hello? And he's like, Adam, I just want to let you know that I want to invest with your company. And I was like, really? Why did you choose my company? And he goes, Dude, it's because you're into mountain biking. And I'm in a mountain biking. I couldn't choose anybody. They all take my money. They all give me a return. But you're more relatable to me because we like the same things. So again, it's drawing your line in the sand. I like mountain biking. I might not like some other stuff. And now my people follow me. My people work with me. So this is just like a thing. Like, I wasn't posting about real estate. I was posting about mountain biking. And I still got a passive investor to call me and say, I want to work with you. So your social media does all of those things. And if you go back to Gary V, I'll say the last point about social media, if you are going to want to advertise or market your own stuff, the way to do it is a GaryVee Way jab jab right Hook. When he was writing the book Jab Right Hook, he told his publishers that he wouldn't write the book if it was just called Jab Jabwrite Hook. He goes, that's not what it is. He wants it to be called. And he, like, listed out dozens and dozens of jabs and then the right hook. And he's like, that's what it has to be called. Now, of course, they won, and it's now called Jab jab Right Hook. But the point is, if what we're going to take from this on our social media is if you're going to talk about business, it needs to be after a couple of jabs. I posted that me and my kids went to Parkour. We'd go every Saturday. Parkour. I posted on Thursdays. We do game night every Thursday. We do CrossFit every Wednesday. We do movie night every Friday. We just like, these are our things. We do them every single week. And I post about some of that stuff I post when I go mountain biking. I was snowboarding a couple of days ago. I posted about that, and then it'll come down to where I'll say something like, hey, I'm so grateful for my podcasting team. We've just crossed 30 people, 30 employees for 55 clients, and it's just mind boggling how big we got. And I just wanted to share a gratitude post, because that's freaking awesome that we're serving that many podcasters. And then guess what happened, Wade. Guess what happened? I literally got more than ten I'm not exaggerating at all, but more than ten people, because I put those jobs about my kids. I put those jobs about fasting. I put those jobs about my Jeep that I'm working on. I just talked about me just in a genuine way, and then I showed the gratitude about how big my team is. More than ten people immediately said, adam, I've been putting this off for a while, but I wanted to find out how I could work with you. That is, like, verbatim for how tons of time. And I could pull up the screenshots of this, too. It blew my mind because I don't push my business. And then I just mentioned that right hook one time, and I get, like, a dozen people reaching out to me and saying, I want to hire you. Yeah, that's such a big thing. I remember once, my brother, he's a brilliant entrepreneur. He's younger than me by about eight years. But one day he said to me, he's like, wait, people don't do business with you because of your stuff. They actually chose you first, and then they just want to know, what do you do? What do you have that I can do business with you? I like you. Wait. I like what you're about. I like what I can sense you value, how you roll, what you do. The other thing that I learned from watching him and then him watching some of his mentors was, I don't want to be too in your face. So I do three day weekends. And I didn't want to be like, hey, guess what the ouches. I'm at the beach again. It's Friday. You're not. But that's not the tone of what I post. And more than that, because you can use clever words, just say, I'm grateful that I just made a truckload of money and you didn't. I mean, you can still use the word, but my intention is this I genuinely am hoping that I can help other people, and I am helping other people to create that type of life. So when I'm posting them at the beach and I'm adding, I'm saying, I hope you're getting time with your family. I hope you're getting time for you. And that is truly my intention. Now, despite that, there will still be some people that are going to hate on going to troll, whatever. I could quote taylor Swift and her infinite wisdom about haters going to hate whatever. I can't control that. But at the end of the day, I think that's the part where a lot of people, at least that I know that are around my age, I'm 50, that they do feel weird about the social media because then a lot of us were told, don't brag, don't rub it in people's faces. And you certainly don't want to be bragging to the point where people say, oh, here's a great target. We should rob this dude. It's not about that, at least what I'm seeing. But I think what this is, what you're saying is this is just letting people really get a sense of who you are. I wear this shirt or shirts like this for a reason. My focus of my podcast, my work is a three day weekend, and it's somewhat of a branding thing. I like, these make me happy. And if somebody's like, I freaking hate colors. I only like gray and black and white. Hey, are you probably not going to. Get along with it? I'm wearing gray. No, but you got green in your background. There are some people that are like, dude, you're just too colorful. You're too this. I'm like, guess what? We're probably looking to buy from you. And then it's okay. And I can still love you and you can still love me, but you're probably not. And that's cool. But I love the story about the mountain biker because I think it's funny when people like, I've got all these things, I've done all my work and then God is great, beer is good and people are crazy. I do believe in wisdom of country songs and people will make a decision off of something that's what's not crazy. Like you said, with this investment, everything else is equal. So I'm not going to just go with somebody just because they happen to mountain bike. But now when I'm at that decision point, what's that thing I know about you? And definitely whether it's following GaryVee or I followed so many different authors, wayne Dyer, different people. And you feel like you know the person even if you've never talked to them, like you could just go up to them and go right into a conversation with them because you feel like you know their world. And I think that's so powerful, dude. Thank you. There's so much to this that I think is great and is going to help people. So share a little bit, if you don't mind, specifically how you help people. Because I always like to make it just very clear because people are saying, I like this dude, automatically. You mentioned real estate throughout this. And I even just think of how even slightly different this is what we even thought this was going to be. And yet I love this. I love what we've created today. How do you help people right now? And where can people reach out to you if they want to connect with you and learn more about what you're up to? Perfect. Grow your show is the easy button for podcasters. So our typical client is going to be somebody who wants to be able to achieve greatness through their podcast but doesn't want to have to do all the hard stuff. We'll handle it for them. So our clients always call us the easy button. So how we help them is by doing all the marketing, doing all the branding, doing all editing, publishing, promotion of their podcast. And we have a promise that it will get into the top 1% of all podcasts in the world. It'll be ranked or else we'll give you your money back. So we literally have a promise that it will achieve it or we'll write you a giant check. So that's how we help people. And where to find us is probably the best place to grow yourshow.com. Our main person. We don't help people write books, we don't help people do all of the different thought, leadership, sir, start, meetups necessarily. But the things that we will help you with is launching a podfest or growing your podcast and being your easy button. You can find us@growyourshow.com. Awesome. Yeah. And we'll have all the links and stuff in there. I just think so much of what you said about the vetting and I've checked out some of what you have going on and of course you can just see what they're doing, what he has going on. And certainly I know so many people that they say I would do this podcast, but there's all the tech and this and that. And correct me if I'm wrong because I know this is what the team that I work with, that I've built over the years has done, is I just want to be able to have the interviews like this. And I do actually, I still like to do most of the research myself because I think I'm intuitive, maybe I'm not. Who knows? I think this looks good. Who knows, maybe some people might say no, but I get to do the parts that I want to do and that's the part to me, that's the freedom. It's kind of like the whole idea of being able to retire but not choosing to retire. Being able to pay off your house, but maybe you don't because you get the tax breaks or whatever it is, but being able to get the best out of it. I think for those people. I just think of it that person that says gosh. There's other things I'm doing and actually I'll advertise on top for you and even just the space of what you're doing is so many people that I know having come from the insurance industry and a lot of the business owners I work with for years are brick and mortar places and they're so used to again. I don't want to bash advertising. But they're so used to promises that might or might not be full or hey. Drop 1000 a month or 2000 a month or 3000 a month on these things and they're ethereal and they're gone and they're like. Oh. I'm supposed to put 10% in my marketing budget. And I would invite anybody, whether it's with Adam, I get no piece of any business that you get. In fact, you'll find that with a lot of people, whereas everybody in other industries, a lot of people want to make sure you get a piece. Podcasters in general, like, look, do your thing. Your thing. We're so used to not pitching aggressively because it actually works really well. But I would invite business owners, if you're dropping five to 10,000 a month to growing your business, man, set aside a few thousand. Get in touch with someone like Adam and their group or somebody that can help you share your message. Because if you have something to say, if you have wisdom and you had advice and nobody in your market is doing it, I don't know, writing a book and I've written books, that's very powerful and it takes a lot more focus getting on this and talking with people about what you already know. For a lot of us, that's just easy. And maybe that's a stylistic difference. I'm a better talker than I am a writer, let's say. There's so much possibility. To your point. Just to add one more thing. All the stages I've gotten on from podcasting, which I was brand new, whereas the insurance industry, I'd grown up in the industry and had connections for years, all of those without a podcast, without my social media and without me actually having gone there in person and beating them once, none of that would happen. And so it really just reiterates really what you're doing. Wow. How's that for me, closing? That might be one of the best closing. I'm going to give myself props. And that was a pretty damn good close for you as a guest on the show. Exactly. I'm not going to drop the mic. It's going to make really loud noise. But dude, thank you so much for coming out. I really think people get a lot out of this. And again, if you're listening to this, share in the comments or share with Adam what you got from this and then follow us. So thanks again for joining us. Anything else you'd like to leave the audience with? Soon after this interview goes live on your podcast. You're going to be on my show so your listener can hear me interview you. Reciprocally on that one as well. Wow. Just like that. A true pro. Just when I thought I had, like, I dropped Mike. He dropped his. That's really good, by the way. Thank you so much for coming out, Adam, and as always, for those of you all listening, I look forward. To helping you impact more people and make more money in less time. And do what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends and your life. Thanks so much for listening. Bye.