Leveraging Thought Leadership With Peter Winick – Episode 19 – Andy Paul

 

Hey, thought leaders! If you want to use podcasting as part of your business development, this is the episode for you.

This week, Peter is joined by author, speaker, and podcaster Andy Paul. Andy spent 40+ years in sales before hanging up his bag and dedicating his life to a new mission: sales education. Andy talks to Peter about the essential skills needed for thought leadership podcasting, and how to build your online brand.

Andy’s deep understanding of the sales process and brand building provide an excellent template for thought leaders looking to make a splash with their content. Podcasts can be an integral part of your branding. Listen in, and find out how!

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Transcript

Peter Winick And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I’m the founder and CEO of Thought Leadership Leverage and we’re on the podcast today, Leveraging Thought Leadership with my guest, Andy Paul. Let me give everybody a little background on Andy. I’ve known him well for a long time, but not everybody. Well. So Andy, excuse me, knows what it takes for companies and sales teams to power growth. He’s written two books. One is the award winning amp Up your sales powerful strategies that Move customers to make fast favorable decisions. And zero time selling ten essential steps to accelerate every company sells. He focuses primarily on the sales side of the universe, and as he says, he will help companies that are selling in every continent except Antarctica. And I’m assuming you’re not biased against and origins, but it’s just that there hasn’t been demand there yet. Is that true?

Andy Paul Yeah. Well, my career, I’ve never had an opportunity to go sell something there.

Peter Winick Okay, well, let’s see what we can do to change that. So now I.

Andy Paul Think I’m.

Peter Winick Your warm weather guy, right? So, you know, Andy, as you know, the focus of this podcast is really the business side of content and thought leadership. And you’ve been in this space for a number of years. So maybe to start with a recap of your journey from sort of the corporate world into this universe slash business that is content based, content generated. Sure.

Andy Paul Well, I mean, I’d start my own consulting company back in 2000 and then moved to New York. I got married and moved from San Diego to New York and. Late 2010.

Peter Winick By the way, the definition of love is leaving San Diego to come to New York.

Andy Paul Right at the time, we had an agreement between my wife and I that we are moving back to San Diego. And I think two years at that point and as like say we’re now in the eighth year of our two year plan to relocate. So but yeah, I got to New York a sort of opportunity to sort of say, okay, tech stock, what am I doing? What do I do differently? You know, chance really to reinvent myself. And that’s when I said, okay, well, maybe I’ll write this book. I always want to write them thinking the more like the calling card for the consultants have, right? And yeah, I should turn out to be more widely received, well-received, more widely anticipated, I guess. And it sort of got me thinking about. Yeah. You know, blogging and, public speaking and sort of this path to being a, quote unquote, thought leader.

Peter Winick So, so the idea was, hey, this is just a way to differentiate myself as one of many consultants in the universe. But it became more than that for you. I mean, the basis of your business is really the root. The core is the content is the thought leadership.

Andy Paul It is. And so basically, excuse me, suffering a little cold today. But yeah, based on that, you know, a second book followed and, you know, blogging fairly consistently. And then, you know, it was building my platform. But I think that that really sort of took us to the next level was start my own podcasts. And so I start that sort of two and a half years ago and. Cash. You’ve done 650 plus episodes and yeah, it’s certainly. You know, giving me exposure that probably would’ve taken much longer to get just through regular, you know, contact, you know, blogging or social media and. And it gives you a chance, really, I think, to sample what you think and what you believe. And if you do it the right way in ways that that you wouldn’t be able to communicate, you know, as easily through blogging or whatever.

Peter Winick And it’s less of an ask of someone that might be curious, maybe somebody heard about you or they read a blog or they saw something. You know, a book is, is is a pretty big commitment. Hey, come spend six, eight hours to learn about me versus pop into a podcast. And, you know, maybe it’s ten minutes, 20 minutes, half hour or whatever, but it’s a lower risk way to sample the thinking and the frameworks and the thoughts. Tell me how you’ve taken the concepts, the content that are in the book and put that out in the world in a variety of ways. So basically, you know, the book is not where the money is, obviously, but how have you taken the core concepts and for example, in zero time selling and put it out there in different modalities to scale and monetize?

Andy Paul Well, I think that that, you know, some of the usual things public speaking, you know, a as 1 or 2 with a lot of companies doing workshops that are based on the concepts, that’s our platform, the basic platform concepts in the book. But I’ve really been extended and I’ve extended and expanded upon over the subsequent years and. As I said, the wrote that the podcast. And it’s interesting for me the podcast has been effective in that and that. It took me a little while to learn. After I started the podcast as. That it was okay to inject myself into the podcast. I was brilliant in an interview format and I think for the first few months, maybe a little too deferential, perhaps to the guests. And.

Peter Winick Sure. I’ll try not to be deferential to you today, Andy.

Andy Paul No, no need we. But it that really made start making a difference. And so I really for me, part of the mission of the podcast is to. Expose people to new concepts, new thoughts and tools. New technologies are in the sales space now because we’ve done a lot of marketing podcast leadership episodes. Actually, Magazine Co has put us on their list, the top leadership podcasts and tastic.

Peter Winick But what’s the underlying business model there? Because from my understanding, most people on the podcast side are not doing it from a business perspective, meaning a direct revenue generation piece. So what is the benefit to you as a business owner of putting all this time and energy and effort into a stellar podcast?

Andy Paul Well, I think it was it’s really been a branding exercise to a large extent. I mean, we’ve nothing more than pays for itself through sponsorships and so on. But yeah, it’s not a huge a huge revenue generator, but we are using it as a platform because some new services were for launching very soon that are really geared toward the audience that we serve with the podcasters. By and large are small mid sized enterprises. Our audience is about 6040 managers to individual contributors. So I think we run a little bit heavy on the management side, somewhat intentional in that regard, in that based on the guest, the topics that I like to talk about. But I think as part of the branding, it’s not just reinforce what we talk about in the books, but it’s also, you know, with the reputation we developed, we don’t we don’t suffer fools gladly. Sure. On the show. And so we’ll challenge people. You know, social people are happy.

Peter Winick Right, right, right.

Andy Paul And substantiate claims or looks like their logic doesn’t hold together in books I’ve written because I’ve.

Peter Winick I love that. So this is not a walk in the park. I need I need to be prepared when I’m on your podcast, which I’ve been. Yeah, but so let me ask this. When we talk about branding in many instances, depending on how you define that, that is an activity whose benefit is exposure, right? So there’s a, there’s a universe of people that don’t know who you are. And one way that they can be exposed to you, your ideas, your thoughts, your content is through a podcast. And part of it is the guest may be more have more notoriety than you, right? So if you bring on somebody that’s a multiple New York Times bestseller or whatever, whatever they’re bringing sort of their peeps, their tribe over into your place for a little while to come and visit. Is that is that part of the plan?

Andy Paul Certainly. It’s certainly something that happens. And I mean, you know, guests on podcasts, you know, there’s always a sort of idea that, you know, if you get the really big name people on your show that they’re going to have that exposure to their audience, which really doesn’t happen to the extent, but that people would like to believe.

Peter Winick Okay.

Andy Paul And because, you know, if one of 100 podcasts they’ve been on and. Right. And they’re really concerned about themselves not so much about helping you.

Peter Winick So let me let me go further on the branding though. So ultimately, I would hope that a subset of the branding is net new client acquisition. Right? So somebody, you know, the universe of people that don’t know who you are or who I am is greater than the universe of far greater than the universe of people that do. How often is it that someone’s sort of coming into using the podcast as a door into working with you?

Andy Paul It does happen. And but I think that it’s part of what we’re doing with the new service were introduced which is geared Little more broadly based than, you know, sort of, hey, hire me for a day or higher medium keynote or whatever, which what certainly happens from the from the podcast happens with a fair amount of frequency. But it’s we have a broader audience that I think are looking for. More of anti refugee. And I think that I think that one things that comes with the branding is that you do sort of build up sort of this assumed expertise on the parts of listeners based on the people you speak with. And so it’s been sort of interesting that there have been a couple of things I’ve done in markets where I wouldn’t have necessarily considered myself an expert per se, but where, you know, companies will outreach to me and say, Hey, can you help us with this? And it’s like, well, based on what I did on the podcast.

Peter Winick So that’s interesting because you I mean, I know you’ve worked for a long time and we’ve done some work together. You’re somewhat humble, right? So your style is you’re not one of these over the top motivational. Me, me, me, me, me. I mean, there’s a gravitas to you. There’s a thoughtfulness to you. The proof is in the pudding. You know, you’re big on models and frameworks and, you know, not it’s not going to get done because of sheer charisma, but it’s you know, everything that you do is very thoughtful and methodical. And what’s interesting is you don’t proclaim yourself to be a guru or whatever, but people are coming to you saying, Hey, I’ve listened to a bunch of your podcast and clearly you have this expertise in action. It wasn’t even popping into your head that the world would perceive you as being an expert in X, whatever X is. So that’s pretty interesting.

Andy Paul Yeah, well, I think that that’s part of that’s due to, you know, not too many podcasts are sort of have the standard set of questions I’m sure. And yeah, I’ll be getting a lot of podcasts and the host will supply me a list of questions this is all going to talk about or, you know, give me ten things I can ask you. And I do things do things very differently. And that, that, you know, I don’t share questions ahead of time with guests. And I do, you know, fairly substantial preparation. And in a relative sense, you know, not spending days hearing for a single a single episode. But. But if someone’s writing a book, I’m going to read the book and we’re going to talk about it. So if, you know, I do my research, I do preparation and I’ve really geared towards, you know, what do I think the audience wants to learn about this particular person? You know, really understand what it means to them and how they can take something away from that bad interview. And so, yeah, I like to think, though, that we do challenge people to be more thoughtful. And, you know, I’ve had episodes where, you know, authors have come on and they’ve got a thesis on their book. Yeah, I might challenge them on the thesis and it falls apart and it’s like.

Peter Winick So, so let me touch on two things you said there, because I think I think they’re important. I think they’re very important. Number one, you’re doing the prep. It seems like basic table stakes, but I as you know, I can’t tell you how many podcasts I listen to where it’s really clear that the host doesn’t know who the person is, maybe read, you know, sort of the back of the book or the cover or a review or something like that, but doesn’t have anything, even a cursory level of understanding of who that person is, what their contents about, the folks that they work with. It’s just, you know, someone that came in out of the blue, popped in for a podcast and they’re having a conversation that there’s really no meat on the bone, right? And then, you know, the canned questions and all that. You know how many questions that I sent you before? Did I, Andy?

Andy Paul None. Yeah.

Peter Winick Right, Right. Is it? It should be a conversation. So the doing your homework. I think that’s a key piece. And yeah, reading the book and going online and watching their videos and all that makes a difference. The second piece that you said and you touched on it, but I want to go a little bit deeper is knowing the audience. So when you say knowing the audience, you know, the world is a busy place. I have less time than I do. Any other resource available to make time is really valuable to me. So who is your you know, how do you design your podcast in terms of knowing the audience in mind? Give me a sense of sort of the avatars or the profiles of who you are. You know, who are you building this for?

Andy Paul Sure. And that’s morphed a little bit since we started. But the goal and we started the podcast when I started the podcast was to. Serve the small business entrepreneur, owner, CEO and sales leader of those companies, small and midsize companies.

Peter Winick And that was your traditional client base.

Andy Paul If I want to have my consulting business, right. Sure.

Peter Winick Okay. So that you know that space, you know what their issues are, etc.. Yeah.

Andy Paul And it was deliberately to sort of not be like a lot of sales podcast and other podcasts are really sort of geared toward, you know, the tech industry, let’s say. And but as we as you go through the story, you’ll see things change a little bit. But the goal was saying, look, there’s all these incredible things happening in sales, you know, all new tools and technologies coming into the market that, you know, most small mid sized companies just aren’t being exposed to and things that could really help them and, you know, methods and processes and, you know, other thought leaders in the space. I had a really interesting things to talk about that that the natural audience always seems to be, you know, Silicon Valley where they’re sort of, you know, leading edge are trying out new methodologies for sales, new tools, technologies and so on.

Peter Winick But 99% of businesses aren’t, you know, over 2.0 in Silicon Valley, right? Most people are to two dudes or whatever, starting a less sexy company.

Andy Paul Yeah. But they still the same need if they’re especially a business selling to a business. Do you understand how things are evolving? Things they could do to really elevate their productivity and so on. So accelerate the growth. So that was really where we started. And it’s funny when you sort of look at the demographics of where our listeners come from. Yeah. It seems like here after two years, two and a half years. So we are sort of about 45% probably in a tech aligned business that are in our listeners and 55% that’s, you know, more mainstream small businesses. But that’s still the focus we have as you know that that sales leader in a small sized enterprise that CEO entrepreneur that sometimes got to be running the sales are a top individual contributor. I mean, there’s got something for everybody at some point on the show. But. Yes. To make them think.

Peter Winick So how does that how does that impact. I want to say everything, but that’s too broad of a question. Who you have on the questions that you ask. So if you know, it’s that sales and sales manager in the small startup sort of non-tech company, how does that influence who you choose to have on what you choose to ask them? What you hope for an outcome of a good podcast to be?

Andy Paul Well, I’m rich and find people I think have something interesting to share and that’s yeah, I think we’re reasonably successful at that in terms of the guests we have on, they’re not all huge names but outlets that oftentimes I don’t think it’s the huge names that really have the biggest impact, the best takeaways. So right now I find people that are less are doing something that seems a little bit different, that maybe people aren’t familiar with a different perspective. And yeah, mostly something that I think would be interesting to speak with, You know, from a selfish standpoint, that’s as I tell people on the radio, having a podcast, at least the way I approach us, is really a selfish endeavor to a large degree, because here I’ve had 650 plus conversations over the last two and half years with a lot of really smart people, and I’ve learned a ton, right? You know, I’m, as you know, well into my career. And I’d say, you know, 95% of the people plus. And so at my stage of their career after four decades, I think they know everything about sales or whatever endeavor they’re in. And that’s certainly not the attitude I take. And I think I can always learn something new. And you have benefited immensely from talking to all these smart people.

Peter Winick If you extrapolate that if you’re someone that’s seasoned, that’s experience. And I would say skeptical. But you’ve been around and you’re able to learn from talking to people. Obviously, anybody listening to that conversation on the podcast is going to have the same experience, one would hope.

Andy Paul Yes. Yeah. I think if they have an open mind and they’re curious. Sure. Absolutely. And that’s again they have another one. The Avatars actually, to some degree is somebody sort of like me those. Just naturally curious and always wanted to be a continuous learner. And I love this. Quote from Thomas Huxley, who is British writer and the country who said, you know, one should try to know something about everything and everything about something. I love that. And that’s really what I try to do. Help people will have fun in the show is expose them to a broad range of topics that relate to sales. I mean, I can say a quote unquote, I know everything about sales, quote unquote. Yeah, to some degree, that’s the area everything about. But yeah, I’m just endlessly fascinating about everything else that’s out there.

Peter Winick Well, I think we’ve done a bit of that today. So, you know, as we start to wrap up a bit, give me a sense because you have an interesting perspective from experience on both the book World Publishing, still publishing, publishing with a traditional publisher and then the podcast world. So talk about those two endeavors from the perspective of. Energy and returns of 600 and something podcast. I mean, I’m new to the game. This is I think my 15th one or something like that hosting. So I’m a pleb here and I’m still learning and figuring it out and I’ve listened to a bunch, but I’ve got a long way to go, obviously. But give me a sense, if you could, to. For folks out there, the. Differences and the various benefits of writing a book and or doing a podcast because they’re two totally different animals. But you’ve got deep expertise in both. Share some of that with us, if you could.

Andy Paul Well, that’s a great question in terms of, you know, building your platform and then your brand as a thought leader. You know, it’s there are two different animals and. I think it just depends what people feel comfortable with. I mean, I, I, I still we have other books that are in the works that I’m, you know, want to have published that. But there’s not there’s an immediacy with the podcast. I think that if you if you really approach it that way you know for me that I get feedback on all the time that, you know, once the book is out there, you know, it starts becoming less relevant every day after you publish it to some degree, unless you’re, you know, published one of these real classics. Right. Whereas I think with the podcast, it’s sort of constantly self-renewing and. Know for me, it’s me. I don’t think it’s an either or. If your thought leader, you’re thinking, just how am I doing? What do I have to do to sort of get the word out there about myself? I think the thing that you get with the podcast, you do it correctly, as we touched on earlier, is just people get a better sense of who you are and what you can add to them. So if you’re looking at from a client development standpoint, you know, interestingly, I think my guests actually oftentimes get more business out of each show than I do. I’m half right. Endless number of guests, you know, email me after the fact and say, hey, I just got a contract. And so I heard me on your show.

Peter Winick Very cool. But let me go back to the let me go back to the book piece. So one of the thoughts I had in my mind and I’ve been around this for a long time is you go to write a book that’s 40 to 60,000 words against a given subject area that’s fairly specific, right? So, for example, zero time selling ten essential steps to accelerate every company sales. There’s lots of things that couldn’t be in that book. Right? Because it’s technology and there are a lot of things that would be of benefit to the people that would buy that book that just wouldn’t make it under that title versus a podcast. It goes back to your Huxley quote, If you know who your client is and you do, there’s lots of things that you can give them, gives you more sort of range and freedom and an experiment. You might come up with something that you think, Hey, this is interesting, but it’s far fetched. Throw it out there. And if it resonates with the podcast audience, that’s real. You know, market data. They say, well, they want some more of that. Let me let me go down that path a little bit more versus like you said, you know, once the book is out, you know, you can’t have that, whatever moment it is. I wish I would have done this differently in Chapter seven or, you know, I you know, I just heard about this and I would love to go back and do that. It’s done. Signed, sealed, delivered. Right. So talk about the podcast in terms of the flexibility, the creativity, the benefit to testing hypotheses and research and such.

Andy Paul Why? Yeah, I do it all the time. And but again, I’m not. You have a lot of podcasts of some of the individual, the host speaking. Right. I mean experts of all have this is 15 minutes of me. Yeah. My opinion about yeah mine I tend to integrate more into the flow but yeah, I’m not afraid of introducing new concepts and bouncing off guests. And use that sort of as like a comedian trying out new material, right as is. Yeah. The podcast is, is a platform I use that for. So yeah, I’ll engage them in a conversation point based on something I think is as new or relevant or something. I’ve come up with them and I’ll do it over a series of episodes to try it. And especially with an episode that has run on a weekly basis for two and a half years with my friend Bridget Gleason, a seasoned senior sales professional and sales leader. And yeah, we have oftentimes, yeah, a lot of times the topic conversation or some new thing I’m thinking about and trying out and yeah, she’s a great, great audience to, to try these new things out on, right? And then I’ll make her way back into other, other interviews and conversations I have with people because I, you know, I want to. Challenge people to think differently about sales and how they approach this business of building relationships and working with somebody on the customer experience and customer journey. And you have a great opportunity to do it.

Peter Winick Fantastic.

Andy Paul But I don’t. But I don’t. Go ahead. The reason I want an interview format, though, to us is rather than. I know some people successful have podcast that’s just for them right in there their opinions. I’ve never felt that you know I. It was that interesting individually to an audience to sustain at the point.

Peter Winick Where you have 600 episodes worth of interesting in you.

Andy Paul Yeah, that’s right. So that.

Peter Winick So yeah. What’s interesting about what you’ve said is as we started to wrap things up a bit here is this was primarily focused on podcasting, which is one of many things that an author, a speaker, a thought leader should entertain, should consider. Obviously, it’s easy to do it as a guest, but launching your own, this was really fantastic. In closing, give us, you know, 1 or 2 things that people should consider and then as well, how do people find you if they wanted help putting together a podcast, launching or reaching out to you for your core content around sales and sales management? So tell me that for sure. Yeah.

Andy Paul Yeah. Well, they can certainly people can connect with me on LinkedIn or just send me an email. Andy of Andy paul.com is the easiest way or pick up pick up a phone call me (619) 980-4002 and do the old-fashioned way. Old school always appreciate you always appreciate the old school approach that’s still very for us. And yeah, people have questions about, you know, putting on their own podcast or whatever. You know, we’ll be happy to to talk with them. But yeah, that’s the easiest way to reach me.

Peter Winick Great. And I would encourage folks to do that. Andy. Andy is a wealth of knowledge and he’s gone deep on the whole podcast world over the last several years, and I’m sure he’s made some mistakes along the way, as we all have done. But he’s really got it down to almost a science, but it’s ever evolving. So if you’re considering diving into the world of world of podcasting and as I would suggest, you would as one of the tools in your arsenal, there’s nobody better at it than Andy today from my humble opinion. So I appreciate you here. Thank you for pushing through the cold. And I had a little bit of a cold today and it’s always a pleasure to talk to you. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Andy Paul And thanks. Well, thank you for having me.

Peter Winick To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at Thought Leadership Leverage dot com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at Peter at Thought Leadership Leverage dot com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.