Using Books to Build Business Relationships with Seth Greene

Rob Kosberg:

Hey. Welcome, everybody. Rob Kosberg here with the Publish. Promote. Profit. podcast. With me is a friend and someone that I am actually a client of, in full disclosure, Seth Greene. Seth is the nation’s foremost authority on growing your business with a podcast, and this podcast, as a matter of fact, is a product of Seth and his team’s work, and so I’m excited to have them on. He’s the cohost SharkPreneur podcast, which I’ve been on with a friend of both of ours, Kevin Harrington of Shark Tank, and it was just named one of the top 10 podcasts to listen to by NASDAQ, which in incredible, in 2019. Congratulations for that, Seth. He’s the founder of the direct response marketing firm, Market Domination, and he’s a seven-time bestselling author. Ergo, that’s why I’m having him on Publish. Promote. Profit. He’s been interviewed on NBC, CBS, Forbes, and 500 other podcasts. So, without further ado, Seth, good to have you. Thank you for taking the time to be with us today.

Seth Greene:

Thank you so much, Rob. It is an honor to be here. I am super excited. I am a product of the product, and that is, of course, why we’re both here, so super excited, and I got to update the bio because it’s now eight bestselling books.

Rob Kosberg:

Nice, nice. Of course.

Seth Greene:

So, I’m trying to keep up with you.

Rob Kosberg:

I love it. I love it. Well, Seth and I, obviously we’re friends. As I disclosed already, I’m a client of his. We’ve done a couple of things together, and most excited about the incredible work that your team is doing on this podcast. Obviously, the fact that you have eight bestselling books now, I want to kind of start there. What was your first one, if you will, and was that something that was kind of pre-thought-out with the idea of authority, or did it just happen? My first one actually just kind of happened because of another mutual friend, Dan Kennedy, but I’d like to hear your story because you’ve really done some amazing things with your books.

Seth Greene:

Sure. So, mine also started because of Dan Kennedy. No, my first book was God-awful. So was probably my second and third one. My first-

Rob Kosberg:

Now, that’s not the title of it, right?

Seth Greene:

It is not. It is not. I was cold calling as a financial advisor, interrupting 300 strangers a day before the do-not-call list, before the internet 20-plus years ago, and I hated it. I hated the cold calling part.

Rob Kosberg:

Wow.

Seth Greene:

So, one of the first assignments Dan gave me when I started working with him was to read Think and Grow Rich, which I had never seen before, which transformed my life, and I said, “In addition to all the great content in here,” I said, “Hey, wait a second. Napoleon Hill interviewed a bunch of people and wrote about it. He didn’t start out as an expert. He became an expert by association by interviewing those people. I could do an interview,” and the first one I went after was the chairman of the board of the largest union pension fund in our town. I did that as a financial advisor in my other career, and it was a 100-million-plus pension fund. I interviewed him for the book. It’s how I got in the door. It ultimately got me that 100-million-dollar pension fund took it away from the guy who had it for years, and they gave it to me because I was the only one who brought a book. Everybody else brought a business card and a PowerPoint, and I dropped hardcover copies of my book on the table. So, I was hooked on books from then, from then on.

Rob Kosberg:

Wow.

Seth Greene:

I started doing more. I started interviewing in that practice, accountants and attorneys, people I wanted referrals from, because our strategy was interview them to build the relationship, and they’ll share the book with other people, and I’ll get business out of it, which worked. I did that in my financial services practice. Then when I started the marketing company back in 2007, I said, “I should do this for marketing, where there’s no compliance department and no rules and no sales prevention, and I can do anything I want.” So, I started off, I wrote a book for financial advisors called Financial Advisor Marketing Magic. The first edition, I’m a little embarrassed, I had a high school intern do the cover. It was literally clip art stuck over the cover. It was terrible. However, the great news for your listeners and viewers, and my mother called, and she said, “I bought the book on Amazon.” I said, “Mom, I would’ve given it to you.” She said, “I wanted to buy it like a real customer.” I said, “Okay.” She said, “I’m so embarrassed for you. There’s 23 pages of typos.” She’s a librarian, retired.

Rob Kosberg:

Oh, gosh.

Seth Greene:

I said, “Mom, nobody cares but you. That book already made me $100,000, so I think I’m okay. I don’t think anybody cared about the typos.” So, I sent out a marketing campaign going, “Typo finding contest thanks to my mom. I’ll give you a bribe if you go find typos for me.”

Rob Kosberg:

Nice.

Seth Greene:

Then I did an interview book-

Rob Kosberg:

Back up. Back up one second. How’d you make 100 grand? You told your mom, “I already made 100 grand with this book.” How’d you make the 100 grand with the book?

Seth Greene:

Sure. So, I was willing to pretty much give the books away because the book had a whole bunch of marketing campaigns that had worked in my practice, and I was literally giving them away in the book with the hopes that there was some strong call to action, and that folks in the book would say, “Ooh, if he’ll give me this for $14.95, what will I get if I write a real check?” It launched a coaching program for financial advisors that, in the first three months of that book coming out, sold 100K.

Rob Kosberg:

Beautiful. Love it. Congratulations.

Seth Greene:

Thank you. So, I’m going to skip ahead. I did a book interviewing marketers that I wanted to meet and get to do business with and get referrals from. That worked. Then I aired those 15 episodes as a podcast just for the hell of it. It was an unedited conference call. There was no Zoom. You heard the phone ring. You heard the secretary, “Can I talk to Mr. Jones? What’s this about?”

Rob Kosberg:

You’re kidding.

Seth Greene:

I asked, “What are we talking about? I’m interviewing you, remember?” All the reviews in the beginning were, “The audio production is terrible, but the content’s really good,” and that’s when I decided we needed to make it a real podcast, and that launched the show eight years ago.

Rob Kosberg:

Wow. That, of course, led to your focus being more on the podcast end of it, and of course, doing production and doing the whole nine yards for clients.

Seth Greene:

Absolutely. So, I realized if it worked for me and I could make money in the marketing world doing a podcast and monetizing those relationships, not focusing on downloads or subscriber advertising revenue, because that’s what everybody does, and most people never make any real money out of it, I said, “If I do this as a relationship-building, networking, referral generation tool, we could do this as a done-for-you service.”

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah.

Seth Greene:

I said, “I want to test it on another client other than me.” I said, “Let’s test it on somebody who’s not marketing, who’s got a regular business.” We tested it on a golf coach. It worked so well that he quit his job at a country club and just flew around the world teaching golf lessons to CEOs who had written him large checks, thanks to the podcast, and I said, “We are on to something here,” and we started a separate company that does that, and now we product 63 different shows.

Rob Kosberg:

That is awesome. Congratulations, man.

Seth Greene:

Of course, yes.

Rob Kosberg:

Of course, I have your book here, Market Domination for Podcast. I love it. Thank you for sending it to me, by the way.

Seth Greene:

My pleasure.

Rob Kosberg:

I love your process. I love the way you do things, obviously, because I’m a paying client and am referring people to you, and have a number of clients, obviously, in my business with Best Seller Publishing that I think could really be a good fit for you, but your strategy is very, very different. Your strategy, and I noticed, by the way, just a quick check on Amazon, you see you have books with Ivan Misner. If you don’t know who Ivan Misner is, he is the founder of BNI, the largest networking organization in the world. I know him as well. Back in my real estate and financial services days, I was a part of BNI, and we have some history there. I had no idea you were in the financial advisory space. My first book, because of Dan Kennedy, was written in the financial advice space, and-

Seth Greene:

I did not know that.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah, and it led to me getting a radio interview, and the very, very first radio interview led to me getting a client on that radio interview. They literally called into the radio station, called my office, and became a customer, and I thought, “Maybe I’m on to something.” Within about a year, I had my own. This was before podcasts. I had my own terrestrial radio show, kind of Dave Ramsey-ish, like a call-in radio show, and blew up from nothing to seven figures in one year just from my book and radio, and of course, now you’ve reversed a little bit podcast and book, and there is some interchangeability there, which is really, really cool. So, you’ve obviously used your methodology is very different than what podcasters and authors are doing. You’re not thinking mass market. You’re not thinking thousands, tens of thousands, millions of downloads. You’re thinking very strategic, “I want to get in front of the right people that can either become my clients or become referral partners.” Talk to me a little bit more about that.

Seth Greene:

That’s absolutely right. You nailed it. So, that book, Market Domination of Podcasting, was my attempt to solve the problem. So, I literally interviewed 10, 15, however many, 18 top podcasters and marketers in the world. I asked people with, like John Lee Dumas, 80 million downloads, and everybody in there said a lot of the same things, ad revenue, sponsorships, and I said, “That’s great for them, but I need a way to make this work for a local entrepreneur, a solopreneur, professional practice owner, coach, consultant, who may never get more than a thousand downloads.” So, I said, “I got to do the opposite of what everybody else does,” and that’s what launched our idea of let’s do this the opposite way on purpose and focus on the relationships, and it’s funny. My wife is now a podcaster, and she was fighting with me the other day on wanting more downloads, and, “When am I going to get enough to get ad revenue?”

Rob Kosberg:

Your own wife, man. Your own wife wants more downloads.

Seth Greene:

I said, “Honey, first of all, we’ll run some ads for you. We’ll get you some more downloads. That’s fine, but as I’ve told you 37 other times. I’m going to make a t-shirt. It’s not about the downloads. It’s about the relationships, and if you would give me something else to sell other than your book, if you would do a course, if you would do a summit, if you would something, then I could monetize those relationships, and you would start making money,” because it’s about who do you have as a list. So, I want to interview people, as you said, who either can hire me, or I want to interview people who have a list of potential clients for me as their tribe. So, for example, you will email all of your authors that you had me on your show.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah.

Seth Greene:

That’s going to expose them to me.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah.

Seth Greene:

I’m going to email all of my podcasters and all of my entire marketing tribe that I was on the Publish. Promote. Profit. show, exposing them to your publishing company. So, that’s a perfect marriage. It’s we’re cross-promoting, and we each have each other’s clients, and it is a total symbiotic relationship.

Rob Kosberg:

Right, right.

Seth Greene:

So, I care more about the relationship than I ever do about how many people actually watch this. If 100 of the right authors watch this, and 10 of them want to do podcasts, it’ll be the most profitable thing I do all day.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. Yep, 100%. Our methodology is exactly the same. Obviously, every author wants to sell a million copies. We have to let them know right out of the gate that is not what our goal is. Sure, we want the book to be awesome. We want it to speak to a very narrow audience if we can convince them to do so, because that narrow audience is really where the big checks come from. So, give me an example, if you will, of somebody in a local market, and of course, you were the first example of how you did it with a book in a local marketplace. Give me an example of a podcaster that’s doing that. I know many are, but tell me about one.

Seth Greene:

Sure. So, I’ll give you the example of the golf pro.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah.

Seth Greene:

So, he said, “I get $75 a lesson. I’m in Buffalo. It snows seven months out of the year. I’ve got a short golf season.”

Rob Kosberg:

Poor guy.

Seth Greene:

Right. He said, “How is this going to work?” and I said, “If I could wave a magic wand and get you anybody as a client, sky’s the limit, who would it be?” He said, “I want those big CEOs who play in charity golf tournaments.” He said, “But I’ve got no way to get them,” and I said, “You do now.” I said, “You’re going to start a podcast. You’re going to talk about golf and business and how golf is networking and deals are done, and how you can judge a person’s character on the golf course, and these CEOs never get a chance, other than with their foursome, to talk about that stuff. Their wife doesn’t want to hear it, and we’re going to be your media department. We’re going to reach out for the PR interview of being on the show about this topic.”

“They’re going to say yes because it’s a fun media appearance, as opposed to CNBC, where they might get grilled by Jim Cramer or whoever. It’ll be a golf show. It will be fun. They’ll do it, and then we’ll build you a multi-step direct mail follow-up process to get that CEO to let you send them more information and give you their snail mail home address, and then we’re going to send them a very large package that will blow them away, that they’re not expecting, and get them to want to sign up for your last golf lesson ever program. It’s $100,000 a year, because they are going to fly you in their private jets four times a year to their home golf course to play for three days with them and give them lessons for three days in a row.”

Rob Kosberg:

Wow.

Seth Greene:

That’s what he said. He didn’t believe me at first. It took a couple meetings with him and his wife to convince him to let me do it, that it was possible, and then on the very first episode when we had nine listeners, and six of them worked for me, and one was his wife, one of them was a CEO who picked up the phone, called, and said, “I’m interested.” They didn’t buy the 100K program, but they did buy a 50K program, which is more than he made in a year in his job as a country club pro.

Rob Kosberg:

Wow. That is incredible. Love that. Now, you also had to help him put together a package that he could actually monetize and sell outside of his 75-bucks-a-lesson kind of mindset in the past.

Seth Greene:

Correct, and obviously that helps, if someone has a high-ticket item for this to work. It doesn’t have to be $50,000.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah.

Seth Greene:

We’ve got coaches that are at $1,000, $2,000, 500 a month. Our lowest end ever is we have a software company where the software’s 100 bucks a year, but we’re getting them mega affiliates, people who can drive 1,000 customers with one email, and then we’ve got another guy who’s selling keto-friendly meals delivered to your door but nobody buys one meal.

Rob Kosberg:

Right, right, right.

Seth Greene:

They’ll buy 15 or 20, and then he wants them to subscribe every month, and again, we’re recruiting people who have 100,000 people on their email list. So, ideally, I’d like it to be a higher-ticket service that you’re selling, but you can make it work with anything. The only thing I wouldn’t do is I wouldn’t do a slice of pizza. You’d have to sell too many.

Rob Kosberg:

Right, or balloons.

Seth Greene:

Right, balloons. Yeah.

Rob Kosberg:

No selling of balloons.

Seth Greene:

No balloons. No balloons, no pizza.

Rob Kosberg:

So, give me an example of a $500-a-month kind of coaching program, because that’s a little outside. I actually prefer the 50 100K because you only need one of those. Right?

Seth Greene:

Right.

Rob Kosberg:

When it comes to 500 bucks a month, you need to find 10, 20, 30, 50 before you really get into a significant amount of revenue. So, what does it look like? Who are they interviewing? Is it more the affiliate type of relationship that you’re still looking for, or are they actually interviewing the people that they want to end up having them be hired by?

Seth Greene:

So, it depends on the client. So, if you have someone who’s trying to fill a $500-a-month, let’s say, group coaching program, they probably aren’t going to do one interview at a time for $500 a month because they’re doing four interviews a month and they closed four for four, that’s only 2K a month.

Rob Kosberg:

Exactly. That’s why I’m asking. It seems that-

Seth Greene:

You and I could interview the 50 or 100K person all day long. The $500 a month, they’re going to interview other centers of influence who have a whole lot of those potential $500-a-month people on their list.

Rob Kosberg:

Gotcha. Gotcha. I love that. This is a great strategy. It’s funny. You started this strategy with a book, by interviewing somebody in your local town that ran that $100 million fund, that ended up becoming your client. Obviously, that is a great strategy for my authors, and it’s not one that we talk about a lot, so I’m going to begin talking to my clients about that. That is your focus, of course, when it comes to podcasts.

Seth Greene:

Yeah, we’ve switched. The podcast didn’t exist when I did it. Otherwise, I would’ve tried to air it, and my compliance department might’ve said no.

Rob Kosberg:

Right, right.

Seth Greene:

However, since they’ve existed now, our focus is more on the podcast and all of the ways to repurpose that content, so there’s an audio show, there’s a video show, there’s social media content, there’s a blog post every week, there’s a whole bunch of content that comes out of that one interview a week, including us feeding them back to you for an actual book.

Rob Kosberg:

Right, right. No, that’s one of the things that I love so much about working with you guys, is I was looking for, and this is a shameless plug for you, but I was looking for a service like myself. I work with people that have been trying to do it on their own for weeks, months, and in most cases, years, and think, “This is ridiculous. Can I just write a check to somebody and get them to do these things for me?” There were plenty of people that I could write a check to that would do a podcast and edit it and promote it, but I wanted somebody that was going to create the show notes, that was going to build out the marketing campaign. Even this direct mail thing. When you told me about that, and of course, you’ve sent me stuff, I said, “This is awesome.” So, give me some stories or a story around what that looks like. I’m a big fan of direct mail. You start mailing, who do you mail, how does it work, and what kind of results have you gotten from that for your podcasters?

Seth Greene:

Okay. So, I’ll give you two examples. I’m going to go in reverse order. So, if you’re a podcaster, for example, one of the things that we suggest you send is we’re going to create graphics around the show and the guests, so it’s going to have my picture. So, just like you see, me, Kevin, and Russell Brunson.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah.

Seth Greene:

Well, I took that art, I put it on a travel mug, I sent it to Russell.

Rob Kosberg:

Nice.

Seth Greene:

Then a couple days later, I sent him a postcard with the same art on it, and then I sent him other stuff to follow up. So, he now has a mug on his desk next to his ClickFunnels mug with my picture and Kevin’s picture.

Rob Kosberg:

Nice.

Seth Greene:

People ask all the time, “What the heck is that?” which is what I want because it generates more leads. So, that’s one example. Think about you want to send something sticky where your prospect, your interviewee is going to use every single day, and it will be on display for somebody else to see all the time.

Rob Kosberg:

Right, right. Love it.

Seth Greene:

So, it is a constant reminder.

Rob Kosberg:

So, are you going to send yourself a mug of me and you, and a picture of it?

Seth Greene:

No, but I’m going to send it to you. We’re going to send it to me for you, because we do it for you. Yes. I will have-

Rob Kosberg:

That’s what I mean. You’re going to get a mug with your picture on it.

Seth Greene:

I will have 63 mugs on my desk, yes.

Rob Kosberg:

I love it.

Seth Greene:

Yes. I have a giant collection. Then the other thing I mentioned, if we’re going after one of those 50, 100K high-ticket potential clients, we send something that you learned from Dan, which is called the shock and awe box, where in this case it’s how I got Kevin Harrington. After meeting him, after kidnapping him, I sent him a box that had a DVD player in it held up by custom foam inserts, and the DVD was me on camera saying, “Thanks for letting me send this to you. Here is the 12 holes in your marketing funnel as we see them right now, and how we could fix that.”

Rob Kosberg:

Wow.

Seth Greene:

Then it had all my books, and it had a whole bunch of other stuff in the box, and I got a phone call in less than two minutes from when they received that going, “This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I’m in a meeting right now, but my secretary interrupted me to show me this, and I want to talk about hiring you guys,” which is how our relationship started.

Rob Kosberg:

Love it. Love it. Love it.

Seth Greene:

So, I’ve used them to get Fortune 500 CEOs and CMOs.

Rob Kosberg:

Wow.

Seth Greene:

I’ve used them to get celebrities. We’ve had clients who we came up with creative ways of delivering the box. I had one client, we got in front of Warren Buffett.

Rob Kosberg:

Wow.

Seth Greene:

Depending on how much you’re willing to spend and how creative you’re willing to be, you can knock down pretty much any door.

Rob Kosberg:

Love it. Love it. That’s brilliant stuff, Seth. Thank you. So, give me your marketing strategy personally for your podcast business. You obviously have the SharkPreneur podcast, but that’s not primarily for your Market Domination business. How do you get clients? How does that work in your world, and what can we learn from that?

Seth Greene:

Okay. So, we have two divisions, as you alluded to. We have the podcasting division, and then we have the Market Domination division, which is Traffic & Conversion. We build funnels, drive traffic, drive sales, all that good stuff, the internet market, digital market. So, we’re talking about the podcasting program, we get clients by being on other people’s shows. We get clients by me interviewing potential clients on my show. We get clients by me interviewing potential affiliates who then promote to their audiences, and those folks hire us. We do a lot of webinars, which have replaced in-person speaking. We did webinars before COVID, but we do a lot more now because I’m not traveling.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah.

Seth Greene:

A lot of events aren’t happening, so we will do, for example, I’ll give you a long selling cycle. I’ll give you two years ago. At Traffic & Conversion, I interviewed Daniel Harmon and Benton Crane from Harmon Brothers, which was a bucket list interview for me. They also interviewed me on their show. Then I dripped on them for about a year. They finally hired us to do the same program we’re doing for you, so bucket list marquee client. Then they liked it so much, in less than the first 30 days, we did a webinar for their audience where they emailed 50,000 people, business owners, to attend the webinar and learn our process, and then multiple people hired us from the webinar. They have since sent multiple referrals, and we’re doing another webinar slot next month. So, that one interview has led to at least $200,000 in revenue.

Rob Kosberg:

Wow. Fantastic. Good. That’s two years ago from an introduction leading to podcast swapping and the relationship, basically.

Seth Greene:

Yes. I tried to speed that up, and the reason it took a year to get the first interview and a year to get the contract signed was on them. They will freely admit that, and now they say, “We wish we had done it sooner and listened to you,” but yes, that was the goal. I was hoping that 30, 60 days later they would’ve seen the light and hired us, but it took a while, and we are relentless in terms of followup. We never, ever give up.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah. Love it. Love it. Well, I’ve noticed that too. I didn’t get started with you right away.

Seth Greene:

You did not.

Rob Kosberg:

I think I was on SharkPreneur a year or 18 months ago, and kind of fiddled around, and I thought finally, “I got to get this doggone podcast going, for crying out loud.”

Seth Greene:

Yes, yes.

Rob Kosberg:

I love the content creation aspect of it. I love the fact that we’re recording it for both video on a YouTube channel, we’re doing the show notes, we’re repurposing it for blog post and email. Look, I’m a big believer. I think you know that already.

Seth Greene:

Yes.

Rob Kosberg:

So, love it. Okay. What have I not asked? What am I missing here? There’s certainly a lot. You’re used to having these interviews. To me, I’m just sitting and learning, and I’m thinking, “Okay, these are all the things I need to make sure that me and Seth’s team are working on here,” but what else? What am I missing?

Seth Greene:

So, we have a very special offer for your listeners.

Rob Kosberg:

Okay.

Seth Greene:

So, I have a 37-page eBook on how you can grow your own cult of 50 evangelists who will promote your brand every week for a year, which is what we’ve been talking about.

Rob Kosberg:

Yep.

Seth Greene:

So, that is normally $14 on Amazon. For your folks, it’s half off.

Rob Kosberg:

Nice.

Seth Greene:

If they go to growyourowncult.com, they can get it for seven bucks. After that, I will disclose up front, because you are a super smart marketer, there is an upsell to the 90-minute training I did with the Harmon Brothers about how to do this. So, if you’d like to watch as opposed to read, take the upsell of the eBook. If you’re happy to read, you don’t need the upsell. There will be one more where we offer you the opportunity to do this with us, and that’s, of course, if that’s right for you.

Rob Kosberg:

Nice, nice. Good.

Seth Greene:

That’s at growyourowncult.com.

Rob Kosberg:

All right, fantastic. Of course, we’ll have a link in the show notes and all of that for people to go. So, is that the best place for them to go? Is there someplace else they should check out and maybe learn a little bit more about all the cool things you do?

Seth Greene:

Sure. So, that’s specifically for the Grow Your Own Cult program.

Rob Kosberg:

Yeah.

Seth Greene:

If they want to learn more about everything we do, that’s marketdominationllc.com. I am obviously all over social media. LinkedIn is probably the fastest way to get me.

Rob Kosberg:

Love it. Love it. Seth, thank you, my friend. Thanks for taking the time to be on. I think I’m going to be on SharkPreneur again sometime soon which I’m looking forward to, and grateful to be working with you guys. I’m a big fan, and it’s something that I’m excited to see come to fruition, and in the next year see what comes from it. I know that there’s going to be a massive return on investment because this is really the same thing that we do. We do it with books. We do it with authors. You’re doing it with podcasts and podcasters, so love it. Thank you again, my friend. Thank you for taking the time and sharing your secrets.