274: Discover Your Ideal Market, Focus on Creativity, Create the Right Team and Systems with the King of Podcasting Jonathan Rivera

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank, Show, episode 274, discover your ideal market. Focus on creativity. Create the right team and systems with the king of podcasting, Jonathan Rivera. Hey everybody, and welcome back to the show. Our guest today is Jonathan Rivera, and Jonathan comes from a blue collar background, and he left the rat race to pursue real estate, and he runs a successful rental business in only four hours a week. And today, his main focus is running the podcast factory, which is a podcast network and production company where he is surrounded by some of the world's most respected direct response marketers. So Jonathan, welcome to the show. Robert, thanks for having me on. I'm glad that you're on. So we talked about a couple things there in your bio, about real estate, podcasting four hours a week. So, I mean, I mean, what are you up to lately? And out of those things, I mean, what has you the most excited?

Jonathan Rivera 0:52 Well, I let's see, what has me the most excited has nothing to do with work. It's being with my family. But second to that is the work that I'm doing over at the podcast factory now, hanging out with my mentors, rapping, sharing our insights, and hopefully helping people along the way.

Robert Plank 1:11 Awesome. And so, so you're you're having fun, you're helping people out. And so what exactly is this thing called the podcast factory?

Jonathan Rivera 1:19 Well, it's it started by accident, right? So it was just me talking to some of my mentors who had helped me out. So you talked a little bit about the four hour work week at my real estate business. And the reason that's possible is because I've had some really great mentors in my life who have helped me with direct response marketing, helped me with email, sales, positioning, direct mail, all that kind of stuff to the point where our units are now full. We have a waiting list, and people are always trying to get in. We've raised our prices twice in the last year, and people are still trying to get in. And so these guys that helped me out a ton. I just I liked them a lot, and I wanted to hang out with them, and they wanted to do podcasts. I'm like, Yeah, I can help you out with that, because I just using it as an excuse to rap with my buddies, and I figured the people listening might get a little bit of information from us, and it might be useful to them as well. And that's where it all started, really, was just me rapping with my buddies, and before I knew, it turned into a full production house. We've worked on like 18 shows. Now I've co hosted eight shows, and we're up over a million downloads. I mean, all kinds of stuff going on is actually a business now, and it started by accident, awesome. And aren't those like, the best kinds of business to start right where it's like, you're just helping people, and you're maybe doing it for fun, then you realize, oh, I could charge for this thing. It's probably one of those things where most people would overlook it. And I'm very fortunate to have had mentors and to invest in masterminds and to always be improving myself. And it wasn't till I was sitting at this very high level mastermind in Texas, and I was working on my real estate training business, and all anybody wanted to talk to me about was the podcast thing, and I'm sitting there saying that's not what I'm working on right now. I got to get my work done. And I realized later on, when I talked to my wife, I said, I think the podcast thing might be the business, so I might have to look into that. And it's been about a year and a half since it's been a real business where I've been focusing on it, and my wife is actually working with me full time, so we're both working from remotely, actually, from the house sometimes. Last month, we were in Utah all month, snowboarding and working, and it's just it's turned into this thing that has a life of its own, and now I'm just here guiding the ship.

Robert Plank 3:32 Awesome. So, so it took off, and now you're living the dream and so and so, just to get everyone sort of caught up, so a podcast is like what we're on now, where it's like an internet radio show. We're on iTunes. And so I'm looking at the podcast factory website here, and I recognize about half the names. I recognize, you know, Ben settle and Dan Meredith and Michelle SPIVA and Igor and some of these, and James Jones and all these people. And so if someone is a member or a client of yours, I mean, what does that entail? Are you, you know, getting them guests. Are you publishing the podcast? I mean, what exactly do you do for these clients?

Jonathan Rivera 4:06 Some of the it started like I said, by accident. I was really just rapping with my buddies, and we turned it into shows and shared it out to the world. And so now it's a full fledged business, right? So someone comes in and they want to build up their authority, they want to take up some market share, they want to be known as a leader in their market. I help them with that, and the tool that we use is podcasting, but there's so much more behind the scenes, like knowing your market, knowing your offers, making sure that you have the right calls to action. So what I'm realizing is it started out as just producing shows for people, and it's morphed into this bigger thing now, where we when someone comes in, I really get into their goals for the next three years and figure out if I want to take that ride with them, and then we start looking at how the pieces connect, how the podcast fits into the lead. Generation into the sales and into the bigger picture of the lifestyle they're trying to live. So it's, it's, it's really like I said, taking on a life of its own. In fact, I got a testimonial the other day from my buddy Kyle, from unlocking your inner strength, and one of the things that he said that I just found so interesting was that it's not just the tech stuff that we help him with, but we give him business and life advice, and that was something that made me feel really special, because the impact that we're not only having on his life but his listeners lives, is really helping me realize what my legacy looks like.

Robert Plank 5:38 Awesome and and what's cool about just what I've heard so far from you about what you're doing to help these people is that, you know, I've seen a few of these sort of podcast services, and I'm sure you've seen some of them too, where they say, you know, well, you know, we'll edit your podcasts, or we'll put music on it and stuff like that. But it sounds like you also work with them on the marketing side of things, which correct me, if I'm wrong, I think that a lot of these other services don't necessarily do the other services. It sounds like just do the technical stuff and you do the marketing as well.

Jonathan Rivera 6:06 Yeah. So it's a more holistic approach. That's a funny word, holistic. It really is, because that's anybody can do that you can get an engineer to go ahead and mix a show up for you. That's easy, but knowing the bigger goal of what the purpose of your show is and how your show gets you from where you are today to that vision you have of yourself a year, two years, three years down the road, that is a longer term approach, because you can get, like I said, audio engineer anywhere but to get somebody involved in your vision, helping you guide your way to that vision, that that's a different level of relationship, and that's why I'm pretty picky about the people I work with. I mean the names that that you said you already knew those people are are no names in their industries, and that's why I want to work with people that had a bigger vision, and I want to help them make that vision a reality, and I want to impact lives on the way there, awesome, and

Robert Plank 7:05 I'm right there with you as far as impacting lives. So I'm really curious about, kind of what, what that initial conversation is like. I don't know if maybe you're okay with talking about Kyle or maybe someone else, but I'm sort of curious about, you know, you mentioned that someone comes to you and they say, and you talk about, like, you know, their next three years. Or you kind of flesh out, you know, like, what's the reach going to be? So, like, what is that conversation sort of like? Like, when you ask somebody, what is the next three years look like? Like, what are some of your clients safe as an answer to that question.

Jonathan Rivera 7:35 So before they become clients, I interview them. So you won't find a sales page on my site, you won't find a way to get into my podcasting service until you're on my email list. I have a waiting list, and then every so often, I open up the doors and I allow people to apply. And when they apply, my team reviews the application, and we already have some things set up where we say, this sounds good. This sounds good, great. Let's get on the phone with them, or this doesn't sound right. Not a match. Forget them, right? And so, and it's just, I can't help everybody, so I want to be with someone whose vision I like. And so one of the initial things that we're doing when we're interviewing them, before they come on board, is to find out if they actually have a bigger goal. Because if I'm talking to someone and I ask them, What does your life look like two, three years from now, and they can't tell me, then this person does not have a bigger goal, a bigger picture, and has no direction. And I can't give that to you. It's just not possible. So you have to come in with a vision, and then I help harness that vision. So when they first come in, it's just some topical questions about that kind of stuff, and finding out about their database, and finding out what their mission is and what they're trying to accomplish, and to see if I can help them do all of that. And if it's a match, if I like them, if they like me, we decide to work together. Then after we get the show launched, I have what I call, and I didn't make this up, I'm in Strategic Coach, so it's the R factor dos conversation. If you look up Dan Sullivan and his book, The Dan Sullivan question, you'll see the whole layout right there. But after we launched their show, I get into the even bigger vision. What are we doing three years from now? What does your future look like? What does your business look like? What does your personal life look like? And I start getting really involved in that kind of stuff, to the point where we talked about Kyle. He didn't even realize it. We had this conversation, and he was talking about stuff like having a lake house and all this other stuff, and he was looking at it like it was three years down the road. But after we had the talk, and he became more aware of it. He's like, why am I not doing this now? Dude went out and bought himself and his family a lake house, like, two months after the conversation. So I'm harnessing what they already want and helping them focus on it and the bigger picture. And so that's part of it. Is a podcasting. Part of it is the marketing. Part of it is the back end, whether it's a membership site or their coaching or their products and services, tying all those things together so they actually function. Because most people that are just doing that, that podcasting production service alone, that's all they do. They get you good sound, and that's all they can do. We're doing something bigger over here at the podcast factory, awesome,

Robert Plank 10:22 holistic, just like you said, not just the podcast, but also that backing, also that those membership sites and stuff like that. Yeah?

Jonathan Rivera 10:30 Goofy word holistic, but I had to throw it out there. But then once it gets stuck in your head, you can't Yeah, so we're stuck on that, yeah? So, yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun doing this. It's a lot of fun the people that I choose to work with and that we connect with, it's more like really, I look at them as friends and family, people who I really care about, and that's why I have to do the interviews and the whole process, because I can't spend the next three to five years with somebody I don't care about, and same for them. They can't spend that time with me, because, look, podcasting, a lot of people think that it's one of these things where you could try podcasting. I'm gonna try five episodes or 10 episodes. If you're trying, you might as well not bother, because podcasting, and look, I've been doing it since 2009 This is how I know podcasting is a long term venture. You have to have an investor mindset. You have to put in your time. And once you put in your time, you get things dialed in, you start seeing results down the road. But that doesn't happen if you just try it. You have to commit to it

Robert Plank 11:35 awesome. And so I kind of want to, want to talk about that. I sort of want to go in that, that direction is, um, you know, when you're you're meeting with some of these, these people, and you're, like, narrowing down to see, like, you know, if they have a big goal and a vision, and if you have a good match and the personalities fit and stuff like that, and then they become a client. And so, I mean, what kinds of decisions are there to be made? Like, do you help name their podcast? You decide on a podcasting schedule and guests, or like, you know what kind of things go into your thought process,

Jonathan Rivera 12:04 all of it, everything, like, they come here and they just have the idea of a podcast, and they don't, they're busy, right? They're busy business people. They're already doing well with whatever they have going on, and they want to add a podcast without a lot of extra work. And so a lot of times they've taken courses before, and once they go inside and they see that there's 1000 videos on audio engineering, they're like, No, thanks too much work. And so they really value their time, and they're trying to figure out, how does this fit into my bigger goal? And that's what I do. I help tie it all together. So yeah, for some of them, it's lining up guests. Like for Doberman, Dan, we're lining up guests all the time for him, of course, there's a podcast production side, and even when they come in, when someone comes in, and we've already, we've got the agreement going, they've already paid to get started. I still won't even get on the phone with them again, and I let them know this on the call, the sales call with them, I'm like, hey, you know we're not going to talk till you do assignment one. So the sooner you get assignment one done, the sooner we could get going on your show. We can usually launch a show in 30 days, as long as they're meeting the deadlines, but assignment one helps me and them get their market crystal clear in their head, which also helps us figure out their problems, the markets problems, and helps us figure out the topics, the packaging. And when I say packaging, I mean stuff like the bumpers on the audio, the actual iTunes cover the even the calls to action and all that stuff. All of it has to tie together. And it starts with knowing the market, getting that dialed in. And then from there is where we start coming up with topics, name of the show, packaging, everything. So scheduling. We do that as well, booking them guests. We get that taken care of. My goal is to make it really almost brain dead simple, like the way people envision podcasting is like, Oh, you just hit record and it's done, and you already know Robert sway more than that. You got post production. You've got the posting you got the marketing. My people don't have to think about that stuff, because we take care of it for them.

Robert Plank 14:15 Cool. So they just get to get they get to have fun, and they get to pursue their passion and do the artistic stuff while you do the mechanical stuff,

Jonathan Rivera 14:23 right? Exactly. They come in, and that's what most of them will say. If you go look at the testimonials or listen to the testimonials, that's what they say. It's easy, right? They come in, they do the recording, they give us the files, and they don't have to think about it. We have copywriters on the team doing show notes for them. We have audio engineers who get to know them and make sure they sound great. We get the post to their blog and do all that stuff. So they are just doing the creative part like you said. They're doing the part that they're uniquely able to do, and then they don't have to think about the behind the scenes stuff awesome.

Robert Plank 14:58 And that's why I think a lot of people. People got started in the first place with this marketing stuff like that, you know, they want, like Doberman Dan wanted to just, you know, talk about his stuff. And I think that a lot of us kind of have gotten caught up in messing around with audio engineering and WordPress and copying and all those things you mentioned. And wouldn't it be great if they could just have your team do these things for them? And you mentioned that there was, like, this assignment one they started off with, and that leads to figuring out the rest of it, and the marketing and the artwork and all that stuff. But, I mean, what is this assignment? One? Is it like a questionnaire or, like, what when they first get started with you? What is this assignment and what should they be doing? Yeah,

Jonathan Rivera 15:39 so it's, it's a, I believe it's six PDF documents, and it's really just narrowing down into their market, what they know about their market, who their ideal market is, what they are offering their market, and really dialing into who their customers are. Because that's one of the things I do when I choose someone to work with. I want to make sure that they already have a database in place. They've already got customers, so that we can dig into that information. And what I call it is cloning your customers, so that the idea is to know your customer really, really well, and we put a dossier together about their customer, and we make sure that the podcast lines up with that customer's wants, needs, desires, so that when we create the content, it clones their customers, because other people with the same wants, needs, desires, same problems, will connect with them. And so the whole assignment one goes into all that knowing the customer, sort of cloning your customer. And then from there, it goes into coming up with the title of the show, coming up with a tagline, coming up with the topics, but at the base of it is knowing your customer so that you can use the podcast to connect with more of them and clone them.

Robert Plank 16:55 Awesome. I love that cloning your customers idea, because I know that. You know, at least for me, if I'm not careful, I kind of fall under that, that curse of knowledge trap. And I assume that you know, that people know all the jargon, or that people you know want to know about certain topics, or especially the advanced stuff. And I think to and have to kind of dial back and take a second think to myself, well, some of these super crazy, advanced things I want to teach, maybe they're fun for me, but if someone is just getting started in, you know, Amazon, or just getting started with WordPress or something, then they would want to know some of those more basic things. So I can completely relate to that. And so you mentioned a couple times that I'm like, there's like, there's, there's this team to be hired, and there's like, money involved, and how does, how does the billing aspect of that work. Is it like a revenue split or a flat fee, or you come up with, like a custom quote, or how is the money aspect of that handled?

Jonathan Rivera 17:49 Yeah, it really, it depends on what they're doing. It's different for somebody who wants to do one show a week versus somebody who wants to do three or five shows per week, because we have fixed cost for doing all that. So yeah, I used to do the rev split thing and the partnership thing when I first started. And I moved away from that because I just it made more work for me, more work than I was interested in doing. And so I've moved away from that to where we have a sign up fee for getting started, an initiation fee, and then monthly. And it really depends on what we're doing, if we're booking guests for you, if we're producing shows and show notes and all that stuff, it's customized to what exactly they're trying to do. So one show a week is going to be different than three or five shows a week, but we customize what else they want. Do they want us booking guests? Do they want us following up with guests? They want us doing social media stuff we can do all that. Do they want us syndicating it and turning it to video? It depends on how much or how little they want awesome.

Robert Plank 18:51 Makes perfect sense. And then so, so, when you have these, these clients, and you do all these cool things for them, but they still need to, I guess, provide their end of things they still need to record their podcast. And have you ever come across any difficulty with that, with maybe some of your clients, maybe have having trouble getting motivated or doing the things they agreed to, or just in general, getting burned out?

Jonathan Rivera 19:13 Yeah, absolutely. And I see it most of the time with anybody who wants to do I've had them come in and and I've really, I like the guys, and I'm like, All right, let's, let's, let's see if you're gonna be the one. But I always see the burnout with the guys doing five times a week, and I tell them, if they come in now, it's like, no, we're not. No, no, no. I really, I talk more people out of podcasting than into it, because I know what it really takes, and that's it. If you're going to do five times a week, you're going to get burnt out much quicker, and I'd rather see that spread out over time so that your creativity can grow. But yeah, we put them on a schedule and we have a production schedule. That's what we do after assignment one. When we get back on the phone, we go through and. I really get to know their market. Get behind their vision. Give them some suggestions. We get the final naming in place, and I put them on a production schedule, and they are to deliver every so many weeks. It's usually four to six weeks. They will deliver shows. We will produce them, and we won't launch till they have eight shows in the can. So day one, when we launch, there's already eight shows, which is usually two months of content behind it, so that they have a big runway, just in case anything comes up. Life gets in the way, technical difficulties, all that is thought about ahead of time. So we put them on the production schedule, keep them ahead. But yeah, people get burnt out. People run out ideas. I have Tracy Matthews, who has been with me for quite a while, and not too long ago, she's like, I just don't know what to do for the next episode. She's got over 100 shows, or does she? Yeah, I don't know. She's got quite a lot of shows. I'm like, It's time for best up. Just take a break. Let's do a best of let's find some stuff that that really resonated with your audience. Let's look at the data, and let's bring some of that back with a little bit of commentary. And that's one of the things we do. Is just, all right, you're out of ideas. Let me help you. Let me direct you. What other things you can do. Sometimes it's a series, like, in the making agents rich show, when we were getting burnt out, we'd go into a series like the think Rich series, or the rich habits series, where we had eight shows lined up really quickly. Like, here are the eight points we need to make, one in each show, so we help them with all that stuff, and as long as they are willing and able to do it, we'll get them through those roadblocks.

Robert Plank 21:31 Cool. I mean, it sounds like the way you're describing all this, that that you've you've been through this before, and you've thought ahead about some of the stuff. I mean, as far as the, you know, having that schedule and having those extra eight shows in the in that that content piggy bank, or the runway, like you say, where, you know, even if they kind of get tired, then that runway can kind of still be playing out, or the that series, or the best of and it sounds like by the time they kind of have that break, then they're, they're kind of recharged and Ready to get started again. Is that about

Jonathan Rivera 22:02 right? Yeah, you know what I do, Robert, I told you, like, I get involved with these folks, and I really care about them, and I know them. So I love to read, I love to explore. I just like to really get my mind going all the time. And so I have these talks with them, the art factor. Dos get to know things about them. And sometimes I come across books that they might like, and they'll get a book in the mail from me with the little note, thought you might like to do a show on this. I have someone who is doing a LinkedIn show specifically for people looking for jobs through LinkedIn. And I'll be reading The Wall Street Journal and see an article. I'll clip that article out, drop it in the mail and be like, hey, drop a little post it note on it. Thought this might be interesting for a show. I am here to inspire them and help them move forward and get them as creative as they can be. You know, I can't give it all to them, but I can certainly motivate them and help them without what I think would assist them to meeting their vision. Awesome.

Robert Plank 23:05 You sound like an awesome coach. Your brain's always, you know, working even when, when it's not working to help those clients. And probably even while you're sleeping, it's probably doing something subconsciously to think about what what book or what article could I, could I recommend them? And so, you know, we're starting to sort of go over time, but I want to make sure before we take off, and before we talk about your websites and stuff that, you know, we mentioned, and we first started talking about the four hour work week, and it sounds like we've been talking a lot about, you know, like, like, having this system in place, and having deadlines and having a team, and so you have All the these, these clients. So how do you manage like your clients and your team and still have time for yourself while only working four hours a week? Well,

Jonathan Rivera 23:48 there's a there's a distinction there. The four hours per week is what I invest into my real estate business, because we've got a portfolio of real estate rentals, and actually at this point, I'm usually working less than four hours there, because I have those systems in place. I have a man on the ground running it. I have marketing systems in place that bring in leads every day. I have renewals, a system in place that make sure that we know how many people renewing and how many apartments we're going to have available. So that took me about 10 years to get in place. But even right now, with the with the podcast factory, which is only about a year and a half old, it's luckily I have my wife working here with me, who's now handling all the operations, and I basically try to use her to insulate me from all the needs. And then we have teams, we have audio engineers, we have copywriters, transcribers, all those people are running as a machine through the systems that we've set up over the time that we've been working on this. And most of that is managed through base camp. Rachel handles most of it, and I just have to come in for the more creative stuff. And so we're working on that right now to get. At me just focused on creative stuff, because that's really what gives me the energy, and that's what I like to do, that that creative and creating systems, because I'm a nerd that way. But it's a really just a work in progress, consistently trying to find the things that you need results on, and creating a system to get you the output that you're looking for. And it's kind of a geek hobby of mine to do that and turn everything into little machines. But that's pretty much the way I did it my real estate business. That's the way I'm doing it right now. And once this business is dialed in, and we don't, I don't need to be here anymore, I'll be building another business the same exact way.

Robert Plank 25:39 Awesome. Well, I really like your mindset in that respect, just as far as, like you said, like having or knowing what results you want, knowing what that output is, and then having that team, and then running your team through those systems, that way you can have those sort of predictable results coming from the machine. And I mean, it sounds like what you've built for yourself with your with your real estate stuff, with your rental properties, where it's almost like, in that business, like you're, you're like, the one client, right? It's like you're all that whole team kind of works for you. And then and the podcast factory, then when you have a client, sort of same deal there, where that client can just focus on their creative stuff, they can focus on just that stuff that is uniquely them. And then your team deals with all the you know, technical stuff and all the details. They all the you know, the legwork, but then that client can kind of do what, what fulfills them. So it sounds like, sounds like this is a pattern in everything in your life where you know, like your with your rental, you know business, and then with the podcasting business. It sounds like it's, this is just your pattern, your habit there.

Jonathan Rivera 26:43 Yeah, if you, if you were to, I don't know if, if you guys have heard of the Colby, but I rank very highly at systemizing and keeping systems running on my Colby. So that is, you're, you're absolutely correct, Robert, it's, it's a pattern that is ingrained in me, and I can't break free of it, even if I tried

Robert Plank 27:02 Awesome. Well, why fight it, especially if it's making you money, right? Good point. So cool. So, you know, as we're kind of starting to wind down here, when you you, when you deal with these, you know different clients that have, you know different businesses and different ideas and different work ethics and stuff. I mean, do you see a number one, universal mistake that, like all these marketers are making in their businesses,

Jonathan Rivera 27:26 universal mistake that these guys are making, I don't really in my best customers. I don't see it in the ones that so I've gone through the trouble of figuring out my best type customer my worst type and that's kind of how we score people on the application. And the big mistake that I see in the worst type customer is thinking that a podcast is the business, or a podcast is going to save a business. That is not the way it's going to work. The thing that I see about my best customers is that they just have a business that's working, buzzing along, making money, and they want to plot a podcast into it to go ahead and amplify their results. And that's that's what works, and that's the people that I like to spend my time with

Robert Plank 28:10 awesome, really good advice. So the podcast itself is not the business. It's just a way to get traffic and a way to boost that existing business. So and really good advice today, and lots of cool, you know, breakthroughs and takeaways and stuff like that. And I want to make sure that everyone knows everything that there is to know about this cool guy. Jonathan Rivera, so I mean, what sort of websites do you have, and where should people go after listening to our conversation today? Well,

Jonathan Rivera 28:35 you can listen to more conversations like this with me and my mentors and some of my clients over at the podcast factory.com

Robert Plank 28:44 Awesome, short and sweet, the podcast factory.com so everyone should go right there right now. T, H, E, P, O, D, C, A, S, T, F, A, C, T, O, R, y.com, the podcast factory.com to check out all those podcasts in the podcast factory family, and see what Jonathan is up to day after day. So Jonathan, thanks for coming on the show and dropping all this knowledge about systems and about podcasting and about a little peek into your consulting business, all kinds of good stuff. And everyone should go to the podcast factory.com and Jonathan, thanks for being on the show to share what you had to share with us today.

Jonathan Rivera 29:21 Robert is a pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Subscribe to

Robert Plank 29:25 us right now, while it's still fresh on your mind at Robert plank.com/itunes or just search Robert Plank in your iTunes app. You.