You don’t create 4 years of podcasts and walk away without some insights. Dave and Stephen talk about what they have learned so far on The Empire Builders Podcast.
Dave Young:
Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.
[Waukee Feet Ad]
Dave Young:
Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here with Stephen Semple, and we’re talking about empires being built and fortunes being made. I understand today we’re not really talking about a business. We’re going to talk about the Empire Builders Podcast in a way.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, because we’re episode 208. We’ve been doing this for four years, my friend.
Dave Young:
My gosh.
Stephen Semple:
Haven’t missed a week in four years.
Dave Young:
That’s pretty amazing. Pretty amazing.
Stephen Semple:
Well, especially for two people like you and I, who are not following through on things is not really.
Dave Young:
That’s because we get together once a year and record 52 episodes.
Stephen Semple:
Well, on top of that, after I download these, we have a team of people who produce it and post it and all that other stuff.
Dave Young:
That’s the key. That’s the key. My job is, as I think I’ve mentioned before, is to show up. So what you wanted to talk about, just reminisce and see if there’s lessons learned about this.
Stephen Semple:
Well, the funny thing is, normally something like this would be like, “Hey, David. Dave, tell us your favorite episodes.” Your reply would be your favorite episode was the last one you did because…
Dave Young:
Exactly.
Stephen Semple:
That’s just the way you live. Then I thought, well, maybe there’s some things that we’ve, after going through 207 of these, is there some things that we’ve learned from this, from either the experience of doing it or the things we’ve covered? Or is there just some lessons there?
Dave Young:
So do you want me to go first or you want to go first?
Stephen Semple:
Whichever way you want to do it, my friend.
Dave Young:
Go ahead.
Stephen Semple:
Okay. So for me, probably the most interesting thing has been the research of these stories because all these companies have got these great stories. Even after we go through the stories, it’s amazing how often, like you’ve said, this is now my favorite whiskey. We did one recently on a cookware company and I then went out and bought one of their frying pans after hearing the story. They actually do create this greater connection with the business.
Here’s the crazy thing, they’re all great stories and they’re all hard to find. People are not glorying in these stories. They’re not actually sharing them. They’re not on their website, they’re not prominent. Even if there is something that’s on the website, it’s all positive milestones. The struggle, the challenge, the packaging things in your backyard and cleaning the blood off the packaging because you got so many paper cuts is not being talked about on the websites or in the company pages or anything like that.
They’re obscure. They’re coming out with interviews with the owner or there’s some weird researcher who’s really dug into things. I look at it and go, I don’t understand that. Why are you not wanting to tell these stories about your business?
Dave Young:
I love that.
Stephen Semple:
Literally, all of these things should be just on their home page and their about you.
Dave Young:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Stephen Semple:
It isn’t.
Dave Young:
These stories shouldn’t be hard to find. Not at all.
Stephen Semple:
They should not be, and they absolutely are. To me, that’s the part that I find incredible, incredible. Why do you not want to share these things? Especially if there’s mistakes that you made that you had to overcome.
Dave Young:
Thank God that they’re not telling the stories otherwise, what would we be doing?
Stephen Semple:
Well, that’s true. Well, if they all started to do that, we could shut this podcast down and do something different.
Dave Young:
So there’s a couple of things to me that I get out of this that I would miss if we weren’t doing it. One is, as an advertising and marketing consultant and working with my own clients, these conversations just help me focus back on that whole notion of we’re looking for strategic moves and unleveraged assets businesses can use. The business topology that we’re able to focus on in these helps me do better work for my own clients.
When you start examining all these other success stories and you go, oh, well, here’s what they did, that would absolutely apply to this client. Let’s take that idea to them. The other big thing for me, Stephen, and I’m going to get a little personal here, but thank you for, I enjoy the conversations that we have when we record these.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. They’re fun.
Dave Young:
To me, it’s not work. I’m not doing the research. I show up and I have the conversation. It reminds me of the days back years and years ago when I was a morning show guy on the radio station, and my job was to show up and be the morning show guy. So I enjoy it. I enjoy the conversations. It keeps me focused and it keeps me in the game, so to speak.
The other thing I really enjoy is someone coming up to me in Austin or at Wizard Academy somewhere and saying, “Hey, you’re the guy from that podcast.” I’m like, “Yeah, I am.” So there’s that.
Stephen Semple:
You got to carry a Sharpie with you now so you can sign your name.
Dave Young:
Nobody’s asked for a signature yet. It’s always fun. I love that there’s that parasocial effect a little bit. People feel a little bit like they know me even if we’ve never met because they’ve listened to a few dozen podcasts.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah, it’s cool.
Dave Young:
That’s always kind of fun. Yeah, I love doing it. I’ll do it as long as you want.
Stephen Semple:
That parasocial effect is real.
Dave Young:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Stephen Semple:
It’s a real thing. I appreciate you also talking about the business topology because the whole idea for people that the concept behind business topology is the problem you’re facing has probably been solved, and often it’s been solved by somebody who’s not in your industry.
Dave Young:
Exactly.
Stephen Semple:
If it was solved inside your industry, it would be a problem that’s easily solved. So the whole idea is to look outside your industry, look to other businesses. If you can find somebody who the shape of the problem, how they define the problem was similar, their solution would probably work for you. Even though I make cookies, and that’s a furniture company, if the problem is the same, the solution will work. So that’s the whole idea behind business topology. At its core, when you look at this, this is over 200 examples of business topology.
Dave Young:
Yeah. I think if you’re a business owner, you just let these kinds of stories wash over you and you will have an aha moment. You’ll be struggling with some problem. When you listen to a couple hundred ways other people solve problems, all of a sudden things start to click in your brain and you go, oh, I bet I could solve my problem by applying that lesson. Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.
[Using Stories To Sell Special Offer]
Hey, it’s Stephen Semple here, and I have a special offer for you. As you heard in this podcast, I really feel it’s important that businesses tell their story and so many businesses don’t. I believe they don’t because I feel like they really struggle to find their story, discover it, and figure out how to best tell it. So here’s the offer I have for you.
Go over to usingstoriestosell.com and take me up on my free starter session. This is a specific starter session that we’ve put together to help you tell your first story. At the end of this 90 minutes, you’re going to walk away with your amazing story.
I’ve had the opportunity to travel around North America doing these group workshops where I have tested out this methodology, and I know that at the end of that 90 minutes, you’re going to have an awesome story to tell. So take us up on that because I look forward to hearing your story. Again, that’s usingstoriestosell.com.
Dave Young:
Let’s pick up our story where we left off, and trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.
Stephen Semple:
Inevitably it starts as being, okay, this is a crazy idea. I know that what you do is you sell heating and air conditioning units, but Cabela’s face this very same problem. Here’s what they did and it worked.
Dave Young:
Yeah, yeah.
Stephen Semple:
Right?
Dave Young:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Stephen Semple:
So this is an example of that. What I’m always fascinated with is when people talk about business topology, you can only practice business topology if you study a broad range of businesses in many different industries.
Dave Young:
Absolutely.
Stephen Semple:
Can’t just hang out with your buddies in your industry and study best practices. Best practices is great, but it’s not business topology.
Dave Young:
Absolutely. If I may put a shameless plug in for Wizard Academy.
Stephen Semple:
Go right ahead.
Dave Young:
We have a class, it’s called da Vinci and the 40 Answers, and we take a look at Leonardo da Vinci and his innovative mind and his background. We also then take a deep dive into a thing called TRIZ, T-R-I-Z. It’s a problem solving system that was developed by Genrich Altshuller.
Basically, there’s only 40 ways to solve a problem. There’s only 40 things you can do, and we teach all 40 of them in a couple days. So if you find yourself always trying to solve problems, it’s a great class for that. It happens in October. It’s set up for October 15th and 16th.
Stephen Semple:
It’s taught by a real rocket scientist.
Dave Young:
Mark Fox. Yeah. So it’s a lot of fun, but it’s also that whole notion of a deep dive into business problem topology and how to solve things with 40 different lenses that you can look at your problem through.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
There’s plenty of room left in that class. It’s a ways away. it’s in October, but act now. It’s at wizardacademy.org. You’ll find it. Look for da Vinci. You can see how the parasocial influence… You’ll greet me like you know me.
Stephen Semple:
Ask for a signature.
Dave Young:
We’ll hug as if we were best friends forever.
Stephen Semple:
Now stay for a signature, so he gets his first one. We really need him carrying the Sharpie around.
Dave Young:
I think to me, you can sit and listen to something like this and you’ll take it in. My own experience is if I’m involved in the conversation, I remember it better and I can apply it in more ways. So when you’re in a room full of people that are all interested in the same thing and you start having these conversations and giving examples, there’s a great deal of power in that. I’ll tell you this, this is an insider secret. Okay. All right.
Stephen Semple:
All right. I’m listening.
Dave Young:
If you’re listening to the Empire Builders Podcast, don’t tell other people about this, please, go to the website, sign up for the class and use the code alumni. Then put in the little… There’s a little box in the checkout. Just say, Dave told me I could use the word alumni at checkout, and guess what you get? You get half price because you’re alumni. So if you feel like the parasocial influence is real, use the word alumni. Alumni.
Stephen Semple:
This came from Dave, not from Steve. This came from Dave.
Dave Young:
Yeah, that’s fine. That’s fine. Hey, look, no. A friend of the Empire Builders Podcast is a friend of Wizard Academy, so I don’t have any qualms putting that out there.
Stephen Semple:
Awesome. So the last thing I want to share, because I get approached by a number of people who are thinking about starting up podcasts or have started up podcasts. They’ve said, okay, what should they keep in mind? The big thing is if you’re going to do this and podcasts are great, but if you’re going to do this, you have to really commit to long-term. It does take a year to build audience. It just does. If you sort of go, well, I’m going to do 10 or 12 and see what happens, don’t start. It is one of those things that just really does require that to gain that traction and build that audience.
Dave Young:
I can absolutely back that up with experience. There are podcasts that I’ve been a part of. I started doing my own in 2012 and got 30 or 40 episodes in and then just thought, oh, well I don’t know if anybody would miss this if it went away. Can you imagine how many podcasts I’d have under my belt if I’d just kept going?
Stephen Semple:
It’s too bad we weren’t friends back then. We would’ve figured out a way to make that work.
Dave Young:
I know.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah.
Dave Young:
So yeah, keep going. Find a way. In our case, the way to find a way is to find some other people to do the parts that you don’t like to do and maybe you don’t have time to do.
Stephen Semple:
Yes. When I started on this, the lens I started with was it was a minimum commitment of a year. So it was 52 episodes. So first of all, it had to be something that I felt like I could research 52 times. Then there was a whole pile of things where the goal was, and even in the early days, the first few weren’t done that way, but the goal was, okay, how do we have other people do certain pieces?
What I knew was if the production was up to you or I, it was not going to happen. If posting was up to you and I, not going to happen. Now, in the early days we did those things, probably the first 10 or 12. Again, just figure them out and then it was like, over to this person, over to this person. Yeah, yeah. Otherwise, it would never have sustained. There’s no way.
Dave Young:
Here’s to a couple hundred more.
Stephen Semple:
There you go. That’ll be awesome. All right.
Dave Young:
Thank you.
Stephen Semple:
Thanks, David.
Dave Young:
Happy four years.
Stephen Semple:
We are.
Dave Young:
Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big, fat, juicy, five-star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. If you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute Empire Building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.
