Matt Johnson runs an agency that produces podcasts for thought leaders, such as, coaches, consultants and authors; those you would consider speaker types in the business world, and that directly feeds into his “why” for being in business.
Years ago, Matt went from working in a marketing agency to becoming a partner in two different coaching consulting businesses in the real estate space. Through those experiences, he realized that his skill set was best suited to assisting clients with their marketing. He could see that they had life-changing content and it wasn’t being seen by enough of the right people.
Today, Matt, through his own agency, helps his clients craft their message and get it heard by the right market to add to their credibility and increase their sales.
Podcasting not only helps individual businessmen and women reach more people and become known as problem solvers, it allows them to set themselves apart from the rest of the pack and cultivate their ideal clientele.
Matt shared with us that the marketing approach taken by most business coaches can be traced back to several basic business principles, but the right question for most business coaches to focus on, should be:
“What clients are you best suited to attract and are you attracting the clients you actually want to work with?”
Matt believes that coaches, consultants, authors and speakers looking to attract the right audience, should not use the old shotgun approach. They need to identify their ‘niche market’ and become well known, or famous in that smaller space, thus MicroFamous.
“You can become bigger than your ‘niche market’ and expand your sphere of influence over time, but you must first gain credibility and a following in your primary area of focus.”
Matt believes that you do not need to reach everyone in the world to be successful. First, you must make yourself relevant to a smaller target market. Whether they are on LinkedIN, Facebook, or Twitter, find your audience and target content to become the expert to that group.
“For example, if your personal Facebook profile has the maximum 5,000 friends and they are your audience, that’s really all you’d need.”
Matt encourages his clients to build their reputation and credibility to those, such as the 5,000 Facebook friends in the example above and become ‘MicroFamous’ in that group.
“You don’t need to be recognizable to the entire world, and sign autographs at the grocery store, or when dining out. But, when you show up at an industry event, you want people saying, ‘Hey, can I grab a picture with you?’.”
It is scary trying to find your exact niche. Matt believes the missing link between attention and sales is influence.
“Can you dominate in a very focused space? Can you build that level of influence so that someone will hire you simply because you are the person of influence to them?”
He is convinced that if you will work on becoming a person of influence, the sales will come.
MicroFamous, the book
In his book “MicroFamous, Becoming Famously Influential to the Right People” Matt encourages businesspeople to cut through the noise with a Clear & Compelling Idea. Using that idea, they can then communicate it to their market via podcasting to build their reputation and credibility.
Matt explained that becoming influential can be looked at as a pyramid, with work that needs to be done prior to creating a podcast. The top of the pyramid is identifying your ideal client and developing a Clear & Compelling Idea. It is the one thing that attracts a prospect that will listen to what you have to say and ultimately do business with you.
Compelling to Matt is the ability to get people off the couch and into action. He explained that if you share with people what you do and you’re talking to someone that’s probably an ideal client for you, when you tell them in one to two sentences the core idea of your business and you don’t get that response – that’s a symptom that you probably haven’t uncovered your Clear & Compelling Idea.
Don’t feel bad if you don’t immediately know your Clear & Compelling Idea. Matt said he helps many people that don’t immediately recognize their compelling idea because it’s buried somewhere in all their content. It’s not refined down into a form that is immediately understandable to the place where it punches the right people in the face mentally and emotionally and gets them to pay attention.
“Once you have those one to two sentences that when you share them with an ideal client and their response is, “Holy cow, okay, we need to talk more about that,” you know you’ve got it. That’s the power of a Clear & Compelling Idea.”
Below the Clear & Compelling Idea in the pyramid, sits the framework of supporting beliefs and opinions. These are the ‘buying beliefs,’ which are five key ideas that you believe and that your ideal clients also need to believe. At the bottom of the pyramid is your foundational belief system, or core values. Clients don’t have to agree with every one of your core values, according to Matt, but when they do and you first meet, you’ll know immediately that this is your ideal client.
“I leveraged my strengths as an introvert to engineer a marketing system. A system that allowed me to be my introverted self. A system that methodically grew my visibility, influence and sales. A system that allowed me to build a business I run in a handful of hours each week. MicroFamous is that system. A marketing system designed for introverted experts.”
Get your digital copy of “MicroFamous” for FREE, when you go to MicroFamousBook.com.
Matt Johnson currently runs a done-for-you podcasting agency based in San Diego, with an international team that assists coaches and consultants dominate their niche using podcasting. Matt thinks podcasting is one of the best ways for people to get their ideas out to the world, especially for introverts.
He told us that podcasting right now is one of the few places where people spend any significant chunk of time and especially if they are looking for a solution to their problem. In fact, he shared that 80% of people who start listening to an episode listen to the majority or all of the episode. And most episodes are 25 to 40 minutes long.
“Where else do you get somebody’s relatively undivided attention for 30 to 40 minutes in marketing? It’s one of the few places where people spend any time. “
Matt told us that it’s easier than ever to start a podcast. The technical component has gotten less complicated with new technology and what Matt noticed that trips most people up is the marketing, the branding, and the strategy of the podcast, which is what his agency focuses on. They do the backend work but more importantly, help people get the strategy right so they are confident in what they are saying.
Prayer Prompts
A new passion project of Matt’s is creating Prayer Prompts. Here’s his story, in his own words, of why he creates them.
“I grew up as a pastor’s kid in Iowa, and in my teens I started playing background music for prayer meetings. I noticed that instrumental music helped people focus on prayer and opened new doorways to a connection with God.
That’s where I first experimented with combining music and prayer. It’s become an obsession.
But in the last couple decades, church has drastically changed. Group prayer meetings are a relic of the past. There’s little guidance on how to pray, other than what people see the pastor do on Sunday mornings.
So, people are left to learn to pray on their own. And church is losing its appeal to younger people (for good reason, in my opinion).
Many people, some who used to go to church, and some who never set foot in church, are looking for ways to connect with God. But they don’t know how.
I created Prayer Prompts to solve that problem. Prayer Prompts are a different category of music altogether. The music tracks aren’t super long, and there’s no singing or big guitar solos. But they’re not just “oohs and ahhs” and nature sounds, either.
Each song covers a specific prayer topic, so you can focus on that topic while listening. If you want to pray on top of the music, that’s great. If you just want to listen and meditate, that’s great, too.
I hope they help create the connection to God you’ve been looking for.
To learn more about Matt visit his website at: http://pursuingresults.com/
We thoroughly enjoyed our conversation with Matt. Access the Soar to Success podcast on iTunes where you can listen to everything we discussed, including some points not covered in this feature.
