Why Marketing Your Service-Based Business Online Is Important: Michael Buzinski - Digital Marketer/Best Selling Author

SPEAKER_00 0:04

This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. Michael, welcome to the show. Hey, how's it going? It's going great, man. Thanks for taking some time out to finally hang out with me here on the Beyond the Story podcast. I know uh I emphasize finally because I was able to get my life together enough, enough to be able to at least get something calendar to get you on the show. So it's great to, hey, it's great to meet you. Be great to have you on the show. Thanks for taking a few minutes out of your busy uh, what is it, Tuesday? Feels like Monday, but it's Tuesday. Uh the time we're recording this here.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

Tuesday uh hangover. Yes. Yes. It's the Monday's Tuesday ever. That's right. That's right. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Absolutely, dude. Where are you based out of?

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Right now I'm in Springfield, Illinois.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

That's the uh is that southern part of the state? It's right in the middle. In the middle. Lincoln Land. The proposed inspiration for the Simpsons. And not is it near Metropolis? There is not. Yeah, that's would be Chicago.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

No, but that's like where Superman's from. Oh, Metropolis is New York. No, I'm pretty sure it's in Illinois. Am I going crazy here?

SPEAKER_01 1:31

Yeah. Metropolis is actually New York.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Um hold on a second here. Pretty sure. I have unless I have completely lost my DC. Yes, it's the home of Superman. I'm not yes, you're definitely losing it. Uh maybe you've lost it already. Metropolis is supposed to be Chicago. Metropolis, Illinois is the famous home of Superman. It is a city in Illinois. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Metropolis.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

But like Batman's metropolis is not Chicago. I know, but the name of the actual city's metropolis. So I'm telling you, look it up. It's actually on my list. I lived in Chicago a year. I didn't make it uh any longer in that cold. That's just nuts. That cold is horrible.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

And I always thought the DC uh uh modeled metrop the metropolis, metropolis like Batman's metropolis as well, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Right. Where uh well, if you Google where is Superman from, uh it'll let you know.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Yeah, but I mean I think he grew up in like the farmlands of maybe Illinois.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

No, he was born in a that's right, he was born in a fictional planet, Krypton.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Right, but he grew up like when he crashed in the middle of a cornfield, I think that was Illinois, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Yes, his ship landed in the American countryside near the fictional town of Smallville.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Smallville, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Yes, which this podcast is uh all about Superman, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know if you guys knew that.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Well when you have Superman of Marketing on your show, it and it lends itself to the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Hey, listen, touche, my friend. That uh uh from your mouth to God's ears, right? But we're gonna unpack that here. So I'm glad you uh you you brought that up.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

You got that?

SPEAKER_00 3:09

Yeah, that was a good segue. I like that. You're making my job easier here. So uh let's back up a little bit for some context. Help our listeners better understand a little bit more about you. Um walk us through the you know the past you know few decades and you really find your your groove for what you're doing right now.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Oh my gosh, the last couple decades. I so in 2005 I got out of the service. I I was a uh aviator in uh the Air Force, got out, started a recording studio of all things, um, a failed musician. Um, I started my music career back when I was a teen, a young teenager as a jazz rhombonist, um, and worked my way through multiple uh genres of music. So that's what spurred the social, the um the recording studio. Unfortunately, the surviving office started musicians was a horrible business plan, especially when you start your uh recording studio in Anchorage, Alaska, the metropolis of Alaska. There you go, the metropolis of the the upper north, right? So um over the years it became a media uh media production house for small businesses, and then it grew into a creative agency. A creative agency became a multi-million dollar agency, uh, had a 13,000 square foot facility, 22 employees, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, I ended up hating my job as a CEO of a digit of a marketing agency or a creative agency, I should say. And I closed it in the end of 2018 and started a virtual company called Buzzworthy Marketing. The last four years, I've been reinventing how we do business and how we create uh profitably predictable or predictably profitable marketing results for service-based businesses. A couple of years ago, I wrote a book called The Rule of Two Six, Rule of 26, which basically simplified the whole my whole methodology and strategy down to three KPIs and three objectives. And since then, as they say, the rest is history. I make it every day.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

It's it sounds to me like a constant evolution of figuring out where your lane was and what was going to make you a most importantly, overall was going to give you the most satisfaction work-wise, and then I would assume life-wise, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:16

It is. And like right now, we're sitting here instead of in a studio, which is back in the day, was probably how I would have done it. We're doing this virtually.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

Yeah, I love I love that. I mean, there was the you know, a lot of downside, a lot of good side of to the entire world shutting down for a couple of years, um, and really making and forcing us to figure out how to innovate and learn new ways. And now, you know, a lot of people, especially like offline. I'm still part of like B and I and local networking groups, and they're still kind of old school and really want, and there is some value to meeting for a bite to eat or a coffee, or but there's also a tremendous amount of value of sending a calendar invite and clicking on a link.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Oh, I think the efficiencies of digital meetings and networking and stuff like that is definitely there, but the the depth you get in a face-to-face is so much better, so much better. And so I will never say um that you should just abandon face-to-face because the human body, the human brain needs it. You know, we need interaction with other people in in the physical form. So if you unplug from the reality too much and go too digital, I think it's a detriment to what you can accomplish in this world.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. So, do you have a podcast?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

Uh three podcasts.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Okay, cool. I I thought so. I always before I dive in and start asking podcast questions on here, I do all my homework on my guests, I promise. Doesn't that show? So uh, why did you decide to start your first podcast?

SPEAKER_01 8:08

So I started my first podcast after being a podcast host for a year, hawking my book, right? And um, the the funny thing was is that I didn't want to start a podcast until I created a way uh created a format that wasn't just another podcast. And so being on over a hundred different podcasts allowed me to watch how other people did it and take the best of the best that that I felt was um that resonated with me, I should say, right? Sure, and so originally buzz uh you are buzzworthy, um, which you can check that out at you are buzzworthy.biz, um, what is the original podcast. And originally I wanted that to be two shows a week where I was interviewing on one show and then doing kind of a reflection solo cast on another show, and it was like a Tuesday, Thursday release. Uh, unfortunately, life got in the way and we're I had to boil it down to one. And the guest was the easiest of the two at the time. Um, and so we're just starting season five, the beginning of October, where I'm actually flipping the switch and I'm going completely solo. So still one show a week, um, still talking about how to build a buzzworthy business, a little bit more for not a little bit, uh a whole focus on marketing. Um, we'll sprinkle some Geno Wickman's and Mike McCallowitz's and stuff like that in there to you know round it out, but those are going to be far and few between because I'm pretty much creating a series of podcasts that people could listen to um throughout a season and help them incrementally make their marketing better. I like that. I've been thinking about starting a podcast about starting a podcast. That is huge. Um, there's actually a friend of mine, he is doing one on just solo podcasts. Like the somebody just asked me, um, they they they they chimed in on um one of the social medias asking me, he's like, What I was LinkedIn and he and he he said, I'm thinking about starting my own podcast. What are your points of view? He saw my podcast, and um, that one's become a top one percent podcast in the United States for business podcasts, just so people know. Um, the um sorry about that. Um, my so he asked me, he's like, so what are the secrets to that? And I I I fervently believe this, and I and I hear more and more of the the experts talk about it is that the more niche you can make it, the better. So my friend decided he is only going to be talking about running a solo podcast. I was like, that's beautiful because nobody else is talking about what a solo podcast looks like.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Love that. Uh solo podcasts are not the easiest task. That's why people don't do them.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

No, that's hard. It's it's it takes just as much time to prepare for it, then record it as it is to find a guest and just have a discussion.

SPEAKER_00 10:58

I'm doing it right now. I'm making a note. I'm gonna start two podcasts because I need two more podcasts in my life. Like, I need another hole in my head. But uh, one's gonna be a meditation one, and then the other one is going to be a podcast about podcasts because I'm about to launch my course and I want to like pull pull one out of Hormosy's book. There you go. And um and actually hold the phone! Uh, and actually uh actually hold on one second, dude. One second. Let me pause this. Hold on. So podcasting is a powerful medium, uh, to say the least. So powerful that you've encouraged me to start these two pending podcasts that I've had. So thanks for that, Michael. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

You are you are more than welcome.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Well, I brought John as Hermosy says, keep giving he did a great job with that launch. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 11:52

You know, I it's funny. I I I thought he was gonna have a bunch of downloads, but I guess it's a bunch of videos that you have to watch to get through all the content he gave away for free. So it was uh interesting. I finally found the catch to it all. I was like, okay, cool. I gotta sit there and watch him talk for seven hours to get everything.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

What did you think it was though?

SPEAKER_01 12:10

I thought it was just a bunch of ebooks, which I love. And I say I soak in books through I think it's both, isn't it? I haven't been able to figure that out because I haven't seen anything to download except for when I click on it, there's a video to watch. I haven't seen anything downloadable. Yes, so yeah, but I mean that's I I I get it. I do it, you know, whatever works for you. This year, um we're gonna be doing a lot of webinars for uh my stuff on top of our podcast that are gonna be doing kind of a lot of the same stuff except in the marketing for service-based businesses. That's what we focus on is helping um people serving people um, you know, find their most profitable prospects and uh run profitable businesses.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Let's talk about that. I'm glad you brought that up because that was one of my next questions anyway. Sure. Uh I literally just had my buddy Mitch Smedley on the podcast right before you, and he's a plumber in St. Louis. His catchphrase is fix pipes and pet dogs. Nice. And uh he's built a whole community around it, fellow podcaster too. Uh, he's just done a great job of bringing podcasting into you know, creating community and did the same thing, took his book that he wrote, turned it into a podcast, and those first nine episodes he always references to uh when people ask about the podcast where he's telling them about that. So it's funny that you bring up service-based business marketing. What does that mean for the average person? If there's a service-based business listening right now, why do they need to be doing what you help other service-based businesses do?

SPEAKER_01 13:42

Well, without marketing, you're gonna be struggling and be living in entrepreneur poverty for the rest of your life because no big deal. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

It's kind of harsh, Michael.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

It is, but you know what? I lived through it. I was I was the cobbler with no shoes for so many years. And uh, you know, and I thought, well, you know, marketing, it's hard to market a marketing company, which it is, it's like one of the hardest things to do. Um, and and that's why I chose marketing, right? Because I I can't have an easy job where people just know what I do, right? Like fix pipes and pet dogs. I mean, that's that's I wouldn't. It's catchy though, isn't it? It's my thing, man. I would like my marketing genius would go a long way with that, right? So the um, but the funny thing is is that a lot of people think that online marketing, even for those localized businesses, is a waste of money. And it's like, no, it's just how people are finding people, they're not going to a phone book. I mean, there are people who have never even touched a phone book now that are alive in this world, right? So if you're not getting yourself seen in the digital realm, how are people finding you? And if you say it's from word of mouth, referrals, and you're networking, then you have a you don't necessarily own a business, you own a job. Because when you stop going out there and networking, when you stop um going and and working through the top of mind awareness and you stop working your current clients for referrals, guess what's gonna happen? Your phone's gonna stop ringing. So if you have a job and that job without you stops happening, that means work stops happening. That means your revenue stops flowing. So, therefore, without marketing and specifically without online marketing, you own a job and you'll never own a company.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Yeah, I love that. So, what are some things service-based businesses can do to help get them market your business? What are some things you do to help people?

SPEAKER_01 15:42

So, a lot of the things that we do are actually covered in my book, The Rule 26. You can check that out at rule of two six.com. But really, it's about getting clear about your perfect, what we call uh perfectly profitable prospects or P3. Okay. And there's a lot of folks out there who just like actually I'll use plumbers just because you brought up a plumber. Um there are plumbers out there who will take any job as long as it's within a certain radius of where their base is, right? Um, they're not my most profitable plumbers. My most profitable plumbers go, nope, I like to work on houses that X and sometimes it's low income because they can do five or six of them, or there's always more problems than in a nicer house. Um, sometimes it's a nicer house because they know they're always gonna get paid. It could be that they only want to work on a certain um age of a house, or maybe they only work on uh older houses. It just depends on what niche they want to make. So we help them find where that most profitable prospect is, or who that most profitable prospect is, and then where are they hiding? You know, and and when I say where they're hiding, where do they hang out online? And you'd be surprised. Um, it's not always your Facebook and your Instagrams and stuff like that. So we help people uh, you know, identify their most profitable uh prospects, then uh find out where those people are hiding, and then with their websites, we help them get the highest conversion rate or their best basically the best ROI out of their website by talking to that most profitable prospect um so that they get a lot more from their website than just, oh, we're a plumber, and you if you have a broken pipe, call us.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Yeah. Love that. Yeah. I mean, if you're not marketing your business, how do people know about you? You're exactly right. Word of mouth, fantastic. And I'm I'm a word of mouth business myself and content-based and my speaking business, but those are all unpredictable mediums. So consistent marketing, a predictable lead generation solution, specifically for service-based, so so very important.

SPEAKER_01 17:47

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Well, man, uh, it's been great to finally connect with you here and learn about what uh what you're doing for service-based businesses. I'm glad you found your lane. And um as a fellow podcaster, I'm always encouraged to hear other people's stories about the impact of podcasting on here. And thanks for the nice nudge to get these uh solo podcasts rolling that I've been uh good luck on that.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

And I appreciate that. Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

So, any final thoughts for our listeners?

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Um, I you know, there's there's one, you know, as far as podcasts, there's a lot of people who think about uh they have to have their own podcast. And I think that the flip side is a great place to start, which is where I started, which is being a podcast guest and utilizing other people's stages to get your word out there, um, also to sharpen your own speaking skills because I don't care how much you've talked in front of uh big crowds in in person. Guess what? It's a lot different when you're staring at a screen. Yeah, sure is. And the dog's barking in the background or something stupid's going on, and and you just got to get focused, right? And your story will get a lot uh better, you'll get more succinct. I mean, today we covered over 20 years of my business career uh in a matter of 90 seconds. That used to be a five-minute conversation in interviews, right? Yeah, so you know, you're gonna get so much from that. And just like you heard in my story, it's also allows you to figure out how if you are going to create your own podcast, what does that podcast look like? Because you're gonna learn what you like and what you don't like from other people's podcasts being in and behind the scenes.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Love that. Great tips. Uh, we just uh we're we're we're piloting a podcast booking solution right now. So um nice. We're trying 10 episodes out, see how it goes. And but you're exactly right. Being on podcast does kick open a tremendous amount of doors on there. Michael, thanks so much. Uh, be sure to include the link to your book, links to uh your socials so people can follow and connect with you. I do appreciate you taking some time out of your day to hang out with us here on the Beyond the Story Podcast. We'll have to have you back on the show sometime. That would be awesome. Thanks for having me. Thanks again, Michael. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story Podcast. Be sure to appreciate it. Evidence already. Make sure you subscribe to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you're so inclined, please leave us a review. Be sure to appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, LaunchLive.com studios. Talk to you next time.