Out of the Cubicle, Into the Mic: Mark Savant's Journey from Corporate to Podcasting Titan

Imagine jumping ship from a mundane corporate job to follow your passion; this is exactly what our guest, Mark Savant, did. Mark, a podcast and AI aficionado, turned his interest into a booming business and he's here to share his journey with us. His experience in podcasting isn't just about business growth; it also played a pivotal role in earning him a spot on the Entrepreneur Organization's board of directors. Now, he's all about making Mondays exciting again and helping others achieve the same.

Struggling to stand out in the sea of businesses? Mark has some insights for you. We explore the intertwined dynamics of podcasting and social media, and how to leverage them for creating an omnipresence. Mark further enlightens us how AI can be integrated into businesses for success, and shares intriguing examples like the potential of chatbot AI and YouTube in testing new ideas and building quality content.

But that's not all. The conversation also delves into the nitty-gritty of launching a podcast, setting up a tech stack, and automating to scale. Need some quality advice for solopreneurs? Mark has got you covered, sharing his experience with using Go High Level as a CRM, and offering practical tips. Wrapping up, we explore digital marketing strategies and the role of weekly Zoom calls in giving businesses a boost. If you're an entrepreneur or business owner seeking to leverage podcasting and AI for growth, buckle up for an enlightening ride with Mark Savant!

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

Hey guys, ryan Dement Chasing Financial Freedom podcast. I hope you guys are having a great day. Today on the podcast we have Mark Savant, and Mark helps busy professionals build status and sales with podcasts, and there's also a new caveat in there. We're going to talk AI, guys, and I know we've talked about it on the show before, but I think this is going to be a whole different dive into AI and how it can help you grow your business, mark, welcome to the show. Yo, ryan, glad to be here what's up people?

Speaker 1: 0:50

Man, we're morning, we're recording this thing and we're getting going. So, before we jump into what you're doing, a little bit about yourself and what. Some rabbit holes, as I say.

Speaker 2: 1:00

Yeah, happy Monday everybody. You know it's fun. I used to wake up every Monday loathing the day, staring at the ceiling, like oh, I go to this insurance office, I hate my life. And now it's like every day is a great day, dude, Like why be stuck doing something that doesn't bring you fulfillment or excitement? I mean, it's just, it's unbelievable. But to say I love Mondays.

Speaker 1: 1:18

We could have a whole conversation on that, because most people and I shouldn't say most many people don't ever go after their passion in their what drives them. They just rather just get that job, get the paycheck and just keep on living till they're 65. And that's sad.

Speaker 2: 1:35

In the amount of shade that I received, ryan, when I decided I was going to go all in and leave my day job. People were telling my wife how can you let your husband leave his job, mark? Why don't you just stick to what you're doing? You've got it so good. You've got a six figure income. You've got all these benefits. I was like F that what there's more to life than making money. I can always get a new job and I'm so glad I stuck to my guns because the business continues to grow on track this year to probably do about 150K. In the next year I'm aiming at 500K. So I'm just really excited to be helping business owners launch and automate podcasts tonicational material that I'm putting out with arts to AI and podcasting. I won the lottery diving into that because it's so impactful on businesses to have that omnipresent digital footprint and AI is really accessible.

Speaker 1: 2:27

So what got you started in this space? I mean, you were always in insurance or did you have some type of other background before you decided that you were going to dive into helping business owners and businesses with AI?

Speaker 2: 2:40

Well, I graduated from Florida Atlantic University back in 2009 with a degree in business management and marketing and immediately went into the insurance industry, was in there for about five years until I recognized that I just wasn't satisfied. Like I said Monday, staring at the ceiling like oh gosh, is this what I have to do? I started exploring different types of businesses everything from mattress warehouses to financial planning, to Amazon, fba but I eventually just said you know, I'm listening to podcasts all the time. These are very interesting. It's like listening to them while I start my own. And within a month, I was speaking to Super Bowl champions and big time entrepreneurs, presidential candidates. I was like this is pretty cool, that the access that I'm getting by having this media platform is unprecedented. And that's only a month in. And so I dove in. Eventually, people started paying me and I will leave my job about a year ago to just fully commit to helping business owners launch and automate those digital footprints.

Speaker 1: 3:41

That's cool. I mean they call it pod fade, but there's a lot of it out there. A snapshot when I started this podcast almost four years ago and those same podcasts that started at the same time I think there was a hundred, and some on that same day. There's only like 20 that are actually producing an episode, whether it be weekly, bi-monthly, once a month, whatever some type of frequency. They're all. The rest of them are gone, and it's great medium to get your job to people. You just have to be consistent in what you're doing and make sure that you don't fall into that hole of fade, because otherwise, just like all those other people, they'll be gone.

Speaker 2: 4:23

Yeah, I think it's something like 95% of shows are dead before episode seven. And I started to really look at that, Ryan, why is this happening? Why are all these shows just going by the wayside? And the reality is they just don't have the systems in place. You know, every wants to be a YouTuber quote unquote or a podcaster, but without the right systems in place it becomes so laborious. I spent years, tens of thousands of dollars trying and failing and trying to learn this stuff and most people just don't have the resiliency to make it through that. And that's okay, you know, because casting is a long game and it's not like running a Facebook ad where you put in 10 bucks and you get clients and you get 20 out. But every single opportunity that I've had over the past several years is through podcasting. Every single client, mastermind member, every single coaching client. You know every just got back from the entrepreneur organization's nerve event, which so this is bananas.

Speaker 2: 5:19

It met Chris Crisis through the pod. He's the founder of PodFest. I had him on my podcast, developed a connection. He liked me, I liked him, we developed a relationship and then a couple months ago, at Patrick Bet David's Vault conference, I saw Chris there. Chris was like hey, Mark, it's good to see you here. Let me introduce you to Matt Weiss. He's the. He's the head chair of the board for entrepreneur organization here in South Florida, and the Southeastern Conference Entrepreneur organization is bananas.

Speaker 2: 5:47

Just to contextualize this Ever in there, in order to to they need to be making at least a million dollars in your business. Membership is thousands of dollars annually. There's 18,000 members worldwide and I got to meet Matt because of my podcast and we got to know each other a little bit in just a few minutes. He said you know what? I would like Mark To come to the entrepreneur organizations event, host a podcast booth there where you can interview people. I said sure, I'd love to. That sounds great. So I brought all my equipment up there and I'm on the way up, I kid you not.

Speaker 2: 6:21

Chris calls me and says hey, Mark, someone dropped out of a speaking there. He was going to be talking about chat, GPT and AI for business. Would you be able to fill in? I was like, yeah, yeah, it's a day before, and not only did I get a chance to interview a dozen people on my podcast, the after-hours entrepreneur, I was able to get on stage in front of 60 millionaire entrepreneur, business owners, get all the video, get all the photos, walk away with dozens and dozens of leads, and again it all comes back to the fact that I had a podcast that was used strategically to create connections.

Speaker 1: 6:59

So long tail, but once you start getting the momentum, it's it's unprecedented Well, that's because I love to talk about the momentum, because, as a podcaster, I'd like to see what we can do on our side and be able to push it forward, even though we've got a good base. But I think there's a lot more that we can do, because I'm not the professional podcaster. My day job is an affordable housing developer, so I mean I'd love to be able to get my word out even more than what we're doing today.

Speaker 2: 7:27

Yeah, I mean, that's what we're here for and I you know that's 20 years ago. If you said, hey, you're going to court a video and then you're going to be able to distribute it and reach potentially tens of millions of people, you'd be like, oh, that's crazy, no way I need to go through major cable networks or distributors. It's not the case. If you have a smartphone like. My pitch to business owners is look, if you can host a 30 minute zoom call, you can have an omniscient, omnipresent digital footprint. We can put you on YouTube, on your blog, on iTunes, you can be on Instagram link. You can be everywhere all the time, just like Gary Vee, yep, but you need to commit 30 minutes a week. Are you able to do that? And it's unprecedented what you're able to do with the right systems in place.

Speaker 1: 8:14

So you said, starting out, 30 minutes a week. What does that look like?

Speaker 2: 8:20

So again, systems are really important. So when I'm working with a client, what I do is to say, hey, you know, record episode, you can use zoom, you can use restream Riverside, there's a, there's a chin. Depending on the client, we figure that out. But the first thing I'd like to do is say, hey, let's make it as easy as possible to record. We got to eliminate all the stuff Like I don't want you to have to, like, get dressed up in a suit and drive down to a studio to record. I want you to look good and feel good and sound good writing office or write at your office at work. Right, we want to eliminate all the pain points, eliminate all the time. So you say, hey, I want to speak to Jim he's let's say it's affordable housing, for example. Right, you say you know what? It would be nice if I was connected with the developer of, or with the air of, my city, for example. That might be a good connection to have.

Speaker 2: 9:06

Boom, you got your podcast. You reach out to the mayor. I've done this, by the way. You reach out to the mayor. You say, hey, I'd like to have you on my podcast. Mayor says cool, free publicity to meet people. Then you get to generate a connection In a way, because the connection that I had made with the mayor of my local city, I was able to get some permits passed almost instantly.

Speaker 2: 9:24

I was able to get some exceptions made for the community of which I was the president of. That's another side topic. So, anyway, you say, hey, the mayor would be a good connection for my business, Let me invite him onto my show. Boom, you get him on the show after the recording is done, which then about 30 minutes zoom call. Then it I had her fill out a form takes about three minutes. After the Google form is filled out, then it sends off in a series of automations which notifies my video editor, my audio editor, my graphics guy, my admin. Everybody gets notified that that is happening. And then within a few days everything is produced all the show notes are written, all the graphics are written and then they're uploaded all over the place. And so the business owner at that time has an automation set up to say, hey, mayor Suarez, it was great having you on the show, you're awesome. If I can, you know here's the show. If there's anything else I can do for you, let me know. And it's just, you know it's part of a great relationship.

Speaker 1: 10:19

And it's like you said to start out, it's very for him or her, whoever you've got on, and you can get it out to so many people that the best way to describe it and you said it earlier is you don't need to get on a nation or a national television channel. You can get it out to so many other platforms. But my question there is and this is something we've struggled with and I've gone through some of it, but not all of it is getting through the noise, because if you're not out there consistently posting, like Gary Vee says, on a daily basis, you're going to die through obscurity. You need to be able to be seen. So how do you get through all that?

Speaker 2: 11:01

Well, let's frame this a little bit right, because there will be noise in an age of AI. There's a lot of noise, but the reality is, if you're not showing up day to day, it's hard for you to stand out in people's minds Like do you know how many people I know that are realtors? There's a ton. There's so many realtors. And the best way for people to remember you as a realtor is you just keep showing up at their news feed day after day after day after day. And that is hard. How many people say, oh, I just love waking up and posting to Instagram and to LinkedIn and to Facebook every single day? Nobby says that no, but if you can use the podcast platform to develop strategic relationships and distribute it, then you have that omnipresent. And even if look, even if these clips people get this twisted all the time. They think I'm going to create clips for social media and it's going to promote my podcast, and people are going to say, oh, I like that 30 second clip. I'm going to go listen to the podcast.

Speaker 2: 11:55

That's not the way it works. Your podcast promotes your social media. Your social media does not promote your podcast. Let's get that straight right now. So if you're a business owner. The podcast is there. In case someone's like I'm on the fence of doing business with Ryan, but he's got a podcast, let me listen to a few episodes. Okay, I like the way Ryan talks. I like his guest. He's well connected, cool, this seems like a person I can do business with. But the social media omnipresence, the showing up day in, day in, day in, as soon as that person's ready to buy their house, as soon as they're ready to buy their house, the first person they think of is, in this case, right, because Ryan is showing up the newsfeed all the time. So it's. And then what ends up happening is, because you're showing up day in, day out, you start to get a feel for what works, what's not working, and then you can start with quantity and then build quality off of the quantity.

Speaker 1: 12:48

That's where we're at.

Speaker 1: 12:49

We started with sticking you know spaghetti at the wall and saying what stuck and then now we've got a base to where now we've started putting quality out.

Speaker 1: 13:01

But it also I agree with you the podcast does make your social feed.

Speaker 1: 13:07

I think, with the nuance that I have with real estate, as in being an affordable developer, tying the two together and kind of them works very well because my company, truvest, can promote the podcast at the same time and they go across channels to help co-promote but also keep on branding and the branding pieces where we struggled in the in the news to have each of the businesses or the podcast and the business have their own channels. But there's overlap in the actual channels because, like this chasing financial freedom and I've got TruVest, it was making an impact in real estate You've got some overlay there to where you can have those conversations with your different groups or your different followers that you're ultimately going to bring them into both channels. But it takes some time and that's what we've struggled with and we found that voice, that footing, but that footing seems to change slightly every so often when you get off of those topics and I've learned that also through that processes. Staying in my lane with topics is key.

Speaker 2: 14:15

For sure, and there's ways that you can trial this too. I can share a YouTube strategy I've been playing with. It seems to work really well, because YouTube is just great for testing new ideas. By talking about different topics, you can start to get a feel for who your audience is and what I can. I'll give you an example of how you can integrate AI into YouTube to try to blow this up. So I call this the YouTube 10 by 10 strategy. So, whatever your business is, we'll say. We'll say marketing. For example, you say, okay, I'm a marketing agency, I want to be well known for marketing, I want to build my audience here. Well, 10 subtopics in marketing. So you could say something like email marketing.

Speaker 2: 14:53

SEO, youtube, facebook, instagram, Google ads, whatever right. Pick out 10 topics. Then you go to chat gbt, say, hey, chat gbt, give me 10 short video idea titles for this topic, for YouTube, for marketing, for SEO, for Instagram, etc. And you can easily come up with 100 short video ideas almost immediately with chat gbt, right? Then you go in and then you record the short video ideas. You let your video editor take on, something we do here at my agency.

Speaker 2: 15:26

The editor chops up all the videos. We post them all to YouTube. We see what hits, what are people interested in, and what you're going to find is that there's some topics people are really hungry for and other topics people could care less about. And then, when you find the topics that people are hungry about, you say, okay, I'm going to record longer form content on this. I've already dedicated 30 seconds to this. Now let me dedicate 30 minutes and you can start to flesh out more, more in depth ideas on the stuff that you know is hitting your audience. So this is a great way to start to build out quality off the basis of the quantity funnel.

Speaker 1: 16:02

I love it. I mean, it's a great way to go about it, and you mentioned chat, gbt and AI. How can we integrate and I know we can't go into detail, but what would be some tips to integrate AI into our businesses? Because there are some people that don't know what well they know I is, but they have no relationship with it. They don't understand how to effectively use it.

Speaker 2: 16:22

I was talking to Patrick but David about this. At the nerve event this last weekend, I got access because of my podcast. It just continues to open doors. I was talking to Patrick, David, I said hey, Patrick, if you were to have a AI day at your business, like what would that look like? He said listen, Mark, if you're in the Tour de France and you're going to be racing against all those dudes, if you're not using the tools, if you're not using the steroids basically like Lance Armstrong was using you ain't going to compete. If you're trying to win Mr Olympia and you're trying to beat Arnold, you're going to need to be doing something more. And AI is like the steroids for business, without the bad side effects Although if you use it incorrectly, there can be massive bad side effects but AI is going to be vital. You're not going to be able to compete against someone in a Ferrari if you're on a bicycle. Ai is that Ferrari. So I would recommend to every business owner out there is to look at all of your. This is what business is about. By the way, this is what podcasting is about. It's having the right systems in place.

Speaker 2: 17:23

So you start to break down all of your systems for onboarding team members, to literation, to customer fulfillment. You look at all those, you bring all of your team members and you say, hey, where are we wasting a lot of time? Where do you feel like I'm doing something that I just don't enjoy doing? And then start to find those gaps there where you can start to add AI. How can chat GPT solve those pain points? How can I integrate my forms with Zapier and chat GPT to start to automate things together? Is there a software that's already been created that can help? I was talking to AI to have to develop the other day. Who has a calendar program that if you use your email to sign up on their calendar, it scours the web. It scrapes the web for all data and information attached to that email and gives it to you. So as soon as you get on that call, you already know this person's life story. You know where they live, where they've worked, if they're married. Wow, All that just based on the email.

Speaker 2: 18:20

So I think the way that I would start this out is you sit down with your team, you dedicate a morning or an entire day to break it down, all of the systems, and then try to find places where AI might help you accelerate through those and, quite frankly and this is what Patrick said was your team is already using AI. They're already using AI and if they're not, you should probably be empowering them with AI. But I think getting the team involved and explaining to you hey, this sucks. I don't enjoy this part of the process. Okay, how can we use AI? Here's $1,000 to start investing in your team in this area. Let's use this AI tool. What do you like? You like this, you don't like it, and then start breaking it down backwards from there.

Speaker 1: 19:04

So I got to back up just a little bit because there are some solopreneurs that listen and so forth. How can you help those solopreneurs put a system together? Let's sit. I mean, they're recently starting out and they got it from. They've left their nine to five, they're working full time in their business, but they don't have a team yet and they need help to scale. I'm guessing that's where you could potentially come in and help them.

Speaker 2: 19:32

Well for sure, you know, at least for mine, of members just like that who are saying, hey, how can I start to use AI, how can I build out systems? I've been building out my system several years ago, which was sloppy, very sloppy at first, which is where we all start. It's me a lot of money trying to figure out the solutions, but start is by just jotting down what is each, what does it look like Like, what are all the steps like? So, fanpal, someone let's say somebody wants to launch a podcast with my agency. What does that look like? They see me on LinkedIn. They send me an email. Who's responding back? How long does it take to respond back? What is the copy look like when I respond back? What are the links Once they click on the link? Well, that's into a calendar. What's the goal of that meeting? What's the goal of the meeting that happens in that calendar? Is that calendar meeting designed to get them to a longer meeting with, maybe, a decision-maker? Is that the close meeting? Is this just a discovery call? But so again, breaking down all the way from someone sees me to they bought the product, right? Boom, that's the entire marketing phone.

Speaker 2: 20:38

Well, now, what bought the product. Well, what happened next? Customer fulfillment Are they getting emails saying these are the next steps? Is there video involved? Are there forms for them to fill out? How does all this integrate together? The place where AI becomes really exciting is comes to write copy. I think that that's one of the best places to start for your business writing copy. If you're integrating together, like forms, calendars, along with written copy, zapier's a really powerful tool for integrating these things together. Bring out your tech stack.

Speaker 1: 21:11

There's a lot in there. I get it all. I'm there, but could we talk a little bit more about that and get into the weeds before we kind of wrapping up is what would be three nuggets you could provide to a listener that's a solopanur that's struggling with getting all their systems together.

Speaker 2: 21:30

First step is you need to have a clear vision as to where you're going. What do you want to accomplish? What hill are you growing? Are you building an agency? Do you want to be an influencer? Do you want to be a YouTuber? Do you want to be a consultant? Do you want to get a job somewhere? Do you want to be an entrepreneur? Like, where are we actually going? What are you trying to build Right?

Speaker 2: 21:45

First step, because if you don't know where you're going, as the rabbit says in Alice in Wonderland, any road will take you there. Okay, yep, so you need to be clear on where we're going right. Secondly, you're going to need support. You're going to need people to help, and whether that's hiring one virtual assistant or whether you built out a team of 10 people, you're going to need to fill in those gaps. So when you're building out your systems you're listing out all of your systems. I want to look at what's the stuff that I can replace with AI, what's the stuff that I need a person to manage? And once you've got them in place, you need to remove yourself from that equation. And I really struggle with this as its owner Now 17 members, but this is a pretty common email that I'll get. Hey, mark, I'm waiting on this, and what I'll typically do is just say, hey, I could have my team member handle this, but I'm just going to take care of it. I can just do it right now. It'll only take me a minute. Do not do that, because now what you've done is you just you cannot scale your own personal touch. And if you do want to scale your personal touch, you need to charge a premium for that, because your time is very valuable and I'm not saying you'll be able to do this day one.

Speaker 2: 22:55

You know, this is the stuff we want to be striving towards. We want to be striving towards how do I remove myself from the system as much as possible? Can I automate this with AI? That's one of the first places I would look, because it's unbelievable what you can do using Zapier, using Google Forms, using Calendly Ohio level, using HubSpot. Once you start integrating stuff with a peer, which is very cost effective, you can start to remove yourself from these steps. Every time a client needs to email you or ask you something, you should be asking how do I remove myself from this? All the time I'm asking that, and if it doesn't work, cool, we'll go back to the drawing board and we'll fix it right. Don't the gaps for your? So those are the things that I would get vision starting to build out your systems.

Speaker 2: 23:39

Again, it's difficult without doing like a deep dive into the specific person, their specific business. You know, I look at, I'm looking to always remove myself from the equation, because once you can build out a system, once you have a system that's built out that removes yourself, then it's not pressing. Go, because now you can get on sales calls, now you're getting on stages, now you're guessing on podcasts like this, and then everything gets automated on the back end. You have your team gets notified, you have the responsible people, the AI, the automations takeover, and it doesn't happen overnight, but once you start to get that fleshed out, it becomes addictive in a way, and then you could really start to press. Go on your business. That's how you go from six figures to 100K to 500K and that's the way I'm tackling it.

Speaker 1: 24:26

Is there a CRM that you use or suggest to use for, let's say, a solopreneur or something? To that extent? I use Go High Level, so I mean since 2019, 20, something like that. Yeah, I use Go High. It comes a long ways.

Speaker 2: 24:41

Yeah, I'm using Go High Level now. I'm really happy with it in a lot of ways. There's some places where it's weak. It's a really starting point. If you're looking to build out landing pages and funnels and lead magnets, you can do courses. There's a robust pipeline system so that if I have someone, they go into my pipeline, then they get nurtured with emails, then I can call them, I can schedule follow-ups. So I think that's really important. If you're going to be a successful business owner, you need to sell. Period. That's probably the most important skill is I need to sell. So yeah, go High Level is good. Hubspot is great. It's free version is fine. But HubSpot you're going to be in that $1,000 a month category to get the full experience with the HubSpot text.

Speaker 1: 25:25

So, with your agency, let's talk a little bit about that is what are you doing within your agency to help or, as in, business owners grow?

Speaker 2: 25:37

Looking out the entire media marketing plan. When it comes to the root of the podcast, your business owner, you're busy. You need to show up. You know you can go through the yellow pages. Anymore business is done digitally. Listen, you're busy. You don't have time to be recording little TikTok videos in front of the restaurant. Like time for that garbage. I don't have time. Do you have time? I don't want to do that. What I do want to do is make strategic connections with people that will bring me business, whether it's a direct consumer, direct client for my business, or it's a strategic partnership that will bring me referrals for my business, or it's somebody that knows more than me that I can get free coaching from Right. Yeah, I got Neil Patel on my podcast the other day. That dude is charging tens of thousands of dollars for a consulting session. I got him on my show and I was able to ask specific questions about my business. That's tens of thousands of dollars that paid for the entire year in podcasts. Right there, right.

Speaker 1: 26:33

That's cool.

Speaker 2: 26:34

That's reasonable. So you're busy, but if you can hold a 30-minute Zoom call once a week, we can boost you out everywhere your blog, YouTube, iTunes, Spotify, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. You can be everywhere if you're willing to dedicate 30 minutes a week to hopping on a strategic call with someone that is interesting and can provide you with a benefit. It's very simple, it's hassle-free. That's what I want to do for business owners, because without that digital footprint, you just don't exist. It's not 2,000 anymore.

Speaker 1: 27:10

You can't grow and you can't do sales. I mean, there's some things that come along with it. I aim in on that stuff. For people or entrepreneurs and owners to work with you, where is a good location or a good spot to reach out to? Is it social? Your website?

Speaker 2: 27:29

In Mark Savant Media across the web. Best place is just to go to marksavantmediacom. Mark Savant Mediacom. Hop on a call. We'll see how we can help you grow your business with digital marketing and podcasting.

Speaker 1: 27:42

We'll put the link in the show notes for sure, sir. Thank you very much for coming on. It's been a great conversation, but better yet the tidbits that you shared, the nits, because I know there are entrepreneurs out there that are struggling, failing and you need to have a system.

Speaker 2: 28:01

Systems, baby, it's all systems. I appreciate you, Ryan. Thanks for bringing me the show, bro. This is great. Yeah, not a problem, thank you.