AP 1196: Where Are They Now? Mark Savant

AP 1196: Where Are They Now? Mark Savant

Pat Flynn:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to episode 1,196 of ask pat 2.0. And all this month, we're catching up with people who have been coached here before, and today we're talking with Mark Savant, somebody who I remember specifically, when we interviewed last time, it was all about positioning and messaging.

And Mark has an agency where he helps people build their business online and help them in so many different ways. However, he was struggling a little bit with how to position that, how to stand out, how to create a USP or unique selling proposition. And I'll tell you right in the front end of this episode, you're going to hear just the improvement in how he talks about what he does and all the discussions about, well, what's going to happen next.

And where do we go from here? He's offering so many great things, but how do we actually offer them all together? Because there's different levels. And he's just doing such an amazing job. He's progressing much faster than I did when I first started. And I'm so stoked because he's taking the information that he's learning from the last time he was on the show and he put it into practice, and it's just worked out so well for him.

So we're gonna hopefully see the same thing again and maybe invite him on, in the future. But I want you to sit back, relax, cause this is Mark Savant, and you can find him right here, wherever you're listening to this podcast at The After Hours Entrepreneur. That's the name of his podcast. One more time, The After Hours Entrepreneur. And here he is, Mark Savant, back with us on AskPat 2.0.

Mark, welcome back to AskPat. Thanks for being here again.

Mark Savant:
What's up, Pat? What's up, Team Flynn? How are we doing?

Pat:
We're doing good. Good. 'Cause you were here, 'cause the last time we chatted, we got pretty deep. Right? We talked about one of the most important things we, as entrepreneurs can talk about, which is, well, our positioning. What are we bringing to the table that perhaps others can't? What's our superpower and how do we position it in a way that gets people excited, inspired, and moving? And I want to take us back to that call. We hung up. What were you thinking? What was going through your head after our conversation?

Mark:
Well, the first thing I thought was, "I need to reach out to Pat's team so I can listen to the replay," because there were so many good nuggets.

But for me, I think the big turning point was when we started talking about messaging. And that's kind of sent me on this kind of path of discovery because messaging is really everything. You know, you need to know who you're speaking to, the problem you solve, et cetera. And I had a big disconnect. I had a big disconnect in my business.

And just to kind of catch people up to speed, I run a digital media agency and I help people create better content in less time. That's what I do. Right? And at the time, my messaging across all the platforms was "take your side hustle full time." There was a big disconnect in, in what we're doing there. And through the process of you asking great questions, I was able to kind of work through that, talk through that.

And now I've got a much, I think, stronger value proposition. And I think you'll be pleased to know I've made more money in the last three months than I did the last three years. So pretty cool, man. Appreciate you.

Pat:
Congratulations, Mark. That's how important positioning is, and it's not just positioning for your audience. It's positioning for you so you can get confident in what you're offering.

And I love what you said there: better content in less time. They're just, just like four words. Five words that just speak to every person who's creating content because we all don't have as much time as we want. And we want to get better with our content. How long did it take you to get to there? I'm curious.

Mark:
Not too long, because I was actually just listening back to our episode again, before our discussion today. And there was a point where I was just kind of explaining what me and my business do, and then. Well, it took a little bit of cleaning up. I did some keyword research and then "better content, less time," just, it really stuck.

And now I try to like drill that down with everyone I meet. 'Cause people still are a little bit confused. Maybe they don't understand podcasting and YouTube and video and all that. "Better content, less time." And that's kind of the way I think about myself and my personal brand, my businesses, anytime someone hears named Mark Savant, I immediately want them to think "better content less time."

I've actually evolved that even a little bit further here recently and added on another clause to kind of better explain what I do, and I help business owners create better content in less time and turn that attention into income. Right? And so that's, that's kind of what I've evolved it into a bit.

Pat:
Dude. Yes, dude. That's super pro. That, that gave me goosebumps hearing that. That's amazing. So when you share that message and you position it on your podcast, The After Hours Entrepreneur, everybody go and listen. How does that look like as far as what you're offering? What does what you're offering, your coaching, your program, like and talk about your programs a little bit. How does that blend into the message and make it just an easy sell? I mean, you're making more money than you did before, which is means it's working.

Mark:
We're trending in the right direction. And, and I'm glad you asked that cause that's, that was really the core of what I wanted to ask you today, which by the way, pat, this is, it's really incredible that you're this open with your time, with your community to let people like me come on and learn from top 1% expert in the field. Much respect. Very much appreciate that.

Pat:
Thank you.

Mark:
By the way, what you're doing with Pokémon on YouTube is incredible too, by the way. I just wanna give you a shout out for that too. You're crushing..

Pat:
Thank you. I have no idea who's like following me on that, and I know I share it on my Instagram and stuff and people are curious, and it's just been a really fun, interesting experiment. And it's cool because there's a lot of actual crossover. I know it's like in a hobby and it's completely different, but a lot of those people who are finding me there are going like, "is this what you do full time?" No, you should check me on SPI. And a lot of those people have become fans of SPI now, have purchased my books. A lot of YouTube creators who are in the Pokemon space have also gone, "wow. You came in out of nowhere and look at all you're doing. Like, teach me, show me." And that's been really neat too. And I think just showing up is a major part of the equation. So if you're listening to this and you're like, I don't know what my positioning is. I don't know what I should offer. Sometimes you just got to show up and immerse yourself in a space to realize what's there. And that's exactly what I did there.

So first of all, just thank you for that, but I'm curious to hear sort of what's coming next for you.

Mark:
I guess there's three main things that I'm looking at being the, I guess the main revenue driver of the business. Right? And of course I have other ancillary, smaller, different forms of income, whether it's affiliate links and advertisement, sponsorships, things like that.

But, but really the bulk comes from one of three different places. It's either like a consultation slash coaching. Right? Which we kind of talked about last time. It's, it's a "done by you," but I'm going to come in and I'm going to advise you, we're going to get clear on your messaging, your systems, et cetera. The second is, is services.

I've got a team. You want the full "done for you." We activate the team and then we're going to start producing all of your content for you. And then third, which I actually just launched, and my team was pretty scared when we, when I said I'm going to do this because it was kind of like, I decided in August, I'm gonna open up a group workshop, paid group workshop, and I'm gonna bring people into this workshop.

And we launched that on September 1st. So within, uh, within 30 days we, we launched it. We didn't get a ton of people that joined in. We got four, four people, but they all seem to be really enjoying it. They're learning a lot. They're giving me feedback. So now we've really got these three main sources of revenue. I'm trying to decide, am I spreading myself too thin? Am I diluting my focus in different areas? Or is it good to continue to diversify? Because you know, the problem with consultations and services is it can be feast or famine.

And I'm wondering if, and that was kind of my goal there was, you know, let's create kind of this buffer, consistent, whether it's something like you're doing with your community, which is, you know, a flat fee monthly, you get total access. Or if it's like a workshop type of challenge type of offering. I'm not a hundred percent sure where to go there.

Pat:
A little bit, I'm curious in terms of how that's structured. Is it like certain, a number of weeks that you're together with them and working them through something? Or how does that work exactly?

Mark:
Because this is the first like group workshop paid group workshop I've done, part of my goal was, you know, let's just dive in and let's learn how to swim. Right? Let's figure it out. The way that this workshop is structured is "create better content in less time. Go figure, right? Coming full circle: "create better content in less time."

And it's a six- week workshop with four live, interactive style zoom group calls, where I take the group members, the students through really the way that I look at content creation. And it, and it starts with clarity and moves around to your planning, to your actual, all your production, editing. And then it, then it goes into the posting, the engaging, then back up to clarity.

Because now that you know more about who you serve, you can refine your clarity and your messaging. Right. So it's six weeks. So we got four people in, each one is paying money. So that's, that's obviously it's good, but I'm wondering like maybe six weeks is just too much for people to, to chew on. Right.

Like, you know, would it be, you know, I'm kinda thinking like, maybe it's better if I just do like one week, and not necessarily the whole gamut of content creation, but something simple like "rebrand your podcast" one week, or like you were saying, I was talking to someone last night on Clubhouse, we're talking about Circle and implementing some sort of membership style program as well, like you've been successful with.

So I'm just kind of fleshing that out and figuring out what that looks like.

Pat:
Yeah. I mean, I think the fact that you are experimenting is huge. Cause that's how, you know whether or not this is going to work or not. I think what's going to give you a good North star is gonna be, at the end of the six- week program to ask, "okay, how did this work out for you? How did it feel? Did it feel overwhelming?” We've done some, we call them boot camps, but those are our version of cohort-based courses. And always at the end, that's the most important part because that's how you figure out whether or not this worked or not. It's working in terms of selling, because you're, you're getting people to come in and then you can scale it up from there and you have testimonials coming in.

So it's going to be easier and easier in terms of, well, “Is this actually providing the value that we want? Is it where we want to head?” If you imagine yourself, like a year from now and you're still running the same program, how does that feel? Does that feel good? Does that feel not good? Does it feel too much now? Based on the feedback that you're getting, you can combine your and your team's effort and their sort of response to, “That was great. Let's do it again.” Or “let's tweak it” or, “yeah, they're saying it was too long.” Or I know some people who have run cohort-based situations too, and their feedback was they just want more group interaction. So they did the same amount of time. They just switched how things were learned and 20 minutes of lecturing and then an hour and a half of you get into groups now in Zoom and you get into your little bundles of people and you learn from each other now, and everybody's loving that.

So it's going to evolve over time, but as far as like the three things that you have there. The three things make sense to me. They don't compete with each other in a way that would self-sabotage, but they're also perfect offerings for people who maybe are at different stages or who prefer to learn in a different way, or like with the middle stage here, which is the “done for you.”

I like the “done by you, but we'll teach you.” “done for you.” And then kind of like “done together.” Like, “let's do this together,” right? Is this sort of group coaching positioning. I, and I really love that.

Mark:
That was kind of the thought process too, behind the group, because you can bring it almost like a top of funnel.

Right. And I know that's an important concept when it comes to growing a business, is, are people actually willing to pay you money? You know? Cause the first dollar is the hardest to get from someone. So I was thinking maybe I can get them into like the group at a much lower rate. I can help more people there.

And then maybe one or two of those people decide, “You know what, maybe I need one-on-one,” and then maybe, you know, if we keep scaling it, they can go into the service side. So that was kind of the, the rationale there, but, you know, as every business owner knows, “Do I want to take on one more task and spread myself too thin?”

Pat:
Right. And that's where this comes in in terms of the conversation, which is, are you doing a hundred percent of each of these things, or do you have systems in place so that when you have a person coming in on the service side of things, they fill out, for example, a Gravity form or a Typeform that gives you all the information you need to just do one, essentially, orientation call with them and your team. And then everything else is handed off. Like you have an OBM or an online business manager or an integrator who is now the liaison and you, you are done. You can do that with the group coaching stuff too. I know this is the first time around, so you want to do it, but you could find a coach that can do this for you.

In fact, with our bootcamp, our latest bootcamp or latest Power-Up Podcasting bootcamp, we had over 50 people join. And there was no expectation that I was teaching. Like, we were very clear with that. The whole thing's running on its own with Jay and Tony and Nōn on the team. Like, that for me was very difficult because that's my podcasting course.

And now somebody else is like working with a group of people to learn that? And I had to let go, and this was an experiment for me. And again, this is just another reiteration of just, okay, let's try it this way to see how it is, because if I was involved with that and something else and something else, I'm going to be spread thin and I’d have no time for Pokemon anymore. I'm just kidding. But it's proven to be actually so valuable because my team is all in on, on those people that they feel like they're getting, not just Pat and Pat only, they're getting extensions of Pat and more versions of Pat and different viewpoints. So you could potentially hand off all these things if you want it to and get, you could get to that point.

And I don't know if that's been something that's on your mind. I mean, we think of people like Dave Ramsey, right? Who is a single person, but he has thousands of people who've gone through Dave Ramsey's training to qualify and are certified to teach Financial Peace University to all these other people on his behalf. And that's how he's able to scale. So it is possible to remove yourself from this too. The big question is, are these three things helping people? And they are. And what do you want to do? If we could fast forward and you're doing, Mark, exactly what you want to do. What are you doing?

Mark:
That's one of the difficult parts about growing an agency style business, but yeah, I mean, the goal eventually is, you know, I don't want to just sit on a beach drinking margaritas all day. I had an interesting question. I asked my community the other day was, would you be happier with no responsibilities? Because that's kind of the dream of being a business owner. You know, “I just want to sit on a beach,” but I don't think anyone's going to be happy with no responsibilities. If you're not progressing, you're regressing.

But that's the challenge of being of doing these consultations, traveling to meet clients, doing consultations, is that's that's really you. I really like that idea though, that you've mentioned, is bringing on people that are trusted. You see Sean Cannell over at Think Media doing this, bringing on Heather and the rest of the squad over there, kind of a similar thought, you know. And I guess the other, the other thing that I was thinking is, digital courses kind of have this bad name, but I do think that the more people you help, the better understanding you have of them and of your clientele, the better understanding you have of the, the offers that you have, then you can build a course off of that. Cause I don't want to be one of those people that build some massive course. It takes a lot of time and then nobody buys it.

Pat:
You know, your group coaching stuff could become a course. You have already proven that people want this information, and perhaps it's more asynchronous in terms of how they absorb that information in a digital course. I mean, this podcasting boot camp that I did is essentially the same as my digital course, just with some people to help them along. And we sell both. Now we have both, and we could go one way or the other, because actually half of the people who came on this cohort were people who bought the course who were, “I don't, I need some help. I need, I can't do it on my own.” Cool. You can upgrade it. And there's people who bought the cohort because, and didn't buy the course. Because they're like, they already know that they just don't learn that way. And there are some people who buy the course because they don't want the help. They can do it on their own. And that's just means there's a lot of options for you, which is really cool. So you could prove this course that you have already with the cohort of students you have currently.

Mark:
I'm curious, Pat, how long is that course? So if I sign up for the group training, real life training, how long do you, how long does that go for?

Pat:
That's actually an eight-week course. There's a lot. We, we go slowly to keep people caught up. Right? Cause there's a lot of things, at least in the world of podcasting, right? Where you got to get the equipment. Okay. Well then you have to wait a couple of days, you go and get your artwork commission, and then you got to wait a couple of days. So, so there is room for that and we're always building and helping and supporting. Whether or not this is too long for your students is going to be up to them in their feedback and the results are getting right. And, you know, I think six weeks in some cases can feel very long. In some cases, six weeks can feel very short. It depends on the results and what they're getting.

Mark:
Well, and it depends on how engaged they are in the process. Cause I spread all of these meetings two weeks so that we can have the discussion. I can send you various worksheets and checklists and making sure that you're, like, to your point, that you're keeping up. The issue, I think, and I don't want to throw the students under the bus cause they're fricking awesome. But you know, I'm putting together these worksheets and things. And, and I still know that they're actually doing them. I'll get a message the day before and saying, oh, I didn't do all the checklists. I just wonder if it's maybe just too much to bite off.

Because I really like what you, you say, it's Power-Up Podcasting. You know, we're going to teach podcasting, but I'm trying to teach all the branding, all the recording, all the messaging, all the planning, all the engagement. It just feels like it's maybe just too much to chew off. And that's kind of why I was thinking about to your point, getting that feedback from the people that are, yeah, in the course.

Pat:
Yeah, the feedback would definitely be helpful, but also on the homework thing yet, that can be a struggle. Sometimes people have lives, and they have things going on. It can be very difficult, especially for a long period of time. But we are very, very strict with our homework policies. You must turn it in on Sunday here on Slack or in Circle, actually, uh, in our academy. And we set that tone right from the get-go. And we set that tone, even as we're selling, that this is like an intense thing that we want you to commit to, because that's really, what's going to get you the results. And yes, it shies some people away, but the people who are in there are definitely people who are going to be working. But, you know, with the gamut of things that you're teaching you're, right, you could potentially experiment with just taking a piece of that and teaching on that. And that might be your next step. If you feel like maybe this was too much and you want to try, okay, well, I’m just going to do a two week thing on one particular topic, and I'm going to find people who only need help with that.

You might find that that's going to be a lot easier and maybe even though it might be a lower cost, so you're going to make up for that because you're going to get more people and then have a digital course version of that. I've seen people who've done this before. Like, they start with a big course and they break it down and it sells much easier. Right? It reminds me of this story of somebody who invented a bug spray that killed all bugs. And they ended up selling it at a hardware store. Nobody bought it because people don't have an all-bug problem. People have an ant problem, so they buy the ant killer. They have a roach problem, so they buy the roach killer.

Right? What ended up happening, going back to digital, as somebody who did the same thing, broke their courses up, they sold them all. And they ended up packaging all of them together again, and selling that as an all-in-one package bundle deal. So they almost had to like break it down to then show the value of what it was when it was all put together again. It was just really interesting how just the psychology of money and selling and positioning. It's just, goes back to our first conversation that we had a while back. Yeah.

Mark:
It's everything, it's everything. And I host a pretty popular clubhouse room, and we get, it's all about podcasts. You know how to grow your podcast, name of the room and people ask all these things like, where should I share it? How do we get it from social media? It's like you said, it's all about messaging. I do want to ask you though about Circle, because this is something I've been, been really interested in. I know that you're you're on their board or something of that nature

Pat:
I am.

Mark:
I, again, I feel like I need to have a place for my community to live. And especially when it comes to delivering content to the, the group, getting the group involved, turning in homework, getting them communicating together. One of the cool things I've heard about Circle is that you can have like a free paywall. You can give different access to different tiers of group members. Right? Can you kind of break down, maybe? I don’t want you to give away all your secrets, but can you kind of break down a little bit how you've kind of structured that for, for you and your community and for your classmates or class students?

Pat:
Yeah. We have two different circles. Essentially. We have a circle for our SPI Pro premium community, which is specifically being sold to entrepreneurs who have a business. We don't allow people who don't have a business in, and it's a premium monthly slash annual payment for those high-level entrepreneurs to come in and network. There's no content additional in there other than people's posts. There are events, there are networking events. There are special guests who come in, there are challenges and all that kind of stuff.

That's actually its own thing. Like that's its own almost entity, if you will. We also have a second circle or a second account, if you will, which is called SPI Academy. And SPI academy is our free space or free Circle where people can come in for free as a student, they get access to this, and they can find the course that they're in and find other people who are in courses with them.

And that's more of the—you know, it's not necessarily what I'd recommend for you. What I recommend for you would be potentially a single Circle where certain parts, certain spaces, right? Like in a Slack community, how there's like a, the hashtags on the left-hand side are different channels. You can create different spaces in Circle.

So you can have a space for just general announcements. You can have a space for your cohort. You can have a space where all of your people who are signing up for the agency are, and they can only get access to the ones that you let them have access to. Some of them can be free. Some of them can be paid, and they can see the paid ones there. That's the difference between what I have. They don't see SPI Pro in the academy. They're separate, but you can have them all live in the same area. They just can't get access to it until they join the membership or they join the course or what have you. And I kind of like that because then it shows people, “Wow, there's a place for me to uplevel to. There's a place where there's conversation happening right now.” If you're on the outside, you're like, “Oh, I wonder what's going on in there. I want to see what's happening.” We purposefully don't have SPI Pro in there cause we definitely wanted it to be its own thing. Although there is crossover and cross selling, but, but yeah, you can set it up in that way, which is really neat.

And the nice thing about Circle is, it's your community. You can develop it in any which way you want, have your own set of rules in there. You can customize it, and it's so much better than a person's experience on Facebook and on LinkedIn. It's just separate from that. And people find their own people and they love it for it.

So, happy to answer any questions on that. I am on the board, and it's one of my favorite products. It's just, it's just been an incredible, incredible experience to use.

Mark:
Yeah, well, I've been in your community, I've tried, you know, it's, it's, it's on my radar because you're right. Facebook groups, I think are very easy to get set up. They're free, you know, which is great, but there's just so much distraction on Facebook and it doesn't feel like a great place to, to grow a community. Yes, that's great. I guess my, the other problem I've been having or question I'd have is regarding payments. You, you can process all your payments through Circle, right? Because I was getting payments through PayPal, you know, a few months ago, but they're like, these guys are just taking, they're taking all my money. They're taking all my hard-earned money, you know? And so then I started using Venmo. You know, Venmo is great, but it doesn't do international. So I'm just trying to wonder if, if you could give me your backstage pass.

Pat:
Circle just announced their paywall. Because for a while, when we got on it was just the community platform. You had to tag on a third party situation to actually accept payments and then make some crazy Zapier connections and all this stuff. So we took a chance with them, cause it wasn't really like out of the box ready back when we started it, but we knew it would be, and it has become that.

And so now you can just go through circle and accept payments. I mean, every single payment gateway is going to take something. But you mentioned PayPal. That's like, you know, one of the worst and, you know, there's other places where they just it's just like, “Wow, I don't have any left for me and what I want to do anymore.”

But Circle has paywall now. They are also including live video within the community now. For a while, you could have an integrated YouTube or integrate Wistia and other things, and they still have that. Loom is a great integration as well. But now they're going to have baked in live video as a part of it.

It's just becoming, it's going to be huge. Like it's only been up for a year. It's going to be huge. And I think it's going to change a lot of people's businesses because I think community, or at least people who are customers of yours, being able to connect with each other and hear from you in a more social like fashion is, is the future of business.

Mark:
I mean, we kind of turned this into an ad for Circle, but I'm glad we talked about it because I very much. I'm very like, listen, it's serious. You know, I've tried to build a business here, and Circle seems like, honestly, it seems like I've used it. I've tried. It seems like a great solution. I have, I have one more question for you, Pat. I'm planning out events for next year. What are a couple must attend events for digital marketers? Is next year's Flynn con back on? Like, where where's some someplaces I need to be next year?

Pat:
Rest in peace, FlynnCon. FlynnCon is not coming back. It's canceled for now. It's just, we've had to with the pandemic and everything, I'm not going to get into it, but it's, we've had to cancel that. But there are some great events. Traffic and Conversion is a great one to go to. I actually just spoke at it this year. It happens in San Diego. If you come to town, let me know. We'll hang out, grab a meal or something together, Mark, and that's for anybody, actually. So, Traffic and Conversion summit. There's also the Social Media Marketing World conference, which also happens in San Diego. That's coming back. That's coming back this year. It's been delayed. The Financial Blogger conference, although niched toward finance. There's a lot of just internet marketing stuff that happens in general. There it's become much bigger than just stuff for the finance industry.

Mark:
Yeah. I miss them. I'm going to start sending out speaking applications pretty soon here because great place to connect. Well, I really appreciate you, Pat. You’re the man.

Pat:
Oh, you're the man. Thank you so much. One more time. Where can people go and find you?

Mark:
Find Mark Savant Media all over the web: YouTube, Instagram clubhouse. Mark Savant Media, the podcast After Hours Entrepreneur. Hopefully I'll be talking to you again and we'll be talking about massive growth from today's episode. It's been a blast, brother.

Pat:
That's great. We'll have to come back and talk about that growth. The next time you come on the chance then guaranteed brother. Thank you, man.

All right. I hope you enjoyed that catch-up with Mark. As you can tell, big strides moving forward and a lot bigger decisions to make. Of course, what got you here won't get you there. You're going to have to unlock new un-comfort zones, not comfort zones, but you have to unlock new un-comfort zones in order to grow. And I loved the discussion about how to sort of manage all the different pieces and how they fit together, and what the group coaching, the group course and cohort type stuff might be like, and I'm so excited to see what Mark does with this.

So well done, Mark. Way to progress, and I'm so looking forward to seeing you progress even more. I'm so proud of you and so stoked for you. Again, make sure to check out his podcast, The After Hours Entrepreneur, and of course MarkSavantMedia.com, S-A-V-A-N-T, MarkSavantMedia.com.

Thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you. Make sure you head over to AskPat.com so you can check out the rest of the episodes there. You can find the ones that make sense for you for where you're at in terms of what to learn about, and you could potentially apply to come on the show as well and get coached by me. And then maybe one day, we'll do an episode together here and then I'll invite you back and we'll do another “Where are they now?” episode, and hopefully you'll progress. And that's the whole idea here. I want you to take action on the things you're listening to, whether you get to come back or even on the show to begin with. Hopefully you're taking action. You could hear what happens when you do. So thank you, Mark. Thank you.

And I look forward to serving you next week. We have another amazing “Where are they now?” episode coming, and a great conversation with somebody who was just a joy to talk to the first time. And wow. It was even better the second time. So make sure to look forward to that. Hit subscribe. I'll see you then, and until then, peace out. Take care, and as always, Team Flynn for the win.

Thanks for listening to AskPat at AskPat.com. I'm your host, Pat Flynn. Our senior producer is Sara Jane Hess, our series producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. AskPat is a production of SPI Media. We'll catch you in the next session.