OUR advantage in Human vs AI generated content.
Hey Pod Pals!
This newsletter was lovingly curated (without the use of any AI) in real time on Thursday morning at 9:00 am CST.
The kids have been fed and are off to school. Now I'm slowly sipping cold brew coffee as I mentally prepare to tell you one about one of the most embarrassing moments of my entire life....this should be fun!
Before we dive into this week's embarrassing topic.... ⤵️
I specialize in helping podcasters do three things:
🚀 Optimize their podcast launch.
📈 Grow their audience with ideal fit listeners.
💰 Leverage their show to get more clients for their online business.
Need help with any of these?
Hop on my Podcast Profit Potential Discovery Call Calendar.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
This week we are going to talk about the time that I got all of my arm and leg hair waxed off so that I could grow my community of clients.
I just got back from presenting at the Content Entrepreneur Expo in Cleveland earlier this week. It was an awesome event...10/10 recommend!
Based off of the topics of several of the presentations and many of the conversations I had, it feels like right now many content creators are very concerned about AI wiping us all out.
Who will want to learn from our imperfect human content?
Who will want to buy our programs/services when they can get it from ChatGPT for free?
The situation we are currently in as Human Creators vs AI Bots reminds me a lot of an experience I had early on in my career as a fitness professional and gym owner....and this is where my weird story begins.....
My fitness facility was based in Bloomington, IN and for the first three years we were CRUSHING IT. There was only one other local bootcamp fitness program and the YMCA as competition.
In the first three years my program had helped our home town lose over 35,000 lbs and I even had a McDonald's style sign out by the road that had the running tally of how many pounds our clients had lost.
Then in year four everything changed......the big fitness franchises started popping up in town with their big marketing teams and marketing budgets and they immediately started stealing clients and cutting into profits.
After having a few anxiety attacks over this I decided to sit down and figure out what MY advantages were over them.
I had to find a way to stand out and make people want to do business with us instead of the big franchises.
My list consisted of TWO key advantages:
✅ 1. I can act really quickly and try new things. The big franchises have a specific recipe and all the corporate BS to deal with.....advantage Adam.
✅ 2. I can do weird shit that the big boys would never even think of, with a goal to build a real sense of COMMUNITY and a gym family.....this became my marketing super power.
I was actually inspired by a Will Ferrell movie called Semi Pro where he played the character Jackie Moon who was a player and owner of the Flint Tropics semi pro basketball team.
Jackie had a hard time getting locals to show up for the game so he starting trying all kinds of weird marketing tactics....including fighting a live bear at halftime.
Game ON!
After doing some research on my competitors I realized that they had some really lame "community building" ideas like Silly Sock Day workouts......
I knew that I could do way better, and get way weirder than that!
📌 I eventually came up with my secret marketing formula of:
Do weird shit + have fun + build community
= Kick some fitness franchise ass
🔬 My first experiment was a special workout I called Kardioke....which was a blend of a group fitness class and Karaoke.....suck it "silly sock day"!!!
Instead of having music for the workout we did karaoke.
Want to get out of doing burpees?...You had to get up there and SANG!
Stars were born and social media was on fire with clips of clients singing like:
🎶 Big Ray, a man in his 60's, belting New York New York just like Frank Sinatra!
🎶 Neil...the super quiet guy that kept to himself that did a PERFECT rendition of Superstition by Stevie Wonder.
and then there was the fearless leader...ME...but if you wanted me to sing you had to donate $20 to our featured charity.
Donate $20 and I would sign ANYTHING you want which always ended up being things like:
-Like a Virgin by Madonna
-Hold On by Wilson Phillips
..and any other super embarrassing songs that my clients could think of.
We got a ton of new clients from these efforts and the social media buzz that it created.
➡️ People realized that this was a safe place for adults to come in, workout, be themselves, and have some fun along the way.
Then I upped the ante.....
For our next event I wanted to set a fundraising goal of $10,000 in one night.
The prize if we hit our goal?
I will have a couple of local beauty professionals standing by with hot WAX ready to wax off all of my arm and leg hair.
To say that our community was fired up to hit the goal is an extreme understatement.
EVERYBODY was recruiting new (non members) to come to our fundraising workout event and witness The Waxing!
The event was a huge success!
With about 15 minutes left, I thought I had gamed the system perfectly...
We were about $1,000 short. I could still say that we raised $9,000+ and we would call it a night.
And then....a woman named Cheryl stepped up and asked the golden question..
"How much do we need to wax him????"
Cheryl wrote the check and the crowd went nuts!
The next 30 minutes or so were among the worst of my life!
The arm hair waxing wasn't THAT bad.....but the legs....sweet baby Jesus.......that was AWFUL!
If you have ever seen the movie The 40 Year Old Virgin my experience was a LOT like the waxing scene "Kelly Clarkson!!!!"
My wife was there holding my hand in case I passed out.. and as they got higher and higher up, the men in the crowd started shouting "Mercy....Mercy!!!"...
but the women...especially CHERYL...just sat back and enjoyed each and every RIP.
My formula was a success:
Do weird shit + have fun + build community
= Kick some fitness franchise ass
I decided to keep applying the secret marketing formula by doing things like:
👟Walking eight marathons in eight days with the nephew of the Dalai Lama (he was a client) and a group of Tibetan monks.
🕺🏻I competed in the local Dancing With The Stars and performed the Hot Cha-Cha in front of 600 people and raised over $30,000 for our local Boys and Girls Club. Here's a clip of my winning dance.
🍕I started doing several "food challenges" like the 12 pound pizza challenge at Monroe County Pizza (I'm STILL on the loser wall!) ...
and the donut eating contest at the Stinesville, IN Covered Bridge Festival (which I DOMINATED and proudly displayed the trophy at the gym).
Every time I put myself out there and got a little weird...it drew attention to our fitness facility and we got new clients.
In the end, we had successfully created a truly one of a kind Gym Family community that could not be duplicated by any franchise.
So..let's round out this conversation and bring it back to Human Creators vs AI.
Pod Pals, here's what AI cannot do:
1. Be authentically unique/weird.
2. Build community.
3. Tell authentically human stories.
My formula still works...
Do weird shit + have fun + build community
= Kick some AI Bot virtual ass
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
🤩 Client Testimonial of the week: My client Lisa Bradshaw has a NEW show called Pitch Playbook: Brand Visibility Beyond Social Media.
Check out what she has to say about working with me to get her show launched:
"After hearing Adam guest on a podcast, then binging his podcast, it was a no brainer to hire him. His guidance is direct. His advice is solid, and the outcome is exactly waht I was looking for. He definitely knows his stuff with so many ideas about podcast content and promotion. Thank you, Adam, for helping me add Podcast Host to my own visibility strategy!"
➡️ Ready to get some help with your podcast launch, growth, or monetization strategy?
Hop on my Podcast Profit Potential Discovery Call Calendar.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
New Content for this week:
🎙️ Podcasting Business School EP 584: The "Be Everywhere" social media strategy isn't working anymore!
In this episode I talk about why this strategy has stopped working and the SIMPLE strategy that I'm using that is MUCH more effective.
✍🏻 SuperThread Of The Week: The real reason podcasters struggle to get new clients from their show is NOT because their content isn't "good enough". It took me three years to figure out how to leverage my podcast to get new clients. I will teach you how to do it in the next three minutes....
📝 Substack BONUS article of the week: How I create content WITH my audience and turn them into super-fans!
📢 Newsletter recommendation: My friend Tiffany Neuman has an incredible newsletter called Your Legacy Brand.
If you enjoy my newsletter, you will love hers! She shows entrepreneurs how to turn their brand into a true client-attraction machine. Trust me, this is one of the few newsletters that's actually worth opening every week! Here's the link to sign up for free!
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
❤️ If you have been enjoying my newsletter I'd really appreciate it if you would share it with one of your Pod Pals that might get value out of this content!
Just hit that FORWARD button and share it out! 😎
If someone forwarded you this email you can CLICK HERE to subscribe and get a fresh newsletter from me every single Thursday.
Talk to you next week!
Your Pod Pal,
Adam
⭐️ P.S. Ready for some help with your podcast launch, growth, or with getting more clients from your podcast?⭐️
Sign up for a FREE Podcast Profit Potential Discovery Call.