86 Mark Savant

[00:00:07] Kristen: Welcome to this edition of Insider Secrets, the weekly podcast that turns real estate investing goals into reality. Each show we interview guests who are seasoned real estate professionals, actively closing and managing real estate deals. Mike is the founder of My Core Intentions and would like to help you make your real estate investing dreams a reality.

[00:00:29] Mike coaches you to buy investment real estate, creating short-term cashflow and long-term wealth, your host and real estate coach. Mike Morawski has more than 30 years of real estate investing and property management experience. Here’s your host, Mike.

[00:00:46] Mike Morawski: Hey everybody, welcome back. It’s Mike, your host of Insider Secrets brought to you by My Core Intentions. I ask you every week, what are your intentions? Did you get up this morning? Did you sit down and spend some time in gratitude, meditation, or prayer? Wherever you get your fill from. Did you have a chance to exercise? Did you plan your day? What were your intentions for today? I often ask those questions because I think that it’s important that we empower you with some sound principles and some sound advice that will help you grow personally and professionally. You guys know how important it is that we grow personally, and that none of us grow our business or grow professionally until that happens. So today we’re going to talk about being an entrepreneur.

[00:01:31] We’re going to talk about podcast production and how to maybe do some things that might take your business to the next level. Before we get to that, remember please go to wherever you hang out on social media and like me love me, follow me, subscribe to me. Whether it’s me personally, or whether it’s My Core Intensions. So let’s dig in. My guest today is Mark Savant, an entrepreneur and digital marketing expert. Mark say hi to everybody really quick would you?

[00:02:02] Mark Savant: Yeah, what’s up Mike? What’s up everybody? So thrilled to be here today and talk podcast production, excited about it.

[00:02:07] Mike Morawski: I’m excited too. I heard Mark on C-Roc’s show and was just intrigued by the episode, you guys all know how I feel about Mike and C-Roc. We are going to definitely tear it up here today. Mark owns and operates a social media agency, he helps people create better content in less time. Love that. Mark focuses on power of video collaboration to help clients create constant social media presence in less than an hour a week. His YouTube channel has over 600,000 views. His podcast, The After Hours Entrepreneur, features top digital marketing and media experts. If you’re looking to build a brand and reach people online, Mark’s your guy. Mark, welcome to the show.

[00:02:50] Mark Savant: Mike, it’s a real honor to be here. Mike/C-Roc hosts a great show. If you’re in that ballpark, Mike, it’s gonna be a great conversation and hopefully extremely valuable to everyone listening. I take people’s time very seriously as I take my time seriously. So anyway, very excited to be here and chat with you, Mike.

[00:03:06] Mike Morawski: I’m glad that you’re here. So listen, here’s how I kick this off every time, one thing I want to know is in one word, what best describes you personally and professionally?

[00:03:16] Mark Savant: One word. What best describes me personally, professionally? Wow, that is a really tough question. I would say creative, if I just use one word. I’d say creative.

[00:03:24] Mike Morawski: Interesting. 90 episodes in doing this podcast and maybe once or twice, two people have used the same word and creative has not been one of them. That’s interesting. Talk about that for a minute. What gets you there? Where’s the creative juices coming from? How do you get there? What do you do for yourself, much less coach other people to do.

[00:03:44] Mark Savant: I think creativity for me, it’s more so of a personality trait rather than something that you can really train. It’s hard to train someone to be creative. I think that there are certain elements that you can imply, and I’m a big believer in outsourcing if you’re not super creative on your own, try to bring in somebody or collaborate or partner up with somebody that is, that really enjoys that. I’m this weird, odd duck where I’m both really great at the creativity aspect and thinking about things and how can we get our marketing and our name out there better? How can we leverage tools like search engine optimization and keywords to make sure that we’re actually found and funneling it all into the creativity portion.

[00:04:19] What makes it so hard being an entrepreneur is you wear so many different hats and the other hat is the systems and the analytics in the data and making sure that all the bottlenecks are taken care of. Podcast production, I think is a great fit for me personally, because it leverages both the interpersonal skills like I mentioned, with building up teams, building up systems, but also being creative. To be able to interpret what a client says and then try to grow that into something that is going to come from nothing. That would be my short answer, but I do think that every entrepreneur out there is very creative in general because we’re creating something from nothing

[00:04:57] Mike Morawski: Interesting. So listen, Mark, do us a favor and tell us your background a little bit, fill in some holes and some gaps, tell us how you got here.

[00:05:04] Mark Savant: So obviously the story starts way, way back when, but I’m going to fast forward to a major turning point in my life, which happened, about four or five years ago. I was sitting with my grandfather, at the time he’s 94, and he says, “Hey Mark, come over here. I want to show you some stuff.” He pulls out this big red binder, he’s sitting in his old easy chair and he starts flipping through these pages, these newspaper clippings. He starts taking out different photos and images and registrations and address all sorts of like different knickknacks he’s collected throughout the year.

[00:05:32] And as he is showing me, this is where I went to college and this is where I taught basketball, and this is where your grandmother and I got married. I’m looking at this, I’m thinking to myself, ” I’m going to be doing this one day with my grandkids. How do I want my story to look? Where’s my story trending right now?” I’d been kind of stuck in a good job, very happy there. But I looked at what is my story going to look like 20, 30, 40 years from now? I wasn’t happy with the way it was trending. So for me, that was a very formative moment in my journey in recognizing where I was headed and it wasn’t aligned with where I wanted to be.

[00:06:04] So at that time I started shifting, I started trying out all sorts of different businesses and what I love about entrepreneurship and creating something from nothing is you learn something every day. With each client that I work with, with each dollar that I make in my business, I’m able to adjust and create new offerings that better serve the market. Anyway, it’s a long way of saying that I didn’t grow up with the Gary Vaynerchuk style, knowing that I was gonna be an entrepreneur, knowing that I’m gonna create the big business, knowing that I’m gonna buy the New York Jets. What I think that I found was that my place, my competitiveness in the market, the assets that I was growing, didn’t compute with where I wanted to go. So I really took that step forward and it started opening doors.

[00:06:42] Mike Morawski: Interesting. I’m a big Gary Vaynerchuck fan.

[00:06:44] Mark Savant: He’s awesome.

[00:06:45] Mike Morawski: Big shout out to Gary V.

[00:06:46] Mark Savant: He’s awesome, and also very much a creator. He’s a very creative guy.

[00:06:50] Mike Morawski: Yeah. I think there’s a lot to learn there, and he’s got a lot of insights, but I think that we gain those insights too, by talking to people. It’s all about relationship and building relationships, especially as an entrepreneur, I have to imagine in your business it’s all relationship, as it is in mine. Whether it’s a new client coming in or you serve in somebody at a different level.

[00:07:11] Mark Savant: I mean, that’s what entrepreneurship is, that’s what business is. It’s about people, right? It’s about the people that you’re building up on your team. It’s about the people whose problem that you’re solving and how can you better solve that? It’s all about people and the better you solve it, the better you’re able to communicate. This is why I think that podcasting is so important right now, Mike, because it gives people an open window into who you are. If we can all agree that business is all about people and relationships, the podcast opens up all sorts of doorways. Without this podcast that you have, we probably wouldn’t be talking today, but now I know that in a pinch, I’ve got Mike in my Rolodex, and there’s a lot of value in that as well.

[00:07:44] Mike Morawski: I heard a number the other day and maybe you can quantify this, but a half a million podcasts out there now.

[00:07:51] Mark Savant: Listen, 90% of statistics are made up right? Including this one. So it’s hard for me to track, but I’ve heard pretty recently from Pat Flynn, who is someone I follow closely and I communicate with, that there’s currently 1 million podcasts out there as opposed to about 28 million YouTube channels. Podcasting is still relatively, it’s not new but it’s not reached maturity yet. So you can absolutely still create compelling podcasts to stand out. The other thing to keep in mind, Mike, is there’s a lot of podcasts out there that are dead. They’re not even being actively produced anymore, which is maybe where the half million number comes from because there’s a lot of people that start a podcast, they record three episodes, they’re like, “I’d rather just watch Netflix.” and they give it up.

[00:08:30] Mike Morawski: What’s funny is I outreach all the time, every day, a couple people a day, trying to get on podcasts because I have a story that’s a little bit unique and my goal is to tell it to the world. You wouldn’t believe the amount of podcasts I reach out and they say, “oh, I don’t do that show anymore.” It’s funny you bring that up, but I never really thought I’d get into it as much as I do, but I love this cause this conversation between you and I is a conversation that we probably would have had anyhow, but why not record it and let the world see what’s going on.

[00:09:01] Mark Savant: There’s the value, it builds the know, like, and trust. People listen to you talking day after day, week after week, you’re open, you’re transparent. You’re sharing your story. That’s what I do with The After-hours Entrepreneur podcast. They feel like they know you before you’ve even gotten on the phone. It’s really powerful.

[00:09:15] Mike Morawski: I do this one, but then I do another one on Saturday with a co-host. We have 50 years of multifamily experience between the two of us and we get on and we call it Raw Unscripted Radio. We bring somebody on, no script, we just go at it and always wind up in some rabbit hole, trying to figure out how to get out. So it’s always great. Hey, you’re a professional in this space. Tell me if I was going to be your client, why and how I could use my podcast to grow my multifamily real estate coaching business.

[00:09:50] Mark Savant: Podcasts to me, really incredible for coaches, because again, the biggest challenge as a coach is getting that first dollar from a client. The reason it’s hard to get that first client is they’re trying to feel out do I know this person? Are they going to be here tomorrow? Are they going to give me what they say? Can I truly trust what they’re giving me? It’s that unknown. When you’ve already got a presence, when you’ve already got a show out there, you’ve already eliminated that completely. The other advantage obviously is you’re a pretty competitive market right now. There’s a lot of people out there that are coaching, getting into real estate and whatnot. It’s a huge way to stay top of mind, and to be actually known for something that you’re creating.

[00:10:26] The other thing that really doesn’t get talked about enough is the way that we communicate now is very different. The way we communicated even 5 years ago or 10 years ago. It’s completely changed, completely shifted. How often are you going to the mall now versus 20 years ago? The mall near my house is basically dead, it’s more of a flea market now than anything. I’m driving past old computer cities, they’re all dead. So anyway, the point I’m trying to make is the way that we communicate and do business is very different. One of the reasons I love podcasting is it’s teaching you the most important skill that you can be learning right now. That’s how to commute and how to teach digitally. It’s just evolving so rapidly.

[00:11:00] If you’re not learning how to record your thoughts and produce them and scale them out, you’re going to be in trouble in the next five years, because I tell you what, your competitor is learning how to do that. When I have a decision between you and someone that’s actually producing content that I find valuable, you’re gonna have a hard time changing my mind.

[00:11:17] Mike Morawski: So how do you know that you’re staying relevant? I’ve been in this space 30 years, I didn’t just read a book and say this would be a great thing to teach about. I’ve been doing real estate investing for 30 years and I’ve got one of these stories where I had a little ten-year sabbatical in between because of some mistakes I made along the way. I’m really one of the only guys out there talking about it. So when you talk about what separates you from somebody else, how do you know what that is? Cause you tell your story over and over again, it becomes mundane to you. But how do you know that it’s not become mundane to the general public?

[00:11:53] Mark Savant: This is an interesting point, Mike, because I think a lot of times when people think of podcasting, it’s a one-way street, it’s a one way road. People listen to your episode, they leave a review on iTunes maybe once, and then that’s it, it’s really important that you build an engaged community, it doesn’t really matter how many people are listening to your episodes. Again, this depends on your goals, we can go really deep on goals and the way you set up your show, whatnot. But it’s about delivering something that is in line with what your customer needs and their needs are always changing, we already established the world’s changing really quick. What happens if there’s an interest rate flip? Or that the government gives some sort of new house buying benefit? Or there’s a leasing moratorium? Who knows what the future holds. I think that for me, the biggest thing is trying to engage, trying to get feedback from your audience directly.

[00:12:37] You can do that in different ways. My email list has been a really powerful way of sending out emails, the new episodes live, what do you think? I get a pretty good response back from that, we’re ranging about 35% open rate, 5% click-through rate, et cetera, et cetera, but that’s part of it. Another thing that I think is really important, Mike, is when you’re producing a podcast, it’s really easy to get overwhelmed with everywhere that you can be. Gotta be on YouTube, gotta be on Tik ToK, Instagram reels, LinkedIn of course, I need to be there. So it can be easy to get overwhelmed. For most podcasters that don’t have a full production team behind them, I think it’s best to focus on just two platforms, focus on your podcast and one social media platform. The reason is, one place is your long form content where someone can listen to an hour, half hour, what have you. The other place is for short, quick engagement type posts. Like a poll, what type of multi-family home do you think is the best investment right now? It’s just ways to feel the market and feel what people are really interested in talking about.

[00:13:25] Mike Morawski: Yeah, I got a couple questions, let’s talk about social media for a minute. What do you think is the best social media platform out there today?

[00:13:34] Mark Savant: It depends on your goals, it depends who you’re speaking to. If you’re speaking to Gen Z, you’re probably gonna be hanging out on Tik Tok, if you’re speaking to corporate business investors and six figure income type earners, you’re probably going to be on LinkedIn. If you’re trying to talk to mom and grandma, you’re probably on Facebook. So there’s different platforms that you can be on depending on your goals. Really, I think the end of the day, when you’re starting a podcast, there’s a few questions you need to ask yourself. One of the questions that you should be asking yourself is, who do I speak to? The clearer you are on who you speak to, then you can start to define: where do I want to spend my time? What should the name of my show be? What is this psychographic Googling? What are they typing into YouTube? How can I show up and provide relevant information?

[00:14:10] So again, to answer your question, “where should I be” really depends on this one question of “who do I speak to?” Is a big one.

[00:14:18] Mike Morawski: Yeah, interesting. I’ve been at this now for 20 months and after the first of the year I’m going to hit a hundred episodes on one of my shows and I’ll be just short of that on the other one. I like what you said about people they do 2, 3, 5 episodes and they go, “oh man, this is a lot of work.” And it is a lot of work and I have a pretty strong team behind me and I know that I would not be where I’m at today if it wasn’t for the people around me. I got a couple of VA’s that are MIA this week because of pneumonia and one likes to travel a whole bunch.

[00:14:51] Mark Savant: To be fair, that’s one of the reasons that I started my production agency, because it’s really difficult to get it all down and to figure out what colors operate, and what’s the key word, and what’s the new layout for LinkedIn videos this month, what hashtags are trending. So hard to keep up with that, so that’s why Mark Savant Media was born. So I can take that off the client’s hand and we can handle the production ourselves because it’s just it’s ever changing. Before you even hit record, Mike, I think this is important thing. It’s something that I’m always reiterating both with myself and with clients is, I think the number one question you should ask yourself when you start your show is “why am I even starting this podcast in the first place? Why am I doing it?” Because different people have different goals. Some people want to have a radio show, some people want to fill their funnel, they want leads by interviewing people that might potentially buy from them. Some people want to create a community or they want to be the next Joe Rogan. So there’s a lot different reasons, but being clear on exactly why I’m doing this, that kind of helps lead you to better decisions in the formulation of your show.

[00:15:53] Mike Morawski: Here’s one reason I can tell you why I’ve been doing it and I’ve noticed, I don’t think I started out with this intention, but it’s kinda grown which is kinda cool. It’s helped me in my public speaking arena. I’ve been a public speaker for years, but it’s really helped me carry more of a message. I get to listen to other people, I have to actively listen and especially in the sales arena, you have to be a great active listener and it’s helped me to be able to convey a message a lot more. I pay attention to the Gary V’s, the Tony Robbins, the Dave Melzer’s of the world, the people that are out there really in that public platform. Do I want to be a Joe Rogan? No, I really, don’t, not from a podcast standpoint, but here’s what I do want to do. I want to be on a platform out there where I am a public speaker and people call me to tell my story, bringing hope and inspiration.

[00:16:47] Mark Savant: I want to stay on this for just a minute here, because this is a very significant shift that people are talking about, but not everyone may be as aware of. That’s the shift to an influencer economy, right? Because in the past, distribution all went through a few different channels, you go through ABC, NBC and CBS, and that’s where you run your ads. If you want someone to be a spokesperson for your brand, you need to speak to the football player or the celebrity, the Victoria Secret model, you need the celebrities. But things have completely changed because distribution is not only monopolized by a few TV channels or a few radio channels. You can listen to hundreds of thousands of different creators and finding your voice within this influencer economy is incredibly important for what’s going to happen next.

[00:17:27] That’s going to be everything from finding a job and understanding how to communicate and having that built-in brand. If you want a side hustle, it’s going to provide your home with more stability, there’s because I have influence now I can have action taken. I’ll give you a perfect example of this, I bought a product, it was a computer software that helps you manage your social media accounts. I run a podcast production agency, it’s important. So I bought this product that paid the year in full, in about 30 days or so, I recognized that this is not a good fit. It wasn’t doing some things that my team needed. So I canceled it, came back a few weeks later and I hadn’t got a refund and I reached out to them and I said, “Hey, what’s up?” ” We don’t do refunds for these types of cancellations.” I said, ” the hell you don’t.”

[00:18:07] You know what I did? I went to my network, I went to Twitter, I went to LinkedIn and I started posting that this brand, I tagged them, they’re ripping me off. People need to know. And guess what? Because I had an audience, within a few hours, it was solved and I had my refund back. It’s because I have some clout in the market. I have some of that influence, which is becoming more and more important.

[00:18:28] Mike Morawski: Yeah. How do you think you grew that? Where does that come from?

[00:18:31] Mark Savant: Time. Certainly time is part of it. That’s the other part of what I do when it comes to consulting is trying to help people get there faster. It really comes down to asking yourself the right questions. Why do I have a podcast? Who am I speaking to? What is the problem that they have that I solve? Once you start getting clear on solving people’s real problems, you just start to create content around that and then over time, it starts to snowball. The better you are at it, the faster it snowballs, and that’s something that I think we all want to be not only just studying but practicing. Just trying to get out there and improving your show regularly, it has a very significant snowball effect.

[00:19:07] Mike Morawski: One of the things that we talked about early before we started the show today, and you said, oh man, I’ve already put out four fires before this even happened today. So a question I always like to ask my guests is how do you make high stake decisions? So obviously you’ve got a fire going on and you got something happening in your life. How do you make high stake decisions when they come up?

[00:19:26] Mark Savant: So for me, high stake decisions really come down to systems and trying to create processes so that hopefully you can even remove yourself from putting out that fire. So once I solve a fire once, I try to put a system or standard in place and try to off source it so the next time that fire pops up, one of my team members can help resolve that fire. So that’s one thing that I look at. I think setting expectations is underrated too, at least in what I do consulting and in agency management, setting a realistic expectation upfront so that the fire never even occurs. I find a lot of problems that I have with clients is because something happens that they didn’t expect or they didn’t want to have happen. So trying to put the systems in, and set a better expectation upfront helps to prevent those fires. I think the reality is that when you sign up to be an entrepreneur, when you sign up to create something from nothing, when you sign up to put food on people’s plates, you’re also signing up for the fires. It’s just part of it.

[00:20:18] Mike Morawski: Isn’t that funny, I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 23 years old, that’s a long time ago. I was an entrepreneur back when it was not the sexy or chic thing to do, and now today you can’t hire help because everybody’s an entrepreneur. Everybody’s got a side hustle that’s starting to take off. I had a great assistant working for me, in a very short period of time changed my whole life, changed the complexion of my business, and all of a sudden comes to me one day and goes, “hey, my side hustle took off. I’m going to have to leave.” I was like, are you kidding me? So that’s the kind of stuff that happens in today’s economy, right?

[00:20:54] Mark Savant: Yeah, that’s going to be happening more and more as people realize that maybe I don’t need to drive into the office and I can start this side hustle. COVID really accelerated that. Maybe you agree or disagree with this, but because the economy has been so good for so long. It’s been, I think, easier for people to get things started, but I think people undervalue as well that feeling of stability. Because to your point, oh my gosh, like every Instagram model with a bang energy is now an entrepreneur, but that’s not entrepreneurship. But you’re the definition you’re doing it when it’s not cool, you just have this kind of drive inside of you. And I think because entrepreneurship has become like cool because of the Gary Vaynerchuk’s popularize it and because it’s easy because it’s so easy, like you can set up a website in an hour and actually be selling product within an hour.

[00:21:35] I think people have this misunderstanding that it’s easier than it really is. The last four and a half years of me trying to build out this agency, and all the different failures that I’ve had, the respect I have for someone that’s been doing it for decades, I’ve really grown at another level of respect. It’s very difficult.

[00:21:51] Mike Morawski: Yeah. As much as you say Vaynerchuk glorifies this, makes it really cool. He also tells you if you think you’re going to sit in your mom and dad’s basement, and do something and sponge off of them, go figure something else out. Go get an f’n job. So it’s funny cause he shoots both sides of the aisle.

[00:22:10] Mark Savant: And he’s right too because it opens up all sorts of doors when you start proactively taking control of your life and your future. He also will tell you there’s no crying in baseball as the old saying goes.

[00:22:20] Mike Morawski: Right, just because you have a hundred thousand followers, a lot of times some of that is incongruent. I’ve got a thousand followers on Instagram right now and I’ve been at it for six months. I didn’t buy them, it’s all organic.

[00:22:35] Mark Savant: You don’t want to have fake followers because what happens is when Instagram shows your fake follower an image and your fake follower doesn’t care, they don’t like, they don’t stop, they don’t comment, they don’t look. Then Instagram starts to think this content isn’t good and it doesn’t show it to the next person in line. That’s one of the things I see with clients, they’ll come on, they’ll have 15,000 Instagram followers and I’m looking through them, they’re all robots. You want real human beings, that’s very important.

[00:22:59] Mike Morawski: Yeah, there is a difference and you can notice that difference if you’re paying attention to it. As an entrepreneur, you have to pay attention to the metrics, the numbers. I always tell people all the time, every good business knows it’s numbers, you need to. One of the big things I talk about is you’ve got to know your numbers. I knew when I was selling real estate, that if I made 20,000 dials a year, that I’d sell 125 listings a year, it was just simple math. I knew I made $8 every time I picked the phone up. I’d go to the office and dial for dollars. You’ve got to know those numbers. Some entrepreneurs go spend a thousand dollars and get on a private jet and take some pictures and go have a nice car and a couple of models, but it’s all fake. Where does it come when you really want to go to the bank and cash it in? You know, It’s not there.

[00:23:45] Mark Savant: This problem that you’re alluding to Mike, as we move into this influencer economy where everyone needs to have this digital attention. I think it highlights exactly why having a podcast is so important because it’s not just a picture of you on Instagram. It’s actually an intimate setting where someone’s putting on headphones, listening to your voice directly in their ear and you’re teaching them something. You’re showing up. All of a sudden you build that trust. They don’t look at you as eh, is this guy for real or not? No, they know you’re for real cause they can listen to you, they can hear you, they can engage with you.

[00:24:16] Mike Morawski: This is interesting because I just had a conversation with my marketing guy, and we talked about if you were going to create a Superbowl commercial for what you do, what do you want it to look like? So we brainstormed for a while and I said I want to have three people come in, a construction worker that’s just laboring on a job; some guy sitting at his desk after hours like this, just shaking his head; and a woman walking out of work, it’s dark out, you could just tell she’s all disheveled and had a rough day. That would be the beginning, then we went through some of these other things, what we were trying to accomplish. At the end, can we have the swimming pool and the Ferrari and he goes, no Mike that’s old network marketing stuff, that’s fake. It’s pretend, you don’t want to pretend, you want it to be real. That’s the same thing that we’re talking about right now. This is interesting conversation.

[00:25:06] Mark Savant: Yeah, transparency is really important nowadays. Privacy is essentially dead at this point. We talked a little bit earlier about podcasting and a lot of people are just not really sure where to start. The best thing to do is just get started. You can always evolve and adapt and change things, it’s not set in stone, you can always adjust things. But I think that just getting started in documenting your process, what are you working on? What are you challenged by? What are you struggling with? I’m going to bring on experts who can actually help me with this problem. For me, that’s when podcasting really started to get good. When I can bring on someone like Pat Flynn to help me get a podcast rebrand done.

[00:25:40] I had a client that I was challenged with, he’s in this unique space with his podcast and I was talking to Cliff Ravenscraft, who’s got 41 podcasts, he’s helped tens of thousands of people. And I said, Hey cliff, this is the problem I’m having with this client, how can we fix it? He gave me some specific actual tips. I can just go on for hours about how much podcasting can change the way you’re perceived in the marketplace and even the way that you can service and help your clients level up.

[00:26:05] Mike Morawski: Technology resources over and above a cell phone and computer, what do you like? Give me a couple of technology resources you really like to use.

[00:26:15] Mark Savant: So if you are going to be launching a podcast, I think it’s definitely worthwhile investing in a microphone. The mic I’m on right now cost less than a hundred bucks, at least it did when I bought it. So you can buy a great microphone, super cheap. I would also recommend investing in a good webcam. Most podcasts are going to have some sort of video element into them nowadays. I could get deep into that, but having a good webcam, that’s 10 ADP and a good mic. I think that’s what you want from hardware. Again, you can do that for a couple hundred bucks or less, like a really good sounding and looking setup. Audio is key. Another thing that I’m a big proponent of, if you’re going to be doing remote style recordings, just like we’re doing now. For people that are serious, I recommend upgrading from zoom to something that’s a little bit more made for podcasting. A technology that I use it’s called Riverside.fm and it’s more designed for podcasting specifically.

[00:27:02] One of the things that I love about is that it records locally on each side of the recording on your side and on my side. It records a high quality audio and video file and then after the recording’s done, it ships that to a cloud. So long story short it doesn’t compress your file, so your audio, your video quality is a lot better on a program like Riverside. I’m a big proponent. I have a free trial offer if anyone is interested in that, hit me up on Instagram @marksavantmedia and I’ll hook you up.

[00:27:29] Mike Morawski: With Riverside, can you go live on any platform?

[00:27:31] Mark Savant: You can, the short answer is you can. If you were wanting to go live and stream to multiple platforms at once, I would probably look at a different program like StreamYard, that’s a good one if you’re a multi-streaming. Just to grant break down what that means, that means you’re going live on one video camera, but it’s being distributed against multiple platforms all at the same time. So I can go live here and people can watch me on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, all these different platforms all at once.

[00:27:58] Mike Morawski: We’ve been having that conversation about StreamYard lately. I think StreamYard would be the solution for that.

[00:28:03] Mark Savant: Last I checked, it didn’t have multi-streaming to Instagram. Instagram’s a little weird the way it works, so what you could do for that is just take out Instagram on your phone and just prop it up next to your webcam, something like that. So you can have that also at the same time

[00:28:16] Mike Morawski: We could have done that right now, huh? Hey, how’s my microphone?

[00:28:19] Mark Savant: You sound good, you sound good.

[00:28:20] Mike Morawski: It’s a Blue Yeti.

[00:28:22] Mark Savant: Blue Yeti is a great one, one of the things I like about Blue Yeti it’s good at picking up rooms. So you don’t have to be like right in front of it, but that can also be a negative too. If you’re in a room with like wood floors and not a lot of the panels to absorb sound. For example, in your room, you could put up some foam to help absorb some of the wave lengths and it would probably reduce some of the echo. The mic I’m using here is an Audio-Technica ATR 2100. It’s what we call a dynamic cardioid mic, which means it doesn’t pick up everything that’s going on around me in the room. It’s only what’s directly in front of it.

[00:28:53] Mike Morawski: This has been great, let’s shift gears a little bit. One technique, one system, one thought that you would give a new entrepreneur just coming into the world of being an entrepreneur. What would that look like today?

[00:29:06] Mark Savant: Step one is don’t focus on all the fancy stuff. Just focus on one person whose problem you can solve, test it, try it, solve one person’s problem. Then you can look at how can I turn this into fixing two people’s problems. Don’t get so caught up in I need to file for an LLC and I need a website and I need the marketing. Just say how can I solve a problem and get paid for it? That first dollar is the hardest dollar to make, but once you’ve made and proved that you can make $1, then the second dollar and every dollar after that becomes easier.

[00:29:37] Mike Morawski: Awesome advice, awesome advice. Three quick questions, we’ll call this a fire round. Favorite book?

[00:29:43] Mark Savant: Favorite business book would be the Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferris.

[00:29:47] Mike Morawski: Ah, great book. Awesome book. How about best restaurant you’ve ever eaten at?

[00:29:52] Mark Savant: My favorite restaurant would have to be Raglan Road at downtown Disney. It’s an Irish restaurant where they dance, they do these Irish jigs. They brought my daughter up at age three to do dancing. So Raglan Road would probably be my top favorite.

[00:30:05] Mike Morawski: You mean Coyote Ugly don’t you?

[00:30:07] Mark Savant: Well, it’s more family friendly. It’s Disney, come on, she’s three. Okay, we’re not there yet. Geez, don’t scare me.

[00:30:15] Mike Morawski: Favorite tourist attraction?

[00:30:16] Mark Savant: I would say Robbie’s on Marathon Key. I’m in Florida, I love the ocean, love the beach and Robbie’s is a really cool stop halfway down to Key West. You can feed these giant Tarpon, shark, tons of pelicans, a really cool spot most people don’t know about.

[00:30:33] Mike Morawski: Cool. Cool. Mark, how do people get ahold of you if they want to talk to you about podcasting and engage you in your service?

[00:30:40] Mark Savant: Happy to help anyone, hit me up contact@marksavantmedia.com. That’s contact@marksavantmedia.com. I’m certainly willing to help whether that’s a consultation or you just have a couple of questions, some resources, I got your back.

[00:30:55] Mike Morawski: Thanks mark. I appreciate it, thanks for being here. Certainly look forward to continuing the conversation with you.

[00:31:01] Mark Savant: Anytime, Mike.

[00:31:02] Kristen: Thank you, Mike, and thank you for joining us for another great episode of Insider Secrets. As always, Insider Secrets is brought to you by My Core Intentions. Wherever you hang out on social media, you will find Mike and My Core Intentions, please like and follow us to get the most up-to-date real estate investing trends.

[00:31:22] Visit mycoreintentions.com, where you can get expert coaching on all things, real estate investing and property managers. If you’re looking to become an expert, Mike’s coaching will help you scale your real estate investment business. We’re looking forward to having you back again next week for more Insider Secrets.