EverydaySpy Podcast - The Secret to Becoming Popular

Episode Date: April 4, 2023

Having a healthy social life is a constant balancing act between being unknown and being known. But in business and career, being 'unknown' can ruin you; it can kill your career ambitions and end your business before they ever even start. In this episode, Andrew explains a little-known HACK he learned at CIA to grow popularity, reputation, and credibility even among people who have never met you! If you know the feeling of hitting a glass ceiling, getting stuck in a professional rut, or being 'blocked' from your personal goals, you don't want to miss this conversation... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My name is Andrew Bustamante, and this is everyday espionage. There is no way to talk about a tactical advantage without also talking about how you can secure exponential growth. And what does exponential growth mean? I'm not talking about exponential growth as a person or professional development or self-improvement. I'm talking about literally how you grow your sales, how you grow your audience, how you grow your fans, how you grow your fans, you grow your business. That's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the exponential growth of the people who know you exist. Because in order to sell anything, in order to run a successful business, in order to become an influencer, in order to have any kind of brand, people have to know

you exist. And it's the same way in espionage. If you want someone to sell you secrets, if you want someone to become a traitor against their country and side with the United States, the only way you can do that is if you have a lot of people that you can choose from. Because it's not like the average person becomes a traitor. It's not like the average person engages in espionage. In fact, the average person steers well clear of espionage because they know it's illegal. They know it's unethical. They know it's a crime. So in order to find the few people who have, you know, have the potential to become information sources or intelligence sources, you have to get as many people as possible into your network, as many people as possible that you can shake hands with, introduce

yourself to, talk to, and learn to understand. So it's almost the exact same concept in business. If you want to sell a thousand products, you need to talk to 10,000 people. If you want to sell a million products, you need to talk to 10 million people. And this is something that, is a real challenge for entrepreneurs and startup owners and business owners and salespeople and and pretty much anybody at the point in their career where they are responsible for generating revenue. And if you're in a senior managing position or if you're an executive position, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Because when you become responsible for generating revenue for the company, the whole game changes. So today, I want to talk about a tool that we use

at the agency to gain exponential growth in terms of our audience so that you can gain exponential growth in terms of your audience right now. Whether you just want to grow your Instagram account or whether you want to be featured as a business leader in your industry, this is the trick. This is what we do at the agency. Now, we don't talk, you think from the movies that James Bond is just famous all the time, right? I mean, everywhere he goes, he says his name, he's always dressed nice, and everybody seems to know who he is. That's not how it actually works in the real spy world or in the real world in general. You have to find a way to get people to discover you. And generally, people discover new folks all the time. You meet a stranger every day. You probably meet several

strangers every day. But that doesn't mean that you like them or that you trust them or that you feel like you want to get to know them. The term that we use in espionage is that you need to build a network of advocates. Now, what is an advocate? An advocate is not someone who tries to sell you. An advocate is not a talent manager. They're not a pump up or a promotion person. An advocate is somebody with credibility, someone with authority, someone with relevance

in some field or niche of their own, who shares. you with their niche or shares you with their field or shares you with their audience. As an example, you've probably seen me on a number of podcast channels, whether it's audio podcasts or YouTube podcast, you've even probably seen me on some of my television appearances. Each of those appearances is an example of me using an advocate to expand my audience. I just had a fantastic interview with Sean Ryan. Sean Ryan is a super popular YouTube podcaster and audio podcaster. And most of you listening right now have probably seen or listened in to some part of that

interview that I did with Sean. Now, Sean's a great guy. And Sean has a super passionate, really loyal audience. So when Sean has a guest like me on his show, his audience immediately connects with me. because they trust Sean and they see Sean trusts me. That is an advocate. So now, Sean's million plus member audience, they are introduced to me through the advocate. And as a result, they become that much more likely to listen to me, hear what I have to say, give me a fair shake, give me a chance to impress them. And I'm willing to bet a lot of you listening right now,

this might even be your first episode listening to my podcast because you just recently found me on the Sean Ryan podcast. If that is in fact you, then you know firsthand exactly what it feels like when an advocate represents you to their fan base. Now this has been, this process of having advocates represent you is super popular in espionage because you can imagine when you're trying to find someone who has access to secrets, those are hard. people to find. And then when you do find them, the last thing they want to do is let you know that they have access to secrets. So a lot of times we try to use advocates who will introduce us or represent us or lend us their credibility so that when we finally have a chance to talk to a target

of interest, some of those barriers, some of those suspicions, some of the skepticism is already reduced because it's a hard job to find someone who will sell you secrets or it's hard. It's hard enough to find someone who's overseas willing to talk to you, let alone someone who's willing to consider espionage alongside you against their own country. So you can see why this advocate who stands in the middle is such an important person in building a relationship quickly, establishing trust, and even helping to secure long-term loyalty in the world of espionage, but also in the business world, the sales world, and the professional world. Let me walk you through a little bit of how I used advocates to get to where I am today.

Because if you've been with me since 2019 or whether you just recently found your way to Everyday Spy and to this podcast, then you know that where I am right now is nowhere near where I was in 2019. The podcast that I just did with Sean, as I'm recording this with you right now, that podcast is growing at a rate of 250 downloads per minute. that is a massive amount of growth. And that's because Sean has a huge following. I have a large following.

And the two of us have very strong and overlapping opinions and passions in our specific niches. So the way that you get explosive, exponential growth like that at the speed of 250 podcast downloads per minute, the way you get that is when you have an advocate to support you. Now, the first time I ever used an advocate in growing my business was actually when I did a charity event in 2019 with a local art studio that was also a nonprofit studio in downtown St. Petersburg. Now, my goal was not to make them an advocate. My goal was just to build a relationship to see if that's art studio had the potential to be an advocate in the future. Now, what ended up happening is by coordinating a series of lectures, I was going to represent a series

of lectures at this art studio, that art studio was so impressed by my willingness to collaborate with them that they actually began advocating for me without me even knowing it. And the result of that was that a major newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times, which is a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper that is located in the Tampa Bay area, the art studio reached out to their contact at the Tampa Bay Times to invite that contact to come interview me and do a featured story about our charity event. That story that the Tampa Bay Times ran that they wrote and created, they actually ended up publishing on the front page of their Friday issue that week, which of course, completely transformed the turnout for our charity events.

So we had this door-busting charity event that happened in part because the art studio advocated to a local newspaper and the local newspaper featured us on the front page. Very shortly after that story went live, I got interviews or I got invitations to interview on local television channels. So the local NBC channel, the local ABC channel, the local CBS channel all came out to interview me and hear about what we did at the charity event. Well, when those local channels ran an interview, the larger channel syndicated the interview and sent it nationwide. So now, all of the sudden, I went from being virtually unknown in July of 2019 to known nationally on three different television channels within five days, all because of the power of one advocate

at a non-profit art studio in St. Petersburg, Florida. But that's not where it ended, right? Now that I had this advocate at the art studio, they had shared me with these credible media sources, CBS, NBC, ABC, Tampa Bay Times. So now each of these groups who also interviewed me, who also built a relationship with me, they also became advocates. So now the stories and the snippets that they were running became story leads that were picked up by the Houston Chronicle in Texas, by the AP Newswire and sent internationally. I was getting invitations from business magazines, culture magazines.

I even got an invitation from a niche sci-fi magazine because they read one line in one of my Reddit interviews that said I was a sci-fi fan. So you can see with every new step, there's a new advocate coming on board. And every new advocate that comes on board starts to introduce you to a larger audience still because they're using their lending.

These advocates are lending, their credibility, their reputation, their expertise, into the larger mission of sharing your brand, your vision, your purpose, your product with a larger and larger audience. The magazine features and the newspaper features and the local TV features all turned into national cable television invitations. And I started showing up on reality shows. I started getting invitations to be a contestant on game shows. And some of you may have even seen me on ABCs to Tell the Truth in 2020. That may have been 2021, actually. But you may have seen me on some of these game shows and some of these reality shows participating as a guest expert. And those appearances have incredible

weight because now the production quality, meaning the quality of camera, the quality of lighting, the makeup, the hair, all of that production quality now impacts the viewer because they start to see you through the lens of how you're represented on screen. So when I was doing a local a local spot for TV news or CBS News in Pinellas Park or Pinellas County, Florida, you know, it was just somebody coming over to my house. And I did my own makeup. I did my own hair. And we just used the ambient light in my room.

So you can imagine it wasn't a very high quality television interview. By the time I ended up on a stage with ABC doing a game show, everything was well lit. Everything was meticulously shaped. Someone took care of my hair. Someone made sure that they powder. the oil off my face. It was really quite hilarious. But the end result was that now I had a national television show, essentially advocating my credibility, advocating that their audience, their customer base should take me seriously, should consider me a valid, credible lead if they're interested

in what I'm talking about. It's been an incredible ride to start with a charity of event at a nonprofit art studio in my own hometown and then end up syndicated on national television in Los Angeles just two years later. And that's where all of the momentum for everyday spy started. It was all from that complimentary charity lecture event that everything started. And it's not because I did something right. It's not because I had some connection or some family friend or some political, you know, godfather who was watching over me. It's because I understood this concept of advocates. And I was looking for advocates. And when I found my first advocate, luck set in. And my first advocate turned out to be somebody who was very well connected. So that same kind

of process can work for you. Whether you're trying to get a promotion at work, whether you're trying to win a new client, whether you're trying to increase the audience that's being exposed to your digital brand. The idea of advocates is the idea I want you to take home today. It's the tactic I want you to have in your hip pocket because so few people use advocates. When you follow the strategies that are shared on YouTube or Instagram or any number of the click baity things that you see come across your TikTok feed, most of them say that you have to hustle. And most of them say that if you want to grow your business, you have to be out there constantly working and constantly pitching and constantly shaking hands and constantly selling business cards. There's entire networking groups that make money off

of basically getting people together so that they can swap business cards once a week. It's ridiculous because anything you do by yourself is always going to be limited by your time and your connections. When you leverage advocates, you're actually increasing the total amount of time and the total amount of resources that can be used to expand your brand. Because now you can shake a bunch of people's hands in one place while your advocate is shaking a bunch of hands in a completely different place. And while you're sitting there pitching your products and your services, your advocate is somewhere else speaking very intelligently and genuinely. about their positive experience with you, which means everybody in the advocate's circle of influence is now hearing a positive, valid, credible message that's authenticated by the advocate themselves, which makes them that much more interested in you. If you want to see how this

has worked in your own personal life, just think about the last time you went to a restaurant or maybe the last time you picked a dentist or a pediatrician or a grocery store because a friend recommended it. Guess what that friend was? That friend was an advocate for the brand that they recommended. So whether you went to a specific Whole Foods on a different side of town because one of your friends said that they had a better deli or whether you went to a different Thai restaurant because your friend said they had the best curry, your friend was acting as a trusted

advocates on behalf of a brand that is now doing business with you where otherwise you would have never known that brand even existed. Now, how does that apply to those of you who are entrepreneurs in the digital space or entrepreneurs that are trying to increase your followership, your podcast audience, your business audience, your newsletter audience, whatever it might be. Here's how it applies. We live in an information era. unlike anything you've ever seen or anyone has seen in the past. And in that information era, you can actually start to research the potential future advocates that you want to meet.

This is how podcasting works and this is how I have become popular on podcasts. Because when I get a podcast invitation or when somebody recommends me to another podcaster, then I have an opportunity to meet and be. friend that podcaster and invite them or turn them into an advocate for my brand, for me. Now, if you listen to my podcast, you've heard me talk a lot about, you know, guest spots that I've done, guest interviews that I've done. That process is called guesting. When I go on someone else's podcast or I appear on someone else's show, that is called guesting. When you are a good guest, then the host becomes an advocate for you

and hosts share guest recommendations among each other. So back in August of last year, I was invited by Lex Friedman to be a guest on his podcast. Now, at the time, I didn't know who Lex was, and I didn't know that he had a podcast. And he had a very large podcast. Back then, his podcast was about, I think, 2.1 million viewers, 2.1 million subscribers on YouTube.

So here I Lex reaches out to me. I meet Lex. We agreed to a podcast interview. I come out and have a fantastic interview with him because Lex is an excellent interviewer. This is also important. I am, I'm an okay guest, but the interviewer who's interviewing me makes the podcast phenomenal. The reason I've had great podcasts is not because I'm a great speaker. It's because the interviewers are phenomenal interviewers.

They know their topic, they know their questions, they know their audience, and they dig into this subject. Whenever you see a podcast interview that you don't like, you can't really blame the guest. You have to blame the interviewer for not being able to present the guests in a way that the audience is interested. Lex is one of those people that can always present his guest in a way that's relevant and interesting and impactful to his audience. That's why there are some people who don't like Lex's podcast, but there are many, many millions who do. Once Lex interviewed me, all of a sudden, Lex became an advocate. That doesn't mean Lex started selling me and pitching me to all of his friends. What that meant is the millions of people who trust Lex Friedman saw me on his podcast, watched our interaction, took something valuable home with them from that conversation.

and then through that relationship, they started to trust and watch and follow me. So Lex's podcast, Lex's authority, credibility, expertise, he lended all of that to me. That is the process that we call becoming an advocate. So Lex became my advocate. And because of that interview, I was invited to other interviews, including the London Real, which is one of the top podcasts in London. Another interviewer named James English, who runs the top. podcast in Scotland. I was invited by Chris Williamson who runs Modern Wisdom. Some very large

podcast names saw me, discovered me through Lex. And then they reached out and they invited me to come interview with them. And you can see how the process repeated again. So now I have a relationship with these other large podcasters. They are also well prepared for their interview. Those interviews also feed and add value to their customer base. So then those podcasters become advocates for my brand. And it grows and it grows from there. What's really powerful about the process of building advocates is that advocates don't ever stop. They don't ever go away. Instead, especially in the digital world, once something becomes a piece of recorded digital content, whether it's an audio podcast or a video, YouTube video, or some other kind of video,

it lives in the digital world forever. So new people are constantly finding. these pieces of content that were created in the past. And then those past pieces of content lend current advocacy to make people find, discover, and trust me and trust my brand everyday spy. That's exactly how I ended up coming across Sean Ryan's calendar. Sean Ryan saw me on a podcast, connected with the interview because the interviewer that was interviewing me was an excellent interviewer, and then that inspired Sean to come up with his own set of questions for me. So then when I sat down with Sean, again, Sean is an excellent interviewer with a very high production quality podcast. So when we had our conversation, if you've watched our

podcast interview yet, if you haven't, jump on and watch it, listen to it, wherever you listen to podcasts, you'll see very genuine excitement, very genuine chemistry, very genuine friendship between Sean and I throughout that entire podcast. That happens because, because Sean brought me in. I was advocated by someone else. Sean trusted me. Sean communicated with me openly. We built a genuine trusting relationship over the process of our podcast. And now, Sean is an advocate for me and for everyday spy. And guess what? My calendar continues to fill up every few weeks with new, large podcast invitations. Now, yes, I still get smaller podcast invitations too. And sometimes I'll say yes to a small podcast if I see that

that interviewer takes the time to be a very diligent, very thoughtful, very engaging interviewer to feed their audience. Because if the interviewer is more focused on on creating something other than a high impact interview, then they're not really thinking about their audience. And you are trying to grow your audience, so you need to find people who care about their audience. That's how you get that right kind of advocate. If you find someone who's more interested in selling ad space, or you find someone who's more interested in clickbait, or if you find someone who's more interested in slinging, you know, false headlines and making empty promises, that's not the kind of person that you want to advocate for you, because the audience that finds that person most

likely doesn't trust that person. So now you have an advocate who has no audience. And if your advocate has no audience, then you don't have an audience to pull from them, right? That's how advocates work. Now, I talked a lot about the podcast world and the TV world, the newspaper world, and the media world. How does this work in a corporation? How does this work in your daily career? if you're not trying to build influence or if you're not trying to build an audience outside, it works the exact same way. Only instead of trying to build an audience by the hundreds or the tens of thousands, you're trying to build an audience with the few key decision makers in your company.

If your manager is a roadblock, then you don't need to worry about making your manager an advocate for you. Instead, find the people who are just as hardworking, just as diligent, just as dream, in their career as you are. Find the people who work in the budget office. Find the people who work in finance. Find the people who work in HR. Find the people who work in operations. Find the people who work in sales. Find those few people who have the same level of commitment and the same level of professionalism that you do for your company. When you find those people, work directly with them to support them to help make their life and their job easier. And what's going to happen is that they will develop

trust in you. As they develop trust in you, they become advocates for you. So now when a new project comes or a new implementation comes or a new client comes on board, these advocates think of you first. So you get the first invitation to be the next account manager. You get the invitation to go to the next offsite. You get the invitation to take the new management job. That's how you use advocates in a corporate setting or in a business setting. You don't need to impress your boss. There's a good chance that your boss is not impressive to their boss anyways. Who you need to impress are the people who have the authority, the credibility to advocate for you. And all of the hardest working, highest reputation people in the office are the kind of advocates that you want.

You're not looking for people who have title or people who have position. You're looking for people who have credibility. And when someone with credibility advocates for you, you just grew your audience, you just grew your influence, you just grew your impact. And that is everyday espionage. Everyday espionage is dedicated to one thing, educating everyday people. I know that not everyone will listen, but those who listen will learn. If you learn something new today, click subscribe, review, and share the podcast with a friend. Find me on social media at EverydaySpy or on my website, Everydayspy.com. If you are up for a special challenge, visit Everydayspy.com forward slash operations and join me for an authentic spy training mission.

And above all else, remember that knowledge is freedom.