The Unsure Entrepreneur

The Unsure Entrepreneur with guest Jamie Irvine
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Podcasting, entrepreneurship, heavy duty parts, niche focus, business growth, podcast production, audience engagement, monetization, Michael Gerber, E Myth, business systems, consulting, sponsorship, content quality, audience trust.
SPEAKERS
Jamie Irvine, Roger Pierce
Cold Open
Podcasting has horrible ROI metrics. If you look at just conversion, like, horrible, like, like you, if you, if you just want quick conversions on a product, like, go buy some Facebook advertising or something else, like, but if you want to build a body of work that resonates with a specific audience, that over time, will turn into something meaningful, then I'd think of no other medium to do it.

Intro 00:00
You're listening to the unsure entrepreneur podcast with Roger Pierce, whether you're scribbling business ideas on a napkin or wrestling with the should I shouldn't I question. Get ready to explore the realities, the risks and the rewards of entrepreneurship as we share the stories, scars and successes of small business owners.

Roger Pierce 00:25
Hey everyone. Thanks for joining the podcast. Glad to have Jamie Irvine here today, and I'll share more about Jamie's impressive background in a few seconds. But meanwhile, welcome Jamie.

Jamie Irvine
Hi. Nice to be here.

Roger Pierce
Excited to have you, man.

We're going to dive into the world of podcasting, and especially podcasting for entrepreneurs, something I know you can speak at length about, so I've got a bunch of questions lined up for you today. So a bit of background for our listeners. You know, more entrepreneurs are turning to podcasts to grow their audiences and attract customers. With over 5 million podcasts globally and over 460 million podcast listeners around the world. Podcasting has become, you know, a powerful tool, not just for thought leadership, but for business growth now for niche entrepreneurs, especially, it offers a way to, you know, dominate specific verticals without needing massive followings. Today's guest, Jamie Irvin, built not only one, but two, actually three podcasts, one broad and one laser focused, and the third one, we're going to hear about too leveraging each other to build credibility, attract opportunities and generate real world business results. In this episode, we're going to dig into how you can do the same. So let me tell you a bit more about Jamie's backgrounds. You understand why he's so qualified and the perfect guest to talk about this with us here today. Jamie is a heavy duty parts industry expert with decades of experience across manufacturing, distribution and service. He's known for helping fleets reduce costs through strategic purchasing and root cause analysis. Now Jamie hosted the heavy duty parts report from 2019 to 2024 producing a mind blowing 350 episodes and earning over 25 and a half million impressions. I've been catching up on some of those episodes, so we'll talk about that along the way too. Now, before that, he hosted a podcast called Build a better business, where he interviewed over 150 business leaders, including me, if I'm not mistaken, years ago, and he's got a new podcast out. He's going to tell us about Parts for Trucks Podcast today, he serves as National Sales Director and podcast host for parts for trucks, continuing to influence the industry through smart sales strategy and very targeted communication. Jamie, did I miss anything there?

Jamie Irvine
I think you got it. You made me sound pretty good.

Roger Pierce
You're a bit intimidating to interview because, as you said, the other side of the microphone, and you're an established pro at this. My little podcast is just a year old and I'm still fumbling my way along, so bear with me, but you've been at it for years.

Jamie Irvine 03:05
Yeah, yeah, pretty soon it'll be 10 years, you know, it's hard to believe. Actually, I remember first discovering podcasts and just instantly recognizing that it was a medium that I could succeed in. I've always been someone who was blessed with the ability to speak publicly, and it really resonated with me almost immediately.

Roger Pierce 03:26
And now you're confident, you're calm, you can get on the on the microphone. It's like riding a bicycle.

Jamie Irvine 03:33
Yeah, after you do several 100 of these, keep in mind the counts that you you know, the 150 episodes with build a better business, and the 350 episodes with Heavy Duty Parts report, those were all just pre recorded episodes. I've done nearly 100 Live episodes. I've moderated done like Group Type content. Yeah, it's been, you know, I would definitely say everything. If you added it all up, I've probably got to be close to 750 different pieces of content that we've been involved in in some capacity. So still chasing the 1000, but I'll get there.

Roger Pierce 04:11
And for people to put it in cos decks for people who don't know much about podcasting, the average person makes it to 20 episodes and gives up. So…

Jamie Irvine 04:20
Well, let me speak to that. The statistics actually have changed a little bit. It used to be that the average podcaster made it 12 episodes or six months, whichever came first. So when I launched my first podcast, I made a goal to do 100 episodes, no matter what. I stuck to that, and, you know, ended up doing 150 when I started the heavy duty parts report. After that, I set an even larger goal, and obviously we we were able to hit that. But I think you have to have a real commitment to this, because, especially in the early days before I had a team, I was spending hundreds of hours developing that first show on my own, doing everything from pre production. Production, production, post production, all of it myself. And so it's definitely has to be a labor of love, because you don't make a lot of money when you first start. I'll tell you that much.

Roger Pierce 05:10
Well, I'm glad you brought that up. So again, add some context for me, paint the picture of the kind of tools and resources a solo person needs, versus the end of your Heavy Duty Parts podcast where you had a whole team. You don't need a team at the beginning to get going necessarily, do you?

Jamie Irvine 05:27
No, I mean, I had a crappy webcam, a bad microphone. The images of those first episodes and video recordings are horrible. I was using a very simple free software, you know, for editing now, all this stuff doesn't even exist anymore, because it's all changed in the last almost decade. Yeah, I mean, I was as bare bones down and dirty as you can get, and it was just determination and drive and willpower, right? Just applying brute force to get it done every week, or whatever the interval was, you know, sometimes you just have to start. And how else are you going to learn? I took inspiration from people like John Lee Dumas, who did the exact same thing. You know, when he started, he always said to his listeners, go listen to my early stuff. It was pretty bad. Well, you know, I could say the same.

Roger Pierce 06:17
You brought him up. He's one of one of our shared heroes, John Lee Dumas, Entrepreneurs On Fire. What is it? Eof.com or something (https://www.eofire.com/ ) But he is prolific, and he's pumping out what a podcast a day or more?

Jamie Irvine 06:28
He did a daily show for a long time. I'm not I haven't really followed him in the last little while, but I mean, it was daily for a while. I think he took a break after, after he had over 2000 episodes. I was privileged to be one of his guests at one point. So much of my life has changed since that episode. So you know, you can go listen to it if you want, but none of it, of what I none of what I was talking about back then applies to today. It was really great to see somebody who was able to just take an idea and really make it work. I would say for me, though I tried, in some ways, I tried to copy his format with my first podcast, and I was very broad in my subject. And what ended up happening was that that really became the reason why that first show didn't succeed, and that in the sense that it never really broke into a position where I could monetize it sufficiently enough where it would fund itself and it would grow. The subject was too broad. The days of coming out with a broad based show about one subject, like entrepreneurship had long since passed, but I didn't recognize that as a new podcaster.

Roger Pierce 07:33
I'm going to circle back to that in a second and talk to you about build a better business. But Johnny Lee Dumas go to the website Entrepreneurs on Fire. And what's cool about it, he's actually got his monthly earnings on there, and he's very transparent about it. And it encourages you to go back to the very beginning, when he first had his podcast, 2013 or 14. And it shows how he made no money, but now he's doing pretty well, yeah.

Jamie Irvine 07:56
And, actually, if you look at his overall revenue, that's been in decline now for several years, which speaks to the tough I mean, he's still doing just fine, but it actually speaks to how difficult this whole game we're in is, and how things are changing. I think there was a golden age of podcasting that has come and gone, and it's a very competitive landscape. That being said, I still believe that it is one of the best ways to develop your clients and customers and a relationship with them. And we can talk more about that in a bit.

Roger Pierce 08:31
Okay, that sounds good. So let's go back to the beginning. Build a Better Business podcast, and this is the one where you're interviewing business leaders and authors and experts. 150 interviews. Yeah. What was the impetus there to get that going? And what did you learn from those early interviews? And then eventually you transitioned out of that broader based theme,

Jamie Irvine 08:50
Yeah. So I think we have to go back a little bit. I built a business from 2009 to 2016. I sold that business in 2016 so startup to mergers and acquisitions, where I got my master's in business, if you will. I had these people phoning me all the time asking me, like, how did you scale your business? Run it remotely? We actually moved from the Vancouver area to Alberta at the end there, and was running the business completely remotely. And actually that's why we were able to sell it because the owner who bought us out basically said, I don't know. I've been doing this 25 years. I don't know how you do it. Can you show me? And I said, Well, why don't you buy it? And I'll teach you. That was the beginning of our mergers and acquisitions conversation. Remember when I moved to Alberta and I sold my business, I was looking for other businesses to buy and continue my entrepreneurial journey. And I I didn't find any and so I had an opportunity to go back into the industry that I started my career in, which was the heavy duty parts industry. And so I was back being an employee. So that was fine with that. It was, it was a good sales position, and I was enjoying myself. And I was really enjoying being back in the heavy duty parts industry and, you know, but after a couple years, the entrepreneurial itch was there, and so I started looking around at different opportunities, and I had stumbled across podcasting, and I had these business owners asking me these questions. And so, you know, it wasn't a big jump to think maybe I could side hustle a little business, coaching business or consulting business, and maybe that'll turn into something that was kind of where that came from. So I thought, Well, why don't I start interviewing business leaders? At the minimum, I'm going to get an increased education, or an improved education on what it takes to be successful in entrepreneurship. I can share that with my potential clients. I'll get better. They'll get better. Might as well give it a try. And so that's kind of how that all came together. The entire time I ran it, I was side hustling, so I had a full time job, and I was coaching, and I was, you know, doing my my podcast. It was a lot. It was a seven day a week deal there for a couple years.

Roger Pierce 10:57
What could someone starting off, you know, a one person show, what kind of time commitment are we looking at for a basic podcast?

Jamie Irvine 11:04
I mean, it depends on how quickly you can edit, how OCD you are, about jump cuts and B roll and audio quality. Some people just rip it and send it out. They use AI and boom, it's done right? And I was never that person. I've got a little bit…I overanalyze things, and I really pride myself on creating good quality audio and decent video. So I I've always spent a little more time. I think you can do a, you know, I one of my favorite podcasters is Tim Wahlberg out of British Columbia, and he's the podcast coach, fantastic guy, and he does like, a five minute episode. I think that's awesome. Like, if you have really good, concise learnings that you can share with your clients or your potential customers and your audience, you can do a five minute podcast, and you can crank those puppies out once a week, and it's not a huge time commit. You might be able to get the whole system down to a couple hours a week.

Roger Pierce 12:02
Couple hours a week. So it depends on the cadence, how often you're publishing. Your penchant for stickler for quality or not, and complexity too. Are you interviewing multiple guests? And all that plays into it, doesn't it?

Jamie Irvine 12:16
Oh, absolutely, yeah. A solo five minute show like Tim does is a couple hours. The minute you add a guest, you're looking at at at least a little bit of prep time. And I really recommend you develop a system, because the more you can automate the onboarding of the guests and getting them prepped, and having them come into your ecosystem and be all ready for the interview and all of that stuff, the more you can do that, the the less time it takes on on you. Right? So, but yeah, I think the minute you add one guest, you're probably even, if you're doing a weekly show, you know, you're probably getting up into the six to eight hours a week kind of deal if you're doing it, you know, like if you're not just ripping it and throwing it out there, if you're really wanting to build a show that you're that you feel has a production value, that would that amount of time commitment would give you the kind of result you're looking for, I guess what I'm trying to say, Yeah, you could be up into the six, eight hours a week kind of, kind of area.

Roger Pierce 13:08
But go back to this first show. What were some of the fears or roadblocks Jamie, you had in your head, or maybe you experienced getting this thing off the ground? How did you overcome them?

Jamie Irvine 13:17
Fears and roadblocks? Roadblocks was the the steep learning curve around production, like how to produce a show that is, on the one hand, has a production value that you could be proud of, but on the other hand, has content that is actually actionable and usable for your audience. You know, Tim Wahlberg always talks about the promise of the show. So I think for me, I struggled in that first show to find my lane, to figure out who I was exactly trying to help and what I was trying to do for them, those struggles, those early struggles of learning, caused a bit of anxiety, because, you know, hey, you're putting out content. You've made this commitment to do a certain number of episodes no matter what, and you're kind of figuring it out as you go along, which shows a little bit.

Roger Pierce 14:07
Well, that's okay. And you know, a friend of mine is the YouTuber Evan Carmichael, and he says the same thing, he's produced 10s of 1000s of videos. He makes his living now off YouTube and content inspiring entrepreneurs. But he says quite openly, your first video will suck. Don't be afraid to put out the first video. It's gonna suck and you're gonna get better, right? Just like podcast, it takes time.

Jamie Irvine 14:29
You know? What's funny about that is, yeah, like my first video on the Build a Better Business sucked. I had learned so much by the time I started my second show. I will go back and I look at my second shows, first few episodes, and I go, Oh my God, they're horrible. So you know what? It doesn't matter how often you've been at that there's always room for improvement. You're always going to look back at your early work. And there is an argument to be made that if you're not a little embarrassed of your first launch, you probably launch too late.

Roger Pierce 14:56
So let's talk about the return. I mean, you've gotten to. Consulting work out of this. When did it start to pay off? When did you start to feel it paid off? Did the first podcast do what you wanted to do in terms of money in return? Or was it the second?

Jamie Irvine 15:08
First podcast broke even on costs, but not reimbursed me for my time. I don't remember the exact numbers now, but it was something like 600 hours of my time I figured I spent developing the show, so I never got paid for that, per se. I broke even on, on, on the, you know, the equipment I broke even on, on, any of the investment I made in marketing, things like that. But it was basically, it was just call it a wash. And I invested and volunteered my time in my education and podcasting, which set me up for a real great return on investment in the second show.

Roger Pierce 15:43
Okay let's expand on that, because there are more than one ways to make money as one can learn. I mean, you can Google and learn, you know, how to monetize a podcast. But to me, the best ways to make money you can comment are, you know, it can generate business for you, like, if you're a consultant or a coach. You can sell ads as sponsors, right? But maybe you can give us some of the top ways someone can look to make money or returns.

Jamie Irvine 16:05
There's pros and cons of both, right? So if I was anything from a trades person to a someone who offers professional services, I would first build a show for 10 of the potential customers you'd like to attract. And I would just think about those 10 people, and I would make content for those 10 people, and I would put it out in the world, and you'll find 200 of those people. I think that is the best way to do it, because you have complete control over the content, especially with podcasting in an RSS feed on your website, with your email list. You control distribution. You control the list. You're not really you know now, YouTube and other platforms are great, but they can change an algorithm tomorrow and wipe you out. So think about that. I think that's the purest, best form, because you have nobody dictating to you what the content should be. The volume issue there, right? It's low volume, but it can be high dollar. You know the thing about if you're a plumber and you put out content and somebody hires you, and you get to do a $10,000 jobs, pretty good ROI, if you're a accountant and you've got a specialty for a certain type of business owner, or something like that, and you're offering that service, you can make 1000s and 1000s of dollars consulting, and the ROI could be great, but it also depends on your business. If your business, I think the best possible scenario would be a small business owner with a special service for a specific niche audience. They attract a small volume of customers on a regular basis, and they're able to offer those customers repeat services. That's like the Holy Grail in the consulting world. It's a lot of one and dones. So you're always, always hunting. And it was very difficult to build a base of of clients, because I didn't have those clients necessarily coming back to me time after time after time. They would hire me for a specific, acute issue. I would come in, I would help them solve that. If we solved it, they were like, Thanks, you solved my problem. I don't need you anymore. You're fired. If they didn't listen to me and they didn't do what they were, what I asked them to do, they go, This thing doesn't work. You're fired. So no matter what is the consultant, you always get fired. But if you're like an accountant, for example, you might be able to have the lifetime value of that customer be 20 plus years, and you attracted them with a podcast the ROI on that is insane, so I think that's your primary best way of monetizing a podcast, right where you have complete control. On the other side of that equation, you have the sponsorship game. If you have a niche audience, and you build up this audience, you can offer that to sponsors. The problem is, depending on the amount they pay you, if it's a small sponsorship, they leave you alone. They're like, hey, it's brand awareness for us. We paid them a little amount, like they don't care. Nobody ever, nobody ever checks. I've signed six figure, multiple year deals, and it is a completely different game. They watch every metric they're on you. They are analyzing the content. They are giving you pushback on all kinds of things. And, you know, they really, obviously want a really high return on investment, and they're very sensitive to anything that could potentially cause them harm. So they're they're they really whether or not your contract states that you control creative and have creative license, and it's your show, and you haven't given them over. You're only licensing the content to them. They still pay the bills, so they are the ones who call the shots. So you kind of have two ends of the spectrum. And then there is a mixed model that I ran in between also that can be very advantageous. We could talk a little bit more about that in a bit.

Roger Pierce 19:47
Wow, so much to unpack there. And so be careful of the devil. You don't know is what I'm hearing in terms of sponsors. I mean, I've always thought, oh, it'd be great to get a sponsor. You know, 15, 20,000 bucks. I. Got sponsorship packages out there, if anyone's interested. But you know, there is a responsibility that comes with is what you're saying?

Jamie Irvine 20:06
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, and especially if you have a team. By the time I had that, those those sponsorship deals, those large sponsorship deals, I had a full team. So now I have people representing me if they, for some reason, walk away from the system that I've set up and deviate from the system. It's not them that necessarily has to pay for that. It's me. So it became very stressful, and it changed the whole experience of running a podcast, and I wouldn't say for the better that being said, that particular deal and that sponsor, they were amazing people I love. I love them, and they did so much for me. So on the one hand, it was, it wasn't like it was a completely horrible experience. It's just that it changed the nature of running the show. It changed the expectation, it increased the pressure, and it just didn't make it as fun as it had been up until then.

Roger Pierce 20:58
That's very interesting to hear. As a content producer and I sell content, as you know, to banks and brands, white label it, small business content, yeah. I mean, they're paying for it. They can get it the way they want. We'll edit it to them. But if my name's on it, I get a little sensitive. If I'm publishing something, my name's on it, or it's my podcast, I don't know how well I would handle editorial input. You get a lot of that with a sponsor, I would imagine

Jamie Irvine 21:26
You do, yeah, yeah. And rightfully so, they're paying for it. They're financing, you know, when you get to that level, they're financing your show, and normally it's exclusive deals, right? So you know, they're not going to pay that much and then, and then share the spotlight with other people. So,

Roger Pierce 21:42
so you went into the this, this Heavy Duty Parts report, very niche. That took a lot of guts. I mean, you talked a little bit about the benefits there. What gave you confidence to go so narrow?

Jamie Irvine 21:54
So let's think about this, right? The build a better business. It wasn't working. It was too broad. It wasn't it wasn't attracting a large enough audience that I could monetize in any way, in a real profitable way, and there was no scale there. So I would never be able to, like, stop it being a side hustle. It was never gonna really get out of that kind of cycle. So I took a step back, and I said, Look, I'm working in the heavy duty parts industry again. I wonder if there's any content being made about heavy duty parts, and I typed in heavy duty parts into my search for my podcast player, and it came back with zero results. And it was one of these, like palm to forehead moments. I'd been anguishing and struggling and trying to build this show, this wide kind of generic show, then all of a sudden, I look at this podcast player search result, and there's zero results, and I'm like, oh my goodness, I've missed it. I've got this extensive background in heavy duty parts. I can be the guy that brings heavy duty parts to the podcasting space for the first time. And in addition to that, in my job as a salesperson, I was working with factory reps and vendors and bringing them out into the field, and we were doing field work together with customers. We were having these amazing technical conversations that were so valuable. And I thought to myself, why couldn't I just make this available to the entire industry? Like, why are we having just a conversation? We're not capturing this, right? So that was the genesis of the idea, and I actually ran both shows concurrently for a couple months and just tested the Heavy Duty Parts report, and it, just like it, outperformed after almost two years of doing the build a better business, the heavy duty parts report outperformed it in like three months. And so the answer was just obvious, to shut down, build a better business, and to transition to a full and put all my resources into the heavy duty parts report. Within another three months, it had scaled up to a point where I quit my job and I was doing it full time. So it took six, basically six months, to go from launch to full time doing it. Yeah.

Roger Pierce 23:53
Ladies and gentlemen, the power of the niche right there.

Jamie Irvine 23:57
The riches are in the niches. If you use the American pronunciation of that word.

Roger Pierce 24:03
We could do a whole other show on just, you know, the importance of niche focus for entrepreneurs, that's what I say to, you know, you can't be Walmart. You can't be all things to all people. Pick a lane, go deep, go narrow.

Jamie Irvine 24:15
Don't worry about the like, like, we all have the curse of knowledge. Like, I was like, Oh, I have the heavy duty parts knowledge. But so what so does like 100,000 other people? Yeah, but there was, out of the 100,000 other people, there was one person called Jamie Irvine who was willing to combine it with podcast. The niche is about finding your area where you have a lot of knowledge and then combining it with something else to make it unique.

Roger Pierce 24:40
So how do you I gotta ask it. How do you keep an a niche podcast, fresh and engaging for 350, episodes?

Jamie Irvine 24:48
You know that that was a question I had at the beginning, but I realized very quickly that you can go an inch wide and a mile. You can go an inch. How's that an inch wide and a mile deep? You know? So if you want to get really specific, and so what I did is, I, you know, one of my first episodes was about foundation brakes for air brake systems. And I called in a favor from a manufacturer I had a great relationship with. We talked about brakes like, off and on every few months, because there's, there's a million things to talk about, right, safety performance, cost per mile. You know how to lower it. What are the considerations based on different vocations? You could have an episode about brakes, about dump trucks, about trucks and trailers, air disc brake versus, you know, the old foundation brake systems, like you can just go, go and go and go and go and so what, what I learned is that people don't get tired of that content, not to mention they don't necessarily hear all the content you've done in the past, right? Every single year, there is a brake safety week in August, and there are publicly available statistics that come out from the motor vehicle branches that you can review. And so we did. We just we talked about brakes all the time. We talked about after treatment, because it relates to the emissions and EPA and the environment. There's certain subjects that we could just talk about forever and never. It would never be boring. Not to mention, if you bring in a guest, you can have six or seven guests talk about the same subject. They're all going to talk about something different. They're all going to bring some nugget of wisdom and goal that the other one didn't, and you can build a body of work that actually becomes very valuable. And here's the secret, podcasters, the guests are not the star of the show. The host is the star of the show. The host is the person the audience develops a relationship with over time, not the guest. So bring on guests. Talk about the same subjects. Talk about it from different perspectives. Get perspectives that collide with each other. Oh, that's always fun.

Roger Pierce 26:45
Great tip. It's true. People are listening. You know, podcasting is engaging. It's long form content. People put it on the car or at the gym, certainly on mobile, it seems. And yeah, you get inside their head. You develop that relationship, don't you?

Jamie Irvine 27:01
Yeah, they hear your voice, they see your mannerisms. You tell your stories. They get to know you. They get to trust you. Here's an interesting thing about that. What's the most common interaction I had with a guest who I or sorry, with an audience member who I had never met before at a trade show? It was a hug, not a handshake, a hug that was a little off putting at first, these strangers coming up to me, Jamie, and they give me a hug. And then I realized, Oh, we're on video together every single week. And in video, we're in that social zone where they feel comfortable with me, they've learned about me, they've they've heard what I stand for, what I believe in, who I am. They don't know everything about me, but they know enough to know that they like me, and so their natural reaction would be to come up and give me a big hug. You know, it's kind of funny these big burly guys that heavy duty trade shows and people are, you know, giving us big manly hugs, right? But that was because the trust had been built up over time. So this is just an interesting byproduct of of that. And people buy from people they trust. So if you're offering a service, they trust you. They're gonna, they're gonna reach out to you. Plus, it's interesting, if you ask good questions, they see you as the expert, not the, not necessarily just the guests. They they recognize the expertise of the guest, but they see you as someone who has wide expertise across a number of different aspects or components of a specific subject matter, right? And so over time, they trust you, and they go, hey, this person, if he knows to ask that question, he knows, probably knows the answer before he asked the question, right? So they started to respect your expertise, which is really powerful when you're looking to attract clients.

Roger Pierce 28:43
Absolutely. And do you feel, before we go into asking you a question about Michael Gerber, do you feel the mark? Forget about the money, the marketing return on investment getting your brand out there? Is it worth it?

Jamie Irvine 28:55
Oh, podcasting has horrible ROI metrics. If you look at just conversion, like, horrible, like, like you, if you, if you just want quick conversions on a product, like, go buy some Facebook advertising or something else, like, but if you want to build a body of work that resonates with a specific audience, that over time, will turn into something meaningful, then I'd think of no other medium to do it. So just like with lots of things, it is all about the time frame upon which you look at something, right? So if I'm looking at it in ROI, 30 days of launch of a podcast episode, it's not very good. If I look at three years of podcasting about that subject, it could be pretty amazing.

Roger Pierce 29:49
That's very, very important distinction you just made. Thank you for sharing that. Let's touch briefly, and I'm watching our clock too. Michael Gerber, we're both big fans. You had him on. Podcast I've had. I've interviewed him before, too. One of my heroes, you know, the E Myth. E Myth revisited. How has he, his book shaped the way you think about business and systems?

Jamie Irvine 30:12
So go back to 2008 I was talking about starting my first business, and a friend of mine and a bit of a mentor handed me a book. Said, you know how you read that book, Psychology of Selling, and it made you a good salesperson. You made a career of it. He goes, if you're going to be an entrepreneur, you need to read the E Myth by Michael Gerber. And I devoured that book, and I've read it. I've lost count how many times I've read I've actually read most of his books. There's actually a trilogy. People don't know that there's the E Myth, Awakening the Entrepreneur Within and Beyond the E Myth. Those three books make up a trilogy. So you need to read all three of them. It absolutely transformed my entire life because it allowed me to build my first contracting business. You know, systemize it, scale it and sell it. And I've been systemizing and scaling things ever since. So then to finally get to interview the the man, the legend. It was fantastic. I actually spent some time getting to know him afterwards, and you know, we've talked on the phone many times since. He's obviously getting older now, and we haven't talked in a while. But yeah, it was, it was great. I learned a lot from him. I actually made a mistake at one point. I got all excited about bringing together some of my power guests on that original show, and I didn't ask enough permission before I started putting some stuff out there and got my my knuckles wrapped and had to go and hat in hand and say, I'm so sorry. Inexperience, I made a mistake, and I apologize to the three or four people. They all were very gracious and But Michael was the one who actually took the time to really talk with me and mentor me through that and help me understand, you know, what happened there. And and also pointed to the fact that I should be very proud that I was the type of person who would come and apologize. And so, you know, it wasn't all great. I mean, it is. I've had, I've had an interesting journey with that man. And just to say that he's been influential in my life is an understatement.

Roger Pierce 32:04
He certainly is a hero to a lot of us. And the books, for those who haven't read them yet, it's all about entrepreneurial seizure. You're a plumber. He talks about like you talk about in the podcast, you love plumbing, but you really don't know anything about running a plumbing business.

Jamie Irvine 32:19
Well, I tell people, I tell people all the time when they come to me and they say, I want to I'm this. I'm a mechanic, I'm an electrician, I'm a plumber, I'm an accountant, I'm a sales person, and I'm a parts person, and I want to start what? I want to start an electrical company, a plumbing company, an accounting office, a parts business, a sales agency. And I say, I always ask one question, do you really love your job? Oh, yeah, I love it. I said, then don't start a business, because you won't get to do the job you love anymore, because you have a completely other full time job called building and running a business that will prevent you from truly being able to do what you love. And it's an interesting conversation when you when you walk through people, but yeah, systemizing how to do the thing that is done in your job, and turning that into a business system is what those books are all about. Just fantastic.

Roger Pierce 33:07
It's a fantastic read, and it's so important, build up the systems, remove yourself from the equation. Eventually makes it easier to transition to a buyer if that's what you want or leave it to family, but more importantly, allows you to run a business without being there every day and being stuck in the muckey-muck.

Jamie Irvi e 33:21
The system is the solution. The solution is the system.

Roger Pierce 33:25
I love it. The system is the solution…

Jamie Irvine 33:28
That's a Michael Gerber quote, no, that's not a Jamie quote!

Roger Pierce 33:31
Copyright. Michael Gerber got it okay. Heading into our wrap, I'm gonna ask you two questions, one podcast related. So let's say you know this show is for aspiring entrepreneurs, people just getting into it, thinking about it, unsure about entrepreneurship. What advice would you give them? How can they get into podcasting easily?

Jamie Irvine 33:48
Buy a microphone and start recording content with people. Just get a microphone, get a webcam, hit record, bring people on. It's like anything you will get better at with it, with with practice, right? You know, it's like that, that story about the person who jumps in the cab and says, How do you get to Carnegie Hall? And the cab driver says, practice, practice. So that's the podcasting thing. Just get into it. Just start. But don't be random about the type of content that you put out there. That's not going to work. So think very deeply about who your ideal audience is going to be, and those ideal audience, that ideal audience, should be your ideal customer profile. Think very, very specifically, and every piece of content you put out make it all about them, not about you, not about what you do about them. And I like to run through a little simple formula for an episode. I do this for sales presentations. I do this for in everything, so you don't talk about yourself. Okay, big idea. Who is this for? Right? Identify the hero of the story, which is your customer. Identify the problem that they face which is the villain. You are, the guide you are Obi Wan to Luke Skywalker, who's fighting Darth Vader. Talk about why the problem is hard to solve. Talk about the economic impact of the problem. Talk about the various solutions available to solve the problem and why it's a hard problem to solve. Show them, if they care about 123, they will use solution x, and that's your solution. Then provide a case study or some sort of social proof that it works, and then explain the rules of doing business with you and ask them what they think that would do in their life or their business if they applied that solution. Follow that formula. And you can do that in a five minute episode or a three hour episode, but follow that formula and focus, focus, focus on your ideal customer profile and make sure that you are very consistent in the call to action. People overestimate a call to action, you know, in a timeframe of a month, and they underestimate what it would what would happen if they use the same call to action for a year. So just to get really consistent there, but follow that kind of a formula like that. Find something that works for you. You can you can borrow mine, or you can change it and find what works. But those are the critical pieces to get started with a podcast and turn it into a revenue stream for you.

Roger Pierce 36:20
Fantastic advice, and I'm going to put the links to your shows in the show notes, so people can learn from your your past episodes. Thank you for sharing that. So the last question, if you don't mind putting on your business hat, Jamie, you've you've been through it all as an entrepreneur, what's a piece of advice you'd give for someone thinking about getting into this crazy world?

Jamie Irvine 36:42
I think you should think really, really deeply about your motivation for starting the business. If you are completely in love with the idea of building a business that is completely systemized, that has employees working in it, that the business can not only operate, but can grow and scale without your direct involvement. And you're and you're absolutely in love with that job, you should do nothing but be an entrepreneur. If you are looking for a dream world where you work two hours a week and make millions of dollars and you never have to do any work. Entrepreneurship is not for you, because entrepreneurship, especially when you're building a business, is nothing but, you know, hard work. So this, really, oftentimes, there's this disconnect. And a lot of people look at the success stories, right? Oh, this person started their business in their garage, and now they're worth $250 million…I actually know somebody who's like that. But when you hear the story behind the scenes of what they went through and what they had to do, and like, it's just not what people think. Entrepreneurship is not what people think when they see a successful entrepreneur who won capitalism. That's not the norm. That's not the norm. So if you really, really love the idea of building a business, and that's the job you want to have, then entrepreneurship is for you. If you really love your job, I think you should think very carefully about starting a business that does that job, and I think you should be very wary of that, because the cost of it can be very high, and not just monetarily, not just investment dollars, but time, time away from family, time away from things that you love to do. I didn't take a real holiday in 15 years. That was a mistake. And I, you know, looking back, I go, What was I thinking? You know, so there's a lot to think about there, and it's and almost none of it is actually about the business. It's more about you and what you want and your motivations. I think that's really important. And then if you just look at it strictly from a business perspective, the ideal situation, in my opinion, is a service that people are already looking for or a product that people are already looking for that has a moderate to low competitive environment, and that you can build a repeat base of customers that you can serve on an ongoing basis, which extends the lifetime value of the customer. You need to think about those things, because it's very difficult to sustain a business where you're constantly having to hunt for new customers, and you're always rolling over your customer base. So just some things to think about.

Roger Pierce 39:25
Great advice and there’s another great book, by Toronto based author John Warrillow, called The Automatic Customer, talks about what you're saying. There subscription based businesses, repeat customers. Those are the Nirvana. Those are the best businesses to create.

Jamie Irvine 39:39
Yeah absolutely. And maybe one last thing, if you really want to start a business, start a business, maybe don't necessarily start a business in the thing that you're you know, one of my successful businesses was gutter clean, power washing, window clean exterior building maintenance. I knew nothing about that business, and because I knew nothing about that business, I didn't want to do the work, so I just focused on. Building the business that did that work, and I hired people who knew how to do that work, and, you know, it worked out pretty good.

Roger Pierce 40:04
That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Well, listen, that's that's all the time we have, unfortunately. But I want to thank you very much, Jamie for sharing your podcast journey and your entrepreneurial journey with experience with us. It means a lot to our listeners. And before you go, if someone wants to get in touch, what's the best way to connect?

Jamie Irvine 40:20
I think the best way is just to reach out to me on LinkedIn. If you want to put my LinkedIn profile there in the show notes, that would be best. If you want to check out the body of work that I did with the Heavy Duty Parts Report, that podcast is still live with all 350 episodes on heavydutypartsreport.com you can check that out. And if you want to reach out to me directly, just hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm always looking for new people to connect with.

Roger Pierce 40:43
Sounds good, fantastic. Well, listen thanks again, Jamie and to our listeners, thank you for being here, and be sure to return next time for more insights from the unsure entrepreneur.

Outro 40:55
That's it for this episode of The Unsure Entrepreneur Podcast. Thanks for listening. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss other candid conversations with small business owners and be sure to check us out at unsureentrepreneur.com