Aaron Patton

Blake: [00:00:00] Perfect. We are live on the podcast today with Erin Patton, where we're going to be talking about prospecting and networking, but through some different channels that maybe we haven't discussed here on the podcast before. Before we get into that, Erin, how's your day going?

[00:00:15] Aaron: [00:00:15] Fantastic. Blake, thanks for having me on and hello everyone.

[00:00:18] Blake: [00:00:18] Super excited. I would love to get some context on you as a person, as a professional. Before we dive into the details here. So just to give the audience an idea of who they're, who they're working with here, could you just give us the story of your career so far, briefly as to where you started to, how you got where you are now.

[00:00:35] Aaron: [00:00:35] Sure. Absolutely. So myself and just a regular guy, I, I went through life just a regular path like most of us do. I was just accepted to go to high school, try to get good grades, go to college, get a job, right. The normal path that we're all used to and accustomed to. And I, my parents, had done that.

[00:00:52] They were. Good students. And that was the just accepted way. So I didn't really have any thoughts to do anything else like entrepreneurship wise or, or any other path that was, that was my journey. So went to college, got a job in sales, and worked at about four or five different companies in sales and software, software's a service companies, and then really just hit a wall in my later twenties, and decided that I don't want to do this long term.

[00:01:16] So I essentially started over. I quit my job. I did a little traveling, was playing a little poker. That was a serious hobby of mine. So, trying to chase the dream of not really waking up and go into an office every day, like someone you have a dream about. And, I quickly realized that I don't want to spend all my time at a casino.

[00:01:37] So I decided that I wanted to take some of the reasons why I did love that game. And parlay it into a more productive and business oriented manner. so I came up with podcasting, content creation, first and foremost just to learn how to do online business, but also to be creating content at the same time.

[00:01:56] So kind of learning with the audience. And then it's been about 15 months now, and I feel like I'm in a place where I can. You know, actually launched something decent on my own and help people in their endeavors for what they want to do online. So that's the route that I'm going for this year, and I'm putting a hard focus on building up a little community and membership group to enable people to do just that.

[00:02:18] Blake: [00:02:18] And what would you say your professional superpower

[00:02:20] Aaron: [00:02:20] is. Professional superpower for me is definitely prospecting. It's, getting in touch with the right people, excuse me, the right people, the decision makers, people that, are actually going to be able to either purchase a product or service, like in my sales job or in this case for podcasting, be a guest on the show.

[00:02:41] And part of my show for new age influencers is to try to get people that are really living a true online. You know, dream based lifestyle, and sometimes it's really hard to get in touch with these people, but I felt like it was my duty to, to try as hard as I can to get as high quality guests as possible so that they can give back advice and lessons that they've used in their lives to attain success and give it back to the audience.

[00:03:07] So that's what I try to do every single week, week in and week out. Well,

[00:03:10] Blake: [00:03:10] let's dive into your superpower then and start with the very foundation. I'm curious how you would recommend going about starting to establish herself. So if first off, how you can identify the proper niche for you and then beyond that, just establishing yourself as somebody that anybody should listen

[00:03:29] Aaron: [00:03:29] to.

[00:03:30] Yeah, sure. So, I think. First it comes down to, you know, like what Gary V always says is self-awareness, right? You need to figure out what drives you, what, what you actually enjoy doing, what you have fun doing. Because the internet game, content creation game, it's a hard game and there's a lot of effort on the front end with minimal payoff, but if you keep with it and stick with it, the pay off will come eventually.

[00:03:53] But the, the regular person in society doesn't have that mindset. So it's very hard for them to keep at something for that long without an actual payoff. So that's why I say I'm part of my whole shtick is the new age lifestyle, which is the internet lifestyle. But part of that is really having fun first, so whatever you want to try to pursue, make sure that you at least are interested in it or have fun.

[00:04:19] I see so many people out there making the mistake that they think that they want to be a social media guru or they think they want to be a real estate agent online or they think they want to be this or that, when in reality, they really just want to do that because they see other people having success in it and they think that that's what glamour looks like.

[00:04:38] But that's really not the case. You've got to figure out what drives you. Like whether it's a hobby fishing or whether it's something that you're doing right now professionally, whatever you're doing, if you enjoy it, keep with it. But if you don't, they'll be afraid to switch it up and make sure that you can actually pursue something that you can commit to.

[00:04:55] And if you don't know what that is, well, the only really way to find that out is to experiment with different things and try it out. And it's okay to experiment and fail and not, you know, continue to pursue that path if it's not right for you. But that's the first part. So the first part is just finding out what, what lights you up and what you have fun doing.

[00:05:13] And then the second part is creating a plan and a concept, where you can be proud to pitch it to people. So for me, for the podcast, I came up with this concept because I really enjoy talking to different types of people in the poker. arena and learning their stories. So I, I said to myself, I want to do this in online business.

[00:05:32] So I wanted to learn from people doing it out there in the space, and I pursued them on the, and Instagram and the DMS. And I just prospecting my head off and I pitched them the concept of new age influencers as I want to give. The people that don't have knowledge, knowledge from the people who have it.

[00:05:50] And so that was my concept pitch. I was very regimented with it. I took all the skills that I had learned in software sales and applied it to pretty much Instagram DMS. Yes, I would have some email reach out. If people weren't responding to DMS, but, it was mainly DNS. I had a whole Excel spreadsheet. I had, all my prospects of guests that I wanted to have on the show.

[00:06:10] I would reach out to them. I would Mark whether they saw that message or not, I would Mark whether they responded back, if they committed to being a guest, if they showed up all the different data behind the scenes. I was just very organized with it at the start and, I got a lot of nos at the beginning.

[00:06:24] Like anyone, you know, would get, when you're starting something new, it's not going to be easy cause you don't have any established reputation or social proof yet. So I would reach out to maybe a hundred people, maybe 20% of them would actually get back to me. And then maybe half of those people would say that they're on board for an interview and then maybe half of those people would show up.

[00:06:45] So a hundred reach outs. Three interviews, you know, so it's, it's hard. But I, I, and, and a lot of people wouldn't have that if they weren't reaching out, if they were reaching out to more, you know, kind of, reg regular, you know, people that haven't made it already, but I wanted to differentiate my show, whereas I wanted to start out with a bang.

[00:07:05] People that had some social influence online for that credibility factor. So that's why I put in so much effort to try to get really good guests right from the get.

[00:07:15] Blake: [00:07:15] I do have a question regarding the DM thing. So you, you mentioned if maybe on average you outreach to a hundred people, maybe you'll get 300 views in return.

[00:07:24] Okay, so that's 3% conversion rate. You can live with that. You're at least you're getting interviews. I'm curious though, because. Often the advice that we get as side hustlers is you have to be consistent for a long periods of time. You have to be okay with not seeing results upfront to get results down the road, but there are certain instances where it just doesn't work, where whatever your idea is, it's just not going to work.

[00:07:47] And I'm curious if you have any ideas as to when to actually quit, when did actually stop? If there are any indicators that you seen that say, consistency really isn't going to fix this.

[00:07:59] Aaron: [00:07:59] Got it. Yeah, no, that's a great question. so first I would say that do your best to make it as good as possible. Get as good of a pitch as possible.

[00:08:08] So for me, I already had like good looking cover art already done. I had the show concept in my head, so it was clear for me. It wasn't like I was reaching out to these people like. You know, in a shy manner or shy nature. I was like, no. I was like, this is what I'm doing. Like if you're on board, fantastic....