Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Arlen Robinson [00:02]
Welcome to the eCommerce Marketing Podcast, everyone. My name is Arlen and I am your host. And today we’ve got a very special guest, Mischa Zvegintzov, who is a seasoned sales expert who once retired to teach yoga and be a stay-at-home dad. Now, as the founder of The Influence Army and host of the Table Rush Talk Show, he helps heart centered entrepreneurs amplify their message and build influence without costly advertising. Are you ready to go on an Influence Tour? Welcome to the podcast, Misha.

Mischa Zvegintzov [00:39]
Hey, thank you so much Arlen. I’m super excited to be here I love the work you do and what a great podcast and you’re committed to it dedicated to it So super honored to be here

Arlen Robinson [00:51]
Gotcha. Thank you, Misha. I appreciate that. And I’m super excited to talk to you today. You know, as we were talking before, I think we have a lot in common and we’ll kind of get into that a little bit later. So yeah, definitely like to talk to you more. But you know, today, I think it’s a great subject because although this is a podcast that I’m on and you have your own podcast as well, we’ve talked about, you know, this is probably about the 300 and I would say

43rd episode of the e-commerce marketing podcast, believe it or not. And so, um, we’ve only talked about podcasting a few times, and this is going to be one of those times. That’s why I’m excited to talk to about it. So our topic today is going to be using podcast guest speaking, you know, as a tool to build your e-commerce business. And, um, that’s really the, the topic of our conversation. Um, you’re definitely an expert in that because you have your own podcast and you’ve been in the.

trenches with various e-commerce ventures for quite some time. So you’ve seen, you know, all of the ins and outs of it, uh, from that side of things. And so, you know, before we dive into, to the subject of podcasting, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about your background and, you know, specifically how you got into what you’re doing today.

Mischa Zvegintzov [02:11]
And I’ll try to keep it short, but ultimately for 20 years of my life, I was in sales and I started out telemarketing. So I probably literally have made a million hand dialed phone calls, you know, where you used to have to hand dial the phone call to hand dial the phone. And then I got auto dialers, you know, that did the dialing for you.

I’ve done door-to-door sales in B2B door-to-door sales, literally walking from company to company. I’ve sent out massive flyer campaigns, to me what are massive, you know, so sending out 5,000-10,000 mailers a week to get the phone to ring. So the bulk of my work history was in sales.

Mischa Zvegintzov [03:08]
So I was a home loan officer, did tech sales for a number of years, found my success 15 years as a loan officer and telemarketing and building teams and getting the phone to ring and really finding the data to find the people to be our customers. Like that’s a lot of it. So finding those key databases that you could mine so that you could telemarket to them or send out mailers again.

Um, sort of burned out, went through a divorce, both my parents died. All this chaos happened in 2012, 13, 14, and fortunately, I had a little bit of money in the bank and I retired out of the business. I’ll never forget the day I quit and retired. Uh, I went into my boss and I said, Hey, I’m, I’m done. I’m leaving. And he said to me, well, we’ll match whatever offer you have out there.

And I said, No, you don’t understand. I’m quitting the business. I got to get my boys through high school, you know, through grade school and high school, or whatever those years were. And he looked at me straight up and said, Man, I wish I could quit to such a funny day. Yeah, so, you know, I taught yoga for a number of years and really, it was great. It just was such a great outlet for me and allowed me to

Arlen Robinson [04:07]
got you right

Arlen Robinson [04:19]
Wow.

Mischa Zvegintzov [04:33]
you know, express myself and, and be productive while I was really focusing on getting my boys, like I said, through school, through high school as a single dad. And somewhere along the line, when my one son moved out and my other one was a senior and getting ready to, you know, do his own thing. You know, he’s like, dad, like, you don’t need to babysit me anymore. In effect, he’s like, I’ve got my girlfriend.

you know, I’ve got my job, I’m a senior, like do your thing, right? Go do your thing. And intuitively, I knew that when my boys were moving out or getting ready to move on to the next thing, that I would jump back into the entrepreneurial space. And, you know, for me, it was online marketing, just fascinated by it, right? I was more old school, direct mail, telemarketing, door to door.

Arlen Robinson [05:02]
Right. Right.

Mischa Zvegintzov [05:28]
And I was like, I want to conquer this online marketing space. And as you told me before we jumped on the podcast here, you’ve been in this space for a long time and, uh, it’s easier said than done. Yes.

Arlen Robinson [05:43]
For sure. Yeah, I can definitely testify to that fact. You know, the online space, a lot of times people that are familiar with, you know, direct sales or, you know, have a brick and mortar establishment when they look at e-commerce businesses, it’s like, oh, okay, you know, you got an online store, you know, you just throw that up, throw up a website, you’re selling products, you know, you’re sitting back drinking coffee, you’re clocking out at four p.m.

There’s nothing further from the truth, I think, with it. There’s a lot that goes into it.

Mischa Zvegintzov [06:15]
Nothing for…yes, yes, right? And I think people have this vision of everybody sitting on their boat in the Bahamas, right? Like working for an hour and really just trying to figure out where to stack all the money that they’re collecting. And yeah.

Arlen Robinson [06:25]
Right.

Arlen Robinson [06:29]
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. We wish it was that easy, but yeah, unfortunately it isn’t. Well, yeah, thank you for sharing your background in that story. I appreciate that. It sounds like you’ve kind of, your past has really shaped your ability to be successful in the online space because you’ve sold in so many different avenues. You mentioned direct, door to door, telemarketing, you name it, you’ve kind of done it. And I think that really can help.

Mischa Zvegintzov [06:34]
We wish it was that easy.

Arlen Robinson [07:00]
when you’re in the online space, because, you know, even though, like we said, it’s definitely difficult to sell online, it is definitely difficult to become successful, but when it comes to selling, there are some core fundamentals that I think are present no matter where you’re selling. There’s some things that you have to kind of stick by regardless of the platform. So it’s good to know that that’s carried through with what you’re doing.

Mischa Zvegintzov [07:25]
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I’ll add to that and say things that I was very strong at back in the old, you know, door to door telemarketing was scripting scripts, like literally write out what you’re going to say when you’re going to say it. And we could, that translates into what are the emails that I’m sending in the online space, right? Uh, the systems of, uh, follow up, follow up, follow up. That’s half the battle in sales. A lot of people don’t buy on the first click.

Arlen Robinson 07:3
Yes.

Mischa Zvegintzov [07:54]
You gotta have your systems in line to follow up, follow up, follow up. Right. Um, uh, what else is all that stuff? Where to find leads, all these kinds of things. So I basically bring the old school into the new is what I like to say. Um, yeah, yeah. And you know, of course, what’s that?

Arlen Robinson [07:58]
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson [08:08]
Yeah, yeah, it’s good, good. Good, it’s good, good to know. Yeah, it’s good to know that, you know, those old school principles are definitely relevant today.

Mischa Zvegintzov ([08:21].497)
Oh yeah, go ahead. I was going to add something to really quick and just to cut to the chase. So I of course went all in jumped into Russell Brunson’s, you know, programs jumped into his mastermind $25,000 a year. You know, it’s called the two CCX and so I didn’t just dabble when I decided to re enter the working world, shall we call it, I just went all in and I’ve learned so much from Russell and that whole

What happened was is I started getting video testimonials for people. And because so much of online, what we do is you need to have that, that social proof that, uh, you know, customer validation, uh, testimonials, case studies, uh, UGC user generated content in the, in the e-commerce space, right? Anytime you can get some user generated content where your customer is using that rug that you sell online or whatever it is. And they’re like, this thing changed my life. It reminds me of my parents or whatever it is, right? Like getting that rich content. And I love doing that. I literally got paid to fly all around the world to interview entrepreneurs, to interview customers, to get people’s stories in effect. And I started learning that a lot of people are not good at telling their stories or

Arlen Robinson [09:43]
Hmm.

Mischa Zvegintzov [09:47]
Really, a lot of entrepreneurs are not good at telling their customer stories, and we should be doing that as entrepreneurs. Even if we’re in e-commerce, we need to be learning how to tell our customer stories, right?

Arlen Robinson [09:52]
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson [10:00]
Yeah, yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. And that’s, um, that kind of leads us into our whole topic of discussion, which is, is podcasting because obviously as an e-commerce entrepreneur, um, if you’re a guest on a podcast, a lot of what you’re going to be doing is telling your story, how you got to where you are, how your products got to where they are today, uh, how you got to where you are today and how, um, you know, maybe successful customers of yours have evolved.

by using your products. And so I think where I kind of want to start off is something that was relevant personally to me. And I know it’s probably relevant to a lot of other e-commerce entrepreneurs. So my background is engineering. I was a computer systems engineer. And so I kind of, my personality is skewed more towards introvert. And so I’m naturally, when I was growing up, I was super shy. I was a super shy kid. I didn’t…

you know, do a lot of talking, kind of kept to myself, wasn’t outgoing. And you know, although I’ve kind of come out of that to an extent, I still have those characteristics by nature. That’s just my personality. I’m not one to quickly go up to someone. And so when you’re thinking about podcasting and other entrepreneurs are thinking about, okay, getting on a podcast, if you’re an introvert and more naturally have those characteristics, what would you say?

um would be some I guess you can say tactics for those that you know are more introverted for them to be successful as a guest on podcast what would you say would be some good tips

Mischa Zvegintzov [11:43]
Yeah, that’s a such a great question. I’ve got some tips that I will give. And I will just say I come across as a very outgoing person. People say, Oh, you’ve got this great energy, warm, all this stuff. A lot of that is a learned skill. Right? I think people think that you said it, you’re like, I’m an engineer took me a time to get to the point where now I’m comfortable on my podcast, do the stuff, put my stuff out there, right? Put yourself out there. So it can be a used to cry when I was young in high school, not high school, in grade school. I was so horrified to get in front of class. The teachers would call me up and I’d be crying. And one time a teacher even called me out. It was horrifying. She said, I’d call on Misha, but when he comes up here, he’ll probably start crying. Right? I know so heavy, right? And she brought me up there and I started crying. And, and I don’t know. I just, that’s a horrifying spot.

You know, but fast forward to today, it’s easy for me. I can jump in front of the camera any day, anytime, but it is a learned skill. And, and so I would use that as encouragement for any of your audience that is, feels introverted. And like, how can I ever put myself out there consistently? Cause that’s the problem. Sometimes it’s easy to do it once or not easy. We’ll do it once, but never again. Right. And, and so.

Arlen Robinson [12:42]
Mm-hmm. Hmm?

Mischa Zvegintzov [13:11]
It can be learned and I’ve got what I call my show up as your best you blueprint. And this is my three step blueprint for instantly captivating any audience with unforgettable authenticity and magnetism, even if you’re an introvert or have introvert tendencies. And like I said, this is a learned skill for me. What am I? So we want to have physical.

physical preparation. Step one is physical preparation. And so when I was doing all my telemarketing, and again, I’ve made millions of phone calls, my mentors like zig, and I don’t know if that name rings a bell for you, zig, Brian Tracy, they would tell us things like smile when you’re on the phone, smile, and it creates that natural energy, right? Sit up straight, roll your shoulders back. So that’s physical.

Arlen Robinson [13:44]
Hmm. Hmm.

Mischa Zvegintzov [14:09]
presentation. So I literally have those skills built where when I’m getting ready to jump on the podcast with you, I grab my chair that forces me to sit up straight. I roll my shoulders back and you’ll probably see anybody watching this that I’m smiling a lot, right? You’re just creating that energy and you can hear a smile and there are studies out there. I don’t want to go too deep down the rabbit hole, but your smile changes a smile changes your physiology.

Arlen Robinson [14:26]
Right. Yeah.

Mischa Zvegintzov [14:39]
People can hear it, obviously they can see it, but when you’re smiling and someone’s listened to a podcast, you present better, more naturally. And so I would say if you’re an introvert and you’re like, I never smile and I hate smiling, well, maybe you don’t frown as much, right? Simple as that. Just level it up just a little, that’s all we’re asking. I told you, sit up straight, roll your shoulders back. And you can also stand up. A lot of people stand up. I don’t know if you, you know.

Arlen Robinson [14:39]
Ahem.

Arlen Robinson [14:55]
That’s right. Exactly. Yep.

Mischa Zvegintzov [15:09]
maybe some of the people that come on your podcast are standing when they’re on the podcast. So that naturally opens up your diaphragm and you just you’re more expansive, right? Then the step two is emotional engagement. So how do we come across emotionally in the, how do we want to say it? I like to call it seven excitement. And there’s this lady called, her name by to be coached by her and be on a couple of her calls, but she spoke on big stages in front of thousands and thousands of people. And she said, basically, what you want to do is get to that seven level of excitement for you. And she said, we don’t want to be the 10 excitement, which is like you’re over the top and for who you normally are. Right. So she says, Hey, there’s tricks to get that seven excitement and

Arlen Robinson [16:01]
Right.

Mischa Zvegintzov [16:07]
And again, it’s for you. So for me, she, so she says, Hey, you know, come up with a store or come up with a memory that’s of a seven level excitement. I’ve got two boys, right? When those boys were born, those were like the biggest days of my life. Very exciting. That’s over the top. That’s too much. Right. Maybe the day if you’re married and your wife said yes, when you asked her to marry you, like that’s a 10 day, right? You’re that, right. But how about when I first was.

Arlen Robinson [16:24]
Yep. Yes. Right.

Arlen Robinson [16:32]
Yes.

Mischa Zvegintzov [16:37]
trying to guest speak on podcasts and I had some hosts say yes. And I can remember that I can remember actually the first time I did this virtual summit, where have you familiar with virtual summits at all. Awesome. So I did a virtual summit and there’s a gentleman named Anthony trucks, who’s he was like, he was the a list guy that I wanted to get on this virtual summit and have him speak. And I remember I sent the email to him.

Arlen Robinson [16:50]
Oh yeah.

Mischa Zvegintzov [17:05]
And he responded back pretty quickly and said, yes. And I was like, oh my gosh, like this is real. This is happening. There’s power in what I’m doing here. And so before I jump on the podcast with you, I can retell that story to myself and be like, oh yeah, I remember when I was nervous about doing my summit. And so I started sending out emails and I sent that email out to Anthony Trucks and I’ll never forget when that email came in, man.

Arlen Robinson [17:16]
Hmm.

Mischa Zvegintzov [17:34]
And he said, yes, I’ll be a speaker. Right? Can you feel that passion in me? That’s kind of, and it’s like authentic, right? So get that seven, think of that story or two that you can tell yourself before you jump on a show or do your Facebook live or however it is that you’re putting yourself out there. I just, I do this stuff naturally now, but you can build, you can build that habit. And then lastly,

Arlen Robinson [17:34]
Right, right, Right. Mm-hmm.

Mischa Zvegintzov [18:04]
Step three is I like to get spiritually centered and it might sound a little woo woo, but I like to say a prayer or a mantra before I jump on a show or do something like this. And for me, it’s how can I be of service? How can I serve Arlen’s audience? And so I’m praying for that. Hey God, how can I be of service here? What can I bring to the table? And try and let go of.

that ego and those ego barriers. And I found that serves me a lot. And I learned that along the way. And I have the, I’ll never forget. It’s like page one. And one of the books I have was like page 120. And I have a dog year where it basically said, you can go anywhere and do anything as long as you’re spiritually in the right mindset. And I was like, yep, I love that. So those are some tricks that any, you know, introverts that are listening can do.

Arlen Robinson [18:52]
Mm-hmm.

Mischa Zvegintzov [19:03]
And I’ll end with this in regards to that question, is that you don’t have to be anyone you’re not. Right, we’re not trying to be anyone we’re not. We’re just trying to show up as our best selves, which is kind of cliche these days, but it’s true. But if you’re a moody introvert that likes to wear hoodies and wear sunglasses and frown, show up as that best person. You know what I mean? And…

Arlen Robinson [19:10]
Hmm.

Arlen Robinson [19:29]
Right, right, right.

Mischa Zvegintzov [19:31]
And what’s beautiful about that is there’s somebody in the audience that’s going to resonate with that. Yeah.

Arlen Robinson [19:37]
That’s true. Yeah, those are some awesome tips. Specifically that last one and the previous one when you talked about getting to that or thinking about that seventh level of excitement caused by an experience that you’ve had, because I understand what you’re saying. You want to come off, you want to become off being enthusiastic, you know, happy and how do you trigger that, you know, naturally without going over the top, because I’ve been placed and I’ve seen speakers that are just like, it’s like the shot out of a cannon and that’s too much. You have to, the number seven I think is a good number because that gives you kind of a visualization of, okay, I can think about this experience where, like you said, it wasn’t the birth of a child, it wasn’t the wedding day, those are level 10 and above, but it was something where you truly had some joy.

And it was something that you can kind of pull from when you’re going on to these shows as a way to, I guess like you said, internal motivation. So yeah, I think that’s, that’s really awesome. Now, I know Misha you’ve worked with a lot of entrepreneurs. You’ve, you’ve already talked about some things that you’ve done yourself personally, but are there any specific, uh, real life case studies of any entrepreneurs that may have been on the introverted side that have gone on doing podcasts that have been successful and there’s certain things that they’ve done to be able to do that and be successful on guest speaking on podcasts.

Mischa Zvegintzov [21:09]
Yeah, such a great, great question. And, and, uh, you know, so there’s some big names out there that are self-proclaimed introverts that we might doubt that because they’re so prevalent or they’re, they’re very, um, you know, they put themselves out there now, but there’s a gentleman name. I’m going to just throw some names out there of self-proclaimed introverts that people might know. Right. And these aren’t necessarily people that I’ve worked with or coached or anything like that, but these are

Arlen Robinson [21:17]
Okay.

Mischa Zvegintzov [21:38]
where you can go, oh my gosh. So there’s a gentleman named Tristan Walker, and he’s the introvert, his words, not mine, the introvert entrepreneur behind Walker and Company Brands and the creator of Bevel. It’s a product line that caters to people of color. Yeah, so Tristan, you know, he ended up being the CEO of Procter & Gamble.

Arlen Robinson [21:54]
Okay.

Arlen Robinson [21:58]
Mm-hmm. Maybe with that.

Mischa Zvegintzov [22:08]
And then also he’s like on the board of Foot Locker today, right? On the board of the board of directors of all these crazy companies that we would know that I think are crazy. I’m like, wow, you’re on the board of director as a, you know, Foot Locker. But my point is if you go to, there’s a tool called listen notes and you can search for people who have spoken on podcasts. Okay. And so if you

Arlen Robinson [22:14]
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson [22:19]
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Right.

Mischa Zvegintzov [22:37]
quote, in quotes, quote, Tristan Walker, or make sure to put quote, who it is, end quote. So that way it makes sure to search for that complete name. I’ll leave out the technical details of why you need to do that, but you’ll see that Tristan Walker is on podcasts all over the place, right? Like hundreds and hundreds of podcasts and has been for years.

Arlen Robinson [23:02]
Mm-hmm.

Mischa Zvegintzov [23:07]
right? So, and he’s like, Hey, man, I’m an introvert. And it’s all right, though, I’ll do it. So he’s a gentleman. There’s a there’s a guy, there’s a couple guys that I love that they have this company called Fire Creek snacks. And which is we’d consider that an ecom product, right? Like beef jerky sticks, in effect, right? And so, yeah, so these guys have such a great, great story and

Arlen Robinson [23:11]
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson [23:26]
Yeah.

Mischa Zvegintzov [23:37]
you know, in the e-commerce space, when I think of e-commerce, I’m thinking of, I mean, there’s a couple of levels of e-commerce. There’s like, commoditized products, I don’t know, paper cups or paper clips or whatever, where it’s hard to build a story around it. But then I’m also thinking about, you know, beef jerky sticks that are made with the cleanest ingredients. And, you know, they’re healthy and they’re extra protein packed in them so that they’re good to take while you’re doing your exercise or whatever, right? There’s more of a story you can have around that. I have a buddy who’s got 3D print sunglasses. Anybody listening can go to santiwear.com. These sunglasses are amazing. And the craftsmanship in these things and his attention to detail utilizing 3D printing is

Arlen Robinson [24:15]
Mm.

Arlen Robinson [24:22]
Mm.

Mischa Zvegintzov [24:33]
It is crazy. These things are, they’re works of art, right? That’s what I’m thinking about e-commerce, right? I’m thinking about those sorts of products, right? So these guys with the jerky sticks, and I think a lot of those guys, like these guys with the jerky sticks, they start selling them at farmers markets, right? They kind of do the feed on the street tour. Does that make sense? Or, yeah. So Tom does that with his Sontiware. He’s at all the…

Arlen Robinson [24:34]
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson [24:52]
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson [24:57]
Yeah, yeah.

Mischa Zvegintzov [25:02]
the shows or the like farmers markets or what do you call them? Can’t remember what they call those, those things. But anyway, you, these guys with the jerky sticks, they got their messaging and all in line a little bit by selling at conventions or these sorts of things. What they did is they went to golf. They went to literal golf, uh, tournaments.

Arlen Robinson [25:11]
Hmm.

Arlen Robinson [25:30]
Hmm.

Mischa Zvegintzov [25:31]
And they started pitching them to the actual golfers. They’re like, hey, you can eat these turkey sticks while you’re freaking golfing, right? Anyway, so what happened is these guys, as they tell their story, they started speaking on podcasts a few years ago, and they started talking about their beef steaks, and they went on like 100 shows in three years or something like that. But the next thing you know,

Arlen Robinson [25:34]
Okay. Yeah.

Arlen Robinson [25:56]
Mm. Wow.

Mischa Zvegintzov [26:00]
via podcasting, because there’s six main benefits of guest speaking on podcasts. One of which is who you meet, literally who you meet by speaking on the podcast. Like I meet you Arlen, great chance you’re like, wow, Misha’s got his act together. He can help some of my people by going on a podcast tour. So you’ll introduce me to some people, right?

Arlen Robinson [26:07]
Mm-hmm.

Arlen Robinson [26:11]
Mm-hmm.

Mischa Zvegintzov [26:25]
So these guys are guest speaking on podcasts, guest speaking on podcasts. One of the things that happens when you guest speak on a podcast is the audience will literally go click on your call to action. So you’re like, hey man, if you want to know more about my beef sticks, go to beefsticks.com and right. And then, or you’re gonna have networking opportunities like the host will literally direct you to somebody who needs your product or refer you or what have you.

Arlen Robinson [26:40]
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mischa Zvegintzov [26:55]
Next thing you know, they get introduced to a Walmart distributor. You know what I mean? Because they’re guest speaking on podcasts and bam, now they’re in Walmart.

Arlen Robinson [26:58]
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Arlen Robinson [27:06]
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it can definitely, you know, widen your base of exposure for sure. You like you said, for a number of different reasons. And now, when we’re thinking of this, let’s say you’re going to go on a podcast guest speaking tour, just like anything with an ecommerce business, if we’re if we’re looking at these type of outreach activities, we’re kind of looking at as a

Mischa Zvegintzov [27:14]
Thank you.

Arlen Robinson [27:32]
as a marketing strategy. Now, if we’re looking at this as being a long-term marketing strategy, because obviously these days, you know, there’s millions of podcasts out there. So it’s millions of opportunities for you to get on, you know, other people’s shows and really kind of keep these go, keep things going, you know, year after year. And so if we’re looking at this as a long-term marketing strategy, what do you see and what have you seen as, you know, the potential?

returns that you can expect from this approach. You’ve already talked about the connections that you can build. You’ve talked about the direct calls to action. But as far as, I guess you can say systematizing this or being able to track this via metrics, what would be some of the things that you could expect from going on one of these type of tours?

Mischa Zvegintzov [28:20]
Yeah.

Mischa Zvegintzov [28:27]
Yeah, such a great, great question. And so again, the benefits of guest speaking on a podcast are the, you can literally tell the audience, go click on this CTA. So anybody listening if they’re like, Oh my gosh, Misha, I want to do what you do, I want you to teach me, they can go to badzuck.com, B-A-D-Z-U-C-K.com. Join what I do.

And I’ll coach them up, right? You can, so your call to action. So around that call to action is people are gonna join your email list as well. So you can start building your email list, correct? Awesome. And now you can market, sell, inspire off of that email list. Around that as well is podcast, podcasting, going on YouTube’s guest blogging. That’s the other thing around a…

Arlen Robinson [29:09]
Yep.

Mischa Zvegintzov [29:26]
an influence tour as you can guest write articles, you can do things like that. That content is SEO rich. It’s got lasting power, and you’re tending to build versus if you go on Facebook or the social media channels. That’s very fleeting. Yeah. So we’ve got that.

Arlen Robinson [29:34]
Hmm?

Mischa Zvegintzov [29:50]
As I said, the host will recommend you to someone. The host sometimes will use the services themselves. I know you’ve got this great affiliate software that you use. I know if you’re on a guest speaking tour, guarantees some hosts are gonna be like, I need to use your software. Collaboration opportunities. The other thing is you can repurpose the content. So you can take, I could take this video, take cool clips, repurpose the content, and I’ll get, I’m gonna answer your question here shortly.

Arlen Robinson [30:06]
Right.

Mischa Zvegintzov [30:20]
Um, we’ve also got branding. So you’re going to be seen as the authority in your space. Uh, a number seven bonus is that you’re going to be a different person as a marketer, as an e-commerce seller. If you commit to going on a podcast tour and putting yourself out there like that in that way, consistently, you will be a trans, it’ll be a transformational process for you. Yes.

Arlen Robinson [30:29]
Mm-mm.

Hmm.

Arlen Robinson [30:47]
Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure.

Mischa Zvegintzov [30:50]
And so how do we track it now? So it’s awesome. On your CTAs, you can do bit.ly links and things like that. So if you’re, if you’re telling people to go to specific sites, you can create custom URLs so you can track. It’s a little harder on podcasts because it’s a lot of maintenance to track all this stuff. But I can tell you that as I go on a guest speaking tour, myself and the more podcasts that I speak on and I can’t speak on enough. I wake up to new leads, to new sales, to new… You know what I mean? I wake up and there’s the proof right there. I’m like, where’d that come from? And yeah.

Arlen Robinson [31:25]
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson [31:31]
Yeah, right, right. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I mean, I, I get that a lot of it is you, you know, benefits that you may not necessarily directly see like after a specific appearance, like you may not see, you know, a boost in sales like immediately. But like you said, it’s that awareness that is going to eventually grow over time. 

And depending on the podcast that you’re on, the popularity of them, then that’s where it can really start to build for sure. Now, as we get ready to wrap things up, I know a lot of people are listening are probably like, okay, Arlen Misha, this is awesome. I’m sold. I’ve already been thinking about getting on podcasts. I know the benefits of it. I see there’s so many out there. Now,

Mischa Zvegintzov [32:05]
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson [32:25]
It’s almost like going to a grocery store and going to the cereal aisle. There’s so many options. And like I said earlier, there’s millions of podcasts at this point that you could possibly get on. So as a person that’s now interested, the next question is gonna be, okay, how do I find those right podcasts to get on? And what are some strategies for doing?

Mischa Zvegintzov [32:48]
Yeah, that’s such a, that’s such a, another great question. You’ve got these great questions. Give me one second. I have a framework. I’ve got frameworks for everything. And so I’ve got my find your perfect podcast framework, my five step framework to easily find more podcasts to speak on than you know what to do with. And one of the key thoughts around that is

Think about a podcast audience. We only need a slice of that podcast audience, correct? So we want the Venn diagram of interest to intersect. If anybody knows what a Venn diagram is, but does that make sense when I say that?

Arlen Robinson [33:35]
Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, you don’t necessarily need, because obviously with every podcast, there’s a particular audience. Not everybody in that audience is gonna have the same interests, the same background, same demographics. For your particular product or service, you just need a small snippet of that audience that’s gonna align with what it is that you’re providing. So that makes total sense.

Mischa Zvegintzov [33:59]
Absolutely. So me talking about guest speaking on podcasts itself, if we use that as the product, you could think about, oh my gosh, I could go on to coaching websites. I could go on to coaching podcasts, e-commerce podcasts. I have a lot of rich stories about starting over in life about retiring and then rebirthing into the entrepreneurial space. So I could go on to 50 something podcasts and talk about reinventing yourself. Does that make sense? So if we start getting creative and think about where is a little bit of a slice of our audience, man, their podcasts are all over the place. Right. So for me personally, mid 50s, 

Arlen Robinson [34:34]
Yes.

Arlen Robinson [34:44]
Yeah, yeah.

Mischa Zvegintzov [34:49]
I’ve got a couple of great stories of reinventing myself, reinventing myself as a salesman entrepreneur. And that’s a powerful story to tell to 50 something websites and there’s all kinds of them. Right. I’m going to take a note on that and get on that niche right now.

Arlen Robinson [35:01]
Yeah.

Arlen Robinson [35:08]
Yeah, that’s really good because that gives, I think, the listener some reassurance that you don’t need to find a podcast. You probably never find it that’s going to check all of your boxes of everything it is that you’re trying to connect with as far as that end customer. Because it’s not going to happen. There may be a few people in the audience of these different podcasts where it’s going to resonate.

with they’re gonna be your ideal customer avatar, so to speak. Yeah, there may be a few, but there may be people that are in that particular audience that resonate with maybe a specific aspect of what it is that you’re doing or a certain service offering, but not everything that you provide, not all of your service offerings. So that’s good to know. You don’t have to find a show that’s gonna cover everything because it’s probably not gonna be possible.

Mischa Zvegintzov [36:06]
Exactly. And so the question is, how do you find the podcast? Start with Google. Google is a great way to go. So you could, I could literally start Googling coaching podcasts, you know, midlife crisis podcasts, you know, speaker podcasts, or how to, how to, you know, speak podcasts, there’s podcasts that talk about that. There’s podcasts that are talking about books and things like that. And so obviously authors need to go on an influence tour on a podcast tour. I could literally just go Google marketing to people. I’m in a good niche of marketing, right? And so start with the Google. Um, and then what I’ll do is like, I looked at your podcast guest list. And I’m like, Ooh, Arlen’s had some cool people on there on your podcast. Yeah.

Arlen Robinson [36:42]
Mm.

Arlen Robinson [36:46]
Yeah, exactly.

Arlen Robinson [36:56]
Yep.

Arlen Robinson [37:00]
Yeah, thanks.

Mischa Zvegintzov [37:02]
And so I can start looking those people up and seeing if they have a podcast. So it’s a great way to do that. And so if you find podcasts that you want to speak on, look at their guest list and hack that guest list is what I like to say. And then I have a spreadsheet that I use. And I’m constantly as I finding podcasts, I just enter the name of that podcast on that spreadsheet. I’ve got a name for my tracking

Arlen Robinson [37:06]
Yep, true.

Mm-hmm.

Mischa Zvegintzov [37:31]
I’ve got a framework for all this, which, but anyway, just know that if you systemize it, it helps the process. So then you go, all right, where the heck do I find the email? Cause that’s the next thing. And so there’s a thing called an RSS feed. Every podcast has an RSS feed. Most of those RSS feeds have the email embedded in it. So you can go to an RSS feed finder. And I have the.

I have some favorite RSS feed finders. So my, I’ve got what I call the guest speaker challenge tracking template. So I just challenge myself to how many podcasts I want to speak on. And, and so that’s why I call it that. But some links are where you can find the RSS feed. All you need to know, forget about the techno babble is that if you find the RSS feed, the email is going to be in there. Okay. So you can go to podcast addict.

Arlen Robinson [38:27]
Okay.

Mischa Zvegintzov [38:33]
or chartable.com, anybody listening. So as you start building your lists of podcasts, now you got to find the email. You can go to those tools. They’re super easy to use. Click on RSS feed and look in the RSS feed and the email will pop out at you. So that’s one way. Sometimes they’re hidden. So then you go, okay, go to their Facebook page, their business page. Almost always there’s an email address there. You can go to YouTube.

Arlen Robinson [38:50]
Hmm?

Mischa Zvegintzov [39:01]
So most people who have a podcast have a YouTube channel. And if you go to the about info of the YouTube channel, it says, you know, show me the email address, right? So you can do that. So that’s all free. You can do that. There’s also tools too that you can pay for. So listen notes allows you to use some bulk to do some bulk searching. Um,

And you pay, you end up paying for the email address, a nominal amount, but that’s a great way to do it if you have a budget. And then Anybody can go to find podcasts fasts find podcasts fast. Oh my gosh, that’s hard to say find podcasts fast.com I have a partner that I work with pitch DB. The guy’s name is Ron story.

Arlen Robinson [39:51]
Tongue-twister.

Mischa Zvegintzov [39:59]
junior. And I use this tool all the time. I pay for it. I love it. It’s basically a database of 4 million podcasts with their email addresses. You can send your email pitch right from it. Love this guy. Ron is a genius. His tool is awesome. If anybody signs up, it’s an affiliate through me. They get 30% off.

Arlen Robinson [40:20]
Mm-hmm.

Mischa Zvegintzov [40:24]
But that basically systemizes a lot of the process. Again, if you have a little bit of a budget, so you can go to findpodcastsfast.com and take advantage through that affiliate link. Hopefully I answered your question.

Arlen Robinson [40:38]
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, you covered a lot of bases as far as freeways, of course, of finding the right podcast to get on. As you see, there’s, you know, from going to Google, doing your own searches, there’s a free resources where you can pull emails from the RSS feeds. And then, you know, there’s a lot of paid services. So all of the ways in which you can get into it. And there’s so there’s really no excuse for an entrepreneur to kind of get in there.

and try to find those shows to get on. And yeah, that definitely answered the question. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you, Misha, for coming on. This has been an awesome conversation. Because as we know, you mentioned 4 million podcasts in that specific database. Podcasts today are definitely not going anywhere anytime soon. They’re only gonna continue to grow. There’s gonna continue to be more out there and it’s gonna continually be a good vehicle for e-commerce businesses to expose their businesses to.

Mischa Zvegintzov [41:10]
Yes.

Arlen Robinson [41:33]
to the right customers. And so lastly, before we do let you go, I always like to switch gears just so our audience can get to know you a little bit better. You don’t mind sharing one closing fun fact about yourself that you think we’d be interested to know.

Mischa Zvegintzov [41:45]
Yeah, so when I was young in my late teens and early 20s, I was a professional snowboarder on the first wave of snowboarding. Yeah, so late 80s, early 90s. Yes. As a matter of fact, I was on the forefront so much that a lot of the ski areas, if any of your audience happens to ski, maybe Jackson Hole, Wyoming or Colorado or Utah, a huge, yep, a huge amount of those ski areas.

Arlen Robinson [41:52]
Okay.

Wow. Okay.

Arlen Robinson [42:10]
Yeah.

Mischa Zvegintzov [42:13]
I was the first snowboarder on a lot of those ski lifts.

Arlen Robinson [42:17]
Oh, wow. Okay. That’s impressive. Yeah, I do ski myself. I’m actually going to Park City, Utah, this winter and I ski as well. So yeah, snowboarding. Yeah, it’s yeah, when you think about it, you don’t realize that yeah, it’s a fairly new sport. And so yeah, it hasn’t been around for that long. And so yeah, that’s some good stuff. So I know. I’m sure it was probably when you first started doing it. I’m sure it was quite you were probably catching eyes where people are like, what the heck? What is he doing? Is that a skateboard? And, uh, yeah. So, yeah.

Mischa Zvegintzov [42:50]
Yes, absolutely. Yes. Lots of great feedback and then also lots of negative feedback. Anytime something new comes, there’s a section that will not be happy about it. But I loved it. I loved it. Loved the attention. Snowboarding is fun. I’m a skier too. I grew up in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, so I love skiing. I’ve gravitated back to skiing. I just think skiing is so much fun.

Arlen Robinson [42:57]
Got you. Yeah.

Arlen Robinson [43:04]
Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Arlen Robinson [43:15]
Okay? Okay.

Mischa Zvegintzov [43:19]
I’m jealous that you’re going to Park City.

Arlen Robinson [43:19]
Yeah, that’s, yeah, it’s awesome. Skiing, it’s snowboarding, it’s a great sport for sure. A lot of fun. Well, Misha, thank you for sharing that. I definitely appreciate that. Lastly, before we do let you go, if you don’t mind sharing one of the best ways for our audience to connect with you, if they wanna reach out to you, pick your brain anymore about podcasting, marketing, or anything under the sun. What’s the best way for them to get in contact with you?

Mischa Zvegintzov [43:45]
Yeah, so I have a great resource for people if they’re like, Oh yeah, this guest speaking tour sounds amazing. This influence tour, you can go to guestingguide.com. Guestingguide.com. I’ve got a free downloadable resource. It’s got the 10 key points to executing a profitable and successful podcast tour. So a lot of what we talked about is going to be in there, but a bunch more stuff so you can download it.

for free there. And then of course, you can always find me on Facebook, but I’d say the best way to find me is to go to my podcast, table rush talk show.com table rush talk show.com. And then again, Facebook. Misha’s Vagans off, you can find me just there’s only one of me. There’s not many Misha’s Vagans offs out there. So Facebook, if you want to send me a DM or any anybody.

Arlen Robinson [44:38]
Gotcha.

Mischa Zvegintzov [44:42]
wants to DM me, I’m checking Facebook. So if anybody’s like, I need to get ahold of this dude, DM me on Facebook.

Arlen Robinson [44:50]
Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. We’ll definitely be sure to have the link to your podcasts and those other resources in the show notes and definitely encourage people to connect with you or on Facebook and other social media platforms. Well, once again, thanks a lot, Misha, for joining us. This has been an awesome conversation. We really appreciate having you on the e-commerce marketing podcast.

Mischa Zvegintzov [45:10]
Thank you, Arlen.

Podcast Guest Info

Mischa Zvegintzov
Founder of The Influence Army