Hey, what is up? It is the Follow-up Media podcast. My name is Christian Lee. I'm sitting here with my co-host, Riley Alustin. Yes, sir. Thank you for having me again. No, always. We always have you, Riley. Riley is our vice president of sales for Follow-Up Media. Um, a young buck, but moving his way up. you

know, when uh when I was your age, I mean, talk about a great position, you know, Riley, as I look across the room in one of our studios, um, located at the Blend in Alpharetta, Georgia, you know, how much potential there is for you. What are you, like 18? Uh, 22. Oh, you're all right. You're old enough to

drink. So, yeah. All right. So, but you know what your life is potentially going to look like, you know, by the time you're 25, 26 is going to be mindblowing compared to probably most of the kids that you went to school with. Yeah. But anyway, so, you know, it is 2025. Last episode we kind of talked about content,

you know, creating content, new initiatives, new year, new you, you know, new year for your business, you know, new goals that, you know, businesses are setting aside along with budgets. What they're going to do different this year to get them a set of different results and, you know,

definition of insanity, you've heard it a million times. You know, I almost hate even saying it, doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. you most likely will not get that result. And if you do get a different result, most of the time it is not moving in the direction that you

would have wanted it to be. So you might be getting less of a result than you were getting the year before if you keep doing what you're doing. If you're not moving forward, you're moving backwards.

That's right. Right. Right. That goes for personal lives and that goes for businesses as well. So it's like how can they position themselves? And one thing that we pointed out in our last episode was that, you know, we like to touch, you know, an established contact in a very in a more personal way. Yeah. We

like to pick up the phone or go into your office and introduce ourselves instead of creating an ad hopefully resonating with a portion of the public and spam emails. Throwing out spam emails. Um, while I do like the ones where, you know, I get where they're asking me for my information because my

heir in Kuwait has died and left me a lot of money and I'm the sole beneficiary, the beneficiary. I love those emails because the grammar is never correct. Yeah. It's always jacked up in some way. Um, which I'm like with now with AI, I'm like, you didn't run that like text through like chat GPT to

make it sound like, oh, I can't even poke holes. It is an absurd story, but their grammar is perfect, so it might be real. I would imagine their conversion rates on the idiots that actually, you know, believe what they're doing there is no different than a legit email campaign, right? They're they're casting

a wide ass net and they're just waiting on one reply. Yeah. And and but when you go through millions and millions, maybe billions of people, you're gonna or no, you probably I would I would like to see the ROI on those emails because I guarantee you would probably look at what their daily numbers are of the

people that actually were like, are you serious? Yeah. Like and and actually start like a communication where if you get a reply, oh, you know, they're like, oh, we got one. They're probably all in, you know, in a cult somewhere like cheering and like popping bottles.

Um, but I would like to see those numbers because I guarantee there are thousands. They probably have hundreds of people that might fall for it. But if I could offer you one tidbit of advice to these scam artists that are casting these big fishing nets trying to pull the dumb,

right? uh that fall for these type things. There is something called AI now. There's a many language models that you could use and just run your text through there and it would probably increase your chances because no one would be initially flagged by the poor grammar and punctuation that exists in

those emails. Perfect. It's perfect. Yeah. that college students are using. I'm not trying to increase their hack rate and their spam, their, you know, and taking advantage of, but then again, well, you know what I mean, I'll call it like I see it. If you're an idiot and you're dumb, I mean, like you might as

well I mean, you're going to have to be a little more clever to get me to bite on that, right? But there are some that, you know, that prey on the old. Very true. But I guess someone at the very end of their life, like at the end of their business, you know, cycle as well or their business career before the

retirement. Yeah. I mean, like I guess they're but why would they care because hey, I might not live for another 10 years, but I don't know. Anyway, we're not. So, we talked about, you know, those initiatives. Email marketing would be one of them. But we have a very we like to reach out and touch someone, you

know, like, hey, personto person, you know, voice to voice and really try to establish contact with them to where they know our name, they know our company, and now we know them because we've already done a little bit of due diligence before we called and we already know they're not creating

content. They don't have any video. They're not posting good stuff on social. They're not establishing themselves as a thought leader in that industry or in that business lane they're in. They're not creating any other brand awareness and they're not establishing themselves as a thought

leader in that area of business. And they may think they're doing good, but you don't know what you don't know. You know, it's one of those things where, and I know you've we've had these conversations in in quite detail, Riley, where, you know, you've reached out to somebody. You've pointed out, you know,

I see you're not creating any content. You know, you're not really taking advantage of these social platforms. You might have a profile, but you're not posting anything. You have Old Faithful that blog blog that you're paying some company to put together for you. And if I had to guess, it's probably maybe the

SEO company that you're paying an astronomical amount of money for every month in hopes that they're doing their job and, you know, putting in new keywords and search terms to where you're getting this or and hoping they're not just taking your two grand a month and just sitting back going,

"Yeah, bring me another round." you know um which a lot of companies that we are consulting with that we are dealing with that we're onboarding that seems to be a common denominator in their SEO website you know kind of experience and you know we are uh follow-up media is set out to change

things we are here to shake up I'll be honest with you so if you have been working with a marketing or a production company that you feel is just kind of in idle mode. You're you're kind of got that reoccurring payment. You're used to seeing it. The sting has come out of watching the money come out of your bank

account. It's a necessary evil, but you still don't understand the benefits of it. We are here to change that because we are follow-up media and we are action focused. We are not about what we say.

While we do talk a good talk, but we back it up with action for sure. Um, and that starts to become very clear in just how we reach out and how we interact. And we might leave you 10 messages, but we're not you're not coming off our list. No. Until we at least have that conversation and and you know, feel out

you this is if you are at the end of your I only have a few more years in this business. I'm going to retire and I'm going to go be with my wife or whatever you're going to do. Go fishing every day. That's great. You know, you might not care. And you know, at that point, we might check you off the list

as you know, we won't reach back out because it's we know where you're at. But until we hear that from you, we're not going to stop because uh there's a reason why we contacted you in the first place. It's not just a long list of unnamed un We have the names. Yeah. when we look at the website. But the thing is

is we might not have spoken with you yet. Yeah. But we have already profiled your brand. We've already looked and say okay they are doing something. Are they doing it correct? You know do they know what they don't know? I mean, or do they have somebody in a position that is dialed in to, you know, the algorithms

on all these social platforms on YouTube, on, you know, utilizing a podcast versus not utilizing a pod. So, we've already kind of, okay, this one is worth reaching out to, right? So, if we reach out to you, you should almost take that as a compliment, right? because we think that your brand and your company

has a lot more potential and is probably underperforming, you know, and you know, some people that this is what we I was getting back to. Some people are like, "Oh, you know, we've built this great referral business." Well, that's great.

Fantastic. That's what you want. Word of mouth is the best form of marketing. Yeah. But and I hope that if you do have one of these businesses and you speak highly about it and people approach you for helping you with marketing, you got a I don't need that because guess what?

I have a f I've built a business on doing what I say I'm going to do and performing for my clients and we have a great word of mouth. Well, I hope it lives forever and I hope it never slows down. But a lot of times the reality is is while you might have a good year, two years, three years of having this word

of mouth business is booming. What ends up happening for most from my experience and in talking with other people and businesses about their journey is all of a sudden it does start to slow down and then this pipeline starts to turn more into a trickle and they're like, "Oh we got to open back up the

floodgates." Yeah. And then all of a sudden you're kind of in crisis mode and now you're trying to throw money at stuff and trying to ramp up and now you're trying to adopt these initiatives. Well, let me tell you, your competition has probably started to adopt and which that doesn't mean you

still can't make an impact. Yeah. But always having, you know, the floodgates open is the best. And I think we've run into some customers too that are like, well, I just can't handle any more business. Yeah. Okay. Well, I mean, I'll be honest with you. If if you know you can't handle anymore, you don't want any

more business, I don't really got anything to Okay, great. But there again, when that business and you're like, man, I need more business because now you can definitely handle what because maybe some of them moved on.

Yeah. So, you know, that is the whole thing with, you know, what we are doing is we are trying to set companies up for the future. Now, there are a lot of short-term benefits to what we do and you can see ROI very quickly in some respects and in other respects it does take a little bit of time. I mean, but

this is overall while you will see the benefits and get the ROI, this is a long-term initiative that is going to set your company up for the future. So, if you're in the beginnings of your career or your business, you know, um, this is going to help you build something big and then sustain it. Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? I think really what we wanted to talk about uh and I know I touched on a few things we spoke about in last episode but we're kind of expanding on um you know some of the objections you know one thing we see also is there's a fear like there is a fear

because it's not comfortable to be on a mic. No. Now there are a couple different scenarios that we have to look at when we are talking to a new client whether it's podcast or it's a video series. You know podcast these days is pretty much an audio and video component. years ago when you said the

word podcast, everyone thought, "Oh, it's just audio." Yeah. Right. But now there's a video element most of the time and while clients if they wanted to could opt into just the audio version, I mean, if you come into one of our studios, it's filming regardless, you know, video, they're not used to it,

right? They're not used to being on mic. They're not used to being on a in front of a camera. And it's not the most comfortable thing because you know most people come in here and they're oh you up until we hit the studio doors they're talking like they normally would and then you put this mic in front of them.

Yeah. And they're like in a world along your eyes. Whoa, buddy. That's not how you talk. Yeah. Right. Like it's but they they they're almost they're gathering all the things they've seen and they think they have to project a different way. And really the more conversational the better. But that does

not make it any easier. And so what we do is is we have a number of ways we help. Riley is also one of our hosts. So if we have a company that is just not comfortable with leading the initiative or opening up the video or starting off the podcast, welcoming the audience, you know, just kind of getting it moving.

Yeah. As far as the content goes, Riley, depending on what industry you're in, will have a preset of questions and will lead to make our client look overall smooth and polished because we can ask them the questions that they can we'll set them up so they can knock it out the park and then we can help

them get the content they need that we are guiding them to showcase. Right. Yeah. Um, you know, Endor, we just script it for them roughly. I mean, no one's going to be able to look down and just follow a script. Otherwise, they're not going to be making any direct contact with the camera. You don't want

their face buried in the sheet. And you don't want anybody reading anything verbatim either. Yeah. Well, a lot of people, if they have topics, um, they can kind of I mean, they're the expert in this in this field for a reason.

They're the owner. If you give them the topics, they're going to be able to just ramble off and all of a sudden you're 10 minutes down on this topic. You're like, I couldn't even like I didn't even think I didn't even have any bullet points on it. All I had was the topic name and then I just ran with it. Yeah,

absolutely. We're not going to ask you questions that are out of your wheelhouse. If you're a financial advisor, you know, uh obviously we're going to ask questions that are pertinent and that appeal to, you know, their ideal client, that profile. You know, if you're talking to and about

retirement, we are gonna ask you questions that those people who are on the verge of retirement or they see that coming in their view like in the next year or two that is there are many many questions that you know I would say that we need to ask so they could provide those answers that would educate those

people that are now concerned about retirement. Now, Riley, I mentioned your age and called you out in the beginning of this. If I was, and we do have clients that we that are adviserss, do you give a crap about retirement topics at this present moment? No. So, so, so right. So, you're to, you know,

to somebody at your age, while you might know the benefits of, oh, I'll put a 401k and make sure you're putting away money for retirement, at the end of the day, you could give a less because in all honesty, if you get to live a full and fruitful life, you've got time on your side. And so, at that point,

most 20 year olds, 30 year olds, I mean, at least 20 year olds could give a less about the subject, right? you're probably not their demo for sure, especially when it comes to the retirement topic. But that being said, but we will not only script, we have the ability to host, we have the ability to

schedule guests, we are the marketing arm. That's our goal is to essentially become the marketing arm for these companies that do not have fullfledged marketing departments, right? We can do digital campaigns. We can buy you outdoor advertising. we can buy you, you know, airtime on TV networks or radio

stations or digital. Um, at the same time, we have the ability to actually get in there with our clients to help them create content. I have something very profound that I'm going to say, and I don't know if it's going to help those that we that might see this that go, "Yeah, I'm just not that type of going

personality where I'm going to get on a mic or be in front of the camera." That's That's not me, right? Well, I'd ask, well, if I showed you and said, I'm going to get you these guaranteed results, and you were looking for a way to, you know, a path to get to those results. And I said, this was your

vehicle, a podcast, video. This is the most streamlined, quickest way from point A to point B. Yeah. Hands down. I guarantee these results. Would you go through the pains of overcoming your discomfort with the initiative? Or would it be no, I'll take the long way or I'll take the un

guaranteed way. Yeah. Let me and this is what I was going to say that's so profound. Nobody. And there might be some narcissists out there that you might know in your sphere of influence and in your personal lives that enjoy watching themselves and listening to themselves and I and

actually there are those few out there but most people don't like watching themselves and don't like hearing themselves and they're like that is exactly why when you ask most A-list like Grammy nom nominated actors and actresses. Did you watch the movie you just made? They go, "No, can't do it."

No, no, they don't. They don't watch the final product. Some do objectively, but most find it very uncomfortable and they end up doing what everyone else does, what that they're going to criticize their performance. Oh god, I look like that. That's how I look. Okay. That's how I sound,

you know, like anything to not and and you know what? You let follow what media do it. You don't even have to watch it. Yeah. But the way we see ourselves and the way everyone else does is not always the same. Sometimes people need to be a little more self-aware to be honest with you because they think people are seeing

them one way and they are not seeing them that way and they're seeing them completely different. But when it comes to appearance and sound, you know, as long as you're not a scumbag, I mean, like overall, it's not as bad as you no judge yourself, right? And it's not and it

doesn't really matter because the content being authentic and sharing your knowledge and your experience and you're an expert. Otherwise, you wouldn't be uh successful in your business already and we would not have reached out to you. Right. Yeah. Right.

We're not trying to onboard some losers. Yeah. I mean, we're not, you know, we're trying to onboard top level executives and industry experts who were underperforming from what we can tell. Um who need help on setting themselves up for the future.

Yeah. and and you know in content creation is the future. So, it's like get out of your own head and let us or anybody. I mean, if it's not us, you don't have to use us. And while I would love you to, and I think we should also point out, too, it's like you don't have to outsource creating video. I mean, you

got video on your phone. You could figure out and probably a Google search how to start your own podcast. Yeah. But here are a few pros and cons. I would say a pro is that you will go down this path and you will have to learn and and there's plenty of resources that will educate you, but it's its own damn

thing. And so, okay, then you've got to are you going to be a video editor and an audio editor? All right. Well, okay. So, if you're a business, obviously you're a business owner, you probably want to spend time doing the things that make you money, right? Instead of trying to teach yourself new things, unless

you've just always wanted to learn video editing or YouTube optimization, if that's your thing, I don't know. U maybe that's a hobby for you. So, you can go about figuring out how to do it yourself or task someone that might work for you who's never done it and your results are probably going to be minimal at best

because there's a huge learning curve. Or one of my clients whom I've been having a lot of conversations with, that is their goal was to bring on a full-time social media manager. And at the time, we were managing their social profiles. We were posting their video content, some static posts. they did

have somebody in their office that was that would send out, you know, a few posts, you know, a week or something about an event or about a product that they had just, you know, put on the market to sell or whatever. And so I started raising the question while not trying to hold on to this huge amount of

monthly money, but I am an advisor. When you start working with us, I am going to offer insight to what we see. I mean, if we see something that it's like, okay, well, you can think about it like this or you could look at it like that. I'm at least going to show you. That's what's so important about our discovery

call. We we talked to them. We get down to stuff that they don't know that they needed and stuff that they they they wanted but didn't know the the right avenue to get there. Exactly. Yeah. No.

No. Absolutely. And so it's like, okay, you could pay us 12 or 1,300 bucks a month and we'll manage your social media, you know, your Facebook, your Instagram, your LinkedIn, your Tik Tok, your Twitter. It's not Twitter, your ex, your threads, all these, you know, platforms with your ex.

Yeah, we'll get in touch with your ex. Um, and you know, and so and that's going to cost you, you know, x amount of dollars a month, you know, depending on the level and how many platforms. I mean, it could be a $1,200 to $4,000 a month expense, but I mean, because social media management could you've got

to define that also because is the company that's handling it, are they responding to every message on Facebook on your behalf? That's another level of engagement. That's not just posting something and then going, "We're done." You know, posted today, we're good.

Well, no, but then there are these companies that okay, well, who's handling when somebody actually responds? You know, is is the your team going to do that? Because if that's the level of social media management you need, there's obviously going to be a bigger cost. But then you look at, okay,

well, I'm going to hire somebody that's full-time at 40 hours a week probably for this one task. And we do have clients that have gone down this road where they try to find this unicorn.

Yeah, this SEO, website builder, social media manager, video editor, um YouTube optimizer, somebody, this one person that is going to handle an entire department's worth of tasks. I mean, they are going to be expensive. Yeah.

But and I would probably advise I doubt that they're going to be an expert in every one of them. Yeah. So, you know, if you want somebody with that knows a little bit about a lot or somebody that knows a lot about that little. Yeah.

Because that is what is going to get you the best bang and ROI for that initiative. Right. So, if it's it's the way you post content, it's the way you title it, it's the way you describe it, it's the call to action that accompanies every piece of content that is put out.

if depending on the platform are they more hashtag friendly or are they not hashtag friendly you know like obviously Instagram you can throw up you know 30 hashtags in there Facebook you can use the same but it's not going to help you anymore I think they're like at the last time I looked in 2024 at the end I mean

it's like five six hashtags is probably best practices to use on Facebook and most people don't know this but you know but they don't need to know it because that's not what they're focused on. That is where, you know, we say, you know, bring in a company that can help execute this for you. Yeah. You know, so you

don't have to go down the road and get minimal results because it can be an expensive experience either way. Yeah. You could hire in-house and then realize that this in-house person, they don't know as much as they should know and you don't know what you don't know. I just want you to do action. Just show me

you're working. But are they working right? Right. You know, at least you have somebody to fall back on and yell at if it's not being done correctly. Yeah. But at the same time, the price for, let's just say, the social media manager in house, it's going to be 60 grand. You're going to offer him

benefits. So now that's going to that employee is going to cost you $67,000 with insurance and taxes. So, you know, uh, two grand a month doesn't sound all that bad. No, not really. For I mean, for, you know, a third of the price, you've got it being handled correctly.

Yeah. Now, does that's to not to say that just like hiring a new employee. There is an onboarding, you know, period where it's, you know, follow-up media is no different than any other, you know, part of your company. We need to learn your brand, right? What are your brand guidelines? What what compliance issues

do we need to ensure that that get posted or, you know, applied to every piece of content you put out? Because if you're in real estate or you're in finance, there's a hell of a lot of compliance. The SEC doesn't I feel like they have not come with the times yet.

And so a lot of uh bigger financial companies haven't figured out how they're going to deal with this medium and content. You know, it's very it's very controlled from the top because they're so afraid of getting sued because the SEC doesn't even know how they're going to deal with it yet. Like

what are the guidelines for launching a podcast? And and that in my opinion that's what makes it the opportunity right now in 2025 so key is because while they're scrambling the pioneers of those industries can really with the right disclaimers and the right compliance and some companies have an

in-house compliance department and sometimes those guys are about more scared than anybody because they're like oh my whole thing is we don't want lawsuits and we don't want fines. Well you know sometimes you can play too safe. Yeah. And being so safe ends up costing you what could have been a huge

spike in your intake of new customers and your your your basically um your intake of more revenue from your existing customers. Right. So I guess what I'm trying to say at the end of the day if I had to leave you with one message is don't fear the reaper. Yeah.

I mean healthy balance of fear is always good because fear protects you for sure but you know being so fearful and there's ways of doing things that I'm not saying the gray area but I mean there's ways of doing things and being is from a compliance standpoint adding in your disclaimers and and I mean you

can consult with other compliance outsource compliance companies well and they might say oh well the SEC really hasn't really set up these guidelines but I think if we disclaim and we watch what we say because from a financial adviser, you can never guarantee any sort of results from any of the advice

you're given you're giving out, right? Which is essentially what you're doing. You're trying to educate your existing clients to save more, invest more for retirement, which at the end of the day, the end result of that is your company brings in more money and hopefully your clients get a good ROI on it. But you

can't guarantee those results. You can't even imply that you could, you know, receive those results. It's it's got to be some things that a financial adviser could say could send a compliance officer running for the hills like oh my god you can't you know so there's there's a lot on advertising when it

comes to that and followup media is in the know we know the areas like we know what some of these industries are having to deal with when it comes to compliance and we're not only listening to you know stuff and announcements you and and laws from the SEC, but we're also best practices. We're in the know. This is

what we do for sure and we will guide and advise you on that and we will work with your team. If you have a compliance officer, tell him to call me. Yeah, let's talk. If he has a concern, we'll address it and we'll make sure we exclude that from the content or include it, whatever it is. So, you know, we are

a partner. Follow-up Media is a full-ervice production marketing agency and we are spearheading this content creation initiative. We are here to service our clients, exceed expectations and basically do what all these other companies aren't doing. Yeah. Which is not backing up what they say with the

correct amount of knowledge and action. Riley, anything else for me, sir? Even though I rambled on. No, you're good. I mean, back to what you're saying about the um the fear factor of getting in here and getting in front of the camera.

They lock up. They don't know what to say. They It's a real thing. Public speaking, one of the biggest fears out there. I feel like what followup media followup media is uh like set sets apart from all the other companies are when they come in, we're laughing. We're having a good time. We're prepared.

We're we're more prepared than them. But then when they sit in this seat, they have every bit of content ready. they have they're they're loose. They're the mics are ready, the cameras are ready and we're ready to to execute for Right. Right. If it's if it's a client who is running their own show and who is

leading the show, you know, we've already sent them our, you know, if they're just launching a podcast or a video series, we've already sent them their first four to eight topics or videos or podcast episodes and they're topics of what we suggest from a rollout standpoint. But your first one should

always be about you, your journey, why you do what you do, how you got to be right here, right now. Yeah. You know, and and about your journey and why you love, you know, and you know, what feeds your pockets, but really also what feeds your heart or your soul with why you're working. And when some people are like,

"I hate working at McDonald's." Well, that probably doesn't feed your soul, and it's probably not your end your endgame, but um and you don't have the money to pay us to do this anyway. So, no offense if you are working at McDonald's. We love you. We need I'm loving it. Yeah, I'm sorry. I know that

was going to ice cream. She was Jonah, do not take that out. Um so, uh but but that being said, you've already received your topics. Yeah. And and a lot of times our clients when they come in, they admit, "We got your topics, but we haven't looked at them. We still didn't even take the time

Yeah. to look at them." But then when they see how in depth, they're like, "Okay, all right. I see how this is going to roll out, you know, in the first few video episodes or podcast, whatever you want to call it, or corporate messages or whatever it is." Um, you know, they're like, "Wow, we can

tell you put a lot of time and knowledge into That's what we do. If it's scheduling a guest, we will email them. We will call them. We will try to get them on the books and match calendars and either get them in studio or using our remote studio setup. And we will provide them with a outline of what they

can expect. Yeah. the questions to be so they can be prepared to answer and give the best answers from their knowledge and experience of being in that industry. Mhm. Right. Like so boom, they already know our client knows what questions he's asking. Y they know what questions are being asked. So it's

fluid. If Riley, you are brought in to be the host, you might be brought in to be the host between the client and the guest. So, you would provide both with the questions being that are going to be asked and you would give our client the ability to weigh in on that question and then the guest would get to weigh in

with their expertise and already preview the questions that I'm going to ask. So, we do all that. So, surprises. We can handle that. We want everybody to be ready to go with time to prep ahead of time. Everybody is going to be in the know. And that's what we want. That's how you get a fluid conversation. And

that's all it is is a conversation. If it's a conversation between you, I you and I, and the people that get to see this content wherever it's being posted, or if it's a conversation between you and I, and Riley is not allowed in this room. anymore. Yep. Cuz he's just too young and he needs to go live life a

little more. Y get a girlfriend. Oh yeah. Oh, we won't go down that road. Hey, thank you so much for checking us out. This is the Follow-Up Media podcast on the Fu Media Network. You can join the show. You can hit us up at 770-5448227 or you could hit the subscribe button.

All of our links are in the episode description. Um, you can reach out to Riley through his Instagram because he only uses it for personal use. You won't find any business time on there. Uh, oh, and uh, we'll be back with the next episode and we're going to bring on some great industry experts and guests and

clients and just badass stories from people who went from the streets to the sweets, from the bottom to the top, you name it. Oh, yeah. Follow-up media. Check us out. Follow-updia.com.

Yes, sir.