Welcome to the Action Driven Podcast

Welcome to the very first episode of the Action Driven Podcast!

Who would have known we’d be doing this when we met on stage at WistiaFest back in 2017.

We’re super excited to create a podcast with one goal, and one goal only: Bring you actionable tips, insights and ideas that will help marketers and entrepreneurs unlock business growth & results.

Each and every episode we record is designed to break down a step-by-step framework, process or strategy you can use to grow, optimize your marketing results and get higher ROI.

In this episode we tell you a little about where we come from, why we’re putting this together, and what you can expect.

See you inside <3

Episode Transcript

Ross Simmonds: So we’re doing this.

Talia Wolf: We are.

Ross Simmonds: This is the Action Driven Podcast and we’re finally doing this thing.

Talia Wolf: We’ve been talking about this for so long now.

Ross Simmonds: It’s been an ongoing conversation about how we had to do something together and now we’re doing something. So let’s see how this goes. It’s going to be fun.

Talia Wolf: Yeah, I’m excited.

Ross Simmonds: When did we come up with this? It was at…

Talia Wolf: CTA conference , I think,

Ross Simmonds: Right, in Vancouver. That was a great event.

Talia Wolf: Well you nailed it.
Ross’s entire talk was about repurposing content, and that’s how we got to this, right? We were like, you have some amazing content on your website all about content and distribution and I’ve got so much content on conversion optimization and psychology and emotion and we’re like, we need to pair all this together and do something that’s super actionable that people can just use immediately.

Ross Simmonds: Yeah, and I think that was the key.
It was like when we talk on stage, when we write blog posts, when we do webinars, both of us have that same belief around giving people actionable insights. It’s easy to get caught up in the theory of this, that and the other thing. But when you can actually deliver people with some actionable advice, it changes the game. So I’m excited to come together to create something that’s actionable for folks, and that is also a little bit unique. But before we dive too deep into the podcast and the format that we’ve come up with, because we’re mad scientists…

Talia Wolf: I was just going to say, just as we are, we jump on stage and we’re like, okay, here’s what you got to do: One, two, three.

Ross Simmonds: Yeah. It’s so true. It’s so true.

Talia Wolf: So we’re doing the same here.

At this point, you be wondering – “hmmm hey, who are you guys?”

Ross Simmonds: I think that might be the best place to start. So how about you take the mic? Who are you?

Hi, nice to meet ya

Talia Wolf: I’m Talia Wolf, and I run a conversion optimization agency and training space.
I help businesses all over the world from e-commerce to SaaS to optimize their websites, funnels and email sequences for more conversions. We’re helping them optimize their websites and get more conversions using emotion and psychology and diving into people’s decision making processes. We have that agency side of the business and we also have a bunch of courses that we teach.

Ross Simmonds: I run an agency, my agency is called Foundation. We are a content marketing agency, specialize in B2B. So we work with everything from SaaS organizations all the way up to manufacturing companies, everything from startups to Fortune 500 companies. Oftentimes the organizations that come to us are companies who a lot of marketers and industries and people in the space would say, they’re in boring industries, but I always say there’s no such thing as boring industries, just a whole lot of boring marketers. So we oftentimes get these companies coming to us for creative ideas, unique ways to drive growth and traction through content marketing and distribution of content. And it’s been fun working with a wide variety of different brands. In addition, we also have courses and materials on B2B marketing. Again, that’s our bread and butter and we help organizations make their content engine run smooth as butter.

What’s in it for you (and your business)…

Talia Wolf: I love that because that’s the essence of everything. It’s about knowing people. And I think that’s why this podcast is going to be a little different than most things, because we make it about people, with your content and my content. It’s always about like, so how can you get and reach that person behind the screen, not the geographical location, not the gender, not the browser, the actual person that has decisions and things and challenges and all sorts of things going on in their life. And we’re trying to help them solve their problem. And when one signed up, the content, that’s the distribution. On the other hand, it’s conversion optimization, so it’s just so much going on.

Ross Simmonds: So much. It’s true. Humans are the most complex thing in the world and they’re the only thing that we really build connections with, and at the end of the day when it comes down to it, it’s complex to think about all of the different moving factors. But our hope with this podcast is to deliver folks with some actionable insights that they can run with and turn into results for their organizations. So it’s going to be fun. Before we do jump into the action, let’s give folks a little bit of a rundown on ur format and what we’re going to be doing with this because it is different, it is unique, it’s not something that I’ve seen folks do before. So let’s give folks a little bit of a rundown on that.

Episode Formats

Talia Wolf: Yeah, I feel like because we are the optimizers that we are, that we’re playing around with some formats. And the idea here is that we’re going to have two different types of podcasts. So on one hand you’ll be able to listen to 30 minute sessions, and on the other hand, 10 minute sessions.

Format #1: The time machine (30 min)

The 30 minute sessions are going to be more strategic and we’re basically going to be looking at old concepts of things that people were doing in the 50s and the 40s and the 30s, old stuff that worked really well in the past, and we’re going to be extracting all that good stuff, all the things that worked then that you can now use today in your marketing. So things that maybe companies were using, but even like monarchies, we have stuff about that which is going to be awesome, and how to apply old marketing strategies to today. Instead of that, running to automation, machine learning, AI and all that stuff. Like how do you slow down for a minute, understand people, and then use that in your marketing.

Ross Simmonds: Yeah, I’m super excited for this format. It’s kind of like what the essence of modern Disney is like in some ways. Now when I say that, hear me out. Disney has taken a bunch of old ideas and old stories that worked throughout the 80s, 70s, and 90s, and they are repurposing them with modern technology, and they’re getting blockbuster successes. The new Lion King, amazing new graphics, amazing new artists who are doing the voiceovers, all of those things. They’re just taking old stories and adding a modern spin. If we as marketers can take inspiration from the past and then add a modern spin to it, we can be successful too. I think that this is going to be one of the most unique and interesting parts of the Action Driven Podcast, and I think folks are going to get a lot of value out of it.

Format #2: The lightning round (10-15 min)

Ross Simmonds: The other type, which is a 10 minute format, is also going to be cool because it’s going to be pure tactics, pure tactical, give people the nitty gritty on exactly what they can do to move the needle within their organization. There will be zero fluff. It will be pure, raw, real, 100%. This is something that you can start to do with your organization within the next 30 minutes, sometimes.

Is this podcast for me?

Talia Wolf: And this is built for marketers. This is for the people that are wearing a gazillion hats in the company. You don’t have the time to listen to an hour podcast and walk away with one thing. So the idea is just we choose a topic and this can be anything, I mean anything. From distribution, from content, conversion optimization, any idea with all the platforms, tools, basically I want to say things that you and I are doing in our business for our clients, for our students, and we’re just going to help you bring you over the shoulder so you can see the stuff that we’re doing and give you specific like two, three things that you can walk away and actually do within 30 minutes.

Ross Simmonds: And some of them are going to be experiments that we’re running live, like we’ll be doing these things probably an hour or two before. And then coming back to the podcast and saying, folks, this is the experiment that we did, or this is the experiment that we talked about during the last episode, and now we’ve done it and here’s what we learned and how you can build on top of that. So I think it’s going to be really fun to deliver folks that much action driven insight around what they can do.

Talia Wolf: Yeah, I’m excited about it because I feel like, and we’ve spoken about this before, we see thousands of messages a day. So to be able to just listen to something for 10 minutes and just say, okay, today I’m going to learn about how I can stand out in the Facebook feed, or today I’m going to learn about the most crucial questions I should be asking in customer surveys, or how to leverage Pinterest or Reddit. All that stuff in 10 minutes, get two, three things you can walk away with. I think that’s gold.

Ross Simmonds: And I just thought about what’s going to be really cool is when we have so many of these delivered that folks can just turn them into a playlist and just listen to a bunch of action driven insights one after one after one, it is going to be amazing. So we’re super excited to deliver that format. What else should we tell folks? I think they should know probably how to get in touch with us.

Talia Wolf: Oh, right, yeah. We have a Facebook group, it’s called the Action Driven Podcast obviously, and you can go into that and essentially what we want to do is gather your questions. Just throw all your questions that you have at us so that we can really create content around what you guys need. So any questions that you have or comments or feedback.

Ross Simmonds: Topics that you want us to cover, or if you have inspiration around things that you’ve seen in the past that you’re like, Oh, I would love to hear what their thoughts would be on this topic. Then by all means, share that in the group as well. It’s also kind of cool because they’re going to get exclusive access to both of us, and I think for that on its own, it’s worth joining this group because they’ll be able to get pretty much free consulting in some ways. [crosstalk 00:08:50]

Talia Wolf: Yeah, don’t oversell it. Oh my God.

Ross Simmonds: We have to be careful. We have to be careful with that.

Talia Wolf: It’s consulting. Join the Facebook group, and we’ll just consult you for free.

Ross Simmonds: Pretty much.

Talia Wolf: Great, Ross. I feel like this Facebook group is going to be a great place for people to interact with each other. And if you have anything that you’ve seen in the past that you want us to cover, fantastic. Any topics, and also in the news, like things that are happening right now. Because Ross and I are really into like, this thing just happened in our life and we’ve got to…

Ross Simmonds: Talk about it. Yeah.

Talia Wolf: So we’ll get into that. Maybe even parenting stuff.

Ross Simmonds: Maybe, we might get into that too. We’ll see. I think it’ll be cool to even see folks building their own relationships with each other and answering each other’s questions. So don’t feel like this is only going to be the Ross and Talia show. You folks can have conversations, have dialogues together, help each other. Because at the end of the day, the only way that we as marketers can continue to level up our own skills is if we’re all collaborating and sharing ideas with one another.

Talia Wolf: Yeah, agreed. And I’m super looking forward to this, and I just want to, as we advise our clients the same, we do the same. Like we say, what do your customers want? What do your clients need? Let’s look at them because we’re not the heroes, they are. So I feel like, I just want to help as much as possible, and we can find that content around that. That would be awesome.

Ross Simmonds: I love it. And we will leave a link in the show notes as well as in the podcast show notes where you can access the Facebook group. So we would love to see you inside, and we’re looking forward to sharing action driven insights and chatting with you soon.